“There is that to consider.”

  “I have and I think the Nazi son of a bitch is behind it all, Cec.”

  Cecil had the key open when he sighed, the sigh very audible over the distance. “I think you just might be right, Ben. Needless to say, our intelligence people are very red-faced about this matter.”

  “Tell them to stop kicking themselves. This caught all of us off guard. Good God, Cec, we’ve got the best intel system in the world. They’ve done a superb job over the years. They can’t be expected to nail down everything. All right, ol’ buddy, here it is: I want infiltrators moving ASAP . . .”

  “I’ve got them ready to go, Ben. At the very first sign of aggression, they’ll start knocking out vital facilities in enemy territory.”

  “Good, good.”

  “I’ve placed the SUSA on low alert and beefed up our border crossings. We’re monitoring every transmission. We’re stockpiling supplies.”

  Ben laughed and let Cecil hear the laughter. “Hell, Cec, I’ll stop worrying then. You’ve got a handle on it.”

  “Ben, I’ve just been notified that the new President of the USA wants to talk to me. I’ll break off and get back to you just as soon as I find out what’s up.”

  “Ten-four, Cec. I’ll stay close to the radio. Good luck.”

  “Watch your ass over there, Ben.”

  “You can bet on that. Talk to you soon. Eagle out.”

  Ben stood up and walked around the room for a moment, deep in thought. He stopped and turned to the crowd who had gathered to hear what Cecil Jefferys had to say. “Corrie, advise the batt coms of the situation. But tell them I don’t want to even think about a meeting just yet. There really is no point. We simply don’t know enough to warrant that. Cecil’s got everything under control back home. We’ve got a job to do over here, so let’s concentrate on that for the time being.”

  He put his gaze on Dr. Chase, sitting on the corner of a deck in the old office building on the edge of the airport. “Lamar, give me your first estimates of the health situation of the people here.”

  “Pretty good, Ben, all things considering. We’re getting supplies in from Europe in a couple of days: enough vaccines to last us for a long time. Those countries have really come through for us.”

  “Good, Lamar, good.” He looked at each of the company commanders. “Any trouble in town?”

  “Not a bit,” one told him. “General, the press is due to arrive this afternoon. What the hell are we supposed to do with them?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  “The ships have docked, waiting to be unloaded,” another CO said. “You want us to see to that?”

  “Hell, no!” Ben said emphatically. “That isn’t our job. I didn’t invite these people over here. Let them take care of their own mess.”

  Lamar turned his face away so Ben could not see his grin. Ben was determined to get off on the wrong foot with the press. Lamar was always amused at that, for Ben had a marvelous relationship with the press back in the SUSA, occasionally writing columns for them when he was home. There were several reporters traveling with the Rebels, constantly moving from one battalion to another, and they wrote and sent dispatches back home. But the difference between the national press and the press from the SUSA—at least one of the differences—was that the local people never had to have their columns censored. The local press knew there were always going to be accidental killings of innocent civilians—that was war—and they didn’t dwell on it and blow it all out of proportion, pissing and moaning with every sentence. Not so with the press outside of the SUSA, and Lamar often wondered when that changed. His father had told him that the press was respected and trusted—for the most part—during World War Two. So when did it change and why?

  Lamar shook his head, mentally laid the problem aside—if it was a problem—and returned his attention back to Ben.

  “I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: we’ve got the gangs on the run; we’re pushing them south, and that is making our primary job of seeing to the needs of the people a lot easier. But sooner or later the running has to stop and the gangs are going to stand and fight.”

  “The sooner the better,” Jersey griped, and the people in the room burst out laughing.

  “Keep your pants on, Jersey!” one of the CO’s called.

  “Oh, don’t tell her that!” Cooper yelled.

  The last thing anyone saw of those two for about an hour was Jersey chasing Cooper out the front door, threatening all sorts of pain and suffering upon his body.

  Fourteen

  The press was two days late in arriving, due to the big news Stateside about most of the country reuniting. They started raising hell within moments after their charter plane landed at the Bissau airport. They were very unhappy about their vehicles and supplies having not been unloaded. Several of the big-shot news anchors, from the Big Three Networks, demanded to know why their equipment had not been unloaded.

  “It’s your equipment,” several Rebels told them several times within the span of about twenty minutes. “You unload it.”

  That attitude did not do much to improve strained relations between Ben Raines and his Rebels and the nation’s press. Not that Ben cared.

  The press finally contracted with some locals to off-load their equipment and that was completed just about the same time Ben and his 1 Batt was due to pull out. They had done all they could for the residents of the city.

  Ben had yet to meet with any member of the press, even though they had repeatedly asked for a meeting.

  Ike had radioed Ben, telling him if he sent any of the press over to his sector he’d strand them in the middle of hostile territory the first chance he got.

  “They don’t want to travel with Ike anyway,” Mike Richards told Ben on the day before the battalion was due to pull out. “They want to get some dirt on you.”

  “I’m sure of that. You going to stay with me on this next run?”

  “Not on your life. I’m gettin’ out of here today. Press types give me a pain in the ass. They always ask the dumbest questions.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” Ben said wistfully. “Sooner or later a half a dozen of them will corner me somewhere and bombard me with questions.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks a lot. Keep in touch.”

  “I will. From a distance.”

  Ben watched the chief of intelligence walk away. There was no telling where Mike would pop up next. Even though he should have his butt parked behind a desk, he had spent too many years in the field to be content with paperwork.

  “We’re lining up the column now, boss,” Corrie said. “Where do you want the press?”

  Ben sighed. “Oh, hell, Corrie. As much as I want to, I can’t stick them at the rear of the column. They’d get lost or ambushed. I’d get the blame for sure. Put them in the middle of the column. Hell, we might as well get used to baby-sitting them.”

  “Right.” She didn’t tell Ben she’d already done that, knowing that would be his final decision. Corrie was one of the few people who knew that in many cases, Ben’s bark was a lot worse than his bite. He didn’t like the press, and wouldn’t hesitate to inconvenience them, but he didn’t want to harm any of them. Well . . . most of them.

  There were three news anchors that Ben had absolutely no use for at all. Stan Travis, Marilyn Dickson, and Ford McLachlan. Those three had been up-and-comers just before the Great War, being groomed for the anchor spots on the big three networks. All three were one-hundred-percent left-wing democrats, sobbing and pissing and moaning every chance they got about guns in the hands of private citizens, the use of deadly force by the police, the death penalty, and anything else that smacked of conservatism.

  Ben’s feelings for the three news-people came very close to open hatred. And he made no effort to hide it.

  Before dawn, on the morning of the pull-out from Bissau, Ben was standing beside his vehicle when the three news anchors walked up.

  “Well, General,” Ford said. “We meet again.”

  “How wonderful for you,” Ben said acidly.

  Jersey gave Marilyn Dickson a very contemptuous look and spat on the ground.

  Marilyn fixed Jersey with a haughty gaze and then ignored her.

  “Nice to know you ladies are going to get along,” Ben said, deliberately antagonizing them both.

  “It came as quite a surprise when we learned you were allowing us to accompany you, General,” Stan Travis said.

  “I’d rather have you with me than have to waste time hauling your asses out of trouble.”

  “We are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves, General,” Marilyn said.

  Jersey laughed at that.

  Ben verbally stepped in before Marilyn allowed her ass to overload her mouth and Jersey popped her . . . something Jersey would do in a heartbeat. “You people ready to pull out?”

  “We’re ready whenever you are, General,” Ford said. “What’s the next stop?”

  “We’ll travel from here over to Mansoa, then Bambadinca, with stops along the way. Wherever the people need us.”

  “Looking for trouble along the way, of course,” Marilyn stuck her lip into it.

  “We’re always ready for trouble, Ms Dickson,” Ben answered evenly, although if she could have seen his inner thoughts concerning what he would like to do to her neck she would have run shrieking into the jungle. “We’re an army, not a pack of wimpy-assed left-wing liberals who faint at the mention of a gun.”

  Marilyn curled her lip at him and walked off. Jersey pranced along silently behind her for a few meters, doing a pretty good imitation of a prima donna carefully avoiding the mud puddles.

  Ben’s team laughed at the sight. Marilyn stopped and glanced behind her. Jersey was standing innocently, a smile on her face. “Go away,” Marilyn told her.

  “With pleasure, lady.”

  Marilyn minced on, with Jersey once more resuming her imitation.

  “Amusing, in a crude sort of way,” Stan said.

  “That’s us,” Ben said cheerfully. “Crude. Awfully crude.”

  Ford looked at Ben for a few heartbeats, then smiled faintly. “Come on, Stan. We’d better get ready to move out. Wouldn’t want to be left behind, would we?”

  The press walked off and Jersey rejoined the team. “Twenty-five of those buttholes to put up with. How long will they be with us, boss?”

  “The duration, I guess.”

  “Wonderful,” Jersey said. “Sometime between now and then that bitch is sure to stumble and fall on her face right in the mud.”

  Ben walked back to the wagon, chuckling as he walked. He hoped Ms. Dickson never got too close to a large mud puddle while Jersey was around. Although, that would be quite a sight to see . . .

  There was nothing left of Mansoa. Not one building remained of the village. The Rebels pushed on to Bambadinca, or rather, what was left of it. It too, like Mansoa, had been destroyed. In Bambadinca, Ben’s 1 Batt linked up for a day with Nick Stafford’s 2 Batt. The two huge battalions would travel together south down to Mampata. There, Nick would veer off to the east and Ben would continue south.

  “Starving and sick people,” Nick told Ben. “It’s been a depressing run so far.”

  “I’ve got a hunch it’ll only get worse the further south we go,” Ben said.

  “Says here there is excellent food in Mampata,” Beth read from an old travel brochure. “French food.”

  “Not anymore,” Corrie called. “Scouts report the town is in ruins. Looks as though it’s been deserted for a long time. Water is still good though.”

  “Where have the people gone, General?” Ford McLachlan asked, standing a few feet away.

  Since the question had been posed in a civil tone of voice, Ben answered it civilly. “I don’t know, Ford. All my battalions have run into the same thing.” Ben’s eyes narrowed as a gaggle of press types strolled up to join Ford, including Marilyn Dickson and Stan Travis. “Gangs might have driven them out or killed them, or taken many of them to sell in the newly flourishing slave trade. They might have died from disease or malnutrition; probably a lot of them did. Many of them fled to the cities . . . and died there.”

  “And many of them were forced to turn to a life of petty crime in order to survive and your troops shot them down like rabid animals and killed them,” Marilyn ran her mouth.

  Nick quietly slipped away from the growing crowd and beat it back to his battalion. He had seen Ben lose his temper a couple of times while dealing with certain press types, and it was not a pretty sight.

  Ben ignored the woman’s comments. “Other than the explanation I just offered, I don’t know what happened to the people. I can add this: for several years we have had rumors—those rumors now confirmed—that after the Great War, millions of people died here on the African continent.” He cut his eyes to Marilyn. “Long before we arrived.”

  “General,” a reporter that Ben did not know asked, “Who is paying for this massive military operation of yours?”

  “The SUSA is covering part of the cost,” Ben replied. “The newly formed United Nations and participating countries is picking up the rest of it.”

  “But you are not here as peacekeepers, officially sanctioned by the UN as such?” another asked.

  Ben shook his head. “No, we are not.”

  “You are here primarily to deal with the growing threat that Bruno Bottger and his army presents to the free world, is that it?” another asked.

  “Yes. That is our primary mission.”

  “But General Bottger says he would welcome the press in his country,” another reporter stated. “He says he will show that the nations under his control have prospered, and there is no rampant starvation there.”

  “Feel free to go anytime you wish,” Ben came right back. “But by all means, ask the general if you may travel unescorted throughout his territory, asking questions of anyone. How about doing that?”

  “The general says there are still many gangs prowling the countryside, and that would be dangerous for us,” the reporter replied.

  Ben laughed, devoid of humor. More and more, his suspicions that Bruno had a large hand in what was happening back in America were being confirmed. “I could have told you that would be his reply. A few years back, the dictators of Libya and Iraq—to name two countries—basically said the same thing. If you care to recall.”

  “Are you comparing General Bottger to those dictators, General?” Marilyn asked.

  “Bruno Bottger is worse than Hitler ever thought about being,” Ben told the crowd. “Hitler is the man’s idol. Bear in mind, I’ve fought this bastard off and on for years. Believe me, I know him far better than any of you. The man is the personification of evil.”

  “But we only have your word for that,” another liberal jackoff popped.

  “Oh, shit!” Jersey muttered under her breath.

  Several more knowledgeable reporters quickly stepped away from the reporter who had just let his ass overload his mouth.

  Ben held his famous temper under control . . . sort of, and for a moment only. He smiled at the young man, guessing the reporter to be in his very early to possibly mid-twenties—probably just out of college, with his head crammed full of socialistic bullshit from egg-headed professors who had never had a firm grip on reality in their entire life. “That is correct to a degree, sonny-boy,” Ben said softly, the crowd straining to hear his words. “You only have my word. But that remark tells me you know nothing about world events, and probably very little about anything else. My advice to you would be to keep that flapping blow-hole of yours closed until you have the ability to see and report, fairly, both sides of every story.”

  Ben turned to Corrie. “Tell the troops to mount up. We’re out of here.”

  Ben turned and walked off without another word.

  Jersey fixed the mouthy young reporter with a gaze from her dark obsidian eyes. There was a lot to be read in that look, and most of the reporters read it accurately. Unfortunately, the young man, Alex Marsh, was not yet worldly enough to understand he had just implied that General Raines was a liar.

  Not a very smart thing to do.

  Fifteen

  The Rebels passed through many small villages on the way south to Mampata, but most were long deserted and falling down.

  “Where the hell did all the people go?” Cooper asked, as they crossed the bridge over the Rio Corubal River and headed for Quebo. At Quebo, they would cut south once more and cross over into the Republic of Guinea.

  The Rebels had found no signs of mass graves, and since leaving the north, no signs of mass slaughter in any of the villages along the way.

  “I don’t know, Coop,” Ben replied. “What I do know is we’re less than a month away from the rainy season. And when that hits, we’re going to be slowed down to a crawl and worse, we’re all going to be miserable.”

  “Says here,” Beth said, lowering the travel brochure, “that in some parts of Guinea, the rainfall can be torrential from May to September, with many roads closed during that period.”

  “If it gets too bad, we’ll just hole up,” Ben said.

  “And then, Jersey,” Cooper said with a grin, “you and me can play house.”

  Jersey told him to go commit an impossible act upon his person.

  “I just can’t figure Mampata,” Anna said. “Not a skeleton to be found, not the first sign of any fight. But the people were all gone. It’s weird.”

  “Here’s something just as weird,” Corrie said. “Scouts are reporting that Quebo is deserted. Not one sign of life.”

  “Damn!” Ben whispered. “Corrie, signal we’re stopping. Tell the Scouts to hold up.”

  That done, Corrie asked, “Bad feeling, boss?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not really. I don’t know. Maybe. Hell, I just don’t know what’s going on. And these mysteries about deserted villages and missing people are beginning to bug me.”

  Cooper stopped the big wagon and Ben got out, waiting for the HumVees carrying his company commanders to come to the front of the column.