Ike touched his arm. “Ben...”

  “We don't have time to grieve, buddy. Later.”

  The Rebels drifted silently into the forest, taking their wounded, leaving their dead; Salina and the boy lay among the still and the quiet and the dead. Ants had already begun their march across her face. She lay in a puddle of thickening blood, one hand on the arm of her dead child.

  The Rebels split up, the first two squads not making it past the edge of the northern border of the strip. A forward observer spotted them and called in artillery. None escaped the deadly hail. Another group walked into an ambush; only a few escaped. The kids lay like pebbles on a beach, their broken and smashed bodies a grim reminder of the vindictiveness and power of government. A half a dozen Cobra gunships spotted another group and came chopping out of the sky, strafing them with rocket and machine-gun fire.

  A few moments before dusk Ben's group came face-to-face with two companies of government troops.

  Jimmy Deluce was caught in a murderous crossfire and died on his feet, cursing the enemy.

  Jack had regrouped with his father and now left Ben's side to help a friend. Jack was almost cut apart by M-60 fire. Tina lobbed a grenade into a machine-gun nest and finished it off with a burst from her M-10.

  Sam Pyron watched his wife shot dead, and the West Virginia mountain boy rose to his feet, screaming his outrage. He walked toward the soldiers hip-firing an AK-47 and cursing them. He took more than a few with him into that long good-by.

  Ben took a slug low in his left side, the slug traveling downward, bouncing off his hipbone, the force of it knocking him against a tree, stunning him. A concussion grenade slammed him into darkness.

  Ben was spared the sight of Pal taking a .45 slug through the head. He did not see Valerie torn apart by automatic rifle fire. He would be informed much later that Pal and Valerie's children had run into the line of fire trying to get to him, and had been cut to bloody ribbons.

  Voltan died. Megan was taken alive and raped, then shot. Al, Abby ... many, many more died. Lila walked in front of a Claymore and was blown into tiny bits. James Riverson helped carry Ben out of the forest and across the border, the big man walking and weeping. His Belle was dead, and so were their kids.

  By the time darkness fell on the now nonexistent government of the Tri-states, not many Rebels had escaped. Less than three thousand had made it out. But Badger and dozens more had escaped weeks before, and headed underground.

  The zero squads.

  Chapter 10

  Senators Richards, Goode, Carey, and Williams were having a drink before their usual Thursday- night poker game in Richmond. They would never get around to playing poker, and it would be their last drink before death took them behind her misty curtain of sunless eternity. They all felt safe, knowing that three secret service agents were guarding them. The agents were there, but they were very dead, cut down by silenced .22 automatics.

  Williams jerked up his head, the fresh drink in his hand forgotten. “Did any of you hear anything?”

  Carey laughed. “Relax, Jimmy. You don't really believe in those so-called zero squads, do you?”

  Sen. Jimmy Williams ran nervous fingers through thinning hair. He did not reply. Outside, a late- summer storm was building; heat lightning danced erratically and thunder rumbled across the sky, almost an ominous warning in cadence.

  Senator Goode leaned forward. “Jimmy, it's been over three months since the Tri-states’ defeat. Ben Raines is dead. Eyewitnesses have reported it. If anything was going to happen, don't you believe it would have occurred by now?”

  “No.” Williams spoke. “I don't. We allowed the women and kids to be killed—slaughtered like animals. Just like we did the Indians. They're going to get us. We're dead men and don't even know it.”

  Senator Richards looked up into the gloom of the darkened hallway. “Oh, no!” he shouted. “Oh, my God!”

  The senators looked first at their colleague, then into the faces of hate and revenge and death. Standing in the hallway stood two men and a woman. They held silenced automatics in their hands.

  Goode fell forward on his knees and began to pray. A self-professed “good Christian man,” Goode had been the first to vote for war against the Tri-states.

  Carey's face turned shiny from sweat and a trickle of spit oozed from a corner of his mouth. He began to rub his hands together and lick at his lips.

  Richards dropped his drink on the carpeted floor. His eyes were wide and he urinated in his shorts.

  Only Williams remained calm. “I knew you people would come,” he said. “I told them to leave you alone. I was against fighting you.”

  “We know.” The woman spoke. “And because of that, you'll live. And the Tri-states will live again, too. Remember that.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will.” Williams bobbed his head up and down.

  The automatics began to hum their dirges. Richards, Goode, and Carey jerked onto the floor and died. The assassination team left as quickly and quietly as they had arrived. They had a lot of work ahead of them.

  Williams sat for a long time, looking at the cooling bodies of his friends. His eyes grew wild and he soiled himself. The telephone rang and he ignored it. He began to giggle, childlike. The giggling changed to laughter and he howled his madness as blood vessels burst in his head. He fell to his knees on the floor and cried and prayed. A massive pain grew out of his chest—a huge, heavy, crushing weight. He screamed, his heart stopping its beating. He died.

  General Russell called for more coffee. He was working late in his office. A sergeant brought him a fresh pot, poured a cup, and opened a packet of sugar, stirring it in.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Yes,” Russell said. “You may leave.” He tasted his coffee, added more sugar, and took another sip. He would be found the next morning, dead, his system full of poison.

  Dallas Valentine and the first lady, Fran Logan, lay moaning and thrashing on the bed, both of them reaching for the final pinnacle of climax. Neither of them heard the door swing open. They were enjoying mutual climax as the Rebel with the silenced submachine gun sprayed them with .45- caliber slugs, turning the silk sheets red with blood.

  The Rev. Palmer Falcreek answered his telephone. A voice said, “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.”

  “What the hell did you say?” Falcreek said.

  “I said"—the voice rang in Falcreek's ear—"open the drawer in the middle right of your desk, you semi-sanctimonious mother-fucker!”

  “How dare you speak to me like that!” Falcreek raged. He jerked open the desk drawer and half the house blew apart as the heavy charge was detonated.

  Senator Higley worked late in his office. The storm didn't worry him and neither did the myth of the zero squads. He left his office at nine-thirty. Halfway down the steps of the Senate office building he sat down abruptly, twitched once, then slowly rolled down the steps, the hole between his eyes leaking blood and gray matter.

  Senator Pough stepped out of his porch for a breath of cool night air. He heard a thump and looked down. Between his feet, on the porch, lay a hissing white phosphorus grenade. Pough had only a few seconds to feel panic, attempt to run, and scream just once before the grenade exploded and seared him to the house.

  Rep. Carol Helger answered the donging of her apartment doorbell and took a twelve-inch bayonet through her chest. The young woman who shoved the heavy blade into her spat on the still-writhing body, left the blade in her, and quietly left the building.

  The zero squads were busy that stormy, revengeful night. Very busy. The final tally was thirty-one senators and seventy-four representatives dead. Twelve cabinet heads dead and the entire Joint Chiefs were also wiped out. A few zero squad members made it out of Richmond to rejoin the eastern-based Rebels. Most died in shootouts with the police. Only one zero squad member had not worked that night of terror. He slept soundly in a motel room three hundred miles from Richmond. He had only one person to kill.

  Badger Harbin was to kill the president of the United States.

  Richmond went into a panic. No one could possibly guess at the number of assassins roaming the streets, killing at random. Innocent men and women were killed by federal agents and police during raids on suspected Rebel sympathizers. Martial law was declared. The police were federalized. It was the beginning of America's first true police state.

  President Logan smiled and leaned back in his leather chair. He was very pleased with the way things were going. Seven weeks since the awful assassinations, and the country was settling down. He had rid himself of a cheating wife and accomplished his life's dream: he had an iron grip on the country. The previous night he had dreamed of being crowned king of America.

  Yes, Logan smiled, things were sailing right along. And, best of all, that damned Ben Raines was dead. That damned troublemaker was finally dead and through.

  Or was he? The president frowned at the thought. His agents swore that Raines was dead; swore they'd shot him and a young blonde woman who was with him. Said they saw them fall out there in Washington, up near the British Columbia border.

  “Damn it!” Logan swore. Why hadn't they made more effort to retrieve the body and bring it back with them? Put the stinking, bullet-riddled carcass on public display, to show people that when the government says do something, by God this is what happens if you don't follow orders.

  The president stood and stretched. He walked out of his office and up the hallway. “Get my guards,” he told an aide. “I'm going for a walk.”

  Logan tried to take a walk every morning at ten o'clock, rain or shine. He had missed his walk the past few days because of meetings and was irritable because of it. Now he would have his walk.

  His last walk.

  Outside the new White House, as it was still called, across the street in a public park, a young man sat, feeding the birds and the squirrels, enjoying the cool breeze of fall; a handsome young man, in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked very much the part of a highly successful executive, dressed in the height of fashion. He'd drawn the attentions of a dozen ladies strolling. The young man had smiled at them, then ignored them. Seemingly preoccupied with the time, he kept looking at his wristwatch.

  Ben Raines gazed at the reflection of his face and upper torso in the still waters of the little creek in northern Idaho. He said, “Lord, man, you look like you've been dissected and rejected.”

  Ben was now in his fifty-third year, completely gray. His face was lined and tanned; body still hard, eyes old.

  “No...” A voice spoke from behind him. “Never rejected. Not by me.”

  Ben turned, smiling, to look at the woman who had stood by him during the past very bad months. She returned the smile.

  “At last count there were nine bullet scars in your hide.” She touched one of the newer scars, pink and dimpled. Her touch became more intimate as she moved her hand from his shoulder to his chest, touching her lips to his mouth.

  “I have a meeting in an hour,” he reminded her.

  She grinned. “General, there may have been a time when you could last an hour. But not since I've known you.”

  Together, they laughed.

  In the small park across from the White House, Badger Harbin put his hand on the briefcase. He had heard the newscast, some weeks back, that Gen. Ben Raines was dead. Badger wanted very much not to believe that. And a part of him did not. Gen. Ben Raines, Badger knew, was a hard man to kill.

  The attache case under his hand was ready. In that case he had carefully prepared and packed ten pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, to be detonated electrically, activated by a tiny switch located under the handle of the briefcase.

  Badger smiled. It was similiar to the grin of the Grim Reaper.

  Vice President Addison stood in the president's now-empty office and fought a silent battle within his mind. The president had been his friend for more than thirty years. But Hilton had done so much twisting and changing in his social and political philosophy over the last years ... Aston felt he no longer knew the man, and he was ashamed of himself for remaining silent at some of Hilton's outrages toward humankind.

  Aston had been sick at his stomach for a week after the slaughter of the Indians, and for longer than that after Tri-states was destroyed. There had been more than slaughter in both places: rape and torture confirmed. Hilton had brushed that news aside.

  “Traitors,” he had said, and would speak no more of it.

  The president's own doctor had come to Aston, telling him of his strong suspicions that the president was rapidly approaching the point of being a madman. Aston didn't want to believe it. But...

  “Yes,” he muttered to the silent office. “His mind is sick.”

  Aston then made up his mind: he would have that meeting with the members of Congress who felt the country was heading in the wrong direction. Certain military men would also be present. They would pool their ideas and thoughts, try to work something out. A bloodless coup, perhaps? But it would be difficult, for some units of the military, a lot of national guard and reserve units, and nearly all the newly federalized police supported Logan and his dictatorship.

  Aston mused: Logan is no better than was Ben Raines. Actually, he grimaced at the thought, Logan is a lot worse.

  Yes, Hilton was sick.

  Aston paced the carpet, thinking: My God, how did this great nation ever come to this? What did we do over the years that was so wrong?

  “We drifted away from the Constitution, you idiot!” he said aloud. He moved to the president's desk. There, he seated himself and cursed.

  He picked up the binoculars that Hilton used to study the faces of people who walked past the White House. He adjusted the glasses until he had Hilton in focus, striding across the lawn, toward the fence by the sidewalk. Lifting the glasses, he caught a movement across the street, in the park. He studied the young man as he moved slowly onto the painted crosswalk leading to the sidewalk in front of the fence. The young man carried an attache case.

  Aston suddenly felt he was having a heart attack. His chest hurt, he had trouble breathing, his head felt light.

  “My God!” he yelled to the empty room. “That's the bodyguard. General Raines's bodyguard.”

  He grabbed up the phone, punching a button for a line. He ignored the light signifying the line was busy. He punched another. Busy. Cursing, he ran from the room.

  Outside, the guard had unlocked the gate, allowing the president to step through to the sidewalk. He was alone except for his contingent of secret service agents, some feet behind and ahead of him. One stood by his side, street-side. The president noticed a well-dressed young man walking toward him. The young man smiled; a nice, open, friendly smile, and Hilton returned the smile. Hilton wished everybody would like him. He only had the country's best interests at heart. Hilton suddenly felt very good. It was a beautiful fall day.

  “Paul, call that young man over here.” President Logan gave his last order.

  When the secret service agent hailed him, Badger punched the button trigger of the deadly attache case. It would blow in thirty seconds.

  “Sir!” a secret service man called to VP Addison. “What's wrong, sir?”

  “Stop them!” Aston said, gasping for breath.

  “Stop who, sir?”

  Aston rushed past the man, ran down the steps. In his haste, he stumbled, rolling down the steps, gashing open his head, cracking his skull. He was flung into darkness. The secret service men ran to help him.

  “Hello, there, young man,” President Logan said to Badger. “Lovely day, isn't it?”

  Badger grinned as he finished his silent count of twenty. He stepped up to the president, the force side of the attache case toward Logan. “General Raines sends his compliments,” Badger said. And just before the heavy charge blew them all over the White House lawn and into history, Badger added, “You rotten son of a bit—”

  EPILOGUE

  Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you began; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to—my voice fails me; my inclination carries me no farther—all is confusion beyond it.

  Burke—first speech on conciliation with America

  Ben looked about him, but he was not really seeing the several hundred men and women that made up his personal contingent of the western-based Rebels. No, his mind was far away. He was seeing Salina in the dim light outside that motel—he could not remember exactly where it was. So long ago, he sighed, but yet, only yesterday.

  And now, his sigh deepened, I am past middle age, and she is dead, rotting in a forest. And my son—dead—as are all the others who fought and died for what they believed.

  On both sides, he carefully, reluctantly, reminded himself.

  General Krigel had his eastern-based Rebels ready to go, as did Conger in the mid-north, Colonel Ramos in the southwest, and General Hazen in the midwest.

  Now, in the swamps, the mountains, the deserts, and the badlands and woodlands, many of the marines and paratroopers and SEALs and Rangers and Green Berets and Air Force personnel and regular infantrymen who had refused to fight anymore against the Tri-states, and had deserted, were gathered, awaiting Ben's orders to go. The Rebel dream had not died; it was as strong as before. Whether it would bloom as a beautiful child, or become as evil as a cancer, only time and history would know.

  And now, it was time: Ben would give the orders and guerrilla warfare would once more shake the country, and possibly, the rebuilding world.

  Again.

  God! He was so weary of fighting.

  Ben shook away his thoughts of things and people past and dead and said, “Badger completed his assignment. Logan is dead. VP Addison is hospitalized in a coma. Many military units are in revolt against the government; some others want to take over the government, continuing Logan's dictatorship. It's time for us to make our move toward rebuilding our dream of a free state.”