As the team streamed through the front door Anna looked back over her shoulder and saw Ben sprawled on the ground.

  “Daddy Ben!” she screamed as she ran to squat next to him. With one hand she aimed her CAR at the window and sprayed it with fire while she grabbed his collar with the other and dragged Ben to the relative safety of the front porch.

  While Corrie and Beth cleared out the downstairs rooms, advancing through thick smoke and smoldering flames from the grenades, Jersey and Cooper ran up the stairs side by side, their weapons jerking and bucking as they fired ahead of them.

  At the head of the stairs Jersey pointed Cooper to the right, and she turned to the left. At the first doorway she paused to shuck an empty magazine onto the floor and then slammed another into her CAR.

  Without exposing herself she stuck the barrel into the doorway and sprayed the inside of the room, eliciting two quick screams followed by thumps as bodies hit the floor.

  Cooper dropped his SAW to the ground when it clicked on an empty chamber, and pulled two 9mm automatic pistols from holsters on both hips.

  He dived through the door, hitting the ground in a roll and coming up firing with both hands.

  Automatic rifle fire buzzed over his head, stitching holes in the wall behind him as he shot two gunmen in the chest at point blank range, the bullets punching small holes in the front of the men’s shirts and blowing out larger holes in their backs as the slugs exited. One of the men was blown backward through the window behind him, to fall screaming out of sight. The other was thrown back against a wall, where he slipped to the floor, leaving a blood trail down the expensive wallpaper.

  Within minutes it was over, and the first building was cleared of hostile forces. There were ten men dead, and two wounded severely but able to talk.

  The team assembled on the first floor, where Anna was standing next to a couch where she had laid Ben. Her back was to him, and she stood with CAR at port arms, ready to kill to protect him should anyone survive the assault and come her way.

  Upstairs, Jersey spoke into her mike. “Jersey clear.”

  Cooper, as he popped a fresh magazine into his 9mm, said, “Cooper clear.”

  Beth and Corrie also checked in with their own ‘clear’ messages.

  Anna looked over her shoulder at Ben, who was shaking his head and trying to sit up on the couch. “Anna clear, but Ben’s hit.”

  The team rapidly assembled in the living room, the two prisoners made to lie face down in a corner with Cooper standing over them, nervously looking over at Ben to see how serious his wounds were.

  A large bruise was beginning to form on his right temple area, and a small trickle of blood ran down his cheek where the edge of the helmet had made a gouge.

  He looked around at his friends. “Good work, team.”

  Jersey placed a hand on his swollen face. “You okay, Boss?”

  Ben smiled. “Yeah, but I must be getting old and slow to get clipped like that.”

  Beth shook her head. “Sure, Boss. In the old days you could’ve outrun that bullet.”

  “Good thing it hit you in the head, General Ben,” Anna said in a low voice, her lips curved in a slight grin. “The hardest part of your body.”

  Ben stood up, swayed a moment, and had to grab the arm of the couch to steady himself. Then he said, “Corrie, get on the horn and tell the other squads what happened.”

  He turned to Cooper, “Coop, bring those two over here and we’ll have a quick field interrogation.”

  While Corrie was in the wagon, talking to the other squads, Ben faced their prisoners. They were both black men with ritual scars on their faces, indicating membership in some local tribe.

  “You men understand English?” Ben asked.

  The prisoners glanced at each other and then back at Ben and shook their heads, eyes downcast as they stared at the floor with defiant expressions.

  Ben looked at Cooper and winked so that the men couldn’t see him. “OK, Cooper. They can’t tell us anything. Shoot them.”

  The men jerked their heads up, terror now on their faces. “No . . . no ... we’ll talk,” one said with the singsong accent of a Bantu who has been taught English by missionaries as a child.

  Ben paced in front of the prisoners, who were sitting on the couch surrounded by his team, weapons at the ready. “What is going on here in Pointe-Noire? Where are all the citizens, and who are the forces opposing us?”

  The older of the two began to speak. “When General Bottger’s troops occupied the city, maybe three months ago, those who resisted were killed.”

  He paused, eyes searching Ben’s team’s faces to see their reactions. When he got no response, he continued. “Most of the others ran away during the night, back into the jungle. Soon, all that were left were sympathizers, whores, and soldiers. General Bottger told us you would be coming. He offered much money to those that would stay and fight when you came.”

  The man shrugged. “What were we to do? The alternatives were to be killed by him or to go into the jungle to die of swamp fever or be killed by animals or other tribes. We had no real choice.”

  “How many men are we facing?”

  The second man said, “There are four, maybe five thousand men in the city. Almost all of the buildings are occupied, and the others are . . . how you say . . . booby trapped.”

  “Are the men professional soldiers, or mainly citizens, like yourselves?”

  “There are a few soldiers, but most are men like us, who were forced to fight.”

  Ben grunted. He didn’t for a minute believe these men were forced to fight. He figured they were men who took the easy way out, cooperating with Bottger because it gave them power over their fellow citizens of Pointe-Noire. Most were probably lowlife punks who were criminals and gang members before Bottger arrived, and probably a significant number had been prisoners in jails who took his offer to fight for money.

  Ben turned away, “Coop, do what you can to dress their wounds and stop the bleeding. Then we’ll assemble the team and discuss our options.”

  After the prisoners were tended to, Ben addressed the rest of his group. “Corrie, get on the horn and call the other units. We’ll call in the PUFFs and P51Es to attack the city, bombs followed by strafing runs. Then we’ll have the gunships come in and do low-level strafing of what’s left of the buildings. I want the city leveled.”

  “What about the non-combatant civilians?” Beth asked.

  Ben’s eyes were hard. “There are no non-combatants left here. Anyone who stayed has chosen sides . . . the wrong side, as they’re soon going to find out. Tell the squads to stay out of the city for now, and to pop green smoke grenades so the bombers will know they’re friendlies, and to avoid them.”

  “And after that?” Cooper asked.

  Ben gave a fierce grin. “Then we go door-to-door and house-to-house and finish the job!”

  Eight

  Ben and his team popped a green smoke grenade in the front yard of the house they had just raided, then gathered on the roof to watch the show.

  Four PUFFs, twin engine assault planes known officially as AC47s, each with 20mm Vulcan cannons, 6 barrel Gatling guns, and four pairs of 7.62s, roared in low over the city from different points of the compass.

  Small arms fire began to appear in windows of buildings and houses, some of the tracer rounds making orange trails in the late afternoon light, arching toward the PUFFs as they dove at several hundred miles an hour. Their engines screamed but couldn’t drown out the ratcheting chatter of the Vulcan 20mm cannons as they rained destruction among the structures of the city.

  Walls, windows, then entire buildings seemed to almost disintegrate under the murderous fire from the aircraft before they pulled up in unison, barrel-rolling to dive again and again on the dying city.

  Soon hundreds of figures could be seen running for their lives from houses and skyscrapers, trying to escape the thousands of rounds of molten lead bringing death and destruction their way. Some of the men stopped in the middle of streets, aiming their pitiful rifles at the birds from hell, to die torn asunder by the rounds from the PUFFs’ cannons.

  After several strafing runs the planes’ cannons were empty, but they continued to dive, spraying the buildings that remained partially intact with their Gatling guns, which sounded like swarms of angry bees buzzing toward unlucky men caught out in the open.

  Bricks, mortar, stucco, and wood all splintered and disappeared in a fog of destroyed walls. The planes, guns empty, dipped their wings at Ben’s troops as they departed.

  Through binoculars, Ben could see the few survivors who remained shouting with joy and waving their rifles in the air, as if they had somehow caused the planes to leave.

  Moments later, the chup-chup could be heard as the Apaches approached, the assault helicopters with twin-mounted 40mm cannon and deadly M60 machine guns. Flying lower and slower, these choppers were able to target smaller groups of hostiles, blowing them apart as they flew sideways down narrow streets and alleyways.

  Suddenly, one of the Apaches, evidently hit in the tail rotor by small arms fire, belched smoke from its engine and began to auto-rotate down to a bumpy landing.

  Ben’s knuckles turned white on his binoculars as he watched his ship go down.

  Immediately, two other ships took up station on either side of the fallen bird, hovering low off the ground, giving massive supportive fire until the pilots and gunners could escape the wounded chopper and climb on board the others.

  Ben let out breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding as he saw his men make it safely out of the hot zone and into the other choppers.

  After a moment, he said, “Corrie, radio the Apaches and tell them to back off and head back to base to refuel. It’s time for us to go in and clean out the trash, and I want them back in time to provide air support for the operation.”

  “Gotcha, Boss. You want me to bump John Michaels and have him tell the troops to move out?”

  As usual, Corrie was one step of ahead of Ben. It continually amazed him how she seemed to anticipate his every thought.

  Ben turned to address his team. “Yes, and tell him to take care. It’s going to get sticky. There’re bound to be pockets of resistance that the gunships missed.” Ben took a deep breath. “Okay, guys and gals, let’s mount up and go kick some ass.”

  As his team members grinned and started for the stairs he added, “I also want you all to be wearing the new, lightweight kevlar vests we got in last week. I notice most of them are still in their plastic pouches.”

  “Aw, Boss,” Cooper moaned. “Those things are hot. They make my skin itch, and chafe my armpits.”

  “Yeah,” Jersey added, “and they squash my—”

  Ben held up his hands, his expression serious. “That’s enough, soldiers. That wasn’t a request, if you get my drift. It was an order, and I expect it to be obeyed. I’ll cut you some slack and let you not wear them when we’re not in actual combat, but for this type of mission where we’re going door-to-door and we know we’re going to come under fire, I want those vests on. Comprende?”

  The team members nodded and walked toward the wagon, their heads hanging like children being forced back to the table to eat their vegetables. Ben shook his head, smiling at their backs.

  He had pulled a lot of strings to get as many of the new vests as he could, and had more on order. He felt they were the coming thing in wartime technology. Amazingly lightweight, the vests could be worn under uniform shirts and were hardly noticeable. Their attraction was they would stop anything up to a 9mm bullet, and most shrapnel would be rendered non-lethal. He hoped to soon have enough for all of his troops. Currently only squad commanders and officers were fully equipped, with the first issues going to his scouting teams, who saw the most intense combat of any of the troops.

  As Ben and his team stood next to the wagon putting on their vests, Anna said, “General Ben, I don’t feel right using this vest when all the troops don’t have them.”

  Ben cocked an eyebrow at her. “Oh? Why not?”

  “I was reading in the old Declaration of Independence of the United States where it said all men are created equal, so why do some of us get to use the vests, and others not?”

  Ben shook his head. “I thought you understood history better than that, Anna. First of all, the phrase ‘all men are created equal’ meant that under the law of the new country all persons would be treated equally, with none having preferential treatment. It certainly did not mean all people were born with equal abilities or chances, as the whiny, liberal crybabies used to try to say. Hell, anyone who has ever taught school or been a leader of any kind knows people are all different, with varying degrees of competence at different tasks. Now, as to why some of the troops, notably squad leaders and officers, get the vests and the so-called grunts do not, it’s because no matter how much each person is worth as an individual certain members of an army, are much more valuable to the war effort than others, especially during wartime. Personally, I hate to see any of our boys or girls die, but I have to be honest with you. There are some I’d rather lose than others. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, staring at the ground as she zipped her vest up.

  He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “I know you do, but it was a good try, anyway, even though it didn’t get you out of wearing the vest.”

  Cooper and Jersey and Beth laughed. Cooper said, “I was trying my best to think of some reason not to wear this damned thing, but leave it to Anna to come with the excuse that if everyone doesn’t have one no one should.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes at the group. “Yeah, we’re gonna have to watch her, all right. She’s sounding more like a Democrat all the time. Next she’ll want to share our rations with the enemy, since it’s obviously poverty caused by our success that’s making them so hostile.”

  She punched Ben on the arm hard enough to spin him half around. “I am not a Democrat or a liberal, Daddy Ben! You take that back, or I’ll bash you even if you are my father.”

  Ben held up his hands, laughing. “OK, OK. I apologize for calling you such dirty names. Now, can we get going before the war is over and we’ve missed it?”

  Ben glanced at the sky. “We only have about three more hours of daylight, and I don’t want us crawling through rubble when it’s dark, so I figure the rest of today and tomorrow. We should be able to start moving south again by day after tomorrow.”

  Anna scolded her, “Don’t rush him, Jersey. This is the only part of the trip I like, the combat part. The traveling is boring.”

  “She doesn’t sound much like a tree-hugging liberal now, Boss,” Beth said. “More like a warmongering radical, as the left-wingers used to say.”

  “That’s my girl,” Ben said, throwing his arm around Anna’s shoulders and giving her a hug. “Radical, and proud of it!”

  Ben was off in his prediction of the time it would take to cleanse the town of hostiles. It was more like two-and-a-half days. There were more pockets of resistance than he had expected, and the Rebel Army’s losses were slightly higher than anticipated.

  By the time he and John Michaels met on the southern city limits, Ben’s mood was even worse than before the battle for Pointe-Noire. “I’m really getting tired of this country, John.”

  Michaels nodded, looking around at the ruined and leveled city behind them and at the dozers making huge depressions in the red dirt of the area for the bodies of those they had killed. “Me too, Ben. Bottger has a lot to answer for. We lost some good men and women to this trash that he paid to detain us.”

  Ben clenched his teeth. “Oh, he’ll pay, all right, John. I’ll promise you that, even if I have to chase him all over the world. From this moment on, he’s mine!”

  John knelt in the dirt and unfolded a map of the country and laid it on the ground in front of them. He pointed a finger at the left side of the paper. “Here we are at Pointe-Noire, the southernmost city in the Congo. It’s about a hundred klicks due south until we get to the Congo River on the border of Angola.” He looked up at Ben. “That hundred klicks is through Cabinda, which has some of the thickest tropical rain forest in the entire country.”

  Ben nodded. “Yes. It’s going to be a logistical nightmare to get our heavy equipment through that area. What do you suggest?”

  “We can’t head to the east over into Zaire, ’cause we’d be bunching up with Ike and his 502 Battalion. I think we ought to send most of the heavy tanks and dozers and a good portion of the troops by boat down the coast, to where the Congo empties into the Atlantic at the town of Soyo. From there, most of Angola consists of a plateau elevated three to five thousand feet above sea level, rising from a narrow coastal strip, until you get to the desert in the south. It should be pretty easy going for our heavy stuff.”

  “You’re right, John. As thick as that jungle is, there’s no need to wear out our troops trying to cross it.” Ben hesitated a moment, rubbing his chin. “I’ll take four or five squads, loaded light so we can make good time, and we’ll traverse the area from here down to Soyo.”

  John objected. “Wait a minute, Ben. I figured I’d do the dirty work and go through the jungle, and let you take a break on the ship.”

  Ben shook his head. “No I’ll take my people, and we’ll make sure the jungle isn’t hiding any Bottger secrets.”

  “How long do you figure it’ll take you to traverse the hundred klicks?”

  Ben shrugged. “Depends on how thick the forest is, how much resistance we face, and how many rivers we have to cross. Ordinarily, we can cover thirty klicks a day, on foot. I figure we’ll be lucky to average ten in this hellhole.”

  Michaels nodded. “Okay, I’ll bivouac the men here for four days while we load the ships, and then it’ll take us four days on the water to get to the Congo.”

  He stood and held out his hand. “I’ll meet you at Soyo in ten days, partner, and if you’re not there by then I’ll come looking.”