Ashes - Fire In The Ashes Part 5

Aren't these Americans you're beating? she silently questioned.

She snapped away and stepped back, totally disregarding the new censors.h.i.+p order from the Justice Department and the hallowed halls of Congress. She wound the film and darted up to the police line, snapping away. This time she didn't make it. A long arm shot out and snagged her by her long blond hair.

She yelped in pain and dropped one camera. Another federal cop standing nearby casually lifted one booted foot and smashed the expensive piece of equipment. Just as his boot came down on the camera, Dawn heard the pop of tear-gas guns. Most of the black-jacketed line of federal police moved out, up the street. Dawn looked up at the cop who'd destroyed her camera and screamed at him.

"You miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she yelled, getting to her feet. She kicked out at him, catching him with a sand-colored boot in the b.a.l.l.s. He doubled over, puking, lost his balance, and tumbled forward. His helmet, chin strap loose, fell off and rolled to the street. The cop was a big man, overweight, and when his forehead hit the street, it sounded like an overripe melon struck with a hammer. The cop lay very still.

Dawn heard the sounds of boots on the concrete. Turning, she had time enough to see the cop's right arm raised, a night stick in his hand. He brought the baton down on Dawn's head. Dawn slumped to her knees, stunned. She raised her bleeding head and squalled at the second cop.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she screamed, tears of pain and rage glistening on her cheeks, the tears just ahead of a bright trail of crimson.

The cop, a burly, red-faced, 200-pounder, grinned at her through his plastic face-s.h.i.+eld, raised his baton, and whacked her again. Dawn dropped flat on the street. The cop turned his back to her and watched the action at the other end of the street.

People were screaming, the air choking with gas. Dawn could barely hear the thud of billy clubs on bone and flesh and the snarl of police dogs as they bit through cloth and into flesh. No one paid the fallen blonde any attention.

She did not know how long she had lain in the street. But when she opened her eyes everything was hazy. She waited for her vision to clear. Shots were fired, someone yelled in a hoa.r.s.e bellow of pain.

Dawn turned her head and found herself looking at a nickel-plated pistol. It lay beside the still unmoving ma.s.s of the cop she'd booted in the nuts. She crawled a few inches closer to the gun. She could read the printing on the barrel. 357 magnum. The cop who had clubbed her the second time stood with his back to her, watching the fighting and screaming and running at the far end of the street.

Then he ran down the street, leaving her alone.

Dawn picked up the pistol, thinking how heavy it was. As an afterthought, she reached over the still-breathing federal cop and plucked out the bullets from his belt, putting those in her jacket pocket and b.u.t.toning the flap.

Unknowingly, Dawn Bellever had just taken the first step toward joining Ben Raines's Rebels.

She knew absolutely nothing of guns. She crawled to her knees and hunkered in the street, the blood still dripping from her head. She reversed the pistol and peered down the barrel. Somebody, somewhere close, opened up with some type of automatic weapon, the narrow street reverberating with the boom of rapid fire. People were running all around her. She heard a woman screaming, looked to her right, and saw the second cop who'd hit her holding a young woman against a building. He was. .h.i.tting her with his night stick.

"Well," Dawn said stupidly, "I'm not going to tolerate that."

Something was fuzzy in her head, fouling up her thinking. Dawn shook her head and raised the pistol.

Again, she was looking down the barrel. She righted the weapon, gripped it with both hands, just like she'd seen cops do in the movies, took careful aim at the cop's right leg, and pulled the trigger.

She blew half his head off.

The recoil knocked her flat on the street and numbed her hands. But she still gripped the magnum. She got to her knees and looked around her. The young woman the now-dead cop had been hammering on was running toward her, the officer's weapon in her hand.

The girl's face was b.l.o.o.d.y, her eyes burning with an intensity that Dawn recognized as near-fanaticism.

She jerked Dawn to her feet. "That's the same cop who raped me last week," she said, pointing to the unconscious officer in the street. "I was one of 'em who broke out of the tank."

"Raped you!" Dawn said, not believing what the girl was saying.

The young woman's eyes flicked to the PRESS badge on Dawn's jacket. "You people don't know where it's at, do you? Yeah, raped. Come on, I'll tell you about it. We gotta get out of here."

They ran toward an alley and jumped into the back of a van. The driver roared off the instant the women were inside.

"Where are we going?" Dawn asked, a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. She had killed a man.

Worse, she had killed a federal cop. And she was known. Dawn's face was very well known. As were other parts of her anatomy.

She had posed semi-nude for the newPenthouse twice.

The young woman wiped blood from her face. "Tennessee." She looked at Dawn. "Hey, that was fine shooting. Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"

"I was aiming at his right leg," Dawn said. Then her world began spinning and she pa.s.sed out.

The woman wore a worried expression on her usually cheerful face. She entered Professor Mailer's office without knocking, something she rarely did. Steve Mailer noticed her grim expression and smiled at his secretary.

She ignored the usually infectious grin from the boyish-looking professor of English Literature. "There are two men in the outer office," she said. "They're from the FBI. Or whatever that pack of rabble is currently called."

"I am not a fan of the late Mr. Hoover," Steve said. "Only from what I've read about him, I think perhaps the man is spinning in his grave at what his brainchild has become. I have been expecting the ...

gentlemen, Mrs. Rommey." He stood up, a slender man, several inches under six feet. He could not get his weight above a hundred and thirty-five pounds. But he was wiry and tough and in excellent physical condition. He quickly wrote a number on a piece of paper and handed it to his secretary.

"I may be leaving in a few minutes," he said. "Without them," he cut his eyes to the closed door. "If that is the case, I want you to call the number on that piece of paper and tell whomever answers that cla.s.s has been dismissed."

She watched as he took a pistol from a desk drawer and held it by his right leg. "All right," she said.

"Steve, I remember you as a freshman; you were against any type of violence."

Steve shrugged. "Times change. People grow up and hopefully become wiser. I think I have. Don't ask me if I'm part of the Rebels, Mrs. Rommey-the men working for Al Cody are known for their expertise in torture."

"Open this f.u.c.kin' door!" a harsh voice rang from the outer office.

"Use the rear entrance," Steve told her. "Now!"

She left, tears in her eyes.

"As Shakespeare said," Steve muttered. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." The professor smiled. "Come on in, motherf.u.c.kers!" he yelled. He c.o.c.ked the pistol.

Just off the campus of the University of South Carolina, in a private home, Lynne Hoffman spoke before a small group of men and women. Their ages ranged from fifteen to sixty. Lynne was the head of her particular cell of nonviolent Rebels. Although they believed quite strongly in what the Rebels were attempting to do, their jobs were in gathering supplies and caching them. None of her people carried firearms.

All that was to change this night.

"We don't have much time," Lynne told the group. "One of those captured in the Virginia raid has broken, telling Cody's men about us. We've got to run and we've got to fight. We..."

The front door slammed open and the small foyer filled with federal police and Hartline's mercenaries.

"You're under arrest!" a man yelled. "Get your hands over your head and get up against the wall. Move, G.o.ddammit, move!"

Lynne jumped for the back door just as someone plunged the room into darkness. Gunfire rocked the night and someone began screaming in pain. Lynne and two others made it out of the house, running into the night.

"Burn the G.o.dd.a.m.n house down around them," a man yelled.

Out in the desert, the night animals began their search for food. The hawk for a rabbit; the snake for a mouse; the mouse for a hole. But on this night, another type of hunt was underway. Mike Medlow, a federal police officer from Modesto searched for Judy Fowler.

Ever since he'd handled her lush little body during a campus demonstration, Medlow had tried every way he could think of to get the pants off her. Tonight, he'd followed her old VW into the desert and forced her off the road. The rest would soon be history.

"Come on, baby," he called. "I know you're part of the local cell of Raines's Rebels. I've known for months. But I haven't said anything about it, have I? That ought to be worth some p.u.s.s.y, huh? If I turn you in, Hartline's boys will gang-bang you day and night. It'll be our secret, Judy. Just you and me. Come on, baby?"

A dozen yards away, trembling in the rough shelter of a barranca, Judy tried to still her ragged breathing.

She had been so frightened when Medlow ran her off the road she had failed to grab the only weapon she had, a tire iron.

Medlow came closer. Judy panicked and felt her feet slipping in the loose gravel. She slid down into the dry creek bed and landed on her back. Medlow was on her in an instant, tearing at her clothes. The cool desert air fanned her bare hips and belly.

His fingers found her and entered her, spreading her. Then she screamed as his hardness replaced his fingers and drove deep. Medlow began hunching, panting in her face, his breath stinking. She screamed as his hands found her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and squeezed brutally.

Judy's hands clutched at the dry gravel bed until she found a baseball-sized rock. She slammed the rock against Medlow's head, just above his right ear. He slumped on her, unconscious, blood dripping on her bare skin from his torn flesh.

She wriggled from under him and covered herself with her torn clothing. She started to run, then remembered what a Rebel sergeant had told a group of them at a secret training. She pictured the sergeant and brought back his voice.

"Strip the body of all weapons, ammunition, and money. We're preparing to fight a guerrilla war and we have no time for niceties. Take his ID, badge, everything we might be able to use. Then make d.a.m.n sure he's dead."

Judy stripped the body and Medlow's car. There, she found a shotgun and several boxes of sh.e.l.ls for his pistol and shotgun. She walked back to the federal police officer and stood over him. She c.o.c.ked his service revolver, a .44 magnum, and blew half his head into a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s.

All across the nation similar events were unfolding as the federal police and Hartline's men became more savage and brutal in their handling of any suspected Rebel sympathizers.

It had been raining off and on for a week, ever since VP Lowry had met with the military; ever since that d.a.m.ned demonstration that had turned into a riot. Two cops were dead, a dozen civilians dead. A hundred or more civilians hospitalized, several hundred arrested. And the press was really outraged. One of their own was on the run after killing a federal cop and many press-people were blatantly ignoring the government's censors.h.i.+p order.

President Aston Addison was behaving as if nothing had happened. He had called a press conference; VP Lowry had cancelled it, refusing to allow any network to carry the president's message. But Addison had not lost his cool; had acquiesced in style, without losing his temper.

G.o.dd.a.m.n the man! What did it take for him to show some temper.

And now this.

Lowry turned in his chair and looked at the dozen men and women from the House and Senate seated around his desk.

Ben Raines had moved east and was in command of the Rebels in the Great Smoky Mountains Park.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h was really alive!

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

The VP looked like a man who had just b.u.mped into death and couldn't quite forget the encounter and ensuing chill. When he spoke, his words were slow, carefully enunciated.

"After the states of Tennessee and North Carolina lost so many police officers, I asked Colonel Cody to handpick a battalion of men from his own people and from those units of the regular military who remain loyal to us. Every man picked was an experienced combat man. Almost 900 officers and men. Late yesterday, 83 of them came staggering out of the park area ... shot to pieces, frightened out of their wits, babbling about facing thousands of Rebels..."

"They may have exaggerated the number somewhat," Senator Stout said.

VP Lowry looked at the man. "Shut up."

"Aston Addison is behaving as though nothing has happened. As though he is still running the country.

You people put him in office, you people may now remove him."

Representative Alice Tyler s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in her chair.

"Something, Mrs. Tyler?"

"The ... ah ... military," she said, "especially the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Calland, told us,"

she indicated the other members of Congress, "President Addison is to remain in office."

"Did he now?"

"That is correct, Mr. Vice President," Senator Douglas said, his voice low and rumbling, almost matching in timbre the grumbling of the thunder outside the VP's official residence. "I personally believe the military is waiting to see which way the action moves, so to speak."

"I think you're wrong," Al Cody said. "I think the military is solidly behind Raines and his people."

"The military is neutral," Representative Altamont spoke. "At least in their actions toward this uprising. I can't speak, of course, for their thoughts. But the military will stay out of any fighting-for the time being."

"You're sure of that?" VP Lowry asked. He knew Altamont had a brother who was a general in the Air Force. "You got that from family?"

"Yes, to the first; no comment to the latter."

"All right," Lowry smiled, rubbing his hands together. "The military told me the same thing, but I didn't believe them." He turned to Cody. "You know most of the Rebels, right?"

"A good many of them."

"Know where their families are?"

"Certainly."

"Start putting the pressure on the families," Lowry ordered.

"That could backfire," Tyler said. "That could really setall the people against us. My G.o.d, Weston, we're not some barbaric third-world country. There has to be a better way."

"Name it," Lowry prompted. "We'll talk about it."

She could not.

Lowry looked at the others: Senators Stout, Slate, Douglas, Woodland, Carlise, Reggio; Representatives Tyler, Lee, Altamont, Terry, Clifton.

One by one their eyes dropped away from his steady gaze.

Lowry glanced at Cody. "Do it," he said.