Ashes - Destiny In The Ashes Part 34

Ben and his team stood up. "But before you leave," she added, "I'd like to give you and your men and women a little party tonight ... as a token of our appreciation for what you've done. There'll be dinner, drinks, even a band. We'll have a real going-away party, so to speak."

Ben laughed. "Okay, as long as I don't have to dance."

Claire made a pout. "Oh, and I was so looking forward to that."

After Ben and Mike and the team left the conference room, they headed for the barracks where they were all staying to get ready for the night's celebration.

As they entered the main doors, Mike held up his hands. "Hold on, gang.

I've brought something for all of you from home."

He sat his briefcase on a nearby table and opened it up. Taking out a large stack of envelopes, he began pa.s.sing them out to each of the team members, and even handed one to Ben.

"Wow!" Jersey shouted after ripping her envelope open and pulling out a piece of paper. "What's this for?" she asked.

Ben opened his envelope and looked inside. There lay a check made out to him for thirty-five hundred dollars. The payer was a bank with an address in the Cayman Islands.

He held up the check and waved it in the air in front of Mike. "Mike?"

he asked.

Mike grinned and shrugged. "I don't know. All I know is 304.

everyone on active duty for the SUSA got one in the mail. I don't have a clue as to why."

Beth, standing at the back of the crowd, began to laugh out loud.

Ben looked over at her. "Beth, you know anything about this?" he asked.

She looked at him, tears of laughter in her eyes. "Ben, how many active-duty personnel do we have?"

Ben shrugged. "Oh, a million, give or take a few hundred thousand at any one time. Why?"

"And Mike, how much money did you say we stole from the Farrar family?"

"About three and a half billion dollars.""There's your answer," Beth said. "Our friendly computer expert had the bank in the Caymans divide up all the Farrar family's money and send it out to all our troops."

"But we can't keep this," Ben said.

"Why not?" Coop asked. "Who better to get it than the very people who had to risk their lives because of its owners' actions?"

Ben thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, Coop, I guess you're right.

Besides," Ben added, "I'd hate to have to go to a million soldiers and ask them to give it back."

"The chances of that happening are slim and none," Coop said.

"And slim left town," Jersey added, kissing her check.

After the team filed out to go to their rooms, Ben turned to Mike. "I hope you're keeping a close eye on this computer expert of yours."

Mike nodded. "I am, but why do you say so?" he asked.

"Because I'd sure as h.e.l.l hate to get him mad at us," Ben said. "There's no telling what the little s.h.i.+t would do."

Mike grinned. "Amen."

305.

The mood was one of desperation and gloom in the room where Abdullah el Farrar, Mustafa Kareem, and Osama bin Araman were having their final meeting.

Farrar had been unable to contact most of his field commanders by phone after having decided that, even if the Americans were monitoring the frequencies as Ben Raines had said they were, he needed to find out what the status of his units was.

The men he did manage to contact gave him terrible news. His field units were being systematically decimated by the Rangers of the U.S. and the Scouts of the SUSA, not to mention the unexpected ferocity of the American citizens who'd risen with a vengeance after being armed by the Scouts.

When their FFA partners began to desert the cause in droves after the televised account of Farrar's planned treachery, the Arab terrorists had no chance. They were in a strange land with even stranger customs, and they simply couldn't make any headway against the combined forces of Army troops and armed and aroused citizens.

Farrar put down the phone after his last call, a look of inevitability in his eyes.

"I am afraid we are doomed to failure, my friends," he said, his voice heavy with defeat.

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"There may still be a chance, my leader," Kareem said. "Perhaps we can get more troops from home. . . ."Farrar shook his head. "No, Mustafa. There comes a time when even the most optimistic leader must accept defeat at the hands of his enemy . .

. for now at any rate."

Kareem slammed his hand down on the table. "It is all the fault of that infidel devil Ben Raines," he said bitterly. "If it had not been for his intervention, we should even now be sitting in President Osterman's chair."

Araman raised his eyes. "Mustafa is correct, Abdullah. We owe our defeat to one man and one man only, Ben Raines."

"Do not feel too bad, my friends," Farrar said. "Once my refinery is back up and running and the money flowing again from the coffers of the infidels who have an unquenchable thirst for our gasoline, I will rise from the ashes of this defeat with a new and better Army and will avenge what has been done to us. It is but a matter of time."

"And we will be by your side again, Abdullah," Kareem said.

Farrar stared at his friend. "No, Mustafa, I have another, more important a.s.signment for you. One which will take all of your courage to carry out."

"You have but to ask, my leader," Kareem said, his eyes burning with the fervor of the true believer.

"Here is what I want you to do. . . ." Farrar said, leaning forward across the table.

Six weeks later, with the Arabs defeated and all of their troops either dead or in prison, Ben and his troops and team were back home enjoying a much-needed rest from the rigors of their war experiences.

It was just after dawn, and Ben was jogging along one of the roads of his base with his malamute dog, Jodie, running alongside him.

307.

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He was sweating, his T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts dark with sweat as he pushed his body to the max, trying to get back in shape after going without running for the months he'd spent in America fighting against the Arab invaders.

As he rounded a corner, he glanced to the side and saw a gaping hole cut in the chain link fence running along the road.

"Uh-oh," he muttered, slowing to a walk and catching his breath. "Looks like trouble, Jodij;," he said, bending over to pat the dog on its back.

Suddenly the hackles rose on Jodie's back, and she curled her lips back in a savage snarl and began to growl deep in her throat as she looked to the side toward some heavy weeds near a ditch.

A dark figure, well over six feet tall, rose from the weeds, an AK-47 cradled in his arms as (he walked toward Ben and Jodie.

Jodie tensed, and Ben knew she was about to attack."Jodie, easy, girl," Ben said, npt wanting her to get shot. "Sit! Stay!"

he commanded.

Jodie sat, though it was evident from the way she glanced up at Ben that she didn't want to obey, sensing the danger her master was in.

"General Ben Raines," the figure said as he stopped fifteen yards away on the edge of the road, the barrel of the machine gun pointed at Ben's midsection.

"Yeah," Ben answered, breathing slowly and deeply to replenish his oxygen level in case the man gave him any chance at all. "Who are you?"

"I am Mustafa Kareem, second in command to the Desert Fox, Abdullah El Farrar," Kareem said.

"I see," Ben said evenly, keeping his hands at his side. He had no weapons with him, not even a knife to defend himself with.

"I guess your boss sent you here to kill me for kicking 308.

his a.s.s 'cause he didn't have the b.a.l.l.s to do it himself," Ben said, his voice filled with contempt.

"How dare you speak of El Farrar like that!" Kareem screamed, raising the rifle and pointing it at Ben's face. "He is a prince of Arabia!"

"Hah," Ben laughed. "A prince of cowards maybe." He pointed at Kareem.

"And look at you, aiming a gun at an unarmed man. You don't even have the courage to face me man-to-man."

Ben leaned to the side and spat on the ground. "I spit on you and your cowardly leader!"

Kareem was so angry he trembled, the barrel of the AK-47 moving up and down as he shook. Finally, his face red and flushed, he lowered the rifle to the ground and pulled a wicked-looking dagger with a curved blade out of his belt.

He took a deep breath. "You are right, Ben Raines. It will be much better if I return to El Farrar with your infidel blood on my blade to show him."

As he walked slowly forward, Jodie growled and started to rise. "Sit!"

Ben commanded, not wanting her to get hurt.

He moved away from the dog out into the center of the road, crouching and holding his hands low out in front of him as Kareem moved the knife from side to side, his lips bared in a grin.

"Tell me something, Kareem," Ben said, his eyes never leaving the knife Kareem was wielding. "Do you Arabs insist on your women being covered from head to toe because they are so ugly, or is it because it keeps the flies off them?"

Kareem's eyes widened and he growled as he lunged forward, furious at Ben's degradation of Arabian women.Ben stepped lightly to the side, levered on his left leg, and swung his right in a powerful side-kick at Kareem's right hand.

Ben's shoe connected, snapping Kareem's wrist and sending the knife flying to the side of the road into the weeds.

As Kareem whirled around, holding his right wrist with 310.

309.

his left hand, and glared at Ben, Ben smiled. "I don't know why that made you so angry, Kareem," he said mockingly. "From what I hear, you Arabs all like young boys better than women anyway."

Kareem screamed and raised both his hands and ran at Ben, mindless in his anger.

Ben stood his ground, ducked under the hands, and forming his right fist into a rik-hand, with the fingers bent and stiff, he rammed it up under Kareem's rib cage with all his might.

Kareem stopped as if he'd been hit by a truck, his eyes bulging and his mouth open as he gasped for breath.

Ben whirled around and slashed with a flattened hand at Kareem's exposed throat.

A loud crunch could be heard as his thyroid cartilage was crushed and smashed back into his larynx.

Kareem raised both hands to his throat and gasped and gurgled as he strangled on his own blood.

After a few seconds, his eyes became vacant and he toppled forward onto his face.

Jodie whined and inched forward, waiting for Ben to release her from the sit command.

"Come on, girl," Ben said, patting his thigh.

Jodie ran over, stopped briefly to sniff at the already cooling body of Mustafa Kareem, then put her legs on Ben's chest until he bent over and let her lick his face.

He patted Jodie and glanced down at Kareem as he resumed his jogging.

When he got to the guard station at the end of the road, Ben told the guard there to pick up the body and take it back to the base hospital.

When the guard left, Ben patted Jodie and said, "Come on, girl, I'll race you the rest of the way back." After a few moments, he looked down at the dog. "Just 311 310 William W. Johnstone like an Arab, Jodie, to bring a knife to a fistfight," he said as she ran happily alongside him down the road toward the base and home.312 Look for William W. Johnstone's next novel CODE NAME: GOLDFIRE.

Coming in May 2002 from Pinnacle Books Here's a sneak preview .

313.

So barren was the area into which John Barrone, Lieutenant Colonel Arlington Lee Grant, and Sergeant David Clay had parachuted, that they may as well have been on the back side of the moon. Despite their seeming isolation, mission procedure dictated that they operate as if they were under observation; thus they made certain to use shadows and background to eliminate any silhouette. They called their progress across the desert floor a walk, but they were moving at a ground-eating lope of better than eight miles per hour.

"You are certain he is there?" Colonel Grant asked John.

"He is there," John replied.

John Barrone was the only nonmilitary member of the team. John, Colonel Grant, and Sergeant Clay were engaged in a covert operation, also known as a black ops, though not entirely because the three men were dressed in black and had their faces covered with camouflage paint in order to absorb any ambient light.

John had been operating inside Iraq for several days, looking for General Abdul Sin-Sargon. Once he found him, he'd slipped back across the border to U.S. Army "Task Force Ripper," to report on the general's location. When asked if he would return with the special operations team, John had agreed. One hour earlier, he, Colonel Grant, and Sergeant Clay had made a night parachute jump from a C-130, and were now moving swiftly through the Iraqi desert.

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