CHAPTER 5

Dan, ashen-faced, looked at Ben. “I thought I had seen it all, General. I guess I have.

Now.”

Ben had sent Scouts forward, up the dark corridor, to see what lay around the next bend.

“Get some people to take down the bodies of those …

unfortunates. Take them topside and bury them properly.”

Dan waved a few Scouts forward and pointed to the naked bodies on the meat hooks. “You heard him.

Get to it, lads and lassies.”

One of the Scouts sent up the tunnel returned.

“Steel door just ahead, General. And I mean a big solid sucker. Old. Back when they really made steel, I reckon. It’ll take a heavy charge to blow it.”

“Not now,” Ben told him. “We’re going to have our work cut out for us after this, Dan. We’ve tipped their hand.”

Ben walked out of the corridor, into the tunnel, crawled out of the hole in the wall into the basement, and went up the steps to ground level, stepping out into the cold night air. He stood in the darkness for a moment, mulling over the events just past.

All right, so he had uncovered the plans of the Night P. Now what? He had no intention of sending Rebels into the tunnels after the creepies.

They would be ready for his people, expecting the Rebels to come after them.

He would not send his troops into a death trap.

But he knew one thing for certain: the areas that had been cleared would now have to be checked again. Not only up here, but also in Lower Manhattan.

Every damned building and basement!

He walked to his Blazer, Beth and Jersey with him, and climbed in. “Back to the CP, Cooper.

Let’s get some rest. We have to start all over tomorrow morning.”

Ben had alerted Ike and Cecil and West of the new developments before he went to bed. He was once more talking to them, through translators, at five o’clock the next morning.

“Damn!” Cecil summed up the feelings of the entire group.

“Back to square one,” West said.

What Ike said was totally unprintable.

“There’s something else I’ve been thinking about,” Ben radioed. “I think the creepies did this for two reasons: one, to try to put us in a box; and two, because should we discover it, we’d have to retrace our steps, and that would buy them still more time. There is no way for us to inspect every basement of every cleared building before Monte and his people are all over us.”

“So what do we do, Ben?” Cec asked.

“I’m going to push on down to the bridge, secure it and make damn sure it stays open. If we’re going to be trapped in the Big Apple, I want us to be well-supplied before that happens-if it happens. I want you people to fall back to 14th Street. Block every street, every avenue, every alley, every hole. And look for the sons of bitches to hit you from Brooklyn. I don’t think they’ll chance the bridges you control; they’ll be coming across at night, in boats. Start reclearing everything south of 14th. Plug up the holes with concrete reinforced with anything you can get your hands on: steel grating, heavy compressed metal mesh. We’ll start doing the same up here. Pick out a half a dozen or more places to cache supplies. Get your trucks rolling over to Teterboro. Ike, tell your tank commanders to start shelling everything from Broadway to the expressways by the river. Bring it down. Tell them to work the buildings top to bottom.

Use Willie Peter and HE. I want those ten miles, from 14th Street north to the bridge, to be nothing more than rubble, unable to be used by the creepies as hidey-holes. If you want to chance it, send Sappers into a section to help bring the buildings down. It’s desperation time, people. Let’s do it. Good luck.”

Ben broke off.

Ike looked at the others. Sighed. “First we’re soldiers, now we’re combat engineers and tunnel rats. OK, people, let’s go.”

Ben listened to an urgent voice breaking the bad news to him.

“Monte smelled a rat, General. He didn’t take the bait. They’ve turned west just north of the blown

bridges, looking for a way back to highway.

They’re gonna roll right up to Tina’s position.”

“Hang on for a sec.” Ben turned to Beth.

“Get Rebet and Danjou on the horn.” When she nodded her head, signaling that the Canadian and the Russian were ready, Ben took the handset.

“We need your help,” Ben laid it on the line, then quickly explained the situation.

“We’re at your disposal, General,” Rebet told him. “And General Striganov is on his way with another full battalion, including self-propelled artillery and tanks. But due to the condition of the roads, it will be ten days before he arrives. Where do you want us placed, sir?”

“Let’s let Monte think you and Danjou have fallen back and gone home.” Ben spoke through a Russian-speaking interpreter. “Let him think he’s going to be able to just roll right over my people at the airport; then you and Danjou hit him from the rear and force him to fight a double front.”

“That is ten-four, General. Are you beefing up the personnel at the airport?”

“Yes. With about three hundred hippies.”

A pause from upstate New York. “I beg your pardon, sir. Did you say hippies?”

“That is correct. They should be reaching the airport late tomorrow. I will advise them of our plan. Is that agreeable with you, Colonel?”

The Russian chuckled. “Like politics, General, war does make for some strange bedfellows.”

Wait until you see Emil, Ben thought, with dark soldier humor. “Yes, it certainly does, Colonel.

Eagle One out.”

Ben turned to Beth. “Bump Katzman. See if he can get a fix on Emil’s location.”

“They were on the New Jersey line last evening, General.”

“Hell, they ought to be in walkie-talkie range by now. Get Tina for me.”

She spoke briefly and then handed him the mike.

“Babe? Use translators on this.” Ben waited for a moment, then explained about Danjou and Rebet. “Start radioing Emil and his bunch, Tina. As soon as you get them, speak in double-talk. Emil can sure understand that. Tell them to hold their position and you’ll send a patrol out to guide them in. OK, babe?”

“OK, Pop. Will do.”

“As soon as we clear down to the bridge, I’ll pop over for a visit.”

“Looking forward to it. Way-out Scout, out.”

Ben had a good laugh at that. Then decided it was a good name for Tina and her bunch. They were way out in the country.

As it turned out, Emil was only about twenty-five miles from the Teterboro airport. Ham took a patrol out to guide them in.

Ham took a good look at the hippies and decided right then and there they were here for a fight, not for a love-in. They were well-armed, and armed with M-16’s, AR-15’S, and Mini-14’s. A

few had M-14’s. But that was no problem; the Rebels had lots of .308 ammo.

Ham explained to them about Danjou and Rebet.

“Ye gods!” Emil shrieked. “You mean we’ll be fighting side by side with savages from the Evil Empire?”

“Relax, Emil,” Thermopolis tried to calm him. “From what we’ve been able to learn by listening to short-wave broadcasts, the Russians are on our side from here on in.”

Emil looked very dubious, but shut up about it.

Ham, as ordered by Tina, gave the new people one last shot at turning around. “Once in,

folks, for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain, there is no turning around. And bear this in mind: Rebels do not surrender-ever!

You fall back only on orders. Any of you cut and run, another Rebel is going to shoot you. There is a reason for this harshness: two or three people cut and run, they leave a big hole where the enemy can come in and perhaps kill off a lot of other Rebels.

Understood?”

The question was met with silence.

“Why can’t we leave once we’re in?” Emil asked innocently.

“If you’re caught and tortured, you could give away troop strength, command leaders, and a lot of other information that might seem trivial to you, but very important to the enemy.”

“Don’t the sergeants and generals and people like that wear things signifying rank?” Swallow asked.

“No,” Ham told her. “And don’t ever salute a Rebel officer. That’s all that an enemy sniper is looking for.” He smiled. “Don’t worry.

You’ll learn very quickly who is in command.”

“What happens if one of us wants to have a joint?”

Wenceslaus asked.

“For you people, off duty with no alerts on, nothing.

What you do with your private time is your business.

But a joint or a drink of whiskey better be as far as it goes. And don’t offer a joint to a Rebel regular; you’ll be picking your teeth up off the ground. Drugs, unless prescribed by a doctor, are taboo. It wasn’t always that way.

We tried it the other way. It just didn’t work out.”

“Don’t worry,” Thermopolis told him.

“None of us have any intention of becoming a Rebel regular.”

Ham stood up from his squat and smiled. “Yeah.

That’s the way I got it figured. Probably best all the way around.” He walked off.

“I don’t quite know how to take that last bit,”

Santo said.

Thermopolis smiled. “He knows our reasons for coming up here were not totally unselfish. We’ll help them, and they’ll help us, and then we’ll leave, fully resupplied andwitha headful of knowledge about tactics and survival. No joints, people. Pack your stashes away and forget about them. We’ll play by Ben Raines’s rules as long as we’re here.”

Now the war turned bloody and savage for Ben and his battalion. They backtracked up

to 220th Street and began cleaning house-literally.

And Ben gave the orders many Rebels knew were inevitable: “Take some prisoners and find out where the breeding farms and feeding farms are in the city. And I don’t give a damn how you extract that information. Just get it.”

Ben sent his tanks down to the southern edges of Fort Tryon and Inwood Hill Parks with these orders: “Start leveling the buildings. Clear the expressway at least one full block eastward.

HE and WP. Go!”

To Beth: “Bump Katzman. Tell him to contact this Gene Savie. Tell him that Ben Raines said to get his people off their butts and get into this fight or I’ll start shelling their goddamn territory at first light tomorrow morning. I am growing very weary of doing for people who won’t pitch in and help.”

“Yes, sir.” After Ben had stalked off a few yards, she turned to Jersey. “The general is getting pissed.”

“Highly,” Jersey agreed.

“There is nothing wrong with my hearing!” Ben roared.

The women grinned at each other.

Within the hour, smoke from the fires started by the white phosphorus rounds began lifting into the sky. Ben ordered snipers posted along the expressway, armed with .50-caliber sniper rifles, to knock the creepies sprawling as they ran from the buildings being reduced to rubble by the heavy shelling.

“Sir?” Beth caught up with Ben. “Gene Savie on the horn.”

Ben took the handset. “Savie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You got anyone there who speaks Yiddish?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get them.”

The translators ready, Ben was very brief.

“Get off your butts and get into this fight. You obviously are

capable of doing it, so do it.”

“Is that an order?”

“You’re goddamn right, it is.”

Gene Savie was silent for a few seconds. “Very well, General. What would you have us do?”

“How many people in your group?”

“Including children and the elderly, a bit over six hundred.”

“How many capable of fighting?”

“Three hundred seventy-five.”

There were many questions Ben wanted to ask-including how the man knew exactly how many fighters he had-but realized this was not the time for it. “Can you tell me where the Night People keep their prisoners?”

“I can guess at it, General. But that’s about it.

I think in sections of the subway system. I also suspect that the Night People have been around a lot longer than anyone previously thought. The Underground People have been fighting them for decades … so I’m told.”

All that jibed with what Ben suspected. “How have so many of you managed to stay alive for so long?”

Savie’s short laugh was totally void of humor.

“Actually, our number has been steadily declining. At the outset, there were more than five thousand of us. As to how, the section of the park that we control is very heavily mined. We discovered and cleared several tunnels that run from various apartment buildings over to the park. The Night People just got tired of taking so many casualties trying to infiltrate our territory. They knew-and time has proved them correct-they could take us out one at a time and eventually defeat us. At one time, we controlled all of the park.”

“I assume you were going to warn my people of the park being mined?” Ben’s tone was decidedly dry.

“Of course we were, General. Are you going to kill my father?”

“I don’t even

know

your father, Savie. That is your real name, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We have not changed our names.”

Ben decided to hell with it; he’d ask as many questions as he liked. Clear the air, so to speak. “You obviously have good short-wave equipment. Why didn’t you try to contact us before?”

“The Night People would jam the frequencies. That’s one reason. And I told you: my father was afraid you would kill him.”

“What did your father do before the war?”

“You never heard of John Savie? He was a writer.”

Now Ben was more confused than before. He knew damn well that he did not personally know of anybody named Savie. And he had never heard of a writer by that name. “What the hell did he do, plagiarize some of my work?”

“Hardly, General.”

“Fine. Wonderful. Keep me in suspense. I assure you, I can bear it. How much aid can you give me, Gene?”

“How about if we act as spotters for you, General?

My people are so few, and spread so damn thin, if I pull any out, it’ll leave a hole.”

Ben had already put that much together. And in a way, he felt sorry for being so brusque with the man. The survivors around the park had been living in unbelievable fear for many years. “All right, Gene. That would be a big help. You have any other people with a language background?”

“Oh, yes, General. Many languages spoken here. Our bunch is a real melting pot.”

“Good. Always use translators when communicating with us. Gene? Tell your people to hang tough. It’s going to be a long and bloody battle, but we’ll get out of this mess.”

“Thank you, General.”

“Eagle One out.”

Ben hooked the phone and stood for a moment, his face mirroring his inner thoughts. “John Savie. Use to be a writer. And he’s afraid I’m going to kill him. I never heard of a writer named John Savie. And why is he so scared of me?

What the hell is going on?”

“The guy didn’t have an affair with your wife, did he, General?” Jersey asked.

Ben laughed. “No. I’d sure remember that, Jersey.”

“If you knew about it,” Beth added.

“There is that to consider,” Ben conceded. “But I don’t think a woman is the issue.” He shrugged his shoulders and checked his battle harness, making sure everything he might need was hooked in place.

“Let’s go to work, ladies. We’ve got about a hundred thousand night crawlers to fight.”

“I wonder how Lev is doing with the cows?” Beth mused.