"I reckon not," the man said slowly. He turned his head to look at other Rebels, gathered around.

There was no pity on their faces. They were expressionless. A couple of them were eating rations out of cans. One was stretched out, catnapping in the shade of a big tanker. One woman was brushing her short hair.

"Yuma?" Ben asked.

"That would be Banniger and his bunch. About the same size as Texas Jim."

"Calexico?"

"That, I don't know. Things are subject to change from one week to another. That's right on the edge of the zone, so gang leaders come and go. Last I heard they be nearabs a thousand or more toughs down yonder. You gonna let me live?"

"Give me one reason why I should."

The outlaw hesitated, thinking so hard his eyes bugged out. He had killed and raped and a.s.saulted and in general made life miserable for nearly everyone he had come in contact withfor years. He tried to think of some decent act he had done. He could not. He recalled the time he'd been with that bunch when they'd attacked a nearby Indian reservation and killed all the men and raped the women and young girls comanda few boys too. Just to hear them holler and squall.

He swallowed hard. "You cain't just line us up andshoot us, General. That wouldn't be right."

"Isn't that what you people just did with your prisoners?"

"Well ... yeah. But you "posed to show us mercy.

That's the way it's 'posed to work. I mean, after all, I was an abused child."

The Rebels had piled the bodies in a building and then set it on fire. Smoke from the burning town was in their rearview mirrors as they pulled out.

Linda was silent as the long miles rolled by.

Finally, Ben said, "Say what's on your mind, Linda."

"The begging of those people back there, Ben, just before they were shot."

"What about it?"

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"Not anymore. It used to," Ben admitted.

"But then I have always known that people have a choice of several roads to follow. n.o.body forces them to travel any of life's choices. Anytime you have to put a gun to someone's head, to force a promise from them to obey even the simplest of rules, you are dealing with a loser, a liar, and a punk. Our way is very simple, Linda, with no complex legal mumbo jumbo. The Rebel road is wide and free. Be whatever you want to be as long as you obey the few laws we enforce. The other roads are rough and rocky, and violent death at the hands of Rebels is all that's waiting at the end of those narrow paths.

And those who choose the lawless routes know it. They always have, Linda. No matter what lawyers and judges and social workers and psychiatrists used to say, the lawless knew what they were doing. And they did it because they had nothing but contempt for those of us who chose to obey the law. I have nothing but loathing for them.

"My G.o.d, Linda, we're living in the simplest of times since humankind crawled out of the caves. All one has to do is find an abandoned house and start anew. All one has to do is flag down a Rebel patrol and say, I want to join you. It doesn't make any difference what one was before the Great War. We don't care. We don't look back. Now and the future are all we're concerned with. If you can't live with that, Linda, go on back to your peaceful little valley-what's left of it-and see how long you can survive without us."

She was silent for another few miles. "No, I'll stick it out, Ben. Just give me a little time." She smiled. "You see, I was one of those opposed to the death penalty back when the world was whole, so to speak."

"We have a number of them within our ranks, Linda.

But they saw the light, and I suspect so have you, or you wouldn't be here."

"The callousness of it all is still a little mind-numbing. We used to see it in the movies, but we knew it wasn't real. They were actors, and they'd get up and walk off once the scene was shot.

But I'll pull my weight while I'm gettingaccustomed to the Rebel way."

"You certainly have so far, and I have no reason to doubt your ability to do so in the future. Sure, it's mind-numbing, Linda. Unlike the movies or on the pages of a book, here you smell the urine and the excrement after the bullets strike, and sometimes before they do. Few people can face death as calmly as they believe they can."

"So I have discovered," she said, a dryness to her words. "No, Ben, I'm with the Rebels all the way. I'll stick it out."

"Good" Ben said, a pleased note in his words.

"You'll make it, Linda. Part of your mind is still operating on yesterday's premise that we have courts and halfway houses and all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs that go with civilization. But we don't. What you really haven't grasped is that all that stands between anarchy and order is a very thin line of men and women called the Rebels. But understand this, Linda. Once we clear the lower forty-eight, the laws we'll set in place will never be what they were back before the Great War. Not as long as I'm alive. Or Buddy or Tina or Ike or Cecil or West or Georgi or Dan, or any Rebel for that matter. We will never allow that to happen. Not again. In our society, right is clearly spelled out, as is wrong, and there is only dark water and quicksand between the two comno gray.

No legal jargon, no plea-bargaining, no defendant's tearful pleading that it quote-unquote 'won't happen again and I'm so sorry I got drunk and killed those people."

"It's bulls.h.i.t when people say they didn't know they were drunk when they got behind the wheel of a car. They knew. They just didn't care. So why should we care what happens to them? It was bulls.h.i.t when a hunter killed another hunter by shooting him out of a tree and said he was so sorry but he thought it was a deer or a squirrel. What it was was an irresponsible act by an a.s.shole with a gun. And it wasn't the fault of the gun; someone has to be behind the trigger. It was bulls.h.i.t then and it's still bulls.h.i.t when a criminal says that society drove him or her to kill and steal and a.s.sault and maim.

"The Rebels, Linda, all of us, would much rather be back in Alabama or Nebraska or Michigan or Louisiana or New Hampshire, farming or tending shop or raising cattle and hogs and watching our kids grow up or doing whatever is legal and moral. But we chose instead to fight to pull this country, and the world, out of the ashes of horror.

I'd like to go back to Base Camp One, take off my boots, hang up my guns, and write, Linda. And I'll do it someday, G.o.d willing.

I'll have my dogs at my feet and fingers on the keys of a typewriter, and my guns will be cleaned and oiled and in a gun case. And the front door will never be locked and I can leave the keys in my car or truck, and no one will have to worry about some perverted son of a b.i.t.c.h grabbing their kids or rapingtheir wife. Because we don't need those kinds of people, Linda. And whenever anything like that happens in Rebel-held territory, justice comes down swift but fair, and nearly always final.

"There is a line from an old World War Two song: "The White Cliffs of Dover." It goes something like this: "There'll be love and laughter, and peace ever after, when the world is free." And we're going to see that day, Linda. The Rebels -- all of us. A year ago, I wouldn't have said it. But now I believe that. Me and my kids and hopefully my grandkids, and that over-aged hippie Thermopolis, and the little con artist Emil Hite, and the Russian and the Englishman and the mercenary.

"We're going to free the world from savagery and oppression and fear. We're going to do it, Linda. We know how now. We've got it down to a fine art. The people with any degree of decency in them either join us actively, set up outposts, or agree to live in peace with all other living beings ... and that includes animals. Those that won't agree to those terms fight us and die. My grandkids, Linda, if I ever have any, are going to live free and without fear of thugs and punks and a.s.sholes. And if I have to die in a ditch somewhere insuring them that right, then so be it."

A mile pa.s.sed in silence. "Well, s.h.i.t!"

Corrie said.

"What's the matter with you?" Jersey asked.

"The best speech I ever heard the general make and the G.o.dd.a.m.n batteries went dead in my tape recorder!"

They all spent the next several miles laughing uproariously and wiping tears from their eyes.

Chapter Fifteen.

"Buddy is reporting that this Texas Jim outlaw has a tad more than two hundred and fifty men, General," Corrie said.

The column had stopped for lunch on the east side of the Big Maria Mountains, about twenty-five miles north of Blythe.

Ben smiled at that. "Corrie, inform my usually erudite son that a "tad more" doesn't tell me a whole lot."

"Yes, sir." She b.u.mped Buddy, then turned back to Ben. "He says to try about five hundred or so men in the gang."

Ben nodded his head and looked to Linda as she asked, "Where are all the good, decent people, Ben? Are they like the people I was withfor years, hiding out in tiny pockets?"

"A lot of them, yes. There are a lot of good people out there." He waved his hand. "We just have to find them.

Punks and crud and sc.u.m just seem to naturally come together, like flies on a pile of s.h.i.t. But we're finding more and more decent people in our travels."

Ben washed down the last bite of his rations with warm water from his canteen and screwed the cap back on.

"All right, people," he said, standing up.

"Let's gear up and b.u.t.ton down. Playtime is over."Buddy met the column about a mile north of the town. "The outlaws say we don't have the right to come in here and tell them what to do, Father. Texas Jim said, and I'm quoting directly here: "There ain't no government and there ain't no laws, and just 'cause your name is Ben Raines that don't spell jack-s.h.i.t to me." his "My, but he does coin a lovely phrase, doesn't he?"

"Yes. Very quaint."

"Prisoners?"

"Not according to the man my team went in, pulled out, and questioned. They've had prisoners, slaves, but they just traded several dozen of them to another group of trash down the road. For drugs."

"Where is this man?"

"He died."

"I see. How unfortunate for him. How are the outlaws armed, son?"

"a.s.sault rifles, grenades, light mortars.

According to the thug we questioned, there are no SAM'S here or anywhere else in the zone."

"Ben Raines!" The shout came pushing out of huge speakers located at the edge of town. "My name is Texas Jim, and I got this here to say to you and your soldier boys and girls. You beside' carry your a.s.ses on away from here, "fore I decide to kick all your a.s.ses clear over into Arizona."

The Rebels all shared a good laugh at that.

"Oh, my," Ben said. "Do you think we should run away and hide, son?"

"That thought did not enter my mind, Father."

"Well, then, how do you suppose I should reply to his challenge?"

"I'm sure you'll think of some highly appropriate answer," the young man said dryly.

"Ummm." Ben feigned deep thought, then snapped his fingers. "By golly, son, I think I've come up with something."

"I knew you would. I have great faith in you, Father."

"Thank you, son. Corrie, tell the tank commanders to crank up their 105's and start dropping in HE and incendiary rounds, please."

Ben let the thunder roll and roar for five minutes, until the entire northern section of the town was blazing. Ben then moved the column up to within a few hundred yards of the edge of town. Buddy handed his father a bullhorn.

Ben lifted the horn to his lips. "Now you listen to me, you redneck a.s.shole!" Ben's voice boomed over the short distance. "You have three choices: stand and die, surrender, or cut and run.

Make up your mind, p.r.i.c.k!"

The elaborate speaker system of Texas Jim had been destroyed during the first salvo. Using a bullhorn, the outlaw screamed, "I'll kill you someday, Raines! I swear on my mother's pitcher I'll cut your nuts off and do a diddy-wa-diddy on them, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

Ben lifted the bullhorn. "You have one minuteto respond, armadillo-breath."

Linda cut her eyes at him and started giggling.

"Armadillo-breath!"

Buddy was lying by the turret of a tank, behind sandbags, looking at the town through binoculars. "There they go, Father," he called. "They're heading south.

I don't understand this, because we're going to have to fight them someday. Why not do it now and get it over with?"

Ben looked up at the young man. "You know anything about herding cattle, son?"

"I can't say that I do."

"I didn't either, until I started writing Westerns, years ago." Ben winked at Linda and walked off.

Buddy jumped down from the tank. "Now what in the h.e.l.l is he up to?"

"He'll tell us when he's ready," Beth replied.

"I'm a-tellin" you, Banniger," Texas Jim said to the outlaw at his headquarters just over the line at Yuma, "Ben Raines is a-comin' and there ain't nothin' on this earth gonna stop him. He's a devil, man. A devil straight out of h.e.l.l."

"He's a man, just like us. What we got to do is come up with a plan, Jim," Banniger said.

"Mexico is no safe haven for us no more. Not since the people down there rose up and threw us all out.

G.o.dd.a.m.n greasers. Who'd have thought them stupid peasants would ever do something like that?"

"We can't stop them Rebels, Banniger.

They're outnumbered ten, twelve to one over in southern California, and they're steady kickin'

a.s.s."

"I know," Banniger said.

"Well, what the h.e.l.l is we gonna do then!"

"We do some thinking, Jim. That's all we can do."

"We're picking up a lot of transmissions in Spanish, General," Ben was informed. "Garcia is translating and he says there has been a major revolution in Mexico. The people have risen up and reclaimed their country. They're redistributing land and power and are picking up the pieces and putting their country back together." He paused. "They are patterning their laws after the laws being set up in this country by one General Ben Raines."

"It was only a matter of time," Ben said, sugaring his coffee. "We've known there were many survivors down there, and they knew we were up here. But so far, they have not asked for our help. Advise them that we will lend a hand if they need it. And also ask the commanders if they would help us if we request it."