"No. Conservative guesses place his strength as few as seven hundred and fifty, as many as three thousand. I'd guess fifteen hundred fighters.

Add the strength of Villar and Khamsin and Parr, and it kicks it up considerably. To about four thousand. So we can't allow that to happen. Tina, I'm going to send Georgi and his men to beef up Dan and chase Villar. In addition I'll send Five and Six Battalion with them. We cannot allow Villar to link up with Malone."

Ben lifted his mic and gave the orders. He turned to Tina. "Ike will move into the northernmost sector of the state. You join them.

Stretch out up to the Iowa line."

"We're going to be thin."

"I know. It has to be. Georgi will stretch his people, and Five and Six Battalions up into Minnesota. I'm placing all units north of the line under Georgi's command. Cecil's people will beef up Seven Battalion south of us. I'll take this sector. Ike will replace Five Battalion north of us up to the line."

He drove back to his CP and Tina gathered up her gear and her team. "See you, Pop," she called.

"Take care, kid." He called for a meeting of his commanders.

"Risky, Ben," Ike pointed out. "But I see the need for it."

"Voleta could ma.s.s her people and punch through the lines, Ben," the Russian said. "Specifically your lines. It's you she wants."

"I know," Ben acknowledged.

"If she punches through, Ben," Cecil said, "She could cut off Jeff City and really have you in a box."

"I am aware of that."

They all knew then that Ben had some plan working in his head, but was not yet ready to tell them the details of it. Perhaps he hadn't finalized it as yet. They all knew that he would tell them when he was good and ready, and not a moment before.

"When do you want us to pull out, Ben?" Georgi asked.

"Now."

"General Raines is splitting up his people," Sister Voleta was informed. "Our people behind his lines report a ma.s.sive pull-out from Jefferson City."

"Which direction?" Ashley asked.

"Mostly to the north."

Ashley smiled. "He's trying to stop Villar and the others from reaching Malone. It's a good move on his part. Albeit a very risky one."

"We take him now!" Voleta said, smiling like a shark in antic.i.p.ation of blood. "We can punch through his lines and surround him."

"No!" Ashley nixed that. "Don't be so impetuous, my dear. Bear in mind that Raines used poisonous gas to stop Villar and the others. It might be that he wants us to enter the city so he can do the same thing. He has a plan for us; bet on that."

"So we do what?" Voleta asked, her eyes shining with dark hatred for Ben Raines.

"We've got to wait and watch the Rebels very carefully . . . and as closely as is possible."

Voleta paced the room and cursed Ben Raines and her traitorous son, Buddy. The years had taken their toll upon the woman. Where she had once been beautiful, the years of intense hatred had poisoned her, turning her beauty into ugliness. Her face seemed to be frozen in a perpetual mask of hideous scowling. Her dark eyes burned with a strange light.

Ashley, on the other hand, seemed never to change.

He had been a pretty boy rich kid when Ben Raines had whipped his a.s.s back in Louisiana, long before the Great War, and he was still a pretty man . . . and just as vain. He hated Ben Raines, but not to the point of it being all-consuming.

Lance Ashley Lanier had long forgotten just why he hated Ben so, but that was no matter. He was content to just hate. It made him feel good.

Oh, yeah! Now he remembered. Ben Raines had insulted his sister, Fran comhe couldn't recall just what the insult was-and Ashley had called the man out. Big mistake on his part. Raines didn't fight fair. Ben had stomped the s.h.i.t out of him and to make matters worse, had done it in front of witnesses. It had all been so humiliating. Ashley had been a su-per-duper football hero in school. Super-duper football players were not used to getting the snot kicked out of them by trashy people like Ben Raines.

Ashley sighed. Well, he thought, it was all moot, now. The great mansion he had been raised in down in Louisiana was in ruin. The last time he saw it a bunch of Mexicans had moved in and had goats grazing on the front lawn.

His sister, Fran, had taken up with Hilton Logan, the president, and had later been shot to death while s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the secretary of state.

Ashley never could make up his mind whether Ben Raines's Death Squads had been responsible for that or if the President, Hilton Logan, had ordered it.

No matter. Hilton had been killed by Raines's Death Squads after the Tri-States had been destroyed by government troops.

That was back in? . . . h.e.l.l, he couldn't even remember. But some points he could remember was that a lot of people, fronting a lot of armies, had tried to defeat Ben Raines over the years.

No one had ever succeeded.

He brought himself back to the present and looked with some disdain upon Sister Voleta, pacing the room and ranting and raving and cursing Ben Raines until she was so breathless she had to stop and sit down. No doubt about it, the woman was a basket case, all right. But a nut with thousands of followers. His own army paled in comparison with the troops of Sister Voleta.

And he knew what would be the first words out of her mouth when she caught her breath.

She had never disappointed him before and she didn't disappoint him this time.

"I hate Ben Raines!" she screamed.

Two days had pa.s.sed since Ben had ordered his troops to spread out, and not one move had been made against them from Sister Voleta or Ashley. Ben chose to inspect the pitifully thin line of Rebels that were stretched along the almost seventy-mile sector that was his to defend.

About fifteen Rebels to the mile, he mused, enjoying a little game of mental arithmetic. Or one Rebel every three hundred and fifty-two feet, if he had chosen to spread them out in that manner, which he had not.

What he had done was blow bridges and overpa.s.ses on secondary roads from Highway 24 in the northernmost part of his sector, all the way down to just below Highway 50 to the south of him.

He knew Voleta had people watching him from a distance, so he loaded up West's people in trucks and sent them north, all the way up to Ike's sector. The trucks then promptly turned around, with West's mercenaries lying down out of sight in the canvas-covered beds, and dropped them off in the center of Columbia comor what was left of the city.

Ben pulled most of his people into Jefferson City and waited.

"Don't you see what he's done?" Ashley wanted to scream the words at Voleta; he struggled to keep his voice calm. "It's the most obvious trap I have ever seen. He's left us two options, and only two options. We can only go in two ways, Interstate Seventy or Highway Fifty. He's crippled the bridges and overpa.s.ses on every other road."

"There is a flaw in that logic, Ashley,"

Voleta pointed out.

"What?"

"Ben Raines is sitting down there in Jefferson City with less than a thousand Rebels comfar less than a thousand, for we know he's put outposts all up and down Highway Sixty-three. Correct?"

"Yes, that is correct. I would think that Raines probably has less than seven hundred Rebels in Jefferson City."

"The n.i.g.g.e.r general has his people down south of Jefferson City with the fresh battalion from Base Camp One, right?"

"That is correct, Voleta."

"The Russian and the Englishman and the two new battalions of Rebels are off chasing Villar and Khamsin and Parr, right?"

"That is correct."

"Our own people saw, with their own eyes, the mercenary, West, and his men move into Ike's sector, right?" Ashley sighed. Something about that move had caused a warning bell to ring in his head. He knew that Ben Raines liked to take chances, liked to tempt the G.o.ds of Fate ... or make people think he was doing that. But he couldn't deny the obvious. West had moved into Ike's sector.

"Yes, Voleta, that is fact."

"So even you will have to admit that Ben Raines is alone with less than a thousand personnel."

"It looks that way, Voleta."

"We leave token forces north and south, Ashley, and we throw everything we have against Raines in the city.

There is nothing to stop us from being vic- torious.

Nothing except the trick that Ben Raines has up his sleeve, Ashley thought. But for the life of him -- and his life was what he was betting-he could not think of what it might be.

He pointed out the one thing it might be. "Gas, Voleta."

"I thought of that. And rejected it."

"On what basis?"

"I spoke to the G.o.ds last night."

"Oh, s.h.i.t, Voleta! You're no more of a witch than I am a warlock! Give me something real on which to base commiting my people in this." "Ashley," she spoke the words contemptuously, "I hardly think that piddling little battalion of yours would make the slightest bit of difference in the outcome of this campaign."

Ashley stiffened at the slur upon his men and himself.

"If that is the way you feel, Voleta, I can certainly take my . . . piddling little battalion and move on."

"As you wish, Ashley." Her words were as cold as her heart was evil.

"Then I must wish you good luck, and good day, Sister Voleta."

"Good-bye, Ashley. I and my people will get along just fine, so don't worry."

Ashley was sorely tempted to say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a d.a.m.n what happens to you." But he knew that would have been pushing his luck with Voleta.

Voleta watched the man leave her headquarters, located some fifty miles west of Jefferson City. She felt nothing at seeing him leave.

Ashley Lanier was a pompous coward, and those were his good points.

"Screw you, Voleta," Ashley muttered, safety outside her HO.. "Crazy b.i.t.c.h. I hope I never have to look upon your face again."

He drove to his headquarters and gathered his commanders around him. "We're getting out of here," he told them. "Voleta has gone totally around the bend and is going to get herself and everybody connected with her killed."

The leader of the outlaw motorcycle group that had remained with Ashley after seeing his people slaughtered by Ben and his Rebels in Wyoming and Montana only a few months before, walked in, hearing the last part of Ashley's statement.

"As usual, Ashley, I don't agree with you ... at least not all of what you said," Satan told him. "Me and my bunch is stayin' with the broad."

"That's fine with me, Satan. It's your d.a.m.n funeral. She's crazy."

Satan shrugged. "h.e.l.l, I know that. You just remember this: I'm gonna kill you someday, pretty boy, and don't you forget it."

"How can I? You keep reminding me of it, you . .

. lout!"

Satan laughed and walked away.

In his CP in Jefferson City, Ben leaned back and sipped at a mug of coffee. "Come on, Voleta, take the bait. Our son is not here now, so Buddy doesn't have to see me kill you.

Come on, you crazy witch. Come on!"

Buddy Raines grunted as a sharp pain grew behind his eyes. Then the pain faded.

"What's wrong, son?" Dan asked, looking at him.

Buddy looked at the man. "You know I am marked, Colonel?"

"I know. I'm not sure what it means, but I've heard you mention it a time or two to your father."

"It means there are times I know what is about to happen. Not often, but at times."

"And what is happening now, boy?"

"I must return to my father, Colonel comnow!"

To his surprise, Dan did not argue the request. "All right, Buddy. Take your Rat Team and head on back. I know you well enough to know that if you didn't believe it important, you wouldn't ask. But I don't know how your father is going to take this."

"If I get there in time, my father is going to rant and rave and cuss and wave his arms all about."

"If you get there in time? In time for what, son?"

But Buddy was gone in a run toward his Jeep, yelling for his team to get their s.h.i.t together and come on! Dan lifted a map. Buddy had a good four to five hundred miles to go. All the way down through what had once been the state of Iowa.

"G.o.dspeed, boy," Dan said.

"Buddy did what?" Ben roared.

"Don't yell at the messenger, Ben,"

Jerre told him.