"Ask him what he wants," he said to Rani.

She did and the man shouted, "Whatever you got, missy. Give us your due for pa.s.sin" on this road and you can head on out."

"You believe him?" Ben asked, "h.e.l.l, no!"

Ben shot the man in the center of the chest, the slug knocking him backward, sprawling on the dirt road.

"Get me my RPG and a rocket," Ben said.

"I'm not going to jack around with these road sc.u.m."

Amid a ragged hail of gunfire from the outlaws' vehicles, Ben locked a grenade in place, checked to see if Rani was clear of the back-blast, sighted in the trucks, and fired.

The lead truck must have been carrying several hundred pounds of explosives, and the trucks behind it must have also been loaded with dynamite, for when the rocket struck, the force of the explosion knocked Rani to the ground and flung Ben to his knees.

The blast momentarily impaired hearing, and the two of them could only stand and stare in awe and utter silence as bits and pieces of cars and trucks were tossed literally hundreds of feet into the air.

Ben and Rani stared at the destruction that lay in front of them. Burning metal and mangled bodies littered the road in smoking heaps. There were no survivors among the outlaws.

"Can you hear?" Ben asked her, shaking his head.

"In a hollow, echoing sort of way," she replied. "It's weird. Ben, what in the world was in those trucks-an atomic bomb?"

"Whatever it was, we sure can't go back the way we came." He looked at his maps. "This road makes a half circle and then connects with 93, some miles north of McGill. We'll take it and chance it. Check your truck; see if any lead hit anything vital."

Ben's truck had taken most of the bullets from the outlaws' rifles, none of them doing any real harm to the truck. They headed out, driving slowly up theb.u.mpy road. It took them almost two hours to make the run on the rutted road. When they once more pulled onto Highway 93, it felt like a superhighway. They made camp and spent the night out in the open, far from dead towns with unblinking empty windows that seemed to remind Ben that life and love and hopes and dreams had once lived behind those silent walls.

Even after all these years, the feeling was disconcerting.

The eastern part of Nevada seemed to be void of human life-at least human fife that longed for a productive, orderly, civilized society.

The empty trend continued as Ben and Rani pulled up to the outskirts of Wells. Silence greeted them. It was also very cold.

"Idaho going to be colder than this?" Rani asked.

"Somewhat," Ben said, in cla.s.sic understatement.

"Ben, what happened to all the people?"

"I can't answer that, Rani. I just don't know.

I've never seen it this desolate. Hopefully, the people banded together and moved out, probably to the west, where the climate is more conducive to growing gardens. But that's just a guess. They might all be dead."

She shivered in the cold wind. Ben put his arm around her shoulders. "How many people lived in this state before the bombings, Ben?"

"Oh, seven or eight hundred thousand, I would imagine."

"Where in the h.e.l.l did they all go?"

she once more flung, the question to the winds.

Ben let the winds take it. He sure didn't know the answer.

Chapter 32.

They rolled through Jackpot, Nevada, at midmorning. A short time later, Ben radioed back to Rani.

"The old Tri-States, Rani. Welcome to a bit of history."

"Jesus, Ben! It's cold."

"It's also something else," he reminded her.

"What?"

"Christmas."

She was silent for half a mile, the tires humming on the concrete. "You're right. My G.o.d, I had completely forgotten. Merry Christmas, darling."

Ben knew they would encounter few, if any, people in the old Tri-States. While many had tried to move into the area, almost all had either left very quickly or been killed, for the Rebels had b.o.o.by-trapped hundreds, thousands, of cars, trucks, homes.

They had mined the timber and placed explosives in empty buildings. They had blown bridges and overpa.s.ses, poisoned a lot of the water sources. The Rebels knew what had been rigged to blow. The Rebels knew what water was safe to drink. The Rebels knew what to touch and what to leave alone. The Rebels knew where guns and ammo and explosives were cached.

No one else did.

Ben led the way north at a fast clip. He was home. He had masterminded the Tri-States, and knew the highway system as well as he knew his right and left hands.

When they crossed Interstate 86, Ben traveled some twenty-odd miles and pulled over at a house he remembered. A close friend of Ben's had lived in this ranch-style home. He, his wife, and their three kids had been killed by government troops during the a.s.sault of the Tri-States.

"Stay in the truck," Ben told Rani. "And I mean, stay in the truck."

She did not have to be told again.

Consulting a thick ledger, Ben moved around the home, neutralizing the traps. He cautiously entered the home and cut the trip wires. He lifted the top of the range in the kitchen and removed a half-pound of explosives. Smiling, he walked back outside and waved Rani in.

"It's safe now," he a.s.sured her.

"Everything's been neutralized."

She looked at the ma.s.s of explosives in his hands. "Are you sure?"

He laughed at her. "Positive. Go on in and start setting up for the night. Firewood is stacked by the fireplace. It's dry, but it'll give us a good, quick, hot fire. I'm going to find us something."

"What?"

Ben grinned. "A Christmas tree, darling."

The first of Jake Campo's teams arrived in the old Tri-States.

"Spooky," one of the men observed. "Where the h.e.l.l is all the people?"'

"Yeah," another outlaw said, looking around him.

"Man, we ain't seen n.o.body since crossing the state line."

"Weird," the leader of the team agreed. He spotted a nice home sitting just off the highway.

"We'll bunk over there for tonight. I ain't never seen so many nice houses."

"I was told that in the Tri-States you had to keep your place lookin" good. If you didn't mow the lawn, people would come in and mow it for you--then send you the bill!"

"It don't make no difference, no more," theleader said. "There ain't no more Tri-States and pretty soon there ain't gonna be no more Ben Raines, neither."

He opened the front door. It was not locked, since the former residents of Tri-States had never locked their doors or taken the keys out of their cars or trucks (remember, folks, always take the keys out of the ignition. Don't let a good boy go bad)!

The opening of the door tripped an acid-delay switch, tipping the gla.s.s vial to allow the acid to eat through a thin wire.

The entire team of Campo's outlaws crowded into the den of the home.

"Nice place," one said. "Lookie there!"

He pointed. "Farwood all stacked up and ready for us to burn."

The wire parted with a soft ping.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"Your imagination, probably. Come on.

Let's get settled in and fix some grub."

Fifteen pounds of high explosives blew.

One entire wall collapsed on the outlaws; beams fell from the ceiling, crushing the life from two of the outlaws. One man crawled out of the wreckage of the home, pulling himself along with his hands. Both his legs were broken.

He pa.s.sed out from the pain.

He would be frozen stiff by morning.

Another team rolled into what had been southern Wyoming before Ben Raines and his Rebels renamed the entire area the Tri-States, years back.

The outlaws spotted a lovely rock home sitting on a hill. That would be ideal for a headquarters. Or a grave. They settled in and built a roaring fire in the fireplace. Had they been just a bit more observant, they might have noticed the logs were too heavy for wood that had been allowed to dry, inside, for almost two years.

The logs had been hollowed out and packed full of extremely high explosives. The explosives would detonate after reaching the temperature of ninety degrees.

When the fireplace blew, the impact scattered debris-wood, brick, stone, and various parts of human bodies-all over the small hill.

Another team of outlaws came down from the north, into Montana. They thought it would be amusing to spend the night in what had once been Ben Raines'

residence.

Their amus.e.m.e.nt was very short-lived.

Ben had deliberately left sealed tins of what was labeled pure water on the kitchen counter, along with sealed tins of emergency rations. The water was poisoned and so was the food.

Ben and his Rebels, just before the government a.s.sault on Tri-States had begun, had warned the government that if they chose to interfere with a peaceful way of life, they would soon discover what h.e.l.lmust be like.

The outlaws ate and drank their fill, and then died horribly, their bodies and faces and hands swelling and blackening in death.

Another group of Texas Red's boys found a small, very intimate c.o.c.ktail lounge where, by golly, the bar was still stocked with sealed bottles of booze. They had a high ol' time and got rip-roaring drunk. They didn't notice the slight sweet fragrance coming from the bottles of whiskey.

Poison.

One by one they closed their eyes. One by one they went to sleep. One by one they slumped to the floor.

One by one ... they died.

"Anything?" Jake asked his radio operator.

"Nothin', Big Jake. Not a peep. And they was callin' in regular "til yesterday."

Again, Big Jake Campo felt a shiver of fear touch him. He knew, he knew the boys were dead. But how in the h.e.l.l had Raines managed to do it? How had he found them out so soon?

And how in the h.e.l.l could one man and one woman kill so many so quickly?

Jesus Flipping Christ!

Jake looked into Texas Red's eyes. He saw open fear there.

"We can't quit now," Jake said, after taking the man's elbow and leading him away from the other men.

"We got to go on."

"I don't like it," Texas Red honestly admitted his fear. "I'm scared, man. And I mean, really, f.u.c.king scared!"

"Get a grip on yourself.

G.o.dd.a.m.nit, he's just one man.

One man!"

"Is he?" Red asked.