"Shit!" Cooper said.

Beth made a horrible face at the thought of anyone worshipping anything Simon Border had to do with.Anna lowered the window and spat outside.

"Ah, dear," Ben said. "That is not a very ladylike thing to do."

"Who said I was a lady?"

221.

221.

Ben sighed and didn't pursue the subject. Being a father was something he was not all that good at.

"How are we going to handle the people up ahead, boss?" Cooper asked.

"They don't shoot at us, we don't shoot at them."

"Look there," Cooper said. "By the side of the road."

A crowd of people had gathered at the edge of town, many of them holding hand-painted signs-BEN RAINES IS THE GREAT SATAN.

"I don't think they like you very much," Corrie said with a smile.

"I sort of get that feeling," Ben admitted.

THE REBEL ARMY IS FILLED WITH FORNICATORS AND HARLOTS.

"I fornicate occasionally," Jersey said. "Helps take the edge off."

Cooper opened his mouth to say sometfiing.

"Shut up, Cooper," Jersey warned him. "Just don't say a word."

SIMON BORDER IS THE ONLY TRUE WAY.

"Only true way to what?" Anna asked.

Ben halted the column and stepped out of the wagon. He was instantly surrounded by Rebels in a diamond formation. He walked up to the group of people and they hissed and drew back as if Ben had some horrible contagious disease. The women were all dressed in drab shapeless dresses that covered them from neck to ankles and the men were dressed equally drably.

"You people need any help?" Ben asked in a friendly voice.

"Not from you," a woman replied.

"We have doctors with us." Ben kept his voice even. "Are your children all up to date with their shots?"

"With the help of His Holiness here on earth, Simon Border, the Lord will provide," a man told Ben.

222.

"I see. Does everyone here in town feel the way you do?"

"Yes!" the crowd shouted in one voice."What a pack of screwballs," Jersey muttered.

"Well," Ben said, "if that's the case, we'll just move on and let you folks alone."

"Good riddance," a man said.

Ben waved his people back into their vehicles and they moved on without another word, but with plenty of very hard looks from the supporters of Simon Border.

"Good God!" Beth was the first to speak once the column was moving.

"I don't think God has anything to do with it," Ben said. "Those people have been had."

"But they were had willingly, General Ben," Anna said. "No one forced them."

As usual, the young Anna cut right through the fat and got to the meat of the problem.

"I feel nothing but contempt for the adults," Corrie said. "But what about the children?"

"The battle cry of the liberals back before the Great War," Ben told the group. "Whenever a social program was in danger of being cut, the liberals would start pissing and moaning about the children. They twisted facts, manipulated numbers, and sometimes just outright lied when it suited them. And Simon always professed to be a supporter of the liberal movement. I feel sorry for the kids back there, sure. But as it stands now, there is nothing we can do about it. Unless we want to start using force against the adults."

"Scouts report making contact with a guerrilla group about 25 miles ahead," Corrie said. "Little town at the junction of 129. They're on our side."

"Be nice to see a friendly face for a change."

The group they met a few miles down the road were 223.

223.

heavily armed and determined to live free, not under Simon Border's dictatorial regime.

"Simon's bit off a hell of a lot more than he's capable of chewing, general," one of the local resistance members who had been introduced as Tom said. "He's spread thin ... way too thin for what he hopes to accomplish."

"But my intelligence people say he has a very strong army."

"Oh, he does. And it's an army filled with fanatics. Don't sell them short, for are all prepared to die for their beliefs. Come on, general.

Let's get inside out of this damn wind and have something to drink.

We'll talk better there."In the man's very comfortable home, coffee was served by Tom's smiling wife. "It's Columbian," she explained. "Simon apparently worked out some sort of deal with the gangs of punks before they invaded our land, and some warlords down in Central and South America. Simon and the gang leaders trade them women to sell into whoring and men to use as slaves, and they sell or barter, or however they do it with the punks, the raw materials to manufacture dope up here. We hijacked a couple of loads of coffee on the way through here." She grinned. "And shot the shit out of their convoy."

"Now they fly it in," Tom said.

"My intelligence people sure dropped the ball on this one," Ben said.

"We had no idea there were entire communities who were resisting Simon and his nutty ideas."

"Not their fault, general. We just couldn't be sure if they were the real article or if they were lying when they said they worked for you.

We stay in touch by short wave, so we all agreed to hedge our bets to be on the safe side. I don't know whether you know this or not, but Simon has a secret police that would put the Gestapo to shame. They not only look like Hitler's Gestapo, they act like that bunch of thugs. They wear black uniforms with red armbands.

224.

And a lot of people they pick up for questioning are never seen again."

Ben toyed with his coffee cup for a moment. He shook his head.

"Conditions are a hell of a lot worse over here than I realized. But I've got a man in here; one of the best spooks in the world. I don't understand why he hasn't notified me of all this."

"He's probably linked up with a resistance group and running for his life, general."

"I have a very difficult time visualizing Mike doing that, Tom."

"I hate to be the one to tell you this, general," Tom said, very hesitandy. "But it's something you'd better give a lot of thought to."

"What?"

"There is a very good chance you have some Simon Border people with you.

He probably put people in your army a long time ago. He sometimes behaves as though he's about half nuts, and he may well be insane, but he's still a very smart man."

"We went through a purge of the ranks months back," Ben told him. "And we did turn up a few Simon Border supporters. But I thought we had them all. Damn!"

Tom was silent for a few heartbeats. "I'd better warn you of this, general-everything north of 1-40 and everything west of 1-25 is Simon Border territory. You're going to have a fight on your hands when you get in those areas."

Ben smiled, thinking of Jersey's comments about how boring it had been for so long."You looking forward to a fight, general?" Tom asked, a puzzled note in his words.

"I've never shied away from one," Ben replied, as his grin faded and the thoughts of Simon Border having spies witfiin his army took center stage in his mind. "But no, 226.

225.

Tom. I'm not looking forward to a battle. But if Simon Border wants a fight, he can damn sure have one."

"What about the possibility of your having turncoats in your army?"

"Oh ... I'll deal with them. You can rest assured of that." Ben hadn't worked out just how he would deal with them, but he definitely would purge his ranks of Simon Border supporters.

Ben didn't have to ponder how he was going to do that for very long.

That night the traitors within his ranks solved that problem for him.

227.

As soon as Ben left the friendly home, he told Corrie to get his battalion commanders up for a meeting. One look at Ben's grim face and Corrie knew something was rotten.

"We've got Simon Border sympathizers all through our ranks," Ben told his commanders. "I should have guessed it"

"What are they waiting for?" Jackie asked. "Why don't they strike?"

"I think they've been waiting until we were inside Border's territory.

So we can expect some sort of coup at any time."

"No idea who they are?" Dan asked.

"No. None at all. And I've got a hunch we're not going to have time to pull in polygraph and PSE operators to check everyone."

"You think it's coming down that soon?" Buddy asked.

"Yes, I do. I would say to pull in your most trusted people, but hell, who can we trust?"

228.

"I think we can trust the old-timers," Jim Peters said. "I think we have to trust them."

"All right. Get back to your commands and quietly alert the old-timers.

Captain Evans is in overall charge of the platoons that are leaving the column and linking up north of Flagstaff. He's a good man. I trust him.

I'll personally give him a bump and alert him. I alerted President Jefferys first thing, so he's ready for whatever happens back home."

Ben's face hardened and his eyes glinted. "I don't like people who shake hands with you with one hand and strike you with the other. So, whenthis coup attempt begins, I really don't want to have to deal with a lot of prisoners. Any questions?"

There were none. All present got Ben's drift, loud and clear. Treason carried the death sentence in the SUSA.

Ben watched the batt corns quietly leave the room. He sat alone for a time in the quiet room, his expression grim and his eyes holding a very dangerous light Then he picked up his CAR and walked outside. "Heads up," he told his team. "The turncoats are sure to have noticed the batt corns coming and going and they might put it all together. I don't have any idea how many of our people are involved in this treachery. But it won't take many of them to cause a lot of damage. We're going to take some hits when it goes down. Let's see if we can't keep it at a minimum."

The night was closing in fast as Ben spoke and every one of his senses was working overtime. It might have been nerves responsible for his feeling jumpy, but he didn't think so. The column was inside Simon Border's territory, and the coup attempt could just as easily come this night as any other. Ben paced back and forth and up and down for over an hour, his thoughts dark and savage.

' 'Batt corns all back with their commands,'' Corrie broke into Ben's thoughts, and he was grateful for the intrusion.

229.

"Everything quiet with their commands?"

"No problems. Yet," she added.

"How could any Rebel, who has lived free under the laws of the SUSA and the Tri-States philosophy, ever fall for Simon Border's bullshit?"

Jersey asked.

"I think you just hit the nail on the head, Jersey," Ben said. "New people." He looked at Beth. "How many new people in our bunch, Beth?"

"Since returning from Europe ... about 50. The same for the other battalions, since we enlarged battalion size."

"That's it. Corrie, bump the batt corns, advise them to-"

Shots shattered the quiet night before Ben could finish his sentence and Ben and team jumped for cover just as bullets pocked the side of his motor home.