"William W Johnstone - Ashes 16 - Vengance in the Ashes (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

simultaneously all over the world, Russia blamed the United States, the
United States blamed Russia. China blamed Europe. Israel blamed the Arab
nations, England put the blame on Northern Ireland, Germany blamed
Japan, and the French blamed everybody.

It didn't make any difference who started the war, a limited nuclear and
germ attack, for when it was over, there was not a functioning
government left in the entire world.

In the United States, one man was picked to pull the nation out of the
ashes of defeat and set it right again. Only problem was ... he didn't
want the job.

8 Ben Raines was an unlikely candidate from the outset. He was a
reclusive man, a loner. He had been both soldier and spy. He was a
visionary, a philosopher, and a writer of books and articles. He was so
controversial in his views that one group or the other had tried a dozen
times over the years to kill him. But Ben Raines was a hard man to kill.

Ben Raines was a hard-liner on some issues and liberal to the core on
others. Back when such things existed, he was a maverick when it came to
voting in any type of election, for he never voted strict party lines.

It took months for a small group of survivors to convince Ben to lead
their movement. But when he took the reins of controls, things began to
happen. He immediately moved thousands of followers to the northwest and
formed a country within a country, calling it the Tri-States. And life
was good there. In the Tri-States, there was free medical care for all.
There was no crime, for Ben Raines would not tolerate it. The life
expectancy of a criminal was very short. Ben built schools and stressed
education above all else. All students who were able had at least ten
hours of hard physical exercise a week, including paramilitary training,
for Ben knew that once the central government of the United States was
once more functioning, the politicians would ask the military to move
against the Tri-States. Already the struggling central government of the
United States was calling those who followed Ben scum and malcontents
and traitors. Others called them Rebels. The name stuck. Ben Raines's
Rebels.

While the central government of the United States, now located in
Richmond, was ruling with typical inefficiency, the Rebels in the
Tri-States were living happy and contented lives. The politicians couldn't

9 stand it. It infuriated the bureaucrats to see such a large group of
people living with so few rules and regulations, and for heaven's sake,
they were actually shooting criminals out there! Everybody who was a
permanent citizen of the Tri-States could carry a gun. Criminals had
practically no rights at all. And the constitution and the laws of the
Tri-States were written so simply that even a child could understand them.