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

gristle and bone. And they liked a good fight. They went out of their
way to find one.

Ben Raines commanded One Battalion. General Ike McGowan, an ex-Navy SEAL
commanded Two Battalion. Colonel Dan Gray, a former member of Her
Majesty's Special Air Service commanded Three Battalion. Colonel West
and his mercenaries made up Four Battalion. General Georgi Striganov, a
former Russian Spetsnaz commander was in charge of Five Battalion.
Colonels Rebet and Danjou commanded Six and Seven Battalions, made up of
Russian, French-Canadian, and Canadian troops. Thermopolis, the hippie
turned warrior, commanded Eight Battalion. Ben's daughter, Tina,
commanded Nine Battalion. And the wild Irishman, Pat O'Shea, commanded
Ten Battalion. There was Ben's son, Buddy, and his group of young men
and women called the Rat Pack. And there were the ex-outlaw bikers
called the Wolf Pack. People of all

13 nationalities and all walks of life and all religious beliefs made up
the fighting battalions of Raines's Rebels. And there were the support
troops and the doctors. The chief of medicine was a crusty old bastard
named Lamar Chase. He was the only person alive who could order Ben
Raines out of the field and into a hospital bed, and Ben had to obey.
There were the cooks and the truck drivers and the mechanics and the
supply people and the pilots and hundreds of others. Raines's Rebels, so
far as they knew, made up the largest standing army on the face of the
earth. They were also the most feared fighters in all the world. They
gave an enemy one chance to surrender. Only one. After that, they rarely
took prisoners.

Ben and his Rebels had sailed to Ireland and then England, cleaning it
out and handing a reasonably stable government back to the citizens of
those nations. Then they set sail for Hawaii, going around the Horn,
inspecting each inhabited island along the thousands of miles.

The islands that made up the Hawaiian chain were under the ruthless rule
of thousands of pirates and various other assorted thugs.

All that was about to change.

16 Book One

17

After suffering defeats from the Rebels that came very swift and very
hard, the pirates and outlaws and thugs on the islands began beefing up
their positions and smartening up. They were, to a person, stunned when
they realized that the Rebels now controlled much of the island of
Molokai, including the main port and the airport. None of them could
understand exactly how the Rebels had managed to land so many troops and
go undetected.