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

Rye Billings nodded his shaggy head. A huge bear of a man, the former
mainland outlaw biker was known for his brutality. "I'll take orders
from Books. I don't much like the bastard, but he's smart, I got to give
him that. We're up against the wall, boys and girls. He's right when he
says we got no place to run. This is it."

"The plane we sent out never come back," Dean Sherman said glumly. "The
last transmission we had was that it was hit and goin' down."

"And that the pilot was looking' at the biggest damn armada he'd ever
seen," Polly Polyanna said. No one knew what her real name might have
been. Nobody really cared. "My people will back Books. No problem there."

"Same here," a gang leader who called himself Wee Willie said. "We got
too good of a thing goin' here. I ain't givin' none of it up just 'cause
some overage Boy Scout says to do it."
"Ben Raines ain't no Boy Scout," Tucker said. "Don't none of you ever
think that. I fought that bastard from New York City to California. Or
rather, I run from him all that way. Now I got no place left to run. If
any of you people come out of this alive, and you find my body when
Raines's Rebels is done kickin' our asses, bury me up in the mountains
if you can. Mighty pretty country up there."

"Aw, man!" a thug called Spit shouted. "Hell, you

20 act like he's done won this fight. We can whip the Rebels."

"Maybe, just maybe," Tucker said. "But we're gonna have to be awful
lucky. You folks don't know Ben Raines. He hates punks and thieves and
the likes of us. And in his own way, he's just as mean as we are. Look
at who the Rebels has whipped: Hartline, Khamsin, Sister Voleta, the
Believers, all the L.A. street gangs, ever army that's ever had the
nerve to take them on ... has lost. Been wiped clean off the map. And I
don't know how to fight Ben Raines and his Rebels."

"I do," Books said from the open doorway. "Oh, my, yes. I certainly do."

"Get the general up here," a Rebel sergeant radioed back to Ben's CP.
"Fast!"

"What's the problem?" Ben asked, as he was stepping out of the vehicle
Cooper had procured for him.

"The enemy is gone, sir. They started disappearing about five minutes
ago. There isn't a sign of them down the road."

"Well, it's about time," Ben said, lifting his binoculars.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" the sergeant asked.