"William W Johnstone - Ashes 22 - Chaos in the Ashes (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

But we don't know for sure."

"The new capital?"

"In a shambles. Taken over by malcontents. It's bad, Ben. Real bad.
We've lost about two thirds of the SUSA, including the old Base Camp
One. But we deactivated the missiles there before we pulled out. They
can't be launched. I doubt if these idiots can even find the silos, much
less get into them. In all our years of war, Ben, I have neverseen
anything to equal this. The slackers, the malcontents, the
give-me-something-for-nothing bunch, and all the rest must have been
planning this for months-maybe years. And they've got some real brains
behind this movement."

"Sure they have," Ben said sarcastically. "All those ultra-liberals we
read the riot act to several years back. I should have seen this coming."
Cecil stared at him for a moment. "Ben, do you really believe . . . ?"

"I damn sure do."

"But Blanton was one of them!"

18

William W. Johnstone

"Was is the key word, Cec. He changed. He and I became friends. Friends
as much as we ever could be. Certain members of his old party just
couldn't take that." Ben shook his head. "I should have seen this coming."

"Oh, hell, Ben! Nobody could have seen this coming. We've got the best
intelligence network in the world, and we didn't see it coming. If what
you're saying is true, then the old ultra-liberal wing of Blanton's
party just sacrificed God only knows how many thousands of people."

"They don't care about that. To them, the end justifies the means. They
want back in power. They don't give a damn how that comes to be."

"That's monstrous!"

"Yes, it certainly is. I preached for years that liberals were a greater
threat to individual freedom than communism. Now tell me what happened."

Cecil drained his coffee mug and sighed. "People began peacefully
gathering along our borders. One day there were five thousand, the next
day a hundred thousand, the next day half a million. Then they started
pouring across and rioting and looting. They came across our borders in
human waves, thousands and thousands of men and women and children.
Hell, Ben, we couldn't open fire on unarmed civilians and little kids.
We used rubber bullets and gas but they kept coming; our people were