"William W Johnstone - Ashes 26 - Triumph in the Ashes (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

they had deplaned weeks back, were now combat tested and hardened. In
the weeks they had been in Africa they had seen sights that toughened
them mentally; they had learned what every experienced combat soldier
learns: you shove the bloody, awful sights into a secret part of your
brain and close and lock the door . . . and keep on doing your job.

Ben's 501 Brigade was halted on the Cameroon/Gabon border, just north of
Bata. The other brigades were stretched out across Africa, all the way
over to Mogadishu, Somalia. They waited for Ben's orders to move out.

Ike McGowen's 502 Brigade was just to Ben's east, on the Congo's west
border. Thermopolis's 19 Batt, which kept up with everything going on,
and not just concerning the Rebels, was in the center of the ten
brigades. Pat O'Shea's 510 Brigade was on the coast of the Indian Ocean,
almost twenty-five hundred miles away from Ben. Doctor Lamar Chase, the
Rebel Army's Chief of Medicine, was traveling with Ben's brigade. The
brigades had traveled several hundred miles since

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William W. Johnstone

re-forming, and so far had seen only limited action, most of it coming
from gangs of thugs.

All that was about to change.

For the past week, Ben and the Rebels had made good time, considering
the condition of the roads-in some cases, almost non-existence. Ben and
his 501 Brigade had traveled south through the western portion of
Cameroon and found very little resistance. They had seen thousands of
human skeletons, their deaths brought on by war, sickness, starvation,
and Bruno Bottger's deadly laboratory-concocted virus that he unleashed
on the population.

But the animals had made a miraculous comeback. The Rebels saw dozens of
prides of lions. They saw leopards and hyenas and wild dogs, and what
appeared to be thousands of different species of birds. Scouts reported
all sorts of animals ahead of the main force.

"Gorillas," said Cooper, Ben's driver. "I want to see some gorillas."

"Go look in the mirror," Ben's diminutive bodyguard, Jersey, told him.

Beth, the statistician, looked up from the tattered travel guide she was
reading and smiled at Ben, then returned to her reading.

Corrie, the radio tech, was busy yapping with somebody about something,
her headset on, and didn't hear the exchange. She probably wouldn't have
paid any attention to it, anyway, for Jersey and Cooper had been hurling