"William W. Johnstone - Ashes 07 - Smoke from the Ashes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

God ride with you."
The old man limped painfully into the timber.
The young man walked swiftly to his
motorcycle and cranked it into life. He toed it
into gear and rolled out. He did not look back.
"How would you have changed history, General
Raines?" a young Rebel asked Ben.
The Rebels were bivouacked by the shores of a
small lake in Central Kansas. They had
pulled over early in the day to make some much needed
repairs to some trucks.
"That's a very interesting question, son," Ben said with a
laugh. "What time frame in history are you speaking
of?"
"Ten years before the Great War," another young
Rebel said.
Ben started to ask, "Which Great War?" But he
knew which one the Rebel meant. The world war that brought
the entire world, free and otherwise, to its knees.
The war from which the world had never recovered.
How would I have changed history? Ben silently
mused. He hid a smile, thinking: I would have shot
every goddamned liberal.
But he knew he would not have done that, for while Ben
Raines sometimes leaned so far to the conservative right
some wondered how he managed to walk upright,
figuratively speaking, Ben shared many of the liberal
views. The difference was, Ben backed up his
views with gunpowder.
"What do you know about that time before the Great War?"
Ben asked, looking at the young Rebel who had
asked the question. The young man could
not have been much more than ten years old, if that
old, when the world collapsed.
Several hundred Rebels, including Ike
McGowan, had gathered around. Ike had been with
Ben from the outset; had been with him, working beside him,
when Ben's dream, the Tri-States, had become
reality. The ex-navy Seal was just about Ben's age;
both men's hair peppered with gray.
Ike winked at Ben.
The young Rebel said, "I know that it was a time of
great confusion. Of a lot of people being rich and a lot of people
being poor, with not much in between."
Ben also knew the young man had no real knowledge of what
being rich or poor meant. The dollar had not been in
use for some time. And within Rebel-held territory,
no one went hungry, or went in rags, or
lacked proper housing or fuel to keep warm. But
outside of Rebel-controlled territory in this,