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thinking.”
    “Scouts are reporting there’s been one hell of a slaughter in the towns and villages along the way to Rabat,” Corrie said abruptly. “The gangs of punks and
     
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    thugs and insurgents and what have you took the women and young girls and then killed everybody in sight before pulling out. Scouts think it started late yesterday. It’s pretty grim along the way. The carrion birds are having a feast.”
    “We’ve all seen it before,” Ben said quietly. “I’ve been expecting it. Corrie, get the flatbeds with the earth moving equipment up here. We’re going to have to scoop out some mass graves.”
    “Again,” Cooper said.
    “Yes. And I’m afraid it won’t be the last time we do it.”
    Asilah and Larache had been spared the slaughter, but the next town down the coast, Ksar el Kebir, took the full force of the outlaws’ savagery.
    “The Great Fortress,” Ben said, speaking through the mic in his gas mask. Ben and team stood just inside the first houses and shops of the old city. “That’s what this city used to be called.”
    “Didn’t help them much,” Anna said.
    Bodies lay everywhere in the twisted and grotesque final throes of death. Black carrion birds were busy ripping out dead flesh and pulling out yards of intestines. Huge bloated flies hummed all around the Rebels.
    “The fleeing gangs couldn’t have killed everyone,” Ben said. “Bump the Scouts and find out where the survivors are.”
    “They’re hiding in little pockets all over the city,” Corrie informed him. “They want us to move on and leave them alone.”
    Ben didn’t change expressions. “Do they want us to bury the dead before we go?”
    Dr. Chase had driven up from his position in the center of the column and was looking strangely at Ben.
    “They want us to go,” Corrie repeated.
    “Mount up,” Ben said. “Let’s go.”
     
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    “Ben …” Chase said.
    “Mount up!” Ben ordered. “I’m not going to nursemaid these people. If they don’t want our help, that’s fine with me.”
    “Not everyone feels that way, General,” the voice came from behind Ben.
    Ben turned around. A man and a woman stood looking at him. A nun and a priest.
    “The survivors are frightened,” the nun said. “They don’t know who you are. They’ve just been through a terrible ordeal.”
    “Won’t you stay and help us, General?” the priest asked.
    “Get these people some protective gear,” Ben ordered. “Have your doctors check them out and bring them up to date on everything, Lamar. We’ll start burying the bodies.”
    Father Joseph and Sister Mary had been checked out and brought up to date on their shots. They both had taken hot baths and were dressed in clean clothes when they met with Ben about two hours later. The sounds of earth-moving equipment gouging out pits in the ground grumbled throughout the edge of the city. Rebels were working in the city, gathering up the bodies and trucking them to the mass grave sites. The chaplains that traveled with each battalion were offering up prayers for the dead.
    “You’re Americans, aren’t you?” Ben asked, waving the man and woman to chairs in the makeshift CP.
    “Yes. We’ve been here since before the Great War,” the priest replied.
    “Are there more Americans in this area?” “Several hundred, at least. At last count.” “You’re both educated people,” Ben said. “There
     
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    must be shortwave equipment in this city. Why didn’t you start transmitting, sending out trouble calls. Somebody would have rescued you. We would have if we’d received a signal.”
    “This is where our work is,” the sister replied. “We have people who depend on us.”
    “If there are Americans here, why didn’t they make an appearance in Tangiers?”
    “They’re mostly concentrated in Casablanca,” the priest said. “About two dozen or so are in this immediate area.”
    “Religious people?”
    “Only a few. Most are business men and women