Doomsday Warrior 01 (11 page)

Preson looked around furtively. There were no whips or chains here. Somehow he had imagined a more primitive dungeon, with racks and burning pokers. Instead, a simple plastic chair, body-contoured with aluminum arms and straps for the wrists. It was the object that waited on a mobile stand above the chair that looked forbidding: a large helmet covered with wires and meters. In the center, underneath, right where the head would fit in when the helmet was lowered, two six-inch long, syringelike prongs.

“Please. Deity, let me die before I betray,” he prayed. Death was his only hope. Escape was impossible. He glanced around the room, The device seemed to be wired to some kind of computer terminal, rows of green and amber lights softly glowing, waiting to flash with life. As he swung his head around, he saw a large piece of glass about ten feet off the floor, and behind it, a number of KGB officers stood, talking and laughing, They stopped when they saw him taking them in, and all stared back down at the prisoner. A voice suddenly came over a speaker to the right of the bulletproof, inch-thick glass partition.

“Welcome, Mr. Preston. Welcome to the Center. I am Director Killov. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

Preston stared up at the hawk-faced man speaking into the microphone, “Yes, I’ve heard of you, Killov. You’re the greatest mass murderer alive in the world today. Any loyal American would give his beating heart to see you dead.”

“You flatter me,” Killov said with a slight smirk. “To be so notorious a man to you so-called Freefighters just fills me with happiness.”

“Murder is nothing to be proud of. Your day will come, that I know,” Preston replied, almost shouting now. “Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with.”

“Kill you?” Killov laughed. “Oh no, Mr. Preston, we have much greater things in store for you than that. How unimaginative of you. Don’t you see that device near you? The chair, with the metal hat. Won’t you have a seat?” The officers around Killov laughed as Preston tried to struggle with the three hulking guards who grabbed him and strapped him quickly to the chair. From a side door, a man emerged wearing a white smock and surgical gloves. He moved slowly over to Preston, a short, fat man with thinning brown hair and black eyes that were dead. Preston shuddered as the man looked him full in the face. He had never seen eyes like that before. They seemed to have no life behind them at all, total blackness that fell back, like a stone dropping into a deep well, never touching bottom.

“I am Dr. Yurov,” the short, smocked man said with the sheerest flicker of a smile. “If you will allow me.” He reached above Preston’s hand and lowered the helmet, attached to a curved stainless-steel arm, until it was halfway covering Preston’s face. The points of the twin surgical probes rested just an inch above the Free American’s skull. Yurov pressed a button on the side of the black helmet that resembled a kind of ultramodern diving helmet as it covered the prisoner’s head. Two foam pads slowly eased out of each side of the helmet and moved forward until tightly pressed against Preston’s temples. He tried to move. God, his head was totally immobilized now. He began trembling in spite of himself. Those hypodermic spikes, what were they going to?

“Ready, sir,” Dr. Yurov said softly, looking up at Killov about twenty feet away behind the glass partition. The KGB leader merely nodded once and waited. An orderly carrying a tray of drinks walked around to Killov and the other top officers giving out brandies and scotches and Killov’s drink, straight gin.

Yurov stroked the hair away from the center of Preston’s head, looked at the spot of bared scalp and nodded to himself. He lowered the two prongs until they rested right on the flesh at the very top of the skull. “Yes, that’s just right,” he mumbled absent-mindedly. The KGB “doctor” walked to the large control panel along one wall, covered with flickering video screens, read-outs, computer-drawn graphs of CATSCANs of Preston’s brain that were being taken by a camera at the top of the helmet every four seconds. Yurov switched the Laser On button, and a row of dark green crystal diodes, stretching along a chrome metal cabinet behind the prisoner’s chair, instantly lit up. “Yes, yes, everything’s working fine,” he muttered again, unaware of his spoken words.

“Now, this is going to hurt,” he said to Preston, walking back over to the helmet. “It’s going to hurt quite a bit. So the best thing I can say to you is to give in to it. The quicker you surrender your personality, your thoughts, your obedience, the quicker the pain will be over.”

“Oh, cut all the goddamn bullshit and torture me, I’m getting bored,” Preston snapped, trying to maintain a tough front. He steeled himself inside, steeled his guts and his very soul for what was about to come.

Yurov threw a switch at the top of the metal helmet and two brilliant lights shot out from the ends of the needle-sharp prongs. The lights were of an extraordinary green, like the star fire of a burning gem, incandescent. Yurov slowly began turning a small lever which lowered the probes toward Preston’s skull. The heat of the laser beams shooting out from the tips instantly vaporized the flesh and bone at the top of the Freefighter’s head. He screamed and kept screaming. The probes continued at a downward angle moving at the prescribed rate of ten millimeters per second. The million-degree, green fire of the laser probe burned and sizzled away at the brain tissue, bubbling it and disintegrating it into putrid smoke that rose from the top of Preston’s head.

One of the officers behind the partition turned to Killov. “That’s apparently one of the only problems, sir,” he said in a whisper. “They say the brains smell quite awful as they burn.”

“Really?” the KGB boss asked. “The premier won’t like that at all when we demonstrate this for him. Tell them that something will have to be worked out. A miniature ventilation fan to suck in the smoke and the odor. Priority!” Killov’s right hand man, Colonel Dobrynin, took out a small, red leather notebook and quickly wrote down Killov’s command. Every word of the Blackshirt leader must be obeyed. Every.

Dr. Yurov glanced over at the video monitor on the wall displaying Preston’s CATSCAN. Every layer of the brain crossed across the green-tinted screen in waves of imagery. The probes could clearly be seen biting into the central tissue of a human mind.

“We’re now reaching the cerebral section, sir,” Yurov said. “Now is when the process actually starts. You see, as I burn away the older memory system and also apply excruciating pain, the patient is put into an entirely different consciousness.” The doctor of torture moved the lever again, and the burning arc of purest pain bit deep into the prisoner’s brain.

Preston screamed and screamed, but he no longer knew that. He no longer knew who he was. The screams were entirely involuntary, his lungs filling, hyperventilating with air and rushing back out through his throat with a ghastly wail. His body attempted to jerk wildly in response to the overwhelming pain. But strapped tightly on both sides, he nearly cracked his bones within their muscle and skin confines. The pain! Teeth, razors, flames, ripping through the center of his very being. White hot pain. Memories of his life, his wife and daughter, his childhood, burned and defiled, ripped out and torn from his mind as if they had never existed. He could feel his mind disintegrating, falling into pieces of dust, exploding in every direction.

The pain! The pain! It was so intense, pushing everything to the side as it gripped him in clawlike vises of sensation. He was being sliced by razor blades of liquid fire, slashed open and cut, his backbone and veins, his guts and his tongue and his boiling eyes, all cut and twisted into knots of flame. At last, all he was was his body, and his body was sheer, infinite, unbearable pain. He suddenly snapped, a shudder coursing through the super taut arms and chest, and fell unconscious, held upright only by his bonds.

“Good, good,” Yurov said, muttering to himself again. He pulled the lever the opposite way and the prongs lifted out of the smoking brain. He pushed the Laser Off switch and the green streaks of hellfire died out. He put smelling salts under Preston’s nose and slapped his face as the prisoner groaned.

“Very good. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Yurov asked blandly. “Now, just one more question and then you can go to sleep. Where is your city?”

Preston’s eyes half opened, bloodshot, dead. It wasn’t the same man as it had been five minutes before. His brain was different now. He felt . . . He didn’t understand. Where was everything? Where was he? He had no past memory beyond the last few hours. He was afraid, so afraid. These men, they had hurt him. He was an animal—dumb, unaware even of his humanity.

“Your city? Your city?” Yurov continued, slapping him lightly on the right cheek.

His what? Oh, his city. They wanted to know. Yes, his city. But no, he wasn’t supposed to tell. But why? He couldn’t remember. There was a reason, there was.

“Tsk, tsk,” Dr. Yurov said, staring down at the trembling shell of a man. “I’ll have to use the probes again.” He started to lower the helmet.

“No! No!” Preston screamed, bolting up. “It’s just about three hundred miles west of here. Westfort. Just inside three valleys, where the Falls River splits into two. It’s hidden in the trees and there’s . . .” He trailed off, suddenly looking confused, staring down at the floor.

“Good, very good. That’s all for today.” He lifted the helmet completely to the side and applied an antiseptic to the two quarter-inch holes at the top of his skull, followed by a gauze pad and bandage. “We’ll meet again,” Yurov mumbled pleasantly as the guards took the nearly catatonic Free American off to one of the holding cells for future interrogation.

“Excellent, Dr. Yurov, excellent!” Killov said, standing up behind the glass partition and clapping. The other officers quickly joined in. “Your device more than lives up to its reputation. I’m very pleased.” The KGB leader allowed as much of a smile as his officers had ever seen to pass for a split second across his stone face. “I want to see more. But first, this city must be disposed of.”

Killov exited from the viewing booth with the officers following closely behind. Dr. Yurov tidied up. “Such a good machine, such a good machine,” he mumbled absent-mindedly, almost stroking the helmet as he wheeled it on its stand back against the wall.

In his eightieth floor office, Killov began shouting orders over telephones and intercoms. “Immediately, I want an advance reconnaissance plane, two drones, to advance to these coordinates: G-5, T-2 on Western Sector grid map. Transmit only in attack mode code. I want them off the ground in three minutes.” He turned to General Yablonski, commander of the KGB air force. “I don’t want army or regular air force in on this,” he said, his eyes as cold as steel frozen by a Russian winter.

“Of course, your excellency,” the suave air commander answered, lowering his head in a slight bow.

“We will use two of the neutron bombs that I have stored away just for this eventuality.”

“But, sir,” Vice General Sracksin spoke up from out of a group of about twenty assembled officers. “Premier Vassily has given direct orders to all military personnel not to use—”

Killov glared at the offending officer. “You dare tell me what to do?”

“Oh no, not at all, sir,” the admonished KGB officer said, his voice cracking slightly.

“The premier doesn’t want us to go out hunting with atomic bombs—not go setting them off like madmen,” Killov said coolly, addressing the Red brass gathered around his office. “But now we know where these rebels are. This is a surgical operation. Clean. Instantaneous. Believe me, my unthinking comrade, when the premier sees what we have done, he will give us medals.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I didn’t understand,” the vice general whispered, trying to blend back into the group of officers. Killov made a mental note to get rid of the idiot as quickly as possible. The man was probably a plant of Zhabnov’s or the premier’s.

“Now,” the KGB commander continued, “I want you personally—” he addressed Yablonski—“to pilot the bomber that takes these in. You’ve had experience with this sort of thing. This mission
can’t
fail. You know what’s at stake, and you’re the only man I trust to carry it out flawlessly.” Killov looked at the young rising star of the KGB. If he handled this one right, big things were in store for all of them.

“I shall not fail you, leader,” Yablonski replied. He saluted and walked out the door, heading for the airstrip a quarter mile away. A Ziv staff car picked him up at the door and quickly whisked the general to the air base where his Sukov swingwing bomber was already fueled and waiting. And loaded with the two neutron weapons, mounted under each wing. He suited up and, five minutes later joined his co-pilot, already seated at the controls. Yablonski took command and let the controls ease into his hand with that cool, familiar feel of cold steel. Within two minutes they were tearing down the runway, quickly reaching air speed. Once up a thousand feet, he hit the transsonic overdrive and nosed the death-dealing bomber toward the target coordinates.

Eight

T
he day began beautifully in Westfort. The green valley was flooded with the clearest sunlight the Free Americans had seen in years. It always thrilled their hearts to see the sky so clear, so open. The town’s mules, hybrids, wagons, all began making their way along the hidden roadways, beneath the overhanging trees and camouflage netting. The sun’s rays trickled down through the green and red and golden leaves, creating patterns of dappled light along the dirt roads, and onto the hides of the animals protesting at pulling their loads.

The people of Westfort were in a good mood this morning. Somehow things suddenly seemed all right with the world. Oh, there were plenty of problems. Westfort was a relatively primitive city. Without the scientists at the disposal of Century Gty and some of the other more developed and technologically advanced Free Cities, and without the equipment or supplies, the city had over the years adopted a laid back, Western style of living, of easygoingness. Farmers, small craftsmen, hunters, the city of about five thousand traded with one another and with neighboring towns to meet their subsistence needs. They lived in wooden cabins, fifty or sixty feet apart, and shared communal bathing facilities. There was a sense of comraderie, of sharing, in Westfort that was worth all the gold or electrical generating equipment in the world.