Doomsday Warrior 01 (24 page)

In crisp Russian, McCaughlin spoke the only words he had ever memorized of the foul language, “Special orders from Commander Killov, Priority One!” They kept walking. They were about fifty yards from the tower and speeded up ever so slightly.

“What special orders?” They broke into a run. “Stop them! Stop them!” voices screamed behind them. Gunfire broke out; Red slugs ricocheted off a thick antenna only a foot from Smith’s head.

“Break for it,” McCaughlin yelled. The fleet-footed Smith ran like a bastard, even with the heavy EQ in duffel bags around his shoulders. He covered the fifty yards to the tower in seconds, dodging back and forth every few steps. McCaughlin knew he couldn’t outrun bullets. He dove to the black tar roof and began firing full auto with a hip-high sweep of the landing pads and the Red crews. Russian knees and thigh bones broke and shattered and chopper tires blew out as McCaughlin’s slugs found a home. Shit, he had only two clips left on him, everything else was in his canvas equipment sack. The Reds ran for better cover—but he knew it was only seconds before they opened up again and this time they wouldn’t miss. He edged backward and bumped against an aluminum vent, one of several at this part of the roof. He hid behind it and looked in. Some kind of hatch or air vent with just a thin mesh screen over it. He reached out a meaty fist and ripped the partition away. The Red slugs began tearing up the tar top like pairs of scissors cutting a path toward his gut. He had nothing to lose, that was for sure. Moving fast for a man his size, McCaughlin leaped up into the square shaft and immediately felt himself tumbling end over end. Jesus, he was falling! He threw his thick arms out but they just bounced off the sheer, smooth metal walls. He plummeted down, praying that when he hit he would go out fast.

Smith saw his chance as the Reds fired on McCaughlin. The big Scot could handle his end for a minute, at least until Smith could gain control of the tower. He slid in the door and latched it shut behind him. A row of steep, circular stairs led straight up to the tower about fifty feet above him. He pulled out his army-issue, .45, a prewar antique that he always carried, as it had saved his ass on numerous occasions. Above him, he could hear Red voices talking frantically. His Russian wasn’t great, but he understood. “Attack on Center. Yes. Reinforcements immediately. And choppers. Good!” So they were going to send in the whole damn Red army from the other side of Stalinville. He’d have to get in and set up fast.

He came around the top of the stairs, trying to sense from their animated conversation just how many there were. Two just to the left of the stairs, one to the right. But there were more listening, in the back. Well, there wasn’t time for computer analysis of that. The Freefighter, drenched with sweat and blood, hefting 175 pounds of arms, charged around the top bend of the metal staircase and blasted the .45, pulling the trigger over and over and turning slowly around the room. Six shots later three unrecognizable Red corpses, leaking vital fluids profusely, fell to the floor and didn’t move.

Smith threw his gear down and immediately began setting up. So far, so good, he thought, kicking two of the bodies through the floor-level entrance and down the stairs to make room for himself in the cramped quarters of the needle-nosed structure. He glanced out the 360 degree window at the roof below where the Reds continued to fire away. But where the hell was McCaughlin? Smith got a sinking feeling in his gut as he scanned the roof and couldn’t find the Freefighter anywhere. There’s no missing that big body, he thought, feeling his throat tighten up. So they’d finally gotten McCaughlin—the men wouldn’t believe it. He was alleged to have a charmed life. Shit!

What had been a cold act of professionalism on Smith’s part so far in the attack mission suddenly became a raging need to avenge the Reds’ killing of one of the best men that he had ever known. He threw the latches on the windows of the tower and pulled them all open to give himself an unrestricted firing range and shoved the muzzle of his RDP machine gun out the opening. 7.62mm shells migrated toward Red flesh at 650 rounds per minute. The Russians who had been firing on McCaughlin suddenly were being hunted. They ran frantically toward the chopper some fifty feet behind them, but were cut down in a hail of smoking death.

Smith looked down at the pile of twisted bodies. He had surprised them. The fools had still been firing at McCaughlin. Score one for you, buddy, he thought. Even when you ain’t around you keep fighting. From the control tower he could see down two sides of the building, toward the main entrance, forty stories below. He had a view of the surrounding air lanes, suddenly realizing with a laugh that
he
was now Stalinville Air Control. He glanced around at the radar screens and radio headsets that lay everywhere. Even from across the room he could hear pilots screaming for instructions. The large, green radar monitor was aglow with dots all sweeping inexorably toward each other.

He was at the very top of the needlelike tower and could feel it swaying in the wind. Christ, I hope the Reds don’t figure some way to chop this thing down with a rocket. But then he’d see them coming and get them first. He could lay down all kinds of fire from up here—pin everyone down outside the building while Rock and the others sealed the bastards up inside their steel holes downstairs. And now, he had their weapons as well as his pack of rockets and the grenade launchers. The Kalashnikovs and AK-47s on the floor would do when he ran out of clips for his own Liberator.

He opened upon a group of Blackshirts who tore out the roof stairwell door, heading toward the tower. He splattered one brain, then caught two in the groins, their balls dripping down onto their shoes. That would take care of that for the moment. He pulled the RDP out from its ledge cradle and carried it to the other side of the room. Norton and Sanford, the explosives’ men, should be making their move right about now toward the armory. He sighted down the 7.62mm machine gun and saw regular Red troops pulling up at the barbed-wire front gate. He let loose with the full belt, sending hot casings spinning to the right. From forty stories up, it looked like a bunch of ants suddenly running from a rainstorm. Only this was a deathstorm and the Red bodies fell in droves to the ground. A screaming round found the gas tank of the big troop transport and it exploded in a yellow halo of fire, blocking the road to any further movement of personnel.

Suddeny Smith saw the two Freefighters weaving their way across the smoke-filled concrete lot to the left of the building. The armory, a long, low, concrete-sided, metal-roofed structure, lay at the other end of the lot. They just needed a few more seconds. A fusillade of shots rang out from far below and one of the running Americans went down but, just as quickly, rose and hobbled on with the other. Smith aimed the RDP across the fence just outside the compound and sent a mailgram of death streaking down to the APV which was sniping at the munitions men. He razed the vehicle twice, sending the occupants flying from their perches in a tornado of blood. The firing stopped. Smith watched with satisfaction as the two Freefighters disappeared into the long storage depot.

When Smith set up his covering fire, Norton and Sanford, who had been waiting in the security checkpoint room just inside the entrance to the KGB Center, flew out the door toward the armory. They could see troops pulling up across the road, but they’d have to trust the man above. That’s the only way an operation like this could work. They’d gotten about halfway across the truck parking lot that separated the Center from the armory when Sanford went down, a ripping pain in his right calf. He stumbled to his feet. He could walk. Hurt like the devil but still functional. That’s when he saw the transport truck go up in a snap, crackle and pop. They made it to the corrugated metal door held with only a padlock which Sanford shot off. They rushed inside, throwing themselves to the ground, pistols ready to take blood. But only silence greeted them. The cavernous dump stretched off into gray, lit by rows of ancient, flickering light bulbs in long, even rows. Everywhere were the implements of death. Rockets, mortar shells, grenades, rows after row, stack after stack of shells, case after case of ammunition for every revolver and rifle and machine gun in the Soviet army. Norton whistled.

“Now, this is what you call armaments. Makes our stockpile back in Century City look shit,” he said, unloading his plastique.

“Only they ain’t gonna have none in about ten minutes,” Sanford replied, resting for a second to put a tourniquet around his leg. “Thank God, we didn’t have to shoot it out in here.” He looked around at the looming supermarket of murder.

The two men did their work efficiently, placing explosives for several hundred feet along the rows of hardware, each globe of explosive with a small radio-controlled firing device stuck in the center.

They finished their work and shot back out the exit, leaving a single small antipersonnel device just inside the door in case anybody poked their face in ahead of schedule. Smith set up a line of cover fire for them and they made it all the way to the KGB Center entrance safely. Norton ran in first and turned to the right against a wall as Red fire was starting to come through the windows. He waited. Where the hell was Sanford? He edged around the wood-framed doorway and looked out. The Freefighter sat motionless as if he were resting. Only his face was gone. Blown away by an exploding .9mm slug.

Shit! Norton stared down at his friend. Only now there was nothing there. The life was gone. The thing that had been Sanford had flown the coop. He stared, hypnotized until he heard a large shell land just outside the window, showering a pile of smoking dirt onto his feet. Time to go. He said a silent goodbye and ran up the stairs, two at a time. There were forty flights to go and he knew Rock would have no choice but to leave once the allotted time was up.

Rock sat at the controls of the KGB commander’s private jet helicopter on the roof landing pad that they had found guarded by only three quickly-dead Reds. A fortunate stroke of luck. He looked at his watch. Where the hell were Sanford and Norton. And McCaughlin. Smith had said he saw the big Scot disappear. Nobody. Nothing. Rock let the blade spin at idling speed. They had to go. The increasing numbers of Red troops below were starting to get their range, too, as shells whistled by. Off in the distance, Rock could hear the drone of what sounded like a fleet of choppers. Where the f—

Norton came hobbling out of the stairwell roof door. He ran to the chopper and dove into waiting arms which pulled him briskly aboard. “They got Sanford,” he wheezed, his face beet red, his lungs pumping like overheating pistons.

I’ve got to go, Rock thought, thinking of the dead McCaughlin lying somewhere in this hellhole. He revved up the rotors and the Red chopper began lifting smoothly off the roof landing pad. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the unmistakable barn of a man—McCaughlin—running as fast as his size twelve feet would carry him. Rock let the chopper drop with a thud to the pad as the lumbering Scot dove in. It took five men to pull the heaviest Free American east of the Rockies into the helicopter. Rock took up and off like a bolt, tilting the copter forward for maximum air speed.

The men gathered around McCaughlin and just as quickly backed off. He smelled like a sewer and seemed to be covered with garbage.

“What the hell happened to you?” Detroit asked, fingers over his broad nose.

McCaughlin looked sheepish. “I fell into a fucking garbage pit, can’t you tell? But it saved my ass.” He laughed with a twinkle in his green eyes.

Twenty

R
ockson could see the rows of troop trucks and tanks pulling up around the KGB Center on all sides. Good, all the better to view the fireworks.

“Norton, come here,” Rock leaned sideways and yelled into the guts of the chopper. The munitions man made his way forward. “You all set down there?”

“We loaded her up to her tits. Rock.”

“From what you told me, all the plastique’s on the same frequency to blow. Yours and the stuff I set in the computer room and downstairs.”

“Everything will go at once. Guaranteed, Rock.”

“Why don’t you do the honors,” Rockson said softly, handing Norton the cigarette-pack-sized radio detonator.

Norton took the device and stared out the window at the dump below as Rockson flew a fast, wide circle around the complex.

“For you, Sanford,” Norton said, flipping a plastic switch on the side of the transmitter. “A thousand dead Russians.”

The entire earth shook beneath them as a hundred thousand square feet of explosive power erupted like a volcano. The copter shook violently from the blast, veering at a forty degree angle to the right. Every man in the craft flew against the wall, and then into a cursing struggling pile on the floor. Rock straightened the jet helicopter and swung by for a final look at the damage.

“Sorry about that,” he yelled into the back. “The explosion was a little stronger than I thought.” Beneath the chopper, the explosions continued one after another, blasting the armory to pieces, and hurling chunks of flaming metal and boulder-sized concrete segments through the air and onto the nearly one thousand milling Red troops on the outside of the perimeter fence. Rock glanced up at the KGB Center as a secondary explosion ripped through the walls of the fifteenth through twentieth floors. The building shuddered down to its foundation from the blast, glass exploding out from every window and slowly, like a lightning-blasted tree in a stormy forest, collapsed and fell over, its support beams severed like arteries on three sides.