Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America (22 page)

“Save it for the KGB,” Rock shot back. “You Russians gave up all your rights when you invaded my country—America. You’ve heard of it, no doubt?” he asked mockingly.

“But you can’t destroy this complex, it’s—it’s—” the manager of the shift struggled for words.

“Maybe I can, maybe I can’t blow it up,” Rock said with a razor-thin grin. “But I’m sure going to find out.” He glanced at the watch he had taken from the dead sergeant, now coated with dust and blood specks. “Comrades, you have exactly thirty seconds to get out of here, and then I start tossing some of these joy-sticks around. Now move!” The techs sat glued to their seats either through obstinance at seeing their little futuristic kingdom blown to shreds or from fear. Who could say? Archer fired an arrow across the floor which embedded itself in the shift manager’s desk, just inches from his chest. That seemed to do the trick. The techs jumped up from their consoles and flickering display panels. In a speedy migration they fled past the two freefighters and out the door. Not one made a move at the Americans.

“We sure know how to empty out a party, don’t we pal.” Rock grinned at Archer who snorted back. The two of them looked around at the now empty complex, the machines spinning merrily along without their human attendants. Then they got to work. They dragged the crates of explosives across the floor setting five, ten sticks at a time under terminals and behind screens. It took only about five minutes until nearly every unit in the place had something ready to blow it to the dark heavens. Wires led from each group of explosives to the center of the room where Rockson attached them all to a timer set to detonate in fifteen minutes.

“Let’s go,” the Doomsday Warrior yelled to Archer who carried his crossbow aimed straight ahead at whoever was fool enough to get in their way. They tore back down the corridors and stairs, hearing gunfire coming from all directions. At last they reached the main storage terminal on the ground floor and stumbled right into a fierce fire-fight between the freed men and a squad of guards. There were just seven of Rock’s attack team left, all that remained of the three groups who placed the explosives at the foundation beams—or so Rockson hoped—and they were about to be decimated as they hid behind packing crates. The guards closed in with a stream of automatic rifle fire. But they didn’t see the two freefighters coming in from their right flank. Archer let loose with an exploding magnesium arrow into the center of the advancing Reds. The arrow hit the leader in the chest and erupted in a fiery spray of lungs and heart. Rock let loose with his sub, spraying it at waist level across the Elite Air Force Commandos. They fell like so many blades of red grass, clutching their torn guts, and fell to the floor gurgling the last words they would ever speak.

From the other end of the warehouse terminal more and more guards were charging—hordes of them from every part of the vast satellite complex. Rockson had kept some of the dynamite inside his officer’s jacket and pulled out four sticks with twenty-seconds fuses. He lit them, dropping then down onto the floor, and then motioned for the remaining fighters to get the hell out of there. They made it to the two barn-sized steel doors which still stood, opening out into the early morning sunlight. Rockson, at the lead of the fleeing group, made it out first, quickly scanning the terrain ahead for Reds. Soldiers were scrambling madly around far off at the fence, perhaps thinking another attack was about to commence. The fighters rushed forward, pumping their weary legs for all they were worth. Five Red troops stood by the link fence with two tripod-mounted .55mm machine guns waiting to distribute death to all comers. Only all comers were coming in from behind them. The Doomsday Warrior fired on the run, taking out three of the Russians with one quick burst. The other two turned around, trying to swing their machine gun, but it was too late. The freed men were upon them in a flash. Blades met flesh and bone, and two more Red oppressors trying to preserve the Russian ideals of slavery and greed crumbled to the dusty ground, dead men.

Rock led them through the fence gate just as a small explosion detonated just inside the terminal. That took care of anyone coming out after them, Rockson thought. A cloud of oily smoke oozed out through the door as if searching for more bodies to cremate. They ran quickly into the dense brush several hundred yards from the perimeter of the Satellite Complex and stopped short as Rock dropped to the ground.

“Did you place them—the charges?” Rock asked the freed men anxiously.

“Two of them,” Nastronovich, who still carried his short sword from the death games, answered. “The other team was killed before they reached their beam. As to whether or not the Reds will find the explosives or not I—”

But his question was answered by a thunderous explosion. The fighters jerked their heads around at the sound. The mountain-sized dome shook as if it were in the epicenter of an earthquake. Jagged tears tore across the round surface in several places, flames shooting through. Another explosion rocked the very ground that Rock and the attack team stood on. The most advanced technological structure in the world seemed to tremble violently for a few seconds and then began its descent. The entire left side of the eight-hundred-foot-high globe tilted lazily over one side as if drunk, hesitated for a moment, looking for a soft place to land and, finding none, barreled down at full speed. It took only seconds to bring down what it must have taken the Reds a decade to assemble a century before. The entire white/gray skin of the complex was instantly riddled with rips and tears everywhere, flames licking through like greedy yellow tongues. The Missile Control Center dome picked up speed as it approached the moist ground and crashed with a thunderous roar, exploding into a fiery snow that drifted down in pieces as far as the eye could see. What had been a towering monument to the supremacy of Russian power was now just burning rubble, strewn wreckage, and charred pieces of human flesh.

“Well, that about takes care of that,” Rock mumbled softly to no one in particular. Around him the freed men cheered. Never in their wildest dreams had they thought they could ever strike back at the Red Colossus with such power. Archer’s face was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree as he watched the conflagration, the flames reflecting off his sweat-covered cheeks. Rockson turned toward the freed men with a solemn expression.

“Time for us to part company, comrades. But it’s been nice working with you. Any American freefighter would be proud to have you on their team.”

The men were touched by Rock’s parting words, and each shook his and Archer’s hands with slow finality. They would never meet again, and all the freed prisoners were sure to die within weeks, months, years at most. Yet they had something, something Rockson had helped give them. And they were more grateful for it than for anything they had ever experienced in their measly lives. With the burning dome shooting out billows of oily, plastic smoke, silhouetting the city of Moscow off in the distance, the six freed men set off running at a half crouch toward the forests north of the city. If they could reach the northern steppes, the wastelands that Russian troops rarely patrolled anymore, they might just have a chance.

Rockson and Archer watched the men turn to shadows and then dots as they reached the woods nearly half a mile away. Then the Doomsday Warrior turned to his fellow American.

“Well, now it’s our turn, big buddy. But just how the hell we’re going to get out of here I don’t have the faintest idea.”

Twenty

T
he three tanks stood like monuments to the power of death in the center of a cracked, weed-covered concrete lot. The top of the line of Russian armored technology, they were each fifty tons of murderous firepower, nearly sixty feet long and bristling with cannons and machine guns. They looked almost beautiful in the purple rays of the quickly falling sun which hovered above the low hills surrounding Moscow like a dark pearl about to plunge back into the ocean of night. The Doomsday Warrior stopped dead in his tracks, hidden in the twisted shadows of low gnarled trees off to the side of the Red Army military installation. Behind him Rock could hear the closing drones of what must have been a fleet of helicopters searching for the men who had caused the Red Empire so much damage on this day of destruction.

“Will you take a look at that?” Rock said softly to Archer who kneeled beside him, his chest heaving with exertion from all the running they had been doing. The huge mute looked on curiously, never having even seen a tank before. But Rockson had, and he knew what they were capable of doing. T-82s—the biggest of the Red mobile arsenal. He had once taken control of a smaller version of this battleship-sized vehicle back in America, and laid waste an advancing Red battalion in search of rebel blood. But this monster! If they could just get inside the tank—and the monstrous vehicle was operable—and if he could figure out how to operate the damned thing, they might just have a chance to get to the airfield to which the dissidents had given him directions, some five miles to the south. A lot of ifs—he knew. But they had to get out of the area. It would be like parade day in Lenin Square within minutes—of that Rockson had no doubt. He had caused too much humiliation to the Reds for them to do anything but send out their entire army to capture him.

The two freefighters edged in slowly toward the motionless tanks. Rockson’s keen eyes scoured the perimeter for signs of motion. There, off to the left, the glow of cigarette butts in the darkening air. Voices laughing—at least several soldiers—but they were relaxed, not on alert against an attack. Good—surprise was the attacker’s best weapon. At the far end of the decaying lot were long, curved aluminum barracks from which he could hear more voices—a lot. Too many men even for him and Archer to take on. But once they were inside one of the demonic machines, it would be a different story. They moved forward on the run, slipping from shadow to shadow like a fox approaching a chicken coop.

There were just four guards near the tanks: young, green recruits, dragged from God knew what desolate province, to live their lives as pawns in the vast armies of the Red Empire. Approaching to within twenty yards of the guards, Rock motioned for Archer to work silently. The Doomsday Warrior gently laid down his sub on the cold ground and hefted his duo-blade. He rushed forward from the darkness like a leopard on the heels of its kill. The soldiers didn’t hear the approaching freefighters until they were nearly upon them. They jumped to their feet, cigarettes falling from shocked faces, and reached frantically for their Kalashnikovs which they had placed at their feet. But knives are faster than bullets at close range. Rock’s blade ripped across a stubbly throat and the Red slammed to the hard cement ground, a bag of bloody garbage. Archer jumped between two of the troops and, grabbing a neck in each of his baseball mitt-sized hands, slammed their heads together, knocking both men cold as ice. The fourth leveled his rifle at Rockson, getting off a single shot. Damn! The bullet whizzed past the freefighter but caught Archer in his meaty thigh. Rock leaped across the thick slab of wood the men had been resting on and slammed the tip of the duo-blade into the trooper’s chest, piercing the heart, slashing the aorta of the pumping machine. The Russian stood still as Rock pulled the blade out again and looked at him as one must look into the fearsome eyes of an avenging God. Then he tumbled forward, smashing his face into the concrete.

“Move, man, move,” Rock yelled to Archer who was touching his leg where blood was beginning to seep through. He hobbled after Rock as the Doomsday Warrior leaped up onto black steel of the front end of one of the tanks. He pulled a lever at the top of the T-82 and it clicked, releasing the hatch. Thank God they had left the war machines ready for action. He pulled open the steel hatch and peered down into the dark innards of the tank. Archer was struggling to get up onto the edge, but his wounded leg didn’t quite hold him up for the ascent. Rock reached over with his bronzed, muscled arms and helped pull him up until the immense warrior was able to get a grip. Already Red troops were pouring from the barracks at the other end of the lot. Shots rang out like thin pops in the night as dark bulbous clouds raced overhead, blotting out the crescent moon that hung like a poised sword over Russia.

Rock dropped down inside the control section of the war wagon as Archer stumbled down the ladder behind him, half falling onto the cold steel floor. Rock reached up past his compatriot and closed the hatch. Now they were sealed in—to victory or death. The Doomsday Warrior made a quick perusal of the controls and gulped. The thing was a thousand times more sophisticated than the one tank he had driven. But at least all the control buttons and dials were labeled. He pushed the ignition switch and the diesel engine of the tank roared to life. Lights flicked on at the instrumentation panels and screen all around the ten by twelve-foot-square control pit of the T-82. Rockson quickly went over each of the computerized displays, and the instructions beneath them lit up with dim blue lights. The steering mechanism was similar to the one in the tank he had handled. There were twin rods—one for forward and reverse, and the other for left and right. The handle of the forward control rod had a swiveling grip which apparently accelerated the tank with gradations of speed measured in kilometers per hour—able as far as Rock could figure to reach a top speed of nearly forty miles per hour.

He started the monster forward as he heard shots pinging off the black outer skin of the tank. He snapped on a switch labeled Attack Viewing Screen. That was better—video cameras mounted on all sides of the tank displayed on a five-way split monitor a full three hundred sixty degree picture of what was going on outside and above. The images must have been enhanced with some sort of infrared system because Rock could see the surrounding terrain as clear as day. Red troops were coming in on them, nearly a hundred, and some were heading toward the two other T-82s. He stopped the tank dead in its tracks, satisfied that he could at least drive the thing, and searched frantically for the cannon swivel and firing controls. There—turret swivel. He yelled across to Archer.