Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (11 page)

The two men suddenly entered another world—an immense cavern of steel garishly lit by high intensity lamps strung around the superstructure of the tanker’s girders. The huge room hummed and buzzed with activity, the whir of motorized vehicles, lifts and pulleys working and grinding away in the salty air. The smell of exhaust fumes was almost overpowering as they filled the great space with a grayish haze. The hold of the tanker, normally filled with oil, had been ripped free of all bulkheads to make one enormous open chamber for the supplies of Dhul Qarnain’s invasion force.

Qarnain and Killov stared out at their stock of the most modern weaponry of war. The cleared hold was three football fields long, almost a field wide—and seventy-eight feet high. Dozens of Norski helicopters stood in a line on each side of the cargo bay. They had been stolen from a Red convoy to Saudi Arabia, believed to have sunk at sea in a sudden gale. The ’copters sat perched like deadly blue dragonflies with silver wings, waiting to take flight and sting. They still bore the Russian Air Force emblems, big red stars, on their sides. And they would stay painted on. It would just add to the confusion—later. High above hung steel shutters that would, at the right moment, slide back to allow the ’copters to rise from the center of the ship and carry out their mission of death.

In the center of the great metal cavern, which echoed with deep thudding sounds from the waves outside slapping against the hull, stood pile after pile of machine guns, ammunition, and hand-held missiles. All were still in their packing crates and teams of men were busy unloading the contents for their imminent use.

Colonel Killov pulled out a silver timepiece with an engraving on the back, inscribed, “From Premier Vassily. With thanks.” It brought a deep smirk to the KGB colonel’s mouth. How fitting that he would use it to time the mission, to tell the very second that the attack should begin. By this instrument would Vassily’s capture—and death—be counted.

“We are right on schedule,” Killov said, glancing at the date and then back up at Qarnain, dressed in flowing white robes, who stood towering over him. “The missiles should be unloaded at this exact moment.” The colonel was a fanatic for punctuality—and obedience. Qarnain had known that from the start of this whole operation. But he had delivered what he promised as well. Cash, weapons. For the oldest truth was and still is: he who has the hands empty has no friends. Now Dhul Qarnain had all the “friends” he needed. Hundreds of them throughout the tanker, ready to die for him. For Killov. For their sacred joint mission.

The two figures walked across the cold steel decking, passing bunches of men here and there in black jumpsuits that covered them from ankle to chin. They busily ripped at the crates with crowbars, taking them apart and stacking the weapons contained within into rows as others began assembling them. They bowed whenever Qarnain walked by them, then quickly returned to their jobs as he impatiently motioned with his hands for them to continue.

In the middle of the steel cave, the Sukai-II hand-fired missiles were being moved and stacked in piles on six-foot-long metal racks that stretched twenty feet into the air. Their bright red nose cones were the only colors in the room other than the shimmering blue of the choppers. Everything else was black—uniforms, weapons, even the straps that supported the weapons, and the boxes that held the ammunition. All had been painted midnight black.

The tanker had been Killov’s doing. Qarnain had told the KGB colonel what he needed—and Killov had worked out the entire operation down to the smallest detail. Every item, every bit of supplies that was needed was here because he had ordered it. The colonel had paid with gold bullion—he had hidden away such deposits of treasure throughout the world, in the days when he had been able to do such things. Now he was cashing in on just one such stash—dug up from its tomb in Asia. Gold—it had always been the international currency. Even a stinking cannibal in the woods would bite into a piece of gold should he see it, and his face would light up in a toothy smile. Thus they had easily been able to procure the weapons. All purchased on the black market from Premier Vassily’s own Asian Red Army forces.

Killov was pleased with the results. Very pleased. He ran his hands along the smooth backs of the cylindrical four-foot missiles. Each one could knock out a tank, a helicopter, even a low flying jet—if they caught its heat trail. They were as accurate as anything in the Russian armory. He snickered again at the thought. Imagine the pigs providing the weapons for their own destruction. That was the greatest pleasure of this whole attack. That, and revenge.

It had been over two years now since he’d had had to flee the United Soviet States, with Ted Rockson in hot pursuit, ready to send the KGB colonel straight to hell. But Killov had been able to send a missile straight for Century City—and Rockson had had no choice but to go after it as Killov swooped off the other way. But the KGB commander’s jet had been hit—and he had gone down. Crashed right into the Arctic Circle in the center of a flow of icebergs. It was only Killov’s ratlike toughness, his ability to keep fighting in a kind of insane rage that kept him alive through the shock of the crash. He just wouldn’t die. It was that simple. Revenge first—then he would go willingly.

Somehow he had pulled himself from the sinking MIG, managing to grab hold of the survival box inside. Swimming to one of the bergs floating by, he managed to drag himself atop it, inch by freezing inch, using a knife from his jacket to dig into it. The first thing was just to not freeze up. He had hardly any flesh on his thin body to begin with—just bone and gristle like some sort of underfed chicken. The freezing wet pilot’s down jacket, he had to take off. But he managed to build a little fire inside of a shelter he created with an aluminized tarp—using a can of Instantflame from the emergency pack. He dried the jacket out, put it back on and sat in front of the can of fire.

Killov found some food in the emergency pack and sat back, stuffing candy bars into his narrow mouth, his beady eyes ripping back and forth over the frozen hell he was in. It was not exactly the best situation, even though he had survived. The wind for the moment was down, but he knew that could change at any moment. And as he watched, it did. An Arctic storm picked up out of nowhere and tore into the hundred or so mini-bergs, each about the size of a city block, pushing them all along. The wind and the slamming back and forth of the bergs made Killov feel like he was tied to a ping-pong ball in an earthquake. But he dug in to the sheer, icy back of the thing—grasping hold of two knives he slammed right into the side of the immense frigid mountain and refused to budge.

Thus he rode it south for hundreds of miles as it split off from the rest of the flow and headed almost due south. And it did something else—it started to melt. For as it hit the warmer climes it lost its outer layer, and kept losing it. Until Killov looked down and realized he was on something about as big as a car—and turning into a lily pad fast. He would have prayed but he didn’t believe in God, so he just gnashed his chewed-down, pointed little teeth, and cursed wildly in Russian at the night air.

“Fucking bastards—I want revenge! I, Killov, will not die. You hear me. Try to take me. I spit on you.” The KGB colonel completely lost it for the first time in his life and just screamed, screamed and bayed at the moon like an old rabid hound dog gone completely insane.

And who knows—perhaps it was these very screams that attracted a small fishing boat from Korea, which had made its way all the way to the mid-Pacific, for Killov’s iceberg vehicle had traveled nearly a thousand miles south.
Whatever
it was, something attracted the attention of the half-drunken captain of the fishing boat, and he headed toward a lump floating at three o’clock. And sure enough, as they approached, something began flailing around. And when they pulled it aboard, it was a waterlogged, weasel-like fellow, his eyes as wild as a crazed saint’s. And he kissed the men who saved him, and then fell on his knees, screaming “Thank you, Revenge, God of revenge. It is you I serve now.”

When the man had been calmed down, the captain was able to talk to him, with the help of his second-in-command, in broken Russian. That, plus Killov’s own fractured understanding of the Korean language—he had had to study many in Officer’s Training School, long, long years before in the quiet hallways of Leningrad Military Academy—enabled them to communicate. The extraction of one of Killov’s five gold Russian sovereigns that he had in the emergency pack made the captain quite cooperative, as this trip had been a disaster, fishing-wise, from beginning to end. He had caught almost no fish other than mutations, monstrous eel-like, over-toothed specimens that Killov shuddered even now to think about. Though the captain kept them—flopping around below. Lost two men, one his own brother-in-law. His sister would kill him when he returned to the small fishing village of Tenachi on Korea’s northernmost coast. But the gold suddenly made the whole venture much more pleasant, the vast gold store that Killov had them eager to set sail for.

Thus it was no big undertaking for Killov to quickly be running the boat and its crew. He had them take him toward Asia instead of heading back to America. He needed time—and money—and most of all men and weapons. Vassily’s forces were triumphant worldwide—after the Premier’s battle with the KGB in which Killov had been vanquished. All of Killov’s bases had been destroyed, dismantled. So he would go to his cache of diamonds and that glistening ace-in-the-hole of his, gold.

“To Macau Island,” Killov had commanded, handing out gold to the crew and promising more. Thus the boat flew west all the way through the Pacific again—past the Russian coastal defenses, which paid no attention to the fishing boat. There were thousand of such vessels. Not too many ever attacked the immense gun batteries that stood along the entire coast. Killov had the fishing boat land in an isolated bay and row-boated himself to Macau Island. When he returned, they knew he was loaded—and the entire crew closed in on him.

But the colonel was prepared for even that. He had, after all, been the head of the KGB in America. He was an expert in the doublecross, the backstab. He always knew what the others were thinking, because he was thinking it first. As the six-man crew closed in on him with sad grins, as if they were grieved that they were going to have to do this—cut him and throw him to the fishes—Killov struck first. An automatic pistol ripped out from beneath his jacket and he fired a spray of .9mm slugs across them at chest level, then back again—then once more the other way for good measure. Fifty slugs were fired within three and a half seconds. Then there was nothing moving, not even a mouse.

But once again Killov had saved his own butt—only to be in a worse situation. The fishing boat was out—he couldn’t sail it alone. So he didn’t waste time worrying about it, but got dressed in two down coats, rifles and pistols hanging all over him, and a huge supply of drugs—ups and morphine, which he had stashed along with the fortune in gold—and staggered along. Through the steppes of Asia. One plodding step after another. Just too damned mean to give up or freeze. Always carrying Rockson’s or Vassily’s or Zhabnov’s face before him like a dark beacon of hate in the night, to lead him on.

And thus it went. Somehow he made it through Indochina, Burma, hiding during the day, moving at night. He didn’t exactly go fast. But he went, never stopping, never faltering. The dreams of madmen are powerful motors, indeed. He made his way through India, into Afghanistan, where he traveled with mountain bandits for nearly a thousand miles, coming all the way to the Iranian peninsula. Here a camel caravan heading across Iran and into Africa allowed him to tag on. Buying two camels and hiring a swarthy-looking but capable bodyguard, whose scarred face kept most trouble away, Killov rode with the caravan through remote desert landscapes for what seemed like an eternity. Only the pills, the constant popping of the different kinds of ups, and the drinking of hot fruit juices, kept him alive. But his body was used to it all by now. Everything inside had already shriveled up into knots. A raisin would have filled his stomach.

At last, after nearly a year and a half, he had reached Dhul Qarnain—the one man Killov knew he could count on to help him in his mad plan. Of course Killov phrased it all the right way—kill the Americans; cut the throat of the Russian pig—plus promised to return Palestine to Qarnain’s control. Then he would do what he wanted with it. And it had worked. Killov was, after all, a master manipulator. Few could resist his bribes or threats. And since most men are basically greedy, few even tried.

“Well? Well?” A voice penetrated the fog of memory.

“What?” Killov asked, startled.

“I said, is something wrong with that gun? You’ve been holding it for a minute now.” Qarnain looked puzzled.

“Oh, no,” the colonel said, regaining his bearings. “It is absolutely perfect. Perfect!” Killov checked off the box marked
PISTOLS
on the long chart in his hands.

They walked on to the end of the underdeck world, past long racks of rockets.

They suddenly heard coughing and rustling sounds coming from behind the rocket cases.

Qarnain put his finger to his lips, and walked past the colonel around to the back of the rack hidden from view by boxes of spare parts. He reached out and pulled a tarp over from several crates.

Two of his men were sleeping on the floor, with the remains of some food lying on a plate between them.

“What is this?” Qarnain screamed. “What? What?” His face grew red with embarrassment in front of the colonel.

The two sleeping men opened their eyes and, seeing their master, turned deathly pale. They jumped to their feet.

“We were just, I mean . . .”

“Silence, you filthy dogs! You have blasphemed the name of Allah by your actions. There is only one prescribed punishment for blasphemers. So it is written.”

“No! No!” They both screamed, as four guards rushed over and grabbed them.

“They shall be executed immediately,” Qarnain said to the guards. “Gather the entire crew on the deck.”