Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (22 page)

He told his mouth not to inhale, even though his lungs were already screaming for air, and kicked his legs together. He seemed to only rise slightly and realized even in his dim-wittedness that it was the waterlogged clothes he was wearing that were holding him down like an anchor beneath the waters. Somehow he reached around and got his jacket off. But his chest was burning for air, his heart pounding. The jacket fell free, falling slowly into the dark depths, and Rock kicked again with all he had, trying to stroke feebly with his arms. It was enough—barely. He started up toward the surface like an elevator run by a snail. Agonizingly slow. Another kick and he speeded up slightly, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stop his greedy lungs from sucking in water at any second.

Then they did and he breathed hard. And lo and behold, he took in air. Air mixed with water—but real air that he could taste and breathe. He took four harsh gasps and got a little bit of brains back in his head. Something was wrong with him. What, he didn’t know, though his head felt strange. Maybe he’d taken a hit. Not fatal—but— But not too good, either, for suddenly he felt himself blacking out as if his head just couldn’t take the strain of thinking. And he felt himself sinking back down into the waters. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop it.

Suddenly a hand grabbed him around the collar and Rock felt himself being dragged up. His eyes filled with light and the precious air again rushed into his mouth when he opened his lips. He squeezed his eyes apart and saw a black face, bobbing in the water right in front of him—
Rahallah.

“Don’t talk, move or think, Rockson,” the black servant said firmly. “You took a bad hit—in the head. Pretty bloody, a concussion at least. Just try to hang on man, keep breathing—don’t struggle, I’ll try to get us both in.”

Rockson couldn’t have struggled if he had wanted to. Whatever had happened to him had turned him, at least for the moment, into a dead fish floating there. Rahallah swam through the water, holding onto a wide piece of table that had been thrown overboard in the blast. He half dragged Rockson up on it so that the Doomsday Warrior’s back was about two feet up on the rising and lowering mahogany life preserver. Somehow Rock turned his head slightly and saw bodies. Dozens of them floating all over the goddamned place. Oh shit, what a mess this thing had turned into.
Killov—
the bastard was more dangerous than even he had ever imagined. To return from the dead and do this—destroy what had been the first real chance for peace in a hundred years. To kill all those men—Russian and American alike.

Rockson searched with his fluttering eyes for Archer, praying he wouldn’t find the big body. And he didn’t. The one bright note as he still weaved in and out of darkness. He could hear Rahallah kicking hard, pushing the makeshift life raft toward shore. The strontium clouds above danced across the bright face of the sun like wounds, like purple blood. Rockson felt as if his mind was crumbling, as if he were going mad. But somehow they were finally there, and Rahallah dragged him up on the rocks about 150 yards upriver from the
Dreadnaught.

They both lay there gasping for breath like eels out of water. But Rockson at least found himself gaining a little strength, a little clarity of vision and thought. He sat up. His head throbbed like an open wound. He put his palm up to his scalp and sure enough it came back coated in red. Rahallah sat up and pulled the hand away.

“Don’t touch it, Rockson. The wound must stop its own bleeding, be allowed to coagulate.”

“Do you see any brain tissue or anything?” Rock asked, wishing he had a mirror. The damned thing hurt like hell.

“No—you will live. You were lucky—unlike most of them.” The black manservant ripped a piece of material from his waterlogged white tuxedo jacket and wrapped it carefully around Rockson’s scalp. Then they both stared over at the conflagration. Though choppers were still flying around the deck—occasionally hovering down to the water to take out a few struggling souls—the fighting appeared basically over. And Killov had won. It was clear. Even more clear as the choppers discharged ropes, and red-robed men slid down. Soon, the Hammer-and-Sickle Red flag was lowered and the death’s-head symbol of the KGB—crossed fists over a skull—was raised in its place. Below that a strange, Arab-looking flag rose too, until both were at the top of the halyards above the bridge, snapping in the strong breeze coming up the Potomac now, ruffling the waves, the bodies floating among the cherry blossoms.

“Jesus,” Rock said through gritted teeth. “Jesus.” So much had been lost. So much. He glanced over at Rahallah, who seemed in shock. Not so much for any pain he might have suffered, for he looked unhurt, or even for all the destruction and death that had occurred. No—his thoughts were only of the Premier, the man he had served for decades now. He couldn’t believe that the Grandfather was dead, though all the evidence pointed to it. And Killov—the Dark One—would rule. It was almost too much even for the powerful spirit of the Black prince.

Rahallah let his head sink down in his hands, not wanting to believe it. He sobbed softly.

A chopper that had been taking potshots at any sailors still moving around saw the two men on the shore and headed toward them, letting out another stream of slugs.

“Come on, Rockson—or we join them all,” Rahallah shouted, pulling the Doomsday Warrior to his feet with a powerful jerk of his hand. The two men ran like cats, Rock glad to find that though his head still felt like shit, his body seemed to be responding now. The chopper tried to find them, releasing quick little bursts of three or four seconds duration, sending swarms of whistling slugs migrated toward the two would-be escapees. But as fast as the Arab pilot of the chopper got them in his sights and opened up, Rock and Rahallah were somehow always gone again.

Still, the craft was closing in on them—it was a matter of seconds. Suddenly shots rang out in front of them and Rock whipped his head forward to see three men firing. The Premier’s guards—Premier Vassily’s private palace troops that he’d brought over from Russia. For a moment the Doomsday Warrior thought they were shooting at him, and looked around for a place to jump—realizing as he did so that he hadn’t a chance. But as a second passed and not one of the shots hit him, Rock realized they were shooting at the chopper. Two of them had .45 caliber submachine guns, and they just kept their fingers on the trigger’s firing straight across the bow of the helicopter, which had come to an abrupt halt about a hundred feet away and was firing back. The third Elite Guard had a pump shotgun that he kept firing; pumping free a smoking shell and firing again, he walked forward as he did so, obviously ready to die to take the damned thing out.

Something hit the chopper—for suddenly it began spinning wildly around in the air like a top. Rock could see the terrified faces of the two fighters for Allah inside, their robes whipping all around them as the air shot in from both openings in the plastic-domed cockpit. Flames erupted from the gas tanks below the craft, and in a split-second it was a ball of fire roaring out in every direction. Rock dove for the hard ground and felt a wave of heat pass over him, some of the hairs on his head actually vaporizing from the heat. Then the craft dropped from the sky like a flaming comet and crashed about fifty yards off. A second explosion shook the ground as debris flew off like a massive Roman candle had ignited.

Then he felt the heat dissipate a little, rose, slightly amazed to discover that he was still alive after all the attacks on his person in the last several minutes. Rahallah, too, was getting up about five yards off. Both men looked at each other, exchanging similiar emotions—can you believe this shit?

The Elite Guards—marked so on their collars with the symbol of a Russian black bear standing high on its legs, holding a hammer in one arm and a sickle in the other—walked over to the two still-dripping men.

“Sir,” one of them said, saluting Rahallah. Though many hated the black man, the palace guard, a total force of over a thousand men—super-hardened combat troops ready to lay down their very lives for the Premier—were used to taking orders from the Grandfather’s manservant. He had been telling them what to do for years now, passing orders on from Vassily—sometimes giving his own. Thus, though it seemed odd to Rock, and not unpleasing, to see the three Russian soldiers standing at attention in front of the African, it didn’t feel that way at all to the Reds.

“Orders, sir?” the stiff-backed sergeant asked.

“Give me your field glasses,” Rahallah said, reaching out for them and swinging around to take a look at the
Dreadnaught.

Rahallah could clearly see the hordes of black-and-red-robed men rushing around the place, still fighting off Vassily’s naval and elite forces. But the battle was clearly over. Killov had won. Rahallah wished he had a long-range rifle to take out the son of a bitch, who he could see walking around the deck, leading some of his red-robed commandos. For jut a split-second the black swore he saw Zhabnov being led off, and just in front of him an Arab carrying—carrying someone. The Premier? But though his heart slapped a beat, the African couldn’t tell for sure. A cloud of smoke from a burning chopper went over his vision, and when it was gone, so was the KGB colonel and whoever he had been leading off.

He handed the glasses to Rockson, who took them eagerly, searching for Archer in the surrounding waters. But not a trace of the mountain man was to be seen. Rock raised the field binocs up to the deck of the
Dreadnaught
and saw a row of Red naval officers lined up on their knees. Then an equal number of the fighters of Allah stood behind them. They took out their long, curved swords, and raised them!

Qarnain, who stood up on the captured bridge surveying all that he had conquered, nodded once. The swords fell like the steel blades of God in the noon sun, glistening like shivers of ice in the air. Fourteen heads fell to the deck and rolled forward, as their necks spewed out great gushes of steaming red blood, creating an instant pool all around them.

“Next,” the captain of the execution said, motioning for another group to be brought forward. There would be no prisoners. Only those few men needed to steer and fire the ship’s weapons systems would be kept alive—under close guard. The rest would all be disposed of. Dhul Qarnain would keep the heads as part of his booty. Where he came from heads were an indication, a symbol, of power. When he got back there—if he ever did—he would be a pretty important guy. He ordered his men to carefully gather up every one—putting them in big burlap bags and hanging them from the yardarms so they could bleed and dry out in the cleansing sun and salt air. The rest, the sharks could have.

“What’s your deployment? Who’s left loyal to us?” Rahallah asked, turning to the officer of the three Elite Guards.

“We’re part of Field Security Operations for the Premier, sir,” the man answered, his head held stiffly back on his shoulders. “We were deployed along the banks of the river here, about fifty of us—twenty-five on each side, spread out along the mile’s distance. During the attack, when it became clear that the Premier
was
being attacked, our forces opened fire—a number were killed; I’m not sure how many.”

“Does this thing work?” Rahallah asked, looking down at the walkie-talkie that hung around the man’s waist.

“Yes, sir, security forces are in constant communication.”

“Then direct the rest of your men to meet me in the White House briefing room—leave at least a five-man intel squad on each side of the river. They are to report to us if there is any movement or action on the
Dreadnaught
whatsoever. But otherwise they are to take no action—and use the Premier’s new code only. We don’t need to let them have any idea that there’s any organized resistance to them left now.”

“Yes, sir,” the Elite Guards snapped out, and grabbed up the wireless and began contacting whoever the hell was left out of this maelstrom of blood. Rockson unsnapped his waterproof walkie-talkie from his belt an started signalling Detroit, Chen and McCaughlin. He knew they would be wondering just what the hell was going on with all the explosions and what-all. They were only a few miles off and responded fast. “We’re on our way Rock,” each man stated on the crackling set.

“Rockson—I know this will sound crazy,” Rahallah said looking at the Doomsday Warrior gravely, “but we’ve got to work together. I know a lot of your people were killed there, but so were mine—perhaps even the Premier himself. You know the danger that Colonel Killov represents. Perhaps the two of us, alone among men, truly understand the threat that the madman is—not just to us, but to the entire planet.”

“I know,” Rock answered softly, trying to figure out this whole crazy game plan.

“We’ve got to stop him,” Rahallah intoned forcefully. “We’ve got to combine our forces.” Rockson knew this wasn’t a trap. The black man loved the Grandfather, for better or worse. No—it was the colonel’s doing. And the final darkness loomed that much closer.

“Yes—combine our forces,” Rockson said gritting his teeth, for he knew that more Freefighters would die—maybe all of them this time, himself among them. But they had no choice. He held out his hand and the black man shook it firmly. The two men, their shirts ripped to tatters, Rockson’s head covered with blood, their boots and pants waterlogged and saturated with oil, soot and powder burns, stared at each other, trying to gauge just how far they could trust one another.

A mile behind them, the fighters of Allah kicked the headless corpses to the side of the great
Dreadnaught
and heaved and swept them overboard. It was a veritable rain of bodies, their arms and legs flailing around like rag dolls, their opened necks still pumping out gushes of blood from hearts that didn’t understand they were dead. Quickly the fish gathered around the boat. The mackeral and cod at first. Then the eels and green trout in from the shoals, then the big boys, the sharks—several species of freshwater mutations that had adapted quite well to the Potomac after the war. Within minutes it was a feeding frenzy as the water was turned to foam, red waves cascading out in all directions. It was as if the river was boiling, alive. And it was. Alive with death.