The Rabid Brigadier (15 page)

“Yes—Stone, sir. Send him right in? Thank you, sir.” He hung the phone up gently, as if afraid to put it down too hard, and
waved Stone through. Sergeant Zynishinski started along after him, but the secretary stopped him with an icy “Not you, Sergeant.
Just Private Stone. You may leave. The general thanks you for your quick attention to his orders.” The D.I. stared down at
the shoulder-padded worm of a man with a look of tangible contempt. He had the strongest urge to take his head and slam it
down on the perfect wax finish on the cherry desk beneath him. But he had been in the army too long to lose it all with such
a violent impulsive motion. The sergeant had learned to push down his own emotions like one would kick an enemy in the face.
Though it would be fun. He filled his barrel chest, stood up stiffly and turned on a dime toward the door.

“Couldn’t have stayed anyway,” the sergeant intoned clearly as he walked off. “Must attend to my men.”

Stone gingerly pushed against two handcarved oak doors and they virtually flew open. And again his breath caught in his chest—it
was… awesome. Huge oil paintings of Greek gods fighting among themselves in the heavens took up one wall; a picture of Napoleon,
cracked and faded, clearly a masterpiece, took up another. Angels flying down from the sky on a third wall—hundreds of them
with arched ivory wings, and the eyes of God himself staring from behind a cloud. Here and there around the large room suits
of armor stood upright, as if guarding the art on the walls. And on the fourth wall, swords, ancient firearms, daggers hung
everywhere, beautiful in their primitive lines and exaggerated antique features. Stone started slowly forward, hardly able
to digest so much luxury, splendor—the gold candelabra in the ceiling, the black velvet couches on the sides of the rooms,
the library of gilded books that rose floor to ceiling in the corner, the Greek vases and Chinese porcelains…

“Ah, Private Stone,” a voice said from his side. Stone turned to see a powerful-looking man seated in a leather armchair.
It was Patton—unmistakable. Stone had seen his picture enough on the walls of the main buildings. Next to the NAA flag it
was the most repeated image. But in person, the general looked much more vibrant, alive, with piercing crystal-blue eyes that
seemed as if they could burn right through you. Stone almost instinctively saluted, instantly feeling angry at himself for
playing soldier boy so well. But Patton looked pleased and motioned for him to sit.

“Please, please, take a seat. Have a cup of coffee.” He pointed toward a steaming electric brewer on a small table to the
side. “It’s my own mixture, made from a number of different beans we have in the warehouse.” Stone leaned over and poured
a cup, then sat in the chair. It seemed to fit his body perfectly and Stone wondered for a second if the arms were going to
spring up and grab him. He quickly lifted the cup to his lips and took a sip. It was delicious, the best coffee he’d had since
going into the bunker, where it had been all frozen and instant and almost undrinkable after the first year.

“Excellent,” Stone said, his mouth still glued to the edge of the cup. He took another gulp. The high caffeine content flowed
instantly into his veins and Stone felt his eyes open wide and his mind suddenly snap into second gear.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the general asked as he swept his hand around the room.

“It’s incredible, General,” Stone said, letting his eyes make a more careful sweep this time. Still, there was too much to
even begin to comprehend, just a blur of art and military objects that belonged more in a king’s castle or a
Rockefeller’s Hudson River mansion than in a windowless, rust-tinged warehouse in the middle of nowhere. “I’ve never seen
so much,” he struggled for the words, “expensive-looking furnishing anywhere… and in my time I’ve seen some high level places.”

“Yes, I love beautiful things,” the general said, rising from his chair and starting to pace around the room. He reached out
and stroked the art objects as if they were alive, running his hands across the surfaces of Rembrandts and Michelangelos,
along the spine of a statue of a horse. Stone studied the general carefully. He was a big broad-shouldered man with a military
bearing much like his father’s; around his hips sat two ivory-handled .45’s, which, if Stone remembered, the World War II
Patton had adorned himself with too. A McArthur-style jutting jaw and weather-burned skin, lines around the eyes, the cheeks
grooved. The face of someone who had been out in the world all his life instead of hiding from it. But it was those eyes—those
laser eyes that looked as if they saw through everything—like the major’s. So many things about General Patton reminded Stone
of his father that it unnerved him; it threatened to bring up unresolved conflicts with the old man that he hardly needed
to pyschotheraphize right now.

“Beauty is what makes it all worth fighting for, Stone,” General Patton went on, walking around the room, stroking his prize
possessions.

“Indeed.” Stone coughed, unsure what to say about such a statement. He hadn’t seen too much beauty lately.

“I need men who appreciate beauty—and who
want
it, Stone,” Genreal Patton said, suddenly turning and glueing Stone to the chair with those ice pick eyes. Stone just dug
his face a little deeper into the coffee, having no idea what the general was getting at.

“You did well on your training, Stone. Excellently in fact. From what Sergeant Zynishinski has relayed to me, you displayed
not just ingenuity in getting through the obstacle course, but went out of your way to provide leadership to the rest of the
recruits. In fact, I was informed that several more lives might have been lost but for your intervention. Excellent, excellent,
Stone. I need men who can think on their feet. Men who can dare to rise above the herd. I have many recruits, more and more
every day now. But you see what most of them are like—half of them dumb cows from the caves, the rest morons from the mountains.
And most of those who make it through are useless as anything more than cannon fodder. I need men who can be leaders, Stone.
Men like you.”

“That’s—uh—great,” Stone said, lifting his head from the cup. He reached forward and poured himself another cup. It might
be a long time before he’d have coffee like this again. The general came back over and sat down across from Stone with an
intent look on his craggy face. He swept his hand back through his slicked-back gray-silver hair and looked at Stone with
a fanatical intensity in those missile eyes.

“We’re moving, Stone. God, are we moving. It’s taken me five years to get to this point—to finally have the trained men and
the firepower I need to support them. And now I do. But you know what I don’t have, Stone?” The general didn’t wait for the
answer but leaned forward. “I don’t have the son-of-a-bitches to take those fighting soldiers out there and do some heavy-duty
cleanup of the whole damned central part of our country. We could take back twenty, thirty miles a day if I had the right
staff.”

“That seems fairly ambitious, General,” Stone said,
knowing the terrain for hundreds of miles around to be some of the roughest in the nation.

“No, Mr. Stone, it’s not ambitious, it’s a fact,” Patton said confidently, walking over to the library of fine books in the
far corner. “You know what it is that really separates me from the savages and the warlords out there, Stone?” Patton didn’t
wait for an answer and Stone didn’t try to give one. “This”—he pulled a leather-bound book from a shelf and held it out in
the air. “Knowledge, Stone. History. The history of warfare—
that
makes the difference, and nothing else. Two things, Stone, above all else—speed and armor. ‘Blitzkrieg und Panzer,’ as they
used to say. All my offensive strategic planning has centered around the concept of the fast mobile strike using tanks and
wheel-mounted artillery. And that we have here, Stone. Twenty Bradley III tanks with 120mm cannon and .30 and .50 machine
guns on front and back. A dozen jeeps and trucks pulling 155mm howitzers with 20 foot barrel. Firepower, that’s what it all
comes down to ultimately, Stone, the ability to send down punishing waves of shells on the enemy. To grind him to a pulp.
As both my illustrious namesake, General George S. Patton and his wartime nemesis, Rommel, proved: with the right firepower—primarily
tanks—in the right place at the right time, a man can do just about anything. The tank is and always will be the most lethal,
unstoppable land weapon man has ever created.”

Patton stopped, put his hand to his chest and sat back down in his chair, knowing he had to relax, that his blood pressure
was rising again. He took his pulse and waited until it seemed to have slowed down.

“Can’t let myself die now, can I?” he asked Stone with a quick smile. “Who’d run this whole goddamned show?” Stone grinned
back. He liked the guy. There was a tremendous
sense of power, of almost pure electricity about the man. Stone had never met anyone with so much personal charisma before
except perhaps his old man. He could see why the general could get his men to fight for him, could keep the whole damned army
together with just the force of his personality. For the fire that burned inside his eyes was the flame of genius, and even
the dumbest man who looked could see that it was so.

A dog suddenly pushed through a side door and Stone nearly did a double take. It was Excaliber… how the hell could…? But as
the dog walked with the total assurance that was the mark of the breed across the Persian rugs that covered the floor, Stone
saw that, though remarkably similar, the animal had different coloration and was slightly smaller than his own fighting terrier.
The pitbull walked up to Patton and pushed his head against the general’s leather boots.

“Yes, Hannibal, good dog,” the general said as he scratched the pitbull on the head. “Beautiful animal, isn’t he?” Patton
said, looking up at Stone. “He’s a pitbull and—”

“Yes, I know the species,” Stone answered. “I happen to have one of my own. He was rescued along with me, and is in your animal
warehouse right now.”

“Why, that’s amazing,” the general commented as he pushed the dog’s jaws away from his black leather boots, which the animal
had started to half-heartedly chew on. “You are an unusual catch, aren’t you. Perhaps we could have a little match between
the two of them. Not to the death, of course, but… just to see which is the fiercer, which the stronger bloodline.”

“I don’t think so, General,” Stone said, remembering the last time he had had to make the pitbull fight—against an immense
Doberman. It had been a bloody experience. “Although
he travels with me, he’s his own dog. I don’t make him do anything he basically doesn’t want to. And arranging a match, I’m
afraid, would fall into that category.”

“A shame,” Patton said, clapping his hands loudly. The pitbull turned sharply and headed back out the door. “Perhaps you—or
your dog—will have a change of heart. It would be a most interesting diversion.”

“I’ll have a little talk with him, and see what kind of mood he’s in,” Stone said with a half grin.

“Stone… Martin Stone,” Patton said softly, looking at a file card. He had put reading glasses on but half hid them from Stone
as if he didn’t want the younger man to see that the supreme commander had any deficiencies whatsoever. “Tell me, it’s extremely
unlikely, but are you by any chance related to Clayton Stone? Major Clayton R. Stone.” Stone gulped down hard the final lukewarm
swig of coffee from the cup.

“Yes. I’m hi—his son.” He coughed, some of the grounds from the bottom of the cup getting stuck in his throat.

“I’ll be damned,” General Patton said, pounding his fist into the palm of the other hand. “I knew your old man well. We were
in Vietnam together. The son-of-a-bitch was actually theoretically under me at one point, but he just evaded my chain of command
and went off and did his own thing. He was something else. A genius at what he did. You know, don’t you, that his long range
reconnaissance patrols, in which he went all the way into northern ‘Nam and left trails of heads in the forests, are famous
throughout Asia—infamous, I should say. There’s never been anyone better.”

He stared hard at Stone. “I’ve made my mind up. Everything about you clicks together. I have no time, Stone, to play around.
I’ve got to move now. There’s just no time. If my
plans came together I could strike a blow that would change the course of America. I’m going to take a chance on you and do
something that I’ve never done before. If you succeed, the sky is the limit. Those who join me now will be powerful men in
five years. You could have this all, and more, Stone.”

In spite of himself, Stone found his brain permeated by the messianic, almost hypnotic energy with which the general spoke.
It wouldn’t be so bad having some of these things, Stone thought, hardly ever having been so impressed in his life with sheer
objects. He felt seduced by it all.

“What—what is it that you want me to do?” Stone asked hesitantly, knowing that the last thing you were supposed to do in the
army was volunteer.

“There’s a band of mountain bandits about thirty miles from here. They’ve been preying on passing caravans and even families.
They’re scum, Stone. Scum of the worst kind—mutilating, raping, taking the organs of the dead to cook back in their camps.
The kind of lice that must be wiped out so that we can clear the way for decent, civilized people. I want you to lead the
strike force against them. Tomorrow, take them into the mountains and destroy this cancer. And if you succeed”—he looked at
Stone with those laser pupils—“If you succeed, it is obvious what will happen. You can take what you want, Stone.”

Martin was strangely moved by the general’s words. The fact that such a brilliant military mind, a man who hardly knew him,
had come to trust him so much so quickly filled Stone with a flushed pride. His ego swelled up like a sponge from the attention.
He looked over at the Michelangelo on the wall. Imagine that in the bunker. It would be like some sort of mad monument to
his father. Just to show him something that Stone had never been able to express in life. And
now in death couldn’t. But maybe his spirit would see, would feel the presence of such a masterpiece.