The Rabid Brigadier (18 page)

Suddenly the tank was there, coming up the pebble-covered slope just behind him, treads digging furiously into the loose gravellike
surface, spitting out an arch of the stuff behind them. But the steel teeth of the Bradley found traction enough to grind
its way forward until it was settled in between Stone and his men, high up on the canyon wall. The immense 120mm cannon, which
seemed almost oversized on the relatively small frame, swiveled around and down until it had one of the larger cabins in its
sights. Stone covered his ears and the entire vehicle shook violently as a sheet of flame roared out the front of the cannon.
The cabin
was suddenly a rising ball of flame and smoke and twisting timbers spinning crazily like pick-up sticks through the air. And
within it, Stone could see bloody puppetlike things, their arms and legs twisting and flopping around at impossible angles.

Two more of the tanks had found their range and let off bursts of brilliant fire from across the canyon. The structure next
to the first, pieces of which were just starting to fall in smoking meteoric trails back down to earth, also went up in a
ball of red and white, with such volume that Stone couldn’t even hear the screams that started issuing forth from below. The
tanks opened up with everything they had, shooting down shell after shell until the entire center of the encampment was ablaze
and smoking. It was a bloodbath, a blazing burial ground for everyone caught in the cross fire below.

After five minutes of the unceasing barrage, the tanks and infantry stopped firing. The air was punctuated with numerous screams
of the wounded below and the crackling of the many fires that burned everywhere. Stone looked through his field glasses and
suddenly saw a white flag being waved from what looked like a solid piece of ground. An arm followed and the flag waved higher
as a door opened in the dirt toward the far side of the canyon floor. A woman emerged with a look of terror on her face, then
another, and a child. Within a few seconds there were several dozen of them, women and infants, half clothed, covered with
dirt. They looked pitiful, about the saddest state to which Stone had ever seen the human species sink. Still, they were human—and
women and children.

He turned to give the order for a team to go down and take them prisoner when the tank behind him opened up again. Stone was
almost knocked from his feet by the blast, which
went off only yards from his ear. He shook himself from the effects and couldn’t believe his eyes. All the tanks had opened
up, along with the infantry, pouring a stream of shell and slugs into the unarmed wretched refuse of the camp. Stone screamed,
“No, no!” waving his hands at the tank, at where he knew the video camera could see him. But it was already too late. Two
cannon shells landed dead center of the crying and sniveling group. Their flesh was blasted into paste, their bones into a
million little pieces of shrapnel that flew out in all directions. When the smoke had cleared, there was nothing to be seen,
except, lying almost untouched, the head of one of the children, which had been severed cleanly from its body. It sat in a
smoking crater, dead center of it, like some sort of idol to death, a symbol of the unspeakable violence that firepower could
do to human flesh.

Stone watched speechless, numb. As the other soldiers cheered all around him, flamethrower units came pouring down all four
sides of the inner canyon walls, two men to a unit. They joined up at one end and formed a line about thirty feet apart. Then
they ignited their long gas-spewing wands, and four tongues of swirling red fire spat out sixty feet ahead of them. Side by
side they walked along the canyon floor, burning everything in front of them. Burning the cabins, and the bodies that were
hung up to be cooked, and the screaming wounded bodies. When they reached the spot where the women and children had emerged
they poured walls of flame down into the underground tunnel system for a long time. Then they started forward again, unstoppable,
like messengers from hell, bringing a little sample of it with them. They set every square inch of what had once been the
bandit encampment aflame until it looked like the burning surface of Jupiter.

Stone stumbled onto the side of the tank, then up a half-dozen
hidden footholds. He came down inside the ladder and stared hard at Lieutenant Carpenter, who was looking quite pleased, as
were the rest of the Bradley’s crew.

“What was that all about?” Stone asked. “Those people were under a white flag. More than that, they were women and children.”

“Colonel,” the lieutenant exclaimed, looking at Stone with surprise. “We
never
take prisoners on a search-and-destroy mission. Those orders come from the very top—from General Patton. It’s always been
that way. Those things down there weren’t even human. Why, did you see how they looked?”

“Get out!” Stone suddenly said through clenched teeth.

“What?” Lieutenant Carpenter asked nervously, his contemptuous grin suddenly vanishing, not sure what Stone had said.

“I said, get out, all of you.” He glared around the inside of the tank as if he were ready to kill every one of them. They
all rose and slowly climbed the ladder and then out the top, looking back at the commander of the strike force as if he were
absolutely insane. Stone pulled the hatch cover down hard and locked it from the inside. Then he sat down on the steel floor,
put his head between his hands and cried like a baby.

CHAPTER
Seventeen

“A
TOAST, Colonel Stone, I insist,” General Patton exclaimed, his face just inches from Stone’s, his hand holding a crystal
snifter filled with the finest brandy, which swirled like liquid fire inside.

“General, I—I—,” Stone started, then stopped again, not having the slightest idea of how to explain his feelings. If the man
didn’t know it was wrong to kill women and children, it was not exactly something he would be able to convince him of. Stone
knew he had to go very slowly and carefully here. He had just sort of let events carry him along up until now, like a leaf
on a river. But now Stone had to figure this whole thing out, and fast.

“Relax, Colonel, relax,” Patton said, letting his hand rest on Stone’s shoulder. “Here, again I insist. Humor an old general.
It is a ritual that I carry out after all my victorious battles with those officers who helped bring them to successful
fruition. And you, Stone, have carried out an eminently successful engagement—with the least number of casualties, I might
add, that we’ve taken on any large search-and-destroy for nearly a year. It’s just as I hoped; you’re high-level material,
Stone. You’ve shown up at the right time, I’ll damned well tell you that!” The general laughed again, standing up. His eyes
were so filled with seeing his ambitions for so many years so close to completion that he didn’t see the pain in Stone’s eyes—the
strange look that he now wore, like that of a haunted man.

And Stone was haunted. Haunted by the faces of those sobbing women, the snot-nosed kids hanging onto their mothers’ tattered
clothes. Haunted by the blood mist that had filled the air for long minutes after they were all banished from the face of
this earth with merciless sheets of hellfire. Haunted even though he had ordered his troops to halt, even though he had cried.
But tears weren’t enough to overcome blood. Martin Stone was now a possessed man, the faces of those innocent dead hovering
around him like vultures made of the darkest material.

“Drink! Drink!” Patton said, putting one of the pear-shaped crystal snifters into Stone’s hand and pushing up. Stone let the
hand be guided. He felt dazed, confused, unsure in a way that he had never felt before. He lifted the blue crystal glass to
his lips and gulped it down, hoping it would erase the image of a white flag whipping in the air from his mind. But it didn’t.

“General,” Stone suddenly spoke loudly as he let the drained glass fall to his side. “General, there were women and children
out there. They were under a white flag. I commanded the men to stop, but they fired—wiped them out. They told me this was
under your direct standing order.”

“Of course, of course it was my direct order, Stone,” Patton
said impatiently, filling his brandy glass again, this time to the top. He sipped it, walked around his office and then addressed
Stone from across the luxurious room. “Look, Colonel Stone, we must eradicate a disease. Stop it before it starts. If allowed
to live, those women, those children would just create more of their own. You saw what they were like—flesh eaters. These
cannot be allowed to live. Stone, it is nothing but pure logic. America must be cleansed, purified, before she has the slightest
chance to be resurrected. This we do, Stone. As we conquer we purify. As we slowly retake the wastelands, we cleanse them
all. We are like a flame, a burning flame that destroys and fertilizes at the same time.”

Stone reached his hand out for a refill. He needed it. The general poured the snifter full and Stone pulled the glass back
to his mouth and drained it fast.

“Tell me, General, I know it’s a little far off… but just what kind of world do you visualize creating when you’ve conquered
everyone out there? When there’s no more fighting to do.”

“Oh, that’s a hell of a long way down the pike.” Patton laughed. “But it’s a legitimate question, and I won’t lie and say
I’ve never thought about it. Because I have. What great man wouldn’t… in his most tranquil moments. I visualize a world of
order, Stone. That is what man needs. Order and control. Humanity has misunderstood its own nature for much of man’s history.
All these… governments have been tried—democracy, parliamentary… But you know what, Stone. The truth is, people want to be
ruled. They desire to be told what to do, led like sheep through gates. Told what to think, dream, eat and shit. Humankind
are most happy when they’re most controlled. Like the army, Stone. That’s why men want to join me, want to become a part of
this growing military empire. Because they want order. They
want to be told to jump… and heel… and kill. So I
will
create such a world, Stone. A world where people will finally get what they actually want. A system of law and order that
will last a thousand years, ten thousand years. A society in which there will be no crime, no dissension. The first truly
perfect society in history.”

“I see,” Stone said softly, starting for the first time to get the full picture of what he had gotten himself into. “I see.”

“And that is exactly why the human gene pool must be purified,” the general went on, his eyes fiery. “If it is all allowed
to just keep blending and reproducing together, there will never be peace; there will always be these disruptive elements.
Thus, the misfits, the social lowlifes, the flesh eaters, the negroid race and all the other troublemakers must all be removed.
When the race is pure and white the way it was when the country began, then there will be order, and true equality among men
who are equals.”

“I see,” Stone muttered dumbly again, as Patton’s bloody plans came into further focus. And suddenly Martin Stone knew one
thing above all else: he had to stop this man. Patton was far more of a danger than those he was wiping out, a million times
more dangerous. They were isolated, savage, with no more interest in taking over the whole damned country than in colonizing
the moon. They just wanted their own little piece of the mountain, the highway, and they would just kill and/or eat whomever
came along. Even the Mafia, and the ruthless biker gangs of the Guardians of Hell were all too shortsighted and too greedy
to see beyond their own little provinces, their own immediate desire. Only Patton, of all the dark minds he had met, had plans
to take it all—the whole damned pie of America—and leave a river of blood behind, composed of half the races in the country,
to do it. And then a nice fascist Third
Reich type arrangement to last “a thousand years.” Patton was far more dangerous than any of those he killed, because he had
a chance to succeed. A damned good chance at that.

On the spur of the moment Stone made up his mind. April was going to have to wait a little longer. Stone had to figure out
a way—impossible as it seemed—to stop the military juggernaut that the NAA was rapidly becoming. Nothing was more important.
Stone knew he was going to have to play a con game par excellence if he was going to pull this whole thing off. He plastered
a smile on his face, grateful for all the recent practice, and looked up at Patton, who was standing in front of the Michelangelo
he had promised Stone, with an almost lewd grin on his face.

“Don’t you wish to collect your reward, Colonel Stone?” Patton asked from across the room.

“Ah yes, my painting,” Stone said, rising and walking over to the wall-to-wall masterpiece. He ran his fingers just over the
surface of the painting as if stroking an expensive silk. Patton appreciated the gesture of possession, that the art mattered
to Stone not because of its beauty but because he owned it. Because through the giving of wealth and promotions, Patton knew
he could control the young man he was already beginning to dimly picture as being a possible successor to himself. A hardly
conceived notion, one he wouldn’t readily admit even to himself, but someday far in the future, perhaps…

“Yes, I was thinking about this magnificent painting when I was out there in the battlefield,” Stone said. “You’re right.
Beauty does give one a strong motivation to succeed. And my dog—and bike—as we agreed.”

“Of course, of course,” Patton said, waving at him and wincing in mock disgust. “That’s already old hat, Stone. I still don’t
think you totally understand. Whatever’s out there
is ours, yours, mine. The wealth of an entire civilization is ours for the picking. We’re like… gods now.” Stone noticed his
inclusion in the word “gods.” So Patton had allowed him to such illustrious heights. The general poured another load into
Stone’s glass, and then his own. They were both starting to get a little drunk.

“Go ahead,” Patton said, pointing at the Michelangelo. “Take it.”