The Rabid Brigadier (22 page)

“Better not be a trap, Stone,” the judge said. “Or you’re dead too.”

“Not too many guys set a trap by bringing the enemy to the most strategically vulnerable point of his fortress and then tell
them how to destroy him by using tank and artillery tactics formulated by Rommel and General Patton.”

“Everything is twisted right now, Stone,” the Mafia chief said, looking at Stone with those corpselike unmoving eyes, the
skin stretched tight across his face as if it would crack and that flesh, so white, as pale as the flourescent face of the
moon. “Who knows who to trust. You betray someone that we’ll kill for you. But will you betray us? Will we kill you? Who is
enemy and who friend?”

“There are no friends,” Stone said bitterly as he started. up the ladder and unsnapped the hatch above. “Only enemies who
work together—and enemies who kill each other. Today we’re on the same side. Tomorrow if I could I would probably try to kill
you.”

“And me the same,” the don said with the first grudging little twist of his mouth indicating a smile. Somehow it was all humorous,
a black joke beyond understanding. A joke played on the whole fucking human race.

“By the way, Stone, just for the record,” the crime lord said, “your General Patton ain’t no general. He’s not even related
to the World War II Patton. We’ve had our run-ins with the bastard before, and were able to dig up some records on him. He
was a lousy captain when U.S. forces
fell apart. His whole trip… is bullshit. He’s a liar and a con man just like the rest of us. Just like you.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Stone said as he handed the controls over to the Mafia lord. “It makes everything… a little easier.”
Stone climbed up to the hatch and exited. He jumped down from the edge of the tank and headed up a small hill about a half
mile from the fort. He stared through his binocs, lying flat on his stomach, and watched for about five minutes—setting in
his mind just where the guards were moving, and the speed of the searchlights that slowly swept back and forth across the
wide fields that surrounded Fort Bradley. He would go in from the back, where he knew it was slightly less guarded. When one
of the floods had just made its back-and-forth route past his hiding place Stone leapt out and ran straight for the wall as
fast as his feet could carry him. It was four in the morning. Stone knew how it worked in Fort Bradley—those men in the observation
towers would have been on sixteen-hour, perhaps twenty-four-hour shifts. There was a tremendous shortage of manpower lately
as Patton had had the men working eighteen-hour days preparing an invasion force to sweep over the countryside. They’d be
exhausted. If Stone could just move fast. Real fast.

He rushed through the dark funnel of shadows created by the lights reaching the ends of their sweeps a hundred yards apart
on each side of him. Just ran as if he were sprinting the last hundred yards in the Olympics. Suddenly one of the beams was
heading back toward him and he dove flat onto the ground, turning his head away so nothing would reflect off his dark camouflage
flak jacket and pants. The search played over him for about ten seconds and then moved on. Hearing no gunfire or yells of
intruder, Stone jumped up and was on full blast in just steps. He made it to the base of the fence and again flung himself
flat on the ground as the lights
turtled past. Stone knew from something the general had let slip when he had been drunk the other night that there was a section
of fence ten feet long that was not electrified and that could be opened by merely releasing a catch. It was a quick-escape
option for the general, should things explode. Only Stone was going to use it to break in.

He moved carefully along the bottom of the fence and found what he thought was the right section, without the little ceramic-coned
electrical transformer on the other side and reached out a tentative hand. He touched the metal… and nothing happened. Stone
rose carefully, searching for the release latch. He was directly below one of the guard towers now and suddenly heard pacing
on the wooden platform fifty feet above him. Someone snorted in hard, far above, and then spat out a gob that landed on Stone’s
boot. He didn’t move an inch. The spitter let out a contented snort and walked back to his chair, where he fell almost instantly
into a doze.

Stone found the gate release and lifted it slowly. It made the slightest click and then the fence moved and Stone slipped
through, closing it quickly behind him. He ran into the shadows created by the nearest warehouse and then started down one
of the side streets of the fort. He knew his Harley was being stored in the main repair garage in the eastern part of Bradley
and moved through the center of the fort, clinging to walls, edging around corners. There were always patrols, and who knew
what other traps Patton might have set. But he made it to the garage without being spotted, a two-story building with the
middle floor ripped out to create a thirty-foot-high space for the lifts to operate.

He entered through one of the back doors—it wasn’t locked—and let his eyes adjust to the dim light of the few orange bulbs
that were on here and there. There were tires,
and frames, bumpers and engines everywhere, in various states of disassembly. Stone prayed that they hadn’t done anything
drastic to the Electraglide. It had kind of become his security blanket. But he was only about halfway through the place,
walking on tiptoes as he though he heard strange clicking sounds everywhere, when Stone saw a row of ten motorcycles along
one wall. His eyes lit on the Harley instantly and he rushed toward it, trying to see what shape it was in. And as he reached
it and stopped just in front of it Stone was slightly amazed to see that it was in perfect shape. Even the machine gun and
Luchaire mini-missile system built into the bike had been left untouched. They had probably just wheeled it in the day they
brought him into camp with the intention of studying it further, and then had just forgotten about it. He looked close; there
was still surface scum from the flood dried onto the seat and body. Not a hand had been laid on it.

Stone sat down on the seat and pushed the instant start. The Harley came to life with a dull roar and he let it settle down
before clicking it into gear. He moved slowly out of the garage and back around the corner into one of the darker streets,
driving with the lights off. There was just one thing left to do. He headed toward the pound.

Stone could smell the animals blocks before he actually reached the place. He was downwind and the thick animal scents mixed
pungently into the moist air. He turned the engine to neutral, letting himself glide the last few hundred feet, which angled
slightly downward. Stone came to a stop just feet from the building and jumped off the bike in a flash, letting the autostand
snap out and hold the Harley up. He was running out of time. He opened the side door and slipped inside to the huge animal
pound and the rows of pens and cages spreading off as far as the eye could see. Blue
light bulbs lit the scene with a dull light as Stone made his way carefully inside. He could hear the snores and slobbering,
the sudden growls in sleep, the scratching and farting of over a thousand animals. He headed toward where he remembered the
dogs were penned at the far end of the place, praying that he wouldn’t set the place to barking when one little turd of a
poodle woke up and started squealing shrill poodle barks. But they only lasted a few seconds, until Stone was out of range,
and the thing settled back down into sleep.

Then he saw Excaliber, lying with his face pressed tightly between the bars of his holding pen. If he had once seemed content
in his little prison—the last time Stone had seen him—he sure as hell had had a change of mind. The animal looked positively
forlorn, its ears down at their sides, its eyes drooping down at both ends with a most depressed expression. Even the dog,
given all the food it could eat, wanted its freedom more. Stone suddenly emerged from the shadows and the pitbull’s eyes lit
up as if they’d hit paydirt on a slot machine. The demonic white face pressed harder against the bars as if it had forgotten
it couldn’t go through them and it let out a whine that quickly grew in intensity until it threatened to turn into a siren.

“Shh, shh, dog, quiet,” Stone whispered harshly through the blue half-darkness. “I’ve come to rescue your goddamned ass; don’t
get me killed.” The pitbull clawed wildly at the bottom of the metal bars but kept its mouth shut, getting at least part of
the message. Stone kneeled down beside the pen. “Little bastard. I shouldn’t even rescue you. Thought you liked army life.
Don’t mind living in a cage the rest of your life.” The canine gave him a hard squinting look that said cut the bullshit or
I start barking and Stone searched for the catch on the cage. Only there wasn’t any.

“You won’t find it down there, Colonel Stone,” a voice said suddenly from behind him. Stone rose with a sinking feeling in
his gut. He turned slowly, wondering how long it would take him to reach the Uzi autopistol hanging around his shoulder or
the Ruger .44 strapped inside his jacket, which he’d taken from the Harley. Too long, he could see as he came face to face
with a chrome-plated .45. And Sergeant Zynishinksi who held it.

The sergeant looked at Stone through the blue luminosity of the gray air. “All the pens are controlled electrically from this
panel here.” The sergeant’s other hand rested just above a long row of buttons set on a wide control panel built into the
wall.

“Well, why don’t you just press the button for number 257,” Stone said as he read the number off the front of Excaliber’s
cage. “And I’ll just get my dog out as General Patton promised I could after the last mission. Didn’t he tell you?” Stone
asked, dripping sincerity.

“It’s all over, Stone. I know what’s happening. You’re setting us all up. I had my own man in on your operation, Sergeant
Ferris. He was supposed to contact me every six hours and the messages stopped half a day ago. Stopped
after
you had signalled the general that the bosses had agreed to surrender. You shouldn’t even be here. According to your message
you were working out surrender technicalities down there and needed more troops. And yet here you are, sneaking into camp.”

“I can explain,” Stone said, slowly moving his foot to the right as he set himself to dive into the shadows created by a large
water trough set in the center of the room several yards away.

“Explain, shit,” Sergeant Zynishinksi spat in disgust. “A traitor to your own people. After the general promoted you
above all his others, after I trained you.” A look of real pain came over his granite face for a second. “I should have known
from the skills you showed that you weren’t the regular asshole. You knew too much. Way too much.”

“Look, Sergeant,” Stone said, moving fractions of an inch at a time, keeping one eye peeled on the pistol to see if it wavered
even a millimeter. “I like you. Believe it or not. The training was… interesting, and I learned a lot of things from you.
But I tell you, General Patton, although he is a brilliant general and a good soldier, is wrong. The world he would create
is a nightmare, more like Hitler’s dreams than Washington’s, more like Stalin’s slave camps than Lincoln’s free society.”

“And your own father was a military man of such great honor,” the sergeant said with a sad shake of his head. “To have a son
who would betray his country to a bunch of scum-sucking pigs.”

“My father only said one thing to me about choosing sides,” Stone said, his voice like ice, his face flushed, a little angry
at the insults. “And that was to fight only for that which made men more free, not that which enslaved them more. I’ve made
my choice.”

“And chose to die,” Sergeant Zynishinksi yelled, his whole face suddenly contorting in rage at the betrayal he felt by Martin
Stone. He pulled the trigger hard but Stone was already in motion. He sprang off his coiled legs right through the air the
moment the D.I. pulled the trigger. By the time the first .45 slug reached him it found only air. Stone hit the ground hard
and rolled behind the water trough without stopping. The second he came to a rest, he ripped out the .44 Ruger and hefted
it in his hand. It felt good to have his own firepower back in his hands after all the standard and substandard weaponry of
the NAA. The .45 barked
twice more, little puffs of dirt puffing up just a few feet away. The dogs were already starting to bark. Stone ran in a half
crouch behind the trough as Sergeant Zynishinksi came in low on the other side and hit his last shot on the pistol. Stone
stood up in a flash, leveling the thirteen-inch Red-hawk at the sergeant, right between his eyes from about a foot away. The
big man’s own freshly loaded pistol still hung at his side.

“Don’t make me do it,” Stone said softly. “Don’t make me kill you. You’re basically a good man. Leave now, and raise a family,
live somewhere out in the forests away from the rot and decay of humanity.”

“You dare ask me to betray my men, the Third Army. You’re an insult to the very uniform you wear, Stone. I’d rather die in
my boots than sully the honor of Patton’s Fighting Third.” Stone saw his eyes tense up and he pulled the trigger as he closed
hisown eyes. When he opened them, the sergeant didn’t have a face anymore. Only he was still standing. The bloody, gouged-out
hole that had once been where his nose stood was now just a pit of dripping gray brain matter oozing down over his lips, his
chest, like the thick frothy water that boils off rice. Then the sergeant’s dead knees collapsed together and the corpse fell
to the ground like a straw scarecrow suddenly losing its nail on the pole. “Son-of-a-bitch,” Stone whispered down at the spasming
body. Not that he or anyone could hear the words. For the whole place had awakened from the gun battle and every dog, cat,
laboratory rat and other non-human guest was letting loose with its own ear-splitting and repetitive squeals of fear and anger.
The result was quite loud.

CHAPTER
Twenty-One