The Rabid Brigadier (24 page)

“Come on, dog, come on,” Stone screamed as the animal trotted along slowly behind. But it got the message at the last second
as it saw that Stone kept running, and it picked up a little speed, just enough to avoid the deafening blast that went off
right around the bend. A shock wave flew past them on all sides and Stone felt some sharp stings in his legs and back as a
few pieces of mini shrapnel dug like whirling saw blades into his flesh. He rose and ran back through the swirling dust of
the silo and saw that the grenades had popped the lock. The door was ajar. Pulling the Ruger, Stone crossed himself with the
pistol, kicked the door open and rushed into the control room.

“So, it is you,” General Patton glared at him with utmost contempt as he stood toward the far end of the blinking and beeping
missile control center. “I thought just perhaps they’d broken you, but I see now your greed extended far beyond what I had
to offer. I misjudged your ability to even sell out your fellow countryman.”

“I don’t have time to explain, General,” Stone said wearily. “I do what I do. Stop the missile and I won’t pull the trigger
of this .44 mag, which will take your head off if I do.” He raised the Redhawk in a slow arc toward the general’s face.

“Sorry, Stone, but I don’t think so,” the general sneered and snapped his fingers. In the excitement and the smoke Stone hadn’t
even noticed the white shape sitting at the general’s feet. But he did now as Hannibal, Patton’s eighty-five-pound pitbull,
almost identical in appearance to Excaliber, raced down the long tiled floor toward Stone with a look of total annihilation
on his snarling wild face. Before Stone could even move his arm to get the canine in his
sights—he knew as he tried that he could never do it in time—another shape launched itself into the air from behind him. Excaliber,
his own jaws opened to full like a shark, ready to take on the whole fucking world, flew past Stone. The two fighting dogs
met in midair and crashed together to the floor. Excaliber was the first one up, spinning around on his side and he clamped
down instantly on his adversary’s leg, pulling it hard toward him so the dog couldn’t gain its balance or rise. Hannibal snapped
at the air with loud vicious chomps but couldn’t find anything as Excaliber just kept pulling it around in a circle. Suddenly
the pitbull chomped extra hard and the leg cracked in two. As Hannibal let out a howl of pain, Excaliber lifted his head and
came down on the exposed neck. Again he clamped with all his might, his second eyelids closing protectively over his eyes
as they always did on a full attack. He bit down hard, the jaws locking in place and then spun the dog back and forth in the
air like a rag doll. The incisors tore through the thick muscle sheath around the neck of Patton’s pitbull and into the pumping
artery just inside. Hannibal howled like a siren as his neck opened up and a geyser of blood exploded out into Excaliber’s
face. Both their white coats were coated with red in just seconds.

Then, just as quickly, it was over. Excaliber shifted the neck in his jaws slightly, getting a deeper grip, crunched hard
again and that was that. The spinal cord of the animal had been snapped in two. It fell to the floor of the control room,
good for a bathroom rug and not much else.

Stone ripped up the Ruger, searching for Patton, but he had disappeared. A door at the far end where the general had been
standing stood open. The technicians were still playing with buttons and Stone screamed at the top of his lungs, firing toward
the closest one.

“Stop, stop, you fucking fools!” He hit the near man in the shoulder and he slumped over hard in his seat, held in place by
the chains that locked him there for his shift. Then Stone turned toward the other. But the man had already risen. He was
pointing toward the silo on the other side of the thick control room wall and laughing.

“It’s too late, Colonel Stone, it’s already launched.” At the word “launch,” Stone heard a roar like the world was going through
the second coming, and the bulletproof Plexiglas window of the door, which had been closed, turned bright orange and filled
with a sheer sheet of fire. The temperature of the control room shot up instantly and Stone felt himself covered with sweat.
The whole place vibrated as if they were in an earthquake and Stone ran wobbly-legged toward the exit door through which the
general had vanished.

The technician tried to grapple with him as he flew past but Stone thrust his pistol hand out and knocked the man back into
his chair. He reached the door and saw that there was a back exit—this one steel-gridded circular stairs—that led right to
the surface. Stone glanced around and saw the pitbull coming right after him. The thing looked a mess, covered in blood from
nose to tip of tail, but it was something else’s blood. The pitbull gave him a look of I-know-I-fucked-up-before-but-that-was-pretty-good-huh?
and then bolted up the stairs behind him. As they reached the halfway mark Stone heard a deafening roar, then saw a sheet
of flame pulsing through the exit door below. So much for technician number two.

But it was all too late. Stone knew that as he tore up the stairs, his boots almost skidding off the gridded steps as he flew
along so furiously he could hardly keep his balance. It was too fucking late. The damage was done. He could feel
the walls just the other side of him that encased the silo, shuddering like they were giving birth. The missile was rising,
coming out of its hole in the ground, right alongside of him, rising like a tree on fire from the dirt. Still he ran, not
wanting to die down here in a dark pit, even if he would soon enough be ashes.

He reached the cover at the top and pushed something titled
EMERGENCY ESCAPE RELEASE
. There was a loud burst of air and the round hatchway just above his head flew to the side, letting in the snow and the gray
morning air. Stone flew from the exit and saw that he was about twenty yards behind the silo. The missile was rising out of
the top of it, its flaming rockets just clearing ground level. It moved along achingly, grudgingly, as if it couldn’t quite
get up the energy to make it. But Stone knew these big ones took a few seconds to really pour it on. They had the ponderous
strength of moon rockets, and rose almost lazily at first.

But even as Stone stood back, shielding his eyes from the burning cloud of smoke that spat out the bottom, the missile began
gaining speed up into the purple-splattered dawn. God, God, he couldn’t let it take off… though it was impossible to stop
it. He scanned the back of the shielded enclosure around the silo and saw something—an antiaircraft gun. Stone tore over to
it and grabbed the controls. It was an undamaged twin 35mm aircraft cannon. The thing looked like it would work. It was manually
controlled—with an antique-type operation at that—with two small wheels for turning horizontally and vertically. Stone jumped
into the metal bucket seat built behind the weapon and spun the wheels for all he was worth. The entire gun system spun around
smoothly on a complex gear system beneath the frame and within seconds Stone had the missile in his dish-sized sights.

The M-7 was about two hundred feet up now and accelerating by the second. It filled the air around him with a thundering roar
as if the very gods were screaming out encouragement. For him or it, he didn’t know. Stone pulled the trigger of the antiaircraft
guns and held it down. It was as if he was on a brahma bull at the rodeo, only this was a rodeo of megadeath. The gun jerked
and shimmied and did all kinds of strange little dances, as if it were trying to send Stone flying. But it also shot a weaving
trail of screaming slugs up into the curtain of snow falling everywhere in the sky except just beneath the rocket, whose flaming
thrust burnt a hole right through the snowflakes as it rose.

Stone couldn’t see shit with all the smoke and thick flakes falling in his face. But he leaned back, following the tail of
the thing, trying to send a stream right into the fiery tail. And suddenly he hit something. He knew the thing was hurt as
it suddenly wobbled violently to the side, the whole rocket section vibrating back and forth wildly like a washing machine
with too many clothes in it. Then the M-7 began spinning around like a top as pieces of metal and wire from its guidance system
fell from the sky. The long tail of white flame sputtered and then went completely out. And as Martin Stone watched in happiness—and
horror—the ten megaton missile began dropping right back down toward him.

“Jesus Christ,” he whistled through his teeth. He hadn’t thought about that one. He heard a barking sound and flashed a glance
down at Excaliber, who was staring up at the smoking missile headed right toward them as if to say you-do-know-how-to-deal-with-that-right?
kind of look that Stone found most unsettling. He stared back up again and saw that the thing was directly overhead, the tail
section growing as large as the side of a house, coming down right on top of him. He threw his hands over his head, which
he
knew even as he did it was about the most absurd motion imaginable. As if his arms would protect him from the blast of a ten
megaton hydrogen bomb going off at his hairline.

There was a tremendous ripping and crashing sound that seemed to occur what felt like an inch from Stone’s nose, though he
wasn’t watching, since his eyes were shut tight as sealed crypts. The ground quaked violently, shaking the antiaircraft gun
and the seat he was in all over the place like one of those crazy rides at an amusement park. Then it all seemed to settle
down, with just the whooshing sound of the fire from the silo filling the air with an almost soothing hiss.

Stone opened his eyes. And couldn’t believe them. The missile had crashed to earth not more than thirty feet away. It had
come down almost as straight as an arrow, backwards, and the tail section of the M-7 was buried in the earth a good six feet
deep. The dirt had extinguished what fire was burning so it just sat there smoking like a skyscraper of steel death as far
from Stone as he could spit. He stared at the thing for long seconds and then got out of the antiaircraft chair and walked
slowly over to it, the pitbull following cautiously behind. It didn’t like the immense missile and snarled at it from between
partially opened jaws.

The atomic weapon lay there dead, little streams of smoke drifting up all around it. It hadn’t gone off. Stone could only
think that the warhead was armed to detonate at a certain altitude. But it had never reached that altitude—and never would—lying
here broken, useless. He looked suddenly around for General Patton. But the madman was already gone, his half-track tires
disappearing in the snow through a back exit. And now Stone knew the son-of-a-bitch had two more of the H-missiles. And he’d
use them. God, would he use them. Stone was going to have fucking A-bombs trying to find him all over Colorado. No matter
what he did, things
seemed to get worse. It couldn’t get much worse than this. Could it?

Stone heard a sudden hissing sound and looked around. His face instantly lit up like a Christmas tree and he felt a surge
of love for the dog that almost made it all worthwhile. For the animal had walked to the very base of the hundred-foot ICBM,
lifted its back right leg and proceeded to send out a pungent stream of piss onto it. A little cloud of steam rose above the
pitbull as the liquid hit the still sizzling hot metal of the steel tail. Stone laughed out loud into the snowy air. And then
laughed again. Never had a dog had such a fire hydrant to raise its leg to. And Stone knew that for the pit-bull, there could
be no greater reward than that.

CHAPTER
Twenty-Three

“C
OME ON, dog,” Stone said wearily, turning and walking away from the immense steel spear of megadeath immovably imbedded in
the ground like King Arthur’s sword as swirls of cottony snow fell from the sky. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we
start glowing or get our fucking chromosomes all twisted and rearranged.” There was something about standing right next to
so much potential destruction that gave Stone the shivers. And he wasn’t quite convinced that the thing wouldn’t go off at
any moment. Excaliber let loose a final stream of steaming liquid and then put his leg back down. He sniffed at the ICBM for
a few seconds, his moist black nose opening and closing as he tested the air for his own territorial marking scent. Then the
pitbull turned, snapping his head up and away with a motion of contempt, as if it was he who had emasculated the missile,
and ran over to the
Harley and up onto the back seat, where he wrapped his muscular legs around the snow-dusted leather.

Stone started the bike up and headed out through the silo perimeter fence, a large section of which had been blasted apart
by the Luchaire 89mm and hung in twisted steel tatters on its side like the jaggedly opened top of a sardine can. He drove
into the white mists without a look back. It took hours to reach the outskirts of Fort Bradley, although even through the
curtains of snow he could see the rising funnels of black smoke from miles away, hear the explosions still going off everywhere.
The attack rages on, though it was now unclear just who was fighting who. The whole battle had seemed to have deteriorated
into pure anarchy as bullets, artillery and tank shells streamed through the air like the fourth of July. The bastards were
after the spoils now. The Mafia and the Guardians of Hell and the mountain bandits and the filth-coated slime who were beyond
description were closing in on the fortress itself, wanting to grab up the booty of war, the heavy firepower that every man
was doubtless thinking would make him king of the hill back in whatever shithole he called home.

“Good.” Stone spat as he watched the conflagration, saw the sky painted orange and red for miles above the fort. “Let them
wipe each other out.” The less of the whole sick crew that was left, the better the rest of humanity would fare. Still, he
had no illusions that they would complete the job. The toughest would survive. And they would take every bit of death-dealing
firepower they could carry, to further their greedy little ambitions. Still, a lot of them were dead. And most important,
Stone had destroyed Patton’s Reich before it had a chance to take root. He had given mankind a little more breathing room
before the thousand-year darkness closed in.