War Weapons (7 page)

Stone rose, threw his boots on, and crushed the wretched leftover, putting it out of his misery. He patted the pitbull on
the head. “Owe you again, dog, even though I suspect you had something to do with the whole event.” Excaliber looked up at
him with supreme innocence. Stone got the whole crew up, and after a quick few pots of coffee, boiled on little stoves inside
the tanks, they were on the road again. Stone went slowly at first, not sure they would actually remember the lessons of yesterday.
But behind him the two tanks steered as straight and steady as a ruler. He added five miles per hour every fifteen minutes
or so. Within a few hours they were cruising north across a crumbling interstate highway cutting up through the mountains
at thirty-plus.

The day was clear, the sun burning down through an almost cloudless sky, and as they rose up into the Rockies the peaks around
them took on an almost mystical beauty, mountains shimmering with snowcapped crowns; blankets of pine trees, every branch
frosted with a million jewels of ice. Above them, hawks circled, lazily searching for the movement of a rabbit or a groundhog
far below. And after a half hour of climbing, Stone, looking from inside the tank with the scanning video camera, could see
down into chasms thousands of feet deep. If one of the tanks went over there, there’d be no need of a rescue mission. There’s
a silver lining in every cloud—no matter how bloody it may be.

They reached the summit of this particular set of low mountains in the eight- to ten-thousand foot range and started back
down the other side. Stone scanned ahead to the north as they descended. He could see miles off, lowlands stretching to the
horizon, more treed than the terrain they had just been through. Stone had already formulated a plan —and that was a plan
for what to do when he hadn’t a fucking idea of what to do. Go to the bunker.

The bunker—carved into the side of a mountain at the northern edge of Estes National Park in northern Colorado. There Stone
had lived for five years with his father, the Major; and his mother and his sister, April. One big happy family screaming
at each other, staying out of each other’s way. But now the Major was dead, his mother raped and killed, and April … The Major
had installed a complex computer system in the place and had been storing up data for years in the damned thing.

Maybe there was information there that could be useful. He had to start somehow, and as they were within thirty miles of the
place according to his calculations, Stone couldn’t see that it would hurt. Also, although he wouldn’t even really admit it
to himself, Stone hoped that somehow April had been able to make it there and was waiting for him.

They reached the bottom of the mini range and another flat landscape and had been traveling on it for several minutes when
Stone glanced away from the front-angle drive screen and up to the 360-degree scan monitor. He dropped his eyes back down
and then ripped them up again, doing a double take. At the eastern and western flanks, at the very edges of the screen, he
swore he saw vehicles. He slowed the Bradley slightly, whispering “Drop five” into the mouth mike, meaning slow down five
miles per hour. He kept his eyes on the 360 screen and leaned forward anxiously. Yes, there was something. There were—

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Stone blurted out as his eyes took in what was being transmitted back by the rotating camera. They
were surrounded on both flanks by dozens of bizarre vehicles, streaming down the sides of two hills. And. bizarre wasn’t even
the word to describe them. There wasn’t a word. Wooden, boxlike frames had been built over truck and car chassis. The things
were like raw machines, all the gears and workings exposed, smoke pouring from every crack. Some had what looked like crow’s
nests, towers of wood that swayed back and forth in the air as the primitive vehicles below them charged. They were loaded
down on all sides with savage-looking fellows, with long beards and manes of greasy hair. Every one of them carried some sort
of blunderbuss. And they were headed straight toward the tanks.

“Defensive formation!” Stone screamed into the mouthpiece. He had had time to go over some of the battle strategies he had
picked up from both Patton and the Major’s computer the last time he had been there. He wasn’t a genius to say the least,
but a tank was a formidable weapon, so if he just didn’t fuck things up … He saw that the way ahead was blocked; the mountain
men had created a small avalanche some four hundred feet ahead. He didn’t want to get stuck with his back to them. The three
tanks wheeled around and came to a stop, creating a three-pointed star with the long muzzles of their cannon protecting each
side.

“Just open up,” Stone shouted, “with everything you got. And don’t stop until I give the command.” He slammed back into his
seat, put his hands over the firing triggers of both the 50-cal machine gun and the immense 120-mm cannon. The tank slammed
back on its treads, throwing Excaliber to the floor from a warm shelf he had discovered above the exhaust pipe. He immediately
sent out a growl of disapproval. The shell tore into the left slope, landing almost directly between two trucklike vehicles
with high steel sides and double-thick tires. The dirt erupted up in orange and red flames, but when the dust settled, both
were still heading right toward the encircled wagon train of high-tech battle wagons.

“Son of a fucking bitch,” Stone cursed under his breath. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. These assholes were
supposed to go out fast from a 120-mm. He could see the other tanks shooting out their huge shells as two thunderous roars
erupted on each side of him. Stone followed by watching the 360 video sweep, which was on double time now, so the entire surroundings
were flashed to Stone every 2.5 seconds. It was hard not to get dizzy. One of them slammed into a VW minibus from which the
whole top had been ripped and filled with seats in which the dirt-coated attackers sat so they could fire in comfort. This
particular batch took the direct blast at about the center of the “bus,” and bodies went flying every which way. The other
shell came down just in front of an old Dodge with a machine gun mounted on top and sent that, too, careening up into the
air, as if it were trying to get into orbit, the machine gunner spiraling off in a different direction until his skull met
the side of a boulder and painted it red. The Dodge, with its engine dripping out the front, came crashing down just in front
of a speeding biker who slammed into it head-on. Then the whole thing erupted as leaking gasoline from the carignited.

But others poured through the wall of flame. Rifle and pistol fire was coming from every car, and as Stone glanced to the
top of a monitor, he saw that more was coming every second. He could hear the slugs pinging off the armor of the tank, sharp
little sounds that reverberated through the tank. He fired again, trying to sight up one of the command cars that was now
coming dead on toward them only a few hundred feet off. The tank reeled back, and the huge shell flew out of the smoking barrel
just feet above the ground. It missed the target Stone had aimed for—the lead car—with someone who must have been closely
related to Genghis Khan standing on the hood, firing some kind of rocket grenade. But the shell streamed past the gang leader
and slammed into the front end of a diesel truck cab. The front end disintegrated as if the hammer of Thor had descended from
the heavens.

Stone saw the war-painted man—in blood as far as Stone could tell through the video monitor—fire the long, tubular device
he was carrying. Some sort of shell rocketed toward the Bradley and slammed right into its side, just a yard away from Stone.
The entire tank shook, and every one of them, including Excaliber, went flying around the interior. Stone gripped the seat
with both hands. In a second the tank settled and he could feel the heat of the explosion coming right through the titanium-armored
wall.

Things weren’t quite working out as he had hoped. The tanks were tough, but they couldn’t just let themselves stand there
taking all the assorted slugs, grenades, and minirockets these blood-smeared mountain thuds could dish out. Stone sighted
up on the bastard who was slamming another load into his launcher. The vehicles were streaming down from everywhere now, a
solid sheet of them—rusted hulks with coughing engines, absolutely loaded with blood-coated men firing constantly. Again Stone
missed what he had sighted, but the shell landed dead on through the windshield of an ancient Ford, wide tail fins and all.
The man’s head disappeared inside, as did the entire car a second later, exploding out a curtain of steel and glass, slicing
myriad cuts into men hanging on to the charging vehicles around it.

One of the truck bodies from which the whole back had been stripped off, and a single high crow’s nest built up on it, suddenly
caught Stone’s attention. The plywood cabin in the sky, a good twenty feet up, the foot-thick pole beneath it wired down to
all four sides, glistened for a second with the reflection of steel, and Stone saw a small cannon muzzle poking through an
opening. The bastards even had artillery. The thing roared, and the entire pole seemed to lean backward. Stone heard a blast
to the right of him, and as the camera panned by, he saw that Bull’s tank was enveloped in flame. Phosphorus bomb.

“Don’t panic,” Stone yelled into the mouthpiece, as he heard screams of raw terror coming over his headset from inside the
blazing tank. “Listen to me, you bastards,” Stone shouted at the top of his lungs. “You’re self-contained in there. The flames
can’t get to you—I swear to God. Bull, flip the ‘Internal Oxygen’ switch on the panel in front of you. You hear me, do it
fast!”

“Can’t—breathe,” a voice whispered back. “Can’t—”

“The switch, the switch. Oxygen on!”

“Yeah, I see it. There.” Then the voice died out. Shit, the specs said the Bradley could easily take a hit like that. But
the specs had been wrong before, many times. If a whole tankload of them died already … The video scanned past the burning
tank, and Stone saw that the flames were already dying down, but suddenly Foster was emerging from the top. The idiot had
panicked and opened the hatchway. He closed it, or someone did from below, and the terrified manran to the edge of the tank
to jump down. He had barely started his descent when slugs tore into him from every direction. A hundred rounds must have
ripped into the flesh within two seconds, and the body spun and jerked wildly in the air, held in place momentarily by the
sheer force of the multitude of bullets. Then the flood of lead ceased, and the body, bleeding from so many holes that it
would take an hour or two to count them all, slammed down onto the dust and flopped around like a spastic worm.

This couldn’t go on, Stone suddenly realized. If he had an ace in the hole, it was time to use it—or there wouldn’t be any
more games to be played. He slammed his hand down on the “Missile Systems On” button, and a whole portion of the control panel
suddenly lit up.

“Missiles?” The machine read out on the computer terminal before him.

“All.” Stone slammed his finger down on the answering button.

“Range?”

“Impact detonation,” Stone input. “Firing at ninety degrees.”

“Formation?” the missile systems computer program asked.

“Four left, four right,” Stone input. He glanced up at the video screen and saw that the vehicles were almost upon them. Once
there, they could plant dynamite, petrol bombs. It was now or—

“Systems armed,” the screen read out. “Signal launch to implement.”

Stone ground his thumb down hard onto the “Launch” button. There was a whirring sound, and above them, the top of the tank
seemed to lift up, at least to those killers who were within yards of the Bradley, bringing their vehicles to a screeching
stop. On each side of the turret a missile rack popped up into view, four steel tubes with the tips of shining, cone-shaped
noses just poking out of them. The things buzzed and clicked and quickly spun around into firing position, moving on ball
bearings hidden in the armor below. They seemed to set themselves, as if shocks were coming out beneath them, and then they
fired.

The leader of this particular group of slime, who had fired the grenade launcher at Stone’s tank, had just driven up to the
side of the Bradley as the missiles went off. In fact, he was looking right at the point of one, reaching his hand out to
touch it. It took his head clean off as it shot free of its launching pad—severing the tattooed face cleanly from its body—but
not detonating, as the flesh didn’t even offer enough resistance to its sensing devices to trigger it. On each side of Stone’s
tank, four Mini-Hawks, the most powerful short-range missile ever built, shot out exactly six feet above the ground, their
own computer-guidance systems taking control. They began veering off from one another within a fiftieth of a second, heading
left and right. By the time they reached the first lines of the advancing cars and trucks ahead, they were about thirty feet
apart.

Eight mountains of fire erupted around the three besieged tanks. The very ground beneath them seemed to shake, and the Bradleys
shook back and forth, buffeted from every side by shock waves. It took almost twenty seconds for the main explosion to settle
down and just the secondaries to continue on, little pops here and there through the thick tank walls. Stone’s brain ceased
ringing like a bell. He wondered if the video camera mounted topside was still functioning, but as he raised his eyes to the
screen he saw that it was. And the scene it transmitted back was one of total devastation. The attack vehicles lay strewn
every which way, steel bodies peeled back like opened tuna-fish cans, melted tires like gumdrops too long in the sun. And
the bodies—or pieces of bodies, really—lay draped over everything, like the final strokes of a painting, buckets of blood
and ground-up flesh heaved over the picture, adding a certain element of unquestionable finality.

Here and there Stone could see bodies moving feebly through the smoke, as the vehicles burned like bonfires on both slopes,
like some sort of sacred ceremony of winter. Ceremony of death. The invasion was clearly over.