At a truck stop, he bought some tarps and some heavy tape and spent a few disgusting and very odious minutes wrapping the two and sealing them shut.
They were just as ugly in death as they had been in life.
He spent the next night in Las Vegas, pulling out hours before dawn and rolling hard. At noon, he was on a two-lane, just north of Bakersfield, heading for Interstate 5. He was about seventy-five miles from the headquarters of the so-called religious leader named Ja.
Ja was, in truth, about as religious as Attila the Hun and about as faithful to his god as Hitler was to preserving the human race.
There was absolutely, positively nothing on the stretch of highway Barry was traveling. Ja had chosen well if he wanted solitude … and a place to train his Liberation Army of Islam.
Barry drove past the entrance to Ja’s headquarters twice, just to let them know he was in the area—he knew hidden guards would spot the rig—and then barreled north on a secondary road, finally cutting back east and checking into a motel many miles north of Ja’s HQ.
He took a hot shower and dressed for dinner, knowing that it could very well be his last time to put on a suit—until the undertaker stuffed cotton up his butt and brushed his hair and knotted his tie before placing him in his silk-lined home for eternity.
Barry slept well that night, dreamless, and awakened refreshed. He ordered breakfast sent to his room and ate slowly, savoring every bite. Then he geared up: the 9mm went into a shoulder holster, the .44 mag on the other side. His jacket covered them, but he couldn’t zip it up.
Outside, Barry squatted down on the concrete walkway and looked at his rig, mulling over some things in his mind. Then he smiled.
He punched off the alarm system, paid his bill, and pulled out. Several miles down the road, he pulled over and transferred the bodies from the trailer to the cab. He wired them with explosives, almost gagging at the stench, and then taped the tarp closed.
But he left the windows down.
Bastards smelled awful!
Back in the trailer, he opened all the compartments and wired the explosives to activate from an electronic timer. He put that in his pocket. He patted each stiff and tarped terrorist and rolled on.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” he asked one mummy-look-alike.
No reply.
“That’s all right,” Barry told him. “Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
It was a short one. Before he knew it, he was approaching the locked and chained gates to the headquarters of Ja. He floorboarded the pedal and blew his air horn and barreled right on through, as the two guards leaped for safety.
It was the weirdest-looking building he had ever seen. Purple stars and silver moons and blood-red suns all adorned the multicolored House of Islam that Ja built. Having constructed the hideousness on the blood of innocents around the world, Barry thought it only fitting to bring it down with some blood of its followers.
Cutting a wide donut in the middle of the barren front of the mosque, he leaned over and opened the right-hand door, shoving the tarp-wrapped terrorists out. They bounced on the sunbaked ground and rolled to a halt.
All sorts of gowned and robed and turbaned weirdos were running out of the huge headquarters of Ja … and bless their little religious hearts, they all had guns of nearly every make and model and caliber.
All pointed at Barry’s rig.
The lead started whining and bouncing and howling off the armor plate and thick bulletproof glass of the Kenworth as Barry continued in his wide circle in the front of the HQ.
Several of the terrorists made the deadly mistake of getting in front of the rig. They moistened the parched earth for a while with their blood, the big tires mashing them flat under the midmorning sun.
As a dozen or more gowned and turbaned figures ran toward the rolled-up bodies of the terrorists, clawing at the tarp, Barry felt that was just a dandy time to go exploring at the back of the funny-looking sprawl of buildings. For when they removed the last bit of tape and peeled back the tarps, things were going to get really hostile around there.
Barry made it to the rear of the mosque when the explosives, almost simultaneous in their eruptions, ripped the air. He had wired enough explosions around the bodies to stop a tank.
A huge dust cloud arose from the front of the building, the dust all mixed up with the twisted guts and mangled limbs of a dozen or more terrorists who had gone to pay their last respects to their fallen comrades in terror.
Barry circled the complex and the last thing several members of the Army of Islam saw, coming out of the whirling dust, was the massive front of the Kenworth, its huge steel-protected grill bearing down on them, a death-grin on the face of the man called the Dog.
Their anguished screaming was cut off in burbling chokes as the tires ended careers in spreading death worldwide.
As Barry slowed to make another circle of the complex, terrorists jumped onto the rig, hanging on the chromed ladder, beating at the thick glass with fists and the butts of pistols.
Barry headed for a wooden building at the edge of the complex, picking up speed as he went, and silently praying to whatever god—if any—looks after men like him, that the building was not filled with explosives, Barry crashed into the wooden structure and barreled out the other side. He completely destroyed the small shack, and doing that, ripped off the turbantoters who had been clinging to the sides of the rig.
Glancing into the mangled and glass-busted right-side mirror, Barry saw one terrorist impaled on a sharp board, the board ramming clear through the man and pinning him to the earth. His legs were still kicking in anguish, seconds before death would reach down with that cold hand and touch him.
Barry made one more circle, the roaring of the mighty engine and the kicked-up dust adding more confusion to an already chaotic scene. He saw four people run to a car parked away from the complex, and recognized one as Ja. He spun the wheel, felt the rig try to roll, and brought it under control, heading for the car.
“Not yet, ol’ hoss,” Barry muttered. “Just stay hooked for a little while longer.”
He rammed the side of the car, turning it over, the impact almost tearing his gloved hands loose from the big steering wheel.
He drove the car into the side of the mosque, smashing it, maiming or killing those inside. Barry dropped the shift into reverse, backed up, and felt the big engine shudder as he floor-boarded the pedal, lunging forward, again making a wide donut in the front of the complex.
He widened his donut, giving the rig all the power he felt it could take, and at the final turn, unlocked the fifth-wheel slide. He heard the connections rip as metal tore loose and the trailer ripped free, to go rolling over and over, smashing into the entranceway of the HQ, completely destroying the front wall.
Barry pointed the nose of the Kenworth toward the west, toward the dirt road that would lead him back to the highway, and as he did, he flipped the detonator switch on the little box in his shirt pocket.
Just as his tires touched concrete, the headquarters of Ja, the squashed leader of the now-defunct Army of Islam, went up in a roar of several hundred pounds of plastic explosives.
The ground shook even at that distance, Barry feeling the mighty charge transmitted through the tires, up through the suspension system to the steering wheel and through the leather of his driving gloves.
Barry drove to the interstate, waited until no vehicles were in sight, then grabbed his suitcase and shrugged out of his twin shoulder holsters, leaving them in the cab of the truck.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Jesus, I hate to do this.”
He tossed a thermal grenade with a delayed timer into the cab and closed the door. He began walking up the interstate, catching a ride on his fifth try.
“Down on your luck?” the elderly man asked, smiling at Barry.
“No, sir.” Barry said brightly. “All things taken into consideration, I guess I’d have to say that my luck has been pretty darned good.”
27
>
He had caught a bus at a one-store-stop just off the interstate, changed a couple of times, and made it to Vanderberg AFB in the middle of the night. At a stop, he had called Jackson and told him to advise Barnett that he was coming in.
Barnett met him at the front gate and promptly took him to a motel in Lompoc.
“Man, man, you’re hotter than that much talked about two-dollar whore, Barry. Have you heard any news at all since you blew up Ja’s HQ?”
“No, none. What’s it sound like?”
Barnett chuckled. “God, that must have been quite a show you put on. Something like seventy bodies have been found and the cops think they’ll probably find at least ten more once they get through digging through the rubble. Of course none of the cops can say it out loud—hell, they have to be careful who they even think it around—but they’re pleased that this terrorist group is out of business. And, brother, you damn sure put them out of business.”
“Ja has been confirmed dead?”
“Squashed like an ugly bug. But Bakhitar and a lot of his bunch were not at the mosque. And neither was Darin Grady or any of his people.”
“I need a new rig.”
“One is being readied for you now. It’ll take about a week, with people working around the clock, to get it ready. You’ll pick it up outside of Marysville one week from today.”
“How’s Cutter?”
“She’s been transferred to an Air Force hospital. She’s fine. Up and walking.” He looked at Barry and smiled. “And your dog, Dog, is all right.”
“What am I to do until my rig is ready?”
“Lay low. Tomorrow we’ll get you out of this motel and move you to L.A. Sleep. Eat. Relax.”
“Is my rig going to be identical?”
“Yes. But with a lot of new features and modifications. You’ll enjoy them all.”
For a full seven days, Barry did nothing but eat and sleep and read and watch TV, especially the news programs. Many of the networks’ news men and women were shocked by this rash of violence sweeping America, several of them imploring the government to do something about it.
Barry got a big hearty belly laugh out of that.
If the news people would ever decide which hand washed the other, the government would be more than happy to do something about crime and terrorism. Delighted, in fact.
“Make up your mind, people,” Barry muttered, rising to cut off the TV. He stopped abruptly as the anchorman’s expression turned hound-dog somber.
“It is with great regret and heartfelt sorrow that we report the death of George and Edna Stanton, the parents of our own George Stanton. Mr. and Mrs. Stanton were killed when their car was struck by a truck and forced off the road near Allen-town, Pennsylvania late this afternoon. The truck was found abandoned several miles from the scene of the accident and a large manhunt is now under way for the driver …”
The picture faded and a commercial about something that was guaranteed to make you shit came on the screen.
Barry clicked off the set and fixed himself a drink, sitting back down. “Accident, my butt!” he muttered. He picked up the phone and dialed Jackson.
It was answered on the second ring.
“You heard?” he asked Jackson.
“About ten minutes after it happened.”
“I hope you’re not going to tell me it was an accident.”
“I was born looking like I was retarded. That doesn’t mean I am. Hell, no, it was no accident. The Pennsylvania State Police know it was no accident, so does the local sheriff’s department and everyone else involved. But they were asked to play it like it was. For obvious reasons.”
“When do I come out of retirement?”
“You grow that beard like Barnett asked you?”
“Sure did. Looks halfway decent now.”
“What color is it?”
“Salt and pepper. More salt than pepper. And I got a professional dye job yesterday. I look like I’m about due for retirement any moment.”
“The word had gone out via our leak—yeah, we found him and we’re going to use the bastard for a while—that a shipment of grenades and rocket launchers is leaving Southern California in two days, en route to a small military reservation in Vermont. And yes, there is one there.”
“I never doubted you, Jackson.”
“You’ll pull out day after tomorrow. Your rig is ready for your inspection. A car will pick you up in about two hours. I was just going to call you. I wanted to see how the network was going to treat this thing about George’s parents.”
“Screw the networks. Who’ll be coming after me this run?”
“Everybody,” Jackson said cheerfully. “Good luck.” He hung up.
“You didn’t have this rig built in any week,” Barry told Barnett.
“No, we didn’t. The U.S. Treasury seized it about two years ago in a drug-running operation. A certain government agency has been working on it for about that long. This baby will stop damn near anything anybody wants to toss at it. The glass is the finest made anywhere. It’ll stop a fifty-caliber machine gun slug. The tractor was flame red when it was seized. How do you like this color?”
Barry liked it, but it had taken a few minutes for it to register on him. Midnight black with white striping. The colors of a Husky. He smiled. “I like it.”
“Look inside.”
Barry climbed in. Real leather. And damn expensive leather at that. Soft.
Barnett had climbed in the other side. “I’d like to tell you that it has machine guns and rocket launchers built in the fenders and under the hood, but that’s not feasible. But it was suggested. But it will give you an honest one hundred and twenty miles an hour. With this radio”—he pointed—“if you’re within a hundred miles of any sort of military base, you can talk to anywhere in the United States. If you don’t want to use the radio, there is a mobile phone.” Again he pointed. “The sleeper is custom made. Big bed. A special built bed for Dog …”
Barry looked and laughed. Damn sure was!
“… Small refrigerator, small john, TV and radio, plenty of storage space.” He pointed to the floor of the sleeper. “In there, anything and everything you might need in the way of weapons, plastic, grenades, ammo—you name it, and it’s in there. You are a legitimate SST, Barry, with all the papers to prove it. If you are stopped by the police, you won’t be detained long. And we’ll know where you are at all times. S.O.P. for all SSTs. You’ll be tracked, every move, from a bunker at the Energy Department’s Safeguards and Security Division command center at Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque. Ninety percent of the cops will be cooperative if they stop you. The other ten percent are local hotdogs and we’ve dealt with those types before. Take whatever action you think is necessary to get your job done. You’ve got thirty-six hours to familiarize yourself with this rig. Have fun.”
He pulled out two hours before dawn, an average-built, gray-haired man with a salt-and-pepper beard driving a beautiful midnight black custom Kenworth; a truck that carried more armor plate and bulletproof glass than any other rig running the super slab. A rig that held, in secret compartments, an Uzi, two sawed-off shotguns, a 9mm Beretta, a silenced .22-caliber auto-loader, a .44 magnum, a 7mm magnum sniper rifle, and five thousand rounds of ammunition. He carried an assortment of grenades and plastic explosives, with various types of timers and detonators. Under the floor of the trailer were various other types of heavier weapons and ammunition, weapons which Barry could not imagine himself using, much less getting to in a tight spot, but if the government wanted to load him down with machine guns and bazookas, that was fine with him.
By the time the sun poked its growing warmth and radiance over the eastern horizon, Barry was halfway to Las Vegas. A rolling target for terrorists.
He missed the company of Dog and knew that dog missed the road, for the animal loved to travel.
Barry wondered when the terrorists would strike at him, and how. Barnett had echoed what Jackson had told him: “Everybody will be com
ing after you, Barry. The ante on your head has gone up to a quarter of a million dollars. Stay loose, Dog.”
On the seat beside him lay a small M-11, the lethal little machine gun not much bigger than a large auto-loader pistol. It fired a .380 round (9mm Kurz), and while the smaller .380 does not have the knock-down power of its larger cousin, the 9mm, the .380, when fired from the M-11, has a nasty habit of chewing the hell out of its intended target. The weapon was fitted with a sound suppressor, not only to reduce the noise, but to help stabilize the weapon on full auto; firing without the suppressor, the muzzle would climb very rapidly.
A bag of 32-round clips lay beside the little spitter.
Barry wore his .22 auto-loader, with factory silencer fitted, in a shoulder rig, under his jacket.
Five hours after leaving Los Angeles, Barry rolled past Las Vegas. Due to the carnage he’d already caused on some of the nation’s highways, those responsible for his routing put him on a wandering route; for the most part, avoiding those states whose cops were already a tad jumpy from all the bodies that had littered their roadways.
His route, as it now stood, subject to change, was L.A. to Vegas, Vegas to Salt Lake City. Then up into Idaho, where he would then cut east, rolling through Wyoming, South Dakota, and into Minnesota, down to Chicago, over to Cleveland, up to Buffalo, and then into New England.
No one actually believed he would ever get to Vermont; the attack, or attacks, would come long before then.
And all available intelligence stated that Darin Grady would lead the attack against him.
Barry wondered if the Irish terrorist had new front teeth by now.
He rolled on at a steady 65 mph, rarely answering any calls on the CB, and keeping his eyes open for any sign of a tail. But he could spot nothing to arouse any suspicion in him.
Just at dusk, he pulled into a motel south of Salt Lake, and carefully parked his rig, setting all the alarms, much more sophisticated ones than were on his other rig. And he also had, in his suitcase, a small handheld electronic sweeper that would enable him to detect if any explosives had been planted on the outside of his rig. The explosives he carried were in specially constructed compartments, built so as not to confuse the sweeper.
18 Wheel Avenger Page 19