by Ryder Stacy
“Sorry for the push, Rock,” Chen said as the three men rose to their feet and started forward again. “Didn’t think you wanted to make that fellow’s acquaintance.”
“He’s not my type,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered as he started forward into near darkness, his .12 gauge shotpistol cocked near his head. He saw just a glint of light on the floor—then it was gone. Rock dropped to his knees, lowered his head to the cold cement, and began squinting furiously. Chen and Detroit looked at each other as if their leader had gone mad.
“Uh, lose a contact lens or something?” Detroit asked, holding another grenade in his right hand and his chromium .45 in the other.
“I saw a glint—I think—I think. Here!” he said excitedly. “This is it. A trap door down to the next level. It’s sealed tight—but not tight enough. What do you think?” he asked Detroit as he traced the barely noticeable edges of the pseudo-concrete door below with his fingertips.
“Got enough apples with me—but that’s it,” Detroit said, hitting the floor with a fist. “Feels thick, Rock. These Reds—sometimes they built ’em two feet, three feet thick. These might not do shit against that—but we’ll see.” He took the remaining six grenades from his web belt—the rest were back with his ’brid—and placed them around the perimeter of the sealed door. Instead of pulling the pins, Detroit flicked a small lever on the mini-bombs that switched on their radio detonation controls. Rock shouted to the other men to mop up and stay alert, while his team went into the bunker.
“All right,” the black bull of a man said, standing up. “Let’s find a place to hide—and—we’ll see.” Detroit sounded a little edgy as if not quite sure that the grenades were really capable of doing the job. And since he was the explosives-man on the team, he felt that the success or failure of the mission was on his head. They headed back around a cement wall and Detroit pulled a small transmitter from a pouch on his belt.
“Close your eyes and cover your ears, hoys and girls,” the dust-covered Freefighter said with a smirk. “ ’Cause it’s party time.” He turned a lever on the cigarette pack-sized transmitter and a roar filled the floor they were standing on. A shock wave followed instantaneously and the three of them were thrown from their feet and covered with a blanket of debris from the detonation. “Hey,” Chen whispered, “kill them, not us.”
Detroit was the first one up and around the corner—wanting to see with his own eyes whether it had worked. He shot forward, trying to peer through the still-swirling smoke—and then saw it. The grenades had blasted the concealed hatch right out of the floor. He could see down into a large chamber below, filled with dust and voices yelling in terror.
“Don’t kill ’em if you can help it,” Rock yelled out as Detroit prepared to swing down. “We need at least one tech expert alive—otherwise, we’ve just wasted a lot of ammo.”
“To hear is to obey, Effendi,” Detroit said, disappearing down into the steaming hole, followed by Rockson and then Chen. As they swung into the communications center, hanging onto the sides of the opening and then dropping the two yards to the hard floor, the stunned, dust covered Russian techs around the hundred-foot-square room ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. They weren’t fighters—just communications specialists and repairmen whose training was in turning dials, not pulling triggers. They didn’t want to die—and from the looks of the filth-covered American rebels who were coming after them, it appeared that that was the general idea.
Several of them tore over to the guncase—it was impossibly cumbersome for them to carry their weapons while working with the transmission equipment—and grabbed for pistols, Kalashnikovs—anything their hands touched. The first to arm themselves turned and tried to draw a bead on the weaving American fighters, who had just dropped in.
“Don’t shoot,” Rock screamed out. “No one down here has to die if you do what we tell you. I promise you as an officer of the Re-United States Army.” Several of the more ambitious young techs saw their chance to make a name for themselves by killing the attackers and continued to sight up the Americans, squeezing off shots that missed their furtive targets by a mile. Rockson dove forward on the floor and somersaulted over twice, coming up in a crouch. He fired his .12 gauge pistol three times and the three Russian techs who’d had ideas of being heroes tumbled to the floor behind a long workbench covered with soldering equipment, their weapons flying from their hands, blood pouring out of the wide wounds that shotgun shells make.
“Over here, bastard,” a voice suddenly yelled with a thick Russian accent. Rock turned to see a large beer-bellied military officer, possibly the overseer of the technical team, holding an arm around Chen’s neck, a Turganev revolver poised against his head. “Anyone moves,” he said, in passably understandable English, “and your little buddy here gets his brains sent back down to China.” Rock and Detroit froze, their pistols useless as the Red was using the Chinese American as a shield.
But not for long. At the instant the Russian said the word “China,” Chen was in motion. His left hand whipped up with the blurred speed of a propeller, knocking the pistol into the air, while the other hand reached down and behind him, slamming into the Russian’s groin with the force of a mule kick. The big man didn’t even have time to scream out in agony as the diminutive martial arts master turned and, making spear fingers with both hands, drove them into the Russian’s ears. The stiff fingers sank in nearly four inches, digging clear into his brain. Chen pulled them out in a flash, followed by a sludgy mess of pink that poured out from the ruptured skull cavity. The Russian stood stock still for a moment, a look of horrified surprise frozen on his face, and then he toppled forward, splattering the floor with what had been his mind. Chen wiped his sticky fingers clean on his pants and turned, ready for whoever else wanted to buy tickets into the next life.
But there were no more takers. The remaining dozen techs lay cowering behind tables and consoles as the room beeped and clicked with a billion rubles worth of high-tech equipment.
“Okay, everybody up,” Rockson said, motioning with his shotpistol. As they were slow to rise, he fired once into the ceiling and the Reds sprang to their feet, their hands raised high in the air. “We’re not here to waste all of you,” Rock said softly, trying to calm the white-faced radio operatives with a soothing tone. “You do what I want—and you’ll all live, all get to take your wives and little babushkas rowing on the Volga again. Anyone else speak a little Amerikansky?”
“I—I know you,” one of the techs stuttered, his eyes growing even wider in alarm. “I’ve seen your picture. That white streak of hair down the center of your scalp: one blue, one violet eye. It’s you! You—you’re the Rockson—the head of the rebels. They say you love nothing more than to cut off heads—and—put them on a stake.” The man looked as if he were about to lose his dinner. “We are dead men,” he said resignedly.
“Appreciate the notoriety,” Rockson smiled back. “But I’m not giving autographs today—and not taking any heads. All we want and need is telecom linkup to the Kremlin. I want to talk to your Premier Vassily.” Rock couldn’t help but grin as he watched the faces of the technicians grow a whiter shade of pale.
“They will know it was us,” one of the Russians whispered out in his own language through clamped vocal cords. “They’ll kill us. Put us on the dissident’s crucifixes outside Moscow, if we do as he says.”
Rockson, who understood a smattering of Russian interjected, “Pal, when I get finished talking to the Great One, they’ll give you all the Medal of Lenin. Now listen to me—shake some sense into those propaganda-filled things you call heads,” the Doomsday Warrior said, letting his gun hang down at his side as he walked among the prisoners. Chen and Detroit kept a careful watch from each side, ready to blast anyone who tried anything into a detour to hell.
“Now, me and my buddies here,” Rock went on softly, knowing that you can neutralize at least half of a man’s fear just by the tone and volume of your voice, “aren’t about to sli
ce any heads. You all know what’s going on—the KGB has taken all your Red Army chums prisoner—those that it didn’t slaughter outright. What the hell do you think they’re going to do after they catch up with you?” The technicians who understood looked at one another nervously—for they had been wondering and talking about that very possibility when the door above them had crashed down in pieces.
“What—what do you want us to do?” asked one of the techs, skinny as a stringbean, his face covered with a battlefield of pimples. He was barely out of his teens, he probably wanted to reach 25.
“Just put me in voice communications with Vassily—that’s all. Anyway, fellows,” Rock went on, letting his voice rise a little, putting a tone of coldness into it, “I’m not asking—I’m telling you. We haven’t got time.” To add a little drama to the words, the Doomsday Warrior whipped his arm up and let loose a shot from his pistol, just missing the skinny tech by inches and blasting the side of the table behind him into splinters.
“I—I’ll help you,” the pimply young technician shrieked, his voice rising all the way into the higher registers. Several of the others looked at him with scorn but three more joined in a chorus of agreement, yesses and Da’s.
Within minutes the four Russians sat in front of their radio transmission stations—the rest were locked in a storage closet for safekeeping—madly twisting dials this way and that, as monitors and grid screens lit up with an incomprehensible array of diagrams, detailing the relay routes of the telesat linkup. Rock, Chen, and Detroit watched the largest screen, mounted high on one wall, in fascination; it depicted the earth, the bounce satellite hovering above, their location, and the Moscow radar tower. The radiomen did their work quickly and efficiently, lining up the waves of all the different locales so they were in Transmission Mode Symmetry—all hooked up and ready to go.
“I guess—we’re ready,” the skinny Red said. Rock realized that although he was the youngest of the bunch, the fellow was apparently the head of the technical unit as he gave orders to the other three and kept looking back at the Command Screen. “The premier, you say? You want to talk to the premier?” He said the words twice as if trying somehow to assimilate the absurdity of the idea. Nobody could just call up the ruler of the world and say hello.
“Yeah—there’s only one, right?” Rock responded, standing just behind the head man. “Vassily—I think he lives in the Kremlin. Tell him his old pal Rock wants to chit-chat.”
“Yes—I—I can make contact,” the Russian said, suddenly seeming a lot less sure about the whole venture now that it was actually about to happen. He handed Rockson a headset with earphone and mouthpiece. The Doomsday Warrior examined it for a few seconds to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped, and then slipped it over his head. He could hear the static swirling and humming through the earpiece as if they were listening to the atonal music of the stratosphere where the COMSAT swung lazily across the night sky.
The technician hit a few more buttons and a row of lights lit up amber just above his head. Then there was a ringing sound. Once, twice, three times. Rock was just wondering if the whole damned planet was going to be lost because the guy wasn’t home when the other end clicked and a voice spoke from 9,874 miles away.
“Who is this? I gave orders that no one, absolutely no one, was to call the Grandfather tonight.” Rockson recognized Rahallah’s basso sotto voice.
“This is Ted Rockson, you might remember me? Listen pal, calling long distance, so got to get to the point. I have an offer I want to make to the premier. I know he’ll want to talk to me.”
“Rockson!” the voice gasped on the other end. “This—is Rahallah, the premier’s manservant. Do you remember me—I was present when you were our—guest—at the Kremlin?”
“Yes, I do,” the Doomsday Warrior answered, picturing that stark noble statue-like black face. Somehow he had trusted the man. Something in his eyes. “I believe you are a man of peace,” Rockson went on, following a hunch, “I believe you are the premier’s conscience—the voice that counsels sanity for the world. And I tell you now—let me talk with him. Whatever went on between us in the past is irrelevant. We have a common enemy—an enemy who will take us all down with him. You know what I’m talking about, I know you do.”
“Yes,” Rahallah answered, his voice shot up through space and back down to the center of America in one-sixteenth of a second. “I know. I have prayed that something would happen—that the premier would act swiftly and powerfully. Perhaps, Ted Rockson, you are the God-sent messenger to save this dying world. Yes, I will get the premier. But he is tired, so tired these days. Speak gently with him. Try to persuade him, not bludgeon him. I will tell you something. I am on your side, Rockson. I am not a Communist—it is not my way. But I do counsel the Grandfather. He is not a bad man, just a man trapped by karmic events that would crush most of us to a pulp. He is, in his own way, trying to do what he believes is best. And I think—if you are careful—you can get him to help. Be careful, Rockson—it could all ride on this conversation.”
“I hear you, pal,” Rock said softly. “And if you’re ever over this way, drop by Century City, say Rock sent you.”
Within a minute Rockson heard another click and then a feeble voice.
The highly educated Grandfather’s English was excellent. “Rockson—you bastard—I was told you were dead; I hoped you—”
“Ease up, Excellency,” Rockson said softly. “We both, in the past, have screwed each other, okay? We both lied, double-dealed, stabbed each other in the back. So on that score we’re even.” Rockson waited a second to see what the response would be and heard low laughter and then several quick throat-raking coughs.
“You are right, Rockson,” the premier spoke up after spitting a gob of bloody phlegm into his purple silk handkerchief, now coated with the dried red splotches. “We did both, as you colloquially say, screw each other. And now . . . ?”
“And now, we’re going to help each other, Excellency,” Rockson said, glad that they’d at least gotten off on the right foot together. “We know who the threat to the planet Earth is. And though you may think I’m a menace and I certainly don’t like you—it’s not either of us. We’ve been banging away at each other for decades and things are still standing. It’s the Skull, the murderer—Killov. We know he’s taken over huge numbers of your Red Army forts—and Zhabnov has fled D.C. So you can’t be too happy about recent developments.”
“Happy—no,” the premier spat back. “But—my arms are tied, at least for a few months. My forces are spread very thin around the world, and—”
“Don’t be a fool,” Rockson snarled, deciding to take a chance and rile the old fellow a little. “Whoever your troops are battling—in China, Ethiopia, India—it doesn’t matter. Killov—Killov is the only one who matters—the others are just dogs pissing in the bushes. Let’s help each other. I need you, and—”
“The Empire crumbles, Rockson—you don’t understand. It’s nationalistic men like you—always attacking my troops, my convoys, blowing up my fortresses. And when they are gone—barbarism, anarchy. The entire human race will fall into the dark ages from which it will never again arise. I am the last buffer between civilization of any kind and total and complete savagery.”
For the first time, Rock suddenly and instantly saw how the premier viewed the world. To him, he was the last bastion of western civilization—albeit the Slavic, not the Greco-Roman part—he did see himself holding the walls against the hordes; the mutants, the wolves who would devour it all. Trying to save what was left of the books, the computers, the remnants of the old world. In his own way—perhaps the man was heroic in his misguided attempts.
“Excellency, we could get into a debate about this for hours. About how—what appears to you to be barbarism is actually just the patriotism of men around the world wanting to run their own lives and nations. Debate about how, with true freedom there can be no barbarism because each society will make its laws and culture from the bottom, from
the heart, not from the top. You must have had a stern father, and wish to be the same to the world!”
Rockson’s perfect pegging of the premier threw the old man for a loop. He hadn’t realized that anyone could see him that clearly—and it made him feel suddenly terribly vulnerable. He sat in his sweat-soaked bed holding the red phone near his mouth, but was only able to make the movements of his lips—no sounds.
“All right—now you’re angry,” Rock said, pushing ahead with complete abandon. “But within your anger—listen to me. We—the Freefighters throughout America—are going to attack the Blackshirt forces. We’re going to surround fifty of the biggest bases that Killov has managed to gain control of and we’re going to risk our lives to save your men. We can’t allow Killov to get total control—to get access to the nuclear stockpile. He’ll make the U.S. and the world twice as radioactive as it already is from the Big Blow.”
That very thought had been giving nightmares to Premier Vassily. The hundred land-based nuke missiles that Red Army forces had hidden around the occupied country. Killov would have a hard time tracking them down, and getting the launch codes. But he would—doubtless he would.
“What do you want, Rockson?” Vassily asked wearily, as if each second of life was a torturous ordeal.
“I want you to get me some tough men, Excellency. Not Red Army, not guys marching in formation with rows of medals. Not Nazis. I know you’ve got native forces working for you in various parts of the world. Men who have been out there fighting the ‘savages’ as you call them. Fighting the Muabir in Asia—the Flame of Allah; fighting the Viet Sinh in Vietnam: the Utapas in Nicaragua. I want some of those men, Excellency. Men who can chew trees and knock down walls with their fists. Men who are ready to die.” Rockson could picture Vassily’s mind making decisions, calculations. Rockson’s offer was truly, too good to pass up.