Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory

by Ryder Stacy

  Suddenly the two men were past the troops and in a large oval intersection from which all the roads of the city seemed to fan out. They pulled their steeds to a stop for a moment as Rockson looked around, trying to determine the right direction. Everywhere the sounds of fighting, of bullets whizzing, of dynamite erupting in cratered roars, the screams and war cries of the combatants all filled the air with the deafening cacophony of battle.

  “I love it,” General Panchali said, turning to Rockson with a wild look in his eyes. His sword and white robe were now saturated with blood as if they’d been dyed that color. His jewels peeked through the coating of human flesh, sending out an occasional sliver of light. “I can’t deny it, Rockson,” the silver-bearded Sikh warrior laughed, holding his sword to the skies. “I love every damned minute of it. I haven’t felt so alive for months.”

  “You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” the Doomsday Warrior shouted above the din of battle, as he at last sighted the Russian street sign pointing the way to the Command Center.

  “Where to now, Freefighter?” the Sikh general asked with a glow in his eyes, wanting to wade into the human ranks again.

  “I’m gonna get that bastard Killov,” Rock said, taking another clip of shells and putting it in his rein hand so he could reload on the run. “He’s the key. With him captured—or dead, the coup will fall apart throughout America. But it’s going to be bad in there,” he warned, pointing with his pistol hand to the center of the fortress city. “Killov will have his elite forces surrounding the building. The first ones in there are going to be met by an army. Maybe you should—”

  “Trying to keep all the fun to yourself, Freefighter,” Panchali said with a bark. “Lead on, General Rockson. I have not yet begun to kill.”

  Eighteen

  They galloped neck and neck like racehorses trying to beat each other to the finish, down the widest boulevard of Fort Minsk—Trotsky Avenue—toward the Command building which rose from the center of the now smoke-enshrouded city. Two blocks ahead Rockson saw the sandbagged emplacements of the KGB commander’s elite forces, ready to give their lives to save Killov’s. The machine-gun squads saw the riders as well and opened up from ten different positions, sending a blizzard of .50 caliber slugs whistling down the avenue. But Rock pulled Snorter’s reins sharply to the right, making the hybrid wheel about and push Panchali’s horse along with it. Both steeds flew down a side street, nearly losing their balance from the sudden turn, but within a few strides gained it again.

  “We’ll have to come in from the rear,” Rockson screamed out as a series of secondary blasts shook the ground beneath their feet as one of the fortress’s munitions depots went up with the explosive power of a small A-bomb. “They’re too well fortified up front.” They made their way down the narrow streets, heading all the way around the twelve-story central headquarters.

  Suddenly from out of nowhere a KGB’er jumped forward, firing his rifle and stabbing forward with the eighteen-inch-long bayonet mounted on the barrel. The bullet missing Panchali who was nearer the attacker, but the knife blade caught him in mid-thigh, sending him flying off the back of the stallion and onto the street. As he hit the unevenly paved road, the Sikh general sliced behind his head with the sword, ripping across the KGB’er’s stomach. Whatever plans the Blackshirt had had for dispatching the Sikh fighter vanished as his belly spewed out in a gush of red.

  Rock pulled his ’brid to a stop and turned to see dozens of the black jackets pouring from a doorway toward the fallen Sikh.

  “Go ahead, leave me,” Panchali shouted, preparing to swing the sword and pulling out the snub-nosed .44 mag pistol from beneath his robe.

  “Right,” the Doomsday Warrior spat out from the side of his mouth as he kicked Snorter and shot into the wall of KGB elite troops who had closed in on the fallen warrior. But they had bitten off more than they could chew as Rockson and the Sikh went wild, both of them sighting and firing, slashing, kicking out like whirlwinds of death. Within seconds half of the attacking Blackshirts were lying on the ground, dead or wishing they were as their severed arteries vomited out every drop within. As Rock’s .12 gauge shotpistol clicked empty he jumped down from his ’brid and pulled out his long-bladed hunting knife, courtesy of the Sioux nation, and dove into the thick of it—a blur of muscle and an impossible catch, ripping at every shape he saw.

  Before they knew it, it was over. The two of them stood back to back, their heads snapping around like owls, searching out the next man who wanted to die. But there were no more takers. The three KGB who were left pulled back, looked down at the remains of their comrades, and turned, throwing their weapons down as they disappeared into a dark basement to hide.

  “I told you to keep going,” Panchali shouted to Rockson as they remounted.

  “Disobeyed orders,” Rock grinned. “You’ll have to courtmartial me when it’s over.” Panchali gave a flash of a smile of thanks to the Doomsday Warrior, but in his soldier’s heart he felt wounded, not wishing to owe his life to any man. The Sikh ripped one of the silk scarves from his neck and tied it around his leg to stop the flow of blood.

  “Can you ride?” Rock asked.

  “My corpse could handle a horse better than most living men,” Panchali snapped back and the two warriors shot forward again, their steeds jumping over the odd assortment of bodies and appendages on the street. They rode for another five blocks and came up behind the building. But again it was as well guarded as the front and they had to pull back quickly, ducking behind a building wall to escape the hail of slugs.

  “This ain’t gonna work,” Rock said, dismounting. “We can’t come in head-on—we’ll have to sneak in.”

  “Never,” Panchali said, sitting stubbornly atop his stallion. “A Sikh warrior must attack his enemy head-on, or—”

  “Or bullshit,” Rock said, his voice rising. “If you want to donate your body to the butcher’s heap, be my guest. But I’m more interested in ending this whole damned thing. There’ll be other wars, pal. Other charges with bugles blowing.” He turned and started toward a smaller building that faced the Command Center without waiting to see if the Asian general was going to follow.

  As he came to a locked door and put his shoulder against it, Rock felt the Sikh’s presence just behind him.

  “All right, all right, we’ll do it your way,” Panchali muttered into his ear. “But how the hell are we going to get in there, anyway?”

  “The Reds often build underground tunnels linking their various command buildings—just in case of attack. But we can use them for our purposes as well—for attack.” Rock pulled back a few inches and then slammed forward with all his mutant strength, snapping the lock on the inside. The steel door flew open and the two fighters par excellence rushed through, weapons at the ready, but the dimly lit underground passage was unguarded, at least at this end. With Rockson in the lead they ran along the crumbling corridor, much in need of repair as the Reds apparently hadn’t paid attention to it for years. Doors stood half open on both sides of them, falling half off their hinges—and inside were darkened storage rooms, filled with the scent of rot and decay. Though there were numerous leadoffs heading in all directions, Rock steered them straight on toward where he figured the Command Building to be.

  Sure enough, they came to the end of the main tunnel and then up some stairs to another locked door. On the other side they could hear voices mumbling in frantic Russian about just what the hell was going on out there as the explosions and the gunfire were growing closer by the minute. Rock and Panchali stood facing each other on the top step and at a nod from the Doomsday Warrior, they both slammed their shoulders against the structure and burst through. They found themselves, when they had risen from the floor, in the center of a machine-gun nest—bad luck for the opposition as the tripod-mounted .50 caliber submachine gun was pointed in the other direction, toward the main front doors. Before the five KGB’ers could find their handguns, Panchali’s sword had found two necks to dissect and
Rock’s fist two faces that shattered beneath his knuckles like leftovers in a bowl of cherry pie mix. The fifth KGB trooper made the mistake of pulling his knife and waving it in Panchali’s face instead of running. The Sikh general made a grimace of disgust at such a feeble gesture, slicing the knife and the hand holding it clear off the man’s body in one swing, and with the backward stroke nearly cleaved the man in two at the waist, the messy sack that was left of him tumbling over to join his fighting buddies in their long sleep.

  Now that Panchali was killing again he seemed to get a little less disgruntled, the semblance of a pleased expression returning to his stony face.

  “Come on,” Rockson yelled as he heard a squad’s worth of boots slamming down on the corridor floor just around the corner. “These are the peons—we’re after El Excellente himself.”

  He searched frantically around the wide floor and saw it—the elevator bank. Grabbing Panchali by the sleeve, Rock rushed over and pressed the “up” button on all four panels. A heavy whir of grinding gears and whining cables issued forth and the green light above one lit up as the door slid open. They virtually flew inside, slamming into the back wall as the elevator was much smaller than he had thought. Rock turned and found the buttons and instinctively punched 12—the top floor—sensing in his gut that Killov, with his eightieth-floor suite back at his command center in the Monolith in Denver, Colorado, would have chosen the highest vantage point here as well.

  His finger had barely pressed the button when heavily armed KGB commandos came storming around the hall and sighted the two intruders. They lifted their submachine guns and unleashed a storm that would have cut an elephant in two. But the doors slammed shut with a satisfying bang and the elevator headed upstairs as Rock and Panchali heard the pinging of countless slugs against the steel doors below.

  “This is it, General,” Rock said as the “10” and then the “11” flashed on the indicator board. “When we hit ‘12’—move as fast as you’ve ever moved in your life. This—this Killov is no ordinary man.”

  “No—?” Panchali asked with a curious expression. “How interesting. I’m growing bored with killing ordinary men—it’s like shooting carp in a pond. Perhaps we will have a worthy challenge.” Rockson threw a skeptical look at Panchali but didn’t have time to debate the man’s character as “12” lit up and the doors flew open.

  It wasn’t that Panchali was slow, but that Rockson was just a millimeter faster. He saw the five men standing yards from the doors, their rifles aimed dead forward, and reacted with the speed of a striking piranha. As he dove forward, Rock kicked Panchali’s leg out from under him, bringing the man down like a stone to the corridor floor. The KGB assassins opened up like a firing squad, sure they had the men in their graves. But the slugs only found closing elevator doors and ricocheted off, careening backwards. Rockson’s .12 gauge equalizer was in his hands at the moment the Reds fired. By the time they realized they’d missed, his finger had moved three times. Five bodies flew backward as if hit by the fist of God himself, leaving five bright red trails on the floor all the way to the back wall, fifteen feet behind them.

  “That’s the second time, Freefighter,” Panchali said, jumping to his feet, “that you’ve saved my life. I am growing too indebted to you.”

  “Forget it, man,” Rock said as they headed down the hall on their toes. “Just your coming to this country, where every goddamned thing seems to want to kill a man or at least take a bite out of him, is payment a thousand times over.”

  As they went down the hall they kicked open doors, ready to incinerate whatever was inside. But all the rooms were empty. They came to the last and main door at the end of the corridor and again, facing each other just inches apart, shoulder-slammed into it, smashing the rectangle from its hinges. Both men stumbled into the room, their weapons high.

  “Ah, welcome, gentlemen,” said a cold voice dripping with lies and deceit in every word. “I’ve been expecting you. Although I didn’t realize I was going to have two guests.” Both fighters focused on the man who sat in the misty dimness at the far end of the room behind a long wooden desk, both hands clasped together on the heavily waxed top. Could it be—him? Killov?

  “Thanks for the greeting,” Rockson said, his shotpistol pointed at the calm man’s chest, as he and the Sikh walked forward.

  The gaunt man’s face moved out of the shadows. Rockson would know it anywhere. The evil skull features, the reddish scar he had himself placed on that face-of-death. “Killov!” Rockson snarled. “You are our prisoner, you will stand trial for war crimes—or die right here, right now. However you want it, bastard.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” Killov said, his eyes wide, the pupils dilated big as quarters. “You really should be taught some manners. Pity you won’t get the chance to learn.” Still his long pale hands were plainly in sight. Rockson didn’t get his making threats.

  “You must finally be cracking, slime, from all those drugs you pile into that skeleton of a body,” Rockson sneered. “I think you’re the one who’s finished—not us.”

  “Perhaps there are factors you don’t know about,” the KGB commander said with the icy smoothness of a razor cutting flesh.

  “Like what?” Rockson asked, his eyes darting suddenly around the room, searching for hidden attackers.

  “Like this!” Killov screamed, all the rage he had been suppressing over the imminent loss of Minsk exploding from him. The Blackshirt leader pushed his knee up hard under the desk and thus pressed a button. Whether he was intending to reach Killov with his sword, or to shield Rockson from what was coming, the Doomsday Warrior couldn’t tell—but suddenly Panchali was jumping in front of him. There was as roar from the whole front side of Killov’s desk as the wooden panels flew off and a mounted rack of ten arrayed shotguns fired simultaneously at waist level. The wall of shots hit the Sikh general dead on, ripping into every part of his torso. Rockson, standing three feet behind him, was shielded from the majority of the blasts though he felt stabbing pellet fragments rip into his right shoulder and leg. Panchali was thrown straight backward as if running in reverse and slammed into Rockson, dropping them both down. Before he even made contact with the floor, Rock had his pistol up and pulled the trigger over and over again until the chamber was empty.

  But before a single one of his shells could take root in the mad KGBer’s flesh, Killov had already pushed another button. A peeled-open steel globe shot up from the floor and snapped closed around his entire chair, shielding the madman inside in an impenetrable cocoon. Rock’s shots bounced harmlessly off the thick outer alloy-layering. Suddenly the room was filled with a deep vibration and a rocket system ignited on the underside of the diving-bell shaped device.

  Using all his strength, Rockson pulled the dead weight of Panchali out of the way of the flames emerging from the desk as the heat swept by them both like the fire of a furnace. The white ignition flame changed to the blast of a full-sized escape-rocket taking off and the globe shot backward, smashing right through the twelfth-floor wall and out into the air.

  Rockson ran forward and coughing from the hot smoke, peered through the twisted opening, pieces of wall still tumbling to the street below, and saw the escape device shooting through the night like a meteor until it disappeared far over the vast woods to the north of them. Rock let his gaze fall to the streets below where Freefighters and Sikhs were streaming past the Command Building. The KGB was in full retreat now, many of them driving vehicles at full speed trying to get out the back entrance of the fort. But there would be no escape for them. Only their master had made it out.

  Rock walked back to Panchali and knelt down beside him. The man was still alive, his eyes open and weakly alert. But the Doomsday Warrior had been around too many wounded, too many dying not to know that the Sikh didn’t have a chance. He was bleeding in over thirty places, thick streams of red that pulsed, and emptied out his life onto the floor around him. Rock reached down and put one arm under the man’s head, lifting him slightly so he
could breathe easier.

  “Thank you, Freefighter,” Panchali said as he looked up at Rockson with a smug smile. “See—I repaid you. Now we are even.”

  “No—now I am once again in your debt,” Rock said softly. “And I don’t know if I’m going to get the chance to repay you,” he whispered so low it could hardly be heard.

  “Don’t whimper like a raw recruit,” Panchali barked out, coughing up blood. “I know I’m dying. It is obvious. But Rockson,” he said, looking the Doomsday Warrior square in the eye, with incredible power in his gaze even as he lay mortally wounded, “do not mourn for me. My life has been a miraculous adventure—and my greatest wish in life—to die in the midst of glorious foreign battle—has been granted. Can you see me growing old and fat, sitting at a desk? No! I go now on the river of my own blood across the Styx into the land of fallen warriors.” He held his hand out and squeezed it tightly around Rockson’s. “I shall see you there someday—friend.” His hand tightened and then relaxed and Rockson knew—it was over.