“All right, you’re not too bad with stationary targets,” Stone said after they’d blasted various structures into nonexistence. “Unfortunately none of the bastards we’re going to be fighting will be stationary. So now we’ll try some mobile firing. Drivers, in combat situations the gunner takes command. You listen to him.” They started forward, Stone in the lead, going through desolate flatlands with the fields of cacti and anthills off to their left. “Black cactus with three arms at a half mile,” Stone yelled into the mouthpiece. Within seconds both gunners had found the target, and their cannons erupted almost simultaneously. One of the shells crashed down about ten yards past, the second just a yard or so in front.
“Again,” Stone screamed. “You missed—that’s a tank—he’s going to blow your ass up. Take that motherfucker out. Fire, and don’t stop until—” But he hadn’t even finished his harangue when both barrels screamed out tongues of flames, once, twice, three times—a total of six high-explosive shells. Stone kept them moving ahead at about twenty miles per hour while he sighted up to observe the damage. They had not only taken out the offending vegetation but had gouged out a swimming pool-size hole where the vanished cactus had just stood.
They were doing a hell of a lot better than he had expected. And they were competing with each other—each tank’s crew striving to do better than the other. Still, they’d have to do a lot better than that. He had no illusions about the enemy they were facing, three Bradleys against perhaps fifty, against a heavily armored fortress—this time on the alert. It was insane, it was impossible. Stone knew the odds against him were something no betting man would take. But if he had worried about the odds, Stone would have just laid in a comer and gone to sleep.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
NIGHT FELL suddenly like a veil dropping over the earth. In the twilight even Stone found it difficult going. As the stars started snapping on across the skies, Stone pulled his troops to a stop just as they approached more foothills. They had been getting all the breaks so far, and Stone didn’t want to push it. He bivouacked them into a half-circle with their backs to a sheer rock wall and set a guard. Then the men cooked, and after dinner a crate of hidden beer was pulled out. They looked at Stone, wondering if he was going to nix the after-dinner imbibing. But he spat and looked away. Like he had told them he wasn’t “that kind” of officer. He had seen enough rules-and-regulation asshole brass in his life to turn him into an anarchist forever.
A bottle was thrown across to him, and Stone grabbed it from the air. He opened it with the hilt of his long, custom bowie, having found the exact spot that created identical torques and angles to a can opener, and took a deep swig. He turned his head and spat it out, but surreptitiously, so the other men didn’t see him and feel hurt by his rejection of their homemade brew. Excaliber, who had been lying with his head on his paws, sniffed the air, and his eyes grew alert. He rose up, stretching his back into a sudden hump and then back down again, and then moseyed the few feet over to Stone, who let the bottle dangle at his side.
“Want some dog?” Stone asked, holding the amber bottle up to the pitbull’s mouth. The fighting dog had enjoyed Dr. Kennedy’s brew—maybe he’d like this. The huge sandpaper-like tongue darted out like a snake’s as Stone poured a little of the foaming liquid onto it. Excaliber slurped it back in, paused a second while the taste buds and like-dislike judgment centers of his brain argued things out for a moment. The “like” clearly won as the dog shot back to the bottle and his tongue lapped in and out quickly over and over again like some kind of pink suction device. Stone poured a steady stream of the brew out, and though half of it bounced off the slapping tongue, Excaliber quickly finished the bottle off. He stood back and burped, then turned unsteadily and headed back to where he had been and lay down again getting into nearly exactly the same position he had been minutes before. One eye closed, the other half open, his tongue hanging slightly out of his mouth like a flap out of a shoe, he looked all in all the picture of pitbull contentment.
Stone’s mind was boiling. The responsibility of saving the whole damned state was on his back now. And he didn’t like it. April too. He hadn’t even thought about her for the last two days—he’d been too busy just surviving, just keeping the wolves at the door. He was just a mortal man. A nadi— yes, the term the Ute Indians had given him after they saved him from violent death. He with the gift of death. Yes, Stone had it, but he also had a heart and a gut. And they both felt like they were about to explode. From the moment he had left his father’s mountain bunker, Stone had been fighting. And though so far he had won them all, the battles had gotten bigger each time, the stakes higher. It was as if he were rising in some kind of hierarchy of war. Some unknown battle plan taking him somewhere he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“April, April,” Stone sent out from his trembling mind into the star-riddled sky above, flashing with meteors, slivers of light that slashed across the black and blue skies like swords leaving long, ethereal trails in their wake. “I’ve got to do one thing first. But I swear I’ll get you. Hang on, baby. Hang on.” He did something he hadn’t done for years, and he felt like a fool as he did it. But pulling a blanket up over his chest as he lay, head back against his rolled-up jacket, Stone put his hands together in prayer, closed his eyes, and asked whoever ran this sick show to give his sister a break. To let her live. And if she had to die—if it was her time—to not let her get raped or mutilated. But just take her—fast. With a bullet or a bomb.
When he awoke with a start the next morning, Stone heard something growling at his feet and discovered his hands still clenched tightly against each other, his teeth sore from having ground against each other throughout the chilly night. His eyes opened, and he saw the pitbull about three feet directly in front of his face. It was staring straight down at something right in front of Stone. He looked sleepily down, raising one hand to rub his swollen eye and froze in the air. A rattler! A big son of a bitch too. This one looked to be six feet long. It was coiled back not two feet from Stone’s shoulder, coiled like a spring, its head balanced up on its swaying body, tongue snapping in and out. It stared at both of them, unsure of which was the more dangerous, and flicked its eyes back and forth, trying to keep both of them at an equal distance.
Stone was in no position to move fast, his entire weight on his side where he had been sleeping. But the serpent seemed more concerned about the growls coming from the pitbull and the incisors that glistened in the rays of the morning sun. The snake had probably been slithering by after night hunting, and Excaliber had seen it. It would have been better just to let it go by. But then, growing pitbulls had to have their fun. Stone stayed absolutely still, as if he were a statue. Excaliber’s head suddenly moved fast from the right, and the snake launched itself right up into the air, its jaws opened wide, fangs dripping with poisonous venom. But the pitbull’s charge had been just a feint. As quickly as it started from the right, the dog twisted his back and around like a Slinkie, and came in from the left. The timber rattler sensed the change in direction at the last second, but it was too late. It had already launched—and there was no turning back.
The entire length of the black-and-gray diamond-patterned snake seemed for an instant to spread straight out as its fangs closed on the spot that the pitbull had just been inhabiting. But the canine jaws ripped up from underneath, coming into the thing sideways. His teeth closed cleanly around the head, and he bit hard. Then just as quickly he opened the white mouth and spat out again, and the snake flew off in pieces. Stone pulled himself out of the way of the whipping, but now harmless, body of the thing that fell across his shoulder. With disgust he ripped it free and flung it off and then glanced down at the ground where the head and but a few inches of the body still writhed around, the jaws still opening and closing. Excaliber slapped his paw against the thing, and damned if it didn’t try to bite him. But with nothing to propel itself, the dying animal jawed feebly at the air like an old man without his dentures
.
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 land
ed 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!”
War Weapons Page 5