Lights and meters, readout monitors, screens, graphs, all beeped and flashed throughout the room. Apparatus was piled atop apparatus, so that the place looked like a madman’s junk shop. Only it wasn’t junk but all the latest high-tech gear—in computers, computer linkups, data gathering. His father had brought in tons of computer parts and backups when he had stocked the place. And everything still seemed to work perfectly. Stone knew as he moved among them that the machines were automatically carrying out all sorts of tasks—from measuring the radiation in the air outside to attending to the bunker’s life-support systems, temperature controls, solar panel adjustments…. The computer system ran the whole fucking show.
Stone sat down at the main work substation and flicked the monitor and keyboard on. The thing roared to life with a whir, and several little green lights came on here and there around the machine. The thing was user-friendly, thank God, and a menu suddenly appeared on the screen in little green letters, asking him the category of information he wanted access to.
“Great,” Stone muttered to himself as he faced the screen. This was always the problem—what question to ask the fucking thing. He had no idea how much information his father had had access to or been able to process into the system. It would just have to be trial and error.
“Missile Sites,” Stone punched into the keyboard before him. The machine clicked, and a few lights went on and off as it communicated with the mainframe off on the other side of the room, a large box, a simplified version of a Cray II, one of the most advanced computer systems. But the thing beeped a few times, a red warning light flashed on and off, and then a message flashed on the screen. A message from the dead, from his father.
“Martin, I can only assume if you are reading this that I am dead and that for some reason you must have access to this information. In the last few months before it all came down, I was able to tap into a number of military computer systems for the whole central portion of the country—and gather quite a bit of information. Also, as the U.S. deteriorated, there was still a lot of transmissions going on via satellite from one isolated installation to another. This, too, was fed into the mainframe. Thus you will discover there is a wealth of material for you to draw from. Merely key in your subject by name, and the Cray will either display this information or help you find it—if this is possible.”
Stone watched the streams of letters as they fed across the screen in front of him. The hand of his father had input all this. It was weird, as if the old man were still sitting in this chair, as if his ghost danced among the circuitry. Stone felt a shudder ripple through his body, and he tried to concentrate on the screen—keep the rest out.
“But first, just to make sure no one else has gained access to this computer, you must answer a question that no one else could know, but you, I, and your mother. That is the access code to this part of the computer’s classified information. It’s silly, but I couldn’t think of another one as good.”
“Come on, Dad, come on,” Stone said impatiently. He’d been away from the tank force three hours already and hadn’t even begun to get anything together. But the question flashed on the screen, and Stone’s face wrinkled up in a wide smile.
“What was the name of your pet hamster when you were twelve, the one that died of a heart attack during a thunderstorm?” Stone stared at the screen, numerous emotions rippling across his face. Because for the life of him he couldn’t remember. So much had happened recently that many memories of his old life were in shambles, drifting tatters of thought; broken images that he could hardly remember and didn’t know for sure if they were real or just dreams. The hamster—what the fuck was its name? The blank space after the flashing cursor on the screen waited for him to fill it in, and Stone started madly typing names.
“Clifton, Spike, Charlie, Ink, Topper…” Every name he could vaguely remember liking when young. But the computer rejected them all, one after another, flashing a red light and the words “Incorrect Answer” each time. This was ridiculous. The fate of Colorado itself hanging on his long dead pet hamster. “Aquaman,” he suddenly typed impulsively into the keyboard, remembering that the underwater hero had been a particular favorite of his and he had collected hundreds of the comic books.
The screen clicked, whirred, and a green light went on above it, then the words “You may proceed” appeared.
“Missile Sites,” Stone punched in again, slamming the “Command Execute” button.
“Location?” the computer asked.
“Utah, Colorado area.” Stone keyed in. The thing whirred again, and across the room Stone heard the mainframe itself switch into gear as lights lit up along one side of the steel square the size of a large refrigerator into and out of which wires ran all over the place, connecting the central portion of the computer system to all the other functions it carried out throughout the bunker. Within about twenty seconds a list of nearly fifty locations appeared on the screen. Stone whistled. Great. Suddenly the computer terminal started spouting out more data.
“Nonfunctional, forty-seven—functional three. Locations —Livermore, Wellington, Pawnee. Of remaining three, transmission monitored by radioscan, indicate, Livermore and Wellington are functional and active.” A map appeared at the top of the screen as the image split into two, showing a map of northern Colorado. The two locations flashed green; on and off, right next to each other, only fifty or so miles north of where Stone was standing. “Each silo known to contain one ten-megaton ICBM missile, capable of ten-thousand-mile flight path. Two man firing crew, requiring simultaneous double key turn for execution of firing commands.” The message stopped, and a question mark appeared, asking him what further information he required.
Stone’s jaw hung open as he stared at the screen. He had thought at best it might give him a vague clue as to where to proceed, but it had pinpointed it exactly. And suddenly Stone remembered Patton mentioning the word Livermore over the radio back at Fort Bradley when they had been on better terms. Stone hit the “Close-up” button, and the map suddenly enlarged a hundred times, bringing the local detail of the terrain into superlarge perspective so Stone could see every road, every mountain, for ten miles around the place. He pressed “Close-up” again, and the image inside the screen seemed to rush up at him as if he were falling from a plane getting nearer and nearer to its very microscopic surface. A detailed plan of the silo itself filled the screen, showing levels, entrances, control booth….
Stone studied the information for several minutes and then cleared the screen, starting from scratch. This time he keyed in “Personnel.”
In a few seconds the computer asked, “Service, name, rank?”
“Army, General Patton III,” Stone keyed in, and sat back with his chin in his hand, wondering if it would even have a thing on him.
The mainframe behind him chugged away, as if it were struggling with the question. After about thirty seconds the reply came. “No record of General Patton III on normal service personnel files; however, standard cross-reference check to radioscan shows mention of such a name as commander of the New American Army. Cross-check shows man previously to have been identified as Colonel Strath. Records as follows.” The computer proceeded to read out line after line of Patton n6e Strath’s biography: Education at West Point; Distinguished army career; Service in Vietnam, and as a colonel just before the country collapsed. It all looked innocuous enough, Stone thought as he rested his head down on both folded elbows and watched the lines scroll by one after another.
Then it came to “Psychiatric Evaluation,” and Stone’s eyes opened wide. “Manic depressive, with delusions of grandeur—bordering on psychosis.” Stone read, fascinated, as what were apparently a number of detailed psychiatric reports scrolled by him. The Führer had had quite a few problems along the way. But his good-old-boy buddies in the higher echelons with whom he trained with at the Point had kept him out of trouble. The man obviously was mad. He had paranoid delusions that he was meant to be a great savior to mankind and
that others were out to stop him. He would do anything “that had to be done” to take them out. But apparently he had been put on some sort of medication, and the whole thing had been swept under the carpet.
Yeah, only now he ain’t taking his medication no more, Stone thought with disgust as he got to the end of the readout. The monitor went back to a blank screen to await his next request. Stone fed some more questions about tank warfare into the computer. Questions about flanking, strategies for armor against armor, the advantage of mobile over stationary tactics. Every bit of information he could get his hands on. He was about to try to take on what was probably the most powerful and well-armed force in the country. With three tanks. Stone just kept wishing he could lie down, could just fall into endless sleep. Because nothing he was finding out was making him feel any more fucking cheerful. He shut off the terminal, though the rest of the room kept humming away, a factory of information processing. He walked through the door. It slid closed behind him, the lights inside instantly shutting off. After all, computers didn’t need light to see by. They had eyes inside their heads.
CHAPTER
NINE
STONE STARTED down the hall, his shoulders slumped, his head bowed forward. He felt in a daze, asleep on his feet, as if he hardly knew where he was. Shit, he just needed to sit down. Have a cup of coffee. Just ten minutes of nothing. There was too much information for his brain to process, to assimilate. Yeah, he’d just go in the kitchen and—
A blow slammed into the back of his skull, and his senses reeled. He felt himself falling into blackness as stars of brilliant color danced rapidly by before him. Then he felt his face slam into the wall, and though the blow was incredibly painful, pushing his nose in almost flat, the sheer electricity of its painfulness brought him out of near unconsciousness. He curled up into a ball at the base of the wall and spun around, pulling himself a foot to the side as he did so. And just barely in time, for the wall where his flesh had just been was stabbed by a long knife, the blade so strong and thick it pierced the plasterboard to the hilt. In the dim light of the long hallway with the soft, plush, low-cut carpeting beneath him, Stone could see there were four of them. How in hell they had gotten in here and how they even knew where the place was were questions that raced through his mind.
But for the moment he was more interested in the knives they all held, long stilleto-shaped commando blades, razor-sharp, with only one purpose—to kill human beings. They wore NAA camouflage slacks and black sweatshirts and jackets. And pinned to the lapels of each jacket, Pattern’s elite forces symbol—crossed fists over Ml6, the cheerful symbol of the Gestapo of the madman’s army. They sneered at Stone, their faces all blackened with grease—their hands, too—so that not a patch of them would reflect any light. And this was the night he had decided to relieve himself of his weapons at the door, wanting to relax without their death dealing responsibility on his hip and shoulder every second of every day. And now … He promised himself that if he lived through all this, he would never take off his fucking guns again—even when he went to take a crap.
“Heard you were tough, tough boy,” one of them said with a sneer as he came at Stone, slowly, one carefully placed foot at a time. “I think you’re just dead meat.” The man leapt forward, slashing down with the twelve-inch blade of the commando knife. Had it been anyone else but Martin Stone, the victim undoubtedly would have been rump roast. But Stone had trained for years in hand-to-hand and knife fighting. He had learned from the best, the very best. For the Major had been famous throughout Asia for his knife and other silent killing techniques. The severed heads of VC search-and-destroy forces sitting on poles along the Northern Mekong would attest to that. Stone, staying down low near the ground, was in excellent position to throw a low kick. He snapped his foot straight out and smashed into the attacker’s kneecap. The thick ball of bone shattered with a crack like a huge chicken bone, and the leg suddenly bent backward at a weird angle. As the man stumbled forward, losing his balance and toppling over onto his left side, Stone slid up the wall he had been crouched against and caught the still outstretched knife hand in a strong grip. He twisted the hand up so the knife instantly fell free, and then helped the falling man on his journey by throwing his palm down behind the commando’s neck and driving his face into the floor. Because it was carpet, it didn’t crush his skull—it did smash everything in an inch or two, including his nose, which drove up into his skull. The nasal cartilage pierced right into the brain tissue and the man started, and then instantly stopped, a scream, a scream that caught in his throat as the engine that drove the whole fleshy deal stopped dead in its tracks.
But there was another assassin just behind him. The burly commando raised his knife in a lunging attack, slashing forward, and then back and forth, in a windmill of cuts. But Stone stepped back, once, twice, as the man took two steps forward. Then, as he started on a third, Stone rushed in, caught the swinging arm at the elbow, and pushed the knife past him, turning the attacker so that his side was exposed. Stone drove his own blade up and right through the rib cage, pushing it sideways—so it didn’t catch on the bone, as his father had shown him—and deep into the attacker’s flesh. The blade first pierced the man’s lung, then his heart, cutting the aorta so that blood exploded out and all over Stone as well as the rug and walls. Stone ripped the knife out and pushed the man down the hall toward the two attackers as the dying NAA’er screamed out in pain, his hands slapped over the gushing fountain that poured from his side.
Stone took a chance. If he could just get to the other room and his pistols. He turned and started running. Never had the forty-foot-long hallway seemed so long or so dark. Like a child’s nightmare, he just couldn’t seem to get to the other end no matter how fast he ran. He was almost there when suddenly he felt something wrap around his feet and he fell forward, nearly slamming into the wall but deflecting himself with his raised arms. Still, he crashed down onto the carpeted floor and stared down at his feet where some sort of bololike device—two pieces of perfectly round steel attached to each end of a long leather thong, had wrapped two or three times around his ankles. He was hog-tied, and the NAA death squad—the two who were still alive—were tearing ass down the hallway with blood in their eyes. Stone reached forward to try to undo his tangled legs, knowing there was no way in hell he would be able to do it in time. As far as he could see, he was about to die.
Excaliber, meanwhile, had moseyed off the moment he had entered the bunker. He remembered the place well, having explored it thoroughly on his last visit when he had laid down a scent trail to remind him of just where the best observation posts were. The trail also led directly to the kitchen. Now the pitbull was already exploding with food, and even the thought of more made it feel a little ill. But it had daydreamed about the kitchen here, and the feeding frenzy it had experienced the last time here. It was pulled forward by pure lust, pure desire to fulfill its dog dreams. And so, remembering where Stone had taken the dozens of cans down from, Excaliber pushed a chair over to a wall, climbed up on it, and opened the door with his paw. The shining cans inside were piled high, but the dog had no way of knowing what taste lay in what container. He reached up with his paw and knocked a few cans down from the top of each pile. They tumbled over him, some landing on his head, then falling down to the tiled kitchen floor. When it seemed like there was enough of a sampling—to start, anyway—the pitbull jumped back down and began nosing the cans around.
Paradise at its feet, the terrier sniffed at the metal containers, batted them with its paws, whined at them, did everything a dog could to persuade them to open and release their flavorful morsels. But nothing being forthcoming, the pitbull regressed to a more primitive approach, took one of the cans in his jaws, lifted it high, and snapped down hard on it. The incisors on both sides of his mouth pierced the can like a metal opener, and peach syrup began flowing through the holes. The dog balanced the can in its mouth and bit again, this time opening even larger holes so that some of the smal
l half spheres of terribly sweet peaches squirted through and down into its mouth.
That was better. The pitbull shook the can back and forth, draining every bit of fluid and fleck of fruit inside. Then it flung the used receptacle aside, so it flew through the air and crashed at the far end of the kitchen. He sniffed around the pile of cans that lay strewn around and then poked at a big one, making it stand up on end. Opening his jaws to the maximum, the fighting terrier slammed them down hard, again piercing the container with four deep and even cuts. He lifted the can high in the air upside down and chomped again. This time pickles, gherkins and hamburger slices, mixed together, all flooded out and down into his throat. At first the dog liked the taste and gulped them down. But on the second gulp the thick, vinegary flavor made it cough, and the pitbull exploded in a violent sneeze, spitting the can halfway across the floor as small pickles of various shapes and sizes sprayed out, flying against drawers and tables around the entire kitchen.
Undaunted, after shaking its head a few times to clear its juice-flooded nose, the pitbull reached for another can and another … . It was draining the tenth can when it heard the first scream coming from the long hallway. The dog knew instantly that its master was in trouble, and it started across the smooth kitchen floor so rapidly that its claws scraped across the surface skidded in place. At last it got some friction going and shot forward, out of the kitchen and into the living room. It knew the direction instinctively and turned left at the living room, its back end skidding around and crashing over an aluminum light pole that lit one end of the room.
There, in the hall, the pitbull saw its master, and above him were two men with pain things in their hands. The bull-terrier shot forward, this time getting good leverage against the carpeting of the hall. It accelerated like a rocket, coming out of nowhere before the two NAA commandos even saw it.
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