by Ryder Stacy
FREEDOM’S CHALLENGE
Russia’s nuclear first strike against an unprepared United States has turned the land of the free into the home of brutal hordes of Soviet invaders intent on enslaving all who survived the atomic holocaust. But out of the radioactive rubble emerges a heroic leader of American rebels who choose to fight for freedom’s cause or die in the attempt. He is the ultimate soldier of survival, the Doomsday Warrior himself, Ted Rockson.
After years of hard-fought resistance against the hated Red oppressor, Rockson’s band of Freefighters have forced the highest authority in Moscow to convene a peace conference in the ruins of Washington, D.C. But the renegade leader of the KGB, Colonel Killov, has other plans. If his insurgent terror-commandos capture the Russian Missile Carrier anchored in the Potomac River, Killov’s maniacal dream of world domination—and the destruction once and for all of his greatest enemy, Ted Rockson—will be within his grasp. Once again the clouds of deadly radiation will drift across the ravaged land. America’s last and only hope for peace and freedom is the . . .
DOOMSDAY
WARRIOR
DEATH FROM ABOVE
Ted Rockson looked up at the black SK-9 chopper with death’s head markings. It was bearing down on him, and Rock suddenly realized with horror that he had fallen into a trap.
He started to roll out of the way, but had gotten only a yard or two when the whole world erupted into brimstone and blinding light—and Rockson was suddenly spinning through the air, the water below coming at him like a gigantic mirror.
And then he was in the water, turning and rolling like a little boy caught in the big breakers at the beach. But the Doomsday Warrior knew this time he was way over his head. And probably wasn’t coming out!
ZEBRA BOOKS
are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
475 Park Avenue South
New York, N.Y. 10016
ISBN: 0-8217-2211-5
Copyright © 1987 by Ryder Stacy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
First printing: November 1987
Printed in the United States of America
One
“Here the waters lead toward Hell
a frightful ferryman keeps the river watch
a ragged horror whose eyes are flames
knotted rags hang filthy from his frame
he poles his craft, he tends its sail
and in its rusty hull he freights the dead
the leaky vessel groans beneath the weight
then passes across the river of death
from which none return”
The Aeneid
The huge black tanker loomed through the fog like some spectral creature from a nightmare. It pushed on, steadily, patiently, through the thick mist that covered the Atlantic for hundreds of miles. It moved as if it could not be stopped, its great momentum of black steel carving a path through the dark green sea as wounded water foamed and leaped from its path. It carried no running lights, no flags of identification, not even a name appeared on its bow.
It was a monstrous vessel, a Universe-class oil tanker built in the Ishikawajima-Harima shipyards of Kune, Japan, in 2077 A.D. It was one of the largest ships ever constructed by man.
Christened the Mimbutsu, it had since passed through several hands, becoming, in turn, the Greek Pleiades, the Argentinian City of Bravo and the South African Boermaster, before finally vanishing in an international shuffle of maritime papers. It had been purchased recently for gold by a Middle Eastern man.
Now, the tanker once again crossed the sea like some reborn serpent from the beginning of time, its long, hard, steel body disappearing and reappearing in the steaming clouds of fog that hop-scotched the ocean.
The crew of desert-browned men aboard knew the vessel as the “Dhul Hajja—The Carrier of The Prophet,” and indeed, it was a ship worthy of carrying the greatest of kings.
The Dhul Hajja measured, 1,213 feet in length and 206 feet in width. It stood tall as a ten-story building, while the radar towers at each end of the ship reached another 60 feet into the air. Its I.H.I. twin turbine engines churned out 63,900 horsepower that whipped thirty-foot propellers through the thrashing water. The tanker was of such weight that it consumed 17 gallons of oil just to move the distance of its own length through the water. Within its thick metal skin, the Dhul Hajja could, when fully loaded, hold 1,000,000 gallons of one of the most precious cargoes in the modern world—oil.
But today it did not carry this life’s blood of civilization. Today, as it moved steadily at 15 knots through the Atlantic’s dark waters slowly cooling from the summer’s heat, it carried death.
The black-clad ‘Servants of Death’ slowly walked the long deck of the tanker, heavy rifles slung around their shoulders, watching for any sign of trouble. But only a lonely seagull occasionally flew by, looking lost and far from home. The men could feel a constant shuddering vibration in the deck below their feet, where others of their group worked feverishly preparing for the Day of Judgement that was soon to come.
Here, in the middle of the vast ocean, it seemed strange, almost like a dream, to have spent the last years of their lives in the middle of the Libyan desert. They remembered—as their boots clanked across the steel deck—remembered the sand and the sun like a blast furnace, the scorpions scuttling along like angry crabs. They remembered the pain, the endless agonies they had endured.
The Servants of Death had been trained thoroughly in all the arts of killing. They had learned to shoot pistols and rifles and machine guns while running and while lying on their stomachs on the hot desert sand. They shot at dummies, piercing them with bullet holes until they looked rotted and worm-eaten, and until their own eyes burned in the shimmering rays of the North African sun.
They had learned how to stab and blind and kill with their commando knives in hand-to-hand fighting. It had been a very thorough course. Six of the trainees were killed in “mock” knife combat.
They had been taught to slide through bushes of thorns on their bellies, quiet as snakes, and garrote guards with four-foot pieces of piano wire. They had learned to use their feet and hands as weapons; how to kill with a single punch to the middle of the throat. Four men had died during this part of the training, their larynxes crushed like eggs, blood spurting from their gasping mouths.
They were pushed on relentlessly by their leader’s military commander, Colonel Killov, his skeletal figure unperspiring in the desert heat. Many times they had seen him high up on a sand dune, watching them through his binoculars as they suffered and struggled and nearly murdered one another—and they had hated him. But their master, Dhul Qaraain, had ordered, ordained it. This foreigner was to be the man who must train them in the ways of war.
They had crawled and run, and climbed and sweated their guts out, until they felt they could take no more. But they did.
They had been hand chosen, these elite terrorists, from Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and from Palestinians in exile. All were between the ages of 19 and 26. None was younger or older. They were all in perfect health and they all had two things in common—they were ready to die to return the stolen land to the Palestinian people, and they believed in Dhul Qaraain.
They had run obstacle courses of barbed wire and broken glass and scaled high cement walls that left them with broken arms and legs, and sometimes dead at the bottom of a wall, their necks snapped like chicken bones from the fall. Eight more men died here, under the cold eyes of the foreigner, Killov.
For the
final test, each had walked halfway across the Libyan desert with only a knife and a small gourd of water at his belt. They slept in mounds of sand at night and, to stay alive, ate snakes and sipped the precious moisture from cactuses. Twenty of them never walked out again.
They had been chiseled and hardened and beaten and formed until they were as tough as steel, without an ounce of fat on their dark, muscled bodies.
Out of 500 men who had entered the training camp, only 200 remained after 34 months. Seventy-eight had died agonizing deaths, their bodies buried under the shifting sands. The rest had either fled into the black starry night or were thrown out of the elite cadre as too weak, too soft to endure another day of the pain.
At last their training had ended. A torch-lit night came when their master, Dhul Qarnain, summoned them. Qarnain—The Prophet, the Hand of Allah, the Mahdi. Qarnain—who, it was prophesied, had come to smite the infidel. Qarnain the Invincible. And next to him, the mysterious, gaunt stranger.
They stood before their master in five rows of forty men each. He looked at them all, slowly turning his head, savoring this moment of completion.
He spoke, “You are now the toughest fighting men in the world. You can do anything. Always remember that. You fight for Allah. This makes you invincible.”
He walked among them, this holy man with burning black eyes, and handed each a white robe, white as the desert sand with a single small red circle right above the heart.
“You have earned the Robe of the Holy Warrior,” he said. He kissed each man on the lips and looked deep into his eyes. He let them feel the full dark power of his soul.
“You now belong to the Prophet, blessed be his name. You are his warriors in the Jihad to come.”
When he had embraced every fighter in his holy army, and given them each the sacred robe and the gold medallion bearing his picture, they laid out their prayer rugs and bowed as one to the East, to Mecca, and prayed together.
Dhul Qarnain sang out, his voice as strong as the wind,
“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the creation
The Compassionate, the Merciful
King of Judgement Day!
You alone we worship, and to you alone
We pray for help.
Guide us to the straight path
The path of those whom you have favored
Not of those who have incurred your wrath
Nor of those who have gone astray.”
Dhul Qarnain stood up from the white sands, his red robe snapping in the wind like a red flame reaching up to burn the sky.
“Hear me, my warriors. Our time has come. The day is near when the sky shall be ripped asunder, when the stars shall scatter and the oceans roll together; when the graves are hurled about. Each soul shall know what it has done and what it has failed to do.”
His voice was deep and beautiful, and seemed to carry effortlessly across the parched sands. Each man clearly heard every word as if it were being said just to him. They trembled, almost in ecstacy, beneath their new warriors’ robes.
“When the sun ceases to shine, when the heaven’s fall and the mountains are blown away. When the seas are set afire, when Hell burns fiercely, then each soul shall know what it has done.
“My brave warriors,” he smiled, his teeth sparkling in the moonlight that flooded down onto the desert, “when you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads, and when you have laid them low, turn your face to the next battle. Those brave men who are slain in the War of Allah will not perish, but will fly to Paradise.
“This is the Paradise that the righteous have been promised. There shall flow in it rivers of unpolluted water and rivers of milk forever fresh. Rivers of delectable nectar and rivers of clearest honey. You shall eat therein of every fruit and receive forgiveness from Allah. You shall dwell in the gardens of Eden, reclining upon soft couches. You shall be decked with bracelets of gold and arrayed in garments of fine green silk and rich brocade. Allah will make your faces shine with joy. You shall never again feel scorching heat or biting cold. Trees will spread their shade around you and fruits will hang in clusters over you. This is your reward.
“You shall be served with silver dishes and beakers as large as goblets, and cups brim-full with ginger-flavored water from the Fount of Selsabil. You shall be attended by dark-eyed angels graced with eternal youth, with teeth like sprinkled pearls.”
He lifted his arms to the heavens and cried out in a booming voice. “Do not fear death, my warriors. When you gaze out upon Paradise you will behold a kingdom blissful and glorious. Praise be to Allah.”
The men shouted as a single man, their voices rising high into the cool night air. “Praise be to Allah!”
Qarnain let his arms drop limply to his sides, his head bowed slightly forward. But Killov did not bow. His head held high, his eyes fixed straight ahead as if looking into eternity, he watched, just watched the Servants.
It had been the most beautiful moment of their lives. The men’s eyes glowed with a fanatical brilliance like the piercing moon under which they had lain for the last year, as if the cool white rays of the dead world had infused their bodies with a power beyond the mortal man’s—a magic strength that made them invulnerable and superhuman. They were with Allah now. He would cradle them in His arms. They were His children, His flesh, His warriors, ready to fight the Holy War. Ready for—nay, seeking death. A martyr’s death. The holiest of the holy, giving their blood in His name. They could feel His spirit in them now. It pulsed through their veins, hot and powerful. They were immortal and without fear.
And Killov was satisfied. These men could do the job.
Now the desert was far behind; it seemed a dream, a memory from some distant childhood. Another place, another world that was swallowed up whole by the raging walls of seawater that swelled around the tanker, threatening, always threatening to pull her down into the dark bowels of the sea.
The Servants of Death walked the long, flat deck of the Dhul Hajja, Kalashnikov rifles slung around their shoulders, their faces stung by the salty spray. They stared out at the black waves and the cold cloud-cracked sky streaked with jagged lines of rain. Sheets of light and darkness battled back and forth in the sky like armies at war.
The sun tried to rise, advancing relentlessly, until brightness seemed almost to take hold. But the raging clouds clawed their way back until they covered over, and took prisoner, her white rays.
The light and the darkness battled through the long day, fighting, fighting for men’s souls. For now the ship was coming, and IT was the darkness, and Death.
The men on board watched the elements war in the sky until at last the sun fell wounded and sank into the boiling cauldron of the sea. The black hand of night fell over the tanker and pushed her on, on toward America.
Two
“God, it’s big,” Rona Wallender exclaimed to the muscular, tan man who lay by her side at the top of the hill.
“It’s nine feet if it’s an inch,” Ted Rockson said, watching the creature with his field glasses—one of the newest of Shecter’s science boy’s gadgets. The binoculars autofocused on whatever moved, so that even if the user didn’t know what the hell he was doing, the binocs would zoom in on the enemy, even if hidden in the bush or forest. But it wasn’t exactly an enemy that the glasses had just telescoped up to, at least not a human enemy. The image of the creature some two hundred yards away, just coming out from the shadows of a Rocky Mountain forest, filled Rockson’s view—a redhide grizzly, one of the biggest and nastiest he’d ever seen. This one looked like an old male—a rogue. They got real mean when they got old—got all cranky, running through the woods swiping down whole trees, killing any damned thing that got within reach. Rockson had seen one lay waste to the whole side of a mountain years before. The thing had run wild like a drunken psychopath on the rampage. It was hard to believe a living creature—and not a bomb—had done all the damage that it had by the time it was through.
“Let me take a loo
k, my binocs aren’t clear,” Rona protested. Her hand reached over and half ripped the glasses away from Rock’s grasp. He looked around annoyed at the red-haired woman who had been his lover—and fellow Freefighter—for years. Rona Wallender. Damn it, why did he love her—and hate her—so? She was such a bitch at times—and such a lovely, beautiful, soft woman at others. Rock let out a little angry snort but she took no note of it, already swinging the glasses back and forth across the opposite slope, searching for the immense carnivore. Her buttocks and thighs pressed tight against her frayed army khakis, circa late 2080’s. Rockson half felt like grabbing her, right there on the spot . . . Even though all they’d been doing was making love through the long cold nights for a week now, out here in the most beautiful parts of the Rockies. The stars so clear, the wildlife abundant and the vegetation thick and lush; flowers dotting the slopes everywhere in rainbows of petaled beauty. Somehow this part of the Rocky Mountain Range had been left untouched, relatively so anyway, by most of the nuclear devastation that had swept across America a century before. It was Ted Rockson’s favorite place on earth.
“Oh Rock, its teeth—they’re huge,” Rona half squealed. She tossed her head and her flaming red hair spun around behind her shoulders like the burning mane of some wild and untameable creature, just like the one she was staring at. She gulped hard twice, and then looked back again, her elbows resting on the thick grass that swirled around them like the edges of a Van Gogh painting. “Are we really going to go after—that?” she asked, unsure now of the mission that for days she had been boasting to Rockson would be a snap. Even though she had never seen a redhide grizzly up close, just pictures of them back at Century City. But a picture does not a reality make. For here, on the mountain, she could see it, and hear it’s low growling like the thunder from cannons far off—and smell it, a dank, almost foul smell that filled the nose like a shot of ammonia. It was thick on the wind that, thank God, brought its smell to them—and not theirs to it.