by Ryder Stacy
“Few . . . more . . . minutes . . .”
Rock looked up and saw that the red, yellow and blue lines of force were feeding from the giant crystal weapon into Archer.
The Doomsday Warrior saw Archer lift up the rear bumper of an abandoned truck and twist his arms. The bumper bent and tore off the truck. The mountain man, grinning from ear to ear, walked toward a group of advancing KGB troops, ignoring their fire. He swished the bumper back and forth, knocking the troops down. They fell like tenpins, still holding their smoking submachine guns, with astonished looks on their faces.
Archer had been hit a hundred times, and yet he lived! He picked up one of the spilled-soldier’s weapons. He raised the Kalashnikov to fire point-blank at another Red that rolled from behind a charred truck to the right. The new opponent levelled his big-barrelled submachine gun at Archer. The burst of .50 calibre slugs hit the near-mute square in his fat gut, but with no results. Archer’s return fire threw the KGBer’s body back like a loosely stuffed scarecrow of death.
Rock looked around and saw Killov’s troops abandoning their posts, fleeing Archer. The Freefighters were in a position to take the south leg of the tower and use its big guns to take out the other fortifications.
He saw a group of Surfcombers fling their power-tridents at a pair of KGBers. The Russians fell, spurting blood around the huge tines of the long forks. Polynesian paddle-bludgeons cracked heads right and left in close combat. Bullets howled.
Archer’s superman-act had turned the tide of battle.
Rock took up his binocs and scanned the other tower legs. He saw that Chen’s group was pinned down and taking heavy fire. Rockson had the option of either helping Chen’s beleaguered attack team, or advancing his own whittled-down force toward the tower building. A tough choice. But if he could add Chen’s group to his own before advancing on the building . . .
Rock glanced over at his strange mountain man friend. His head was still sparking with electrical discharges from the strange linkup with the tower crystal.
“Archer,” he ordered, “come on—let’s help Chen!”
Archer dropped the KGBer he was throttling and waved. “Okay!”
Somewhere up in the tower, a large calibre machine gun started raking the vicinity with explosive rounds. But the KGB bastards had trouble seeing because of the oil smoke, or else didn’t care. They hit several of their own men.
“Advance on the west tower leg,” Rock ordered his troops.
Taking advantage of the smoke conditions, the sprinting forces, with Archer in the lead, got behind the Reds on their left flank. Tridents flew again, Bushido cut down the dodging Reds. But Rock saw a tank coming into the square—Damn, where the hell did they get that?
Archer turned to the tank, said something like “MEE GET!” and walked toward it, his head still sparking and trailing red, white and blue electrical discharges.
“Archer, don’t—” Rock shouted. But either the giant didn’t hear or didn’t obey. He and the tank were racing at one another like two mad bulls in a farmer’s field.
Only one would survive—and how could a human best a tank?
Yet, as they collided, it was the tank that lost and burst into smoke and then flames. Archer obviously had some sort of force field protecting him—a gift of the crystal. Cheering wildly, the Freefighter groups merged.
Rock saw Chen bounding rather gracelessly atop a Datsun X-7. What the hell was he holding? And what did he carry on his back?
Rockson soon found out. The Chinese-American let loose a sweeping hellfire of liquid napalm from his commandeered flamethrower, into the steel-rim holes dotted around the area.
Screaming, burning Russians rose up from their hidden positions and scurried helter-skelter. They were either cut down by their startled comrades or collapsed of their own volition. Other fighters, draining gasoline tanks, ignited other hidden rats. In the confusion of burning screaming runners, Rockson ran right at a machine-gun pillbox and dove in. He plunged his dagger into the nearest uniformed shape and, finding one other soldier still alive in the emplacement, twisted the blade out of the first body and stuck it deep into the second man’s windpipe.
There was a tripod-mounted .105 in the bastion. He took up the big gun and sighted down the hot barrel. Shells fed down the belt into his new sewing machine of death. Rock stitched out a fabric of destruction on the KGBers he sighted.
The Freefighters and their allies were winning now. And just in time, for Archer’s head suddenly stopped dancing with crystal power. The giant stood in the open, his skull top smoking slightly, a bedazed expression on his face.
“Archer, come over here—you’re not invincible anymore!”
The near-mute nodded slightly and walked slowly, like a zombie in thick mud, over to Rockson. The Doomsday Warrior pulled his friend down beside him behind the sandbag barrier wall and said, “Good work, Arch!”
“WHAAT HAPPEN?” Archer said, confused.
“You’re a hero! We’re winning, thanks to you.”
Now it was time to advance on the central building itself.
“Attack,” Rock shouted as he jumped up on top of a smoking, metal tank part. He waved his men onward, and then joined the run forward himself. The other victorious attack squads also advanced on the run toward the tower building’s steel-shuttered doors.
Killov’s steel trap was now just history.
“Detroit get the KGB positions at the door with your grenades. Morimoto! Get that contingent by the side with your men,” the Doomsday Warrior ordered.
As Rock led his four surviving Polynesian warriors forward around the KGB positions on the right flank, Detroit took out his grenades. Jumping on an abandoned jeep’s hood, he tossed the fused pineapples accurately at the six-inch-wide gun slits in the steel-shuttered lobby doors.
The two grenades went through the openings one after the other. There was a two second pause, then the steel doors blew outward, bits of flesh and bone among the shreds of metal shielding.
“Good work, Detroit,” Rock yelled. “Men—advance. The building is ours!”
That was not quite true. But it’s best, Rock thought, to be optimistic!
Twenty-Four
Killov, cut off from the sounds of the desperate battle below by the steel-alloy walls of his control sphere, aimed a last “demonstration” shot. This one was toward Baltimore, Maryland. He had just positioned the crystal and space mirror to perfection and was about to pull the trigger when an annoying beep-beep-beep started on the control chair’s left arm.
“Damn,” he cursed as the sudden noise made his arm jerk. His aim was sent way off as he hit the destruct button. He burned a hundred miles of the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Cuba, instead of his target.
Killov realized that the beeping noise was from the built-in red emergency phone on the chair’s arm.
Was there an emergency? He supposed that his troops were being engaged by some ragtag enemy. He had long expected the sullen natives to erupt in futile opposition to his rule. Well, his officers could handle it—at least for another five minutes. He had important things to accomplish—a whole world to bring to utter prostration, millions to incinerate. What could be more important?
Angrily Killov cut the sound switch on the phone without picking up. Nothing must interfere with his work!
Seventy-two stories below Killov’s insulated domain, his burly KGB chief, Igor Stepanovitch, let the telephone receiver dangle and started firing his Kalashnikov on full automatic. The strange intruders—a band of old Japanese men with swords, tall khaki-clad Caucasians, and near-naked South Sea islanders—had breached the security doors of the lobby and killed half the KGB force defending it. His clip jammed, and he ejected it, sliding another into his weapon. Now the intruders were pouring at him with blood in their eyes. He ducked bullets that clipped the marble wall where his head had just been. Stepanovitch pulled up his big submachine gun and let rip, smiling as two of the Japanese storybook swordsmen fell. But no—they hadn�
��t been hit, they had merely rolled out of his fire. Before he could reload again, Igor Stepanovitch felt a sudden sharp sting on his neck, then the world was swirling, whirling.
Why? Why was the world whirling?
As the roar in his ears rose, a red circle of gathering darkness was closing in on his vision, and he found out why the world had been whirling. Stepanovitch saw his own headless body crumpling to the ground. The KGB officer realized that he was now just a severed head, and he started to scream. Only a voiceless gasp came out. He was seeing the things of this sad globe for the last time, from bursting eyes in his bodyless head!
Fade to BLACK.
Morimoto wiped the sword blade on the headless corpse’s uniform jacket. To avoid the fire from another guard’s position, he again dove for cover behind a garbage dumpster. Blood trickled from a hit in his thigh.
Rockson, meanwhile, rushed for the silver elevator with a sixty-pound pack of high explosives over his shoulder. Chen and McCaughlin covered him as he bounded over spilled bodies and made it into the elevator area.
Two KGBers came running right at Rockson, with fixed bayonets. The Soviets were caught with the whooshing steel edges of Chen’s star-knives. Their deaths were instantaneous as the blades dug into their bodies and exploded.
There was too much action going on for praise, but Rock yelled out a brief “Good work!” to the Freefighter. “Get to the other end of the lobby and secure it: I’m going to head upstairs on the elevator.”
Rock had a simple plan—pick the lock again and ride the thing up. One flight past the madman’s suite, just under the tower roof, he would plant the explosives.
Ignoring the firefight raging all around, and the spatter of bullets that ricocheted around the lobby, Rock started to work, putting the heavy bomb satchel down for a moment on the marble floor. But he was not allowed a moment . . .
Careening around a corner swept a pair of ancient-looking nemesis. Not Russians—something worse!
Rockson now faced off against two Japanese samurai—two of the disgraced samurai’s, no doubt, that had thrown in their lot with Killov.
The keen-eyed thick-set men were naked to the waist. They drew their swords and shouted a challenge. Rockson frowned. No time for an elegant means of stopping them, not now. He felt foolish when he reached for his shotpistol and only found an empty holster. Lost the damned thing somewhere!
One of the swordsmen smiled a missing-toothed grin. “Do you think we would come to you with swords if you had a pistol? We saw it fall!”
So, there was only one recourse—the sword he carried. Rockson reached for the long, heavy Katama sword and pulled it from his scabbard as the samurai rushed forward with glistening swords raised over their heads.
The attackers’ biceps and pectoral muscles rippled as they advanced toward the Doomsday Warrior, swinging their blades like twin scythes. Rockson darted to the left, away from the near miss of one steely blade, and tried to compose himself to raise the Katama into the proper position. He was not an expert at this, but Chen had taught him something of the noble art of swordsmanship in their many practice sessions in Century City’s gymnasium. That lesson would be tested now!
“Let’s see,” Rockson said aloud, “that special grip is sorta like this—”
No time for any more rumination! They were upon him again, eager to take advantage of his momentary gathering of wits. They separated so they could come from both sides. Good! Chen had shown Rock what to do in that kind of situation. He employed the ancient technique of Master Uechi—hitting one opponent’s sword with a quick thrust of your blade, joining its weight to your opponent’s blade to meet the second man’s thrust.
The method did stop the swords of the two samurai in midair, sending sparks of metal flying. Rock silently thanked the ancient master!
Then Rock spun, sweeping the gathering of three swords to the side—again, an Uechi move. With a sudden, blindingly fast motion, Rock pulled his sword out of the tangle and twisted his wrist, delivering a horizontal slash at torso height as he got in a crouched position. The shorter samurai was not prepared for the slash. Twisting ungainfully to the side, he was still caught in his thigh by the blade. He screamed out an anguished epithet and collapsed.
The larger samurai took advantage of his friend’s demise to push Rockson down with a lightning drop-kick. Rockson went down and rolled away, then saw the blade descend where he had just been and clank against the floor.
Rock grabbed the fallen samurai and used him as a shield to get back up. The body took the full sword blow of his frenetic companion. The mighty blow nearly split the samurai open from neck to pelvis, sending coagulating blood splashing. The big samurai drew back in horror.
Rockson grabbed the sliced man’s Katama off the floor. He still had his own blade.
Now for the double-dicer! Swinging both swords at the remaining samurai, as if Rockson were a food processor chasing a carrot, the Doomsday Warrior advanced.
The samurai cut and ran—something a samurai should never do! Rock aimed and threw both swords, skewering the coward against a wooden display case containing a Tokyo diorama. The man jerked a few times and then hung limply, oozing red.
Rockson turned back to the elevator to continue his work, but cursed as he saw a KGBer lifting up the shoulder bag full of explosives. The Soviet started to run away with it. Perhaps the Russian didn’t know what the pack contained, or perhaps he knew; but in any case, he was absconding with the package that meant life or death to the world!
The angry Freefighter tackled him. They fell atop the severed samurai, and Rockson and the Russian struggled with each other in a glop of blood and intestines. They grappled for the man’s Tokarev pistol. The Soviet was a fiercely strong man and got his pistol up, bending it toward Rockson’s chest despite Rock’s best effort. But the American bit down on his hand until the fingers open, twisted the pistol at the man’s face and squeezed the trigger. The man’s anguished features exploded into bloody fragments.
The Doomsday Warrior rose, wiping blood out of his eyes, only to confront a tall blond KGBer carrying a smoking submachine gun. The man sneered and lifted the barrel at Rock. This time, however, Rock didn’t have to do a thing to defend himself. The Russian turned as he heard the sudden approach of sandalled feet.
It was Morimoto, swishing his silvery sword in a figure eight. He screamed out a primitive challenge.
The Russian tried to fire but in a micro-second took the blow from the descending sword on his right forearm. The submachine gun clattered to the floor with the Red’s right hand and wrist still attached. He hadn’t let go of the weapon after all.
The next Katama blow came as the Red stood frozen, staring at the hoselike squirt of blood issuing from his half-arm. Morimoto’s sword came directly at his head, and the Russian made no move to counter. The razor-sharp instrument sliced his skull neatly in half, down to his collarbone. And he sank to the ground.
Morimoto tugged his ancentral blade away, then wiped it on the man’s jacket. “Continue your work, friend.”
The Doomsday Warrior nodded, grabbed the satchel of explosives and headed back to the elevator. The hell with the lock picking, he thought. Prying the dead Russian’s submachine gun from the severed fingers, Rock fired the full clip into the elevator lock button.
Brute force accomplished the job. The silver elevator door opened. Rockson sighed, shouldered the explosive satchel, stepped into the silver car and pressed “72.” The door shut out the cacophony of screams and shots in the building lobby, and Rock rode up in silence.
This was too easy—wasn’t it? Rockson watched the floors rapidly click off. Sixty-one, sixty-two.
He looked casually around at the elevator car. Something was odd. What was different?
Yes! The little hand rail that had been at the back of the elevator—probably to prevent the wall being damaged by carts—had been neatly removed. The screw holes from the screws that had held the rail in place had been almost invisibly filled.
Why had the rail been removed?
Then Rockson understood that because the rail was missing there were perhaps only seconds to act—or he would die!
Quickly he reached to his belt and took out his balisong knife. He dug out the two highest buttons on the elevator panel, “73” and “Tower.” The buttons popped out and rolled about the elevator’s floor.
Rock sheathed the knife, and jammed the index fingers of both his hands into the holes he had made—the only holes he could possibly make in the steel-walled elevator.
The elevator’s floor suddenly dropped out from under his feet! He watched the floor panel fall, hanging seventy-one floors above the basement, supported only by his two fingers.
Twenty-Five
Detroit ejected a hot magazine from his Liberator and looked around. There were KGB bodies everywhere. The Americans and their allies now controlled the lobby, but the cost had been high. Ten samurai and two Polynesians had died in the fighting; he and McCaughlin were wounded. Detroit’s wound was just a nick on his ankle, bandaged with a piece of KGB uniform, but feisty McCaughlin had a bullet lodged somewhere between his collarbone and his heart. Chen was looking after him. And there were still KGBers coming in around the building from the surrounding city.
Morimoto had explained that Rockson had entered the elevator and was probably already planting the bomb upstairs. Their job was to keep control until he came back down, then break out of the building before it was blown to shit.
Suddenly Detroit heard a clatter and hard thud in the elevator shaft. Fearing the worst, Detroit went to the elevator and used a twisted piece of metal to pry the door open. He was greeted by darkness and heavy dust. He snapped his flashlight on and swept its beam downward. The light revealed the shattered remains of the floor of the elevator—twisted tiles and bent metal.
“Rock?” Detroit said, “are you—alive?”
No answer. Scheransky came over and gasped out, “Do you think he’s dead?”