“That’s—uh—great,” Stone said, lifting his head from the cup. He reached forward and poured himself another cup. It might be a long time before he’d have coffee like this again. The general came back over and sat down across from Stone with an intent look on his craggy face. He swept his hand back through his slicked-back gray-silver hair and looked at Stone with a fanatical intensity in those missile eyes.
“We’re moving, Stone. God, are we moving. It’s taken me five years to get to this point—to finally have the trained men and the firepower I need to support them. And now I do. But you know what I don’t have, Stone?” The general didn’t wait for the answer but leaned forward. “I don’t have the son-of-a-bitches to take those fighting soldiers out there and do some heavy-duty cleanup of the whole damned central part of our country. We could take back twenty, thirty miles a day if I had the right staff.”
“That seems fairly ambitious, General,” Stone said, knowing the terrain for hundreds of miles around to be some of the roughest in the nation.
“No, Mr. Stone, it’s not ambitious, it’s a fact,” Patton said confidently, walking over to the library of fine books in the far corner. “You know what it is that really separates me from the savages and the warlords out there, Stone?” Patton didn’t wait for an answer and Stone didn’t try to give one. “This”—he pulled a leather-bound book from a shelf and held it out in the air. “Knowledge, Stone. History. The history of warfare—that makes the difference, and nothing else. Two things, Stone, above all else—speed and armor. ‘Blitzkrieg und Panzer,’ as they used to say. All my offensive strategic planning has centered around the concept of the fast mobile strike using tanks and wheel-mounted artillery. And that we have here, Stone. Twenty Bradley III tanks with 120mm cannon and .30 and .50 machine guns on front and back. A dozen jeeps and trucks pulling 155mm howitzers with 20 foot barrel. Firepower, that’s what it all comes down to ultimately, Stone, the ability to send down punishing waves of shells on the enemy. To grind him to a pulp. As both my illustrious namesake, General George S. Patton and his wartime nemesis, Rommel, proved: with the right firepower—primarily tanks—in the right place at the right time, a man can do just about anything. The tank is and always will be the most lethal, unstoppable land weapon man has ever created.”
Patton stopped, put his hand to his chest and sat back down in his chair, knowing he had to relax, that his blood pressure was rising again. He took his pulse and waited until it seemed to have slowed down.
“Can’t let myself die now, can I?” he asked Stone with a quick smile. “Who’d run this whole goddamned show?” Stone grinned back. He liked the guy. There was a tremendous sense of power, of almost pure electricity about the man. Stone had never met anyone with so much personal charisma before except perhaps his old man. He could see why the general could get his men to fight for him, could keep the whole damned army together with just the force of his personality. For the fire that burned inside his eyes was the flame of genius, and even the dumbest man who looked could see that it was so.
A dog suddenly pushed through a side door and Stone nearly did a double take. It was Excaliber… how the hell could…? But as the dog walked with the total assurance that was the mark of the breed across the Persian rugs that covered the floor, Stone saw that, though remarkably similar, the animal had different coloration and was slightly smaller than his own fighting terrier. The pitbull walked up to Patton and pushed his head against the general’s leather boots.
“Yes, Hannibal, good dog,” the general said as he scratched the pitbull on the head. “Beautiful animal, isn’t he?” Patton said, looking up at Stone. “He’s a pitbull and—”
“Yes, I know the species,” Stone answered. “I happen to have one of my own. He was rescued along with me, and is in your animal warehouse right now.”
“Why, that’s amazing,” the general commented as he pushed the dog’s jaws away from his black leather boots, which the animal had started to half-heartedly chew on. “You are an unusual catch, aren’t you. Perhaps we could have a little match between the two of them. Not to the death, of course, but… just to see which is the fiercer, which the stronger bloodline.”
“I don’t think so, General,” Stone said, remembering the last time he had had to make the pitbull fight—against an immense Doberman. It had been a bloody experience. “Although he travels with me, he’s his own dog. I don’t make him do anything he basically doesn’t want to. And arranging a match, I’m afraid, would fall into that category.”
“A shame,” Patton said, clapping his hands loudly. The pitbull turned sharply and headed back out the door. “Perhaps you—or your dog—will have a change of heart. It would be a most interesting diversion.”
“I’ll have a little talk with him, and see what kind of mood he’s in,” Stone said with a half grin.
“Stone… Martin Stone,” Patton said softly, looking at a file card. He had put reading glasses on but half hid them from Stone as if he didn’t want the younger man to see that the supreme commander had any deficiencies whatsoever. “Tell me, it’s extremely unlikely, but are you by any chance related to Clayton Stone? Major Clayton R. Stone.” Stone gulped down hard the final lukewarm swig of coffee from the cup.
“Yes. I’m hi—his son.” He coughed, some of the grounds from the bottom of the cup getting stuck in his throat.
“I’ll be damned,” General Patton said, pounding his fist into the palm of the other hand. “I knew your old man well. We were in Vietnam together. The son-of-a-bitch was actually theoretically under me at one point, but he just evaded my chain of command and went off and did his own thing. He was something else. A genius at what he did. You know, don’t you, that his long range reconnaissance patrols, in which he went all the way into northern ‘Nam and left trails of heads in the forests, are famous throughout Asia—infamous, I should say. There’s never been anyone better.”
He stared hard at Stone. “I’ve made my mind up. Everything about you clicks together. I have no time, Stone, to play around. I’ve got to move now. There’s just no time. If my plans came together I could strike a blow that would change the course of America. I’m going to take a chance on you and do something that I’ve never done before. If you succeed, the sky is the limit. Those who join me now will be powerful men in five years. You could have this all, and more, Stone.”
In spite of himself, Stone found his brain permeated by the messianic, almost hypnotic energy with which the general spoke. It wouldn’t be so bad having some of these things, Stone thought, hardly ever having been so impressed in his life with sheer objects. He felt seduced by it all.
“What—what is it that you want me to do?” Stone asked hesitantly, knowing that the last thing you were supposed to do in the army was volunteer.
“There’s a band of mountain bandits about thirty miles from here. They’ve been preying on passing caravans and even families. They’re scum, Stone. Scum of the worst kind—mutilating, raping, taking the organs of the dead to cook back in their camps. The kind of lice that must be wiped out so that we can clear the way for decent, civilized people. I want you to lead the strike force against them. Tomorrow, take them into the mountains and destroy this cancer. And if you succeed”—he looked at Stone with those laser pupils—“If you succeed, it is obvious what will happen. You can take what you want, Stone.”
Martin was strangely moved by the general’s words. The fact that such a brilliant military mind, a man who hardly knew him, had come to trust him so much so quickly filled Stone with a flushed pride. His ego swelled up like a sponge from the attention. He looked over at the Michelangelo on the wall. Imagine that in the bunker. It would be like some sort of mad monument to his father. Just to show him something that Stone had never been able to express in life. And now in death couldn’t. But maybe his spirit would see, would feel the presence of such a masterpiece.
“Anything?” Stone asked.
“Anything,” Patton said coolly.
“Then
let’s do it one by one. I’ll carry out this battle assignment for… that.” He pointed toward the wall, toward the Michelangelo teeming with angels, flying down from the cloud-dappled face of God himself. Stone thought he might have insulted the general but instead the man instantly began laughing and reached out to slap Stone on the back.
“Absolutely. My gift to you, Mr. Stone, upon the successful completion of your mission. I like a man who knows just what he wants—and dares to take it. Then I always know what his motivation is.”
“That and my dog, Excaliber, who’s in your pens. And finally, the use of my Harley, which has been impounded since I’ve been here.”
“I’m not used to being given demands,” Patton said, rising again and pacing nervously. “But in your case I’ll excuse it, because it is yet another proof to me that you are a wolf, not a sheep. Yes, you can have it all. There is plenty more where this came from.” He threw a casual glance at the immense work of art that seemed almost alive, so filled was it with motion and swirling supernatural creatures.
“So you accept the assignment, Stone,” Patton asked.
“Yes sir, I do,” Stone said. “It will be my pleasure to take out the bastards who’ve been terrorizing the area. I’ve run into that kind of slime all over the place and I always thought it was a shame there wasn’t an organized force to go after them—get rid of them once and for all. It would be an honor to contribute to such a venture.”
“Good, then it’s settled. You’ll leave this afternoon, to command a hundred-man force with appropriate mobile artillery.” He reached down and opened the drawer of a mahogany desk, took out a few items and turned back toward Stone. “But I can’t allow a private to lead a force of that size. This is the army after all. Here.” He handed Stone one of the golden eagles with skull—and the marks of a full colonel.
“The men aren’t going to like this,” Stone said to the general as he hesitantly pinned the eagle to his collar and the stripes to his shoulders.
“I don’t give a damn what any man thinks,” Patton half bellowed. “I make the decisions around here. And anyone who ever forgets it will find himself in front of a firing squad that night. That goes for you too, Stone. I’m putting a lot of faith in you.” For the first time that morning the leader of the Third Army looked angry for a moment. And Stone could see that inside those eyes there was a darkness, a black curtain behind the shimmering blue surface. Something that hinted at unspeakable deeds. But Martin Stone, in the midst of being offered more power than he’d ever held in his life, was blind to the flaws.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
THREE TANKS sped across the canyon country to the east of Grand Junction where Fort Bradley was located. They moved fast, and low to the ground, the super-mobile Bradley III being a far more successful model than its predecessors. Four troop trucks came lumbering behind them like beasts of burden, three filled with NAA troops—battle-hardened men, some of the toughest under General Patton’s command—the fourth with heavy combat weapons including .50 caliber machine guns, mortars, even a few flamethrowers. A 150mm howitzer was linked up to the rear truck and its long barrel arched like a spear. A cloud of dust rose behind them, hanging in the afternoon air about fifty feet off the ground as it was an almost windless day.
The terrain around them was stark, almost primeval in its appearance. This was some of the most mountainous and barren territory in Colorado: hard, almost lifeless, ground beneath the tire treads of their whining vehicles, towering red sandstone sculptures rising all around them, carved by the ceaseless wind of the ages into shapes of mushrooms, lions, pyramids. You could see anything if you looked long enough.
But Stone was more interested in the mechanical workings of the tank he was in than the tortured beauty outside. He sat in the codriver’s seat next to the tank commander and watched intently his every move. It was a fairly simple steering mechanism, using two bars that controlled each tread system separately. It enabled the driver to turn on a dime or, by pushing both all the way forward or pulling them all the way back, to accelerate to thirty-five mph within six seconds, from full speed to a skidding stop within forty feet. Stone kept asking questions over and over, wanting to cement the knowledge of every bit of the tank’s workings in his brain. The driver—Lieutenant Carpenter—pointed each button and dial out.
“Now, the gunner can operate the turret separately,” Carpenter said to Stone as he stared into a video monitor that showed the rushing landscape outside. Stone glanced around at the gunner, who sat off to the right side of the large control chamber, with earphones on that connected him to every other man in the crew and goggles that gave him as well a video picture of the world outside. He constantly fiddled with dials on it so the armored camera swept three hundred and sixty degrees around the tank, searching for trouble. “Or the driver of the Bradley can operate every system from up here.” He swept his hand over the digital display panel that ran in front of them across the entire eight-foot width of the tank.
It was a five man crew, which, with Stone as a sixth, made it a tight squeeze. But as Lieutenant Carpenter was telling him, the other five men were actually redundant. In reality the driver alone could not only drive the tank, but could fire its 120mm cannon, its .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, send off any or all of its eight radar-controlled ground-to-ground mini-missiles capable of taking out a tank twice the Bradley’s relatively compact thirty-foot length. And do a couple of other things as well.
“And this—if everything else fails,” Lt. Carpenter said with a sardonic grin as he glanced over at Stone, “is the self-destruct timer. The general doesn’t want any of our equipment—certainly not a Bradley—to get into the hands of the enemy. So you just crack open the glass here,” he mock-demonstrated with a small red hammer attached to the encased timer by a chain. “And set the clock inside by turning to the right. Then flick the Arm lever—it’s here. And then run. ’Cause every ounce of explosive in the tank—every shell, every bit of fuel—will all go at once. Anyone inside will be barbecued to a char. Even the vultures wouldn’t be able to eat their black ashes.”
“Sounds great,” Stone said. “I’ll keep it in mind for whenever I’m feeling suicidal. Tell me, do you think I could drive it a little; I want to learn. If I’m in command of a whole damn tank force I’d sure as hell better know how to even get the thing going.” The lieutenant hesitated just a second as the rest of the crew’s ears perked up. Stone had met with less animosity than he had thought he would—being promoted to full colonel, given command of such a formidable strike force out of nowhere. But the rest of the operation, including the assorted captains and majors who rode in the other tanks and in two officers’ jeeps to the rear, had not expressed any hostility to Stone. Whatever they felt, he was in the game now, a protegé of Patton. His powers might soon be immense. And so none of them would risk his displeasure. They expressed neither friendliness nor malevolence, just a cool noncommittal attitude that said: “Let’s see just how long you last, sucker.”
“Sure, I guess it will be all right,” the lieutenant said after a few seconds. “I mean, you’re the guy running the damned show.”
“Just keep an eye on me, okay?” Stone asked with a sheepish look. He didn’t want to crash the thing right into the side of one of the sandstone spires. That would be a great way to start a mission, blowing up his vehicle. Stone still couldn’t really belive the whole thing was happening. And he wasn’t quite sure that he had the faintest idea what a colonel was supposed to do.
“I’ll grab them away,” the lieutenant said, sitting back so Stone could slide over in front of the steering bars, “if anything starts going wrong.” Stone took hold of the bars and stared into the slightly wavering monitor above him on the instrument panel. The road ahead looked peculiar, as if he were watching a rerun instead of reality, but in a few seconds his eyes adjusted to the level of the video light. It was actually all very easy. The bars were sensitive to the motion of his arms so Stone hardly had
to move at all to steer. He would slow it down a little, then speed it up, twisting back and forth slightly, trying to get the feel.
“What happens if the TV goes on the blink?” Stone asked.
“As I explained earlier,” Carpenter said in an almost bored monotone, “everything has a backup. You just slide back that bolt and the shielding comes down on hinges. The other side contains a two-inch-thick super resin Fiberglas window through which you can view ahead.”
“Who’s driving that damned lead tank?” A voice suddenly burst onto their headphones. “This is Colonel Malik. My driver informs me that you’re weaving all over the damned place.”
“This is Colonel Stone,” Stone said like ice through his mouthpiece. “I’m at the controls here. Why, is there a problem?”
“Oh, no problem, sir,” the voice apologized. “Sorry, didn’t realize.”
“Carry on, Colonel,” Stone said, suddenly appreciating the fringe benefits of power. They drove through the afternoon and into the evening, and still went on. With the infrared and other light-enhancing visual capabilities of the video system one could see as clearly as if it were daylight. Stone and Lieutenant Carpenter took shifts of an hour each as the concentration level of driving the high-tech Bradley was extremely intense. The tank even had a coffee machine that the crew kept loading up. After the fifth cup of the foul-tasting but highly caffeinated brew, Stone felt like his eyeballs were popping out of his head. But it gave him and the other men energy to drive on through the darkness. Sergeant Zynishinski had been right: if he wanted to get sleep the New American Army was not going to be the place to do it.
The fleet drove through the darkness. Around them canyons and ripped broken strips of land, bizzare sandstone formations, all shimmering with the scalpel rays of the half-moon, glowing as if they were alive. Stone only had one mishap, misjudging a small rise and letting the tank go over it at forty mph. The right tread lifted up high and fast, and suddenly the entire tank was almost over at a forty-five degree angle. Every man in the crew looked as if a jolt of electricity had just gone through them as adrenaline surged into their veins. But just as quickly the tank slammed back down again—creating a funnel of dust all around it—and kept going like nothing had happened.
The Rabid Brigadier Page 12