Two more of the tanks had found their range and let off bursts of brilliant fire from across the canyon. The structure next to the first, pieces of which were just starting to fall in smoking meteoric trails back down to earth, also went up in a ball of red and white, with such volume that Stone couldn’t even hear the screams that started issuing forth from below. The tanks opened up with everything they had, shooting down shell after shell until the entire center of the encampment was ablaze and smoking. It was a bloodbath, a blazing burial ground for everyone caught in the cross fire below.
After five minutes of the unceasing barrage, the tanks and infantry stopped firing. The air was punctuated with numerous screams of the wounded below and the crackling of the many fires that burned everywhere. Stone looked through his field glasses and suddenly saw a white flag being waved from what looked like a solid piece of ground. An arm followed and the flag waved higher as a door opened in the dirt toward the far side of the canyon floor. A woman emerged with a look of terror on her face, then another, and a child. Within a few seconds there were several dozen of them, women and infants, half clothed, covered with dirt. They looked pitiful, about the saddest state to which Stone had ever seen the human species sink. Still, they were human—and women and children.
He turned to give the order for a team to go down and take them prisoner when the tank behind him opened up again. Stone was almost knocked from his feet by the blast, which went off only yards from his ear. He shook himself from the effects and couldn’t believe his eyes. All the tanks had opened up, along with the infantry, pouring a stream of shell and slugs into the unarmed wretched refuse of the camp. Stone screamed, “No, no!” waving his hands at the tank, at where he knew the video camera could see him. But it was already too late. Two cannon shells landed dead center of the crying and sniveling group. Their flesh was blasted into paste, their bones into a million little pieces of shrapnel that flew out in all directions. When the smoke had cleared, there was nothing to be seen, except, lying almost untouched, the head of one of the children, which had been severed cleanly from its body. It sat in a smoking crater, dead center of it, like some sort of idol to death, a symbol of the unspeakable violence that firepower could do to human flesh.
Stone watched speechless, numb. As the other soldiers cheered all around him, flamethrower units came pouring down all four sides of the inner canyon walls, two men to a unit. They joined up at one end and formed a line about thirty feet apart. Then they ignited their long gas-spewing wands, and four tongues of swirling red fire spat out sixty feet ahead of them. Side by side they walked along the canyon floor, burning everything in front of them. Burning the cabins, and the bodies that were hung up to be cooked, and the screaming wounded bodies. When they reached the spot where the women and children had emerged they poured walls of flame down into the underground tunnel system for a long time. Then they started forward again, unstoppable, like messengers from hell, bringing a little sample of it with them. They set every square inch of what had once been the bandit encampment aflame until it looked like the burning surface of Jupiter.
Stone stumbled onto the side of the tank, then up a half-dozen hidden footholds. He came down inside the ladder and stared hard at Lieutenant Carpenter, who was looking quite pleased, as were the rest of the Bradley’s crew.
“What was that all about?” Stone asked. “Those people were under a white flag. More than that, they were women and children.”
“Colonel,” the lieutenant exclaimed, looking at Stone with surprise. “We never take prisoners on a search-and-destroy mission. Those orders come from the very top—from General Patton. It’s always been that way. Those things down there weren’t even human. Why, did you see how they looked?”
“Get out!” Stone suddenly said through clenched teeth.
“What?” Lieutenant Carpenter asked nervously, his contemptuous grin suddenly vanishing, not sure what Stone had said.
“I said, get out, all of you.” He glared around the inside of the tank as if he were ready to kill every one of them. They all rose and slowly climbed the ladder and then out the top, looking back at the commander of the strike force as if he were absolutely insane. Stone pulled the hatch cover down hard and locked it from the inside. Then he sat down on the steel floor, put his head between his hands and cried like a baby.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
“A TOAST, Colonel Stone, I insist,” General Patton exclaimed, his face just inches from Stone’s, his hand holding a crystal snifter filled with the finest brandy, which swirled like liquid fire inside.
“General, I—I—,” Stone started, then stopped again, not having the slightest idea of how to explain his feelings. If the man didn’t know it was wrong to kill women and children, it was not exactly something he would be able to convince him of. Stone knew he had to go very slowly and carefully here. He had just sort of let events carry him along up until now, like a leaf on a river. But now Stone had to figure this whole thing out, and fast.
“Relax, Colonel, relax,” Patton said, letting his hand rest on Stone’s shoulder. “Here, again I insist. Humor an old general. It is a ritual that I carry out after all my victorious battles with those officers who helped bring them to successful fruition. And you, Stone, have carried out an eminently successful engagement—with the least number of casualties, I might add, that we’ve taken on any large search-and-destroy for nearly a year. It’s just as I hoped; you’re high-level material, Stone. You’ve shown up at the right time, I’ll damned well tell you that!” The general laughed again, standing up. His eyes were so filled with seeing his ambitions for so many years so close to completion that he didn’t see the pain in Stone’s eyes—the strange look that he now wore, like that of a haunted man.
And Stone was haunted. Haunted by the faces of those sobbing women, the snot-nosed kids hanging onto their mothers’ tattered clothes. Haunted by the blood mist that had filled the air for long minutes after they were all banished from the face of this earth with merciless sheets of hellfire. Haunted even though he had ordered his troops to halt, even though he had cried. But tears weren’t enough to overcome blood. Martin Stone was now a possessed man, the faces of those innocent dead hovering around him like vultures made of the darkest material.
“Drink! Drink!” Patton said, putting one of the pear-shaped crystal snifters into Stone’s hand and pushing up. Stone let the hand be guided. He felt dazed, confused, unsure in a way that he had never felt before. He lifted the blue crystal glass to his lips and gulped it down, hoping it would erase the image of a white flag whipping in the air from his mind. But it didn’t.
“General,” Stone suddenly spoke loudly as he let the drained glass fall to his side. “General, there were women and children out there. They were under a white flag. I commanded the men to stop, but they fired—wiped them out. They told me this was under your direct standing order.”
“Of course, of course it was my direct order, Stone,” Patton said impatiently, filling his brandy glass again, this time to the top. He sipped it, walked around his office and then addressed Stone from across the luxurious room. “Look, Colonel Stone, we must eradicate a disease. Stop it before it starts. If allowed to live, those women, those children would just create more of their own. You saw what they were like—flesh eaters. These cannot be allowed to live. Stone, it is nothing but pure logic. America must be cleansed, purified, before she has the slightest chance to be resurrected. This we do, Stone. As we conquer we purify. As we slowly retake the wastelands, we cleanse them all. We are like a flame, a burning flame that destroys and fertilizes at the same time.”
Stone reached his hand out for a refill. He needed it. The general poured the snifter full and Stone pulled the glass back to his mouth and drained it fast.
“Tell me, General, I know it’s a little far off… but just what kind of world do you visualize creating when you’ve conquered everyone out there? When there’s no more fighting to do.”
“Oh, tha
t’s a hell of a long way down the pike.” Patton laughed. “But it’s a legitimate question, and I won’t lie and say I’ve never thought about it. Because I have. What great man wouldn’t… in his most tranquil moments. I visualize a world of order, Stone. That is what man needs. Order and control. Humanity has misunderstood its own nature for much of man’s history. All these… governments have been tried—democracy, parliamentary… But you know what, Stone. The truth is, people want to be ruled. They desire to be told what to do, led like sheep through gates. Told what to think, dream, eat and shit. Humankind are most happy when they’re most controlled. Like the army, Stone. That’s why men want to join me, want to become a part of this growing military empire. Because they want order. They want to be told to jump… and heel… and kill. So I will create such a world, Stone. A world where people will finally get what they actually want. A system of law and order that will last a thousand years, ten thousand years. A society in which there will be no crime, no dissension. The first truly perfect society in history.”
“I see,” Stone said softly, starting for the first time to get the full picture of what he had gotten himself into. “I see.”
“And that is exactly why the human gene pool must be purified,” the general went on, his eyes fiery. “If it is all allowed to just keep blending and reproducing together, there will never be peace; there will always be these disruptive elements. Thus, the misfits, the social lowlifes, the flesh eaters, the negroid race and all the other troublemakers must all be removed. When the race is pure and white the way it was when the country began, then there will be order, and true equality among men who are equals.”
“I see,” Stone muttered dumbly again, as Patton’s bloody plans came into further focus. And suddenly Martin Stone knew one thing above all else: he had to stop this man. Patton was far more of a danger than those he was wiping out, a million times more dangerous. They were isolated, savage, with no more interest in taking over the whole damned country than in colonizing the moon. They just wanted their own little piece of the mountain, the highway, and they would just kill and/or eat whomever came along. Even the Mafia, and the ruthless biker gangs of the Guardians of Hell were all too shortsighted and too greedy to see beyond their own little provinces, their own immediate desire. Only Patton, of all the dark minds he had met, had plans to take it all—the whole damned pie of America—and leave a river of blood behind, composed of half the races in the country, to do it. And then a nice fascist Third Reich type arrangement to last “a thousand years.” Patton was far more dangerous than any of those he killed, because he had a chance to succeed. A damned good chance at that.
On the spur of the moment Stone made up his mind. April was going to have to wait a little longer. Stone had to figure out a way—impossible as it seemed—to stop the military juggernaut that the NAA was rapidly becoming. Nothing was more important. Stone knew he was going to have to play a con game par excellence if he was going to pull this whole thing off. He plastered a smile on his face, grateful for all the recent practice, and looked up at Patton, who was standing in front of the Michelangelo he had promised Stone, with an almost lewd grin on his face.
“Don’t you wish to collect your reward, Colonel Stone?” Patton asked from across the room.
“Ah yes, my painting,” Stone said, rising and walking over to the wall-to-wall masterpiece. He ran his fingers just over the surface of the painting as if stroking an expensive silk. Patton appreciated the gesture of possession, that the art mattered to Stone not because of its beauty but because he owned it. Because through the giving of wealth and promotions, Patton knew he could control the young man he was already beginning to dimly picture as being a possible successor to himself. A hardly conceived notion, one he wouldn’t readily admit even to himself, but someday far in the future, perhaps…
“Yes, I was thinking about this magnificent painting when I was out there in the battlefield,” Stone said. “You’re right. Beauty does give one a strong motivation to succeed. And my dog—and bike—as we agreed.”
“Of course, of course,” Patton said, waving at him and wincing in mock disgust. “That’s already old hat, Stone. I still don’t think you totally understand. Whatever’s out there is ours, yours, mine. The wealth of an entire civilization is ours for the picking. We’re like… gods now.” Stone noticed his inclusion in the word “gods.” So Patton had allowed him to such illustrious heights. The general poured another load into Stone’s glass, and then his own. They were both starting to get a little drunk.
“Go ahead,” Patton said, pointing at the Michelangelo. “Take it.”
“You mean just rip it right out of the frame and roll it up, just like that?” Stone asked a little incredulously.
“That’s exactly what I mean, Colonel. We made an agreement—I always pay off.” Stone took out his blade and pried the outer part of the gold gilded frame that held the masterpiece in place. He carefully pulled the immense painting from the wall, put it on the floor and rolled the whole thing up like a rug to be taken to the cleaners.
Patton looked at him slyly. “So you’re no longer concerned with the no prisoner policy? I wouldn’t, after all, ask any man to do something his conscience wouldn’t allow,” Patton said, which Stone figured to be the biggest lie of the night.
“No,” the younger man said, forcing a smile. “After hearing your full description of your plans for total conquest, I understand it all better. And I must say I couldn’t agree with you more. I thought this massacre had been an indication of cruelty by the NAA. But that’s not the case at all. It’s a policy, not an emotion. You don’t kill out of hatred, but scientifically, in a controlled manner, to further a goal of complete order, complete law in the future.”
“Exactly, exactly,” General Patton said excitedly. He had rarely heard it so well put. “You almost read my mind, Stone,” he said with a laugh. “We kill in a scientific manner to insure complete law in the future.” He mouthed the words Stone had just spoken, and liked how they sounded. “I should have you write my speeches, Stone. Going to need some soon… when we start entering the next stage in reconquest.”
“Glad to be of any service I can to the Third Army,” Stone said. General Patton poured him yet another drink, looking close into his eyes through his own slightly hazed-over half drunken orbs. He stared hard at Stone, as if trying to comprehend if the man was entirely trustworthy, if all was as it seemed. But he wanted to believe too much, too hard. And so he looked deep into the lying eyes of Martin Stone… and believed his every word.
CHAPTER
Eighteen
“STONE, WE’RE going for a ride,” Patton suddenly said, grabbing a fur-collared trenchcoat from a rack. “I’m bringing you in on this operation all the way. All the way.” Stone finished his drink with one big gulp. Jesus, it seemed like every second took him deeper into this thing; he was booked for the ride now, that was for damned sure—all the way to the end. He looked over at the general, who had already strapped on his ivory-handled .45’s—he never went out without them on. “Come on, Colonel Stone, America awaits us. Let us not delay a nation’s destiny to be reborn out of fire.”
“Indeed,” Stone answered, putting down the empty glass. He picked up the rolled up Michelangelo on the floor, threw it over his shoulder and headed toward the door. He was glad he had had the shots of brandy. It would make it a little easier for him to go through this whole charade. The general strode like a Caesar with omnipotent pride and rigid determination down the hall to his private garage at the back of his headquarters. Elite troops, all wearing the gold eagle, guarded every doorway, every entrance and exit. They stood even taller, stiffer than the general himself, if that were possible, and snapped out stiff-fisted salutes as he stalked past, Stone fast on his heels. Patton went through a metal door and into a garage filled with vehicles—jeeps, motorcycles, even a tank, just in case. He led Stone to a thickly armored half-track with huge solid rubber tires, high up on double-reinforced frame. The th
ing looked invulnerable. Patton jumped up one side, Stone the other and the general quickly started the armored vehicle.
“If there’s trouble, Stone,” he said with a little grin, almost as if he wished there would be, “the machine-gun controls are there.” He pointed toward the center of the vehicle, where a machine gun sat welded inside a little mobile tower from which the firer could spray the weapon a full three-sixty degrees. Patton eased the thing into gear and started slowly forward. Two guards pulled open high steel gates that moved on a pulley system and they spread smoothly apart. The half-track headed out the doors and down a ramp into the dark night. The general had driven only about a hundred feet up to one of several back entrances to Fort Bradley before the guards on patrol at a machine-gun post saw the supreme commander flag snapping in the air on the front of the vehicle, and ran double time to open the gate.
Within minutes they were hauling ass down a fairly solid paved road heading into the darkest part of night. The general had even flipped on the half shielded headlights of the half-track so he could see and make better time, though it was actually NAA official policy to run blind at night outside of the fort. But then, he had dictated that policy. So he could dispense with it as well. He was feeling reckless tonight. It was all coming together faster than he had hoped. Faster than he had dreamed.
“Are you ready?” he suddenly asked Stone, who was staring up into the few sprinkles of stars that peered down through the overcast sky. But all he kept seeing was the faces of those women, those kids, some of them had been fucking babies sucking at their mothers’ breasts. The faces of those burning dead, blazing in place of the stars, took up the sky wherever he looked.
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