He saw it lying between two burning beams, the flames just starting to lap at its arms and legs. Stone stared down, and felt his stomach turn as the ripped apart, bloody thing on the ground moved its lips, tried to speak.
“He’s not dead, Stone. The general escaped. And all your traitorous plans will fail. Patton is at the missile silo now, and he’s going to punch in the coordinates of Fort Bradley. We’ll all die. All die together.” The blood-coated face coughed and a gush of red liquid came rushing out. Then it sank down like the good dead thing that it was into the ground, into the dark soil that would be its home for the next billion years.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Two
STONE PUSHED the Harley to the max as he shot down the street that led out of the fort. All around him Fort Bradley was covered with dancing sheets of yellow and red flame and secondary explosions every few seconds as a shell or pile of them went up. The tanks in the attack force were still sending down a cyclone of shells without letup, just sweeping their huge cannons back and forth over every square inch of the place. The NAA troops for their part sent back volleys of artillery and even missiles from a multiple launch rocket system. But they had no targets to sight up and their shells exploded in the woods all around the attack force, blowing up trees into flaming toothpicks, but not striking one of the tanks.
Suddenly he saw her coming through the smoke just off the side of the street like a ghostly apparition. Stone pulled both brakes hard and the Harley came to a skidding stop, doing a one-eighty just feet from Elizabeth.
“Martin… what’s happening… they said you were a traitor. They said—”
“Get on!” Stone barked. He couldn’t go through his philosophical arguments again with tank shells landing just yards away.
“I—I can’t,” she said, sobbing, putting her hands to her face. “They said you—”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Stone screamed in exasperation. “If you want to hate me, fine, but stay alive to do it, okay? You’ll be dead in another minute if you keep standing there.” A 120mm came whistling down into the rooftop of a warehouse just across the street from them and they were almost knocked down by the force of the blast. But it seemed to make up her mind and she ran to the bike.
“Get on right behind me,” he yelled over the roar of the firefight. “The dog can fit behind you.” She pulled her leg over the leather seat in back of Stone, as Excaliber, looking a little chagrined by the musical seats, squeezed back as far as he could until his furry back was up against Stone’s rack section on the rear of the Harley. Stone checked to make sure that everyone was basically on, and shot down the street as another shell sent the asphalt they had just been standing on up into a ball of superheated tar. He pushed the bike hard and it flew over bodies, past flaming tanks. A few NAA soldiers recognized him and let fly with a volley of rifle shots, but the Harley was already gone into the swirling mists of oily black smoke.
At last he saw the main gate ahead and the two machine guns set up, ready for an infantry assault. But they were aimed forward, and Stone was coming from behind. Without even stopping to really think about it—or he might not have—Stone accelerated and as Elizabeth buried her head in the back of his leather jacket, the Harley shot into the emplacements. The bike slammed into two troops, sending them flying, and then the front wheel hit some sandbags. The Harley seemed to almost take off, as if it had gone off a ski jump ramp, and came down with a wicked slam about thirty feet outside the fort. Stone ripped the wheel to the right and the whole bike tilted over at a forty-five degree angle as they veered off. The 9mm slugs of the machine guns burped out death but the slugs raced into the air just behind the Harley. And within seconds he was out of the line of fire.
Stone waited until he was about a quarter mile from the fort and then stopped the bike.
“Last stop, baby,” he said, turning around to her.
“You’ve taken me from there,” she said, looking back at the flaming maelstrom that had been the place she lived for two years. “I have nowhere else to go. Take—take me with you.”
“I can’t,” Stone said softly. “I have to do something—right now. And the chances are I won’t be coming back. I’ve got to go… now… I’m sorry.” She dismounted and stood by the bike, looking into his eyes with tears filling her own.
“Come back for me, Martin Stone. Please come back.” Stone managed a narrow smile, and then without a word was gone.
He tore down the road that led to the silo, hunched far over onto the bike as the dog hung on for dear life behind. He prayed he would be in time. The results were too horrible to contemplate. Somehow Stone didn’t want to die in a burst of atomic fire. He didn’t like the idea. A knife, a gun: he could deal with that, though he in no way sought it, but to have your atoms themselves burnt down into… nothing—just super-heated neutrons or something spinning through space. The thought gave him shivers in the very depth of his bowels.
He hit eighty, even ninety on the straightaway and was about halfway there when it began to snow. Oh Christ, was it going to be one of those nights, Stone thought with apprehension, starting to tighten up inside in knots of growing fear. The snow, although not dense, was cold and thick, wide crystalline flakes that were big enough to make a small meal when they landed on the lips or tongue. They quickly coated the road and the land around him, dusting it all with a shimmering blanket of white, pure, innocent, unstained white. It was beautiful, in a way, Stone thought coolly as he had to slow the bike to fifty to avoid skidding. It reminded him of when he had been a child and had had one of those bottles with Santa and all eight reindeer inside it and when you shook it the sky filled with the white snow, obscuring everything. Stone had always wondered if that’s what it would look like after an atomic blast; if the fallout would drop down in thick sticking flakes like that, like tonight. Maybe it was the night to die after all. It sure as hell had the table settings for it.
He reached a fork in the road. Shit, he hadn’t remembered a fork at all. He stopped the bike, looked back and forth for almost a minute, prayed and went to the right. Everything headed to the right. Everyone knew that. He had gone about ten miles and was just starting to be sure that he had the wrong direction when he saw the fenced-in silo ahead in the pale morning light that was just starting to trickle down through the sea of flakes that now filled the slate-gray sky. He had scarcely pulled within thirty yards of the front gate when a voice boomed over a loudspeaker.
“Hold where you were, unless you want to die!” a voice yelled out over a P.A. system. “What business do you have here?”
“I’ve got no time to explain,” Stone said, knowing these fellows were not about to let him in no matter what he had to say. He jumped from the Harley and before they quite realized what he was doing Stone already had the Luchaire 89mm missile tube unlocked and pulled free from the side of the bike. He aimed dead center between the two sandbagged machine-gun nests, forward right through the wire-mesh fence.
“Jesus, he’s got—” the voice screamed over the microphone and one of the big tripod-mounted 9mm’s started to fire, a row of slugs scissoring across the hard-packed dirt toward the Harley. Stone pulled the trigger of the missile launcher and the rocket screamed out of the front like something searching for blood. A tail of flame shot out the back of the hollow firing tube. The Luchaire 89mm found what it was looking for. The missile, designed to blow out the sides of even the biggest tank, landed right between the two gun posts and the whole world went up in a hailstorm of red and yellow, sending all ten men flying up into the air like bowling pins hit by a sledgehammer. The blood of the blasted dead splattered out onto the snowy ground, creating a wild pattern of bright red drips and splatters in the sheer white surface.
Stone ran toward where he remembered the steel door in the ground to be and searched frantically around for the handle. Deep in the soil beneath him he swore he felt subsonic rumblings as if the earth itself were about to vomit. Suddenly he found something and pulled hard a
nd the steel door swung up. At that very instant the ten-foot-wide alloy-steel dome that covered the top of the silo began whirring and opening down the middle. The two sides of the nearly impervious steel slid smoothly and slowly apart, disappearing down into wide slots in the concrete circle around them.
Stone lowered himself into the entrance and shot down the rung ladder hand over foot as he heard the missile stirring, things clicking everywhere below him. Suddenly he heard another sound above, barking. Excaliber had followed him to the edge and right on in after him, not quite realizing the distance to be covered inside. As Stone looked up the yelping dog came flying down toward him like a meteor of fur. He caught the animal on his chest and they both went careening down the shaftway, bouncing back and forth between the ladder and the curved solid wall of the missile shaft behind them like ping pong balls. Stone felt himself hitting the bottom hard and then blacking out for a flash. He came to in what couldn’t have been more than a second to find himself entangled in the squealing pitbull’s legs. It pulled itself free almost immediately, stood upright and looked at him with a hangdog expression. It knew it had fucked up.
Stone didn’t have time for reprimands. At least his arms and legs still worked. He walked around the base of the towering missile as the covering far overhead completely opened and locked. If the fucking thing fired now, Stone thought, standing only yards from the base of the rocket, he’d be BBQ before he had time to scream. He walked around the circular walkway as far from the towering atomic missile as he could—as if it mattered. Stone reached the shielded door to the control room and carefully lifted his head to the Plexiglas window. They were in there, Patton and the two technicians. The general was screaming at them and they were pushing dials and buttons and shit all over the place. Firing time had definitely arrived. Stone took two grenades he had grabbed from the dead suckers upstairs and looped them together with his belt. He hung it over the handle of the door and pulled both pins, rushing back around the base of the missile as the spear of high tech steel started shaking violently.
“Come on, dog, come on,” Stone screamed as the animal trotted along slowly behind. But it got the message at the last second as it saw that Stone kept running, and it picked up a little speed, just enough to avoid the deafening blast that went off right around the bend. A shock wave flew past them on all sides and Stone felt some sharp stings in his legs and back as a few pieces of mini shrapnel dug like whirling saw blades into his flesh. He rose and ran back through the swirling dust of the silo and saw that the grenades had popped the lock. The door was ajar. Pulling the Ruger, Stone crossed himself with the pistol, kicked the door open and rushed into the control room.
“So, it is you,” General Patton glared at him with utmost contempt as he stood toward the far end of the blinking and beeping missile control center. “I thought just perhaps they’d broken you, but I see now your greed extended far beyond what I had to offer. I misjudged your ability to even sell out your fellow countryman.”
“I don’t have time to explain, General,” Stone said wearily. “I do what I do. Stop the missile and I won’t pull the trigger of this .44 mag, which will take your head off if I do.” He raised the Redhawk in a slow arc toward the general’s face.
“Sorry, Stone, but I don’t think so,” the general sneered and snapped his fingers. In the excitement and the smoke Stone hadn’t even noticed the white shape sitting at the general’s feet. But he did now as Hannibal, Patton’s eighty-five-pound pitbull, almost identical in appearance to Excaliber, raced down the long tiled floor toward Stone with a look of total annihilation on his snarling wild face. Before Stone could even move his arm to get the canine in his sights—he knew as he tried that he could never do it in time—another shape launched itself into the air from behind him. Excaliber, his own jaws opened to full like a shark, ready to take on the whole fucking world, flew past Stone. The two fighting dogs met in midair and crashed together to the floor. Excaliber was the first one up, spinning around on his side and he clamped down instantly on his adversary’s leg, pulling it hard toward him so the dog couldn’t gain its balance or rise. Hannibal snapped at the air with loud vicious chomps but couldn’t find anything as Excaliber just kept pulling it around in a circle. Suddenly the pitbull chomped extra hard and the leg cracked in two. As Hannibal let out a howl of pain, Excaliber lifted his head and came down on the exposed neck. Again he clamped with all his might, his second eyelids closing protectively over his eyes as they always did on a full attack. He bit down hard, the jaws locking in place and then spun the dog back and forth in the air like a rag doll. The incisors tore through the thick muscle sheath around the neck of Patton’s pitbull and into the pumping artery just inside. Hannibal howled like a siren as his neck opened up and a geyser of blood exploded out into Excaliber’s face. Both their white coats were coated with red in just seconds.
Then, just as quickly, it was over. Excaliber shifted the neck in his jaws slightly, getting a deeper grip, crunched hard again and that was that. The spinal cord of the animal had been snapped in two. It fell to the floor of the control room, good for a bathroom rug and not much else.
Stone ripped up the Ruger, searching for Patton, but he had disappeared. A door at the far end where the general had been standing stood open. The technicians were still playing with buttons and Stone screamed at the top of his lungs, firing toward the closest one.
“Stop, stop, you fucking fools!” He hit the near man in the shoulder and he slumped over hard in his seat, held in place by the chains that locked him there for his shift. Then Stone turned toward the other. But the man had already risen. He was pointing toward the silo on the other side of the thick control room wall and laughing.
“It’s too late, Colonel Stone, it’s already launched.” At the word “launch,” Stone heard a roar like the world was going through the second coming, and the bulletproof Plexiglas window of the door, which had been closed, turned bright orange and filled with a sheer sheet of fire. The temperature of the control room shot up instantly and Stone felt himself covered with sweat. The whole place vibrated as if they were in an earthquake and Stone ran wobbly-legged toward the exit door through which the general had vanished.
The technician tried to grapple with him as he flew past but Stone thrust his pistol hand out and knocked the man back into his chair. He reached the door and saw that there was a back exit—this one steel-gridded circular stairs—that led right to the surface. Stone glanced around and saw the pitbull coming right after him. The thing looked a mess, covered in blood from nose to tip of tail, but it was something else’s blood. The pitbull gave him a look of I-know-I-fucked-up-before-but-that-was-pretty-good-huh? and then bolted up the stairs behind him. As they reached the halfway mark Stone heard a deafening roar, then saw a sheet of flame pulsing through the exit door below. So much for technician number two.
But it was all too late. Stone knew that as he tore up the stairs, his boots almost skidding off the gridded steps as he flew along so furiously he could hardly keep his balance. It was too fucking late. The damage was done. He could feel the walls just the other side of him that encased the silo, shuddering like they were giving birth. The missile was rising, coming out of its hole in the ground, right alongside of him, rising like a tree on fire from the dirt. Still he ran, not wanting to die down here in a dark pit, even if he would soon enough be ashes.
He reached the cover at the top and pushed something titled EMERGENCY ESCAPE RELEASE. There was a loud burst of air and the round hatchway just above his head flew to the side, letting in the snow and the gray morning air. Stone flew from the exit and saw that he was about twenty yards behind the silo. The missile was rising out of the top of it, its flaming rockets just clearing ground level. It moved along achingly, grudgingly, as if it couldn’t quite get up the energy to make it. But Stone knew these big ones took a few seconds to really pour it on. They had the ponderous strength of moon rockets, and rose almost lazily at first.
But even as Ston
e stood back, shielding his eyes from the burning cloud of smoke that spat out the bottom, the missile began gaining speed up into the purple-splattered dawn. God, God, he couldn’t let it take off… though it was impossible to stop it. He scanned the back of the shielded enclosure around the silo and saw something—an antiaircraft gun. Stone tore over to it and grabbed the controls. It was an undamaged twin 35mm aircraft cannon. The thing looked like it would work. It was manually controlled—with an antique-type operation at that—with two small wheels for turning horizontally and vertically. Stone jumped into the metal bucket seat built behind the weapon and spun the wheels for all he was worth. The entire gun system spun around smoothly on a complex gear system beneath the frame and within seconds Stone had the missile in his dish-sized sights.
The M-7 was about two hundred feet up now and accelerating by the second. It filled the air around him with a thundering roar as if the very gods were screaming out encouragement. For him or it, he didn’t know. Stone pulled the trigger of the antiaircraft guns and held it down. It was as if he was on a brahma bull at the rodeo, only this was a rodeo of megadeath. The gun jerked and shimmied and did all kinds of strange little dances, as if it were trying to send Stone flying. But it also shot a weaving trail of screaming slugs up into the curtain of snow falling everywhere in the sky except just beneath the rocket, whose flaming thrust burnt a hole right through the snowflakes as it rose.
Stone couldn’t see shit with all the smoke and thick flakes falling in his face. But he leaned back, following the tail of the thing, trying to send a stream right into the fiery tail. And suddenly he hit something. He knew the thing was hurt as it suddenly wobbled violently to the side, the whole rocket section vibrating back and forth wildly like a washing machine with too many clothes in it. Then the M-7 began spinning around like a top as pieces of metal and wire from its guidance system fell from the sky. The long tail of white flame sputtered and then went completely out. And as Martin Stone watched in happiness—and horror—the ten megaton missile began dropping right back down toward him.
The Rabid Brigadier Page 18