by Ryder Stacy
FREEDOM’S GAMBLE
For nearly a century, a wasted and savaged America has struggled to rise from the radioactive ashes of a Russian thermonuclear sneak attack. And one man has led the desperate fight to free a once-great nation from the enslaving clutches of the brutal Red Army invaders. He is Ted Rockson—the Doomsday Warrior!
Killov, the insane leader of the KGB, is alive and planning the final annihilation of America. To achieve his terrifying goal, the Soviet death-monger enlists the aid of an overwhelming horde of Libyan cultists, determined to destroy the U.S. . . . or die!
America’s last hope lies with the Doomsday Warrior, as Rockson and a handful of FreeFighters race to the heart of the Dark Continent for an explosive African showdown. But even with the help of an entire force of Bombassa warriors, Rockson’s taking an incredible gamble by facing the lion in its own den. For a jungle defeat for the forces of freedom could set the entire nuclear-blasted world on fire!
DOOMSDAY
WARRIOR
“I’M GOING TO WATCH YOU DIE,
ROCKSON!” KILLOV EXCLAIMED.
The Doomsday Warrior looked up at the six-foot-thick slab that hung in the air micrometers from his nose.
“You’ll be crushed, Rockson, but very, very slowly,” Killov continued. “You’ll feel every bone in your body snap and the very cells of your flesh explode.”
Rock could feel the slab sinking slowly toward him. He turned his head sideways and pulled in his chest. It already hurt as the slab squashed his ear against the side of his skull. And then his skull began compressing as the death slab dropped another twentieth of an inch.
Killov was right. Rockson could see that already. Dying was going to hurt a lot.
ZEBRA BOOKS
are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
475 Park Avenue South
New York, N.Y. 10016
ISBN: 0-8217-2587-4
Copyright © 1989 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: February 1989
Printed in the United States of America
One
It was many thousands of years old, its birth lost in the dim mists of pre-history. Its face was crumbling. Dust cascaded down its granite nose, and sand swirled within its hollow deep-set eyes, which stared out only with blackness. Its long back, flanks, and legs were filled with ten thousand cracks—fissures which threatened to rip open and expose its baked innards at any moment. And yet within this decomposing physique there was a great strength, an unbreakable spirit that emanated energy. In the midst of its inevitable decomposition a ghostly voice screamed out, “I shall live forever, far beyond the lives of the men who built me, or the tens of millions who have come to see, worship, marvel over me through the centuries!”
It was called the Sphinx.
It sat in the sand, stretched like a cat, its long lion claws digging into the sand ahead of it like it was slinking, preparing for movement, perhaps ready to pounce, to leap on any who dared stare at it. It was as mysterious as the day it was chiseled, a monument to rival anything that future generations might offer the gods. A testament to the abilities of the ancient craftsmen of the Nile, and the power of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. A colossal being sculpted out of solid rock, over 189 feet long, the massive sculpture guarded the Duqur Valley, protecting it from other gods, other men. With its human head, lion’s body, and hawk’s wings, it took the best of all three and combined them into one. There was something powerful in its combined characteristics, something to challenge all the other gods: the Bull God, the Cat God, even the Sun God—Amun.
In its immovable immensity and its sheer power, its magic of stone carved into myth and eternal riddle, the Sphinx seemed to toy with mankind. For the ancient myths said that the Sphinx asked a riddle of all who dared approach it.
“What walks on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?” It killed all who failed to answer the riddle, ripping them to shreds with its stone claws, its great boulder teeth. The answer was man. Man crawls as a baby in the morning of his life, walks on two feet at noon as an adult, and must use a cane in his twilight years. But none had answered the riddle. And their bones, along with the bones of the pharaoh who had built it, had been long turned to powder—the bones of all who had labored on it as well!
Yet still the great man-beast sat, asking the riddle with hollow eyes and voiceless mouth, broken mouth dug out by aeons of windswept sand which ripped into it every second of the day. It asked through a mouth which gaped wide now, dark like a cave between the smashed lips. It asked—who dares come before me and gaze directly into my eyes? Who? What man faces the impenetrable gaze of the Sphinx and thinks he will live?
In the 247th day of its 3,789th year the Sphinx moved. Just the slightest ripple of motion at first, as if it were quivering, sending shivers along its back like a lion trying to warm itself on a cold desert night. Then it was still again as the star-studded sky looked down with its trillion eyes as if in awe of the mythical beast.
Suddenly it was vibrating wildly, every part of it shaking and jerking around as if it were going into the throes of a fit. The Sphinx, which had survived the grinding millennia, taking all that nature and man had to offer, began cracking. The face was first to go, as it crumbled apart like sand in a tidal surge. What was left of the nose cracked and slid down the face. One deep-set eye suddenly was five times larger as a whole section of the skull above it cracked with a loud snap and rushed to the desert sands below.
Suddenly all the countless tons of stone were slowly rising right up out of the desert floor, wobbling and gyrating around like a kite out of control. The immense beast rose up twenty, thirty, then fifty feet into the air. It began spinning around wildly, the long paws dipping up, then back again, like a plane which had lost its tail rudders and didn’t quite know where it would head next. Then the huge stone wings which were folded back on its sides began ripping free with great cracking sounds, as if they were trying to unfurl to help it in its mad airborne fling.
As it spun around, the centrifugal force of the motion began hurling whole sections of the Great Sphinx away. The twenty-foot-long claws tore free of their boulder wrists and fell, slamming into the desert. Part of the back ripped free and exploded into pieces which showered the sand below for many yards.
The men who were standing nearby looked terrified. The gaunt black-clad man who was causing the flying Sphinx’s bodily injuries screamed out curses in a violent rage. “It sucks! This is useless! What the hell’s wrong with this stinking device!” Colonel Killov, commander of what was left of the Earth’s KGB forces, screamed out. The red-robed high priest of Amun stood frozen in terror at his right. “You said this powerstick could levitate anything,” Killov complained. “But this damn Sphinx is just dashing itself to pieces.”
“P-Perhaps Your Godship is not quite using the Qu’ul stick c-correctly,” the priest, Aka-ta-Kal, offered. His white, jewel-fringed robe was now coated with ancient stone dust and sand from the Sphinx’s tumbling. Aka-ta-Kal shouted his words above the din, staring with fear-swollen eyes, knowing how enraged the emaciated, drug-crazed Killov could get. The high priest had discovered this Kil-Lov who was also called Ka Amun, the son of the Great Amun. Kil-Lov had fallen from the sky, his shoes flaming and smoking—as was prophesied in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. So Head Priest Aka-ta-Kal, and all the followers of the Amun Sun God cult who lived along the upper Nile, had come to serve the Ka Amun. For the Man-God had dropp
ed to Earth to deliver his divine message straight to their worthless ears. That’s why the high priest had led the Man-God to the ancient storehouse beneath the Pyramid where he had found the Qu’ul stick.
“What the hell do you mean?” Killov screamed out, shaking his hand-held levitation device. The Qu’ul was a crudely finished red crystal in a rough cylinder shape about a foot long and three inches wide. It gave off a glow as if alive inside, as if a million burning fireflies had been trapped within its crystalline surface. As Killov angrily shook the weapon—which shot out an almost invisible purple-hued beam—it lost its contact with the side of the great stone monument. The Sphinx instantly came flying straight down, a good two-hundred-foot drop. As the dozen or so Egyptian priests of the high orders of the Amun cult stood in a trembling circle around Kil-Lov the Ka Amun, they gasped collectively in abject horror as they saw the Great Sphinx smash into the side of one of the pyramids that stood below it.
There was a tremendous roar as if a burst of thunder had gone off right in front of them, and they were all showered with a blinding cloud of dust. The Sphinx had smashed into innumerable pieces against the pyramid. Every part of it had exploded out in all directions, from boulder-sized pieces to grains of sand. What had lasted aeons had been taken out of existence in an instant.
The Sphinx was dead. It was but sand for a sandbox—if there had been such things in the year 2096 A.D.
“Ah, this stupid thing is broken,” Killov raged, throwing the levitation stick, the Qu’ul, to the sand.
The priests gasped again and closed their eyes reflexively for a few seconds. The dropped levitation device easily could have fallen pointing at them. But it had turned off abruptly as it left Killov’s grip. For the Amun Stick needed the touch of a human being, the warmth of his circulating blood to bring it to life. And as cold as Killov’s skin was, there was enough warmth to power the Qu’ul.
Gingerly Aka-ta-Kal reached down and picked the device up again, letting his own pounding heart settle. The Great Sphinx had been destroyed, just like that. It was terrible, a blasphemy. And yet—and yet—if this was what the Man-God, the Ka Amun Sky Being Kil-Lov, who had dropped from the clouds with flaming feet, wanted, such must be.
“Ka Amun,” Aka-ta-Kal addressed Killov as softly as he could through the settling dust and sandstorm created by the exploding Sphinx. “Perhaps I can demonstrate the use of the Qu’ul again. It must be gripped softly and held very still, like this.” The high priest held it up in front of Killov.
The KGB colonel stared at him, his whole face and body trembling. He wanted to strike out and kill those who had seen him not know how to use the power of the thing properly. For power was all to Colonel Killov, and no one could ever question his authority. But Killov wanted to learn the use of the Qu’ul levitation device even more. For he had plans, great and terrible plans, for it. Deeds to rival the most cruel of the ancient pharaohs would soon be afoot. And so he watched. And learned. He practiced with the awesome weapon that no one had dared to pick up since the days of the pharaohs—the device that had been kept hidden for thousands of years by the cultists who thought he was a god!
Two
The African village that called itself Boswandi, meaning “We Who Live by the Volcano,” woke early that morning. It was an important day, the most important for as long as any man in the tribe could remember. For the chief’s son, Musubwambi, was to marry Unam, the daughter of the chief of the neighboring village. It was an event of profound importance to both villages since it meant they could stop the ceaseless warring that had continued between them for many years. The marriage meant that cattle would no longer be stolen, homes no longer burned, members of each tribe no longer killed as they went to gather fruits from the nearby forest or water from the rivers, or as they hunted on the plains. It meant—peace. So they all hoped.
Masdouri M’Bekwani awoke earlier than the others. He was the witch doctor of the village, which meant great and profound responsibilities for him. For his spells, incantations, potions, and sacrifices to the cattle and lion gods could well mean the difference between success and failure for this union of the two neighboring villages. They had lived in war for nearly a hundred years, since the Great Nuke War itself had sent fire over all the continents. This section of the northern Sudan had been spared the atomic fires, which meant that the savannahs still grew, the game animals still grazed. Life could have been decent enough—if the two tribes hadn’t begun warring with one another. They had been warring for a century, and would be heading into the second century within another year. To this day Masdouri didn’t really understand why they fought, had always fought. Both tribes were of the same blood, had shared common beliefs and culture. Even their jewelry and the ritual tattoos and scars that they carved on their arms and chest were very similar in design and appearance. But all the similarities and friendship were lost in the spilt blood that had followed the decades immediately after the Great Fire War. The mushroom clouds had gone up as close as a hundred miles from the spot where Masdouri’s thatched-roof, mud-walled hut now stood. Not that he had seen the towering funnels of glowing death. But his father had been told stories of them by his father. And all the secrets—of history and magic—had been passed on from generation to generation, too, with those stories.
Masdouri had no illusions. He knew that the union of the two tribes was fragile from the start. Very fragile, as brittle as the egg of an Ambala bird, which could shatter at a man’s touch. The people of his tribe prayed for peace, longed for peace. For many young men had died over the years. Not a family was untouched, unscathed. Not a mother had not lost a son. And Masdouri as well—he longed for peace too. Prayed that its time had come like the great migrating herds returning to the Rift Valley year after year.
He was old now, nearly eighty, an ancient age for a village in which fifty was considered old, sixty the blessing of the gods. Disease, attack by man and animal—all took their toll. But being so old, he had the wisdom of many years. Masdouri had seen it all.
Masdouri had been as warlike as the most hawkish of them in his youth, screaming and chanting around the fires in his most terrifying, demon-killing costumes to help the warriors get up their courage to go out and kill some more. But now things were different. Now he no longer had those feelings. Growing old takes some of the fierceness out of even the witch doctor and war-speller of the tribe. The desire for peace comes through wisdom. The desire for harmony comes through viewing too much bloodshed. Such a wise man was Masdouri. He had seen enough of the color red, enough rivers of tears from the wives and children of the dead. For such things alone man was not put on earth!
And so he felt fear. Fear of a kind he hadn’t experienced for many years. He felt his very body trembling, his hands shaking as he sat up from his straw mat feeling the sweat pouring down his spindly arms and legs. For Masdouri knew that the very future of the tribe, its very existence, depended on what he did today, on whether or not he pleased the gods, carried out the right spells, picked the right potions to ward off demons and demon lackeys. And it made his heart beat like the dancing drums to have such a responsibility.
Masdouri rose slowly from the mat bed on the floor of his round mud-walled hut with finely meshed roof of vine and savannah growth. He really didn’t want to get up today. Masdouri wanted to stay in the protective dimness of the klut, stay here where only a few streaks of early violet dawn broke through hair-thin cracks in the thatched roof. He felt strange inside. As if there was something beyond the wedding itself, something beyond the entry into the village of many warriors from the other tribe to threaten him. Something gnawed at his very heart, tugged at it, as if trying to tell him something.
“Ah, Masdouri, you are becoming an old hen, like a woman,” he scolded himself, forcing an insincere chuckle out of his narrow leathery lips. He sat fully up on the mat, his back against the rough mud and cattle-dung walls now baked hard as brick.
Father Sun had not even climbed from his black bed, and
the air was thick, thicker than usual with a sheet of dank air from the jungles to the east. That didn’t usually penetrate out onto the edges of the savannah belt where Masdouri and his people lived! It was going to be very hot today, he could tell already.
The gods were toying with him. They were not going to make things easy. Usually he had one of his four wives prepare his morning rituals, bring him water, but he had banished them from the klut two days before. No women could be near him for at least forty-eight hours before an important ceremony, particularly one of the magnitude of the chief’s son’s wedding.
This was the most important spell-dispensing he had ever undertaken. He wished he were a younger man, one with the exuberance and cockiness of youth. He felt tired, old, hardly able to rise up without the women around to fetch things for him, help him dress. He had gotten used to them. Too used to them perhaps.
Hearing his knees cracking like dry twigs, Masdouri dragged himself upright, pushing his back against one of the wooden support branches which held his klut upright.
The hardest part was getting to a standing position. Once he was fully up, it wasn’t really that bad. He held onto the center support, nearly two feet thick, gnarled and twisted, and walked around it in a stumbling circle. Three times to the east, three times to the west, just to make sure that the whole wedding list of gods and devils was honored properly, making little bows at every step and mumbling prayers very fast under his breath.
Then he stopped and kindled a fire off to one side of the klut in a dugout pit. It flamed quickly. He was quite adept at such things, having been around so long. He put a gourd over it—blackened and smeared with pitch on the bottom so it could take heat without cracking—and heated up his morning drink, Kusamba, a mixture of cattle blood, curdled milk, and herbs. It tasted wonderful and energizing. After he had finished the Kusamba he felt more awake and alert.