by Ryder Stacy
Rock took the boomerang that Boyd held out and gripped it in his hand, swinging it back and forth, feeling its air resistance, the way it seemed to almost want to take off right out of his fingers. It was filled with little lights and screens and dials—an amazing amount of equipment on such a thin base. And still the damned thing flew.
“Incredible,” the Doomsday Warrior whispered. “Bloody fucking incredible.”
Eleven
Nearly 3,000 miles away in the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Red Army Command, President Langford and Kim were being given a welcoming banquet by President Zhabnov. Upon receiving the news that his men—not Killov’s—had been lucky enough to capture the elected leader of all the Freefighters, Zhabnov—gourmand, libertine, devirginator extraordinaire—had decided to try being clever this time. It was always Killov—the Skull—or Vassily, or even that bastard Rockson who played all their clever tricks on one another. But he could play, too. He would show them that he was one of the big boys, preparing the way for his eventual assumption of the Premiership of the Soviet Empire. Vassily was nearly dead already. It was only that nigger magician, Rahallah, who was keeping the frail, cancer-ridden body alive, using magic African potions from his witch doctor ancestors. Zhabnov would show the Presidium that he was the one—the only one who could hold the world together after the Grandfather passed on. Thus the banquet for his “honored guests,” the President and his lovely daughter, for whom Zhabnov opened the White House ballroom, filled it with banners proclaiming Soviet-American friendship, and prepared for a ten-course feast complete with dancers and orchestral entertainment. He would show the President that they could all be friends. There was plenty to go around. No need for anger. In Zhabnov’s simple mind, it all seemed very simple.
He waited while they were brought in from their “guest room” at the Red Army Intelligence Headquarters where they were being debriefed. At last, a chorus of tape-recorded trumpet music blasted the Soviet National Anthem at the far end of the hall and, preceded by a flag-bearing guard, the President and his daughter were led in.
“So glad, so very glad you could both join me,” Zhabnov said, grabbing at their hands with his own sweaty palms. President Langford looked with infinite disgust at the sweaty, fat, red face with its pencil dab of goatee on the jowled chin.
“We’re not joining you, Excellency. We were captured and brought here in chains and, I might add, were subjected to physical and mental abuse by your officers.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Zhabnov said angrily, turning to the major in charge of the two. “What is this all about? I gave specific orders that these two were not to be harmed in any way.”
“Sir,” the major saluted stiffly, his entire body going rigid as he stared past Zhabnov, “I was told by Army Intelligence to deliver them right to you. Whatever was done was done by their people or back at Fort Svetlanya, sir.”
“Well, I want the culprits responsible to be found and brought here immediately.” He smiled at Langford. “Upstanding American citizens such as these are to be treated with our utmost respect. They are the political leaders of the future. Men who someday might—who knows—even command you.” Zhabnov laughed as the major’s face reddened with anger, but remained stone-steady. The Russian President was beginning to enjoy his evening of lies already.
“Now be gone,” Zhabnov said, dismissing the major and his guards with a wave of the hand.
“But sir,” Major Zelinovsky began, “we can’t leave you alone with these two. They—they’re—Freefighting murderers, sir.”
His face sputtering with such fury that it looked as if he were about to explode, Zhabnov screamed out to the head of his Praetorian Guard, “Arrest that man immediately. He shall answer to me personally. Escort the rest of these troops out of here.” The entire crew was quickly hustled out the wide front wooden doors of the ballroom, which shut behind them with an echoing bang. Zhabnov turned back to the President, stroking the blackish-red fuzz beneath his wide chin.
“But enough of all this foolishness. This is no way to treat such honored guests. You must both be hungry. Come.” Zhabnov led the way to the immense dining table covered with the finest embroidered linens. A staff of nearly thirty stood around it, pots and trays of every size in their outstretched arms.
“I want you both to relax. Enjoy yourselves. You are not prisoners here, but—well, let us think of ourselves as old friends. Friends who can speak openly and without fear to one another.”
Langford didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had heard tales of Zhabnov’s stupidity but hadn’t somehow believed them. But the man was totally transparent—it was as if he could see through the skull like a piece of cellophane and into the contents within, what little there was. How could he possibly expect the two of them to believe all this banquet and trumpet bull when, for a decade, they had been hunted down like rats to be exterminated?
The Russian President of the United Socialist States of America clapped his hands with a loud crack two times. The ballroom erupted into a beehive of activity. Waiter after waiter piled exquisite helpings of the most obscure recipes on the Freefighters’ plates. Portions of hummingbird tongue roasted in walnuts, snar-lizard brain baked in Gourmandise cheese, Unicorn Elk steaks covered with rose petals from Zhabnov’s own garden . . . The two of them lost count as the smells and sights of the dishes filled their bodies with a trembling dizziness. They hadn’t eaten for days. Langford decided to play along for the moment, picked up his fork, and dug into the pounds of steaming food on the large plate.
“Yes, yes, enjoy,” Zhabnov said gleefully. “Life is too short not to burn every moment like an ember in your hands, your lips, your—” He coughed and adjusted the long bib that a servant had placed around his neck and chest. “Just my favorite,” he said to the waiter who stood by the side of his chair, anxiously waiting for the order. Within seconds a large steaming bowl was placed before him. Zhabnov moved his red veiny nose in tiny circles over the bowl, inhaling the steam and nearly moaning. Then he began eating—huge round white things that he put in his mouth and, leaning back, swallowed whole. After downing four or five he looked over at Kim, who was staring at him.
“Oysters, my dear,” Zhabnov said with a lascivious smile. “Flown in from the Belgara Sea. These are the finest in the world, filled with potent minerals and chemicals essential to a man’s vital functions.”
“And a man of your stature has so many vital functions, I’m sure,” Kim said, looking up from her swordfish l’orange.
“Yes, many, many,” Zhabnov replied hastily, not quite able to remember exactly what they were.
The Russian President clapped his hands twice again and a curtain pulled back on a stage at the far end of the room. An orchestra of Russian musicians with violins and balalaikas began playing the Star Spangled Banner in a strange blend of Asian rhythms and minor scale harmonies from the music of Mother Russia. Langford ate as much as he could, motioning for Kim to do the same. Somehow he had the feeling that it might be a long time between meals. Kick dancers jumped out on the floor and began the wild acrobatics that Russians seem to love so much. Jumping, smashing, spinning, throwing each other through the air, landing on the far end of the table on which the dignitaries were eating, and doing a pounding gypsy-like tap dance. It was enough to drive the Freefighters to madness—torture worse than anything the KGB could devise.
They ate to the accompaniment of the Red entertainment for nearly an hour, until at last Zhabnov pulled out a purple silk handkerchief, dabbed delicately against his puffed lips, and said pleasantly, “And now President Langford, down to business. Of course, I did want to meet you. We’ve never talked—and communication is so important between great leaders. But, as you may have guessed, there is another reason why I invited you.”
“Really?” Langford replied, stuffing forkfuls of dessert into his mouth.
“Yes, I have a little treaty I’ve devised that I think could be of great interest to you. I’ve decided to give the A
merican people more freedom, more say in their locales—and a pardon for all Freefighters if they’ll surrender to Red Army Command Posts with their weapons for re-education. Painless, I assure you.”
“It really sounds great,” Langford said, gulping down the last slice of chocolate cake on his plate. “But to tell you the truth . . .” He reached for the coffee, poured in cream, and took a quick gulp. “Ah, delicious,” he smiled at Zhabnov, who returned the expression like a cat that’s just been petted. “To tell you the truth, I could never sign anything with a fat murdering perverted ugly pig like you. Why, it would make me regurgitate this absolutely wonderful dinner. And I’m sure neither of us would want that.”
It took nearly five seconds for Zhabnov’s stretched-out plastic smile to fade fully from his face. Then his eyes seemed to start rolling up as his cheeks grew first cherry then fire-engine red. Just when it seemed he would surely burst at the seams, a scream emitted from his tight throat.
“Take these bastards to the MindBreakers!” he screamed to his palace guards. “Tell them to do anything they want with them, get every bit of information they can on the whereabouts of the hidden cities. And when they’re done, I don’t want these two to be able to tie their fucking shoelaces. You hear me?” He kept screaming, unable to control his rage now that it had surfaced. The Freefighters were led away. “You’ll just sit and drool, you hear me? You’ll be vegetables, sleeping in your own puke.”
The door closed and Zhabnov slammed his elbow on the table, resting his head on his hands, near tears. It had all started so well. And then? Well, what could he do? The man had insulted him. They had to be destroyed now. Zhabnov once again began worrying that perhaps he was not quite as clever as he had thought he was just this morning. Perhaps they were right. Killov and Vassily, those he had heard snickering behind his back—of how stupid he was, an idiot, a clown. And now . . .
Angrily he dismissed the entire staff, screaming at those who ran too slowly. Dishes and trays slid from their terrified hands, falling onto the floor and spewing their contents in a thick spray of melons and puddings, stews and savory gravies.
Twelve
He moved through the darkness unseen, a shadow among shadows. Through the streets of Fort Sveylanya, blending with the buildings, the doorways, the basement stairs, Rockson moved like a cat, a creature of the night. A blur of motion, a ripple in the puddle—and he was gone again. Here, the Doomsday Warrior was in his element. Just him and the night—and 40,000 Red troops who would just as soon kill him as look at him. And yet it was he who slipped freely among them—while they with their immense cannons and mortar, their two hundred machine-gun emplacements, waited for the enemy to arrive, not knowing he was already within them.
He felt alive, every sense, every nerve in his mutant body tingling, listening, feeling everything around him. It seemed supra-real, a dream that is not a dream, as he slid among the enemy barracks like a dolphin through a dark sea. And slowly he found out what he had come for. All prisoners were taken to a new prison near the center of the fortress, right off Khruschev Square. Rockson, clothed in old rags like any of countless beggars, misfits, and cripples who lived in these Russian fortresses, walked toward the Square. With coal dust and grease smeared on his face and a slight hobble in his leg, Rock looked as foul as the lowest of the “Untouchables.”
Perhaps too foul, for a pair of flashlights suddenly flashed on him as voices spoke out of the darkness.
“Halt! Who goes there? No slaves allowed in this sector after dark.” Rockson tried to feign stupidity, mumbling inanities at the soldiers as four of them came up, forming a tight circle around him. “Just looking for my dog,” Rock whined, keeping his head under an old blanket with a belt around it, which McCaughlin had thought would make a perfect disguise. “They took my dog. Said they’d eat it.” He coughed and bent over further.
“You,” the head officer said, hitting Rock in the side of the head with a short baton. “I said speak up, scum.” The Red swung again, harder this time, but Rockson let his head go with the blow and barely felt it. He couldn’t let them see—one look at his face, his clear cold eyes, and they’d know everything. He mumbled more, twitching his hands slightly as if diseased, in an attempt to make them back off.
But this particular group of Russian Keepers of the Peace was out for a little fun tonight. Out for some blood, some screams. An Untouchable wouldn’t be missed by anybody.
“I think this slime needs to be taught a lesson, don’t you, Petrov?” The head of the four, a large, thick-shouldered sergeant with a bald egglike head, laughed crudely. He didn’t wait for a reply but stepped suddenly forward, sending a ham-sized fist right toward the beggar’s stomach—a punch that would have killed most men outright. But tonight they’d picked the wrong man to party with.
As the blow came forward, Rockson merely turned his body ninety degrees, grabbed the outstretched fist underneath his right arm, and slammed his left palm into the extended elbow, cracking it in half with a loud snap like a chicken bone. There was an eerie silence for about one second as the Reds suddenly realized something was wrong. They reached for their pistols at the same instant that the sergeant, whose elbow was irreparably shattered, let out a scream to wake the dead.
There was no time for subtlety. Rock threw off the blanket and jumped forward, slamming both palms into the throats of the two closest Reds, driving the blows up with all his strength. Their larynxes smashed in, carotid arteries mashed into dog food, the two threw their hands around their throats unable even to scream as they began falling slowly to the ground, blood oozing from their grimacing mouths. Rock sensed the fourth remaining Russian just behind him, and threw himself down and backward just as a shot rang out, aimed for his head. The bullet slammed into the broken-armed sergeant who was still bellowing in pain several yards away, hitting him in the kneecap. He plummeted to the ground as if hit by lightning, his face driving into the cobblestone street with such force that his teeth were driven into the lower frontal portion of his brain, instantly slicing his cerebral cortex into pink quivering pieces.
Rock drove his fist up into the last Red’s groin just above him, and as the groaning soldier doubled over in pain, Rockson met the face with a fist as hard and immovable as the side of a mountain. The Red smashed into the calloused knuckles and bounced off like a ricocheting bullet. He dropped to the cool stone street somewhere between coma and death.
Rock glanced quickly around the street, but not a creature was stirring—at least none of these. But off in the distance growing closer by the second, was what sounded like a hundred pairs of feet. He couldn’t go on—it was too dangerous. He knew what he had come to know, and it was time to get out. Rock backtracked the way he had come, having memorized every turn, every landmark on the circuitous two-mile back-street route. The Reds in their typical unimaginative stupidity had decided he would come back to the front gates of the huge fortress to escape—which didn’t seem like a very good idea to Rock, since he knew they’d be waiting there. Instead, he went through the muddy alleys and side streets, the dwellings of the American slave workers—moans of pain, a thousand nightmares on each block of barracks. He wished he could help them—but not tonight. Soon, very soon.
He heard the sirens and saw lights in the distance behind him. The whole fort was coming to life. They apparently didn’t take kindly to the death of four of their murdering goons. Rock went on past the slave camp, past even the huge piles of Untouchables sleeping in little groups on the cold bare ground, huddled together for warmth. They stirred nervously as he passed by and held out hands, begging for rubles. At last he came to the wide strip of flat barren earth the Reds always cleared at the perimeters of their forts. Floodlights shone down with a brilliant glare from the towers that were spaced every two hundred feet apart. But other than a patrol that circled the entire fortress by jeep every twenty minutes, Rock new there was no one actually guarding the electrified sixteen-foot-high fence, topped with barbed wire, which marked
the very edge of Ft. Svetlanya.
Rockson rushed from the protecting shadows out into the lit area, running as fast as his legs could carry him, right up to the chain link steel fence. There—he saw it—the edge of the pole he had put through one of the small openings at the bottom of the fence. He reached out carefully and pulled the long wooden pole through. Since it was non-conducting, it didn’t set off the electrical devices. Rock walked back until he was about fifty feet from the high fence and gripped the pole tightly in both hands. There would be only one chance, he thought to himself, focusing every bit of mental and physical energy on that one task of getting over the top. He suddenly heard the roar of a jeep’s engine. They were coming back ahead of schedule. There was no time.
The Doomsday Warrior exhaled, then took a deep breath and ran down the slight incline toward the fence. The jeep swung around a curve and a spotlight mounted on the front caught Rockson dead on. He continued without breaking stride, planting the other end of the two-inch-thick pole in the dirt. With every ounce of his mutant strength, Rock shifted his weight forward and up, kicking off his piston legs. A stream of Red slugs headed like a swarm of man-eating locusts toward him, but Rockson was already climbing up into the air in a perfect wide arc. He saw the fence coming, then the very top. The barbed wire came toward him, its spiked teeth searching for blood. With one final burst of power, Rock twisted his wrists up and flipped his hips in a somersault over the top. He made it—barely. The very upper strands of barbed wire ripped across his right calf as he flew over, slicing open a three-inch-long gash that oozed a stream of blood. But he was over. He soared on nearly ten feet and arced down toward the ground, timing it so he curled up the moment he made contact and rolled over and over. On the far side of the fence the jeep roared to a stop and the five patrol guards inside it opened up with small arms fire and a mounted .50mm machine gun on the back. Rockson came out of his roll, and in a low crouch ran deeper into the blackness that quickly began where the circles of the searchlights ended.