Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory Page 11

  “Yes, yes, I suppose I could let you have some irregulars from a few spots. Rahallah—you are more up to date on the world military situation that I am at the moment,” Vassily said, turning his head to the black servant who stood listening anxiously by the bed. “Where might we scrape up some forces—some real forces, not parade troops?”

  “India, sir,” Rahallah answered instantly. “That’s perhaps the one place on earth right now where things are not at the point of exploding. The rebellion of the Hindu army was put down decisively at the Battle of New Delhi just last month. And there’s but one reason we did well there, Excellency.”

  “Yes, yes,” the premier answered, waving his hand impatiently.

  “The Sikhs, Excellency. A warrior tribe going back to prc-Biblical times. They have always been fighters—it is passed on from father to son like a sacred heritage. They’re some of the toughest fighters in the Empire, Excellency. And with the lull over there, there would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 of them freed up for other duty.”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose,” Vassily mumbled to himself, trying to keep up with it all. He had been asleep just three minutes before—and now he was being asked to ally with the Free Americans, an enemy his country had been fighting for nearly 150 years.

  Rockson pushed further. “Not ‘suppose,’ Excellency—you must send them. You have no choice. For you are a man of destiny, a man who will be remembered as the centuries themselves turn to dust for what you decide right now. You cannot be vilified as the man who allowed the world to fall back into the very dark ages you say you are trying to save us from. You must act now, today. Every second strengthens the murderer’s hands. For he stands unopposed in his drugged madness.”

  “Yes! Yes!” Vassily suddenly screamed out over the phone, with such force that Rock had to pull the earpieces on his headphone away. “Yes, I’ll give you those men—though Lenin knows what the result will be. Whether they’ll even fight alongside of you—or against you.”

  “They’ll fight with me, Excellency—because you’ll tell them to. Because they are your pawns to do with what you wish.”

  “Ah, I grow so tired,” Vassily croaked, his face breaking out into a cold sweat. Just when he thought he would crumble beneath the tonnage of the world—another weight was thrown on. He could feel his heart speeding up, his blood pressure rising, the migraine headache that he had finally suppressed just hours before—coming back with a vengeance.

  “Tell me, Rockson—what do you personally get out of all this?” the premier managed to ask, propping himself up on satin pillows, motioning for Rahallah to hand him a glass of medicinal spirits—brandy—to calm him down. The servant poured him but a few sips in an immense crystal snifter, which the ruler of the world downed like a wino on the long ago evaporated Bowery.

  “I get the Skull out of my way—for good. He disturbs my dreams. I want one thing in return for our help to you.”

  “Your help to us!” Vassily began sputtering again. “You just called me to help you!”

  “Yes—but the result of our aid will release your nephew’s entire imprisoned army over here. We will be back to the way things were—but at least you will have your forces.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s true,” Vassily said grudgingly. “Well, what?”

  “I want all the nuclear devices in America removed, never to return. If you want to fight us with your men, your cannons, your jets—then we will fight. But there can be no more nuclear explosions here. The ecological system is hanging by a thread.”

  It irritated Vassily to no end that many of the things Rockson was saying were thoughts he had had himself in the darkness of his nights. He had read too much, knew too much about the ecosystem not to see the truth. Yet having been the highest of the high for as long as he could remember, it was difficult making deals with a Freefighter mutant who had killed or been responsible for killing literally hundreds of thousands of his men.

  “Rockson,” Vassily spat out. “You’re too damned clever. But as Caesar said to Mark Antony:

  ‘Let me have men about me that are fat;

  Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.

  Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

  He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’

  “Still, I give my word. I had been thinking of deactivating the missiles anyway, having come to some of the same conclusions as you. But if—and only if—your insane plan works, I’ll do it forthwith.”

  “Sir, I never begin anything I can’t finish,” Rockson said. “In wine, women—or war.”

  Within a few more minutes, as the incredulous young Russian radio operator listened in awe, Rockson finished arranging a tentative rendezvous point for Vassily’s airlifted troops, to meet their American counterparts.

  Ten

  They rode black Arabian stallions, their long white robes flowing like kings’ royal garb, their turbans covered with jewels and gold taken from the vanquished, their long curved swords hanging at their sides, ruby-encrusted handles shimmering in the burning noonday sun. They were like visions of some distant past, out of a magical world of genies, dragons, and harems with silk-covered dancing girls. But they lived here in the 21st century. And they killed.

  Sikh Pratha Ragdar and Sikh Sinh Panchali—the generals of the Sikh Army that had just won a long, drawn-out fight with the Uttar Pradesh rebel elements. They would rise again, of that both generals were sure—but it would be years. The guerilla movement in India and Pakistan had been seriously hurt with the destruction of half their forces and the capture of their entire top staff—whose heads now sat atop long spikes lining the roads of Northern India like signposts to hell.

  “Ah, General Ragdar,” General Panchali said wistfully to his big-nosed opposite number, stroking his silver beard which came to a point halfway down his broad chest. “I feel a deep sadness in my heart on this day.” His narrow eyes, set in a face as weatherbeaten as a piece of driftwood, surveyed the immense mountainscape that surrounded them. For the last six months they had pursued the enemy right up into the Himalayas, seeking to wipe them out. The highest peaks in the world poked through the clouds, their tops disappearing above the ken of mortal man. In any direction they could see for over a hundred miles in air that was as clear and cool as a mountain spring. Snow dotted the slopes around them—and higher, glacial ice sheets, a billion tons worth, always threatening to avalanche and bury everything in their path. The realization that the fighting had died down dismayed him. His expression gave this away.

  “What sadness can be found on a day like this?” Ragdar, ten years younger and filled to overflowing with a lust for life, asked his elder. “We have just won a war, we are rich, we are generals of a quarter of a million men who are feared throughout Asia, we have all the women, all the wine a man could drink, we are surrounded by the most beautiful terrain on all of God’s poisoned earth—and you feel sadness.” Ragdar leaned over and slammed a huge hand across Panchali’s back, trying to rouse him from his lethargies.

  “I mourn because there is not more war,” Panchali replied in his deep bass voice. “To fight—to die—what is life for but these?”

  “But what of fine food, gems, slaves—love—women?” his younger compatriot asked with a lascivious smile on his face.

  “Love is for rabbits,” Panchali said. “For me women are just intermissions between the main masculine acts of war. I am quickly bored. But tell me,” Panchali said suddenly, growing animated. “Do you not feel most alive in battle? With all your senses heightened, speeded up so that every image, every sound and scent is imbued with power—power to bring your existence into a super-fine focus—in which men, worlds, civilizations come and go in the flash of an eye, in a second. When a man comes at me with his sword, I feel transcended, lifted from my body. I can see it all in slow motion, sense everything, can see the foam bubbling up from his steed’s mouth, see the way the hoof strikes the ground at an odd angle, and how my enemy’s face is filled with a
thousand conflicting emotions. This—this is my art, my love. The beauty of the fight. Of one man against another. No chance to grow old. When my reflexes go, then my enemy will win. And he should. And I will go into the realm of the gods, of Vishnu, of Brama and Siva where I’m sure we will all continue to fight amidst the clouds.”

  “Well said,” the younger Ragdar laughed, clapping his hands together. “Perhaps you should have been a poet—not a warrior.”

  “I fear rather than creating images of beauty, I would instead take my pen and begin stabbing at whoever came near.” Both men laughed at the image, and looked at each other with the love that brothers have for one another. Although they were not related by blood, they had fought side by side for the last decade. Many times each had been so close to death he could feel it licking down his spine like a wolfs sandpaper tongue. But the other had appeared out of nowhere with swinging sword and blazing .9mm submachine gun and the enemy was destroyed. They had worked their way up in the ranks of the Royal Sikh Army—the “Royal” in the name being a vestige of the old imperial days of the British Empire when the Sikhs had been the fiercest of the colonial English fighters—and had gained a worldwide reputation for their ferocity, bravery, and keen military intelligence. The crafty Russians had allowed them to keep the name—for they understood the power of military tradition to motivate men, to make them storm through battlefields carrying their banner high.

  The Sikhs were given wealth, power, and masses of weapons and ammunition. In return they took on the enemies of the New World Soviet Empire—those “barbarian tribes” that Moscow felt were the most threatening. They were an age-old breed of man—mercenaries. Not worrying a whole lot about who they were fighting or why—but carrying out their destinies of being warriors—of killing, of routing armies. The gods wished it thus.

  “There is truth in what you say,” General Ragdar said as he pulled his high-spirited stallion away from the edge of a steep slope that fell out below them thousands upon thousands of feet to the rubbled bottom. “Battle does quicken the heart, speed up all the faculties. Yet I do it more as my vocation. Yes, I love it—but I love other things as well, Panchali. Spreading the legs of young beautiful women, drinking the best brandies and wines, painting pictures of the sea from my mansion near Calcutta. These things all make me feel alive.”

  “Ah, you are much too sensitive, my young Sikh warrior. I’m amazed you have lasted this long in the business. A career of killing can take a lot out of a man if he thinks about it too long. I prefer to do what I am best at and leave the fate-wheel, the judgments, to the gods.”

  They came to a plateau and let the stallions rest for a minute while the two generals stood on the edge looking down at the plain below them. The tents of their troops stretched on for miles in even rows of round goatskin dwellings, the corrals for their stallions set every quarter mile or so. The men were walking outside, barely visible specks from the generals’ vantage point, spread out around the camps and environs like an army of ants. Only these ants weren’t working—but sitting, reading, wrestling, or swimming in the large lake next to which the Sikh army had temporarily bivouacked. And they deserved it, General Ragdar thought as he gazed down on them with a fond love for those who would die for him. They had all fought as hard as a man—even a Sikh—could fight. And now . . . Now the body would slow down, the heart pace drop to a more civilian rate. Even if it rankled Panchali—the rest of the army needed it. No one goes forever living only on the sight of blood.

  “I am bored already,” Panchali said with a deep sigh, his sapphire-ringed hand resting on the hilt of his sword as if wanting to draw it. “Soldiers should not sit, rest, sleep in the middle of the day. I have lived too long as a fighter, a general—not to feel sickened by the sight of my men without their guns, their swords ready. Ah, perhaps I am already becoming an anachronism, obsolete as the Empire collapses all around us.”

  “Not obsolete, Panchali,” Ragdar said, “just too successful for your own good. We just vanquished one army, took back an entire nation into the arms of Mother Russia. Congratulate yourself, let your own flesh rest for a moment. I have a whole new shipment of young, ripe girls from the southern steppes—they are beautiful, Panchali. With huge brown eyes like a fawn and skin with the texture of the finest Peking silk. There are too many for me—I am not greedy. I will give you four or five—get your mind off all this peace.”

  “Yes, yes, you are right,” General Panchali said, “I’m turning into a fool.” Suddenly they both heard the sound of hooves from behind them and turned to see a messenger with red pennant, tearing up the trail, leaving a cloud of dust all the way down the steep side. Within minutes he reached the plateau and raced toward them. The rider pulled his midnight-black mount to a stop and jumped down. He threw himself to the ground, kneeling far over as was the greeting of all lower ranks to either of the two generals.

  “Sikh Panchali—an urgent message direct from the premier.”

  “Yes, yes, rise up man, what is it?” the general asked with a rising hope in his heart.

  “Sir, I know it sounds peculiar, but we decoded the message three times and asked for confirmation—and it is accurate.”

  “Speak, fool,” Panchali said, pulling his sword half out of its emerald-encrusted scabbard, “before you have no head from which to speak.”

  “S-s-sir, Premier Vassily wishes you to take the entire First Royal Sikh Army by transport jet to the U.S.S.A. where you will join forces with the American Freefighters and battle Colonel Killov, who has attacked Red Army bases throughout the country.” The messenger gave the message in one long breath and the moment he finished he gasped for air, his lungs heaving.

  “W-w-what?” Ragdar said, almost in a whisper. “I can hardly believe it.” His women, his weeks of hedonistic saturation all vanished before his eyes. He looked positively mournful.

  “Good,” Panchali laughed, holding his arms wide to the sky as if thanking the gods. “Good. The wheel of Karma spins again. We fight again, Ragdar, my wishes have come true. I will have to sample your gourmet treats some other day.”

  “But to fight alongside the rebel American Freefighters,” Ragdar mumbled. “It is all so strange. I can’t . . .” Ragdar, who liked to see the world in simplistic, easily understood terms, was confused and mystified. They were mercenaries, but never had they fought alongside any man—let alone their lifelong enemies.

  “As for me, Sikh Ragdar,” Panchali said with a look of supreme satisfaction on his dark lined face, “I don’t give a damn who we fight—as long as we get the chance once more to sever heads from their infidel bodies.”

  Eleven

  “We’ll have to go around it,” Ted Rockson said, pointing at the rim wall of the mile-wide A-bomb crater that loomed ahead, blocking their way north to Fort Minsk like a monument to the gods of nuclear darkness. He pulled the reins of his ’brid slightly to the right and the long straggly line of Freefighters fell in behind him. Since his conversation with Premier Vassily, the Doomsday Warrior had actually begun believing that they had a chance to thwart Killov’s coup d’etat. Even the maddening tit-for-tat—Rona and Kim were still riding right behind him as if to make sure he heard their every biting word—didn’t irritate Rockson today. For the first time in days he felt in a positively good mood.

  “My, you’re looking well today, considering . . .” Rona said with a sweet smile to Kim, who rode almost abreast her, a few feet behind.

  “And you too,” Kim rejoindered, hitting the psychological tennis ball back. “When one realizes that you’re in your mid-thirties and still surprisingly attractive. Why, those sun lines or, are they ‘crows feet’ eyes and lips are hardly noticeable—except perhaps in bright light. It really is amazing.”

  “And amazing that your diminutive twig of a body hasn’t crumpled out here in the real world,” Rona suddenly blurted out as Kim’s last barb had stung her. She felt that her face was more striking than the more sweet-girl-next-door looks of her rival—but Kim
was ten years younger than she. And somewhere in the midst of her fears of losing Rockson, Rona thought perhaps he would want a younger woman, less touched by the acid hands of time.

  “All right, you two,” Rock said, leaning around in his saddle. “We’re going around some high slopes here with lots of loose rock and boulders just itching to slide down if the right sound waves hit them. Sound waves like you two clucking on like a couple of mad hens in the barnyard. Okay. I mean, it’s a free country and all that—but not when the whole damned mountain might come down on all of us.” They both looked at him with burning eyes, angry at him, at each other, at everything, but clamped their lips tight as vises, the skin turning white and stiff in repressed rage.

  The team spread out about 30 yards apart in the standard formation for any potential landslide terrain, so the entire team wouldn’t be buried. Rock slowed his ’brid to a crawl to see what effect the clapping hoof beats of the expedition might be having on the shale slopes that stretched up a good half mile into the rainy gray afternoon sky. He had seen several avalanches, almost died in one. And it was not an experience he wanted to repeat.

  They rode about a hundred feet from the base of the crater, still strewn with shiny green-glass balls—dirt and stone melted by the bomb blast a century ago. The jewels of the atomic age. Highly radioactive jewels—death to the unwary collector. Whenever Rockson passed one of the many craters that scarred the face of America like pockmarks that wouldn’t disappear, he got the same feeling. A sensation of dread, of darkness, so deep it filled the pit of his stomach, his heart, with waves of nausea and doom. For Rockson could feel the souls of those who had died from the blast. Those whose ashes were mixed into the mountain, their molecules forever and inextricably bound with the radioactive molecules of the nuclear mound. If atoms can cry, then the Doomsday Warrior heard their moans, felt their invisible tears waft down the slopes in waves of drifting blue fog.