Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style Page 12

  They had gone about another twenty miles when Rock brought them to a dead stop, just before a steep rise ahead. He pulled out a well-worn map from his saddlebag and checked it carefully, looking around, apparently searching for some natural formation that would confirm their location. And he found it—four hills, almost squarish in shape, off about two miles to the right. There were puffs of smoke in the air from fires.

  “I think we’ve reached our target destination,” Rock said, talking softly. “We may be nearer than I thought, in fact, so keep the ’brids quiet, take a break, and I’ll be back in half an hour.” He motioned to the martial artist. “Chen—come on pal.” Rock started forward as the Chinese fighting master jumped down from his ’brid with animal grace, landing perfectly on his toes and starting forward. Rock often used the man’s speed and super senses on scouting. Next to the Doomsday Warrior himself, Chen was probably the toughest son of a bitch pound for pound in the whole damned country. The man had saved his ass more times than he cared to remember.

  The two of them half ran up the ridge, side by side, making virtually no sound. Chen had taught Rockson the toes-first running motion that could enable one to move through forests with the stealth and whisper-quiet of a stalking Indian of old. Thus they reached the top of the mini-mountain, about 1,000 feet up, not even disturbing the animal life that called the long slope home. They slid to their bellies and brought their heads to the very top, peering over carefully.

  “Damn,” Chen said with a hiss. “Damn.” Both men stared, their eyes wide with awe. The immense trucking depot below them was filled with over a thousand big rigs—diesel-smoke-exuding tractor-trailers. In fact it was just about the biggest assemblage of vehicles either man had ever seen, stretching for over a mile in long rows. From here the Reds shipped out America’s produce and goods, even women, to all parts of the country. This was the hub of the transportation wheel. Even as they watched, trucks pulled out, so laden with goods that they rested heavily on their huge tires. There were so many—everywhere—it was hard to follow them all.

  “Someday,” Rockson muttered from between clenched teeth. “Someday—we take this whole damned place out. But not today. Come on, man,” Rock said, sliding backwards away from the edge as Chen followed instantly behind him. “Let’s get back to bivouac. Now we just gotta figure out a fucking way to get hold of one of those damned things.”

  The driver of the Vlushkin 20-ton diesel truck stared bug-eyed through the dirt-streaked window of his huge transport. He had been driving for three days now without sleep, and only the amphetamines he popped every six hours or so kept him going. But it also made him wired, nervous as a thief, and talkative—the man couldn’t stop talking.

  “Boris, do we think we’ll make Delaware by Friday? I’ve got this bitch waiting for me there who can tickle your balls right off your goddamn cock. You hear me? You hear me?” He looked around with a somewhat insane expression at his co-driver, a huge, fat and bored trooper whose head was resting against the side of the window. The fat man kept both eyes closed, but said something every once in a while to the driver, Nashtrin. If only because he knew if he didn’t utter some kind of response to the babbling idiot’s words he would go completely mad, stop the truck, and make Boris wake up. It had happened before. It was easier to compromise—at least lie in a half sleep.

  “Yes, yes, we’ll make it,” the fat half-dozer replied reassuringly.

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know,” the driver exclaimed, shaking his head. “The weather’s looking bad, the clouds dropping down again like they were doing yesterday. I hate this damned America. I tell you that. When I’m out of here next year, I’ll never sign up for another tour of duty here; never. You hear me? I’d rather go back to Afghanistan. But not here. You hear me? You hear me?”

  “I hear you, Boris. Yes—no more signing. Good idea.” He snorted, rearranged his obese body and tried to catch at least a few seconds of sleep.

  “They push us too hard these days. Driving back and forth without being able to take a break, get any sleep. I tell you—the timetables they set are impossible to meet. Impossible.” He was fairly yelling now, more due to the fact that he was going to miss his whore in Maryland than the actual hardships of the job. In fact, compared to almost any other Red trooper stationed in America, Pastronovitch Boris Nashtrin was way ahead of the game. Prime pay, vacation, and all the black-market goods he could smuggle from stop to stop. And he knew it. But complaining made the long, dark trip a little more palatable. And so as they drove along out of Darkoff Transport Center, his jaws moved as fast as the big wheels ripping below.

  They traveled down I-70, and soon were alone on the fairly well kept four-lane cement interstate. The Reds had let most of America’s highway infrastructure crumble—but here and there they had kept things going. This was one of the best—the main east-west highway that would take him straight to D.C. In fact, if he could have put the damned thing on auto-pilot he could have joined his partner there half sprawled over the seat. If it’d had an auto-pilot.

  Suddenly Nashtrin’s face seemed to contort in an expression of stark horror. For the roadway in front of him had erupted into flame. He couldn’t see just what the hell was happening—just that a wall of fire was dead ahead, covering the whole road. Boris twisted the metal wheel to the right at the same time he pumped the brake up and down—and downshifted from twelfth gear all the way to first in seconds. The man was an expert driver—one of the best. Only that enabled him to bring the big rig to a skidding stop on the weed-covered knoll alongside the highway without turning the whole thing over.

  The moment he came to a stop, Boris slammed his hand over his heart to make sure he wasn’t going to have an attack. With the pills and the adrenaline that had just pumped into his body, it felt like the organ was doing the thousand-mile dash—and wasn’t in the front ranks. But he had barely caught his breath when the doors on each side of the cabin were yanked open and men stood there, holding mean-looking pistols and automatic weapons in their hands.

  “Sorry, boys, but we’ll be needing this big rig,” one of them said. His mismatched blue and violet eyes twinkled in the darkness of the long road, lit by the crackling fire of the flaming tree about two hundred feet back of where the diesel had finally settled to a dusty stop. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to oblige. Since the alternative is—I shoot you where you’re sitting and shovel the pieces out.” The man smiled grimly, and Boris had no doubts whatsoever that he meant it. He jumped down from the cabin, holding his hands high to show he had nothing hidden there. His fat co-driver did the same on the other side, nearly falling as his thick legs hit the ground.

  “D-d-d-don’t kill me,” Boris began to plead. “I have a w-w-w-ife and family. “I—”

  “Save your breath,” the apparent leader of the band of mountain bandits said, “you won’t die if you just shut up and do what you’re told. All we want’s the damned truck.” And so, for the first time in days, Boris shut his white-lipped mouth. For as much as he wanted to talk—even to his enemies—he wanted to live a lot more.

  Twenty minutes later, the two men were tied up, naked, hand and foot, the rope wrapped tightly around a tree. The ’brids had been loaded up into the back of the diesel rig—and the men as well, the doors tightly closed behind them. Rock and Scheransky rode up front, dressed in the uniforms of the trucks previous occupants. The Russian defector drove, glad to be of some real service finally, and not just the most inexperienced member of the strike force.

  “Now, just take it easy,” Rock said to him as Scheransky slid the truck into gear and started her out from the sudden detour into the dirt she had taken. “You say you know how to drive this thing—right?” He looked questioningly at the Russian’s face, which was glued to the road ahead—the twin beams of its headlights cutting a swath of light through the falling darkness.

  “Damn right, I do,” the Russian replied without turning an inch. “Used to drive transports in Minsk. Bigger than this.
Why, you just slip it into gear here like this—and—”

  The big truck suddenly lurched forward like a bear darting out of a cave, and Rock could hear human and animal protests right through the steel walls of the cabin behind him. But then Scheransky settled down and they started down the highway, as he smoothly accelerated the truck from ten to twenty to thirty . . . They had been lucky, damned lucky. The diesel had been carrying nerve-gas cannisters—not that there were any left, they had all been deposited back at the depot for later shipment. Now it was empty—except for Rock’s men. And the insignia, the huge, red CCCP danger signs on each side of the truck gave them top priority on all roadways. And, according to the Russian defector—the privilege of not even having to stop at checkpoints!

  “You’ll see,” Scheransky said, digging with his finger at the collar of the previous driver’s shirt, which was about three sizes too small. Rock, on the other hand, was engulfed in the obese Red’s jacket—it seemed to hang on him like a tent. “You’ll see—we’ll be able to breeze through the posts and be in your Washingtonski before you can say ‘the hair on Lenin’s balls.’ ” Scheransky laughed and the truck darted forward.

  And sure enough, after they had traveled a good hundred miles on the wide highway, passing vehicles coming the other way every now and then, they came to a checkpoint with steel gate, machine-gun posts and a shitload of troopers—and Scheransky’s prediction proved to be true. The Reds at the gate opened the closed barrier as they saw the truck approach, and stepped out of the way so it could tear ass through without even having to give papers.

  Once they were actually on the other side and moving away fast, and Rock had leaned around and looked out the mirror of his window—and saw that no guards were in fact actually pursuing them—did he relax enough to take his hand off the butt of his .12 gauge death-dealer.

  “It’s just common sense, Rock,” Scheransky said. “They’re just men like me and you—well, like me, anyway,” he grinned, as the team was always teasing Rock about being a full mutant and somewhat “different” from the rest of them. “Aside from the fact that we have ‘Priority Transit’ markings on the truck, they also know it’s nerve gas. And for all they know, some of the shit is still lingering around. They’re just protecting their own asses.”

  And that was that. The truck just kept going. Rockson’s plan was working out even better than he had hoped. He settled back in the leather seat and took a look out the window at the landscape that was left of America as the ribbon of highway snaked its way across the belly of the country.

  Through Illinois, and what was left of the once-great industrial state. Not much. Her factories were all silent, chimneys that had once poured out smoke as mankind produced great machines and devices—all were silent now; dead. Only huts and little primitive towns could be seen here and there, far from the highway. Rusted cars and factories, their outer flesh of brick and mortar gone now, so that their rotting skeletons of steel inside could be seen for miles. Like great dinosaurs they were, ancient, dead, devoid of meaning any longer, other than to historians, to those who probed the past. But this past would never return.

  Rock was just as glad to be out of the state, which he noted with the sign they passed: WELCOME TO KENTUCKY, THE HORSE STATE. The sign was old, faded, but somehow it stood, alongside the road, a remnant of an old world, and a new world where normal horses didn’t even exist anymore. Here, the land seemed to have reverted to extremely primitive conditions, almost junglelike in many places. Kentucky had always been a fairly lush and forested state, with its closely trimmed meadows and its stately mansions. It was all gone now, eaten away by the encroaching jungle-like woods, vines and weeds. For the state had grown a few degrees warmer on an annual basis, as well as receiving more rainfall. The mansions which had been overrun with creepers, were now a twisted chaos of vines and thorns. The place looked like one might see a stegosaurus or some close relative come marching out of the flora at any moment. And Rock, in spite of himself, felt his hand edging unconsciously back down toward his .12 gauge.

  Every four or five hours they would come to another checkpoint, and though trucks and cars were all stopped along the sides—guards checking ID and travel papers—Rock and Scheransky were just waved on through—and they waved back, their faces bent forward so that their large Red Army hats completely overshadowed their features. In eastern Kentucky they came to what was an attempt by the Reds to get small farmers going again. For along the highway they could see men in white outfits, white hats, to protect them from the ultraviolet rays of the sun that now poured down on the earth, thanks to the depletion of the ozone layer that had once protected her. But though they looked like they had worked their asses off—as long rows of dirt had been plowed off to the horizon in every direction—there wasn’t a hell of a lot growing anywhere. The dashboard geiger counter clicked slowly. Radiation. Still.

  They just kept on going, the countryside moving like the blur of a fan as Rock lost track of where the hell they were. Scheransky seemed okay, so he didn’t hassle him about taking a break. If the man could keep it up—let him. Likewise—no screams or banging on the cabin to have them stop from the men in the rear. Whatever “elimination” problems the men and hybrids might have, apparently they had been able to figure out a way to deal with them.

  By the next morning, two days after they had hijacked the truck, they were at the outskirts of West Virginia and Rock checked the map again. They were making incredible time. He was ahead of the schedule he had set for himself to do some reconnoitering before attending the D.C. conference—if he did attend at all.

  West Virginia had been hit hard with nukes. Whether the Russians had hoped to dig up a shitload of coal and harvest it by dumping a few dozen warheads around—or whether they had just gone off course—who knew? But the poor state of West Virginia looked like something on the dark side of the moon. The inhabitants who he saw occasionally peering from behind hovels or atop hills were extremely primitive—with long, shaggy hair and animal-hide clothes that scarcely looked as if they would stay on. Again Rock felt a deep disgust well up inside of him as he witnessed what had happened to his fellow countrymen. Damn the bastards back in 1989 who had started World War III!

  They drove hard down I-70 as a dust storm rose up out of nowhere and swept across the highway. It obscured their vision, so Scheransky was forced to slow to about twenty, but they were able to keep on. Both men rolled up their windows as the stuff was gritty, cutting. But even so, some managed to get inside and soon they could feel themselves itching all over as the myriad grains of dust circulated through every bit of their clothing.

  But at last the storm passed and they were into Virginia, just a few hundred miles from the capital. Here the Russians had put some time and money into preserving the state, probably because they knew that all the bureaucrats who ran things from D.C. would want to live out in the suburbs, as their predecessors had. With their little lawns and driveways. Everything had been preserved, even a mansion or two, pulled far back on rolling acres of land. Pink flamingos and black stable boy statues stood firmly rooted in the fronts of many of the houses. Why, one could have come suddenly from out of the last century and felt right at home here in Virginia, the state for lovers.

  Fifteen

  Killov stood alongside Dhul Qarnain in the bridge as the oil tanker moved slowly out of the Chesapeake Bay and up into the Potomac. The KGB colonel didn’t like the fact that the Arab was taller than he was, much stronger as well. He appeared a vision in his white robe, his stern messianic face. Killov knew he was a mere scarecrow of a thing compared to the fierce fighter. When Killov had had power, had run the Blackshirts in America, his size had meant nothing. Power had flowed from his every pore then. But now—except for Qarnain and his fanatical followers—Killov was virtually without forces. Thus he felt more vulnerable, more insecure than ever. So, although he would talk to Qarnain out of the corner of his mouth, he wouldn’t look at the man.

  Hidden behind h
is dark sunglasses, for his eyes had become sensitive to light in his travels over the last few years, Killov stared out the window at the waterway ahead of them as he popped a few more pink and then green pills, swallowing them down with vegetable juice. He gulped hard, as if barely able to get the load through his constricted throat, and then burped. He thought he might throw it all up again, so tense was his stomach now that they were actually entering the very jaws of the enemy. But in several minutes the warm glow of the Darphein painkiller, and the tranquilizing effect of the Thaliums he took, hit the KGB colonel full force and a satisfied smile settled over his lips. Now, even the strength of the Arab was of no consequence to him. Just the destroying of Vassily, Zhabnov—and most of all, oh, most of all—Ted Rockson.

  “We are ahead of schedule, Colonel,” Qarnain said as he stared over the captain’s shoulder, keeping a close eye on things. Two tugs had come alongside and were guiding the big tanker, which was unable to maneuver in the Potomac waters on its own. Just as planned, the Zhabnov forces assumed the tanker was carrying needed oil to port. The men were below deck, except a few of them, garbed in normal seaman’s gear. Killov knew that the tug’s crew, any of the river workers for that matter, had no reason whatsoever to even take note of them. It was just another big tanker, one of two or three a week up this river. But still, the mission was at hand. A man would have to be dead to not feel a knot in his stomach, a clawing in his chest when battle, the possibility of annihiliation, was so close.