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  “I’d kill you this second if I could,”

  Stone managed to mutter, through lips that felt puffy.

  “Brave words from a man who can’t move a muscle,” Patton laughed, turning to the others who joined in. Stone looked down for the first time and saw what he was tied to. He was standing, raised up on an X-shaped wooden structure, hands and feet stretched apart and chained to the four ends of the archaic device.

  “We found this,” Patton said, reaching out and tapping the wood just below Stone’s outstretched arm. “It came from a museum and was once used for precisely the purpose we’re going to put it to tonight.” He looked at Stone expectantly. And sure enough the imprisoned man had to bite.

  “And what purpose is that?”

  “Torture, obviously,” the General replied, sweeping his hands around the aluminum framed hut. “In fact, I had this place constructed just for you. Because I knew we’d meet again. And that was all I wanted.”

  Here ahead forward suddenly and Stone’s head slammed back against the wood…

  ALSO BY CRAIG SARGENT

  The Last Ranger

  The Savage Stronghold

  The Madman’s Mansion

  The Rabid Brigadier

  The Warlord’s Revenge*

  Published by

  POPULAR LIBRARY

  *forthcoming

  Copyright

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

  Copyright © 1987 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Popular Library® and the fanciful P design are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56646-9

  CONTENTS

  “I’D KILL YOU THIS SECOND IF I COULD,”

  ALSO BY CRAIG SARGENT

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  THE SKELETONS burned like black jewels in the snow-filled air. What was left of their charred ash skin glowed with little red shivers of dancing flame along the outer edges. Most of the flesh on the five bodies had been reduced to a charcoallike material, similar to something found at the bottom of a campfire long after the wood had burned down. These sculptures of ash had been set aflame from a phosphorus bomb that had fallen in their midst. Then they had been human—their screams had attested to that. Now, after the consuming fire had bitten and chewed through all that was flammable on the human body, they were no longer human but just mounds of shimmering ash, a form of carbon that began crumbling in the cold winds that swept across them—blowing the black dust of what had been ears, noses, fingers, cocks, into the dawn air in small swirling jetties of human flotsam and jetsam.

  Martin Stone walked past them, a look of profound disgust on his blood-streaked face. It was hard to tell if the dead sons of bitches were friends or enemies, or if the concept even had meaning anymore. Everyone was his enemy as far as he could see. Friends were enemies whom you used for a short while. And then they tried to kill you unless you got them first. It was that simple. He hadn’t made up the fucking rules, that was for damned sure. But he knew what they were. And he’d be a fool not to follow them.

  There was a sudden crunching sound beneath his boots, and Stone looked down to see that he’d stepped through what had been a head or a chest or some damned thing on another one of the crisp pieces of human popcorn. He yanked his foot out with a jerk and almost jumped backward, revolted by the disintegrating piece of humanity. A whole shitload of dust followed the pull of the leg and the black flakes and particles exploded up in his face as if a dust bomb had gone off. He was suddenly covered in a cloud of the foul black stuff. Stone waved his hands like propellers in front of him as he rushed forward, sneezing and coughing out the particles of the dead. After about twenty feet he seemed to be clear of the corpse storm, so he stopped, went down on one knee, and rested. The entire experience had made him dizzy. He had just had too damned much over the last twenty-four hours. Almost more than a man could bear.

  Stone heard a snorting sound behind him and snapped his head up sharply, reaching for the .44 Magnum that hung at his side, holster flap open, ready for quick draw and fire. But all that his eyes beheld was a bedraggled-looking dog, his pitbull Excaliber, all ninety pounds of white-and-brown-hided cannonball sneezing and spitting up a storm as it tried to eject the foul ashes from its nose and mouth. Somehow, though it really wasn’t funny at all, the sight made Stone laugh, and once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop. His mouth opened and closed and opened again, and sounds came out that seemed like they weren’t even his. Stone knew even as he laughed that he wasn’t laughing over anything funny—but over all the pain and death around him. ’Cause if he didn’t laugh, he’d cry or end it all. And so he laughed and laughed, his lungs heaving, his eyes rimming with tears for minutes until it hurt so bad, he could hardly breathe. Completely breathless, he stopped. The pitbull was now standing about two feet away, resting on its back paws and staring up at the poor boy with a look of utmost concern as if he were thinking his master had finally gone completely bananas. The dog had always been apprehensive that this might happen from the very start. Its last master had been killed, and this one had always seemed a little edgy. So the dog growled softly beneath its breath as if trying to exorcise the demon of laughing sickness that had taken over its numero-uno food supplier.

  “Come here, you dumb dog,” Stone said at last, drying his eyes with the edge of a blood-soaked strip of material he had tied around his arm where he had taken a bullet in the battle for Fort Bradley only hours before. The wound was still oozing, but the constant flow of blood it had been spouting had dropped to almost nil. “Now I know why I keep you around, you mangy son of a bitch,” Stone said. He scratched the bullterrier around the ears and noticed that the thing was absolutely coated with blood and specks of flesh, little wounds and burns; even pieces of twisted shrapnel and twigs covered its coat. “’Cause you make me laugh,” Stone continued, “and you’re about the only goddamn thing that does in a world that basically doesn’t have shit to laugh about. But I’ll tell you something else, pal—you need a fucking bath. You look like shit, you know that?” The pitbull whined and got a hangdog kind of expression. Then it raised its head up toward Stone with a skeptical glance, as if to say, “Have you taken a look at yourself lately?”

  Stone rose to his feet from his kneeling position and felt a wave of dizziness and nausea sweep through, and he almost buckled over again.

  “Come on, come on,” he said sharply to himself, gritting his teeth hard. Now wasn’t the fucking time to pass out. Not in the middle of a battle zone where the bodies were still smoldering. He raised his head and focused on the flames that rose everywhere around him, rose from what had been Fort Bradley, home of the New American Army, the NAA, until about six o’clock that morning. That was until Martin Stone—accompanied by a force of motorcycle-gang killers, Mafia hitmen, mou
ntain bandits, and general all-around psychotic murderers under his momentary command—had attacked and, from the looks of it, pretty much done in what had been perhaps the largest “military” base in the country —a fortified installation with nearly five hundred men, artillery, helicopters, even a whole parking lot full of tanks. That’s what it had been, anyway. But no more. Now secondary explosions still raged like bonfires, and spires of smoke coming from every section of the fort all joined together and rose up through the melting snow to build a dome of orange and red that extended up half a mile into the sky.

  It had been one of the hardest decisions Stone had ever made in his life—and he had had to make some damned hard ones lately. The New American Army could have done great things for the surrounding wastelands, for the towns and roads ruled by the cutthroats and slime who now seemed to run things in America. The NAA could have been the first real challenge to the crime lords who ruled it all. Except for one thing—General Patton III, the man who ran it. At first Stone had been taken in by his words, his charm, his vision of an America cleansed of the filth, restored to its former beauty and power. But then Stone had seen deeper into the man’s plans, had heard him talk of the “extermination” of certain races and religions. Had heard him speak of the “purification by fire that must occur.” And Stone had come to see that the man wasn’t a good man but an evil one, perhaps one of the darkest who had ever lived. And incredibly dangerous because he was far smarter than the common crime lords, and because he had that most dangerous of all motivations—a self-righteous cause. And Martin Stone had known that it was possible, very possible, that the general would succeed. Then the world would see the “Pax Pattoni” that would last ten thousand years. A peace of slaves, a peace of the dead.

  Stone looked around, spat out another gob of human ash, and started forward, moving very slowly, as his senses were on full alert for some reason. He tried to erase the image of General Patton’s eyes staring at him with pure hate. “You’re the greatest traitor America has ever known,” Patton had said before he had tried to kill Stone. He hadn’t succeeded, but Martin Stone had no illusions that that state of affairs was going to last very long. That would-be Führer had escaped and headed toward one of two missile silos under his command. Silos that each contained a ten-megaton missile. Patton had vowed to take Stone out if it was the last thing he ever did. And if Stone knew one thing about the general, it was that he kept his word. Stone glanced up and tried to see through the thick snow that just kept dropping from the skies as if all the tears of the dead had crystallized and an endless stream of them had waterfalled down. But it was too thick to penetrate, at least for his eyes. Yet in his tightening guts, somehow he could feel his location being fed into a computer, could feel a missile’s electronic brain digesting just who it was supposed to annihilate into the tiniest of glowing atoms.

  Stone wasn’t even sure what the hell it was he was looking for as he moved forward, stepping over debris, as vehicles burned on all sides of him. Perhaps a clue as to just where the hell the general had fled. There was still sporadic fighting going on here and there in the distance, though clearly the bulk of it was over. His only hope was that Patton had left some indication as to just where the other missile silos were. Stone knew that there were at least two, possibly three of the still functioning underground launchpads somewhere in Colorado and Utah. The asshole would take out the whole damned state if he launched. Talk about overkill—Patton was ready to destroy some of the most beautiful forests, lakes, and rivers that were left in the whole country just to get one man—him. Stone wondered if he’d hurt the fellow’s feelings just a little.

  But just who was going to get the privilege of killing Martin Stone suddenly became an immediate concern as Stone heard a crunching sound to his left and turned to see more of the blistered corpses. Only these seemed to be moving, their black bodies shivering and crumbling as they rose. As Stone stood frozen in stark terror, the filth-coated things seemed to rise right up off the ground and come toward him. Suddenly he saw human flesh, features beneath the outer layers of grime and rotted flesh—New Army soldiers, three of them. They’d been lying in ambush just to snag someone, probably him. But there wasn’t a hell of a lot of time to start asking questions as the pistol in the hand of one exploded and a slug tore along Stone’s head, gouging out a straight little rivulet of red.

  He became unfrozen and flung himself to the side as the other two opened as well, so there was a whole goddamn wall of fire searching for his ass. Stone hit the dirt with the side of his shoulder slamming into something hard, but he kept his momentum and rolled forward and right underneath a still smoldering half-track, its forward tires literally melted into a steaming pile of stinking gunk so that the whole front of the vehicle had sunk down as if on its knees. But Stone didn’t have time to worry about the aesthetic ramifications of the hiding place as another row of slugs tore into the dirt just inches from his feet, which he pulled quickly in as he rolled farther under the armored vehicle.

  Suddenly there was a howl, and Stone’s face grew pale—Excaliber. If the bastards had—He wouldn’t even think it. The fucking dog was too smart, too quick for—But the anger instantly cleared his mind, flushing out all the confusion. All right, he had been attacked. Big deal. He had been attacked so many fucking times now, just in the last month or so since he’d emerged from his father’s hidden bunker in Colorado’s northern mountains, that he couldn’t keep track without a calculator. The question was how to attack the attackers.

  He rolled twice more on the cold ground as the fusillade continued unabated, slamming into armor. The assholes were obviously willing just to fire away for a while. Well, that was fine with him. Stone quickly scanned the terrain on the other side of the half-track. There wasn’t a hell of a lot out there that wasn’t burning or just a pile of debris. Stone slid up the side of the vehicle and peeked through a crack in the top armor. There were five of them now—all wearing camouflage uniforms covered with the remains of bodies. And they were closing in, firing constantly as they came forward a few yards apart. They still thought their prey was under the vehicle as their shots slammed into the dirt on the other side or pinged off the armor.

  Suddenly he noticed that the 90-mm cannon atop the halftrack was aimed straight ahead. Now if the son of a bitch still had a shell left … Stone moved quickly forward in a crouch until he reached the small turret. It was hard to tell without getting up there. From here it appeared that the cannon was loaded. The outer firing mechanism was in set position as far as he could see. He could feel that his mind was ready to debate the issue for days, so he pushed himself up with a sudden spring of his legs and clambered up the side of the vehicle. The moment his head appeared, the attackers raised their pistols, trying to find his range. Slugs whistled by each ear. Stone grabbed hold of a bar at the very top of the turret and reached over with the other arm, slamming his palm down on the firing button.

  The huge 90-mm exploded out a geyser of smoke as the entire vehicle shook so hard that Stone had to hold on for dear life, dangling from the top of the thing like a monkey from a tree. The huge shell tore out of the ten-foot-long barrel and into the snowy air so hot that it melted a tunnel right through the curtains of white. It traveled the seventy feet or so toward the advancing troops in about one one-hundredth of a second. Then it slammed into the chest of the man in the lead. The high explosives in the shell, meant to take out a tank or the side of a building, instead turned all two hundred and seventeen pounds of elite NAA commando into red spray and a few bones that spun off with the speed of bullets in all directions. The force of the blast expanded out in a circle, catching the remaining four attackers and ripping them into shreds. Arms flew off and faces opened up, revealing everything within them, which poured out as if from a pitcher. Fingers and ears spun off into the air as if madly in search of new bodies that might be in better shape than the ones they had just left.

  When Stone finally regained his balance and the armored vehi
cle stopped shaking enough for him to climb up top and look down, there was nothing left. Nothing human, anyway. Nothing that you would send home to Mother, unless Mother was an undertaker with a fancy for gluing things together again.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  STONE HEARD a sound unlike any he had ever encountered in his life. It was somewhere between the wail a hound dog might make if it got a porcupine quill embedded in its nose and the scream an infant emits when it’s delivered from the warmth and safety of the womb into a cold, fucked-up world. He instantly knew it was the dog. The bastards who had shot him were gone into hell, but that wasn’t going to help Excaliber. With a heavy heart, Stone jumped down the other side of the armored car and rushed toward the sound. It grew louder and shriller with each step until he had to put his hands over his ears, as it was quite painful. And he did start to wonder, as he made his way forward, just how fucked up the pitbull was, in that any animal that could produce a sound so loud and excruciating couldn’t be too ready for the grave.

  As Stone came to a deep cannon shell–created hole in the ground a good seven feet deep by three wide, he saw that in fact the animal didn’t appear hurt at all. Not that he could make out. Except its pride. Evidently it had dived for cover just as Stone had when the first shots were fired—and had chosen what appeared to be a perfect foxhole. Only the hole was over six feet deep and the animal couldn’t get out. It stared up at Stone with total and complete mortification on its face, its “kick ass” rep—at least in the pitbull’s easily embarrassed psyche—on the line. Stone didn’t let himself laugh. He wanted to, but the fixed stare the creature gave him dissuaded him from any such notion. Besides, Stone had no reason to rub it in. He’d been down in that hole too.