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  Below he could see it all—the tanks laid out, the jeeps, cannons pointing outward from within a barbed-wire barricade, the same prefab aluminum huts that Fort Bradley had been built with. Stone scanned the base with his field glasses, and then he saw it—the missile silo. Unmistakable, even from a distance. The cone-shaped head that rose six feet out of the earth, the protective shielding over the missile that lay beneath. Stone could hardly believe his luck. The place didn’t even seem that well guarded, other than the usual machine-gun posts at all four corners and a jeep that periodically drove around the perimeter, checking the vegetation to make sure that no one was trying to sneak in.

  He watched the camp for about two hours, getting all the locations of its sections clear in his mind. Then he searched the surrounding slopes and hills for a possible attack site. There—about two miles off—a flat plateau several hundred feet above ground level. It would give them a perfect trajectory of fire from about three-quarter-mile range. Perfect. Stone set the location of the plateau in his mind, then squirmed back through the thick bushes he had crawled through. He wouldn’t wait—there was no need. The sun was just starting to fall, the twilight would be upon them, the night cries of the birds would drown out some df the sound of the tanks. Yes, they would move—and fast. And men when darkness came, they would open up with prearranged firing angles. The New American Army officers wouldn’t even know what was hitting them or from where. He prayed that Pattern was down there as well. And that the Fascist madman would die in the hail of fire that was about to descend on them. For he was the problem. With him gone, the whole rotten Utopia of mindless, robot citizens would fall apart—just another bad dream from some sadistic little man who would be king.

  Stone crawled back through the woods to his tanks and saw that they had posted guards, two men, up in trees with rifles in hand for sniping. Good—they were actually getting it together on their own. He felt a sudden surge of pride in them. The men had been tossed from one terrible situation to another. They had almost been killed three times in the last two days—and still they seemed ready to go on, almost curious about their own skills and abilities to fight, to take on the enemy.

  “We’re moving out,” Stone said as he climbed back into the tank and threw himself down in the metal seat. “We’re going for it, man. Right now.”

  “Don’t you think maybe we should—um—talk about this a little, Mr. Stone, sir?” Bo said stumblingly. He was hungry, wanted at least one more good meal before he died.

  “No, it’s time. Just like when a baby drops, or a shit plops, it’s time to strike. I feel it. We’re going to do this, we’re going to pull it off.” Stone’s enthusiasm seemed to fire up the others, and they set to preparing for the attack. Even Excaliber, instead of heading toward his usual heated shelf, sensed that something was up and came up alongside Stone, sitting on back legs and watching the same monitor that Stone looked at as he drove the Bradley back out of the woods. Though it was quickly growing darker, Stone clicked on the infrared sighting system and instantly saw the whole world in shifting, wavering, almost three-dimensional images of blues and reds and greens. The enhanced night vision enabled him to see every object ahead of him, and Stone, telling the others to use the night guidance as well, led them slowly across the slope mat was around the other side of the low mountain mat sheltered the base. They reached the spot mat Stone had anchored in his mind, though approaching it from the outside, a dip in the peak of the mountain. It was hard climbing, a lot harder than he had anticipated, with the angle of ascent rising to forty-five degrees. And the surface was not completely firm here and there, so that the treads of the tanks spun fast, kicking out dust and mud. But slowly they made their way up about three hundred feet of such surface until they reached a denser surface.

  Here the Bradleys found traction and propelled themselves over me top of the rise and down about a hundred feet of a slope that was not nearly as steep, until they reached the plateau Stone had sighted.

  He pulled them to a stop so that they were side by side, and they looked down on the myriad twinkling lights coming from barracks and huts, from floodlights and car lights, cigarette butts, all the signs of human habitation. Stone sighted up his cannon, lowering it with a grinding whine as he set in conjunction the three red laser-generated lines of his sighting system right over the missile silo. With the infrared enhancement he could see clearly through the cloudy, dark night. The sleek metal cone mat covered the head of so much death. The other cannons lowered as well, and Stone heard each of the men speak over me mike, softly, nervously.

  “Ready here,” Bull whispered.

  “Here too,” Hartstein, said, burping afterward, which made them all chuckle for a split second. “Well, let’s kick—” Stone started to say, but an explosion seemed to go off right in front of him, and the entire tank jumped backward. Stone crashed against the back of the seat and felt as if he had whiplash as his head snapped around and around on it like one of those dolls with spring spines. His vision cleared and he saw another explosion, then another, strike ahead of him and then off to the left. The 360 video scan showed tanks, rows of them, on other plateaus all around the one Stone and his men were on. Tanks, covered with camouflage netting, anchored in place. There must have been twenty or more, hopelessly outnumbering Stone’s absurdly small attack force. He had been betrayed. They all had. The general had known about it from the start. The whole fucking thing had been a trap. A trick. He had been suckered into the thing like the dumbest idiot who had ever taken a chance at three-card monte, had ever been sure he could guess which almond shell contained the pea, had ever been positive he could pick the ace from the stack of cards held out.

  Stone started to drive the tank forward again as he lowered the big 120-mm down into position. If he could just take out the goddamned missile, he could the a little happier, he thought bitterly to himself. Just make it worth it, that’s all. Then it was sighted up—or as good as he was going to get things tonight. Through the telescopic sighting lens it looked as if he were right on top of the thing, could almost reach out and touch it. His hand reached for the firing button as another tank volley landed in the dirt just outside the tank, and the Bradley shook violently from side to side. But as he set his finger down to fire the 120-mm, Stone felt something strike the back of his head. He seemed to half slide into darkness, and as he pulled himself out, he took another blow. As Stone sank into a very painful spiral he knew that he had been betrayed, played like a sucker from the start. They’d never had a chance against Patton, not a chance. Then his brain seemed to fizzle like a burned-out light bulb, and he seemed to be swimming in mud, mud that had fists.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  WHEN STONE awoke, the first thing he tried to do was lift his hand to touch the ripping pain at the back of his skull. But he couldn’t lift his hand—or anything else, for that matter. He was tied hand and foot. Slowly he opened his eyes, which felt like they were stuck together with glue. The light hurt as it entered his pupils, which had seen only darkness for many hours. Brilliant lights all around him, blurry, hard to see. Faces in front of him, walking around him, faces, laughing, but who … He felt confused. Everything was—strange. Stone hardly knew who or where he was. Suddenly, almost at the same instant that his eyes focused on the shapes in front him, his ears seemed to snap on, too, and the world rushed into him with a roar.

  “Ah, Stone, so glad to see you’re coming around. I was afraid that my man had killed you. He was afraid, you see —afraid that if you didn’t go out, you’d kill him. Which is doubtless true.” Stone could see the face, the craggy features, the silver hair, but his mind was still half on the blink, and it took him several seconds to realize who was addressing him. When he did, he would just as soon have fallen back into the black ocean he had just been swimming around in.

  “General—Pat-Patton,” he said, stuttering, slightly amazed that his lips could move, that he could hear his own thoughts. Whoever did it must have hit
him real hard. Stone could feel a huge bump the size of a lemon on the back of his head—and dried blood. Still, he could feel his mind clearing as he made a quick scan of his surroundings. He was in an aluminum hut, the curved roof above him. There was a crude wooden floor, sheets of rough plywood placed down on the dirt. The general and five or six men stood around him, wearing the gold emblems of the Elite Corps. And standing with them was Simpson.

  “Son of a bitch,” Stone groaned out before he even realized he had talked. He had thought it was Bull all along. Had been positive. And he had been wrong.

  “Yes, Simpson,” Patton said with a thin grin, standing a few feet from his prisoner. “I had him checking you out from the very start—back in boot camp. I always plant one of my own men in with the new recruits. It’s saved me a lot of trouble over the years. I was way ahead of you, Stone—from the beginning.” The general was so happy at capturing Stone that he let out with a loud, explosive laugh.

  “Ah, you bastard, you traitor,” Patton said, moving closer, his hands behind his back. “I trusted you above all men—gave you the chance to be next to me, to rule, to—”

  “I don’t want to rule, asshole,” Stone managed to mutter through lips that felt puffy and were not quite working right. “You’re a genius, Patton—you could have done a lot for this fucked-up country. But you blew it. And I’d kill you this second if I could.”

  “Brave words from a man who can’t move a muscle.” Patton laughed again, turning to the others who had joined in. They were all having a grand old time tonight. 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. His weapons, his knife—everything stripped from him. Reaching inside him for a sudden burst of strength, Stone pulled hard at his wrists, trying to rip free. But the chains only bit into the outer layers of skin leaving red welts, and snapped back after only about half an inch of give.

  “Yes, they’re quite strong,” Patton said, reaching out and tapping the wood on the side, just below Stone’s outstretched arm. “We found this, you know—one of the many things my men have dragged in for me. Came from a museum. It was once—believe it or not—used for precisely the purpose we’re going to put it tonight.” He looked at Stone expectantly. And sure enough, the imprisoned man had to bite.

  “And what purpose is that?” Stone asked, giving the general a smirk as if he were his straight man.

  “Oh, torture, obviously,” the general replied, sweeping his hands around the aluminum-framed hut, which was about fifty feet long and twenty wide. “In fact, to show you how much trouble I’ve taken to make sure you’re ‘comfortable’ here, I had this place constructed just for you. Because I knew we’d meet again. And that was all I wanted, Stone —to meet you again. I couldn’t even go on with my plans until you and I had settled things. And now we will … settle things.”

  He reached forward suddenly, ripping his right hand up from behind his back, and a riding crop struck Stone in the side of the face, leaving a red mark. Stone let his head go with the blow, absorbing most of the force, and then turned back and stared right into the general’s eyes.

  “I can understand you would want to kill me. And I won’t even try to argue you out of it, because I know your mind is made up. But I can hardly believe a man of your stature, your military prowess, would resort to torture. As one fighting man to another, I request that you just shoot me and get it over with.”

  “Shoot you and get it over with.” Pattern chuckled, sweeping his hand through his slicked-back silver hair, and again looked around at the others, who immediately followed suit, pealing away as if it were just about the funniest thing they had heard since Caine killed Abel. “No, Mr. Stone, you and I shall get to know each other well tonight—perhaps over the few days, if you live that long, and I sincerely hope you do. You see, I am a believer in the old ways—the warrior ways. The ways of blood and retribution. What you did must be punished, not just because I was wounded, for really it did not anger me. You are just a peon beneath me, a flea, a nothing. But for the sake of the New American Army, for the sake of discipline and law and order, you must be … hurt.”

  “Sounds great,” Stone said with a grunt, wishing more than anything that he could scratch an itch at the end of his nose. But instead of a scratch, he got a fist from the general that nearly took his jaw off. Stone’s head slammed back against the wood behind him, and he swore he heard something crack—whether it was the wood or his skull, he wasn’t sure. Then his eyes cleared again as if out of a kaleidoscopic haze in which there were three of everything. Stone had only gotten back to two of everything when the fist slammed in again and he had to start all over again. The general spent about five minutes on Stone, picking choice punches with a closed right fist with a West Point ring on it, big and brass—to his cheeks and his mouth, his ears and his ribs. The others looked on, cracking their knuckles, letting out little animal grunts of excitement at the blood and the pain.

  At last, as Stone hung limply from the chains, Patton stepped back and put one palm under his chin as if trying to judge the scene before him, like an artist checking to see what spot he had missed, what section needed more red.

  Stone slowly raised his head up, spat out a large gob of blood, and stared straight into Patton’s face. “Is that it? I’ve had old women with AIDS hit at me harder than that.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Stone, that isn’t it at all. That was just the first course, the appetizer. My men here would like a few words with you as well.” Stone looked into each face as the men came toward him. He wanted to remember them, wanted to memorize every feature of the bastards, because if somehow, some way, he lived, he would track them down to the ends of the fucking earth. The first fist hit him under the ear, snapping his head to the left, but halfway in recoil, the opposite ear took another shot, and like a volleyball, he bounced back and forth. Then he felt boots slamming into his stomach, his back. He wanted to fall down, to cover himself, try to protect himself from the blows. But chained up, he was helpless, couldn’t move a muscle, a finger. And that was the most horrible thing of all.

  Stone didn’t know how long the blows rained down on him. He couldn’t pass out, though he prayed to. But he was too fucking tough. He felt them all, felt his body and flesh and brains being slammed around like liver in a Cuisinart. For some reason, in the middle of it all, he suddenly thought of Excaliber and wondered how the dog was. And hoped that it would do okay without him. Damned dog—he wished he’d had time to say good-bye. But then you never knew when you were about to die. At last, after what must have been twenty minutes or half an hour, they stopped and fell back panting, their fists bloody, knuckles broken on many of their hands. Hands that had hurt themselves on the flesh of Martin Stone.

  And still, as they looked at each other, grinning, feeling real good about the damage they’d done, about being such macho men, Stone somehow opened one eye and looked at them, lips that were bloodied and tom, spat out a whole little river of blood, and the mouth hoarsely whispered, “Is that it? I’ve gotten worse from midgets with one arm.” Stone tried to smile but it hurt too much, and his head sank back the few inches it had risen. But the eye, the single eye that was still open—the other was swollen to the size of a lime and closed shut—just kept looking at them, mocking them. Like the smile of the Cheshire cat, the eye seemed to float there on his face, a blood-coated symbol of the fact mat Martin Stone could not be conquered.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  THEN IT was more of the in-again out-again consciousness of Stone’s brain. He really didn’t know where he was or where the hell anything else was, either. But he knew he was Martin Stone. And in his mind he kept saying that over and over to himself. For he was spinning too fast, too hard, to let go. If he did, he might go over a falls from which there was no return. He felt the X-shaped torture device he was on being turned on its back —because he wa
s suddenly looking straight up at the overlit ceiling of the hut. There was more laughter, gales of it, and then his clothes were being cut or ripped right off his body, and something was smeared all over him, something sticky and coating. Even in his semi-comatose state it didn’t feel pleasant, stinging sharply where it touched against broken skin and blood-oozing wounds. Stone wanted nothing more than to reach down and clean the sticky skin, but as he did so, his hand again snapped against the chain that confined it, and with a sigh of resignation Stone steeled himself to his imminent death. He just wished he didn’t have to go so coated with slime.

  Then he was being carried. He knew because he could feel his stomach going up and down and he felt like he was going to puke. And the next thing he knew, he did—to his side—which shot down onto one of those carrying him, who smashed into Stone’s back with something hard. The pain sent him back to the periphery of total darkness. He didn’t know how long it had been, then one eye opened and he saw the sky above, stars leering down like a drunken crowd, cheering on his annihilation. Then he was being lowered and he could feel the cold dirt of the prairie floor below his back. And when he opened his one working eye just a crack the size of a razor blade, he could see them again, standing above him like ogres a hundred miles high, and their faces were all contorted, their lips wide and flapping. And for some reason he couldn’t hear again, but he knew what they were doing. Knew that they were laughing, laughing at him.