Warlord's Revenge Read online

  “You look like shit,” Stone said, bending down to make sure the blood was all from someone else, which, as he glanced around the dog’s head and neck, he saw was the case. “But you saved my damn ass again, dog.” The animal looked up and squinted at Stone through inscrutable almond-shaped eyes as if to say, “If you weren’t always about to get your ass turned to grass, it wouldn’t have to be Wonder Dog to the rescue.”

  “Yeah, well, keep it up”—Stone grinned from one corner of his mouth—” ’cause I need all the fucking help I can get.” The thought of that hook coming down on him, the last second when Stone could virtually feel the pointed tip tearing through his brain, that image would live in his mind forever. As would the image of the dog ripping off Scalzanni’s entire hand. Of such things are the pleasant memories of old age built.

  “Come on,” he said, walking toward the Harley. The pitbull, of course not realizing that he looked like a walking advertisement for the Save a Battered Dog Foundation, tromped along at Stone’s heels, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like an old, stretched-out piece of rubber tire. This was ending up to be a good evening, the dog was starting to decide. Fighting got its blood going, even helped its digestion. Why, after all the fuss, the animal suddenly realized, it had even built up another appetite. It let out a sharp whine as it jumped back up on the cycle—just to let Stone know that after its puking bout and its aerobics, it was hungry. Its vomit-scented breath, which came in hot, panting bursts of air into Stone’s face, was enough to get his own stomach gurgling like a goddamn broken pipe.

  “Pal, my present to you for saving my ass,” Stone grumbled, turning his face away and trying to suck in a deep breath of the cold night air, “is going to be some goddamn dog mouthwash.” He started the Harley through the darkness, straight toward the mall. The shit clearly had hit the fan. People were running everywhere down the corridors. Bells, alarms, and sirens were going off ail over the place. There was no point in playing tag with the bastards. Stone was going in. Straight in.

  The bike roared out of the darkness surrounding the mall and slammed up onto one of the concrete walkways like a steel buffalo ready to do battle. The few pedestrians dived for cover, flying off in all directions like bowling pins trying to flee the ball. Bent over far forward on the Electraglide like a cross-country racer, the dog equally clamped down and low to the seat, they tore down one of the side corridors at a good forty miles per hour. It was all junk here—the windows for the first few blocks containing only hats, camouflage outfits, paintings of famous killers. But after he’d gone about a quarter of a mile, Stone saw the displays, which rushed by the bike in a blur, change to firearms. Rifles, SMGs, machine guns—all filled the windows.

  He pressed a small button just below the trigger mounted in the right handlebar of the droning Harley and swiveled the muzzle of the .50-caliber machine on the front of the bike so it turned like a python to the right. Stone slammed his finger down on the trigger, and the steel barrel sprayed out a hailstorm of destruction. The slugs tore through the big windows, ripping them to shreds. Behind Stone, who was moving just fast enough not to get nicked by the debris, the mall walkway began exploding out from every window in a wall of twisting glass shrapnel. Those who were walking along the corridor were cut into bloody dolls that danced peculiar jigs and screamed incomprehensible songs before they collapsed into oozing twitching pieces of red meat on the cement sidewalk.

  But Stone didn’t stick around to see the end of the performance. He just wanted to be the cause. He tore toward the middle of the mall, to where he knew April was still being held—if the pre-death words of Scalzanni were true. And the bastard had had no reason to lie to Stone then, as he believed he was about to sink one of his hooks right into Stone’s brain. Pity, things hadn’t quite worked out. Stone kept his finger on the trigger of the .50-caliber, decimating whole blocks of windows filled with weapons. The screaming slugs kept going after they slammed through the glass—they ripped into things inside the stores, into ammo boxes, shells, boxes of powder. Explosions began taking out whole walls in the trail that Stone left behind him. Concrete ceilings erupted up into the air; chunks of car-sized walls spun lazily up a few hundred feet before slamming back down and into something or someone else. For those caught in the fire and concrete maelstrom, it was proof—if any was needed —that there was a hell on earth.

  Then Stone saw her—blocks ahead—in the same glass prison that he had been gassed in. He came to a complete stop, took out his binocs, and sighted down the long corridor as clouds of smoke began rising behind him. He could see her—sweet April—so drugged out that her lips hung down like a Ubangi’s, her eyes open enough to let only a pinprick of light into them. He couldn’t see another living soul down the entire mall. Not one. Stone knew it was a trap. Knew that they were waiting for him. But then, he wasn’t exactly planning things out on a drafting board these days.

  “Come on, dog, the night is young,” Stone said, reaching around and patting the pitbull, which was sniffing at the air with a concerned expression. It knew something big was in the offing. “We’re going to go looking for some dog biscuits, okay?” Stone smirked at the dog, laughed, and sat down hard in the seat. All in all, the pitbull didn’t like the way its master had just said whatever he’d said. Somehow he knew in his innate animal wisdom that dog biscuits were not on the agenda.

  Stone revved the Harley and suddenly let its brakes go as if it were a jet plane gaining power for takeoff. The 1200-cc motorcycle shot forward like a Brahma bull coming out of the pen. For a few seconds the bike careened all over the wide mall corridor—some asshole had spilled a whole tray full of drinks hours earlier. The dog let out an earsplitting whine as the bike went all the way over at a forty-five-degree angle. But Stone slammed his boot down, kicked hard, and the bike evened out again.

  Once upright, the Harley shot forward like a rocket. He had gone perhaps a third of the distance—two blocks—toward April when they opened up. Opened up was hardly the term for it, as instantaneously, all the stores on both sides of the mall erupted with automatic and semiautomatic gunfire. They had taken the girls out but left the windows, not wanting to give away the fact that anything was amiss. Shards of glass ripped toward Stone and Excaliber, peppering parts of them with tiny fragments of glass, and instantly they began to bleed. Stone swiveled the machine gun back and forth on the bike. This time he kept his finger on the trigger. Finger-sized slugs shot out of the smoking muzzle and migrated into the stores. Blood-soaked bodies came flying out of them, bouncing from wall to wall and then spitting right out in the street, corpses ready to return to the dirt.

  Stone swiveled the machine gun constantly so the scythe of firepower reached into every store, ripping into the darkness from which scores of little flames kept erupting as they fired back. The gauntlet was almost overwhelming, and as he felt slugs whizzing through the air all around him, Stone knew that if he had the nine lives of cat—as someone had once suggested—he was about to use up about fifty of them.

  But there was no turning back. Not with the only damn person he ever cared about on the whole fucking planet being kept prisoner inside a piece of Plexiglas. Stone got to within a block of the plastic jail cell when the level of fire got absolutely scalding. He wheeled into a doorway, emptying a blast inside the place and hearing a few satisfying screams from the darkness, then skidded around on one foot, bringing the bike to a squealing and dusty stop. The pitbull let out a groan of dismay, but it was so dizzy from the ride that it couldn’t really muster up more than a low howl. Stone ripped out his Redhawk with the telescopic sight and ran to the shattered window frame, holding the big Magnum in his right hand and his Uzi autopistol in the other. If death was stalking him, it was going to have to take a bellyful of bullets in the process.

  Stone barely reached the smashed frame when he saw two figures drawing a bead on him from across the street. He swung the Uzi up and pulled the trigger hard, turning the bucking auto from side to side fast. Two muscle
-bound torpedoes, their bodies jerking around like someone had just put gerbils up their asses, blood pouring from numerous holes in their faces and chests, came exploding out of the window frame and into the walkway. They both seemed to walk forward a few steps, as if anxious to meet Martin Stone, the man who had just killed them. Then they both collapsed into the glass-strewn cement, falling atop each other like two drunken buddies who had just painted the town—and themselves—red.

  Stone carefully tilted his head around the side of the blasted window and saw April—and his eyes widened in horror. They were undoing the lock, opening the door, taking her away. They weren’t even going to let him get to the bait. He was a fool for thinking he had even the slimmest chance. Still, it wasn’t over yet. He leaned around quickly, as slugs danced by him, looking for a fleshy partner. Stone lifted the big Ruger and stared through the floating red-dot sight atop it. He got the thugs back in the center of the dot just as the Mafia gunner was pulling April down onto the stone corridor. Stone pulled the trigger hard, and the torpedo turned and caught the slime in the right shoulder. The sheer force of the big .44 slug ripped into the abductor, and the man flew around like a top and slammed into the wall behind him.

  But, lest Stone begin to feel hope, another one of the late Scalzanni’s crew appeared from nowhere and grabbed April, who was starting to fall forward, not even able to stand up on her own, as drugged out as she was. Throwing her right over his shoulder, the mafioso ascended a ladder that led to the roof of a store. Stone kept his finger on the trigger of the Redhawk, following the bastard every step of the way, but there just wasn’t a chance. A shot that would take him would just as likely kill or severly injure April. Bullets zeroed in on Stone as snipers in buildings up and down the mall were finding his range, but he kept watching, praying for a clear shot.

  Suddenly things got even worse. For as the torpedo reached the roof and climbed out, a chopper appeared out of the dark, smoky mists that stroked the mall from every side. Before Stone’s horrified eyes, the helicopter darted down onto the concrete roof. The mafioso threw his captive female roughly into the small cockpit, which was just big enough for two, then jumped in behind her, picking her up again and putting her on his knee. Stone could see him gesticulating wildly at the pilot, who took off frantically and with such speed that the chopper’s spinning blade nearly collided with another three-story-high roof. Then he seemed to regain control and the craft beelined north—out of the burning city. Before Martin Stone could do a fucking thing about it, his sister was into the closing darkness, as if in the talons of a hawk heading off with its prey to some dank and foul nest.

  “Fucking bastards,” Stone screamed, knowing as he did so that his words were as useless as bullets in reaching the chopper. The storm of return fire was getting absolutely searing, reaching for him and drawing closer by the second. Stone pulled back inside, into the glass- and blood-splattered darkness, and jumped onto the Harley. The pitbull was attached to the seat like a piece of wallpaper to a wall, his head buried between his front paws, as if he just couldn’t bear the sight of the carnage unfolding around him.

  “Tough guy, huh?” Stone snorted as he jumped onto the seat in a flying leap. “Well, hang on, ’cause we’re going to the rodeo.” The dog would have howled back some sort of protest, but it didn’t want to move its head even one inch into harm’s way and so only was able to make a gurgling sort of sound from between its trembling paws. Stone leaned down far forward on the bike and pulled back hard on the throttle. The huge Electraglide shot forward like a stallion leaving the gate. It slammed through what had been the door frame of the place and skidded out into the firefight that was still blazing.

  Without slowing, Stone curved the bike across the street and then straightened out, heading quickly back to the other side again, like a sailboat tacking back and forth. He shot up the block toward the Plexiglas cage where April had recently resided as shots pinged along the walls and concrete floors trying desperately to find some nice soft part of him.

  Then Stone saw the bastard he had winged lying there, his eyes still open, breathing hard. He headed toward the man, who was half lying behind a concrete trough. Stone brought the Harley to a skidding stop, the tires coming to rest only a foot or so from the hit man, who, even in his pain, winced as he thought for a second that Stone was going to run him over.

  “Where?” Stone screamed out, his right boot digging into the big stomach of the Mafia torpedo. “Where the fuck did they take her?” He lifted the Redhawk and slowly aimed it between the man’s eyes. “You might actually live, asshole, though you won’t look too pretty—if I don’t kill you.” He lowered the pistol to the slime’s face until the wide black muzzle was about an inch from the tip of the bleeding nose. “Now tell me—where did they take her?”

  “Sure—I’ll—I’ll tell you.” The torpedo smirked. “Don’t mean nothing to me. “To Alamosa. It was Vindigi’s idea. He said he knew who would want the bitch. I don’t know who—I swear. Alamosa—that’s where. Alamosa…” Slugs were pouring down now, and Stone felt one shoot into the leather seat just between him and the dog. The animal let out a sound like a fingernail scraping along a chalkboard but didn’t move an inch from its ostrichlike position.

  “Now let me live! You promised, man, you,” the hit man pleaded, his dry, thick lips sliding over each other in fear.

  “I lied,” Martin Stone said coldly, not feeling very generous today. He pulled the trigger and turned his head as the whole center of the man’s face turned into some sort of Picasso painting. Then the corpse toppled over and would now have to make its pleas to the keeper of the thick gates of heaven.

  Stone shot around and pulled back hard on the accelerator. The bike sat up in a wheelie for several seconds, giving a good target to the snipers a block or so behind him. A slug tore into the fatty part of his leg before the bike came down again, and he grunted with pain. This was crazy. He’d be ready for the strainer in a few more seconds. He saw a concrete-walled store to the left and suddenly veered toward it, firing a scissor of slugs back and forth, twice, right into it. Without stopping to give a business card, he drove the bike straight through the door, which fractured off its frame and flew off. He came to a skidding stop inside, ripping his eyes around to see if there was danger.

  But the only danger was in slipping in the blood of the dead would-be assassin, his double-breasted suit riddled with smoking holes through which rivulets of red were running. Stone glanced behind him to make sure the pitbull wasn’t going to run off chasing rats or something, but the animal was clutched solidly around the seat, its eyes shut as tight as bear traps. A wall of fire began reaching for the store he was in, and slugs zipped into the walls, richocheting off so that in seconds the large concrete-walled room was filled with ringing, whistling lead bugs just looking for a place to land.

  His eyes caught a doorway in the back, a curtain hung over it. “Beggars can’t be fucking choosers,” Stone mumbled to himself as he twisted the handle of the Harley and it rocketed forward, straight into the curtain. For all he knew, there was a brick wall on the other side. Well, he was about to find out the experimental way. Stone involuntarily closed his eyes as the bike hit the black cloth drape. But when he opened them a split second later, they were in the back of another store that must have stood in the next corridor over. There were stacks of knives and blackjacks all over the place, but Stone just wheeled the Harley through the long room, knocking it all over and sending tables flying. The metal bull in a china shop whinnied and snorted like a thing alive, wreaking havoc throughout the place.

  As Stone came roaring by, men jumped as if they were diving off the high board. To each side he saw the front door just ten yards ahead and aimed for it when out of the corner of his eye he saw the proprietor of the store, a fat, balding sludge of humanity, rise up from behind the cash register trying to sight Stone up in his 12-gauge double-barrel. Stone knew instantly that he didn’t have time to swivel the .50-caliber around. Beside
s, the bastard was at the wrong angle; the gun would never reach him. Acting with lightning-quick reflexes, he ripped the bike to the right at the same second he twisted the throttle. The Harley moved so fast, it outran the speed of the fat man’s finger. The 1200-cc hit a stack of blankets piled up in front of the counter and went up and off of them like a ramp. The front wheel of the bike slammed into the top part of the storekeeper’s face and chest, cracking it all to pieces, slamming the skull into two almost symmetrical pieces, both of which fell off to the sides, the entire brain flopping down and onto the floor like an egg from out of its shell or some hideous jellyfish from the very bottom of the sea, trying to find a home.

  The Harley rocketed over the corpse and straight into the front window where the front tire slammed through the display of cardboard figures—one guy taking another guy out with a blackjack. Then he was into the glass, which sprayed out as if they’d just gone through a waterfall of exploding chandeliers. When he dared open his eyes again after a few seconds to make sure none of the glass got in them, Stone saw that he had come completely through the block and was now on a new, undamaged mall corridor. And not a guard was anywhere.

  This one was filled with women, naked, drugged out of their young, terrified minds. Stone couldn’t let them stay on the inside—not with what he had in mind to do. He remembered seeing one of the goons who had just abducted April reaching down to the front of the Plexiglas booth she had been in.

  Stone stopped the bike, jumped off, and searched at the base of the first of a whole long block of the glass cages. He found what looked like a control box and saw two instructions: Open Window-One, and Master Control—Open All Windows This Block.” But there were just keyholes beneath the writing. And he didn’t have the fucking keys.