War Weapons Page 2

  “Come on, pal,” he said softly to the violently trembling fighting dog, which had calmed down enough to stop its wailings and just let out a few pissed-off grunts. “Grab hold.” Stone lowered one end of the NAA utility belt he had grabbed off some dead bastard in the bloody dawn battle. The pitbull snapped its jaw shut hard on the end of the belt and held onto it with all 2400 pounds per square inch that its jaw muscles could exert—the strongest of any canine in the world. Stone braced his legs against a rock a foot away from the edge of the still crumbling hole and pulled up hand over hand. Like a snapping turtle hanging on to a fish meal that’s been hooked by someone else, the pitbull emerged from the hole at the end of the belt fishing line, and Stone twisted his body around and deposited his catch on the ground. The dog gave him a twisted little look of thanks and then trotted quickly on, not wanting to discuss the subject any fucking further.

  He moved cautiously as he hit the main thoroughfare, now blocked with numerous burning and overturned vehicles, bodies hanging out of them and covering the road, few of them moving. A shell suddenly whistled overhead from far outside the perimeter of the fort, and Stone instinctively dived to the ground, this time grabbing the dog and pulling him down, somewhat unwillingly, to the snow-covered ground. But the shell came down some hundred yards or so past them, falling into a pile of rubble that had already been destroyed once and couldn’t get much more atomized. Still, the shell went off with a roar and did its best to grind up the splinters a little more, send a few more particles of the leftovers of war up into the atmosphere.

  The attacking forces would probably be leaving now, having laid waste to the place, having taken what still functioning weapons they could haul off. But they wouldn’t even be able to use most of them. That was the advantage to having used such a criminal force to attack. For Stone knew that their very anarchistic natures would prohibit them from really being able to put the heavy-duty firepower to any large-scale use, whereas General Patton would have had the ability to conquer the entire country. Unquestionably. The man was a brilliant general, both militarily, in deploying his forces, and in carrying out supply lines. That was why Stone had to stop him. Had to pick the lesser of two evils for the moment. The Fourth Reich could not be allowed to manifest itself.

  What was it Patton had said that night they were half drunk together on expensive cognac? “It is my destiny to rule over a perfect order—rid the world of the scum and vermin that make it impossible to progress—and build a society of perfect order. A society modeled on the ants, the bees, those creatures who in their God-given wisdom know that social harmony is more important than the individual.” Or some such words. Stone couldn’t really remember all that General Patton had said. He had said so much that night. He had taken to Stone, after all, like the son he’d never had. And, with brandy in hand, had told him all of his plans. That was why the betrayal would make him find Stone—and kill him. Unless Stone took out the granite-jawed bastard first.

  He made his way along the edges of things, sides of cars, corners of buildings, always on the alert. The pitbull followed at his heels, body spread out and low almost like a cat, neck long, constantly sniffing at the air with pink nostrils constantly scanning every shadow, every mound of burning rubble with all its senses. His breed were fighting pitbulls—bred to take on tigers. Every bit of its sensory apparatus honed by evolution to detect danger, to react even faster than the attacker, faster than a striking tiger. Thus the dog saw the hand suddenly rising from behind an overturned jeep, the metal glistening in its hands from the red and orange rays of a nearby fire roaring high. The pitbull barked sharply to warn Stone and moved its stance forward, like a hunting dog pointing nose-first toward the attacker.

  Stone turned in a flash, having been with the animal long enough to know what that particular growl meant. He followed the pointing form and saw the uncertain eyes of an NAA-er, his gun hand wavering for a second between the dog and Stone. His last mistake. As he suddenly realized it was the human he should shoot and started to swing the 9-mm Beretta back around, Stone had already raised his .44 and pulled the trigger. The huge slug ripped into the central portion of the skull at the very instant that the attacker sent the command to his finger to fire. But it never reached the hand. The slug tore into the sniper’s head and whipped his brain tissue into an instant mousse, servable at all the best parties. The body crashed backward, the trigger finger as stiff as a piece of rock, the way it would remain forever-more.

  “Son of a bitch,” Stone muttered under his breath as he let the mag drop back to his side, but he didn’t put it away. Everyone was out to get him around here. Mafia crime lords, bikers, toothless bandits, New American Army troops. He might as well just shoot everything he saw, as it was most likely out to do him dirty.

  He moved down the street even more cautiously than before. With the smoke and the snow still falling, though more lightly now, and the bodies and burning vehicles everywhere as if World War II had just been dropped into the center of Bradley, it was hard to tell what the hell was going on. Everything seemed to dance and twist in shadows all around him—souls writhing within the twisting columns of smoke. But at last he made it to what was left of Patton’s headquarters—now a heaped pile of timber, blood-soaked rugs, broken furniture. The general had been quite a collector of antiques, paintings, what-all had turned up when his troops went out on search-and-supply missions. All had been brought back to the fort for his personal use. Now it lay smashed, beautiful works of art. It gave Stone’s heart a tug to see such beauty destroyed, annihilated. He had seen them and admired them—when Patton and he had been on better terms. There—a Manet, with numerous holes burned through it, lay draped over a cracked support timber. There —a Greek bust with a .45 slug slammed into its mouth so that its sculpted, rock lips were now just dust and the whole center of its face a gouged-out crater like the face of the moon.

  Suddenly Stone’s heart gave a little skip. For he saw, rolled up like a rug to be taken to the cleaner’s, the immense masterpiece the general had given him after his successful mission into the nearby mountains to destroy a horde of bandits. He rushed across the debris, dropped to one knee, and ran his hand across it. No holes, no burn marks. He reached up and unraveled it just a bit to see. Yes—it was the Michelangelo—the Creation—safe and sound. Stone could see the very tip of an angel’s finger reaching out through the clouds. It gave him some kind of deep shiver that the painting had survived. It seemed to have been destined to. And Stone felt that as ridiculous as it probably was, it seemed like some kind of honor that he should be entrusted with such a priceless work of art. So much had been destroyed. There wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot left for future generations.

  He heard a sudden commotion behind him and turned to see the pitbull sighting down on an immense rat that scurried past them with a piece of what looked like human flesh in its sharklike black jaws. The English bullterrier shot forward with all the strength of its pistonlike legs. Excaliber snatched the foot-long rodent up right around the central portion of its body. He snapped down once hard before the creature had time to struggle. The rat’s backbone and ribs cracked loudly into splintering pieces like a turkey wing at Thanksgiving dinner. Then the rodent’s body was ripped into two parts, and Excaliber opened his mouth and tossed his head hard, flinging the two blood-spewing parts out into the air.

  Stone had to jump back to avoid the leaking corpse, but still a piece of it landed on his boot, which totally revolted him, so he bent down, grabbed a broken piece of wallboard, and wiped the siime of rat flesh from his boot. As his eyes came up, his heart nearly fell down to his feet, for a trapdoor had opened in the ground just yards ahead of him, and nine terrified and ash-coated faces were staring straight at him, each man with a pistol in his hand—all aimed straight for Stone’s heart.

  The dog started to growl, but Stone, without moving a muscle, commanded it sharply to shut up and stay still. Excaliber whimpered and then lay on his paws just behind him, but
with his eyes cocked on the men ahead like a lion on a gazelle, ready to move at the slightest threat to his master. Stone scanned the faces back and forth in a single fluid sweep, still keeping his body absolutely still, his gun motionless at his side. It was hard to tell who they were, they were all so filthy, but they looked familiar. Suddenly he realized it was the raw recruits, the men who had just been inducted into the NAA a few days before. Stone had joined the army and gone through the super-intensive New American Army boot camp with them.

  “Kill him,” one of the men snapped out, starting to raise his pistol. It was Bull. Stone knew the bastard had always hated him since he kicked his ass in a hand-to-hand practice.

  “Now listen fellows,” Stone started, not having the slightest idea of what he was going to say next.

  “You’re a traitor,” another voice hissed. “Just before General Patton drove off, he said you had brought in the slime. You had betrayed all of us.” It was Bo, a trooper Stone had saved from drowning in quicksand. He knew they weren’t dying to shoot him or they would have done it already. But he’d have to convince them. All he had to do was convince nine hicks from the sticks who had been inducted into the New American Army that the NAA no longer existed because it had been a fascist force that had to be destroyed. And do it in three seconds.

  “Listen, fellows,” Stone began again with a weary sigh, wondering just how long he could keep talking his way out of being killed, just how long he could bullshit death itself each time it came to argue with him about why it was time to die.

  “No listening, asshole.” Bull sneered, raising his .45 toward Stone. “Time to die.”

  “No,” Bo suddenly yelled out, whipping his .45 around toward Bull. “Let him talk,” Bo said in a trembling voice. He was obviously terrified of the larger and tougher Bull. “He saved my life. He helped a lot of us in the boot camp. At least he deserves to speak.” Bull grumbled and eyed the pistol with a simmering anger, but the others spoke out as well that Stone should have his chance, and the barrel-chested Bull let the big handgun fall away at his side.

  “Thanks,” Stone said, exhaling a long breath. Excaliber relaxed slightly as Stone did too. The pitbull was linked to his master by an almost telepathic bond. It had been that way from the start. They just knew each other. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you and say I didn’t bring down an attack on Fort Bradley, because I did,” Stone said. “And I was ready to sacrifice the lives of every man in this camp,” Stone said. “I’ll admit that too. I was ready to let every one of you smelly bastards kick it. But I had my reasons.” They all looked pretty skeptical. But at least they were listening.

  “Patton started out with good intentions,” Stone went on, “but somewhere along the way he lost it. Because what he has in store for America is the Hitler route. The elimination of blacks, Jews. Hartstein—you’re a Jew, right?” Stone asked, looking over at one of the men in the squad. The inductee nodded nervously.

  “Hey, pal, fine with me,” Stone said. “But someday you might just find yourself up across a wall with the captain of a firing squad asking you if you want a last cigarette. The general wanted to rule by an iron fist. No freedom of the press or religion. Nothing. It wasn’t a return to the America we knew but to his own dark vision of hell. You understand what I’m saying?” A few of them seemed to get dim light bulbs glowing in their fear-winced eyes. But most either didn’t appear to understand what the hell he was talking about or else didn’t particularly give a shit if one race or another got exterminated.

  “And,” Stone went on, knowing he had to hook them on this. “He had a policy of purification by fire. You know what kind of fire he has in mind?” Stone asked them, glancing around with a smirk as if they were all poor fools. “Atomic fire, my friends. The crazy bastard wants not only to purify America by burning her to a crisp. But right now, today, this minute, he wants to kill me—and he’s gone to get a ten-megaton missile to do it. You hear what I’m saying. You can kill me or not—it hardly matters. Because he won’t know it. And unless we stop him first, you’re all dead men.”

  That seemed to get their attention. Even Bull looked a little pale through his ash makeup.

  “Let me get this straight,” the big man said skeptically as the others gulped continuously, their Adam’s apples moving up and down like corks on rough water. “You telling me that at any motherfuckin’ second some big ol’ missile gonna come down right on our heads?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Stone said with a razor-sharp smile. The trapdoor flew back and the entire crew—all ten of them, he could see now—stepped out and up onto the rubble. Just a few seconds before they had been ready to kill him—and now … But time passes and things change. And no man likes the idea of his radioactive balls spinning endlessly through space.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  “SIR,” ONE of the ash-coated recent inductees said, looking at Stone. “Should we call you sir?”

  “No,” Stone said, waving his hand with a disgusted look. “Just Stone … will do fine.” He looked them over quickly. They looked like shit. They hadn’t particularly known what to do just days before when he had gone through the two-day boot camp with them. And he was sure that they hadn’t learned a hell of a lot since then, either. They were scared too. Hell, most of them were just kids, not even out of their teens. Half of them weren’t even holding their pistols correctly. It wasn’t a hell of a lot to work with. But then, beggars…

  “At ease,” Stone said with a sheepish look as he saw them trying to stand at some semblance of attention. There was something in him that just didn’t take well to telling men what to do. His childhood, most likely. His father being military had a lot to do with that. And the fact that he and his dad had fought their entire lives until the day the Major died. And yet many of his father’s words remained in Stone’s mind to this day—words of a man who had seen much. “If you want men to follow, you have to enthuse them,” Stone remembered the Major telling a fellow officer once over a prime rib roast at their home in Denver. “Have to make them believe that they’re special, hot shit, God’s gift to the United States fighting forces.” Stone took a deep breath and prepared to lie his ass off.

  “Tell me, fellows, how come you were down in that junk hole, anyway?” Stone asked them as they stood side by side in a vague sort of line. They had just been learning military ways for under a few weeks now and had only just begun to get the hang of it—barely. Well, Stone wasn’t one for marching or spit-and-polish, thank God.

  “ ’Cause this major man tol’ us to guard it,” one of them said. Stone tried to remember his name. Or any of them, for that matter. “Said to stay down here and guard the general’s stuff, and if any asshole shows up—to fill his ass full of lead. And those were his exact words,” the half-wit said with a smile, proud that he could remember so much vital information. It was all Stone could do not to just walk away. But he had to have men. There was no way in hell he would be able to attack Patton with the kind of defensive forces the general had at his command, without some kind of fighting team.

  “Well, you did real good,” Stone said, looking around the place. “Look’s like no one got in here—other than the artillery shells—but then you couldn’t do much about that, anyway, could you?” He laughed nervously, knowing it sounded crazy as the recruits glanced at each other. “Yes, fine job.”

  “But no one really tried to get in here—uh—sir,” one of the real young ones, tall and lanky, his face still acned, said nasally.

  “Ah, but they didn’t try, because somehow they sensed you all. And knew that they were dead men if they stepped one foot in here. Every man has a sixth sense about danger —even if it’s only partially developed. They knew—that’s all—just knew that there were some tough-ass troops lying in wait.” The men, fortunately for Stone, were young or dumb enough, or both, to be extremely gullible, and so they smiled at the praise of their manhood. “And that’s why you guys are kick-ass soldiers. I knew it from
the start—back in training. Could see that I was working with a fine bunch of men.” Somewhere inside themselves they probably all knew he was lying, but every man likes to be complimented, to be told he is tough. Thus they smiled even wider, stood a little straighter, and decided that this guy Stone wasn’t such a bad son of a bitch, after all. And Stone learned the basic truth that all politicians know instinctively—that lying works.

  “Now, let me just say two things about my running this show,” Stone said, trying to sound firm. “One—we’re not going to worry about parades, clothes, haircuts, fingernails, or saying ‘sir’ or any of that shit, okay? You guys can pick your noses and eat it for all I care. But two—you’ve got to do what I tell you, when I tell you. Not just because I want you to but because the lives of every man on this attack force will be dependent on every other man. You’re all in this together. You understand? Any one of us goes and ka-boom—it could be all over. And if we don’t get Patton—it’s going to be kaboom, anyway, for this whole damned central part of the country. So we have to move fast and hard. I’m not going to mislead you—it’s going to be a bloodbath. You hear me? We’re going into hell. So if any of you want to back out now, just tell me—because I have to know I can count on whoever’s on the trip when the shit hits the fan.”

  “Sir.” Another of them spoke up, though who it was Stone couldn’t begin to tell, as the man looked like the inside of a vacuum cleaner, covered with dust and soot. “I guess the fact is, most of us grew up in these parts. And, well, I don’t know who’s right or wrong in all this, I guess, but I don’t want to see my daddy’s farm tore up to hell into that there rad-active, whatever you calls it, stuff.” The others nodded in agreement, even Bull, who Stone knew was the one he was going to have to keep his eye on. The guy kept giving him funny looks.