War Weapons (10 page)

Stone took a chance. If he could just get to the other room and his pistols. He turned and started running. Never had the
forty-foot-long hallway seemed so long or so dark. Like a child’s nightmare, he just couldn’t seem to get to the other end
no matter how fast he ran. He was almost there when suddenly he felt something wrap around his feet and he fell forward, nearly
slamming into the wall but deflecting himself with his raised arms. Still, he crashed down onto the carpeted floor and stared
down at his feet where some sort of bololike device—two pieces of perfectly round steel attached to each end of a long leather
thong, had wrapped two or three times around his ankles. He was hog-tied, and the NAA death squad—the two who were still alive—were
tearing ass down the hallway with blood in their eyes. Stone reached forward to try to undo his tangled legs, knowing there
was no way in hell he would be able to do it in time. As far as he could see, he was about to die.

Excaliber, meanwhile, had moseyed off the moment he had entered the bunker. He remembered the place well, having explored
it thoroughly on his last visit when he had laid down a scent trail to remind him of just where the best observation posts
were. The trail also led directly to the kitchen. Now the pitbull was already exploding with food, and even the thought of
more made it feel a little ill. But it had daydreamed about the kitchen here, and the feeding frenzy it had experienced the
last time here. It was pulled forward by pure lust, pure desire to fulfill its dog dreams. And so, remembering where Stone
had taken the dozens of cans down from, Excaliber pushed a chair over to a wall, climbed up on it, and opened the door with
his paw. The shining cans inside were piled high, but the dog had no way of knowing what taste lay in what container. He reached
up with his paw and knocked a few cans down from the top of each pile. They tumbled over him, some landing on his head, then
falling down to the tiled kitchen floor. When it seemed like there was enough of a sampling—to start, anyway—the pitbull jumped
back down and began nosing the cans around.

Paradise at its feet, the terrier sniffed at the metal containers, batted them with its paws, whined at them, did everything
a dog could to persuade them to open and release their flavorful morsels. But nothing being forthcoming, the pitbull regressed
to a more primitive approach, took one of the cans in his jaws, lifted it high, and snapped down hard on it. The incisors
on both sides of his mouth pierced the can like a metal opener, and peach syrup began flowing through the holes. The dog balanced
the can in its mouth and bit again, this time opening even larger holes so that some of the small half spheres of terribly
sweet peaches squirted through and down into its mouth.

That was better. The pitbull shook the can back and forth, draining every bit of fluid and fleck of fruit inside. Then it
flung the used receptacle aside, so it flew through the air and crashed at the far end of the kitchen. He sniffed around the
pile of cans that lay strewn around and then poked at a big one, making it stand up on end. Opening his jaws to the maximum,
the fighting terrier slammed them down hard, again piercing the container with four deep and even cuts. He lifted the can
high in the air upside down and chomped again. This time pickles, gherkins and hamburger slices, mixed together, all flooded
out and down into his throat. At first the dog liked the taste and gulped them down. But on the second gulp the thick, vinegary
flavor made it cough, and the pitbull exploded in a violent sneeze, spitting the can halfway across the floor as small pickles
of various shapes and sizes sprayed out, flying against drawers and tables around the entire kitchen.

Undaunted, after shaking its head a few times to clear its juice-flooded nose, the pitbull reached for another can and another …
. It was draining the tenth can when it heard the first scream coming from the long hallway. The dog knew instantly that its
master was in trouble, and it started across the smooth kitchen floor so rapidly that its claws scraped across the surface
skidded in place. At last it got some friction going and shot forward, out of the kitchen and into the living room. It knew
the direction instinctively and turned left at the living room, its back end skidding around and crashing over an aluminum
light pole that lit one end of the room.

There, in the hall, the pitbull saw its master, and above him were two men with pain things in their hands. The bull-terrier
shot forward, this time getting good leverage against the carpeting of the hall. It accelerated like a rocket, coming out
of nowhere before the two NAA commandos even saw it.

As the knife of one descended toward Stone’s chest, the pitbull launched itself from about a yard behind its master. It flew
straight over his shoulder and caught the falling hand at the wrist. The weight of the dog took the attacker right over on
his side while the animal ground down hard with its rows of dagger teeth. As the assassin hit the floor Excaliber bit again
and yanked hard—and the hand pulled free from the arm, dangling all kinds of spurting veins and tendons. The dog shook the
thing a few times, the fingers slowly opening and closing in good-bye spasms, and then tossed it into the air so that it flew
almost straight up, bounced off the ceiling, and came down just inches from the person who had previously owned it. The assassin
screamed even louder when he saw the missing appendage.

As the second commando dived in for the kill, attempting to get at Stone, who was still extricating himself from the bolo
around his ankles, Excaliber, knowing the first man was harmless, turned on a dime and again launched himself with tremendous
speed toward the attacker. The man didn’t even know what hit him. It could have been a meteor from space, so instantaneous
and powerful was the blow. The pitbull’s jaws came down square around the man’s face. One second the commando could see Stone
in front of him, and the next, just darkness and pain and the pink throat of a dog, for the pitbull had clamped its mouth
over the front of the attacker’s face, taking the whole thing between its jaws. The dog bit down hard, and the whole central
portion of the elite fighter’s face just sort of squashed together in a bloody mass. The pitbull ripped hard, and the man
suddenly had no features—just a bloody pit out of which a scream emerged, the likes of which Stone had never heard before
and hoped he never would again.

The faceless man fell to the carpet, blood pouring out of the holes mat had once been his eyes, nose, cheeks…. For all was
gone, just a huge wound, drenched in blood, a wound that pulsed as he screamed. Stone let his heart start slowing as he finally
got himself extricated from the bolo device. He rose to his feet and called the dog, which was standing arrogantly between
the two dying men like a hunter over its kills, daring either of them to rise again, to try anything. It glanced back and
forth at them with a proud warrior stare and panted, its eyes wide with excitement.

“Here, boy,” Stone said to call the animal, and it instantly trotted the few yards to him and stood by his side, rubbing its
blood-soaked face against his leg. “You did good, dog. I’m going to see if I can’t dig up some kind of medal or something.”

Stone walked forward to see what remained of the attack force. The men in the back were all dead—the ones Stone had killed.
The one with a missing hand appeared to be dead, or so near death that it hardly mattered—with ninety percent of his blood
drained out of his body and all over the living room carpet within one minute.

The faceless man was the only one who was still alive somehow. And he shouldn’t have been. Not the way he looked. No one who
looked like that would want to live. Or so Stone thought as he walked up to the assassin, his hands over his face, as he rolled
back and forth on the slippery red rug.

“Who told you I was here?” Stone asked the writhing figure. He didn’t even know if the thing could speak, as its lips and
teeth were gone—jaw too. But something uttered out of the red hole that moved where a mouth once might have been.

“You’re traitor,” the wound of a mouth gurgled, blood spewing out as it spoke. “We—we have a spy with you. Have—” It tried
to laugh, or act like it could, to impress Stone with its machismo. But it wasn’t a good idea. Things spat up out of its throat,
and blood seemed to just gush out of every opening of what had been a face.

“I’m going to do you a favor, asshole,” Stone said, not particularly wanting to do what he was about to. He walked to the
couch, picked up the .44 Mag sitting there, and then headed back to the hall. He held it out, muzzle pointing at the commando’s
heart. “I’m going to take you out of your pain, though God knows you wouldn’t have done the same for me.” Wincing a little,
Stone pulled the trigger.

I
T TOOK Stone nearly an hour to make the place even vaguely presentable. He didn’t know who he was making it presentable for,
but he couldn’t just leave blood and bodies lying all over the goddamn place. So he dragged them all outside about a quarter
mile from the house to a pit they had used for compost and burning waste. He threw them in, poured two buckets of lye over
them, and then covered the whole mess up with leaves and decay from another part of the heap. The bastards would at least
help fertilize the ground, Stone couldn’t help but think with a dark laugh. Daisies and dandelions would grow from their rotting
remains. Recycled assassins.

At last he got things together and quickly gulped down three cups of black coffee to keep himself awake. He was so quickly
supersaturated with the high-caffeine brew that his eyes were half popping from his head. Excaliber, now that the excitement
was over, looked as sick as a dog. Though Stone could hardly believe it, he discovered that the animal had gone through numerous
cans, just ripping them open, the shattered tins lying broken all over the syrup and juice-splattered floor. He couldn’t even
begin to get pissed off at the mutt after what it had just done. But when they were all mounted up on the Harley, Stone noticed
that the dog was looking greener and greener around the gills. It had bitten off a little more here and there than it could
chew. Stone headed out, closed the huge rock door behind them, and redeposited the “garage opener” back beneath the huge boulder
so that if April came back, she could again have access to it. If, if, if…

Then he was on the bike and tearing down the dirt path as fast as the Harley could go without snagging into a tree. The pitbull
looked more and more sick but clamped hold of the cool leather and closed his eyes, trying to pretend he was lying by a warm
fire with a stomach about fifty percent smaller. The moon had sunk into the trees by the time Stone hit the bottom of the
mountain path and got onto the main road. The Harley tore back along the long straightaway, Stone opening the big 1200-cc
up to the limit, hitting a hundred and more when he was on flat patches of concrete and asphalt. Excaliber couldn’t even look
as the world sped by in a complete blur but buried his face deeper in the seat.

At last, as light just began to paint the far horizon with strokes of orange, Stone saw the cutoff that was the way back to
the bivouacked tanks. He turned down a back road and then through some fields, slowing down as the going got rougher. As the
sun poked the red pate of its burning head up over the trees, Stone saw the Bradleys silhouetted against some trees. The two
guards greeted him as he came to a sputtering halt in front of them.

“Been hunting?” Ross asked him as he glanced down at Stone’s jacket and pants. Stone looked down and saw that the entire lower
portion of the uniform was streaked and mottled in red.

“Something like that,” Stone replied, not wanting to tell them what had really happened. There was a spy among them. It would
be better for him not to reveal a thing—and perhaps the bastard would show himself. The men rose slowly as Stone yelled out,
“Let’s get this thing on the road.” He was a wreck, and he knew it. He hadn’t gotten any sleep, and God knows when he would
again—maybe never. He could feel his eyes all puffed out, his lips dry and hot. Stone kept his eyes on each man as they rose
from their blankets, searching among the eyes to see if any were shocked that he was there. But not one displayed the slightest
double take or amazement. It gave Stone the creeps to walk among them and know that he had been set up by one of these sons
of bitches.

Stone took over Hartstein’s tank, switching crews and everything because he wanted access to another batch of the eight Mini-Hawk
missiles that were hidden in the Bradley. Hartstein looked a little funny at him, but no one said a word. Stone knew that
they all knew that he had used something extra—back there at the valley of burning cars. But he didn’t offer any answers,
and they didn’t ask any questions. Stone was, after all, running this particular death show. Soon they were all inside, and
Stone started the battle wagon up and headed straight north. The other two tanks fell in quickly behind him, and soon they
were cruising along the relatively flat land between two ranges of mountains that moved in a north/south direction on each
side of a five-mile-wide valley. Stone watched the two behind him, locking the video sweep on them for a while. But they hardly
wavered at all. Both his choices had been good ones, for they were driving the things like they had been cruising around in
the machines since high school. Gradually Stone opened up, until they were moving along at about forty miles per hour. The
shock system of the Bradley was so well designed that the men inside were hardly aware that they were moving at that speed.
It was more of a fluid motion, as if they were at sea, going over long swells. Even Excaliber seemed unperturbed and lay on
the steel shelf above the exhaust piping, his front paws wiggling slightly as if he were running in his sleep.

They had been traveling at near maximum speed for about an hour, skirting between the two ranges when the gap of the valley
suddenly opened and they were facing a wide plain that stretched off to the northern horizon. It looked blank and desolate,
with just scraggly brush here and there, skinny cacti, tumbleweed blowing like pool balls across the hard ground. Stone slowed
down some as he eased the tank onto the more granular surface than the stuff they had been on—just in case. The one thing
he had learned so far was: Never take anything for granted. Even the ground you walk on. But the surface held good enough.
Although covered with a loose, sandy surface, just inches beneath the top it was hard and firm, almost baked into a claylike
substance, and the tanks easily found good traction.