Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (17 page)

But they didn’t move a thing. The metal pole stayed where it was, and two guards, submachine guns over their shoulders, stepped forward and up to the window on each side.

“Papers, please,” a Red sergeant asked in a bored monotone, coming up to the driver’s window. The other guard stared up at Rockson, who smiled back in his stupidest grin as he slunk ever deeper into the seat, trying to hide the fact that he was wearing the outfit of an elephant.

“Papers?” Scheransky acted irritated. “Can’t you see what we’re carrying, comrade? Nerve gas! Priority Alpha Blue clearance. Don’t need papers.”

“Everyone needs papers in the capital, comrade,” the sergeant replied, trying to maintain his composure since he had both ulcers and hemmorhoids and didn’t need to get his blood all boiling—and his infirmities all pumped up again. “So, please—” he held his hand up toward the window.

“Plan B,” Scheransky whispered out the corner of his mouth to Rock. Both men pulled out their weapons—Scheransky his 7.2 mm that he had carried since his defection, Rock his .12 gauge shotgun-pistol. Both weapons burped out loads of death and two Russian Army slobs shot backward away from the truck like they had just been kicked by a mule—their bodies spewing blood in fountains from their death wounds.

“Floor it,” Rock screamed. “Floor it!” But the defector had already slid back in the seat and thrown the big diesel into gear, slamming his foot down on the pedal. The huge rig shimmied down the bridge for about twenty yards, the whole thing sort of arching up almost like a cat in attack mode. Then it got its power behind its huge mass and suddenly tore down the end of the bridge, moving like a whale trying to get back to the sea. The other guards saw it coming and the machine-gun posts on each side of the checkpoint opened up, so that slugs were dancing in on Rock and Scheransky from both sides.

But only for a few seconds. The diesel truck slammed straight into the steel barrier and snapped it in two like a piece of balsa wood. One of the machine-gun posts disappeared beneath their wheels, the screams of the men audible for a second above the roar of the engine and the
rat-tat
of the .9 mm slugs. Then the rig was through and skidding wildly down a wide boulevard that led right into Washington. The sheer momentum of the truck was so great that though Scheransky was steering fairly straight, the back end of the truck was skidding wildly back and forth like a wild ride at an amusement park of old. The long, square body of the diesel keep slamming into parked cars, sending them flying like broken toys, snapping meters and lamp posts as it cut through them like a scythe. Rock could hear yells from the back and the rising chorus of a half-dozen hybrids, all letting the world know that they didn’t like what was going on one fucking bit.

They had gone only a few blocks when they heard sirens blaring behind them. Both men turned and stared into the rearview mirrors that took up the whole front side of each window. Three army cars, machine-gun mounted, were tearing after them like they were ready to pursue them to the ends of the earth.

“Shit,” Rock spat through angry lips. They were so close and now . . . He wondered whether they could all try to make a run for it—but realized quickly that though he and Scheransky might have been able to somehow split the moving tractor-trailer, the men in the back had no quick exit. And that settled that.

“Hang on, palski,” Scheransky said with a strange gleam in his eye. “We’re going for a little ride.” If what they had just been on for the last mile wasn’t a “little ride,” Rock didn’t know what was. But he was about to find out. Scheransky upped the gears of the immense truck until they racing down the center of the six-lane boulevard, the intoxicating perfume of the cherry blossoms wafting sweet smells to their nostrils.

“I know this damned town like the back of my hand,” the Doomsday Warrior said. “When I was last through this burg, I did lots of exploring.”

“This isn’t the first chase I’ve been involved in. Not by Stalin’s nose hairs, it isn’t.” The defector had a peculiar look in his eye that Rock wasn’t at all sure he liked. Scheransky upshifted again and Rock could hear the powerful motor of the diesel truck roaring like some sort of wounded elephant. But it powered the damned thing. The tractor-trailer hit fifty, then sixty. It slammed through every car on the road like they were bowling pins, sending vehicles flying off to the side as the truck barreled through, their drivers twisting their wheels so as not to crash.

But still the army vehicles kept in pursuit, falling behind slightly but letting off volleys of machine-gun fire constantly. Something had to give. And it was Scheransky. Suddenly, seeing an exit appear out of nowhere, he veered the wheel sharply to the right and the entire truck skidded around 120 degrees, wheels screeching up a sound that could be heard for a mile, sending out a cloud of burnt rubber that smelled sour and sickening. The screams and shouts from the back of the truck were louder than ever now, and Rock heard pounding on the steel backrest of the seat. He leaned around and saw that there was a latch and a small opening, which he promptly undid and stared through the small opening into Detroit’s angry face.

“What the hell is going on up there?” He was trying to smile, but Rock could see that his face was almost shaking with anxiety, as were the others of the team behind him.

“If you want to stop the ride,” Rock screamed, cupping his hands, “send some fucking firepower out the back. You hear me! We’re being followed. Take ’em out—we’ll slow down.”

“You got it,” Detroit shouted, his black face covered with sweat. “Why didn’t you say so.” He ran back through the darkness of the truck, lit only by rippling streaks of sun that darted in through a few cracks in the outer covering of the vehicle. The men swarmed to the back, undid the latches of the huge doors and kicked the things open, so that they swung out and around on their hinges. Three Red Army cars had caught up to about a hundred feet, and they saw a band of filthy, wild-eyed men staring out at them, ugly over-furred horse creatures jumping around behind them.

But the Russians didn’t have time to ponder the situation very long, for hardly had the steel door flown open when the figures inside unloaded with everything they had. The Reds didn’t know what hit them. The first armored vehicle took a direct blast from both McCaughlin’s .50 caliber machine gun, which he held under one meaty arm while he fed in the belt with the other, and one of Archer’s exploding arrows. The driver of the ARV found his head suddenly detached from his body and the vehicle ripped to the side sharply so that it suddenly toppled over and burst into flame.

The second car got a combined hit from two of Chen’s exploding shurikens and a phosphorus grenade from Detroit. It went up like a mini A-bomb, suddenly just disappearing as a cloud of black oily smoke filled the place where it had been. The third vehicle, an old U.S. jeep mounted with anti-tank rifle on top, didn’t even need to have any ammo expended on it. It ran into the flaming pile of debris right in front of it—and when it came out the other side it, too, was on fire. Suddenly it erupted with a
boom!
as the tongues of fire found their way to the gas tank. The two men inside came running out, balls of flame themselves, and ran along the highway—hastening their fiery deaths as they fed oxygen to the flames. Then both fell almost simultaneously, burning on the cool concrete.

The Rock team pulled the doors shut fast and locked them. Scheransky steered off the boulevard and went down a side street barely big enough to accomodate the truck. He slowed down to a crawl once sure there was no one still in pursuit, then slid slowly through darkened street after darkened street. There was almost no traffic, Rock noticed, and he wondered where the hell they were. Then he recognized the area. “Turn left, comrade. I think we’re in the old slave section. Slow down, the streets get potholed around here. Reds won’t even think someone might come here, let alone a twenty-ton. We’ll just back-alley it all the way.”

“And where is all the way?”

“There’s an old repair terminal at the north border of town,” Rockson said as they went past an intersection. He looked both ways down the mud avenue to make sure there were no army guards sitting watch. “There’s so many goddamned rigs there that we’ll just be one in a thousand. They bring ’em in for repairs—usually takes months, since there’s only a few mechanics who actually know how to make repairs. We’ll park it in the back somehow—believe me, the bastards there won’t even want to come check us out.”

And sure enough, twenty minutes later, as they pulled in through the front gate of a hundred-acre truck dump, not a soul paid the slightest attention. The halfwit reading a dirty magazine on a spring bed with only half the springs left didn’t even look up as they passed. Scheransky dimmed the lights so no one could follow their passage, and parked in the rows of metal debris. There were piles of tires, engines, hoods, windows. Everything. It was a veritable graveyard of trucks.

“This will do fine,” Rock stated. “Hey guys, get out. Let’s pow-wow.”

Rockson assigned Detroit—the most conspicuous of them—to secure the truck and contents. It would be their base. “The horses will be our way out of D.C. if we have to split. They can go where vehicles can’t follow. Assignments, gentlemen:

“Chen will check around—how about the restaurants? Say you’re looking for work. Get intelligence on any new troops in town. You know, entrapment forces; patches, uniforms— Take McCaughlin.”

“You bet, Rock. I’ll go to Chinese places, too. The Sovs love Chinese food, but the Chinese waiters don’t like them much. I’ll find thing out.”

“Scheransky,” Rock ordered. “Hit the bars—just have beers—listen in on conversations.”

“Got you.”

“Everyone use the walkie-talkies. Frequency 31, Z-Code. Give me a progress report in—say, six hours!”

Rock continued to instruct his crew.

Seventeen

D
etroit complained, but Rock insisted he had the most important job—holding the fort.

“We all meet back here,” Rockson told them, “at 0300 hours tomorrow. Each of you knows his task. If I, or anyone doesn’t return, Detroit, call out the marines.”

“There are no marines,” Detroit couldn’t help but interject with a friendly sneer on his grime-coated face. “But I’ll find you.”

“That’s even better. Drive around, find us.” He looked them over. These American Freefighters were probably the moxiest,
toughest
sons of bitches on the face of the planet!

“Archer—you
come. Come
with Rockson,” the Doomsday Warrior said, turning to the giant who stood a few feet off, looking over everyone’s heads as if he were into some other world.

“MEEEE COOMMMME,” the immense near-mute said with a tooth-twisted smile. He was still feeling pretty good about saving Rock and the rest of the Freefighters from the corn worshippers. What he lacked in intelligence he made up for in animal cunning—or so he liked to believe. At any rate he was flattered that he had been chosen to go with Rock to reconnoiter the city. He looked around at the others with a sort of shit-eating grin, unable in his childlike innocence to contain the simple emotions he was feeling.

He jammed down his big leather hat, the one that hid the peculiar structure of his cranium—filled with crystals. Those crystals were part of an extensive repair job done on his brain when it was caved in by an ax on another Freefighter mission. He pushed the hat tightly down. He’d protect good, hard, the Doomsday Warrior!

Rock worked out various contingency plans with the team.

They all had maps, and all of them had been in D.C. before. He would return—or let them know what was happening. And that—play-it-by-ear plan that it was—was all they had. But then Rockson had been working with a blank script since the day he was born. You did what you did—and hoped that the rest worked out.

He and Archer left first. They made their way through an opening in the steel mesh fence about thirty yards behind the truck and were quickly off into the darkness and the bushes. Rock had kept track of the way they came, more or less—one of the star-patterned mutant’s traits, they couldn’t get lost. They walked through abandoned, weed-blanketed fields and, as they got closer, brick-covered lots, crumbled buildings. Just outside the Russian sphere, they were therefore non-existent to them.

Washington looked like a twinkling fairyland. For though darkness was behind them and on both sides, ahead was a lit-up metropolis the likes of which they hadn’t seen in their travels. Lights were everywhere, a galaxy of them, houses, cars moving, even a few medium-sized skyscrapers, reaching 60, 70 stories into the air, floors lit up like great neon signs in the sky—advertising that there was a new owner here. The old ones were gone. All the condo’s in the sky had hammers and sickles on their white walls.

Rock was glad to see that there was plenty of human intercourse—that is, Americans—from the surrounding countryside walking up to and past the guards at the gates that surrounded the ‘main town’ After numerous assassination attempts, Zhabnov had had the entire city virtually fenced off—with armed guards at every entrance. But though that seemed to assuage his fear, in reality the guards did little to stop or search those who entered. They were dependent on the livestock, the vegetables, on the labor of the American farmers who hacked out what homes they could in the surrounding radioactive tracts of land that had been left for them.

They saw men and women carrying everything from live, squawking chickens to rows of piglets, tender and juicy, for the President’s week of feasting. Men carried pots and pans, silks, watches—every damned thing that could be dug up, stolen, grown or made. Rock rolled up his collar over his neck and chin and let his hands dangle sort of stupidly at his sides as the others seemed to be doing. Archer had folded up his collapsible crossbow and had it stashed in a long pack around his shoulders. The two men tried to blend in as much as possible, with Archer actually half bending at the knees and hunching way over forward to try to get rid of a few inches of his height.