Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (25 page)

Not that the attackers didn’t take losses. A number of the over-laden Elite Guard commandos were cut down in their tracks.

Chen took a piece of shrapnel in the right shoulder, McCaughlin in the leg. But they kept moving, not slackening for an instant, keeping an eye out for one another as the battle raged. Their mounts shot down, they worked their way across the very top of the long super-aircraft carrier, with its planes folded like sleeping hawks at the far end. Fought their way toward the bridge—and control of the entire ship.

The resistance increased as they grew near—obviously Killov had concentrated his forces around here. Rockson scanned the bulletproof windows of the ultra-modern bridge a good sixty feet above them, trying to spot the madman—but the view was covered by the smoke that was now rising from the many explosions around the deck, and the secondaries as well as a few of the jets parked close by went up in great roaring bonfires. Rock and his team were stopped in their tracks as the Arab forces seemed to gather themselves and make a stand. They fired from behind stairwells and steel cabins, from portholes beneath the bridge that housed the ship’s communications center. Time was ticking away—where was Killov?

Slugs of every size pinged all around them as if they were in a swarm of locusts—but Rock motioned for the bazooka men to just open up and not stop. And they did. Both men fired all seven of their remaining shells into every opening they could see. They were fourteen thunderous roars—then horrible screams, as mutilated figures jumped up and ran around minus arms, legs . . . The Freefighters rushed in through the thick smoke, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot of resistance after that.

Rock ran toward the stairs leading to the tower and took out two men who came at him, cutting them in two with a burst from the Liberator—snipping their chest cavities open for disection class. Then he was up the stairs three at a time, jumping over the bloody piles that the bazooka explosions had left behind. There wasn’t even anyone trying to stop him the rest of the way up, and Rockson blasted open the door, burst into the bridge, spinning around and searching for trouble.

There was someone here—an Arab, tall and broad, wearing a red robe that flowed all around him like a fountain of blood.

“I am Dhul Qarnain—and you may not come into this sacred chamber.” The man had a wild, proud face, like something out of Ali Baba. The fellow clearly was the leader of the whole bunch. And as the man pulled out his glistening scimitar, he pointed to a similar weapon on the countertop.
What the hell?
The Doomsday Warrior leveled his .12 gauge shotgun-pistol as the Arab took a sudden step forward. “Here, I have a second sword for you, Rockson. You must fight with a man’s weapon, as I do—do not defile—”

“Sorry, my friend,” Rockson said with just the hint of a smile. “I’m not into swordfights.” He pulled the trigger of the sawed-off .12 gauge shotgun-pistol right in the face of the robed attacker. The whole center of Qarnain’s head disappeared, though the body kept coming forward for another second or two. The nose, eyes, chin, teeth—every damned thing just suddenly wasn’t there. Where it was, who could say. Dhul Qarnain’s arms stayed up, holding the long, curved sword poised in the air. Then the whole dripping thing collapsed into a bloody mess on the floor and Qarnain got the “romantic” demise he had so long sought.

Twenty-Six

W
hile Rockson and his team were fighting it out above deck, Rahallah and his men came in from below the waterline. The acetylene torch cut through the three main connecting pieces within ten minutes and they pulled the door free and were inside the ship—in an inverted cone-shaped chamber that kept the outside water at a constant height, so the ship’s frogmen could go in and out. They came up cautiously, but there wasn’t a soul in the steel-walled room. The Arab commandos had more important things to do than go swimming down here.

Stripping off their water gear, the fighting force, with Rahallah in the lead, charged forward, fast, ready to take out any bastard that got in their way. They had one objective and one objective only: to rescue the Premier—secondarily, Zhabnov. The African prince moved like a cheetah down the steel corridors and up the iron ladders of the
Dreadnaught.
He carried a short spear, the front end of his Masai hunting spear, the one he had killed a lion with at the age of thirteen—the ritual passage to manhood in his tribe. It was about three feet long, two feet of which was razor sharp, with slightly curved point. With his leopard loincloth and the African weapon in hand, with his legs pumping, muscles rippling like an Olympic runner, Rahallah appeared like some primitive African god—and both inspired and terrified the Elite Guards who came swarming behind him down the halls, their submachine guns and autopistols at the ready.

They met some resistance, but not much—two Arabs attacking them on the first two levels. Rahallah took them out easily by himself, thrusting his spear hand downward so that their intestines oozed out over the handle and his hand.

At the third level they met real resistance—a machine-gun post of six. But Rahallah ducked into a doorway and let the Elite Guards use some of the shitload of weaponry they carried. They opened up with automatic fire that absolutely blasted the corridor ahead. A mini-rocket launcher one of them had brought in a watertight pack was aimed from shoulder level and fired.

A blast shook the hall, and when they moved forward through the smoke the red-robed fighters were all dead. All but one, who seemed untouched. He lay in the corner covering his head and face with his arms and hands, whimpering. “Don’t kill me—please, please don’t kill me.”

“Where’s Vassily?” Rahallah said angrily, going over to the Arab, the hood having fallen from his face to reveal a mere teen, sunken-cheeked, a coward along for the ride.

“I can’t tell—they—”

“Where’s the Grandfather?” Rahallah asked again, placing one of his huge fingers behind the man’s ear at the pressure point. The Arab’s whole body arched up and he screamed breathlessly. “Fifty level, Room 5209. Don’t kill me. I
told
you, I
told
you.”

“Sorry,” the black prince said, reaching down with the other hand. “I’m not feeling generous today.” He grabbed hold of each side of the Arab’s head and pushed, before anyone could stop him. There was a loud snap and then the light went out in those eyes. Whatever light had been there to begin with. Rahallah let the lifeless body fall to the floor. “The Lion wills it.”

They tore up to level five and encountered more resistance in front of the room. But it, too, was blasted away, and within minutes Rahallah was at the door. He threw it open, not daring to believe that the Premier might still be alive, though he prayed with all that was in him to his African gods. As his eyes took in the small room and its occupants, his face lit up.

For the Grandfather was alive—the leader had not been killed by the madman Killov. Rahallah rushed over to the Premier, who was lying on his side on the floor of the small room. He was breathing, but his eyes were closed. Rahallah reached his palm down and felt the man’s heart. It was fast, but not erratic. The African had seen it much worse. Maybe there was hope—real hope. He slipped a blue heart pill between the Premier’s half-opened lips.

“Swallow, Excellency,” Rahallah exhorted him. “We’ve got to get out of here. Fast. Try to wake up. Please.” He lifted the Premier slightly and held him up as Vassily’s eyes slowly opened.

“Faithful one—you’ve come,” he said with the trace of a smile flickering across his lips. “I knew—I knew.”

“Shh, Excellency,” Rahallah said, holding the Premier in his arms as he stood up. He noticed Zhabnov for the first time, trembling on the other side of the floor, in the darkest corner he could find. And there against the wall, chained to it, a snarling, very angry Archer. How they had managed to get that overstuffed mountain man alive was beyond Rahallah’s ken, but he signaled to the commandos who came into the room behind him to free the giant. One of them walked over and set a tiny charge, hardly larger than a postage stamp, against the base of the chain—and it popped apart with a puff of smoke. Archer was free. He rubbed his hands, looked at his rescuer and growled slightly, as he wasn’t quite sure what the hell was going on, and then looked over at Rahallah.

“Cool out big fellow—we’re friends,” the African grinned at the man, remembering what Rockson had once said about him—that he picked up emotional states from people more than their words. That he could understand what someone was saying through their tones, their body gestures. He seemed to trust Rahallah and relaxed, his growls subsiding.

“We’ve got to go,” Rahallah snapped out to Zhabnov as he walked back out toward the corridor still carrying the Premier. They had to get the hell out there before the whole place erupted into a firestorm. For far above he could hear heavy explosions going off, the ship seeming to rock from time to time as if it were feeling some of the blows that were leveled against it. He ran with the Premier in his arms as the other Elite Guards formed a phalanx around them, taking out any fool stupid enough to get in the way, or pop his head up suddenly out of somewhere. Zhabnov ran along, his fat body jiggling wildly beneath his uniform, now tattered and ripped, coated with blood. It was the one he had worn that the Peace Conference, just a few hours earlier—it seemed like an eternity. Archer took the rear, snarling at this and that shadow but kept up, as he hated being stuck in the bowels of the steel monster, and was in fact starting to feel quite claustrophobic.

At last they reached the deck—and daylight. Or what they could see of it, for the smoke and fire was thick everywhere now. The deck of the
Dreadnaught
was a war zone. Firefights, hand-to-hand, burning piles of MIG’s were everywhere. It was hard to see or even take in the whole picture—like a Boschian portrait of hell itself, punctuated with a chorus of screams that even managed from time to time to rise above the explosive roars of whole helicopters and MIG fighters going up at the sides and ends of the carrier deck.

Rahallah reached the edge of the ship with Zhabnov fast behind him. He turned around frantically searching for a lifeboat—a way off, since there were on the wrong side of the ship. But as his eyes swung around, the African saw a last-ditch assault team of Arab fighters come tearing at them. Perhaps it was just because they knew that they and their whole cause was doomed—but these fighters of Allah charged and fought harder than the others had. Four of Rahallah’s commandos were out in a flash—the fifth stopping them for a second with a burst of his .9 mm. The African had only fractions of a second to decide. And he did.

He kicked President Zhabnov right in the ass, so that the huge body went over the side, falling and screaming like some sort of giant walrus. Cradling the Premier in his arms like a child, the African leaped forward, far out into space so that he had a clear trajectory to the river. The Arabs rushed to the side, but as eager as they were to engage the enemy for Allah’s sake, they didn’t really feel like jumping into the flaming waters below. Besides, they had their own problems—an explosion shook the entire boat from stem to stern, and they were knocked from their feet right onto their faces.

And then everyone had big problems—for the whole damned ship was going down.

Twenty-Seven

O
nce Rockson had unceremoniously disposed of Dhul Qarnain, he wasn’t sure what the hell to do. The control room of the
Dreadnaught
was a mass confusion of beeping and blinking, radar screens, communication channels all lit up like were they on Tilt. Somehow he had hoped there would be someone around who could explain just how the hell to override the nuke launch controls, but there wasn’t a soul in the bridge—living, anyway. Rock examined the panels of controls but was afraid to touch anything. If the missiles had been pre-armed they might go off if he touched even one wrong button. Where was the skull,
Killov?

He went to the long, curved window of the futuristic bridge that allowed a vista out onto the entire front of the burning boat.
There
—suddenly he saw Killov making his way toward the port side. The slime was trying to sneak out on the little party he’d thrown—that had apparently gotten out of hand. Rockson saw the controls for the cannons. They looked slightly simpler. He pressed madly at the panel of buttons that turned the ship’s huge 30-foot battle cannons, and aimed it down the deck toward Killov. Somehow, even in the midst of the battle that raged on around him, as the colonel stabbed and shot his way to the edge of the boat he sensed Rockson bearing down on him.

At the last possible second he saw the great cannon, saw its black barrel pointing right at his head. And his drugged face went pale as an albino sea slug. Then Rockson fired. The battle cannon thundered out a 150mm shell big enough to take out the side of a battleship. This particular screaming shell didn’t have far to travel. It slammed into the deck about twenty feet from the edge and created a ball of flame and smoke, leaving a crater behind—but no Killov. He was gone as the smoke evaporated above the twisted, red-hot metal shards.

Suddenly—about a hundred yards down the ship—Rockson saw Rahallah emerge from the innards of the
Dreadnaught,
followed by Zhabnov and, to Rocks’ delight, Archer, who pawed away at the air, striking out at anything that got near him. But within an instant, he saw Rahallah rush to the side of the ship, surrounded by Arab fighters and leap over with the Premier in his arms.

“Son of a mutant bitch,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered, his jaw dropping open like it was filled with stones. This was all moving too fucking fast even for him. Before he had a chance to start worrying about the missiles again—he didn’t have to. The entire bridge shook like it was in the hand of a giant as flames suddenly exploded up all over the long deck. The jets burning at the far end had sent down sheets of burning gasoline, which over the course of the last few minutes had run down four levels—to the main gas tanks that fueled the ship’s choppers and MIG’s. The two cylindrical tanks took up nearly half a level of the boat—sealed inside “impenetrable” titanium walls. But there are always leaks, vapors . . . And the fire moving downward found them.