The Rabid Brigadier (16 page)

“Anything?” Stone asked.

“Anything,” Patton said coolly.

“Then let’s do it one by one. I’ll carry out
this
battle assignment for…
that
.” He pointed toward the wall, toward the Michelangelo teeming with angels, flying down from the cloud-dappled face of God
himself. Stone thought he might have insulted the general but instead the man instantly began laughing and reached out to
slap Stone on the back.

“Absolutely. My gift to you, Mr. Stone, upon the successful completion of your mission. I like a man who knows just what he
wants—and dares to take it. Then I always know what his motivation is.”

“That and my dog, Excaliber, who’s in your pens. And finally, the use of my Harley, which has been impounded since I’ve been
here.”

“I’m not used to being given demands,” Patton said, rising again and pacing nervously. “But in your case I’ll excuse it, because
it is yet another proof to me that you are a wolf, not a sheep. Yes, you can have it all. There is plenty more where this
came from.” He threw a casual glance at the immense work of art that seemed almost alive, so filled was it with motion and
swirling supernatural creatures.

“So you accept the assignment, Stone,” Patton asked.

“Yes sir, I do,” Stone said. “It will be my pleasure to take out the bastards who’ve been terrorizing the area. I’ve run into
that kind of slime all over the place and I always thought it was a shame there wasn’t an organized force to go after them—get
rid of them once and for all. It would be an honor to contribute to such a venture.”

“Good, then it’s settled. You’ll leave this afternoon, to command a hundred-man force with appropriate mobile artillery.”
He reached down and opened the drawer of a mahogany desk, took out a few items and turned back toward Stone. “But I can’t
allow a private to lead a force of that size. This
is
the army after all. Here.” He handed Stone one of the golden eagles with skull—and the marks of a full colonel.

“The men aren’t going to like this,” Stone said to the general as he hesitantly pinned the eagle to his collar and the stripes
to his shoulders.

“I don’t give a damn what any man thinks,” Patton half bellowed. “I make the decisions around here. And anyone who ever forgets
it will find himself in front of a firing squad that night. That goes for you too, Stone. I’m putting a lot of faith in you.”
For the first time that morning the leader of the Third Army looked angry for a moment. And Stone could see that inside those
eyes there was a darkness, a black curtain behind the shimmering blue surface. Something that hinted at unspeakable deeds.
But Martin Stone, in the midst of being offered more power than he’d ever held in his life, was blind to the flaws.

CHAPTER
Fifteen

T
HREE TANKS sped across the canyon country to the east of Grand Junction where Fort Bradley was located. They moved fast, and
low to the ground, the super-mobile Bradley III being a far more successful model than its predecessors. Four troop trucks
came lumbering behind them like beasts of burden, three filled with NAA troops—battle-hardened men, some of the toughest under
General Patton’s command—the fourth with heavy combat weapons including .50 caliber machine guns, mortars, even a few flamethrowers.
A 150mm howitzer was linked up to the rear truck and its long barrel arched like a spear. A cloud of dust rose behind them,
hanging in the afternoon air about fifty feet off the ground as it was an almost windless day.

The terrain around them was stark, almost primeval in its appearance. This was some of the most mountainous and barren territory
in Colorado: hard, almost lifeless, ground beneath the tire treads of their whining vehicles, towering
red sandstone sculptures rising all around them, carved by the ceaseless wind of the ages into shapes of mushrooms, lions,
pyramids. You could see anything if you looked long enough.

But Stone was more interested in the mechanical workings of the tank he was in than the tortured beauty outside. He sat in
the codriver’s seat next to the tank commander and watched intently his every move. It was a fairly simple steering mechanism,
using two bars that controlled each tread system separately. It enabled the driver to turn on a dime or, by pushing both all
the way forward or pulling them all the way back, to accelerate to thirty-five mph within six seconds, from full speed to
a skidding stop within forty feet. Stone kept asking questions over and over, wanting to cement the knowledge of every bit
of the tank’s workings in his brain. The driver—Lieutenant Carpenter—pointed each button and dial out.

“Now, the gunner can operate the turret separately,” Carpenter said to Stone as he stared into a video monitor that showed
the rushing landscape outside. Stone glanced around at the gunner, who sat off to the right side of the large control chamber,
with earphones on that connected him to every other man in the crew and goggles that gave him as well a video picture of the
world outside. He constantly fiddled with dials on it so the armored camera swept three hundred and sixty degrees around the
tank, searching for trouble. “Or the driver of the Bradley can operate every system from up here.” He swept his hand over
the digital display panel that ran in front of them across the entire eight-foot width of the tank.

It was a five man crew, which, with Stone as a sixth, made it a tight squeeze. But as Lieutenant Carpenter was telling him,
the other five men were actually redundant. In
reality the driver alone could not only drive the tank, but could fire its 120mm cannon, its .30 and .50 caliber machine guns,
send off any or all of its eight radar-controlled ground-to-ground mini-missiles capable of taking out a tank twice the Bradley’s
relatively compact thirty-foot length. And do a couple of other things as well.

“And this—if everything else fails,” Lt. Carpenter said with a sardonic grin as he glanced over at Stone, “is the self-destruct
timer. The general doesn’t want any of our equipment—certainly not a Bradley—to get into the hands of the enemy. So you just
crack open the glass here,” he mock-demonstrated with a small red hammer attached to the encased timer by a chain. “And set
the clock inside by turning to the right. Then flick the Arm lever—it’s here. And then run. ’Cause every ounce of explosive
in the tank—every shell, every bit of fuel—will all go at once. Anyone inside will be barbecued to a char. Even the vultures
wouldn’t be able to eat their black ashes.”

“Sounds great,” Stone said. “I’ll keep it in mind for whenever I’m feeling suicidal. Tell me, do you think I could drive it
a little; I want to learn. If I’m in command of a whole damn tank force I’d sure as hell better know how to even get the thing
going.” The lieutenant hesitated just a second as the rest of the crew’s ears perked up. Stone had met with less animosity
than he had thought he would—being promoted to full colonel, given command of such a formidable strike force out of nowhere.
But the rest of the operation, including the assorted captains and majors who rode in the other tanks and in two officers’
jeeps to the rear, had not expressed any hostility to Stone. Whatever they felt, he was in the game now, a protegé of Patton.
His powers might soon be immense. And so none of them would risk his displeasure. They expressed neither friendliness nor
malevolence,
just a cool noncommittal attitude that said: “Let’s see just how long you last, sucker.”

“Sure, I guess it will be all right,” the lieutenant said after a few seconds. “I mean, you’re the guy running the damned
show.”

“Just keep an eye on me, okay?” Stone asked with a sheepish look. He didn’t want to crash the thing right into the side of
one of the sandstone spires. That would be a great way to start a mission, blowing up his vehicle. Stone still couldn’t really
belive the whole thing was happening. And he wasn’t quite sure that he had the faintest idea what a colonel was supposed to
do.

“I’ll grab them away,” the lieutenant said, sitting back so Stone could slide over in front of the steering bars, “if anything
starts going wrong.” Stone took hold of the bars and stared into the slightly wavering monitor above him on the instrument
panel. The road ahead looked peculiar, as if he were watching a rerun instead of reality, but in a few seconds his eyes adjusted
to the level of the video light. It was actually all very easy. The bars were sensitive to the motion of his arms so Stone
hardly had to move at all to steer. He would slow it down a little, then speed it up, twisting back and forth slightly, trying
to get the feel.

“What happens if the TV goes on the blink?” Stone asked.

“As I explained earlier,” Carpenter said in an almost bored monotone, “everything has a backup. You just slide back that bolt
and the shielding comes down on hinges. The other side contains a two-inch-thick super resin Fiberglas window through which
you can view ahead.”

“Who’s driving that damned lead tank?” A voice suddenly burst onto their headphones. “This is Colonel Malik. My driver informs
me that you’re weaving all over the damned place.”

“This is Colonel Stone,” Stone said like ice through his mouthpiece. “I’m at the controls here. Why, is there a problem?”

“Oh, no problem, sir,” the voice apologized. “Sorry, didn’t realize.”

“Carry on, Colonel,” Stone said, suddenly appreciating the fringe benefits of power. They drove through the afternoon and
into the evening, and still went on. With the infrared and other light-enhancing visual capabilities of the video system one
could see as clearly as if it were daylight. Stone and Lieutenant Carpenter took shifts of an hour each as the concentration
level of driving the high-tech Bradley was extremely intense. The tank even had a coffee machine that the crew kept loading
up. After the fifth cup of the foul-tasting but highly caffeinated brew, Stone felt like his eyeballs were popping out of
his head. But it gave him and the other men energy to drive on through the darkness. Sergeant Zynishinski had been right:
if he wanted to get sleep the New American Army was not going to be the place to do it.

The fleet drove through the darkness. Around them canyons and ripped broken strips of land, bizzare sandstone formations,
all shimmering with the scalpel rays of the half-moon, glowing as if they were alive. Stone only had one mishap, misjudging
a small rise and letting the tank go over it at forty mph. The right tread lifted up high and fast, and suddenly the entire
tank was almost over at a forty-five degree angle. Every man in the crew looked as if a jolt of electricity had just gone
through them as adrenaline surged into their veins. But just as quickly the tank slammed back down again—creating a funnel
of dust all around it—and kept going like nothing had happened.

After several hours they hit a plateau that looked across a
vast jigsaw puzzle of low mountains, woods and rock canyons.

“We stop here!” Stone commanded over the headphones as he brought the tank to a smooth halt and handed back controls of the
Bradley to Carpenter, who took the operating seat with something approaching relief in his bloodshot eyes. Stone exited the
tank and walked to the very edge of the plateau, where he lifted a pair of field glasses and scanned the hard terrain that
spread off to the horizon. A bloated orange sun with a somewhat sickly look dragged itself above the far mountains, spitting
out just enough light for Stone to pick up a few details in the gray morning mists that swept across the death lands. Far
off—miles away—he thought for a second that he saw a fire—several of them, burning hard—but then more fog moved in and the
view was obscured.

The other officers came up alongside him—a total of eight for this mission—and one of them, Colonel Garwood, coughed and tried
to catch his attention. He had had a run-in with Garwood before, but Stone wouldn’t hold it against him. He wasn’t going to
be an asshole about the officer thing.

“Colonel Stone, if I may be so presumptuous,” Colonel Garwood said, standing just behind him. Stone turned, lowering the glasses.
“We thought we might suggest a strategy meeting at this point.” The colonel spoke with polite, even tones but Stone knew that
the bastard hated him.
He
would have been the one leading the strike except for Stone. And Stone knew also that they were all keeping a close eye on
him. Patton wanted to test him at many levels at once. They were waiting, searching for the slightest weakenss, the smallest
fatal error. And then they would pounce, like hyenas on the kill of a lion. Too cowardly to attack themselves,
they would wait to feed from the prey once it had been already wounded.

“Yes… I was just going to call one,” Stone replied. The tension between him and the officers was almost palpable. He just
prayed that none of them had the balls to shoot him in the back. The troops from the transport had already exited and were
setting up a momentary camp, awaiting orders from their superiors. A folding table was quickly set up for the officer corps,
and maps were unfolded on it.

“Here,” Colonel Garwood said, pointing to a spot on the smudged map, which had obviously been used numerous times before.
“Our latest intelligence is that the main camp of the bandits is here.”

“How old is that intelligence report?” Stone asked.

“One month, perhaps two at most,” the colonel replied indignantly, as if almost insulted by the question.

“Then I want more up-to-date info before we mount an attack,” Stone said, letting his eyes meet every officer’s there. Now
was the time to exert authority, to show them that whatever they thought of him he was going to be the boss. “We’ll have to
do reconnaissance. Send out scouts.”

“We have a team of highly trained forward intell—” Garwood began. But Stone cut him off in mid-sentence.

“I’ll go!” Stone said simply. “I always do my own recon before I attack.” The others sputtered and looked incredulous.

“But the commanding officer of a search-and-destroy mission NEVER goes forward himself,” Garwood said angrily. “It would be
an abrogation of responsibility of the highest order. Possibly subject to court-martial proceedings.”