The Rabid Brigadier (19 page)

“You mean just rip it right out of the frame and roll it up, just like that?” Stone asked a little incredulously.

“That’s exactly what I mean, Colonel. We made an agreement—I always pay off.” Stone took out his blade and pried the outer
part of the gold gilded frame that held the masterpiece in place. He carefully pulled the immense painting from the wall,
put it on the floor and rolled the whole thing up like a rug to be taken to the cleaners.

Patton looked at him slyly. “So you’re no longer concerned with the no prisoner policy? I wouldn’t, after all, ask any man
to do something his conscience wouldn’t allow,” Patton said, which Stone figured to be the biggest lie of the night.

“No,” the younger man said, forcing a smile. “After hearing your full description of your plans for total conquest, I understand
it all better. And I must say I couldn’t agree with you more. I thought this massacre had been an indication of cruelty by
the NAA. But that’s not the case at all. It’s a policy, not an emotion. You don’t kill out of hatred, but scientifically,
in a controlled manner, to further a goal of complete order, complete law in the future.”

“Exactly, exactly,” General Patton said excitedly. He had rarely heard it so well put. “You almost read my mind, Stone,” he
said with a laugh. “We kill in a scientific manner to insure complete law in the future.” He mouthed the words
Stone had just spoken, and liked how they sounded. “I should have you write my speeches, Stone. Going to need some soon… when
we start entering the next stage in reconquest.”

“Glad to be of any service I can to the Third Army,” Stone said. General Patton poured him yet another drink, looking close
into his eyes through his own slightly hazed-over half drunken orbs. He stared hard at Stone, as if trying to comprehend if
the man was entirely trustworthy, if all was as it seemed. But he wanted to believe too much, too hard. And so he looked deep
into the lying eyes of Martin Stone… and believed his every word.

CHAPTER
Eighteen

“S
TONE, WE’RE going for a ride,” Patton suddenly said, grabbing a fur-collared trenchcoat from a rack. “I’m bringing you in
on this operation all the way. All the way.” Stone finished his drink with one big gulp. Jesus, it seemed like every second
took him deeper into this thing; he was booked for the ride now, that was for damned sure—all the way to the end. He looked
over at the general, who had already strapped on his ivory-handled .45’s—he never went out without them on. “Come on, Colonel
Stone, America awaits us. Let us not delay a nation’s destiny to be reborn out of fire.”

“Indeed,” Stone answered, putting down the empty glass. He picked up the rolled up Michelangelo on the floor, threw it over
his shoulder and headed toward the door. He was glad he had had the shots of brandy. It would make it a little easier for
him to go through this whole charade. The general strode like a Caesar with omnipotent pride and rigid determination
down the hall to his private garage at the back of his headquarters. Elite troops, all wearing the gold eagle, guarded every
doorway, every entrance and exit. They stood even taller, stiffer than the general himself, if that were possible, and snapped
out stiff-fisted salutes as he stalked past, Stone fast on his heels. Patton went through a metal door and into a garage filled
with vehicles—jeeps, motorcycles, even a tank, just in case. He led Stone to a thickly armored half-track with huge solid
rubber tires, high up on double-reinforced frame. The thing looked invulnerable. Patton jumped up one side, Stone the other
and the general quickly started the armored vehicle.

“If there’s trouble, Stone,” he said with a little grin, almost as if he wished there would be, “the machine-gun controls
are there.” He pointed toward the center of the vehicle, where a machine gun sat welded inside a little mobile tower from
which the firer could spray the weapon a full three-sixty degrees. Patton eased the thing into gear and started slowly forward.
Two guards pulled open high steel gates that moved on a pulley system and they spread smoothly apart. The half-track headed
out the doors and down a ramp into the dark night. The general had driven only about a hundred feet up to one of several back
entrances to Fort Bradley before the guards on patrol at a machine-gun post saw the supreme commander flag snapping in the
air on the front of the vehicle, and ran double time to open the gate.

Within minutes they were hauling ass down a fairly solid paved road heading into the darkest part of night. The general had
even flipped on the half shielded headlights of the half-track so he could see and make better time, though it was actually
NAA official policy to run blind at night outside of the fort. But then, he had dictated that policy. So he could dispense
with it as well. He was feeling reckless tonight.
It was all coming together faster than he had hoped. Faster than he had dreamed.

“Are you ready?” he suddenly asked Stone, who was staring up into the few sprinkles of stars that peered down through the
overcast sky. But all he kept seeing was the faces of those women, those kids, some of them had been fucking babies sucking
at their mothers’ breasts. The faces of those burning dead, blazing in place of the stars, took up the sky wherever he looked.

“I said, are you ready?” Patton repeated louder to Stone, as he stepped harder on the gas pedal. “Ready to hear the next step,
the next stage on our road to total victory?”

“Yes, General,” Stone said, turning and trying to focus his eyes on the man. “And anxious to know every detail.”

“There’s a meeting going to happen, Stone, a meeting of nearly all the Mafia, biker gangs and warlords for the whole Rocky
Mountain and Plains area. A meeting scheduled for two days from now. They have one every year to work out inter-gang problems,
pay each other off—take care of their slimy business. If we could take out that entire crew at one stroke, we could take control
of an immense area of land—nearly seven states in a matter of weeks, rather than the years it would take with town-by-town
fighting between our forces and each little chapter of the bastards out there. No, I’m going to take them all at once, Stone,
grab them up in my hands.” He gripped the wheel of the half-track with white-knuckled fists. “And squeeze them until the flesh
on their bodies turns to pulp, until they melt before me.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” Stone said, sitting up straight in the leather seat of the half-track, trying to sound as enthusiastic
about the flesh-squeezing idea as possible. “Huh… just how are you going to attack, sir?” Stone asked a little hesitantly,
not sure how the general would take to his pet
project being questioned. “I’ve seen some of their forces; they’re pretty well armed. I would imagine at a convention of that
size they would be extremely well protected. I wonder if your Third Army is ready to take on an army nearly as large as itself
at this stage in time.”

“Precisely,” Patton said, glancing at Stone, his eyes burning like blue laser rubies again. “My realization exactly. Except
for one thing, Stone, my ace in the hole. My way to melt the sons-of-bitches down to ash without losing a single one of my
own.”

“You keep saying melt, General,” Stone said curiously. “What do you have in mind—setting the convention site on fire?”

“On fire.” Patton laughed. “Yes, you might say that. A fire that will cleanse with utter purity, will leave a clean slate
upon which to build.” He squinted at the weaving road ahead as they hit a sudden deep crack and bounced over it, flying through
the air on one side for a second or two and then landing with a thud. “You’ll see soon enough, Stone. See what our ace in
the hole is.”

He drove for about an hour and Stone vaguely kept track of where they were going, mentally noting a particular rock formation
off to the side, or a group of trees configured a certain way on the semi-mountainous terrain around them. Suddenly they were
there—wherever there was—and Patton slowed as he came to what Stone could only make out as a patch of darkness. Lights snapped
on in front of them and gruff voices yelled out challenges as Stone heard the safetys of at least two machine guns being switched
off. Then whoever was in the darkness saw the general and a flurry of feet came from behind the searchlights as a gate was
opened. As they drove on Stone could see they were inside a protected area approximately a hundred feet in diameter and dead
ahead of them was a large cone-shaped piece of steel built on top of a concrete square. The shape and design looked strangely
familiar. Suddenly his heart skipped a beat. It was a silo. A missile silo.

“Come on, Colonel Stone,” the general said, leading him out of the half-track to what looked like a piece of flat ground next
to the silo. But Patton reached down, gripped a hidden handle and pulled a steel door up. He started down inside and Stone
followed just behind, resting his feet and hands on a wide rung ladder. He looked down and felt a wave of dizziness sweep
over him. They were inside the silo—on a ladder that went straight down what looked like hundreds of feet. And taking up the
center of the ten-foot-wide, perfectly round funnel was the biggest goddamned missile Stone had ever seen, poised, ready to
fly up into the blackest of nights.

“Isn’t it beautiful,” Patton screamed up to Stone. “I mean, isn’t it just about the most beautiful goddamned thing you’ve
ever seen, Colonel Stone?”

“Absolutely,” Stone yelled down, examining the missile closely as he moved down the narrow ladder that ran right alongside
it. The thing was thick, a lot wider somehow than he had imagined a missile to be—and long too. It seemed to go on forever
as they moved down the ladder. It was a metallic blue, and seamless, perfect every inch that Stone looked. There was a feeling
about it. God, was there a feeling about it. Just being next to it—though the weapon was absolutely still and silent—he could
feel its tremendous power to destroy, to kill. A shiver ran up and down his spine and he had the strongest urge to get away
from the steel rocket, just get away, run as fast as he could. But he held himself in place and kept descending deeper into
the bowels of the silo.

“Jesus, she’s a sight, isn’t she,” Patton asked Stone as he dropped to a circular walkway at the very base of the silo. “This
particular design of missile, the M-7, has always been my favorite, Colonel. The lines, the thick wide body, the immense double-stage
rocket with nearly enough power to send this thing into orbit. I mean, it’s almost more like a Russian rocket, only this one’s
got the computerized guidance and avoidance systems that the Russkies never could get together.”

“You’re quite a connoisseur of missiles, I see,” Stone commented dryly as he looked up the inside of the silo. The damned
thing looked bigger, if anything, from below. It made him feel small, about as vulnerable as an ant with a combat boot hanging
just over its head.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, in my earlier days, before the shit hit the societal fan, I was attached to a missile base, in
charge of its security and military operations. I learned all about missiles then. Everything about them, from their maintenance
to their firing.” He led Stone around the walkway, reaching out with his hand to touch the missile with his palm. He stroked
it like the thigh of a woman, slowly, feeling every sensation, every nuance of the perfect curve of the metal.

“Tell me, Stone, how big do you think she is?”

“I couldn’t hazard a guess,” Stone answered, gulping, not really wanting to know.

“Oh come on, again humor an old man. What do you think?”

“Oh God,” Stone muttered, feeling as if he were in a guess-how-many-jellybeans-are-in-the-jar-win-a-sundae contest. “Two megaton,
five megaton… I don’t know,” Stone said. “I haven’t been around too many H-bombs lately.”

“Ten, Stone, ten megatons. And plutonium-enriched, one of the advanced models with equivalent power of the old fifteen meg
or better.”

“Can you actually make it… go?” Stone asked, feeling his chest growing tighter by the second, his lips and mouth drying out
so they felt like a salt flat on a summer day.

“Go?” Patton laughed. “Colonel, I can pinpoint this missile to within one hundred yards in a 15,000 mile radius. You think
this is all for show.” He knocked on a two-inch-thick reinforced steel door and a face peered through the leaded Plexiglas
window. Then it opened and they walked in. Again Stone was overwhelmed and fought not to have any of it register on his face—the
sheer insane power these men possessed. The room was filled with radar screens and computer printouts, constantly updating
weather, oil pressure on hydraulics systems, electrical hookups—every goddamned thing it took to keep an atomic missile alive,
and to be able to send its flaming ass into the clouds.

“This is Colonel Stone,” the general said, introducing him to the two technicians who sat on duty, far apart on each end of
the nearly eighty-foot-long control center. “And these are Major Rasner and Major Hollings, in charge of the actual launch
operations. We’re set up here just like the old days. It takes both men to turn keys simultaneously to arm the missile and
send her up. Both men are chained to their seats, so if one goes mad we have a safety. And as you can see—” He swept his hands
around the blinking beeping high tech missile control room that made Stone feel more like he was in a spaceship headed for
the outer planets than a concrete-reinforced bunker two hundred feet below the desert soil.

“And who decides when and where to actually launch the missile,” Stone asked as he tried to see where the launch
controls were. “Assuming,” he coughed, “that one were ever pushed to such an eventuality.”

“Oh, one doesn’t have to be pushed, Colonel Stone.” The general’s laugh was a thin rasp. His tone and volume suddenly dropped
lower and he stared at Stone as a madman might stare into the void. “I have already decided to use the weapon. In three days,
in fact. And it’s targeted for Glenwood Springs, where the warlords of crime and blood are having their annual who-gets-how-much-of-what’s-left-of-America
meeting. Only, you know what’s ironic, Colonel Stone?” the general asked. “There won’t be enough left of them to divvy anything
up. Instead there will be a tremendous power vacuum created throughout the central United States, and the NAA will move in—seize
the opening and take control in a blitzkrieg of armored vehicles and highly mobile, combat-hardened soldiers.”