The Rabid Brigadier (21 page)

“Take her forward,” Stone yelled down through the hatch and the Bradley instantly lurched forward. The biker jumped back in
horror as the others, who had been leaning against their motorcycles in a bored manner, were suddenly wide awake and clearing
a way. There’s not many men who will stand up to the steel face of a tank bearing straight down on them. The Bradley rode
right up on four of the bikes, knocking them down and half crushing them beneath it as the treads ground over the vehicles,
twisting and crushing them like some kind of mobile car-flattening machine. He ordered the tank to stop just the other side
of the barricade in a large square.

“Need more demonstrations before you go tell them?” Stone asked with a satisfied smile, looking down at about a dozen of the
black-jacketed gang, who were cowering back against a brick wall.

“No—I—I’ll go,” the biker leader stuttered. He ran sideways in front of the tank, keeping his bulging eyes on the huge cannon
pointing straight at his head. The others followed
suit, like scampering chickens after their mother hen. Stone had definitely made an impression.

Within minutes he was being led into the main meeting hall of the crime bosses—an old skating rink with an arching domed plastic
ceiling that let in streams of filtered light from above. The assembled bosses sat on wooden seats all around the perimeter
of where the ice floor had been—now plywood sheets nailed down to make a floor over the rusted gridded piping of ice-making
equipment. The general had been right about one thing, Stone saw the moment he walked into the large open space, there were
a hell of a lot of the bastards here. His eyes quickly scanned the rows of seats stretching all the way around the place,
filled almost to capacity. There were a good thousand of them, from Mafia capos in their double-breasted suits to Guardian
of Hell chieftains with golden chains on their shoulders marking their rank; from wild-eyed bandits with belts of grenades
crisscrossed around their chests to subhuman mountain men dressed in badly sewn bearskin hides. They were all there. The whole
rotten crew had turned out for this one.

“And what, may I ask,” a voice spoke loudly above the murmur of voices throughout the ex-rink, “may we do for you before we
kill you.” Stone saw the source of the words—a man sitting with three other hard-looking fellows behind what looked like some
sort of makeshift judge’s bench. They all wore long black robes and were staring down at him with most unpleasant expressions,
as were all one thousand of the toughest, meanest and most psychotic looking dudes Martin Stone had ever seen. Colonel Garwood
stood behind Stone, almost shaking in his boots. Stone glared at the man for a split second to cool him out. To show fear
in front of these bastards was tantamount to committing suicide. That’s why Stone had taken out the church—he knew they respected
power above all else, firepower especially. And right now he had the biggest gun in town.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Stone said, turning slightly as he spoke so most of them could hear him. He wanted them all
to get the message, to truly understand just what was at stake here. “There’s an atomic missile targeted on this very building
right at this instant. By merely touching a dial on this radio transmitter,” Stone lied, as it would take a lot more than
that to get it going, “I can signal for it to be launched. And if you started running the second I pressed the button, you
know what?” Stone asked again, looking around at them as two thousand pairs of eyes glared back like glowing knives. “As far
as you could run, drive or even fly, it would get you. It would get you and melt you right down to your bones like plastic
melting on a toy soldier, and then even your bones would smoke and melt too. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Who the fuck is this guy?” another voice yelled from the crowd.

“Kill him! Shoot the asshole now!” another scarred face suggested, rising and pulling out a .45 that looked heavily used.

“Hold it!” the judge or whatever he was screamed above the din and stood up from his chair with a 30–30 Winchester, holding
it high across his chest. “Shut up, you assholes, and sit down!” the head judge commanded them—and with shoulders as wide
as a table and a sallow and almost concave face that bore not a little resemblance to Boris Karloff, even the toughest of
the tough were persuaded to head back down into their seats and put their firepower down.

“Go on, Colonel Stone,” the black-robed crime judge said more quietly as he sat again but kept the rifle in plain view.
Apparently the gathered criminal elements had their own etiquette when it came to keeping order. “Tell me more.”

“I’ve been sent under order of General Patton of the Third Army. He has instructed me to tell you that he demands your unconditional
surrender within twenty-four hours, or you and everyone within fifty miles of here is radioactive ashes.”

Again there were numerous disturbances around the arena, and before Stone knew what was happening the judge stood up quickly
in his seat and gripped the rifle to his cheek. He pulled the trigger and snapped down the lever, firing again and again in
a blur of motion. Some bearded, wolf-hide-covered thug with pistol in his hand went flying from his chair and tumbled onto
the plywood floor of the rink. He twitched a few times, riddled with slugs in an almost perfect straight line from nose to
navel, as a pool of blood bubbled into a little brook beneath him.

This time the congregation grew very still and again the judge urged Stone to go on.

“That’s the story,” Stone said, now addressing just the judges since it was obvious—that at least inside here—they ran the
show. “I’m to radio back your reply, and then either take you prisoner… or see us all die in hellfire.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” the head judge asked. Stone started walking slowly toward the raised judges’ platform
about eighty feet away, but five men appeared out of nowhere, each holding an Ingram submachine gun, and stopped him short.

“No one may approach the judges’ bench,” one of the men said, his face like something that had been left in the blender too
long.

“Then give him this,” Stone said, pulling open the cover of the missile manual and the chart showing damage at different ranges
from his jacket. He handed it to the man and
stepped back next to Colonel Garwood, who looked as if he were about to shit in his pants under the burning gaze of the rabble.
The face-mashed guard took them over to the judges’ bench and the four black-robed men looked at the pages closely, passing
them to one another. They conferred for several minutes, whispering back and forth. Then the head judge spoke up again.

“It is possible, from this evidence, that what you say is true—possible but not conclusive.”

“Judge, your honor, whatever your proper title is, it’s all true, I swear to you, every word I’ve told you. But though I
was
sent here to attempt to get you to surrender, the fact is I’m going to help you, show you a way out. I’m going to lead you
right back to their camp, and help you destroy Patton and the Third Army.” Colonel Garwood stared at Stone with his jaw literally
hanging open as he heard the traitorous words.

“Why should you do this, Stone?” the head judge asked through his cadaverous-looking white lips. “Help us when all we want
to do is kill you.”

“Because I’ve seen what General Patton really intends for America—a Brave New World of genetically selected sheep ruled by
laws and regulations that make Hitler look like a boy scout leader. I was in his inner circle and I know what he has in mind.
Don’t get me wrong, your honor, I hate your kind. I’ve spent the last few months of my life fighting scum like you—killing
a lot of them too. But I know, just because you bastards are such savages, so greedy in your provincial little ways, that
you will always be divided, will always be squabbling to protect your own little fiefdoms. You will never be the threat that
he is. And for this one moment, you and I are on the same side. Then we can go about our business of trying to destroy one
another. Because make no mistake
about it, I hate you, and the anarchy and blood for which you stand. But right now I hate Patton more, because he
could
do it. He
could
send America into the Dark Ages that will last ten thousand years.”

“You fucking traitor,” Colonel Garwood suddenly screamed as he stood alongside him, listening to Stone’s little speech, his
face growing redder and redder. “I always knew you weren’t to be trusted from the very start. They should have let you go
over the falls, you goddamned Benedict Arnold.” He went for his .45 and had it halfway out when about twenty firearms went
off simultaneously. The punctured body did a hideous little shuffle across the floor as if skating on its own blood and then
slammed face first into the plywood, dead before its nose crushed into bloody putty on the wood.

Stone stood absolutely still, his hands raised so they didn’t think he was going for anything. But the guns disappeared again
and just the smoke and the scent of blood remained in the air.

“Colonel Stone,” the head judge said, his face looking even more somber than before. “I think I believe you.”

CHAPTER
Twenty

I
T WAS perhaps the strangest army that had ever rumbled across the face of the earth: the tanks and jeeps of Stone’s detachment—minus
NAA troops who had been eliminated—in the lead, followed by the Mafia chieftains in their armored limousines, then hundreds
of the Guardians of Hell atop their bikes, their battle colors flying, and behind them the countless smaller warlords from
the mountains and plains in jeeps, old pickup trucks with swing machine guns mounted on the back, and every other damned thing
on wheels that could still get up a head of steam and crank its way down a road. They drove into the descending night in a
long stretched-out, ragged line, engines whining and screaming and pounding as a dim web of stars started to light up above,
like Christmas lights not quite plugged in properly, through the sheer veil of a high cloud curtain.

Stone didn’t feel at all good about the whole thing. His stomach felt like it was churning with bitter acids that were
ripping him apart. He had sent the radio signal telling Patton that the crime bosses had surrendered and the general had been
overjoyed. And now? Now they would all think he was a traitor. Not that it mattered. He did what he thought was right. There
were no two ways about it. You chose the side you were on, and then you went all the way. He would take the judgment when
it came on his last day. But still, not all of them were bad. If only Patton hadn’t gone over the edge. The general had been
so close, so close to the right thing. But he had gone off a cliff somewhere. The cliff of fascist dreams. Why was it always
like that? The son-of-a-bitch was a genius, and in many ways a good man, yet he had lost sight of the ball game and his own
vainglorious schemes of total conquest had taken over. It was the disease of powerful and great men throughout history. Caesar,
Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler, their very successes made them believe everything they did and thought was right. Therefore it
should be prescribed for the whole world. Then everything would be better. Everyone would be happy under their totalitarian
vision of life. It was simple. Right?

Wrong! Stone was in the way this time. All he could think of was those women and kids turning into fire, screams frozen in
the flames. Faces branded into his mind forever. And there would be more—tens of thousands more, hundreds of thousands perhaps.
For with General Patton’s purification-by-fire mode of operation, as the Third Army swept across the center of America they
would liquidate all life not to their immediate liking. Killing a man was one thing. Exterminating him was another.

No, Stone would take the heat. He was on the edge too. The very edge, staring right into the fucking face of death.

“Colonel, Colonel!” Stone was startled from his dark thoughts as he heard a voice talking to him. It was the head
judge, who was traveling with him in the lead tank. “Colonel Stone,” the crime lord said, his white lips hardly moving as
he spoke, “we’ll be arriving at the outer limits of Fort Bradley’s security perimeter within an hour if what you say is true.
How exactly shall we proceed?” He was no longer wearing his black robe but a suit of something approaching leather armor from
head to foot, and though bent over to fit into the cramped seating of the tank he still took up half the inside of the Bradley.
The man was immense. Around his shoulder was an Ingram .45 machine pistol, and around his hips enough knives, pistols, grenades
and other assorted implements of destruction to take on an army single-handed.

“We’ll proceed exactly as planned,” Stone said as he kept his eye on the video monitor of the road ahead. It showed him the
infrared and radar readings interpreted digitally and reformatted into visual image—all in the space of a thousandth of a
second. The thugs in the tank were all fascinated by the futuristic controls and kept staring around at everything with vastly
entertained smiles on their faces. They’d all have some damned good drinking stories to share with their buddies back in whatever
swamp or sewer they called home. There was nothing like killing. And high tech killing might be even more fun.

“We’ll bring the force to coordinate B17-H28, as on this map here.” Stone had the map displayed on a second screen to the
left of his viewing terminal. “There you’ll hold while I get inside and finish up a few things I have to do. Advance and firing
on the fort shall commence at exactly six
A.M
., not one second later.” Stone looked at the crime don, wondering if these dudes were going to really be able to use the
tanks. He had given each of the judges about five hours of training. Not a hell of a lot. But these were the smartest of the
lot, though that wasn’t necessarily saying much by the
looks of the crew that were following them. Still, they had been able to follow behind him in the other two tanks without
crashing. Christ, the more he thought about this, the less chance it seemed they would succeed. But it was too late now. That
was the understatement of the twentieth century.