by Ryder Stacy
Perkins and McCaughlin got the mortar going, slowly zeroing in on the Red squad directly ahead of them, less than two hundred feet away. Their first two shots fell behind the crawling soldiers but the third hit the outermost group of men and blew two bodies into the air like rag dolls. The two Freefighters looked at each other and patted one another on the back.
“A few more like that,” McCaughlin said cheerfully, “and it’s time for dinner.” But the Reds had gotten their own bigger stuff going as well. A Blackshirt jumped up from the left flanking group, the legs of his leather uniform covered with blood from some already wounded comrade. He aimed a long, tubular weapon at the Freefighters. It whooshed fire from the back and a rocket tore at them, forcing Perkins and McCaughlin to jump away from the mortar as both knew instinctively it had their names written on it. The shell landed nearly square on the mortar, blowing it into a rain of red-hot scraps. Shrapnel tore into Perkins’s back and McCaughlin’s legs. They both let out yelps of pain and then checked out the wounds. They’d live. The mortar gone, they raised their Liberators and began firing on auto at the constantly advancing lines of black-leather-uniformed troops.
As if on signal, three Reds suddenly jumped up, one from each of the three advancing squads and pulled their arms back, obviously to throw grenades. Every one of the Freefighters opened up and two of the Death Squad fell dead. The third got off his grenade before he too was cut down by the whizzing wall of death. The grenade spun gracefully through the air like a well-thrown football and plopped in the dirt dead center of the Freefighters’ circle. Lang, who was nearest the shrapnel cocktail, leaped forward without a moment’s hesitation and grabbed the grenade. Without stopping his motion, he lifted his arm and heaved the explosive device back out over the body of one of the dead ’brids. It went off just as it slipped behind the corpse. A burst of metal fragments tore into the hybrid’s cold side, just barely protecting Lang from the blast. He rolled back over to Erickson and, as if nothing had happened, said, “Hey, man, keep firing. We still got at least two dozen to go.” Erickson stared in amazement at Lang, who put his burnt leg back up on the pack and, smiling, resumed feeding the belt of .9mm slugs to the machine gun.
Erickson aimed the machine gun at the rushing troops, pulled his trigger finger back, and didn’t let go for twenty seconds, spraying the entire area to the right of them, creating a dust bowl of sand, metal and blood. Like hornets, the bullets tore into ten Red troops who had made a break for it, stinging, slashing, ripping at their flesh. The very air turned red with the spray of hot blood, shooting out from countless holes in the jerking, screaming bodies. When the smoke cleared after Erickson finally released the trigger, nothing moved in that direction. Nothing.
The other side of the perimeter was not doing as well. Slade, Perkins and Berger fired away at the advancing left flank. Rock and McCaughlin also slammed clip after clip into their smoking Liberators. Thank God the damn things hadn’t jammed, Rock thought as he pushed what must have been his twelfth clip of .9mm shells jnto the Liberator, clicking the catch into place. He raised the rifle and saw two targets. Two Reds, seventy-five feet ahead, with grenades in their hands. He knew they were about to stand. He waited until he saw the upward rise of their bodies and pulled the trigger, emptying the clip as he moved the rifle from side to side. The two Blackshirt uniforms of the grenade-throwers turned bright red where the slugs tore through them and exited out their backs, rivulets of thick blood gushing down onto the dry earth. Their grenades fell back with them. The surrounding Red troops crawling on their bellies saw the devices fall. One Red soldier reached forward and threw one out to the side. The other Blackshirts, about fifteen feet away, tried to run from the second grenade which lay ominously on the ground. As they rose, Rockson and McCaughlin unleashed a hurricane of lead into them. Five more fell to the earth just before the second grenade went off. Two more Reds screamed in agony, the side of their uniforms facing the grenade staining a deep red.
Still they advanced, McCaughlin took a shot through the upper arm and fell back, gasping. Perkins got a slug right in the chest. He dropped to his side, straining for air with a horrified look in his eyes.
“Air, air, I can’t breathe,” the wounded archaeologist groaned. Rock ran the ten feet separating him from the gasping Perkins and sat him upright. He looked at the hole. It had gone cleanly through, puncturing the lung but not the heart. He had to stop the bleeding.
“Perkins, listen to me,” Rock said, catching the coughing man’s attention. “You’ll live. I promise you, But you’ve got to stay absolutely still and keep your hand over the wound. Understand me? If you calm down you’ll be able to breathe, even if just through one lung.”
“Understand,” Perkins groaned out, trying to slow his heaving chest so he could catch a breath of air. Rock ran back to McCaughlin. “You all right, man?”
“Buzz off, Rock,” McCaughlin said gruffly, already lifting his Liberator again to fire. “It’s just a nick.” Rockson could see that it was more than that but there wasn’t time to stitch everybody up. If they lived they could tend to their wounds. He raised up and let go with a burst, blasting two Reds who had taken advantage of the momentary lull from the American side to rush forward. They stumbled backward, their stomachs hanging from their dripping red uniforms and collapsed. Rock turned to the left flank where he could see them setting up some kind of rocket again. He raised his rifle to fire and a slug tore into his face, knocking the side of his head around. Damn, hit! He slapped his hand up. Blood, but the wound wasn’t deep. Must have sliced along the outside of his cheek. He raised up again and fired, letting off a full clip before ducking down.
Rock looked around the inside of the defensive circle. They weren’t doing too good. Almost everyone had been hit in some way. Their fire was somehow grinding down. The Reds had at least half their force left and were continuing a steady barrage of fire that would lay waste their small circle of hybrids if it kept up much longer.
Detroit and Chen had made their full circles, sweeping deep behind the Russian lines. Now they came forward toward the backs of the firing Reds. Detroit pulled out two grenades and aimed at two groups of Reds in the center squad. He threw one and, a second later, the other. The grenades, short-fused so the Reds couldn’t throw them back, went off, blasting the two groups of Blackshirts into bloody silence. A third group turned to fire but Detroit had already dove to the ground. The Reds couldn’t even see where the frags had come from. Rock started up again from the front and the Death Squad spun around to return the fire. Detroit pulled two more pins and jumped to his feet, heaving the grenades. They fell into the largest group of the central Red squad, six black-suited men, firing as they crawled forward. One grenade went off about three feet to the right of the group, the other detonated just above them. The one to the right took a Red’s shoulder clear apart, severing the arm which flopped down onto the ground, trailing a spume of red. The second grenade did more damage, sending out a blast of razor-sharp shrapnel that tore into the Soviet troops’ spinal cords and backs, making three of them instant paraplegics. Two more twitched silently, their hearts ripped apart by metal splinters coming in through their backs. The sixth Blackshirt continued to fire, in shock from the sight of his blasted comrades.
Two hundred feet to the left, the left flanking squad, the least damaged of the three Red units, moved in for the kill. They could see that the Americans behind the circle of mutant horses were weakening. Now was the time. They rose and began forward. Suddenly two small explosions rang out. Two of the Blackshirts fell to the ground, half their backs blown away. The Red squad of twelve turned to find their attacker. A man ran crouched over, spinning small, glinting, metal weapons at them. Two at a time, he flung them with incredible speed, running a broken pattern toward them. Two more star-knives whistled through the air, seeking Red flesh. One snapped into a Blackshirt throat, the explosive charge cutting through the neck, severing the head which toppled from the body before it could fall. The second sl
ammed into a Russian stomach, blasting a hole clear through to the other side. The Red officer behind the man could see daylight through the opening until a geyser of blood filled the space and the mortally wounded soldier fell over in a messy heap.
They tried to get a bead on the running man, who would go twenty or thirty feet, stop for the merest instant, throw two of the weapons and then take off again. He was impossible to sight up. They fired but their ripping slugs found only emptiness. Chen continued his ravaging of the Russian squad. He reached behind him and flung the star-knives, snapping his wrist back at the last second to spin them into the proper death trajectory. His hundreds of hours with the things in the woods around Century City hadn’t been in vain. Two more star-knives whizzed out from the Chinese death-dealer, finding contact in a chest and a thigh, both instantly blasted to pieces. From far on the other side, the Freefighters were concentrating their fire on the last remaining group of Reds. It was they who were caught in a crossfire now.
Chen flung two more of the lethal star-knives at two Reds who had begun rushing at him. Both fell, blasted apart from the whirring bombs of death. Detroit rushed over to join Chen. They dove to the dirt as the last of eight Blackshirts rose as a unit, guns blazing, and charged. Retreat was their only chance now. The two Freefighters each pulled out two more of their exploding weapons and jumped up, flinging them. The second the death devices were in the air they hit the dirt again as a scythe of slugs sliced the air above them. The Reds had no time to avoid the spinning grenades and star-knives. The star-knives hit first, burying themselves in Red flesh—one landing right in a Blackshirt’s eye, exploding the screaming man’s forehead into bloody powder. The second star-knife sliced into the groin of a charging Red, blowing his balls into stew. He flew to the hard dirt screaming a sound that could be heard over the gunfire and explosions. His six comrades kept moving forward, spinning in every direction as they poured out a covering fire. Detroit’s two grenades landed right in the midst of them, going off with a fiery roar. Bodies flew into the air trailing plumes of misty blood. Then, there was silence, but for the groans and screams of the dying Red troops.
Detroit and Chen walked slowly back to their fellow warriors some hundred yards away in the circle of hybrids. They had to step over Russian bodies everywhere. Bodies without heads, arms and legs. Bodies with gaping holes in them as if they had been drilled through with jackhammers. Pools of blood, ever-thickening as the corpses drained themselves of the precious red fluid. But it was no longer needed by the Russians. The dry ground lapped up the blood like rain. Something would grow from the nourishment. Something would arise from out of all this death.
They reached the circle and jumped over the four dead hybrids who had given the lifesaving cover to the Americans. Rock and the other men were tending to their wounds. Almost everyone had been hit somewhere. They had won the battle but it had been costly. Slade, McCaughlin, even Rock had been hit. Rock’s face was smeared with blood from the bullet that had gouged a neat little path along his cheek. But it was Perkins who had been most severely injured. His lung punctured, the Freefighter sat propped up against the back of a hybrid. He gasped for breath, his face pale and clammy. The men cleaned up the mess, letting the hybrids rise. Four were dead. Slade worked on Perkins. The bullet had gone clear through so he didn’t have to operate. He closed the wound, cleaning and sealing it. The problem was what the hell to do about the puncture. Sometimes they healed themselves, sometimes not.
In two hours they had gotten the ’brids reloaded, and tended to their wounds. The men were all somewhat depressed. They had won but were all in pain. Perkins, still looking very shaky, gave Rock the thumbs-up when asked if he could ride. He mounted, grimacing from the pain of the motion, and the Freefighters left the slaughterhouse around them. They headed off deeper into the vast, flat wasteland of the West as buzzards began circling overhead in larger and larger numbers. They were going to feast tonight.
Thirty-Five
The forces of the People’s army and air force were finally ready to carry out their sweeping attacks across the country. Already the planned attack was several days late—but the reality of having to find the planes that Zhabnov wanted and of getting the forces together to conduct sweeps in the American sectors of Russian fortresses across the country had taken more time than anyone had bargained for. When Zhabnov’s top officers had gone out and commanded their underlings to get things in preparation, they found that there wasn’t a hell of a lot to get together. Between Vassily’s priority requests for parts—jet, helicopter, ammunition and large field equipment to fight the growing war on Russia’s eastern and southern front—and Killov’s gradual commandeering of supplies over the last several years, eighty percent of Zhabnov’s military materials were gone. The president’s advisers were unsure whether to relay the startling information to their supreme commander or let it all lie buried in a storm of bureaucratic dust where it had been hidden. They opted for the latter—better to let sleeping dogs lie than awaken raging killers. Who knew what the wrong revelations would mean to each one of them—a confrontation between Killov and Zhabnov? Heads would roll no matter what, of that they were sure. Silence was the order of the day. Let others rake the muck. For Zhabnov’s men the choice was clear—silence!
They were able to scrape together a facsimile of the forces the president had requested by pulling in other units from around the country. At last they had assembled the strike force—twenty jets, fifty helicopters, and nearly two hundred thousand troops—who would be conducting sweeps for undesirables in and around the United States. The entire event was to be kicked off with the command of the president, himself, from his military headquarters in Washington. Around the United States, the Red officers and troops waited impatiently, looking at their watches. They had been standing for nearly an hour and a half. Where was the great general?
At 11:07, nearly two hours late, Zhabnov’s limo slid into the space between his honor guard and his top generals. They waited at one end of the Trotsky Airport and jumped to their feet as the president’s official car, festooned with banners and flags, came to a screeching stop. The president alighted with a big smile on his jowly face and the band behind the podium began playing the Soviet national anthem.
“Yes, yes, everything is going just fine, I presume?” he said with a raised eyebrow to his top general of field operations, General Myovsky.
“Absolutely, Mr. President,” Myovsky loudly reassured him. “Our units are standing by all over the country waiting for your command to begin their assault on the bandit forces. Operation Neutralization is on all burners, Mr. President.”
“Good, good, excellent. Well, let’s get on then with the official ceremonies,” Zhabnov said, beaming, looking down at the rows of medals that nearly covered the front of his crisp, green uniform. It was so seldom that he got to wear his full military regalia.
“But, Mr. President,” Myovsky protested quietly. “The troops are waiting to begin. The jets are standing by with their engines on. We—”
“In due time, Myovsky,” Zhabnov said coolly. “This is a public display of force for all to see. Both American bandits and our own superiors in Moscow. There must be a certain amount of display for the media. Therefore . . .” He walked off to review the pink-cheeked honor guard, standing crisply at attention as reporters and TV crews filmed everything. Official staff publicity personnel followed closely behind Zhabnov, taking down his every word. After Zhabnov was satisfied that he had been photographed sufficiently, the president, surrounded by forty of his top staff, headed over to the viewing station from which he would see the bombing force take off.
“The best place to watch from is the control tower, Mr. President,” Major Dobrynin, head of airport security, said.
“Well, lead the way,” Zhabnov muttered irritably. Suddenly he was terribly impatient to see the plan carried off. The Killov assassination had failed miserably. The colonel surely knew that Zhabnov was behind it. When would he strike? Z
habnov had to be on full alert at all times. His ten personal bodyguards, with submachine guns under their long coats, formed a semicircle around him as he walked toward the tower. This neutron bomb attack on Union City had to succeed. Killov had to see that Zhabnov had power and could use it.
They walked up a wide ramp and took the elevator six stories up in the slim tower. The view of the flat terrain of Washington, D.C. was pretty fogged in.
“No problem for our planes, Mr. President,” Myovsky said, standing directly to the right of Zhabnov. “And our reconnaissance advance teams tell us there’s no fog over Union City.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Zhabnov boomed. “Now, let’s get, as the Americans like to say, this show on the road. Where do I give the command so that all forces will begin their attacks?”
“Right here, Mr. President.” Myovsky leaned forward and pointed to a table mike, shined and polished, waiting for Zhabnov’s three words. He stepped to the table and turned around to the phalanx of photographers.
“Ready? I’m about to give the command.”
“Yes, Mr. President. Yes, go ahead,” the chorus of official White House reporters clucked.
“Begin the attack!” Zhabnov declared. The command tore across communications lines around the country and over 250 thousand Soviet personnel around the country began to carry out their plans of official murder.
Zhabnov watched with satisfaction as the cockpits slammed shut on the waiting lines of jets. Sleek, rapier-nosed, magnalloy MiG 112s: two with N-bombs under their wings; ten more flying shotgun, although exactly who would attack the attackers was not clear since the rebels possessed no air force at all. The first set of three roared down the field, the scream of the big ramjet engines shaking even the heavily insulated tower. Zhabnov felt a thrill. This is what he had been missing—command, action.
