World War Forever (Highway To Armageddon Book 2)

by Harold Bloemer

  So anyway, that was the last time we saw Grenade. The last time we talked to him was shortly after our death-defying odyssey to Alaska. He called us up and gave us quite the tongue-lashing for undertaking such a treacherous mission with no assistance. At first I thought he was genuinely pissed that we risked our lives going after the world’s most dangerous terrorist, but it quickly became apparent that he was actually furious at us for not inviting him to tag along. If there’s one thing Grenade loves, it’s an incredibly perilous bounty hunting mission that results in a high enemy body count. The guy’s basically a glutton for punishment, which is probably what made him such a phenomenal apprehender of criminals.

  Once we decide that’s the route we want to go (dropping the kids of in Sanctuary 32), Boom Boom calls up Audrey through her visor. Audrey answers despite the late hour. Boom Boom quickly explains what’s up and asks if she and Grenade wouldn’t mind babysitting the kids while we’re gone. (Blade and Harpoon loudly object to the term ‘babysit’.) After Audrey spends ten minutes freaking out about us being attacked by an army of Nazi’s, she says of course they’ll watch the twins. Then Grenade gets on the line and gruffly asks Boom Boom what the hell’s going on. Boom Boom manages to cut the conversation short by promising to explain everything in person (Grenade is one of those people who can keep you on the phone for hours with his detective-esque questioning), but before he hangs up he does say that he’s not letting us go after Klaxton all by our lonesome.

  Once Boom Boom finally manages to disconnect the call, she lifts her visor and says, “Can you believe that? Grenade actually wants to join us on our trip to Antarctica.”

  I shrug and say, “We could use the help. Grenade can hunt down anyone. He’s also one scary-ass dude. People will think twice about messing with us if he’s in the picture.”

  “I agree,” Krystal says as she changes course and starts heading northwest toward Sanctuary 32. “If Grenade wants to accompany us, we sure as hell shouldn’t try and stop his crazy ass! We could use a man of his talents.”

  “His talents include mercilessly butchering gangbangers and terrorists,” I point out.

  “Exactly,” Krystal exclaims. “That’s the kind of talent we need!”

  Boom Boom gives an irritated sigh. “I’d feel more comfortable with Grenade at our side, too, guys, but that’s not the point. Grenade’s almost 60, and his bruised and battered body is plagued with all sorts of injuries. He has back problems, leg problems, eye problems, post-traumatic stress issues, heart trouble…”

  Boom Boom blabbers on for another minute or so about all of Grenade’s various injuries before I cut her off. “We all have problems, Firecracker. That comes with the territory when you’re a bounty hunter. But this mission is bigger than any one of us. When we decided we were going to go after Klaxton, we all made a pact to do whatever it took to catch her… dead or alive. I know Grenade’s got a lot of issues, but if he wants to help us, I think we should let him. He’s probably itching to get back into the game. Don’t you ever see how his face lights up when we tell him about our apprehensions?”

  Boom Boom bites her bottom lip as she internally analyzes the pros and cons of having a wounded, borderline psychotic lunatic like Grenade accompany us on a mission that could literally result in a global peace if everything goes right… or nuclear war if things go wrong.

  Boom Boom eventually realizes the pros outweigh the cons (albeit by a very small margin, no doubt) and says, “Oh alright, I suppose we could use his help.”

  “You suppose?!”Krystal says. “Bitch, we need all the help we can get!”

  “I said he can come,” Boom Boom snaps.

  With us all in agreement, we continue our odyssey to Sanctuary 32. While Sanctuary 32 is nowhere near as glamorous as Sanctuary 41 (nothing is, to be honest), I am sure of one thing; there is no way in hell the Dresden Neo-Nazi’s will be infiltrating Sanctuary 32’s heavily fortified concrete walls. The mayor of Sanctuary 32 is a straight-laced, no-nonsense retired general who would gut a Nazi just as soon as he’d look at one. (The fact that he’s Jewish might have something to do with his intense hatred of skinheads.)

  I eventually sit back and close my eyes, doing by best to ignore Blade and Harpoon bickering like only twin siblings can. Even after all the crazy shit that’s happened today, our mission is still right on track. I just hope we can locate Klaxton and go back to living a normal life. Maybe we’ll buy a condo next to Grenade and Audrey in Sanctuary 32 and live the rest of our days in peace.

  Yeah, that would be nice. A nice, lazy, peaceful life.

  That would be real nice.

  Chapter Three: Boom Boom

  “Blackjack!”

  “Son of a bitch!” Lance curses, smacking the table with his hand.

  Grenade cackles as he pulls a pile of chips toward him. “You owe me about $15,000, chump. You better pay up!”

  “I’ll pay right after we find Klaxton and get that $100 million bounty,” Lance says in between sips of his can of beer.

  Grenade’s creepy robotic eyeballs glow red as he flashes a drunken smile, revealing his crooked, yellow teeth. (Apparently Grenade isn’t a big fan of dentists.) “Boy, if I help you find Klaxton, you better give me a helluva lot more than 15 G’s.”

  Lance raises his can of beer and says, “I’ll pay your bar tab for a year. How does that sound?”

  Grenade clinks his bottle of whisky against Lance’s beer and replies, “Considering how much I drink, that might cost you the entire $100 million!”

  Lance and Grenade cackle and light up cigars. I scowl and turn back around in the cockpit. Krystal is sitting in the pilot seat with her electronic visor down over her eyes. The sounds of one of her treasured trashy reality TV shows filters out of the sides of her lenses. Krystal suddenly bursts out laughing and, with a mouthful of potato chips, blurts out, “You tell that bitch, Shananay! You tell that bitch!”

  “Krystal, I thought you were going to help me keep watch.”

  Krystal waves me off. “Not now, Boom Boom. Shananay’s about to beat Rashida’s ass!”

  She then goes back to chomping on her chips.

  I sigh and gaze out the tinted windshield. About five miles off in the horizon I just barely make out Blackbird’s luxurious cruise liner, his current base of operations and hiding spot. Inside that ship are what I can only imagine to be hundreds upon hundreds of dangerous gangbangers, terrorists, and mobsters. Their job is to drill for oil and natural gas miles beneath the sea, just off the coast of the rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet. Ventures like this are the reason Geronimo Blackbird is one of the richest men to have ever walked the face of the Earth. And associates like the ones rumored to be on his ship are the reason he’s been able to elude capture for the past several months. Next to his buddy Angela Klaxton, Blackbird is the most wanted person on the planet. How he’s been able to avoid capture for so long is as much a testament to his cunning mind as it is to the loyalty he inspires from his henchmen, even when those aforementioned henchmen are some of the vilest scum known to man. I should be ecstatic over the fact that we managed to find him when America’s own intelligent agencies have been unable to, but I still can’t help but feel sick to my stomach over the way we went about procuring his whereabouts. I can’t stop thinking about Pocahontas, how we tortured and threatened her. I know it’s silly to feel that way when Lance, Krystal and I just slaughtered dozens of Nazi’s, but I still can’t find it in my heart to condone torture. It’s so weird. I’m perfectly fine with shooting a Nazi or a gangbanger in the forehead with a machine gun, but I object to waterboarding someone for information that could lead to world peace. Are my priorities out of whack or what?

  A yawn escapes my lips. I rub my eyes and stretch, struggling to keep my sleepy, cloudy mind awake and alert. I have every right to be tired, seeing as how we just finished a 15 hour, 9,000-plus mile flight from Hudson Bay to the southern end of the globe in Grenade’s hi-tech helicopter-jet (which at one point was accelerating
us through the sky at 600 miles an hour). Sure the autopilot did most of the work, but I was still awake most of the time, trying to focus on our upcoming mission, arguably the most important operation we’ve ever undertaken. We all stayed awake, actually. Krystal’s been watching her shows the entire time, and Lance, Grenade and I entertained ourselves by playing cards and catching up on old times. I eventually came into the cockpit when I got tired of Grenade and Lance getting shit-faced drunk off of whiskey and beer. (The fridge in the cabin is overflowing with alcoholic beverages.) I tried to chastise the boys in a feeble attempt to keep them sober for our mission, but my nit-picking fell on deaf, inebriated ears. Hell, it might even be for the best that the boys are drunk. Maybe it’ll keep them from feeling the fear that’s been gripping my stomach the past few hours. Blackbird’s ship is filled to the brim with heavily armed psychopaths. Even though most of them are going to (hopefully) be in drunken stupors as a result of their booze-filled Christmas Eve celebrations, there’s still a million ways this mission could go horribly wrong. Anytime you enter a tight, confined space filled with gun-toting bad guys, you’re just asking for trouble.

  A cloud of marijuana smoke envelopes my face, causing me to cough. I turn back around and glare at Lance, who has just lit up a joint and is currently spewing his disgusting pot smoke into the air. I know for a fact Lance didn’t have any drugs on him when we first arrived at Sanctuary 32. He didn’t have time to grab anything when we were being shot at by an army of skinheads. But a few hours upon arriving at Grenade’s condo, Lance went out for a ‘walk’ all by himself in the middle of the night. He returned about an hour later with a big, goofy smile plastered across his deliriously happy face. He probably bought all sorts of crap out on the streets. I’ve been furious with him ever since, but I’ve refrained from arguing. It’s not a good idea for us to get into another emotionally-charged row when we’re about to go to war with hundreds of drunken gangsters.

  I go back to staking out our target. The telescopic function on my visor reveals that there are still quite a few people up on deck, drinking margaritas and carousing with young, scantily-clad ladies (something I find shocking, considering how cold it is out here in the open seas). I’m wearing a coat and gloves, plus the heat is going full-blast, and I’m still freezing. While runaway global warming has definitely tempered the bitter cold temperatures that used to encase Antarctica in a frigid block of mile-high ice, it still gets quite chilly down here at the end of the world (even though December is technically Antarctica’s “summer time”). But I guess all the booze the young ladies have been guzzling has warmed them up to the point that they feel comfortable prancing around in their bras and panties in the bitter Antarctic wind for their perverted mobster ‘sugar daddies’.

  I stifle another yawn. This one is more from boredom than sleepiness. We arrived at this spot about two hours ago and we’ve been hovering here ever since, waiting for Blackbird’s Christmas Eve festivities to die down. It’s nearly 3 in the morning and people are still up snorting cocaine and dancing to techno music. Santa Claus would not approve of such blatant acts of debauchery. Then again, the Northern ice cap did melt about 100 years ago, so Santa’s body is probably currently sitting at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Placing bad apples on a ‘naughty’ list is the least of Jolly St. Nick’s worries.

  While I’m definitely concerned that our apprehension of Blackbird won’t be nearly as easy as Lance and Grenade seem to think, I must marvel at how lucky and fortunate we’ve been thus far. I was initially afraid we wouldn’t be able to locate Blackbird’s ship, seeing as how the South Atlantic is such an expansive stretch of choppy seas. But as luck would have it, the ship ended up being right where our research indicated it might be, hovering directly above some of the richest oil and natural gas deposits known to man.

  I was also concerned that we would be spotted floating out here in no man’s land, but Grenade assuaged my fears when he educated me on the stealth mechanisms of his multi-million dollar plane. The helicopter-jet has state-of-the-art radar-deflecting technology. The exterior of the jet is also made up of transparent computerized steel that can reflect light in such a fashion that it renders the entire helicopter completely invisible. Even if Blackbird’s goons were looking for us with binoculars, they would never, ever spot us.

  While Grenade’s jet is undeniably hi-tech, it has nothing on Blackbird’s multi-billion dollar flying cruise ship. The ship is one of only a handful of flying airships ever created. The ship is currently hovering about 500 feet above the sea, kept afloat by hundreds of strategically placed propellers and several ultra-powerful jet engines. It takes a ton of money to keep a colossal cruise ship up in the air, but the money could be considered well-spent if it keeps everyone dry from rogue waves, which are a huge problem down here off the coast of Antarctica.

  I pull my visor back down over my eyes and watch the live footage being relayed back to me by the robotic mosquito we spent $30,000 on (further depleting our meager savings account). Lance, Krystal and I have already gone through most of the relatively small bounty we were awarded for unraveling Klaxton’s insane conspiracy to ignite an Orwellian world war. While we were certainly grateful that President LeBeau gave us something for our troubles, the $100,000 was a far cry from the $25 million we were promised for killing Rasputin, the world’s number one fugitive. (Well, he was the number one fugitive. I suppose that title now belongs to Klaxton.) Most of that bounty went toward weapons, body armor, truth serums, robotic mosquitos, and various other items we needed to track down Blackbird, not to mention our sky-high rent, food, toiletries, etc. It certainly isn’t cheap living in a sanctuary.

  Whatever qualms I had about investing in another mosquito (we went through enough of them during our hunt for Rasputin), I’m definitely glad we purchased it. The mosquitos have gotten even more advanced than they were just a few months ago. This particular mosquito was able to analyze a strand of hair I ripped off of Pocahontas’ head during her interrogation. The mosquito was able to identify her DNA and store it in its computer database. Once we arrived here, we programmed the mosquito to zoom around Blackbird’s cruise ship and search for his bio-signature. It only took the mosquito a few minutes to locate Blackbird’s room, squeeze under the door, hover over his sleeping face (he was snoring away in his bed with a stunning blonde beauty), scan a strand of his silver hair, and match the hair’s DNA to his daughter’s. Because of that tiny little robot’s ingenuity, we now know precisely where Blackbird is located, making our job all the more easier. As soon as the rest of his goons go to sleep, BAM! The son of a bitch is as good as ours.

  Our mosquito is currently zooming around the inner corridors of the cruise ship, taking a head count of everyone inside. So far it’s counted over 200 people, with many more rooms to go. I quickly get bored of all the numbers flashing in front of my overworked retinas and slide my visor back up over my head. I pass the time gazing at all the blinking lights in the jet’s sleek, sci-fi looking cockpit. I’m definitely grateful Grenade allowed us to use his luxury helicopter-jet. As its name implies, the plane operates like a helicopter when you take off or land, but it flies like a jet when traversing long distances, granting you maximum speed with maximum durability. I don’t think our beat-up, bullet-riddled Stratosphere XV would have made the nearly 10,000-mile journey. Plus it would have taken twice as long to get here. A Stratosphere XV can only get up to 300 miles an hour; any faster and the wings will start vibrating like crazy and break apart.

  A sudden chill shoots up my spin, causing me to shiver. I’m wearing a faux fur coat over my body armor, plus the heat is on full blast, and it’s still nippy in the cockpit.

  I turn to the right and watch a small holographic TV broadcasting American breaking news to help pass the time. The news station I’m currently watching is based out of Washington D.C., Alaska. The reporter is talking about our wild sky-rise shootout with Nazi’s in Sanctuary 7. When I first saw reporters talking about the incident at Grenade’
s condo, I was surprised. After all, there are literally hundreds of wild shootouts across the American continents on any given day. Why would our little melee attract such widespread attention? But then Grenade reminded me that Krystal, Lance and I are three of the biggest celebrities not just in the United States of the Americas, but around the world. We were the ‘teenage wonderkids’ who brought down the imperial presidency of the most powerful woman on Earth. Of course the American media would go crazy over any incident involving us, let alone a flying car chase through the skies of one of the biggest sanctuary cities. President LeBeau actually called us shortly after we arrived in Sanctuary 32 and offered her sincere apologies over the ‘traitorous actions’ of Mayor Tomlinson. LeBeau had Tomlinson arrested and transported to a maximum security prison outside of D.C. Like Grenade said, LeBeau had to arrest the mayor in order to keep the American people from flipping out. As much as I hate the bastard for nearly getting us all killed, a part of me can’t help but feeling slightly sympathetic for Tomlinson’s plight. He was just doing what he thought he needed to do to keep his family safe.