Liberty Run

by David Robbins

  David L. RobbinsWarrior Roll

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  * * *

  David L. Robbins

  LIBERTY RUN

  Warrior Roll

  ALPHA TRIAD

  Blade

  Hickok

  Geronimo

  BETA TRIAD

  Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

  Yama

  Teucer

  GAMMA TRIAD

  Spartacus

  Shane

  Bertha

  OMEGA TRIAD

  Ares

  Helen

  Sundance

  ZULU TRIAD

  Samson

  Sherry

  Marcus

  Chapter One

  Three women emerged from the compound.

  “Look!” exclaimed the stockiest of the five soldiers hidden in the forest to the west.

  “I see,” said the leader of the quintet, a lean lieutenant with angular facial features. His brown eyes narrowed.

  “Do we take them, Lieutenant Lysenko?” asked the third of the five men. Each of them wore a brown uniform; each of them was a seasoned professional; each carried an AK-47.

  Lieutenant Lysenko nodded.

  “It is big, is it not?” commented another soldier, a handsome, youthful trooper wearing his helmet cocked at an angle.

  Lieutenant Lysenko, keeping his attention fixed on the trio of women 150 yards away, nodded. “The Home embraces a thirty-acre plot,” he noted absently.

  “The Home!” The stocky soldier snickered. “What a stupid name!”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lieutenant Lysenko remarked. “I sort of like it. The man responsible for constructing that walled compound knew what he was doing. His name was Kurt Carpenter, according to the files our informant turned over to us. Carpenter was no fool. He foresaw the inevitability of World War Three and took appropriate action. For an American, he was most unusual. Not at all like the typical capitalistic swine of his time. He used his wealth to build this place he called the Home, then gathered a select group here shortly before the war. He dubbed them his Family.”

  “The Home! The Family!” the stocky soldier said, his tone laced with scorn. “I still think it’s stupid!”

  Lieutenant Lysenko cast a disapproving glance at the trooper. “Were your feeble intellect the equal of your flippant mouth, Grozny, the Party Congress would hail you as a genius,” he stated acidly.

  Private Grozny frowned, but held his tongue. He knew better than to match wits with the cerebral Lysenko. He also knew what would happen if he riled the officer.

  The approaching women were 125 yards off.

  “Was it stupid of Kurt Carpenter to surround his compound with twenty-foot-high brick walls?” Lieutenant Lysenko demanded. “And to cap those thick walls with barbed wire? Or to install a sturdy, massive drawbridge in the center of the west wall as the only means of entering or exiting to minimize hostile penetration? Was it stupid of him to initiate the practice of designating certain Family members as Warriors, superbly trained individuals responsible for preserving the Home and safeguarding the Family?”

  “No,” Grozny admitted.

  “It was very smart of them to clear the fields all around their Home,” interjected the youngest soldier.

  “True,” Lysenko said. “Our task is that much more difficult.”

  Grozny nodded at the women. “The mice come to the cats, eh?”

  Lieutenant Lysenko studied one of the women. “But one of the mice sports fangs,” he observed.

  One of the women was armed. She was a tall blonde with prominent cheekbones, thin lips, and an intent expression. A brown shirt and green pants, both patched in several spots, covered her athletic form. Moccasins adorned her small feet.

  “What kind of guns are those?” asked the youthful trooper.

  “I don’t know,” Lysenko acknowledged.

  “They arm their women?” Grozny inquired.

  “What is so surprising about that?” Lieutenant Lysenko countered. “We have female soldiers in our army.”

  “Do you think the blonde is a Warrior?” queried the young soldier.

  Lieutenant Lysenko scratched his chin, reflecting. He had not considered the possibility of the woman being a Warrior, and he mentally chided himself for his neglect. An officer could not afford to overlook any eventuality. The mission’s success and the lives of his squad depended on his perception and judgment.

  “Orders?” Grozny questioned him.

  The five soldiers were concealed behind trees and brush a few yards from the edge of the forest, from the end of the field.

  “Move back,” Lysenko instructed them. “You know the drill. And remember. General Malenkov wants a live prisoner. We will take the blonde.”

  “And the other two?” Grozny mentioned.

  “Kill them,” Lysenko directed.

  The quintet melted into the foliage, Grozny and the young trooper drawing their bayonets as they blended into the bushes.

  The unsuspecting women neared the tree line, the blonde in the lead.

  Her alert green eyes scanned the forest, probing for mutates, mutants, raiding scavengers, or any other menace. She detected a slight movement deep in the trees and stopped.

  “Is something wrong?” asked one of the women behind her, a brunette wearing a faded yellow blouse and tan pants.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” quipped the third woman. She was exceptionally slim and wore a blue shirt and pants, both garments having been constructed for her by the Family Weavers. “Sherry’s a Warrior.”

  “What’s that have to do with anything?” inquired the brunette.

  The third woman ran her right hand through her black hair. “Warriors are walking bundles of nerves,” she said. “They have to be, in their line of work. She probably heard a twig snap, and can’t decide if it’s a bunny rabbit or a monster!”

  “Quiet,” Sherry declared.

  “Give me a…” the black-haired woman started to speak, but the brunette gripped her right arm and motioned for silence.

  Sherry raised her M.A.C. 10, listening. All she could hear was the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, an unusually warm breeze for an October day. The leaves were red and yellow and orange, resplendent in their fall colors. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but her intuition was nagging at her mind, and over the years she’d learned to rely on her feminine intuition. It was seldom wrong.

  “Should we return to the Home?” whispered the brunette.

  Sherry bit her lower lip and glanced over her right shoulder at the Home. Blade’s orders had been specific: escort a pair of novice Healers into the forest and guard them while they searched for wild herbs. The assignment was far from critical. But how would Blade react when he learned she’d aborted the search because of a vague troubling premonition? She decided to proceed, but cautiously. “We’ll keep going,” she informed the pair behind her. “But stick close to me. Don’t wander off.”

  The brunette nodded.

  The third woman rolled her brown eyes skyward.

  Sherry advanced toward the woods. She could feel the comforting pressure of her Smith and Wesson .357 Co
mbat Magnum in its holster on her right hip.

  Somewhere in the depths of the northwestern Minnesota forest a bird chirped.

  Sherry paused when she reached the end of the field, peering between the trunks of the trees and into the shadows of the pines.

  “Let’s get this over with,” said the black-haired woman. Like the brunette, she was 20 years of age. Unlike the brunette, she had applied to become a Healer at her mother’s insistence and not due to any innate sense of altruism.

  Sherry stared at the impatient neophyte. “When I tell you to be quiet,” she informed her, “you’ll shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you. Understand?”

  The black-haired woman bristled. “Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”

  “As you pointed out,” Sherry said, “I’m a Warrior, Claudia. And as such, in times of danger, what I say goes.”

  “Danger?” Claudia scoffed. “What danger? Are we going to be molested by a moth?”

  “Claudia!” the brunette spoke up. “Sherry is right, and you know it.”

  “Nobody tells me what to do, Jean!” Claudia snapped. Before Sherry or Jean could intervene, she angrily stomped into the forest.

  Jean stepped up to Sherry. “Don’t take her outburst personally. Claudia is upset because she knows she won’t be accepted as a Healer. Our apprenticeship, our probationary period, is over in a week. And there’s no way Claudia will be certified.”

  Sherry watched Claudia disappear behind a broad pine tree. “Why did the Elders even accept her as a trainee? She’s too damn immature to be a Healer.”

  Jean shrugged. “You know the Elders. They probably wanted her to at least have a chance at it.”

  “And her mother is real close to Kant, and Kant was the Elder who recommended Claudia for Healer status,” Sherry stated.

  Jean seemed shocked by the implication. “The Elders would never allow anyone to unduly influence their judgment.”

  Sherry started walking into the woods. “The Elders aren’t infallible,” she said over her left shoulder.

  Jean stayed on Sherry’s heels. “If you’d been born in the Family, you’d never make such an accusation.”

  Sherry’s lips tightened. True, she’d been born and raised in Canada, in a small town called Sundown located across the border from Minnesota.

  True too was the fact her nomination and acceptance as a Warrior could be attributed to the influence exerted by her husband, the Family’s preeminent gunfighter, the Warrior known as Hickok. Perhaps, if she had been reared in the close-knit Family, she wouldn’t presume to question an Elder’s integrity. Jean’s mild rebuke stung her, and for a few moments she was distracted, weighing the validity of the reproof instead of concentrating on the vegetation around them, on their immediate situation.

  The mistake cost her.

  “Where did Claudia go?” Jean asked.

  The query brought Sherry out of herself. She searched the landscape ahead. “Claudia! Where are you?” she called out.

  Claudia didn’t answer.

  “Knowing Claudia’s temper the way I do,” Jean mentioned, “she might just ignore you.”

  “She does,” Sherry said, “and she’ll live to regret it.”

  “Claudia!” Jean shouted. “Come back here!”

  Sherry moved past a large pine, then up a low incline. She reached the top of the mound and glanced down. And froze.

  Claudia was lying on her back at the base of the grassy mound. Her throat was slit, and blood was gushing from her neck and flowing down the front of her blue shirt and spilling over her shoulders. Her wide, lifeless eyes gaped at the azure sky.

  Jean bumped into Sherry, then spotted the corpse. “Dear Spirit!” she exclaimed, horrified. “Claudia!”

  Sherry twisted and shoved Jean from the mound. “Run!” she ordered.

  “Head for the Home!”

  Jean hesitated, too stunned by Claudia’s death to realize her own danger.

  But Sherry knew. Her intuition had been right! Some menace was lurking in the woods! And whoever had slain Claudia had to be nearby, ready to pounce again! She crouched, cradling the M.A.C. 10.

  Not a moment too soon.

  A soldier in a brown uniform burst from the brush seven yards to her right.

  In the instant Sherry spied him, she recognized the uniform as belonging to a Russian trooper, and knew the gun in his hand was an AK-47. Hickok had told her all about his experiences in the Capital, when he’d been captured by the Russians. Her mind processed the information in the split second it took her to react, and her finger squeezed the trigger when the Russian was still six yards off.

  The Soviet soldier was stopped in midstride as the slugs tore through his chest. His ears never heard the metallic chattering of the M.A.C. 10, because he was dead before the sound could reach them. He toppled to the hard ground without uttering a word.

  Sherry swiveled, knowing there would be more, and there was another one, coming at her from her left, holding the barrel of his AK-47 as if it were a club, his legs pounding up the mound, and she fired when he was only two feet from her. The M.A.C. 10 caught him in the face, and he was flipped backwards by the impact, sprawling onto his back and sliding to a halt against a tree.

  Jean!

  Sherry spun, hoping the Russians hadn’t gone after the aspiring Healer, but she was too late.

  A stocky soldier had grabbed Jean from the rear. His left arm was clamped around her neck, while his right plunged a bayonet into her body again and again and again.

  Sherry was about to let him have it in the head, when she heard the padding of rushing feet behind her. She whirled, but before she could complete the turn someone plowed into her and bore her to the earth.

  Strong arms gripped her wrists, preventing her from using the M.A.C. 10.

  She glimpsed a youthful face above her, and then something was pressed over her nose and mouth, something soft with a slight odor. Sherry heaved and strained, attempting to buck her captor, but another set of hands grabbed her shoulders and held her fast.

  “We have her!” someone exulted.

  Sherry’s senses were swimming. She tried to focus, to use the martial fighting skills taught to her by Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but her sluggish mind refused to obey her mental commands. Gasping, she made one last valiant effort to rise, then lost consciousness.

  “We have her!” Grozny repeated, still holding her shoulders.

  The young trooper, straddling her waist, nodded.

  Lieutenant Lysenko, crouched to her right, removed the chloroform-soaked white cloth from her face and stood. “We must leave right away!”

  “What’s the hurry?” Grozny asked. “Shouldn’t we bury our comrades first?”

  “Fool!” Lysenko barked. “Do you want to end up like them?” He pointed to the two dead men. “The Family will have heard the shooting in the Home! They will send their Warriors after us!” He paused and gazed at the unconsious blonde. “She is quite formidable. If the other Warriors are half as good as her, we are in trouble! Come! Grozny, you carry her. Serov, you take the lead. We must reach the rendezvous point and signal for the copter to come and pick us up.”

  Serov grabbed his AK-47 from the ground where it had fallen, then hurried to the southeast.

  Grozny grunted as he draped the blonde’s body over his left shoulder.

  He retrieved his AK-47, clutching it in his right hand.

  “Go!” Lysenko directed. “I will cover you.” He picked up his AK-47 and waited while Grozny hastened into the trees. So far, so good. They had the live captive General Malenkov wanted. Leaving the dead men behind was regrettable, but it could not be helped. The Family would learn who was responsible for taking one of their vaunted Warriors, but what could they do about it? Nothing. According to the files relayed by the spy in Denver, the family only numbered about seven dozen members. Only 15 of them were Warriors. And 15 fighters, no matter how adept at their craft they might be, could hardly hope to oppose the military might of t
he Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  Loud voices arose from the direction of the Home.

  Lysenko followed his men, constantly surveying the foliage behind him, alert for any hint of pursuit. He thought of the reception awaiting him in Washington, and he was pleased. This mission would definitely boost his career, perhaps lead to a speedy promotion. Maybe an assignment on General Malenkov’s personal staff. The prospect was exciting. General Malenkov was a man of considerable stature in the North American Central Committee, responsible for administering the occupational forces in America. The Soviets had been fortunate during the war; they’d been able to invade and hold a sizeable segment of the eastern U.S. New England, a portion of New York, southern Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, parts of Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, as well as sections of North and South Carolina were all under Soviet hegemony. The Soviets had intended to conquer the entire country, but their drive through Alaska and Canada had been stopped. And their push into the deep South had been resisted every step of the way, and eventually halted, by the determined Southerners.

  Now, over a century since World War III, the status of the Soviet occupation was still the same. Slightly over 30 years ago, the Russians in America had lost contact with their Motherland. Ships sent to investigate the reason had never returned. Planes had vanished. Communications had gone unanswered. To maintain their military rule, the American-based Soviets had instituted a program of forcibly impregnating selected American women, then training and educating their children, indoctrinating them, creating devoted Communists every bit as loyal as any ever born on Russian soil.

  In other areas, the Russians had encountered severe problems. Much of American’s industrial might had been crippled during the war, and the Soviets suffered shortages in everything from food to military hardware.

  Their expansion plans to the west had been thwarted by the Civilized Zone Army. During the war, after a neutron bomb was dropped on Washington, what was left of the United States Government had withdrawn to Denver, Colorado, and reorganized under the direction of a man named Samuel Hyde, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Hyde had implemented Executive Order 11490, a law few Americans had ever known existed, enabling him to assume dictatorial control of the area under his domination, the area subsequently dubbed the Civilized Zone. Hyde’s bloodline had ruled the Civilized Zone for a century.