Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style
Page 20
At last they reached the deck—and daylight. Or what they could see of it, for the smoke and fire was thick everywhere now. The deck of the Dreadnaught was a war zone. Firefights, hand-to-hand, burning piles of MIG’s were everywhere. It was hard to see or even take in the whole picture—like a Boschian portrait of hell itself, punctuated with a chorus of screams that even managed from time to time to rise above the explosive roars of whole helicopters and MIG fighters going up at the sides and ends of the carrier deck.
Rahallah reached the edge of the ship with Zhabnov fast behind him. He turned around frantically searching for a lifeboat—a way off, since there were on the wrong side of the ship. But as his eyes swung around, the African saw a last-ditch assault team of Arab fighters come tearing at them. Perhaps it was just because they knew that they and their whole cause was doomed—but these fighters of Allah charged and fought harder than the others had. Four of Rahallah’s commandos were out in a flash—the fifth stopping them for a second with a burst of his .9 mm. The African had only fractions of a second to decide. And he did.
He kicked President Zhabnov right in the ass, so that the huge body went over the side, falling and screaming like some sort of giant walrus. Cradling the Premier in his arms like a child, the African leaped forward, far out into space so that he had a clear trajectory to the river. The Arabs rushed to the side, but as eager as they were to engage the enemy for Allah’s sake, they didn’t really feel like jumping into the flaming waters below. Besides, they had their own problems—an explosion shook the entire boat from stem to stern, and they were knocked from their feet right onto their faces.
And then everyone had big problems—for the whole damned ship was going down.
Twenty-Seven
Once Rockson had unceremoniously disposed of Dhul Qarnain, he wasn’t sure what the hell to do. The control room of the Dreadnaught was a mass confusion of beeping and blinking, radar screens, communication channels all lit up like were they on Tilt. Somehow he had hoped there would be someone around who could explain just how the hell to override the nuke launch controls, but there wasn’t a soul in the bridge—living, anyway. Rock examined the panels of controls but was afraid to touch anything. If the missiles had been pre-armed they might go off if he touched even one wrong button. Where was the skull, Killov?
He went to the long, curved window of the futuristic bridge that allowed a vista out onto the entire front of the burning boat. There—suddenly he saw Killov making his way toward the port side. The slime was trying to sneak out on the little party he’d thrown—that had apparently gotten out of hand. Rockson saw the controls for the cannons. They looked slightly simpler. He pressed madly at the panel of buttons that turned the ship’s huge 30-foot battle cannons, and aimed it down the deck toward Killov. Somehow, even in the midst of the battle that raged on around him, as the colonel stabbed and shot his way to the edge of the boat he sensed Rockson bearing down on him.
At the last possible second he saw the great cannon, saw its black barrel pointing right at his head. And his drugged face went pale as an albino sea slug. Then Rockson fired. The battle cannon thundered out a 150mm shell big enough to take out the side of a battleship. This particular screaming shell didn’t have far to travel. It slammed into the deck about twenty feet from the edge and created a ball of flame and smoke, leaving a crater behind—but no Killov. He was gone as the smoke evaporated above the twisted, red-hot metal shards.
Suddenly—about a hundred yards down the ship—Rockson saw Rahallah emerge from the innards of the Dreadnaught, followed by Zhabnov and, to Rocks’ delight, Archer, who pawed away at the air, striking out at anything that got near him. But within an instant, he saw Rahallah rush to the side of the ship, surrounded by Arab fighters and leap over with the Premier in his arms.
“Son of a mutant bitch,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered, his jaw dropping open like it was filled with stones. This was all moving too fucking fast even for him. Before he had a chance to start worrying about the missiles again—he didn’t have to. The entire bridge shook like it was in the hand of a giant as flames suddenly exploded up all over the long deck. The jets burning at the far end had sent down sheets of burning gasoline, which over the course of the last few minutes had run down four levels—to the main gas tanks that fueled the ship’s choppers and MIG’s. The two cylindrical tanks took up nearly half a level of the boat—sealed inside “impenetrable” titanium walls. But there are always leaks, vapors . . . And the fire moving downward found them.
The Dreadnaught burst into fire as the every seam exploded out, twisting like a jaggedly opened sardine can. Rockson watched men burst into fire, disintegrating in an instant. There was a second great explosion as the second tank went up, and this time Rock was knocked to the floor as the massive ship trembled violently for about ten seconds. When he looked up again the whole sky seemed to be filled with flames—the deck itself just a sheet of writhing red and orange and yellow. Rockson knew he had only seconds, and tore back down the metal stairs from the bridge to the smoky deck. He could see that the back portion of the ship wasn’t totally engulfed in flame—there seemed to be a path. He tore-ass down it as towers of fire burned to the sky on each side.
Then the whole boat was going. He could feel it, steel pulling apart from steel, as it melted, as it ripped seam from welded seam, rivets popping with bullet-like sounds by the thousands throughout the immense warship. Rock poured on the extra juice through his already straining legs and reached the edge of the deck just as the whole thing began tilting over. He dove headfirst as a hand of flame reached out right where he had been standing and evaporated the water to a depth of two feet, so intense was its heat.
But Rockson was already way down into the Potomac. And this time he hit with full consciousness, taking the dive easily, cutting into the river in a long, slow curve, and coming up about fifty feet out. He turned his head the second it popped from the water, just to make sure that he wasn’t about to be crushed by a million tons of steel—but the huge vessel was listing the other way. As he paddled as fast as he could in the other direction, the Dreadnaught began keeling over onto its port side. Slowly at first, but then picking up speed as water filled in below and another series of explosions rocked the vessel, sending whole eruptions of red hot metal sideways out over the far bank.
Then she was all the way over, slamming with a thunderous explosion into the Potomac, like a great elephant fallen to its death, sending out a mini-tidal wave that rushed to the opposite bank, flooding it for several hundred feet. And as the river’s waters gushed into every porthole and door frame, a great cloud of steam rose up from the vessel, extinguishing many of the fires almost instantaneously. The cloud of steam rose up high over the war boat, thousands of tons of vaporized water and petroleum atoms. The shroud filled the air with a thick stench and sent out a mist that rolled over the river and onto each bank like something out of a horror movie.
Rock gagged from the foul-smelling smoke but kept going forward. He knew his direction—away from the burning wreck. He found a piece of a wooden crate floating along, and swam up to it—only to encounter another body already hanging on. Ready to fight whatever son of a bitch was there, Rock held up his fist—only to see Archer’s waterlogged, bearded face come into view out of the mists of war.
“Archer, you bastard, you’re alive!” Rockson wanted to hug the idiot savant—but it wasn’t quite feasible in the present situation. The mountain man coughed out a mouthful of Potomac River, but kept his head above the water and clenched his fist in the Freefighter’s symbol of victory. Rock clenched his fist in response, then let it go, as he and the giant kicked along, heading toward the shore.
Epilogue
Scrambling through the smoke-shrouded waters like some kind of diseased, half-psycho rat, Colonel Killov managed to remain undiscovered. He had barely survived the cannon blast that Rockson had fired against him—leaping into the waters an instant before impact. He hadn’t taken the full brunt of it or
he’d be dead—but still the shock had opened up his whole shoulder, sending him careening down into the rough waters below. But then Killov had had experience in survival. The skeletal frame paddled around, searching for anything to hold him, kicking at corpses, floating heads, to get a push in the right direction. He knew that they would kill him—rip him apart—if they captured him. So the madman swam the other way. Into the flames, into the shadow of the great ship.
Somehow he made it to the opposite shore, using the smoke cover that rolled over the bank, dragged himself up like some kind of lizard onto a rock, and then crawled beneath some bushes. Here he let himself rest. But just a moment. Now, he had to run, to slither away into some hole where they couldn’t find him. The colonel had to live. There was only one thing that mattered to him now—escape. Escape, to survive; escape . . . to return.
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Table of Contents
Back Cover
Preview
Titlepage
Copyright
DOOMSDAY WARRIOR #12 DEATH AMERICAN STYLE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Epilogue