Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America (13 page)

“Yes, I see,” Rock said softly, staring at the man he had thought was at a higher level than the other Reds. But Vassily, despite all his learning and pretensions of wanting peace, was part of the pack: power mad, autocratic, and ruthless.

“Hell,” he said angrily, as he reached over and scribbled his signature. The treaty would bring
time—
precious time until Rock could find a way out of these walls—and destroy the enemy’s very heart: the control center. It had to be the towering dome that he had seen on the way in from the airport.

That night there was an enormous Russian-style banquet with whole stuffed roast pig, baked oxen, caviar, and tables of delectable fruits and vegetables and gourmet treats such as hummingbird tongue pie and salmon pâté. Rock and Archer ate their fill with the big mute gobbling up everything in sight as Vassily sat in his wheelchair watching approvingly. They watched a show of belly dancers who gyrated to the accompaniment of a mazooka-balalaika band. Then elite Red Army dancers came out and did some fast-stepping Russian kicks and leaps. They drank as they danced until they fell to the floor unable to stand, to roars of boisterous laughter from the assembled officers and dignitaries who threw their glasses to the floors.

The festivities didn’t end until nearly three in the morning. But at last the vast party room was emptied, and Afghani orderlies came in to sweep up the shards of glass that littered the marbled floor.

Twelve

“I
t’s time, buddy,” Rock said, tapping Archer on the shoulder. The big freefighter slowly awoke, looking up with a startled expression at Rockson. “We’re going to, as they used to say, break out of this joint.” Archer didn’t quite understand the expression, but he got the intent of Rock’s meaning. He rose and quickly dressed himself in his American clothes: bearskin coat and immense khaki pants. At last he could wear his real clothes again—not the Russian tailored suit they had given him.

The two freefighters made their way quietly to a third room into which Rock knew Archer’s crossbow had been put. The door was locked, but several swift kicks from the Doomsday Warrior ripped the lock apart and the thick oak door swung open. They made their way into the darkened suite cautiously but quickly saw that there were no guards present. Rock’s gamble that the Russians would grow lax with security, believing that the freefighter had changed his tune, had worked. They found the crossbow, sealed inside a thick plexiglass case, seemingly impenetrable. Rock hefted a metal table lamp and slammed it against the transparent case, but the heavy object bounced off. The case was strong, probably an alloy of some type. He inspected the plexiglass container closely as Archer pressed his face against it, longing to be reunited with his weapon—the closest thing to a security blanket that the fearless seven-foot warrior had. Rock examined every inch of the case looking for a weakness—and found it. Every seam of the plexiglass was sealed and faultless. That gave the Doomsday Warrior an idea. He went over to the large silver samovar filled with steaming water and carried it over to the case. They smashed the wood table beneath and placed the boiling water of the Russian tea-making device beneath it. Rock turned the steam to high and waited. In just minutes the impenetrable case exploded with a loud pop—burst open by air pressure from inside heated by the steam.

Archer sighed as he inspected his tools of the trade, then grunted approval and slapped Rock on the shoulder. They walked to the window—no bars for they were hundreds of feet up—far above the luminous trails of the ground traffic zipping along the wet pavement below them on Dzerjinski Plaza. Rock surveyed the area outside the window. The shutters opened out. A man, if he wanted to, could commit suicide—just stand on the sill and kiss this old life good-bye. It would take forever to reach the pavement and crush some comrade’s precious car. For a moment he considered making some sort of glider, remembering flying down off Ice Mountain near Century City in a jury-rigged device with glider wings. But one glance at Archer’s heavy frame convinced him that the giant would not fare well in such an attempt.

There: A ledge. He saw decorative series of faces! Lenin, Bulganin, Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Titov, and Drushkin—completely girthing the building with their five-foot-high granite features. The only problem was the sculptures started nearly forty feet away, and there was no ledge to crawl along to reach them and the window set between them that would, Rock hoped, lead to rooms unguarded by Imperial Kremlin troops.

“Archer, do you think you could make a shot, I mean a
very good
shot with one of your steel arrows with a line attached to it—and jam the arrow into that gargoyle over there?”

Archer looked over and grunted. He took an arrow from his quiver and handed it to Rockson who attached a thick electrical extension cord to the back—Made In USA it said on it. He pulled on it with all his strength and the cord held. Archer fitted the arrow into the firing slot on the crossbow and fired. His aim was true as chips of gargoyle chest fell and sailed into the blustery wind. Archer watched incredulously as Rock stood on the sill and hauled himself up across the rope. Rockson reached the row of concrete faces and then motioned for Archer to make the journey. The giant’s face fell as he looked first at Rockson and then down to the street below. With an audible gulp he slung the bow over his shoulder and, praying silently to whatever gods the strange woodsman believed in, he started across. The cord stretched and quivered violently as if protesting the weight on it—but it held. Archer was surprisingly agile for a man his size and immensely strong. If nothing else, his fear of dropping propelled him quickly across the line.

The two freefighters edged along the two-foot-wide ledge beneath the gargoyles, hugging the wall as they moved one careful step at a time. Rock reached a large window and peered quickly inside—empty. He tried it and it opened easily. No one expected entry from the outside—not at this height. He and Archer jumped in and made their way in the darkness to the door. Rockson pulled it and it opened. He put his ear to the crack—nothing.

Moving like cats, they made their way down the carpeted hall heading toward the elevators. Suddenly Rock heard Russian voices—damn—guards in front of the elevator. He should have known. He and Archer came rushing around the corner and at the three guards like bats out of hell. The men barely had time to look up before they were pummeled beneath the fists of the Americans. Rock and Archer dragged the three Reds into a utility closet, and Rockson changed clothes with one, putting the brown Kremlin Guard uniform over his own clothes. It was a tight fit but it would have to do.

Great—now they were free inside the towering building—just untold stories and guards everywhere to get through. “If you don’t mind I’m going to bind you,” Rock said, taking some cord from a shelf. Archer did mind. A life of being attacked by creatures and Reds from every quarter didn’t make him too happy about having his mobility stopped. But for Rockson he would do it. The Doomsday Warrior made the knot loose. Archer could free himself in a second.

They took the elevator down to the main floor and walked past a group of half asleep guards who looked up startled to see the giant. “Taking this foul creature for a bath,” Rock muttered in Russian, keeping his cap low over his face. “The premier can’t stand the stench.” The guards laughed loudly and let them pass. Later they would pay with their lives. Rockson knew they’d have a hard time making it out the front gate where the troops would be much more alert. He saw a stairway exit marked “basement” and they headed down. After marching around the immense storage and boiler rooms they found three steel dumpsters filled with garbage and reluctantly hid themselves under the rotting refuse.

Fortunately they didn’t have to wait long. Within an hour huge trucks drove down a ramp and loaded the garbage containers onto their backs. The trucks drove out through the Kremlin walls and down the now nearly deserted highway toward the dump at the outskirts of Moscow. When their truck slowed for a turn, the two freefighters leaped out. They were free in the heart of the Russian capital.

Rock wanted to find the Satellite and Missile Control Center. He had an idea born of desperation and dependent on luck and surprise. Balls were the key to the whole thing. The destruction of the complex would cripple the Red empire’s ability to launch any ICBM strikes against America. If it could be taken out—destroyed beyond repair—he doubted the Reds had the technical know-how to put humpty-dumpty together again. But the plan was easier said than done.

They made it through twisting streets to the edge of a park that sat in the center of Moscow, complete with gardens and winding paths. But they had barely entered the grassy terrain when they were spotted by a horde of submachine-gun-toting MKVD special forces in blue berets who were double-timing it toward them. There were times when retreat was the better part of valor. They had gone through too much in their escape, and Rock knew they wouldn’t get a second chance.

They sped back out of the park and into the narrow dark streets that wound through the metropolis. In this section of the city most of the buildings were run-down, crumbling—obviously homes for the less fortunate of the Russian workers. They were only blocks ahead of the pursuing troops who screamed out at one another as they searched every doorway. Walkie-talkies crackled, and Rockson knew that within minutes the entire area would be saturated with Reds. They turned a dark corner and found themselves in a dead end, facing a twenty-foot-high brick wall. The troops closed in.

Suddenly they heard a sound just behind them. A manhole grate opened and a voice said, “Pssst!” They rushed over ready to battle and saw a small man dressed in a black robe emerge from the hole. His hair was white as snow and with his black wrap-around sunglasses he made quite a sight.

“In here friends,” he said in heavily accented English. They had no choice. Reds were just around the corner. Rock decided to trust the man and slid down the opening. Archer had a hard time getting in but at last squeezed through, pulling down the cover just as tramping Red feet rushed overhead. Their benefactor motioned for them to follow him. He pulled out a pencil flashlight and though dim, they were able to make their way through the six-foot-wide sewer tunnel. They walked for nearly half an hour. Then the tunnel suddenly widened and they stepped into a large open cavern. Rockson gasped. It was a subway station, old and dusty. A large group of similarly clad smallish men with the same white hair stood waiting. Rock stayed Archer’s hands as he whipped up his crossbow.

“Hold it Archer—these are friends.” Rock hoped he was right. The black-robed men held weapons in their hands that were oddly shaped, almost like musical instruments from what he could make out in the dim light of the flickering electric chandeliers above. Rock stepped up to them and looked the group over.

“You speak English?” he asked.

“Oh very good English,” the tallest of the lot said, moving forward until he stood just a foot away. “I be Yuri Goodman Chekhov and this,” he continued, sweeping his hand over the men behind him, “be my proud people. The dissidents, they call us. We live down here—not too bright, and
cool.
These be the old subway system of this big bad city. We like America,” he said animatedly. “You know any jazz musicians in your country? They still play in nightclubs over there? Do you like Coltrane? Do you have a sax?” The questions flowed one after another as the other dissidents looked on with interest.

Rock stared at the man incredulously, not quite knowing what to say. “Are you all musicians? I see you’re holding a clarinet.”

“Oh,” Yuri Goodman said with a smile, “this not regular clarinet. This be weapon, too—sonic boom-boom. Understand?”

Rock stared blank-faced. “Here I show you.” Goodman laughed. He looked around the dilapidated subway station until he saw a quick movement at one end. “There we go—mouski—now we show you American jazz friends how we play instruments.” He pointed his brass clarinet toward the mouse and played a sweet extremely high note. The mouse froze, then shivered and dropped dead. Yuri Goodman removed the reed from his mouth. “See—do same thing to Red troops. Like gun—only more fun to shoot. Dig us, American jazz friends, where are your instruments? We could have groovy jam sessions. Is that not what you do all time in America—sit in jazz clubs and play with black friends and all races?” Rock looked on, his jaw hanging open. “We dig American jazz. We all right dissidents.”

“Right,” they yelled in harmony. “We dig jazz.”

“Why you not sit down with us in club called Fat Black Pusscat and we play swinging stuff by Mingus and Ellington? If you don’t have instruments—we loan. What you American hipsters play? Vibes? An axe?”

Rock tried to explain that he was an American soldier, but Yuri Goodman only said, “You have big band sound—do jitterbug and with your sweetie you dance in PX?” This was getting them
nowhere.

They were led to a small shack at one end of the station that could barely be called a structure, so rotting were its walls and ceiling. Rock and Archer sat down and rested. The other dissidents sat down around them at tables with candles in the center of each in the dark make-believe American style coffee shop of the mid-1960s. How in God’s name they had gotten photographs of such places or picked up all the lingo they used was beyond Rockson’s comprehension. He looked around: The subway station was really more of a terminal. High marbled walls with murals beautifully embedded in them of proud Russian farmers in their bright red tractors, of workers holding wrenches as they worked inside huge factories. Drawings in red and blue and orange and black square tiles. Rock had to admire their beauty—he had never been a great fan of Socialist Realism art, but these had a certain primitive nobility.

The dissidents had set up their permanent home within the terminal with sleeping bags and hammocks hung from ancient rusting lamps and pipes that ran along the walls and ceilings which rose nearly sixty feet above the platforms. Tracks on each side of the terminal disappeared far off into the darkness. On one side sat a ten-car-long Russian subway obviously not used for nearly a century—its wheels rusted down into red metal dust, its cars filled with decades of dirt and spiderwebs.