Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory (21 page)

But when they cut into the rare roast beef, bit into the yogurt and honey sparrow eggs, they knew it was real.

“Where the hell did you get all this stuff?” Rock asked after he’d taken a few bites. “These things don’t grow around here.”

“General Rockson,” Sikh Panchali said as a young woman covered in gossamer pink veils and bracelets fed him bite-sized portions of partridge pâté and truffles, “one thing our fighting forefathers learned very early in the formation of the Royal Sikh Army was to have the best of everything. It is only worth dying when one’s
life
is rich and full. Thus—we carry out Moscow’s orders and we are rewarded with the finest things that a man can have. One entire transport plane was filled with boxes and refrigerated containers of our culinary needs.”

“This is the way to fight a war,” Rona said, stuffing her mouth with the turtle eggs in chocolate sauce, which for some not-inexplicable reason she found irresistible.

“Why can’t we bring lunchboxes like this along on all our missions?” Detroit yelled from across the table, his own plate piled so high that things were slipping off as he ate. The rest of the team dug in with much enthusiasm, each eating like it was their last meal—which for some would be the case. Archer wolfed down whole platefuls in a bite and reached for whatever was closest as it passed by with a long pronged serving fork.

Panchali clapped his hands after a few minutes and a line of dancing girls came out dressed in gossamer veils, which barely concealed their charms. They began undulating, insinuating their rather attractive musculature directly under the eyes of Ted Rockson and batting their moist doe-like eyes at him. Rona and Kim both coughed loudly and stared at the Doomsday Warrior with green rising in their eyes. This man had it too good!

“If you so much as look at once inch of those—those women,” Kim sputtered, “I’ll put .45’s in both your eyes.” She banged her small fist down on the table, making a plate of creamed onions bounce slightly and several of the little grease balls rolled onto the silk tablecloth. Rock kept his eyes on his food. Rona leaned over and buttered his rolls, showing as much cleavage in her mostly open shirt as the dancing girls.

“You see,” Ragdar said, smiling at Rockson, whom he could see was truly impressed by the display of wealth. “The ancients knew it well. All their fighting men—early Egyptians, the Greeks, Caesar’s, Alexander the Great’s—they always made war in style with feasts and women along the way. Why must a combat soldier
suffer
his hours when he is not fighting? He suffers enough in battle. Really, it is such an outmoded concept! I am surprised at your backwardness in such matters!” The Sikh general scolded Rockson in a mocking fashion with his ringed finger.

“You’re goddamned right there’s ‘backwardness’ in such matters,” Rona said loudly. “This is the United States you’re in now, pal. And our faiths, our traditions—our everything dictate that we do things our own way. And that means no dancing girls. The Freefighters got
us.”
She smiled sweetly at Rockson and then at Kim and folded her hands across her ample chest, satisfied that she’d at least said her piece.

Panchali and Ragdar gathered the top Freefighter commanders around the dinner table, once the feast had finished. Panchali swept the dishes, silverware, and glasses from the table with a dramatic flourish, sending the contents crashing onto the floor where they were attended to by a cluster of efficient servants. Panchali then pulled out a large pencil-drawn map and unfolded it on top of the table.

“This is a map of the fortress,” the Sikh general said, probing his teeth with a golden toothpick. “You can see it from all four flanks.”

“That’s remarkable,” Chen intoned as he slowly sipped some after-dinner plum brandy. “Where did you dig that up?”

“We make our own maps, General Chen,” Ragdar said with a quick good-humored laugh. They’d taken to calling Rockson and his top five men “General,” unable to conceive that leaders of such numbers of troops could be of anything less than of that august ranking. “The moment we arrived, our cartographers were in the field making drawings, using surveying equipment to get the exact distances and dimensions of Minsk.”

“Yes, General Rockson,” Panchali interjected, his face glowing with excitement for the first time that evening—as the subject was war. “We have found through costly experience that the more one knows
exactly
what the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses are, where his highest walls and lowest walls are, their makeup, the more one knows everything about him—as in making a fine piece of carpentry—the results will come out perfect if the measurements are correct. War is a science to us, General, not a game of chance.”

Rockson was impressed as the generals went over the maps, which showed the approaches to the outer walls, the entrances that must be breached. Whatever their kingly airs, the Sikh men seemed to be the real thing—military strategists who knew how to kill better than the enemy. The Doomsday Warrior paid close attention to their words, their concepts. There was a lot to be learned from men such as these, steeped in siege-warfare.

“So you see, it’s really absurdly simple,” Panchali went on, holding a long carving knife he had picked up from the table and using it as a pointer along the map. “We simply create diversionary attacks on the south, east, and west walls but concentrate our
main
attack on the north wall—the least protected because of the inhospitable terrain. But what is thought uncrossable by Russian planners is, for us, an eight-lane super-highway. Once the north wall is taken, cavalry and infantry will attack, sending all forces into the fortress. They have been instructed to kill only KGB and release Red troops. We are, as you can see,” Panchali said, sitting back with a smug look, “completely prepared. The situation is in hand.”

“And what of
my
men?” Rockson asked, leaning forward. “Where do we come in?”

“Oh really,” Panchali said with a bemused look. “We’re used to doing it alone. At least until the first fighters open the gates, I think you’d just be in the way.”

Rockson didn’t show a flicker of anger and froze Chen and Detroit, whom he saw start to rise in fury, with but a single glance.

“I don’t think you understand, General,” Rockson said coolly. “We’re in this together. We asked for you to come here to
help
us. I don’t mind if you run the show, since you seem to know what you’re doing strategically—but my men
are
to be in on every phase of it. You may be great fighters—but I daresay you’ve never fought the KGB or Colonel Killov over there in Asia. And as dangerous and fierce as those you faced may have been, I have a feeling your men will be glad there are some American kick-ass Freefighters along to point a few things out.”

“I just don’t think—” Panchali began again, his eyes rolling up, but Ragdar cut him off.

“I’m sure what my co-general means,” the younger and more diplomatic Sikh said, “is that we’d be glad to have you along as long as our men and your men know just how to place themselves so they won’t accidentally injure one another. Isn’t that right, brother?” Ragdar asked, looking at Panchali with a don’t-fuck-with-me-now expression.

“Of course, of course,” Panchali blurted out, knowing that he easily enraged others and that he’d be better off letting the younger man take care of it all. “You must excuse me, Generals—I am so clumsy with words sometimes, a soldier who sometimes forgets the social niceties that allow for interaction between men.”

“At any rate,” Ragdar went on as Panchali sat back in his chair and drank a dark blue liquid from a crystal goblet, “we attack at midnight tomorrow and—”

“And your equipment—those huge wooden things,” Rock asked, “what are they, how—”

“Please, General Rockson,” Ragdar said, snapping his fingers for more wine, “it’s so difficult to explain it all—you’ll see tomorrow night. A battle, as they say, is worth a thousand military manuals. As we move into position, you’ll see it all.” He looked at Rockson. “If you want, pick your own team and come in with the first of us!”

“I propose a toast,” the black Freefighter said with the beginnings of an idiotic drunken smile, “to our fine Asian fighters—whoever they killed in the past—we thank them for coming to our aid.” The Freefighters raised their glasses in salute and downed their drinks.

“And my turn,” Ragdar said, as a servant filled his glass with a golden syrupy liqueur. “A toast to fighting men everywhere—whatever their rank or army. To the combat soldiers of history.” They all raised their glasses once again and happily downed the contents.

Before the others could respond, Ragdar pulled another glass, already filled, from the table and turned toward Rona and Kim. They were starting to loosen up a little now that their third shots of booze had hit their stomachs.

“And may I say,” the young, quite handsome if rather large-nosed, Sikh pronounced with a twinkle in both eyes as he looked at the Freefighter females, “that the American rebel army possesses some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my travels around a good portion of this planet. To General Rona and General Kim.” He smiled the sexiest smile he could manage, directing it with all his dark-eyed male power at the two and swallowed the liquor gustily. Both women blushed, not daring to look either at Ragdar or Rockson, and quaffed theirs in a single gulp too.

With that it was off to the races with toasts by every man sitting around the table. There were toasts to great generals of the past, toasts to battles, toasts to presidents. After several more rounds, it was toasts to movie stars of the pre-nuke days, and then toasts to the banquet’s attendees, one by one.

If the intention of the feast was to get the top ranks of the two armies better acquainted, it was working. Dancing contests erupted, arm wrestling championships, and boxing matches as they went at it, testing each other’s skills, each other’s mettle as men. And being amazed at each nation’s prowess.

And as the men’s macho came out, so did the women’s machisma.

There’s something about knowing you might die on the morrow and consuming five, six, or seven high-proof drinks that sends one’s inhibitions into hibernation. As some of the men gyrated atop other tables, Rona took off her heavy boots jumped up right in front of Rockson, kicked the military maps aside, and began dancing, giving her lover obvious and wicked looks. Not to be outdone, Kim removed her clod-hoppers, leaped up and joined her several feet away. Both of them began spinning around as Freefighters and Sikh officers around the room joined in clapping hands in time to the now-pulsing odd but sensual music that had reached the decibel level of a symphonic orchestra.

Drinks were handed to the women and they gulped them down, while laughing, twirling around. Kim was the first to remove an article of clothing, her pants falling down, she stepped out of them. Rockson didn’t know whether to stop her.

Kim taunted, “Ashamed of
your
body, Rona?”

Rona tore off her freshly ironed fatigue jacket. The alcohol, the dizziness, the rising chorus of whistles pushed them both to heights they would never ordinarily have reached. But now, in a whirlwind of challenges back and forth, they stripped off one garment after another until both of them danced atop the table in just panties, swinging their bodies around like the dancing girls who continued to undulate through the crowd, diamonds in their navels and adorning the tips of their breasts, making the three points shine like shimmering stars in the oil-lamps’ lights.

Rock’s own brain was somewhere on the floor. He hadn’t drunk this much for years, but was already beyond the ability to judge or care. Somewhere in his head he knew they would regret this tomorrow—but now was a swirling fog of laughter, he had a stupid feeling that everything was fine. He watched the two near-naked women, the two bodies, each perfect in its own and unique way, swinging around, displaying themselves. Suddenly Kim stopped in her tracks, stiffened up, hiccupped once, and fell over. Her eyes closed before she hit the arms that caught her.

“She’s out cold,” Chen said, lowering her to the floor and covering her with a robe draped over a nearby chair.

“Gurl can’t hode her likor,” Rona said, coming to a stop from her whirling-dervish dance of flying red hair. “Gib me anudder.” She took the proffered drink, downed it in one swallow, smiled, and then she took a nosedive forward, falling into McCaughlin’s wide arms. The big Scot placed her alongside her rival and covered her and the two began snoring, probably dreaming of one another as their heads lay so close together.

“Well, the weaker sex, I see, has fallen by the wayside,” Panchali said. “And what of you, General Rockson, what are your drinking abilities? Are they beyond your beautiful concubines’ abilities?”

“Load me up,” Rock said with a corkscrew of a smile, “and we’ll see what happens.” They drank. And they drank some more. By 4:30 in the morning, there were but three men still conscious in the entire tent—Rockson, General Panchali, and Detroit. The trio sat around the table surrounded by bodies lying everywhere on the rug, snoring and groaning loudly. They had each drunk way, way too much exotic beverage but kept going, their eyes floating around inside their sockets like eggs looking for a frying pan.

“Now I’ll get the
good
stuff,” Panchali burped, stepping over the unconscious Ragdar, who had fallen long ago. He stumbled back a few seconds later with a small decanter that looked a thousand years old, poured each of them a glassful, and raised his own.

“To my whore of a mother and son-of-a-bitch of a father, who in their drunkenness, produced the greatest general the world has ever known.” They swallowed the stuff and their gullets nearly exploded as the triple-distilled coconut-gin blasted into their stomach linings like a phosphorus bomb. Detroit’s eyes rolled up like blinds on a spring and he tumbled backwards, out cold before he hit the ground.

“Looks lik ’s jus’ u ’n me now, Ger’l Rurkson,” Panchali said, standing up. “Les shee wich un’s the better man.” Holding the bottle in one hand, he walked, lurching from side to side, and cleared a space, kicking bodies around him out of the way. “Ere, Rurkson, drink fer drink, punch fer punch—til one man falls.”