War Weapons (19 page)

“Move,” the Cheyenne yelled, and the three of them, with Excaliber hobbling along gamely on three legs, beat a quick retreat
behind a pile of thick lumber planking some fifty feet to the side and barely made it when the two mines went off with a roar.
They poked their heads out again and, seeing the smoke drifting up, rushed back to the chromium cap. But aside from scraping
things up here and there and gouging a few shallow little craters in the surface, no real damage had been done whatsoever.
The silo hadn’t opened an inch.

The three of them, with the dog licking at its broken leg, stood motionless in front of the silo, totally stymied at how to
get inside. It was as if the entire journey, the men who had died in battle, the ordeal they had all just been through, was
all for naught—stopped cold in their tracks at the last few inches. Stone bent down as the dog looked up at him with pain-racked
eyes.

“Sorry, pal,” he said, getting down on one knee and lifting the damaged leg gently in both hands. The dog groaned slightly,
letting out a little half-stifled yip of pain and then let Stone handle the leg, looking with interest as his master began
examining it. Stone couldn’t see any bones poking through anywhere, nor any blood. But the bone was clearly cracked, the bottom
half of the leg going off at perhaps a five-degree angle from the top half. The whole thing must have just been held in place
by the tendons and muscles mat surrounded it, Stone realized. It was only because the goddamn pitbull was made of steel inside,
as well as out, that it had been able to go on, to fight, to kill, using a broken appendage. Stone patted the animal on the
head.

“This is going to hurt you a hell of a lot more than me, you hear,” Stone said. Excaliber looked at him trustingly, knowing
his master was doing some strange human thing to his leg that would make it all better. A jolt of pain suddenly surged through
the dog that taxed even its unflappable nervous system as Stone pulled the bottom part of the leg back into place and snapped
the two parts cleanly together. The dog howled several times, holding its head high as if baying at the invisible moon. But
he let Stone handle it, kept his paw on his master’s knee, motionless. Stone made a quick but sturdy splint from several straight
pieces of metal he found—shrapnel from the exploding machine-gun nests—about as long as pencils. He held them parallel on
each side of the break and then took shoelaces from some combat boots nearby, whose owner no longer needed them and tied the
metal holding the whole thing firmly in place. The dog put its weight down when he was at last done and walked around a few
steps as if testing it. Then it looked up at Stone and barked, and its tongue rolled out from its jaws, again in its usual
happy-go-lucky state.

Stone had scarcely risen from setting Excaliber’s bone and turned to ask Little Bear what suggestions he might have for penetrating
the silo when he heard a sudden deep vibration, and the very ground beneath their feet shook as if they were in the grip of
a small earthquake. Stone knew instantly what the sound was. He experienced it just days before. The noises of the missile’s
systems being turned on, of the mechanism for the silo’s protective hood being opened. And sure enough, as the three of them
jerked their heads around toward the sound, the chromium cover moved and began sliding back with a deep hum. Stone rushed
toward the missile hole and stared down as the cover dropped farther out of the way and into deep slots on each side of the
cylindrical launch tube. Little Bear and Meyra came alongside him, and the Cheyenne chief whistled.

“I’ve never really seen one of these motherfuckers—except, you know, in
Time
magazine or something. It’s big.” He leaned all the way forward as the silo covers dropped completely out of sight on each
side of them so there was just a ten-foot-wide, hundred-fifty-foot deep hole below them with a missile taking up over half
that height. Far below they could suddenly see little spits of white-hot fire start to lick out of the tail.

“We’ve got to stop it,” Stone screamed. “Somehow.” He turned to the Cheyenne and grabbed him frantically by the lapels of
his denim jacket. “Do you have any more mines … anything? Anything we can throw down there and—” Little Bear pulled away from
Stone’s grip, giving the white man a strange look as he reached for the satchel hanging behind him. There were three left.
He took them out and held them stacked in his arms.

“These are impact,” the Cheyenne said coolly. “No time to get away. Throw—and bang.”

“Then I’ll take one,” Stone said, meeting the Indian’s questioning gaze.

“And me too,” Meyra said, reaching out for the third one before either of them could stop her. They pulled them back in their
arms to heave them down into the chemical-smelling hole beneath their feet as the flame of the rocket seemed to grow brighter.

“‘No, wait,” Meyra suddenly screamed out as her eyes caught a figure rushing up the curved metal stairway that ran up around
the inside of the silo. “It’s Carla, our contact. She’s risked her life for us—we’ve got to let her get out.” Stone groaned
and looked up at the sky, which returned no advice. He dropped his arm and leaned over to look into the mist-shrouded chamber.

“Get the fuck up here. You hear me. We’re dropping bombs down there in ten seconds. Ten seconds.” The woman seemed to speed
up, though she stumbled here and there as she carried a device about as large as a suitcase. “One,” Stone screamed down into
the hole, so that his voice echoed back and forth even above the growing roar of the rocket’s ignition system. Carla speeded
up even more, and Stone kept counting all the way, goosing her along. He could see that the timing on all this was going to
be so close as to be ridiculous. The whole perfectly sculpted missile of mega-destruction was already beginning to vibrate
and prepare its computer system for takeoff.

Suddenly she was right at the top, and Little Bear reached out hands to help her out. “Run,” he said, pointing toward the
lumber pile and, without stopping, she rushed on. The three of them looked at each other—wanting to time their throws perfectly
so all three land mines went off simultaneously instead of just blowing each other out of existence. They all knew the blasts
would be so quick that they would be caught in at least some of the force. But as the missile suddenly roared into flame below
them, lighting up the whole missile silo like a Roman candle, they knew they’d run out of time.

Three arms flung their explosive packets of steel forward, and three bodies pushed themselves backward. If they hadn’t already
been moving in a direction completely away from the explosion that instantly occurred, they surely would have been killed.
For suddenly the cylindrical hole in the earth roared out a pillar of fire that rose straight up in the air a good three hundred
feet. All three land mines came down within feet of each other at the very base of the rocket. As they went off, the brunt
of their explosions were reflected up from the concrete launchpad and into the engine section of the ICBM. The entire liquid
fuel system ignited at once, as the fuel tanks ruptured, and the flames of the rocket exhaust sent the whole thing up like
a funeral pyre.

The explosion was so great that it could be felt for up to ten miles. Animals and peasants in their slovenly huts all stopped
what they were doing and turned their heads toward the sound, feeling the vibrations in their feet and bones. Then they turned
away again and went on with their respective tasks. Whoever had died, it wasn’t them.

But for Stone, and the two Cheyenne, it was like being in the center of a tornado, and they felt themselves literally lifted
up and flung backward through the air like dead leaves, flipping and spinning around. For one mad second Stone was flung back
in his mind to when he had been a child at the beach in California riding the surf and he had been caught in a wave, and the
spinning ocean waters had spun and twisted him around like this. He had thought for a few seconds that he was going to die.
And again the same claustrophobic panic swept through him of not even knowing where he was—the sky and earth spinning around
unrecognizably. But as he came down hard nearly thirty feet from where he had started, Stone’s mind was riveted back to the
present by the waves of pain that slammed through his already ready-for-collection-by-the-Salvation-Army wreck of a body.

The roar of the rising flame of pure white slammed into his ears like the scream of a jet engine next to his head. And as
he lay on his side in a daze, the flame already began to lower slightly and the thundering roar of the fire subsided to about
half its height. The missile had burned over half its fuel out in one titanic explosion; now it would burn slowly for days,
lower and lower until like a candle it went out in its own wax. What all this would do to the radioactive core of the missile
Stone couldn’t begin to imagine, nor did he try.

The cold dirt that he suddenly became aware of in his mouth brought him back to total awareness, and Stone opened his eyes
wide, coughing out the foul, chemical-tasting soil. He rolled over just in time to see a helicopter fly overhead. It seemed
to hover over them about two hundred feet up, just out of the line of the rising pillar of fire and smoke, seemed to try to
find them. And then suddenly it shot forward, curving around in a wide circle so that it was quickly heading north.

Stone rose shakily to his feet, as did the others. Excaliber, who had been far back from the explosion, walked on a fast three-legged
hobble over to Stone and nipped at his leg with concern.

“It’s Patton,” Carla, the female tech who had barely escaped from the silo, said as she came forward, holding the strange,
high-tech mechanical device out in front of her. “Up in that chopper. I know it—it’s his private craft.”

“So he got away,” Stone said, turning to her and seeing that she was quite attractive, despite hair severely cut back in military
fashion. She wore a white technician’s smock and low pumps and looked terrified. “At least we got the missile,” Stone said
with a tired sigh. “That thing ain’t going nowhere. At least we bought just a little time.”

“You don’t understand,” Carla said with tears forming in her eyes. “There’s another one just ten miles north of here —armed
and ready. That’s where Parton’s gone, I know it. You haven’t bought time—just minutes.”

“J
ESUS FUCKING Christ,” Stone said, his face growing I as pale as a Ku Klux Klanner’s freshly laundered sheet.

“I’ve got to get my men the hell out of here,” Little Bear said, his own coppery tones going to the chalky end of the color
chart. He whipped out a small, fat pistol from behind his belt and raised it straight up in the air. He pulled the trigger,
and a rocketlike shell rose rapidly about two hundred feet up, trailing a thin white stream. Suddenly it burst and lit up
in a star pattern off to the side of the still burning missile silo.

Within about five minutes, six of the three-wheelers showed up, along with both tanks that had been captured from Stone’s
force. His men had taken them back again, Stone was proud to see, as they came toward the silo, battle-scarred, but treads
still turning, still grinding on. A line of the all-terrain vehicles and the tanks pulled to a stop in front of Stone, and
heads popped up from the turrets of the Brad-leys.

“There’s no time to bullshit or congratulate ourselves,” Stone yelled at the top of his lungs, standing on the seat of his
three-wheeler, which he had dragged out from the shadows. “Pattern has escaped and there’s a missile coming at us—right now.
We don’t have a chance in hell, but we’ve gotta try. Don’t wait up for anyone if they falter. Go straight south. If you find
a mountain or a high dirt rise, hide. And whatever you do, don’t get caught in the direct blast or—”

“Good luck, you bastards,” Stone yelled out to them as he started to slide down into the three-wheeled vehicle. “It’s been
a privilege to fight alongside every one of you—” But the last few words got drowned out as the motors started up again in
a roar, as if a drag race was about to take place. And it was. The three-wheelers and the tanks tore ass away from the flaming
wreckage of the silo. All around them, fires rose from the damage the twin attack forces had caused, secondaries still going
off from time to time and sending up big fountains of glowing shrapnel and smoke high into the night air.

Part of the steel-mesh, barbed-wire-topped gate was still standing at the southern end of the fort, and the three-wheelers
slowed down as they let the tanks slam through, their heavy bodies flattening the poles, their treads grinding the mesh into
broken wire beneath them. Stone rode in the tri-bike he had come in. He was happy to see that his Harley was still up on the
back of the tank he had been commanding. Not that it was too likely he’d ever get to use the fucking thing again. Excaliber
rode crunched down in the seat alongside him. And in the nearest three-wheeler, driven by Little Bear, Carla was squeezed
in tight, madly fiddling with the many controls of the device she had expended so much energy to save. They drove out of the
fort and across the prairie, the three-wheelers turning on their headlights to full magnitude, as there was no one to hide
from anymore. Except an atomic missile. And that didn’t need too many clues to find them.

They drove for miles, all of them looking up every minute or so, glancing over their shoulders. They were being pursued by
death itself, no ifs, ands, or buts. The tension was unbearable. A race against time, only they had no idea how long the contest
would last—or what the outcome would be. So they just drove their asses off, the tri-bikes pulling slightly ahead of the two
tanks, which moved about five miles per hour slower at thirty-five.

Stone kept noticing Carla playing with her machine as it lit up here and there and let out a few beeps that he could hear,
even while riding ten feet to the side.

“What the hell is that?” Stone yelled over, above the roar of the fleet of vehicles.