Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American (7 page)

“Dragnov, Stepsky, Kironin, and Andreyov, Mr. President,” General Zhilinsky said crisply. “These are our best.”

“Very well,” Zhabnov said, suddenly growing nervous at the thought of the countermeasures Killov would take if the death squad failed. “What is their training—can they do the job? Sit, Sit, all of you,” he said, pointing to a French Provincial couch off to the side.

“The men will stand, thank you Mr. President,” the general said. “They are not used to relaxing. But I will sit, thank you.” He pulled over one of the “Jackie chairs”—English Tudor—selected by the famed wife of one of America’s most popular presidents. “These are their dossiers,” Zhilinsky said, handing a sheaf of folders to the president. “I think you’ll find their training has been more than adequate. These men are perhaps some of the most highly trained killers in history. Each has learned numerous techniques of assassination, and each has become an expert in one particular weapon of his choice.”

Zhabnov turned through the pages of the men’s personal and training history. All had killed numerous times in combat and during their training, all had been sent out to kill selected targets—American workers—to make sure they could do their jobs with the ruthless efficiency that would be required to take on Killov. They had murdered with guns, knives, their hands, and a number of other rather imaginative approaches to the cessation of life.

“Let them show you their specialties,” Zhilinsky said, with a thin, grim smile. Dragnov, the first of the men in line, stepped slightly forward and reached inside his loose-fitting fatigue jacket. He pulled out a long, glistening ice pick, nearly twenty-four inches in length. He moved his hand around in a blur of motion, stabbing at the air over and over again. Then, just as quickly, he returned the sliver of death to his inner pocket. Zhabnov was impressed. He hadn’t even been able to see the man’s hand move. Surely no one could evade a blade with such speed. The next in line, Stepsky, stepped a few inches forward and reached into his identical green-gray camouflage jacket. He came out with what looked like a blob of dark jelly, and held it up for the president to see.

“Plastique, Mr. President. Stepsky carries it throughout the lining of his clothing. It’s undetectable by metal-scanning devices, which we know Killov has placed at all the entrances to the Monolith. In fact, it’s so woven into the fabric, so stretched out, that even a frisking won’t reveal its presence.” Zhabnov smiled. He liked that one.

The next in line, Kironin, walked several inches ahead, and, as the others had done, whipped out his method of destruction—a long, thin flask containing an amber-colored gas.

“Poison, Mr. President,” the general said, raising a thick white eyebrow. “All he has to do is get within fifty feet of Colonel Killov and release this gas and—” he drew his hand across his throat. “One of the most deadly gases we’ve produced. Very painful and causes death within sixty seconds. We’ve been able to place Kironin as a clerk on Killov’s own floor. He begins next week. Should be very interesting.” The man stepped back and Andreyov, the largest of the lot, moved forward.

“And what is his little toy?” Zhabnov asked, getting into the deathly spirit of the proceedings.

“He needs no ‘toys’ Mr. President. May I have a piece of furniture you aren’t particularly fond of?” Zhabnov was puzzled by the request, but he looked around until his eyes rested on a thick dark coffee table off in one corner of the large rectangular room.

“That—over there,” he answered, pointing out the seventeenth-century antique. “I hate it.” The general rose and walked briskly over to the objet d’art and dragged it back until it was in the middle of the room. “Please,” he said to the muscle-bulging blond assassin, pointing a slightly trembling finger at the table. The man walked the few steps to it and without any sort of preparation slammed the blade of his hand down on the nearly inch-thick oak slab. It broke into pieces, flying off in all directions, splintered, jaggedly torn. The man stepped back in line. Zhabnov’s jaw dropped open as he imagined Killov’s head cracking like a rotten coconut beneath the power of that hand.

“Very good, general. Very good indeed. I’m quite pleased with the work you’ve performed here.” Zhilinsky stood tall, obviously pleased at the president’s commendation. “Now, if they can just perform their feats on Mr. Blackshirt. Just one of you has to succeed,” he said, walking up and down in front of them, inspecting them closely. “And I promise you this. Whichever man kills Colonel Killov will never have to worry about a thing for the rest of his life. He will have all that he wishes. That is my promise.” He looked into their eyes to catch a response to his offer, but could see only a vacuum within them—cold and dark as the reaches of space itself. A shiver ran down his spine. He was glad they were working for and not against him.

The president commended the general again and the five men exited, with assurances from Zhilinsky that the job would be done soon and that he would inform Zhabnov of all proceedings.

Zhabnov felt relieved for the first time in days. So, he would be able to eliminate the power-mad Killov after all. It seemed inevitable. He smiled and patted his bulging stomach. Now I can enjoy myself, he thought. If they have sent the right material to me. I’m so tired of these drugged-up American maidens. I need a real woman tonight. Someone with strength, someone who doesn’t cry, who doesn’t just lie there whimpering beneath me. He had been told by his procurer that a four-breasted mountain-mutant woman would be arriving that evening. Slightly sedated, she would be a delectable treat. And Zhabnov was suddenly very horny.

Machine-gun fire echoed in the Kremlin’s massive brick walls. Lines of KGB officers, hands tied behind their backs, fell like scythed wheat as chips flew off the wall behind them. Two hundred more had been executed in the last three days for crimes against the state. Premier Vassily sighed as he looked out the window, and then limped back to bed. Rahallah, his black servant, came quickly over and helped his master, still weak from the poison he had been given, up into the thick featherbed.

The “Conspiracy of the Doctors” was over. The back of the KGB-controlled assassination plot had been broken here in Moscow. But not in occupied America. Killov still lived—indeed was more powerful than ever—and in other parts of the Empire, Soviet army forces were openly or covertly battling KGB forces as well.

“But
I
am not dead!” he said in a hoarse whisper to his servant and main companion. “Moscow is secure . . . secure.” Slowly Premier Vassily drifted off to sleep with his black African servant sitting by the bed, looking down with the tender eyes of a parent. Outside, the bodies of the dead conspirators were loaded onto trucks and carted off to unmarked graves in the country. The spring thaw was in full force—birds began hesitantly singing within a minute or two after the echoes of the last machinegun volley died out. The cherry trees were blooming, pushing their delicate blossoms out like probing tongues into the warming air. While blocks away, inside the white marble Presidium building, fearful delegates were voting—unanimously—to reelect Vassily as premier-for-life.

On the eightieth floor of the black steel building that served as the headquarters for the KGB in the United States—the Monolith, as it was called—smack in the center of Denver, Colorado, Colonel Killov stared out at the purple-hazed mountains to the west. He ground his teeth as he watched the orange and brown clouds, which could mean an acid rain, move in over the towering peaks. He had just heard: a rout in Moscow, all his men, his spies, his agents, his lobbyists—dead. Vassily had reasserted his control with an iron fist. Killov felt a grudging respect for the doddering old Grandfather. He hadn’t thought the poetry-reading Ruler of All the World had the guts to do it. But he had! One of Killov’s few misjudgments. And now President Zhabnov, Vassily’s dear nephew—the fat lecher—was firmly in control of his regular army forces, as well, in the East and the South. Killov still controlled the North and West, with sporadic encounters with the Red Army in the Midwest. But no one dared launch an all-out attack. The smiles, the everything-is-okay chatter, still remained. Both he and Zhabnov had to bide their time. Neither was strong enough to vanquish the other in a military contest. And though the Red Army outnumbered his men by nearly ten to one, he knew that his staff and his fighting forces were vastly superior to the regulars, both in training, motivation, and ruthlessness. For Killov ruled by fear. Every KGB man in America knew that he had best carry out his orders—successfully—or face the wrath of the Skull, as his men called him behind his back in muted whispers.

“The fools—” Killov muttered, slamming his thin, veiny hand against the darkly tinted blue window nearly twenty feet long and ten feet high that gave him a panoramic view of half of Colorado. “To attack
me
when the freefighters—the American rebels—were so close to an attack.” Idiots. The KGB and Red Army should wipe out the real threat first, before they had a go at each other. Now all the Russian forces would be divided, even more vulnerable to rebel attack. He saw his reflection in the dark glass. His face was taking on a ghastly pallor, his cheekbones poking out like ivory knobs from his skeletal visage. The scar that Ted Rockson had given him the previous year ran nearly from his ear to his jaw, an ugly reddish purple reminder of their encounter that the colonel would carry with him to his dying day.

He had had a few setbacks recently, it was true—but by no means was he in real danger—or his power threatened. He could handle them—Vassily, Zhabnov, or whomever else came along. Because he was smarter than they—and because he would stop at nothing to achieve his ultimate goal—to be ruler of the world. Then things would be run his way. Atomic weapons would be used full scale to wipe out all opposition on earth. He would have the first empire without enemies—because they would all be dead. Peace—peace for the first time in history. Peace under his bloody rule. The peace of the gun and the cattle prod and the elimination of millions. But nonetheless, peace.

He began feeling jittery, the shakes that had been bothering him more and more frequently making his hands vibrate uncontrollably. He walked quickly to his desk and took out his pill vials. He took two Alevils, a Methedrine, and a Placadyl. His need for the drugs was growing more intense with each passing day. He didn’t feel like eating, so he swallowed some vitamins and bulk pills as well, washing them down with a large mug emblazoned with the death’s head emblem on the side—a black skull and crossbones—of thick black coffee. He hadn’t had a real meal in weeks. His stomach wouldn’t accept solids anymore—just the pills. How long could he go on like this? But he had to until the crisis was over. At least until his forward positions—Kansas, Texas—were more secure. With the Doctors’ Conspiracy destroyed in Moscow, he was effectively cut off from his scattered forces in Russia altogether. Except Siberia, where Tirkolev, one of his most trusted lieutenants, ruled like a warlord. But they were in effect out of the running—their planes snowed in for the next three months at least, in 105-degrees-below-zero weather. But if the thaw came early, he would use their highly advanced fighter squadrons—against Washington.

Five

A
fter a battery of tests proved that no permanent damage had been done to Rock’s system, he was given a clean bill of health and his first real meal—steak and potatoes and apple pie, with a big pot of coffee to wash it down. He perused the
Century City Monitor,
one of two independent newspapers put out in the city. HERO RETURNS CRITICAL, said one headline—expected to die, the copy inside read. But the headline the next day—REMARKABLE RECOVERY—made Rock laugh. That would teach ’em to print before all the facts are in. They’d probably been up half the night writing some poetic obituary for him and then were disappointed when they had to can it.

Rath, head of intelligence for C.C., came by to see how the patient was doing. “Any intel from your trip?” Rath, a narrow-faced man who ran Intelligence Services as his own personal fiefdom, asked Rock.

“Don’t get bit by cow-sized spiders,” Rock said. Rath wrote down half the sentence in his omnipresent note pad before he realized what Rockson had actually said. He scowled and put the book down.

“Listen, Rath,” Rockson asked, “what’s the story on the Re-Constitutional Convention? I’ve been hearing people talking, saying that the big meeting is about to happen—to form a new government. At least that was the scuttlebutt.” Rath looked suddenly annoyed.

“No one was even supposed to know about that,” the Intel chief said sharply. “There’s an open meeting in the Council tomorrow to explain the situation and vote for delegates. I can’t understand how that got out.” He looked perplexed. “Only two other people in Century City knew about it besides me—Dr. Shecter and Council President Willis. I can’t believe they would talk.” Rath took it personally when any classified information got out—as it often did. The grapevine of the city was virtually unstoppable, as the citizens loved nothing more than to discuss and debate every issue. It drove the head of Intelligence and Internal Security crazy. “Tell me, Rock, who told you?” he asked, with a hangdog look.

“Forget it, Rath,” Rockson laughed. “You know I’d never reveal my sources. Besides, from what I gather, your secret is on everybody’s lips. That’s what all the people are talking about. Relax, pal. No damage has been done.” The Doomsday Warrior paused, took a breath, and then looked up with a serious expression at the Intel chief. “Listen, Rath, I’ve got to go on this one.”

Rath sighed. “It would be too much of an ordeal, Rockson, right after your spider episode. The four people who will be elected to go must leave within three days. I don’t think you should be among them.”

“Not go? I have a clean bill of health. I’ll be needed to get whoever else is along for the ride through the wilds. You know what it’s like out there. As chief military officer, I
should
go, it’s my right, my duty.” Rockson didn’t say the other reason—he had to see Kim, Kim Langford, the daughter of the man who was organizing the convention to form a new American government, Charles Langford.