Doomsday Warrior 13 - American Paradise (19 page)

One of the swordsmen smiled a missing-toothed grin. “Do you think we would come to you with swords if you had a pistol? We saw it fall!”

So, there was only one recourse—the sword he carried. Rockson reached for the long, heavy Katama sword and pulled it from his scabbard as the samurai rushed forward with glistening swords raised over their heads.

The attackers’ biceps and pectoral muscles rippled as they advanced toward the Doomsday Warrior, swinging their blades like twin scythes. Rockson darted to the left, away from the near miss of one steely blade, and tried to compose himself to raise the Katama into the proper position. He was
not
an expert at this, but Chen had taught him something of the noble art of swordsmanship in their many practice sessions in Century City’s gymnasium. That lesson would be tested now!

“Let’s see,” Rockson said aloud, “that special grip is sorta like this—”

No time for any more rumination! They were upon him again, eager to take advantage of his momentary gathering of wits. They separated so they could come from
both
sides. Good! Chen had shown Rock what to do in that kind of situation. He employed the ancient technique of Master Uechi—hitting one opponent’s sword with a quick thrust of your blade, joining its weight to your opponent’s blade to meet the second man’s thrust.

The method
did
stop the swords of the two samurai in midair, sending sparks of metal flying. Rock silently thanked the ancient master!

Then Rock spun, sweeping the gathering of three swords to the side—again, an Uechi move. With a sudden, blindingly fast motion, Rock pulled his sword out of the tangle and twisted his wrist, delivering a horizontal slash at torso height as he got in a crouched position. The shorter samurai was not prepared for the slash. Twisting ungainfully to the side, he was still caught in his thigh by the blade. He screamed out an anguished epithet and collapsed.

The larger samurai took advantage of his friend’s demise to push Rockson down with a lightning drop-kick. Rockson went down and rolled away, then saw the blade descend where he had just been and clank against the floor.

Rock grabbed the fallen samurai and used him as a shield to get back up. The body took the full sword blow of his frenetic companion. The mighty blow nearly split the samurai open from neck to pelvis, sending coagulating blood splashing. The big samurai drew back in horror.

Rockson grabbed the sliced man’s Katama off the floor. He still had his own blade.

Now for the
double-dicer!
Swinging both swords at the remaining samurai, as if Rockson were a food processor chasing a carrot, the Doomsday Warrior advanced.

The samurai cut and ran—something a samurai should
never
do! Rock aimed and threw both swords, skewering the coward against a wooden display case containing a Tokyo diorama. The man jerked a few times and then hung limply, oozing red.

Rockson turned back to the elevator to continue his work, but cursed as he saw a KGBer lifting up the shoulder bag full of explosives. The Soviet started to run away with it. Perhaps the Russian didn’t know what the pack contained, or perhaps he knew; but in any case, he was absconding with the package that meant life or death to the world!

The angry Freefighter tackled him. They fell atop the severed samurai, and Rockson and the Russian struggled with each other in a glop of blood and intestines. They grappled for the man’s Tokarev pistol. The Soviet was a fiercely strong man and got his pistol up, bending it toward Rockson’s chest despite Rock’s best effort. But the American bit down on his hand until the fingers open, twisted the pistol at the man’s face and squeezed the trigger. The man’s anguished features exploded into bloody fragments.

The Doomsday Warrior rose, wiping blood out of his eyes, only to confront a tall blond KGBer carrying a smoking submachine gun. The man sneered and lifted the barrel at Rock. This time, however, Rock didn’t have to do a thing to defend himself. The Russian turned as he heard the sudden approach of sandalled feet.

It was Morimoto, swishing his silvery sword in a figure eight. He screamed out a primitive challenge.

The Russian tried to fire but in a micro-second took the blow from the descending sword on his right forearm. The submachine gun clattered to the floor with the Red’s right hand and wrist still attached. He hadn’t
let go
of the weapon after all.

The next Katama blow came as the Red stood frozen, staring at the hoselike squirt of blood issuing from his half-arm. Morimoto’s sword came directly at his head, and the Russian made no move to counter. The razor-sharp instrument sliced his skull neatly in half, down to his collarbone. And he sank to the ground.

Morimoto tugged his ancentral blade away, then wiped it on the man’s jacket. “Continue your work, friend.”

The Doomsday Warrior nodded, grabbed the satchel of explosives and headed back to the elevator. The hell with the lock picking, he thought. Prying the dead Russian’s submachine gun from the severed fingers, Rock fired the full clip into the elevator lock button.

Brute force accomplished the job. The silver elevator door opened. Rockson sighed, shouldered the explosive satchel, stepped into the silver car and pressed “72.” The door shut out the cacophony of screams and shots in the building lobby, and Rock rode up in silence.

This was too easy—wasn’t it? Rockson watched the floors rapidly click off. Sixty-one, sixty-two.

He looked casually around at the elevator car. Something was odd. What was different?

Yes! The little hand rail that had been at the back of the elevator—probably to prevent the wall being damaged by carts—had been neatly removed. The screw holes from the screws that had held the rail in place had been almost invisibly filled.

Why had the rail been removed?

Then Rockson understood that because the rail was missing there were perhaps only seconds to act—or he would die!

Quickly he reached to his belt and took out his balisong knife. He dug out the two highest buttons on the elevator panel, “73” and “Tower.” The buttons popped out and rolled about the elevator’s floor.

Rock sheathed the knife, and jammed the index fingers of both his hands into the holes he had made—the only holes he could
possibly
make in the steel-walled elevator.

The elevator’s floor suddenly dropped out from under his feet! He watched the floor panel fall, hanging seventy-one floors above the basement, supported only by his two fingers.

Twenty-Five

D
etroit ejected a hot magazine from his Liberator and looked around. There were KGB bodies everywhere. The Americans and their allies now controlled the lobby, but the cost had been high. Ten samurai and two Polynesians had died in the fighting; he and McCaughlin were wounded. Detroit’s wound was just a nick on his ankle, bandaged with a piece of KGB uniform, but feisty McCaughlin had a bullet lodged somewhere between his collarbone and his heart. Chen was looking after him. And there were still KGBers coming in around the building from the surrounding city.

Morimoto had explained that Rockson had entered the elevator and was probably already planting the bomb upstairs. Their job was to keep control until he came back down, then break out of the building before it was blown to shit.

Suddenly Detroit heard a clatter and hard thud in the elevator shaft. Fearing the worst, Detroit went to the elevator and used a twisted piece of metal to pry the door open. He was greeted by darkness and heavy dust. He snapped his flashlight on and swept its beam downward. The light revealed the shattered remains of the floor of the elevator—twisted tiles and bent metal.

“Rock?” Detroit said, “are you—alive?”

No answer. Scheransky came over and gasped out, “Do you think he’s dead?”

Detroit said, “I’ll find out.” He climbed down and started to loosen the twisted wreckage. In a minute he shouted with relief. “Good news—I don’t see a body. Rock must have grabbed on somewhere above. He’ll need help!” But just then, there was a series of rapid fire shots from outside the tower lobby. Detroit shouted, “Keep the bastards at bay men; I’m going up the elevator shaft.”

“I’m coming too,” said Chen, rushing over. “Leilani is handling McCaughlin; he’s not too bad off.”

“ME TOO,” Archer added, bounding over to the group gathered at the open elevator shaft.

Detroit said, “Rock said I’m in charge while he’s upstairs,
I
decide who climbs. Archer, I don’t trust the cable with your weight.”

“MEEE CLIMB,” Archer protested.

“Look,”
Detroit said with exasperation, “it’s like this—only Chen will climb. I want to go up too, pal, but we’re needed down here.”

Chen nodded. “I’m best at this. I’ll find out what gives.” Detroit didn’t want Archer to hear his next remarks to Chen, so he whispered them in the Chinese-American’s ear: “If Rock’s dead—or unable to finish the job—find the satchel of explosives and finish.”

Chen nodded. He immediately started climbing up the cable.

Seventy-one stories up, Rockson, hanging by his very
strong
fingers, heard the elevator door slide open. He was hanging to the right, out of sight of the KGB men who now peered into the floorless elevator car from Killov’s domain.

“Ha—it worked, Stanislov,” said the blond with the cheek scar, “We have rid ourselves of Rockson! I told you the elevator trap would work!”

“Yes, indeed,” the older man replied. “Now let’s get to the windows, keep the .105 in action. There might be more of the attackers coming in
behind
our reinforcements!”

The pair of Soviet officers left the elevator area. Rockson, with a painful, desperate try, swung his feet onto the landing as soon as they were gone. He was sure he had broken both fingers; but they weren’t his only trigger fingers, and he could still use his fists if need be. A mutant could “put away” such pain—when he had to!

He walked through the ante-room of the suite like a cat—and again reached the doors of the room with the control panel. He nudged the door and, finding it open, pushed in. There were three men slumped at the lit-up panel.

“What the hell?”

Rockson felt each man’s neck for a pulse, and just as he expected by the blood caked on their ears and around their lips, they were dead. Why?

His mutant instincts, the same feeling for danger that had saved him in the elevator, now tickled him again. He had to do something. Rock looked around. There was a rack with—what the hell was it? Some sort of heavy earmuffs! Just one pair.

Rock picked it up. It was more like a plastic shield for the ears, the kind airport workers use around jets.

That clicked. The
sound
of the crystal weapon had killed these technicians. Rock quickly put the pair of super earmuffs on. A readout was flashing “OVERRIDE.” What did that mean? Maybe the panel was being bypassed. Killov must be somewhere,
directly
controling the ray weapon.

Rockson noted that the central seat was missing. He looked around—
nothing.
He looked up and saw a circular grey bulge in the ceiling of the room, directly over the missing control seat. Was Killov up there?

Rock decided that he must be! But it looked like hours’ work to break in. There didn’t seem to be any crack in the uniform grey convexity of the steel sanctuary above.

Rockson smiled. Okay, I
won’t
go in! If Killov is in there—let him stay there and die when the bomb goes off!

Rockson went back toward the elevator shaft, determined to plant the seventy pounds of high explosives one flight up—alongside Killov’s domain. He’d kill two birds with one stone—blow the crystal to bits along with its mad owner.

It took a lot of awkward, dangerous maneuvering for Rockson to get himself—and the seventy pounds of explosives—up through the elevator’s trap door. Still, after ten minutes, he was standing on the car’s roof and packing the
plastique
into a big lump. He jammed a radio-controlled blasting cap fuse into the mass of death, then made his way back down to the 71st floor and swung back into the carpeted ante-room.

As he did this, Rockson heard a grunting just yards below. Someone was coming up the cable.

Crouching down with his big blade at the ready, he saw
Chen
scramble into the room.

“God, it’s you!” He put down the knife.

“Rock,”
Chen gasped breathlessly. “You’re alive!” Chen quickly explained why he had made the climb.

Rock handed Chen the radio-control detonator. “Get back to the others. If I’m not back in ten minutes, get out of the building—and blow it up with this.”

“Why aren’t you coming down with me?”

Rock grimaced. “Because of Killov. He’s here. I’m going to kill him personally. I just don’t trust the bastard to die in the explosion! I’ve blown him up—or thought I did—several times in the last few years!”

Chen resisted leaving, but Rock made it an order.

Once Chen left the way he had come, Rockson piled furniture until he could climb up and touch the surface of the bulging grey metal in the ceiling. It was cold steel. There
was
a micro-thin seam—too narrow for a blade. Rock had to open it somehow if he wanted to personally waste the madman.

He pondered the problem of how to get in. It seemed insurmountable.

Killov, in his darkened domain, was lining up Baltimore as a target again. This time he wouldn’t miss. Suddenly he heard a knock. Who could be knocking on his floor? He should ignore it, and yet, he was a curious man. Killov clicked on the intercom. “Who is it? Who dares—”

“Sir!” a hoarse voice yelled in Japanese-accented Russian. “It is Nakashima! I am alive! You buried my twin brother’s body, not mine. I am
alive,
master. Let me in.”

Killov nearly fainted with relief. Yes! Of course! It was too
tragic
to be true! Nakashima wasn’t dead; his dear friend had returned to him, to share his glory.

“Oh my friend, come in, come in!” Killov shouted. “I’m dilating the door!”

Rockson saw the micro-slit in the grey metal globe start bending. Slowly, like a lens shutter, a hole was appearing. No time to waste! The Doomsday Warrior dove into the aperture, just as it was wide enough to take him in, and started to pull himself up.