War of the Sun (4 page)

He knew this temptation well.

He had, in fact, secretly visited the place alone, not a year ago, shortly before the titanic battle against the Super-Nazis. Now the decadent, wicked memories of the clandestine trip filled his head with a mixture of unbearable guilt and indescribable pleasure.

Sin City could be best described as a real-life pornographic movie.

Soon after his arrival in the modern-day Gomorrah, he’d stumbled into a place called the Q Club. Here he saw a brutal reenactment of nothing less than an Aztec human sacrifice. A beautiful young Indian girl, nude and in a drug-induced trance, was led to a block of stone at center stage. As she was bound to the stone, a robed and masked figure entered the stage, attended by several more Indian girls. As the club’s sound system blasted a deafening, rhythmic beating of drums, the robed figure danced and cavorted lewdly with his attendants. The beat of the drums increased in intensity. Smoke poured from some hidden source near the stage. As it had wafted out over the audience, Wolf had recognized the sickly-sweet aroma of opium.

He got up to leave but found his way out blocked by the crowd craning to get a better look at the stage. Their expressions feverish, their eyes glazed, the crowd pressed against him in the packed, suffocatingly hot room. A roar of approval went up around him, and he had involuntarily turned back toward the stage. There he saw that the robed figure had pulled a large dagger from under his cloak. He advanced toward the bound woman as his attendants rolled on the floor around him, their naked brown limbs twisted together in a variety of sex acts.

The drumbeats reached a crescendo and, horrified, the captain saw the robed figure raise his dagger high above the helpless girl’s chest.

Wolf turned away and forced his way through the drooling, entranced crowds. He never did find out if the ceremony was real or not.

He found himself next on a dimly lit street, sweating, trembling from the bizarre experience. Almost immediately he was surrounded by an army of prostitutes, all of them beckoning to him, shouting out specialties and promises of low prices. Meanwhile, other hookers were servicing confirmed customers in the shadows. He saw one on her knees in front of a wizened old man. She turned slightly toward him and he saw that she was missing an eye. Her one good eye winked grotesquely at him as she gestured for him to take his place beside her customer.

He turned and staggered down the street, the night quickly turning into a garish blur. He wandered from scene to scene of incredible depravity, somehow compelled to witness the darkest and most ugly of human behavior. It was as if he needed to confirm what he knew to be true about man’s ultimate nature.

But sometime during this nightmare of ecstasy, he was either slipped or secretly injected with a powerful drug, possibly even
myx.

He woke up the next morning in a seedy hotel, lying atop a young girl dressed like a Dutch maid, right down to the wooden clogs. She was still breathing when he fled.

He spent the whole night alone on the bridge, his conscience wracked by both horror and lust.

Finally the sun came up, and the neon explosion on shore began to fade away. At 0600 hours, his staff reported that thirty-three men had successfully jumped ship during the night, and seventeen of them were still missing.

Those that survived returned penniless, some missing their shoes, and even their pants. Several were victims of bad or tainted drugs. One of these had to be carried aboard by his exhausted shipmates. He was raving incoherently, caught in the violent grip of a drug-induced psychotic attack. Before he could be restrained in the ship’s sick bay, the man broke loose and killed himself by dashing his head against a bulkhead.

Wolf ordered that a heavily-armed search party be dispatched to Sin City to turn up any trace of the
AWOL
crew members. They failed on all accounts, leaving Wolf no choice but to sail on without the missing men.

By 0830 hours, there was still no sign that the men inside the Canal Control tower would allow the
New Jersey
to pass.

Wolf ordered that radio contact be made once again with the extortionists. They had succeeded in getting the
New Jersey
for the night. Now that their cesspool had sucked in seventeen human beings, the messages from the Sin City authorities became more direct. At 0845 hours, Canal Control’s rulers demanded that the
New Jersey
pay a bribe in addition to the exorbitant toll fee already paid. Only then would it be allowed to pass.

Wolf had had enough. For many reasons, he had patiently resisted using force to move through the canal. But now his patience had simply run out.

He ordered the crew to their battle stations. Then he opened a direct radio link between himself and the extortionists on shore.

“This is the captain of the battleship
New Jersey,”
he told them in his heavily-accented English. “We have paid the required toll. We now demand that we be allowed to proceed immediately.”

The radio’s electronic distortion didn’t hide the bizarre arrogance of the return message. The voice was so sing-songy it was hard to determine if it belonged to a man or a woman.

“This is Canal Control, Captain. May we remind you that you are in no position to make demands.”

Wolf knew the arrogance on the other end of the radio line was well placed. Sin City’s strong hand was its control of this critical point in the canal. They felt they were invulnerable to attack because any use of firepower against them would risk damage to the canal and its locks. The perpetrator would thus be sentencing himself and his ship to be stranded in the canal, possibly forever.

Yet Wolf refused to countenance such behavior. Plus, he had some valuable intelligence on his side: he knew the lackeys controlling the canal locks were not actually in the tower, but hidden deep inside a bunker nearby. But he also knew these people would not make a move without orders from the tower itself.

“Canal Control,” he called into the radio again. “Allow us to pass, or my guns shall be brought to bear.”

There was no immediate response. After a few minutes, Wolf ordered the battleship’s forward gun turrets brought to starboard. A shipboard alarm sounded as the two huge turrets, each bearing three massive sixteen-inch guns, swung into position, pointing in the general direction of Sin City.

Silence fell over the ship. The tension on the bridge was palpable.

Suddenly the radio crackled to life. “If you are bluffing, Captain Wolf, it is a pathetic attempt.”

Wolf ignored the taunt. Instead he gave a few quick orders which resulted in the loading of shells into each of the forward guns. The shells, each the weight of a small automobile, had an explosive warhead containing enormous destructive capability.

“There are innocent people inside our city,” the radio crackled again with the strange voice. “Even some of your own people. They have chosen to stay. Do you intend to kill them?”

“If they were foolish enough to be tempted by your lies,” Wolf replied harshly, “then they are foolish enough to die.”

There was a burst of static, followed by a hideous sexual laugh.

“You surprise us, Captain Wolf—you are so quick to judge us. You see, we know you yourself have partaken of us. Of our pleasures. We know this, sir, because we have your past visit in its entirety on videotape. This, too, can be had for a slightly higher adjustment in our toll fee, plus another…”

At that instant Wolf gave the order for the first turret to fire. The huge guns roared to life, expelling three shells at incredible velocity. But they did not hit the city itself. Instead, the salvo impacted directly on the 200-foot tower housing Canal Control. The top of the needlelike structure was instantaneously smashed to dust and fire. In a matter of two seconds, the rest of the tower collapsed, leaving nothing more than a gigantic rubble-filled smoking crater.

No sooner had the reverberation of the massive cannon shots dissipated when an alarm sounded from the control bunker on the far shore. Within seconds, the lock’s great gates began to swing open.

Two minutes later, the
New Jersey
was once again on its way to the Pacific.

Tokyo

T
HE PALACE HAD THREE
spires.

In each of these towers were three antiaircraft guns, each manned by a crew of three. Three flags flew atop each tower. Each flag contained the symbol of three red balls.

It was just midnight, yet the palace and its vast grounds were lit up almost as if it were daytime. There was a cacophony of sounds emanating from the flying-saucer-shaped main building. Loud music was blaring out of large speakers which seemed to be set up everywhere. Shrieks of laughter, drunkenness, and lust were falling in rhythm with the music’s pounding beat. Multicolored fireworks were being set off overhead. Larger explosions could be heard in the distance.

Inside the main hall of the palace, the orgy was in full swing. The guests this evening were the top commanders of the Home Island’s Air Defense units. There were nine of them in all, representing eighteen air squadrons. Each in turn had been allowed to bring two guests; most had invited their two top staff officers.

Each man now sat at the long low table which dominated the center of the great hall. Before him was a large jug of
sake,
a soupbowl full of cocaine, and a basket containing a pipe, some matches, and an ice-cube-sized piece of hashish. There were also dozens of small wooden barrels containing live fish, crabs, and squid.

Every guest also had access to three females, each one with long black hair cut to the exact same length. Many of these were girls still in their teens. They were all naked, and many were bound by the hands and feet with silk ropes. Each had been injected with a long-lasting barbiturate which would render her accessible, yet virtually defenseless.

The protocol of the party was lust fulfillment, the more decadent, the better. As all the guests had already ingested great quantities of liquor and drugs, they were trying to outdo one another as to who could come up with the most depraved act. Many of them had taken to eating their food off a girl’s naked body, some while having sex with another girl. Others had forced two or three girls to have sex with each other, choosing only to sit back and watch. Still others were mercilessly whipping their procured partners, some to the point of death. While this was going on, just about all the men were eating squirming live fish from the small wooden barrels.

All in all, it was a typical night inside Hashi Pushi’s three-tiered palace.

Yet the man who lay claim to all this madness was nowhere in sight. He was, in fact, in another part of the palace, in a grotto deep below the palace’s inner wall.

Inside this place, it was cool and dark. The only light was a strange red glow emanating from the deep waters of the grotto’s pool. This red light cast eerie shadows on the dark stone walls of the place. The scent of incense filled the damp air.

Hashi Pushi sat by the pool, staring into its bloodlike water. He was a grotesquely overweight man of undetermined middle age; his only garment was a long white robe. His fat face was partially covered with an unkempt, scraggly beard and a long, greasy mustache. His lips and nose were stained with the remains of his last few meals. His teeth were rotten, his ears perpetually infected. He hadn’t bathed in weeks.

He was then, at that moment, a contented man.

Earlier in the evening he had commanded his personal physician to concoct one of the special mixtures of drugs which were the doctor’s special talent. Using a blend of the bark of a tree and herbs and a certain part of the flesh of the poisonous puffer fish, the doctor had composed a paste which, he claimed, would enable the warlord to have visions of things to come. Actually, the physician had simply added some of the notorious
myx
to the
mélange,
which Hashi Pushi had drunk after it had been dissolved in a bottle of
sake.

Now, as he stared into the red waters of the pool, he could feel the drugs begin to electrify his already-overloaded nervous system, so much so, his eyes were involuntarily closed tight.

Ten minutes went by with Hashi Pushi not moving, barely breathing. As the drug gradually altered his brain chemistry, he felt himself slowly entering a state of pure hallucination. Gradually he was able to open his eyes and stare into the blood pool. And in these red waters he thought he saw a vision.

He saw a giant tortoise lying on a tranquil sandy beach. Suddenly the sky darkened as a giant flock of birds flew in from the sea, blocking out the sun. Gulls, terns, ravens, crows, sparrows, and swallows descended on the tortoise and began tearing at its exposed flesh. The tortoise tried to hide in its shell, but the strong beaks of the smaller birds reached into the shell to peck and tear at his eyes. All the while a huge white eagle circled slowly overhead.

Slowly and in great agony the tortoise made its way across the beach, but all the while his attackers tore at him. The combined strength of the birds finally flipped the tortoise over on its back, exposing its softer underside to the skies. Helpless, its bloody limbs and head waving uselessly, the tortoise could only lie there as the eagle suddenly plummeted from the skies, its talons and razor-sharp beak poised to rip into the soft-shelled underbelly.

But an instant before the eagle would have torn the tortoise into pieces the vision ended, only to be replaced with the face of a dark, absolutely sinister bearded man. He was not quite Caucasian, but not Asian, either. His face seemed to be floating in a large bank of cumulus clouds. He was staring into Hashi Pushi’s eyes and laughing, his cackle sounding like thunder. Then a shudder went through Hashi Pushi’s huge, smelly body, and like some weird kind of cinematic special effect, this man’s devilish face evolved into that of a young girl with unusually red hair.

That’s when Hashi Pushi opened his eyes and discovered they were filled with tears.

“What could this mean?” he cried.

One week later