Warlord's Revenge (6 page)

He budged the heavy rock aside, looking down cautiously into the three-foot hole below, to make sure there wasn’t a bomb or
such planted there. He had learned that complete and total paranoia was the best policy out here in the lawless lands. But
the transmitter, wrapped in a plastic bag, was the only object in the dirt hole, and Stone carefully lifted it and aimed it
at the solid rock face. He pressed a switch, and the very sides of the mountain wall seemed to slide apart as two three-foot-thick
doors of solid granite slid apart, creating a wide entrance. Stone mounted the bike and drove it in, the walls closing behind
him automatically, as they were programmed to do unless receiving a counter-instruction within ten seconds. He parked the
bike alongside the two cars and a van parked in the outer garage of the bunker.

“Home” again. It still made him feel weird every time he came in the damn place. “Come on, dog!” Stone put his fingers in
his lips and let loose with a sharp blast that made the pitbull’s ears instantly perk up like flags rising on a flagpole,
as its eyes opened as wide as omelets. It looked at Stone as if to say, “That wasn’t fair,” and then rose and jumped down
off the bike. Realizing where it was, the animal suddenly sped up and rushed ahead of Stone. It knew the way by heart, and
the moment he opened the front door that led into the main house, the animal had disappeared in a blur and headed down the
hall, through the living room and into the kitchen. The goddamn mutt was nothing more than a trained Pavlovian rat, Stone
thought with disgust—behaviorized into making all the right turns to get to its beloved chow.

As he walked through the living room Stone’s gaze swept around the entire space, still clean and spotless, with its large
loftlike area, its plants, plush wall-to-wall carpeting, thick caressing couches. In his mind he kept seeing them all sitting
there, his mother knitting, his father reading military tales or Kipling stories, his sister writing her poetry on her computer
or doodling with her MacPaint. Happy little family scene, Stone thought as he blinked his eyes and rubbed them hard.

Ghosts. Ghosts of the past. Would he ever be rid of them? They seemed to cling to him like a spiderweb, wet and sticky and
suffocating. They had all lived together for five years inside the ultramodern hole in the side of a mountain, twenty thousand
square feet plus of every imaginable convenience, fully stocked kitchen, armaments room, private bedrooms, firing range… The
Major had been prepared, that was for damn sure, Stone thought as a little grin passed over his face. Now that the son of
a bitch was dead, Martin found himself actually caring about his old man a lot more than he had done when the Major had been
alive. Then they had done nothing but argue. For years. Even as they lived together in the bunker there had been an electric
tension between them as Major Clayton R. Stone, Ret., had tried to teach his son
his
ways—and Martin had resisted. Now that the old man was dead, Stone could allow himself softer memories of the past. It all
became hazy, events a little funnier, his father a little less of a person and more of a myth, a dream that had happened in
another life, a dream Stone held in his head like a haunting hologram.

Stone blinked again, and the ghosts disappeared, vanishing from the couches, the rug. He walked through the wide living space
and then down a long hallway to his father’s main computer room. The instant he touched the door, he knew something was up.

It was ajar. Yet when he had left it just days before, he had closed it—and it required a punched-in combination on a computer
keypad to the right of the doorway to gain entrance. Stone pulled out his .44 Magnum and held it loosely at solar plexus level,
eyeing every comer of the beeping, pulsing room. His father had been a computer buff—even a genius, perhaps—and had filled
this, his private chamber, with nearly a million dollars worth of computers, processing gear, and communications devices.
God knew what all. The preprogrammed setup was still carrying out all sorts of functions on its own, powered by computer-run
electric generators and a combination of solar and gasoline power, for which his father had once told him the place could
fuel itself for ten years without a single drop being added. Then it would die—as dead as the mountain rock itself.

But for the moment the room appeared to be functioning perfectly. Everywhere were green and amber blinking lights, numbers
buzzing across screens, sine waves and graphs, clicking sounds as radio transmissions were automatically tape-recorded. Stone
could see no one. Somehow he knew that if someone was hiding here, he would sense them. Yet he felt nothing. He went to the
main computer console, sat down, laid the big .44 up on the Formica table, and entered the “on” code. The screen blinked to
life, and the moment it did, a red light blinked on and off and the words EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION, EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION
gal-loped across it in flickering letters.

Stone stared up in amazement as lines of glowing green print begin advancing down the face of the wide glass monitor in front
of him:

MARTIN, THIS IS APRIL. I CAN ONLY HOPE THAT IT’S YOU WHO IS READING THIS. BUT YOU WOULD BE THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD ACCESS THE
CRAY II. I’M WITH DR. KENNEDY. BUT WERE BOTH IN GREAT DANGER. ALL OF US ARE. YOU TOO. THEY’RE AFTER US, MARTIN. A HIT TEAM,
TRACKING US DOWN LIKE DOGS FROM THE MOMENT WE ESCAPED FROM THE DWARF’S RESORT. THE DOC WAS WOUNDED, BUT I THINK HE’LL LIVE.
BUT WE CANT STAY HERE. THEY’RE TOO NEAR. WE’RE GOING TO RESUPPLY OURSELVES AND LEAVE. LEAVE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT THROUGH
THE EMERGENCY DOOR. MARTIN—WE’RE GOING TO GO TO THE PLACE WHERE YOU AND I VACATIONED WHEN WE WERE KIDS. YOU KNOW WHERE I MEAN—WHERE
GRANDMOTHER LIVED OUT HER LAST YEARS. IT’S ISOLATED ENOUGH THAT NO ONE COULD FIND US. AND WE’LL WAIT FOR YOU. I PRAY THAT
YOU’RE STILL ALIVE. IF YOU’RE NOT, I’M SURE THAT IT WON’T BE LONG UNTIL I JOIN YOU IN WHATEVER THERE IS AFTER ALL THIS—’CAUSE
IT’S PRETTY FUCKING HORRIBLE WHERE I’M STANDING. LOVE APRIL
.

Yeah, that was sis, all right, Stone thought with a sardonic twitch. Always the card, always the optimist. Always a way with
words to make you look on the bright side of things. Not that it wasn’t all true. So she had gone to their other summer home
in Stoneham in Pawnee National Park. If the bunker was in remote territory, that place was ready for a cover of
National Geographic
. It was high up on the side of a mountain, right up in the goddamn clouds. It was only twenty miles to the southeast but
was inaccessible to anyone without a pickax and a llama. If she made it, she’d be safe —for the moment.

Stone keyed out the message and then asked for and got access to general information—the main directory of his father’s extensive
computer-information system. When his father had set the system up, knowing his son might someday need it, even have his life
be dependent on the data, the Major had tried to make it as simple and user-friendly as possible. So all Stone had to do was
pick a subject, then zero in on more and more precise information.

“
AREA OF INFORMATION
?” the computer printed out on the monitor in front of him.

“
RADIATION
,” Stone typed in. The computer box on the table was hooked up with parallel port cables to the mainframe, a Cray II Jr.,
the only computer that the Cray company had ever allowed to be sold to a private individual, his father. But then, being a
war hero, and the president and main stockholder of one of the most powerful and influential munitions manufacturing plants
in the country, Major Clayton R. Stone, ex-Ranger, circa Special Forces, circa LURPS, Vietnam, was not often a man who didn’t
get his way.

“
RADIATION
,” the computer terminal scrolled in a flash in front of Stone. A list of subheadings about the subject flashed on and off.

“
MEDICAL TREATMENTS FOR
:” Stone keyed in, and sat back as the mainframe seemed to gulp down the information with a little electronic bump on the
far side of the large computer room.

“
RADIATION POISONING
.” The green words began jumping across the screen almost as fast as Stone could read them, “
EXPOSURE TO VARIOUS FORMS OF RADIATION FROM WASTE PRODUCT TO REACTOR MATERIALS TO BOMB DETONATION. TYPICALLY GAMMA RAYS, BETA
PARTICLES, HEAT WAVES, SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE SIGNIFICANT TO TOTAL CELLULAR DISRUPTION AND/OR ANNIHILATION
.

“
HYDROGEN BOMB BLAST
,” the screen scrolled on. A chart appeared on the terminal of an H-bomb going off, and the computer asked Stone for its size.

“
TEN MEGATONS
,” he keyed in. “
DETONATION DISTANCE
25
MILES
.”

Within a second the screen was digitizing back, “
CENTRAL LOCATION OF BLAST HERE
.” A flashing dot appeared on the monitor, and then concentric circles going outward from the explosion at ten-mile intervals,
“
DEAD ZONE
,” the inner ring read, as did the second one. “
AT
30
AND
40
MILES
,” the monitor scrolled, “
SEVERE POISONING FROM GAMMA RAYS AT
50—
SURVIVAL POSSIBLE. MAXIMUM TREATMENT NEEDED
.”

“
SYMPTOMS: NAUSEA, BLEEDING FROM ALL ORIFICES, HAIR LOSS, TEETH LOSS, FINGERNAIL LOSS. PEELING OFF OF SKIN AND LIPS IS NOT
UNCOMMON WITH RADIATION BURNS OF SEVERE MAGNITUDE. LEUKEMIA, CANCER OF ALL FORMS, BEGIN SHOWING UP WITHIN
6
TO
12
MONTHS
.

“
RADIATION MADNESS: OFTEN A KIND OF MADNESS CAN SET IN ON THOSE HEAVILY IRRADIATED BUT NOT KILLED OUTRIGHT. SYMPTOMS ARE SIMILAR
TO RABIES, WITH FOAMING AT THE MOUTH AND VIOLENT, EVEN PSYCHOTIC, ACTIONS
.

TREATMENTS: RECENT DISCOVERIES SHOW THAT POTASSIUM IODIDE, SEA KELP, AND CERTAIN MIXTURES OF VITAL MINERALS AND TRACE ELEMENTS
CAN ACT AS POWERFUL CLEANSING AGENTS TO THE ENTIRE BODY. AS LONG AS THE SYSTEM IS FED THESE SUBSTANCES IT NEEDS, IT WILL NOT
HAVE TO TAKE THEM FROM THE FOOD SOURCE OR THE AIR, BOTH OF WHICH WILL BE RADIOACTIVE
.

“
SUGGESTED PRESCRIPTIONS
:

POTASSIUM IODIDE
—20
MG PER DAY
.

KELP TABLETS
—100
MG PER DAY
.

MIXED TRACE ELEMENTS AND VITAMINS
—200
MG PER DAY
.”

The computer sped on and on, giving Stone more information on how to deal with radiation poisoning than he could deal with.
From not eating any animals that grazed or fed on other animals for at least six months to not touching any but spring water
for at least two months. He tried to note what he could but at last grew impatient, knowing he had to get the hell out of
there. He knew what he had come to find out. He knew they had all been heavily saturated with radiation and were right now
living in the spit-up of the big bomb. Unless they could clean out their systems internally, they were dead men. Whatever
the Indians believed about the power of the Cheyenne spirits, it was the white man’s poison that would kill them all.

S
tone swore he felt funny as he walked out of the computer room, this time shutting the steel door securely behind him. He
didn’t know if it was reading about all the stuff or what, but he swore he had all the symptoms—every damn one of them. The
strangest thing was his skin, which felt all sunburned. Even his guts felt like they’d been microwaved, everything all hot
and threatening to spasm at any moment. Stone moved fast to the medical supplies room and quickly found the pills the computer
had referred to. He opened one of each of the vials of the three radiation-fighting pills the computer had recommended and
popped a few into his mouth, swallowing them down with water from a nearby faucet.

Taking as many of the boxes as he could carry, but leaving at least a little for the future, if there was any such thing,
Stone headed back out to the garage section and loaded them up on top of the back of the Harley, securing them in place on
thick, nearly impervious plastic alloy boxes that sat in a wide frame on the back of the motorcycle. Then he headed back to
the ammunition room and reloaded the Uzi 9-mm auto-pistol. He had felt naked without it. But an extra batch of thirty- and
fifty-round clips, and four dozen magazines for the Ruger .44, made him just a little more secure. He loaded up his arms with
more of the 89-mm Luchaire mini-missiles. He had used them all up. What had seemed like a lifetime supply when he had put
the last batch on the bike had gone in under a month. Now he would hoard them like diamonds. He carried a half dozen out to
the Harley, snapping them in place in a slim-line auto-feed built on the side of the bike so he could pop each shell up and
slam it right into the tubular launcher.

Stone made a final trip back to where he knew the pitbull would be waiting. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared for the mess it
had managed to make in the hour they had been there. The canine had somehow pushed the chair over to the kitchen cabinets
where it knew cans of food were stored, had managed to climb up on said chair, open the cabinet doors, knock out rows of the
carefully stacked tins of everything from sardines to toothpaste, ravioli to apricots in syrup. Not that the terrier knew
what the hell it was doing. But as every oak tree knows—from the littlest acorn… Thus some of what crashed to the ground the
fighting cannonball of muscle and leathery hide found appetizing. In fact, it found a surprising variety—and quantity—of the
mixed together substance to be to its liking.

“Oh, God, dog,” Stone whispered, his face growing pale as he saw the damage the creature had inflicted on his mother’s once
clean kitchen. She would be turning in her grave. Stone had a sudden vision of her, back when they had all lived together,
of how she had yelled at him for leaving a plate of chicken out at night, saying it would bring in the bugs and the rats.
If she could only see it now. The thought brought a smile to his face.