Doomsday Warrior 02 - Red America by Ryder Stacy Read Free Book Online Page A

mountains and valleys of the vast wastelands. It was ingenious. Zhabnov still smiled whenever he realized that he had thought of it. He had immediately diverted funds meant for the building of several new fortresses into the construction of Pavlov City—a hastily erected center that would be devoted entirely to transforming docile and submissive American workers into a new army for Zhabnov. An army that would give him a whole new power base that could be used against the rebels—and against Killov himself if it came down to that.
    The city was now nearly complete and had been filled with over ten thousand of the mindbreakers. Already, thirty thousand men had been processed. Twenty five thousand of them had either died or been brain damaged beyond repair. But new projects always had a few bugs to iron out, all his scientists agreed. Soon Pavlov City would be turning out fighters for his new army by the thousands. Things were going well for him, very well.
    Zhabnov whistled from between his ruddy jowls as he headed out of the Oval Office and down the hall to his sleeping chambers. He was glad that he was president of the United Soviet States and that he had two pink-faced young virgins drugged and ready in his huge presidential bed.

Four
    I t took nearly nine days of cautious riding, almost entirely at night along mountain trails thought impassable by the Reds, for the freefighters led by Rockson to reach Century City. They had gone down from the mountainside attack point to check out the damage they had caused the Russian truck convoy and had managed to capture five soldiers who had somehow survived the hellfire, one of them the second ranking officer of the fleet. The Rock Squad had then retreated back into deep wooded valleys and mountains toward the west where they had tethered their hybrids: large sturdy mutated horses that freefighters throughout America used as transportation. With the Russian prisoners tied up, they had made their way back to Century City, one of the most powerful of the seventy-three hidden rebel cities.
    Three pine trees next to three aspens was the only sign of the main entrance into the underground fortress, home of Ted Rockson, Doomsday Warrior. The squad rode silently past the trees and into what appeared to be nothing but dense underbrush. But the brush parted easily and the party headed through a tunnel of vegetation and camouflage netting. A bluejay screeched just ahead of them.
    “That’s the signal this month,” Detroit said to Rockson who rode lead. Detroit, who was the birdcall expert of the Rock Squad, put his hands over his mouth and gave out rapid renderings of a hoot owl. The jay screeched two times rapidly—and the owl responded with a long drawn-out hoot. The Russian prisoners marching behind the hybrids looked on curiously. They were short of breath at these heights.
    Suddenly there was a grating noise. The huge granite boulder in front of them slid sideways and there appeared a quickly sloping concrete ramp lit by faint green phosphorescent overhead lights. Ted Rockson, the attack squad, and the Red prisoners headed down the tunnel entrance into Century City, home of over fifty thousand souls, comprised of twenty levels, with thirty thousand miles of electrical and water systems. As the hybrids’ stone-hard hooves beat out symphonies of clatter in the long smooth-walled tunnel, Rock saw a glint of brightness ahead. The second doorway to the Debriefing Center—a large chamber where medical doctors and intelligence aides were seated. Rock and his men handed over their ’brids to members of the debriefing staff and walked through the wide door where Intel Chief Rath, his familiar gaunt face and hooked nose bobbing up and down, greeted them excitedly. He was anxious. So much depended on the success of the mission.
    “Did it go well?” he asked, unable to contain his questions.
    “Scratch one Red convoy,” Rock said laconically. “And I mean scratch. We could hardly find