Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America by Ryder Stacy Read Free Book Online Page A

they were called, had been able to keep most of the machinery going—constantly oiling the equipment, cleaning the immense factories, replacing worn parts from a dwindling stockpile. But this could only go on for so long.
    Only the immense Satellite and ICBM Control Complex on the outskirts of Moscow was kept at peak efficiency—a budget of nearly two billion rubles a year was required just to keep the huge military installation from falling apart. Two fifty-story buildings sat on each side of a steel/magnesium, plastic-coated dome nearly eight hundred feet high that controlled the spy sats, the killer sats, and the guidance system for the armada of remaining Red missiles. The satellites that had shot down the American missiles from the skies as they streamed toward Mother Russia like so many tin ducks in a shooting gallery. Laser beams and particle beams arcing down from the dark heavens like bolts of white-hot lightning, disabling the U.S. weapons so they plummeted into the sea and sank to the depths of the ocean floor.
    The giant control center really wasn’t needed any longer—as Red intelligence confirmed that no other country on earth had any remaining nuclear weapons. All the nukes were within the Red domain now—an ace in the hole in case the rebels around the world got the upper hand. Not that Premier Vassily wanted to use them. The planet had been poisoned enough already by radioactive pollution. The fertile regions within Russia had been cut to nearly a quarter—and the same was true everywhere. Vast deserts now stood where once fields of crops had danced in the clear sun. But now the sun was sickly and pale as it tried to beat its way through the dust and strontium clouds that continued to circle high above the earth.
    Sometimes he felt so tired. Vassily ruled a crumbling empire and deep inside he knew it, though he would never admit it, even to himself. Somehow he had to buy time, to work out accommodations with the rebels so the Russian Empire could at least remain dominant if not in total control. Nearly twenty million Red troops were dispersed around the earth—the largest occupying army in history, and the supplies needed for the bureaucratic backup to support such a force was immense. And things were getting worse, not better. The empire he had taken over in bloody purges in the Kremlin nearly thirty years before was falling apart. Half of southern Asia was no longer in his firm grasp. The war lords there—Asians and rebellious Russian army officers—had created their own little fiefdoms where they ruled with even more of an iron fist than the regular army. China was on fire, under the control of the fanatical Muabir, the Flame of Allah. His armies of horse riding, religious zealots were only too willing to die to reach paradise. They attacked huge Russian convoys now, losing thousands of their men in the process, but causing increasing damage as they armed themselves with stolen rifles and even heavy artillery. Indochina was exploding in a renewal of Buddhism, as monks burned themselves and roused their people to rebellion. How could you kill people who killed themselves?
    Premier Vassily felt another one of his migraines coming on and pushed the button on the small wireless transmitter affixed to the side of his electric wheelchair. America—that was the worst of all. The freefighters, as they called themselves, were growing bolder by the day—and now they apparently possessed some new secret weapon that had destroyed several Red convoys—if destroyed was the word. He had received reports that nothing but fused metal had been left of nearly a two thousand man, thirty tank force. His scientists couldn’t even discover what the technology behind the weapon was. How was it possible that rebels living in caves could produce such miracles of death. Unless? Unless the American fighters were far more advanced than either Killov or Zhabnov realized.
    And Killov himself—ready to battle it out with