Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour by Ryder Stacy Read Free Book Online

his half-assed command, heading for the hills. Rock got to his feet and took off after the major. Shots rang out, whizzing by his shoulder, but return fire from his men pinned down the Reds trying to get him. Rock tackled the Blackshirt football style and they fell together in the dust at the top of the hillock.
    It was a brief struggle. The man was powerful but untrained in the martial sciences. Hand-to-hand was not his forte! With a knife to the major’s jugular, and the man’s arms pinned by Rockson’s weight sprawled over him, the major cried, “Surrender! I surrender! Mir!”
    Rock knew the Red word for peace. “So it’s peace you want. Mir, hey?” Rock said, twisting the blade so it made a little red pinprick just to the south of the man’s pounding blood vessel. “Well, we’ll both get up, then; you tell your men to drop their arms. Okay?”
    The major said "da,” and they got slowly up. The major was looking for a false move, a way for the tables to be turned, but Rock didn’t give him any leeway. With the knife to his throat he walked with Rock back down the hill, shouting, “Surrender. I order you to throw down your weapons.”
    The first group, three men, immediately stood and tossed their rifles and raised their hands. The second group, of three, behind the tree stump, jumped up too, but with their Kalashnikovs blazing as they backed toward the woods. Farrell cut one down with a burst of .9mm slugs.
    Archer popped up out of nowhere, his bearlike body moving with grizzly speed. He had threaded a harpoon-size arrow into his steel bow and now let it fly directly at the offending pair of Reds. The arrow, a good four feet of steel with a serrated tip, sliced through the belly of one, and, since his comrade was right behind him, it entered him too—skewering the two of them as they fell face forward, together.
    The four surviving Reds—the lieutenant, the major, and two privates—were made to sit with their hands on their heads on the ground. The Freefighters, who had frisked them quickly for hidden weapons, stood over them.
    “How about disposing of this pack of vermin so we can get on with our expedition,” said McCaughlin, fingering his Liberator.
    “No,” Rock replied. “I think we’ll let them go on, without weapons or food. These parts are crawling with mountainmen, trappers, all sorts of interesting animals. It’s time the KGB learned how to forage, how to hunt, and maybe how to beg the people they come across—people they’ve been oppressing—for some food, some water.”
    The major wet his lips with his tongue, and said in broken English, “No! Please. With no weapon, no food, we die.”
    McCaughlin nudged him with his rifle barrel. “Take your choice, partner. Die now or take your chances. As a matter of fact, Rock, what do you say we take their boots too?”
    They all began begging now, and Rock, after a while, said they could keep their boots. They were told to run over the hill, and they did so with just their clothes on their backs.
    Farrell put a plastisynth bandage on Rock’s nick to prevent infection. In addition to his other skills, the lanky blond man was a pretty fair medic. Somehow that fact hadn’t gotten on the file.
    As they rode, McCaughlin brought his steed alongside Rockson’s and said, “Won’t they come back after the little meat we left on the moose? Isn’t that giving them too much?”
    Rock smiled. “Before we left, I sprinkled it with a bit of juice from that arovalis plant over at the edge of the field.”
    McCaughlin laughed. “That will give them a few nightmares.” The arovalis, he knew, was a senior cousin of the weed, the stuff that made plains animals as violently mad as rabid dogs if they happened to lunch on it.
    Miles beyond the encounter, Rockson called a halt, and they camped, setting up the four survival tents—two men in each. They slept for six hours, except for Archer, who sat watch. The mountainman seemed inexhaustible. But he made up