Doomsday Warrior 01 Read Free

take out just about anything . . . if it could see it. That was the rub. If the Americans would fight like men, the colonel thought bitterly, the battle would soon be over. But they wouldn’t. It was always hit and run. Kill one soldier here, take out one tank there. They were like mosquitos, stinging, biting. But mosquitos drew blood. He felt a shiver run down his spine, even as his flesh sweated in the thick, rubberized canvas anti-rad suit.
    There! What was that? Antonovich swung his field glasses quickly up. A flash on a peak about eight hundred feet away. He licked his lips nervously, preparing to shout out the command to fire. No, there, it was just a quartz formation reflecting the brilliant yellow-orange sun. Damn, he was getting too nervous. If they had fired up there, it could have caused an avalanche of rock to fall on the other end of the bridge. His superiors would love that. Blocking the only crossing for a hundred miles that would safely hold a tank or a supply truck.
    These Americans were a ragged bunch. Why should he feel afraid? The Russian forces were so overwhelming in comparison to the feeble resistance. It was a joke. A pitiful joke on the Americans. Nonetheless, he felt his heart beat faster and couldn’t help but think of his wife and children back in Vladivostok. He tried to create their images in his mind. The pictures quickly faded as a cloud of dust shot up into his face. Damn, it was hard to wear these face masks and be able to use binoculars, Antonovich thought, opting for the mask. He pulled the visor down over his face and began breathing the pure oxygen that filled the mask, from a small pack on his back. I’ve got to use this thing more, he berated himself. The dust out here was still radioactive. He wasn’t going to die in this Godforsaken land. Not him! That was for foot soldiers not officers.
    Two of their columns had been attacked in this area in the past month. Though the damage had been minimal, the rebels had to be shown who was the power, the strength. This well-equipped force had twenty tanks, nearly five hundred infantry, and a surprise package of three heavily armed helicopters which flew several miles south waiting for any attack, at which they would swoop in for the kill and wipe out whatever ragged forces these Americans had been able to assemble this time. The secondary attack force was Antonovich’s idea. If it succeeded it would be a promotion for him. “We’ll see who will be surprised by who,” the colonel thought to himself, wondering just when and where the attack would occur. His tank ground onto the gravel embankment to the bridge, and then began the three hundred-foot crossing. The steel-webbed roadway groaned beneath the weight of the tank as Antonovich looked at the dark, rushing water some eighty feet below.
    From his rocky perch, Ted Rockson watched as the colonel’s tank rumbled onto the girder bridge. “Ready, Berger. Get ready,” he barked down, his eyes glued to the column below. Soon, the entire span was filled with tanks, over half the force. The first K-55 was just feet away from the end. “After I fire, blow it!” Rock yelled, jumping free of the boulder and landing on his feet, next to the explosives man. He swung the .9mm Liberator rapid fire on its web shoulder harness and made first-target acquisition through the scope—the officer, the one with the braiding. Rock squeezed the trigger. The muzzle jerked up as the officer’s head blossomed red and slumped.
    Berger smiled, his thick lips curling back into his thick black beard. He leaned forward, putting his full weight on the plunger which slid down into the innards of the generating box, sending out a surge of current. In less than a second, the bridge erupted in fire and smoke. The charges placed at ten-foot intervals along the underside of the metal grid roadway detonated in unison. Instantly Rockson and the twenty Freefighters opened fire from their positions, shooting at the screaming,