Doomsday Warrior 01 Read Free Page B

middle of his head of jet-black hair burned like a flame as the blazing sun beat down. His deeply tanned, rough-hewn, weathered face turned slowly to check out every one of the fighters under his command. He knew their wives, their girlfriends, their children. He knew that he would be the one to bring back the dreaded news if . . .
    The Freefighters looked at one another and then down at their own bodies. Everyone was whole! No flesh pierced, no blood pouring like a river, taking a man’s life down into the dirt.
    “Rock, you’ve been hit,” Detroit Green, a powerfully built black man, and Rockson’s right-hand man, said, pointing to a large gash in Rockson’s flak vest. The Survivor looked down. Something had reached him, some spinning piece of shrapnel looking for flesh to slash. He pulled the dirt-brown vest open and looked at his chest and stomach, then grinned. Nothing!
    “I’m the one always blasting all of you to wear these damn things. I’m glad I listen to my own orders.” A shell whistled overhead and slammed into the plateau behind the wall of boulders, some hundred feet away. “All right, let’s get the hell out of here!” Rockson said, swinging his own pack and rifle up over his shoulders. “Let the bastards blow up the whole mountain. Waste ten tons of ammo before they realize we’re not even here.” The mortarmen loaded up their prize howitzers in field packs and, sharing the weight with another Freefighter, hefted the packs into the air and onto their shoulders, carrying the heavy weapons between them, their taut muscles straining.
    “McCaughlin, leave them a few surprises when they come to investigate up here,” Rockson said with a grin.
    “With pleasure, Rock,” the jowled Scotsman replied, smirking. He quickly pulled three Claymore Sprayers out of his pack and placed them carefully around the perimeter of the clearing, clicking the arming devices into place and sprinkling grass and twigs over them. “Should be a nice birthday present for another ten or twenty of our Russian guests,” the red-haired McCaughlin yelled out to Rockson as the Freefighters began leaving the plateau and heading down the opposite side of the mountain and its loose sliding rocks and pebbles. The thick green woods below beckoned them. Inside was safety, refuge.
    “Move men! Move! Expedite!” Rock yelled out, taking up the rear. The Freefighters slid and half-ran down the steeply sloped ridge. It was a hell of a lot easier going down than coming up, although every few hundred feet someone would slip and go tumbling head over heels, slicing open arms and hands on the coal-sized, sharp-edged rocks. Behind them, the Reds had finally found their targets. The plateau erupted with a thunderous roar into thick, black smoke and flame as shell after shell sped in. “Most expensive rock demolition program in the history of the Soviet Empire,” Rock thought cynically to himself. They were nearly halfway down the mountain, the men yelling out playful insults to one another as first one, then another of the Freefighters slipped and slid ten or twenty feet. They were in a good mood. Things had gone well. The last Freefighting Attack Force, sent out only a week before, had met with disaster. Attempting to attack a small truck convoy, they had been ambushed from behind by a second army patrol. Twenty men wiped out. But this mission was an unqualified success. If they could destroy this much Russian armament every time they went out, it would only be a few more years before the bastards would run home with their Commie tails between their legs, and leave this land of thin air and violet, glowing skies.
    “Move! Don’t slow down!” Rock continued to push the men faster, taking up the rear. He suddenly felt apprehensive. Why, he wasn’t sure. Years of fighting the invader had sharpened his senses to a razor-honed edge of perception. Then he heard it! The sound that every American dreaded, the Russian MS-18 helicopters, armed