War Weapons Read Free Page A

almost like a cat, neck long, constantly sniffing at the air with pink nostrils constantly
     scanning every shadow, every mound of burning rubble with all its senses. His breed were fighting pitbulls—bred to take on
     tigers. Every bit of its sensory apparatus honed by evolution to detect danger, to react even faster than the attacker, faster
     than a striking tiger. Thus the dog saw the hand suddenly rising from behind an overturned jeep, the metal glistening in its
     hands from the red and orange rays of a nearby fire roaring high. The pitbull barked sharply to warn Stone and moved its stance
     forward, like a hunting dog pointing nose-first toward the attacker.
    Stone turned in a flash, having been with the animal long enough to know what that particular growl meant. He followed the
     pointing form and saw the uncertain eyes of an NAA-er, his gun hand wavering for a second between the dog and Stone. His last
     mistake. As he suddenly realized it was the human he should shoot and started to swing the 9-mm Beretta back around, Stone
     had already raised his .44 and pulled the trigger. The huge slug ripped into the central portion of the skull at the very
     instant that the attacker sent the command to his finger to fire. But it never reached the hand. The slug tore into the sniper’s
     head and whipped his brain tissue into an instant mousse, servable at all the best parties. The body crashed backward, the
     trigger finger as stiff as a piece of rock, the way it would remain forever-more.
    “Son of a bitch,” Stone muttered under his breath as he let the mag drop back to his side, but he didn’t put it away. Everyone
     was out to get him around here. Mafia crime lords, bikers, toothless bandits, New American Army troops. He might as well just
     shoot everything he saw, as it was most likely out to do him dirty.
    He moved down the street even more cautiously than before. With the smoke and the snow still falling, though more lightly
     now, and the bodies and burning vehicles everywhere as if World War II had just been dropped into the center of Bradley, it
     was hard to tell what the hell was going on. Everything seemed to dance and twist in shadows all around him—souls writhing
     within the twisting columns of smoke. But at last he made it to what was left of Patton’s headquarters—now a heaped pile of
     timber, blood-soaked rugs, broken furniture. The general had been quite a collector of antiques, paintings, what-all had turned
     up when his troops went out on search-and-supply missions. All had been brought back to the fort for his personal use. Now
     it lay smashed, beautiful works of art. It gave Stone’s heart a tug to see such beauty destroyed, annihilated. He had seen
     them and admired them—when Patton and he had been on better terms. There—a Manet, with numerous holes burned through it, lay
     draped over a cracked support timber. There —a Greek bust with a .45 slug slammed into its mouth so that its sculpted, rock
     lips were now just dust and the whole center of its face a gouged-out crater like the face of the moon.
    Suddenly Stone’s heart gave a little skip. For he saw, rolled up like a rug to be taken to the cleaner’s, the immense masterpiece
     the general had given him after his successful mission into the nearby mountains to destroy a horde of bandits. He rushed
     across the debris, dropped to one knee, and ran his hand across it. No holes, no burn marks. He reached up and unraveled it
     just a bit to see. Yes—it was the Michelangelo—the Creation—safe and sound. Stone could see the very tip of an angel’s finger
     reaching out through the clouds. It gave him some kind of deep shiver that the painting had survived. It seemed to have been
     destined to. And Stone felt that as ridiculous as it probably was, it seemed like some kind of honor that he should be entrusted
     with such a priceless work of art. So much had been destroyed. There wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot left for