James Axler - Red Holocaust

"There's another one without active on it," J.B. pointed out. "This could take out a dozen war wags in one go. Never seen a baby this size still juiced an' ready to go."

"But it's not a lot of good against the scattering of Russians down by the river. It's not antipersonnel, is it?"

They all stood around the launching cradle. Ryan noticed that someone — now long dead and turned to dust — had scrawled the girl's name, Cathy, on the live missile in green paint. For a moment he wondered who she'd been.

It was tempting to do it in the dark. The effect would be more terrifying, the shock more total. But in the end J.B. agreed with Ryan that it would be best to wait until first light.

The party split up. J.B. stayed in the narrow valley with Doc and Lori. Ryan, Henn, Finn and Krysty moved carefully down the track, stopping about one hundred and fifty feet above where Uchitel and the Narodniki commanded the river crossing.

"Could hit their horses there," whispered Finnegan, pointing to the shifting blur of the Russians' animals.

"Tell 'em we're here? No. No fuckin' way. We just stop here and wait and watch. We move when the time comes."

Major Zimyanin was also watching the river crossing. His cavalry unit was a scant couple of miles off on the far side of the valley. He lay on a promontory of cold rock. The sniper, Corporal Solomentsov, was beside him. The party didn't allow muties in the fighting patrols — indeed, they were unofficially being purged — and Solomentsov's eyesight was so good that the major suspected that he must have a mutie strain in him. However, the sniper was valuable to the militia, and Zimyanin had never mentioned his suspicions to anyone.

"How many?"

"More than four hands and less than five, Major. They crossed the bottom of the trail."

"And higher?"

The sniper hesitated, pressing the Zeiss binoculars to his eyes. "Not easy against the dark rock in this light, Major."

"But?"

"But I think less than two hands. I am sorry I cannot see more."

It was enough for the major, and he took back the glasses, smiling. It had been a long stern chase, longer than he guessed when he first received his orders. Now he was in America. It lay open before him, begging to be possessed like a complaisant whore with her legs spread wide. Tomorrow could be the best day of his life.

The first pink fingers of light were creeping over the eastern side of the valley, touching the concrete of the dam. The wind had veered more to the south, bringing the promise of heavy snowfall. The air tasted foul from the volcanic sulfur carried from a volcano a few miles toward the sea.

Uchitel had wandered to the river, keeping in the lee of the huge boulders that dotted the valley. Soon it would be done, he thought. He could take the buggies of the Americans, and their new weapons. And perhaps learn from them the location of the secret city of power where such things resided.

And then there would be no stopping the Narodniki, the rulers of the land.

Ryan glanced at Krysty who lay at his side, then turned to look up the valley toward the dam. "Soon," said the man.

Uchitel moved away from his band and stood where the slope began to steepen. Four members of his band slept there, including Barkhat, Krisa and Zmeya, whose skinny frame was almost smothered by the porcine bulk of Bizabraznia. It was time to begin rousing them for the coming day.

Major Zimyanin wiped smears of mud from the hem of his long gray coat, then peered across the valley, squinting at the unusually bright rising sun. It was rare to see it so naked and unveiled, free from chem clouds.

He clapped his hands together, trying to keep warm; it was much colder than the day before. As the officer glanced farther up the valley, he saw a pinprick of silver that trailed orange and red fringed with ragged smoke. Some moments passed before he realized what it heralded. By then the boom of the massive explosion had confirmed his guess.

Without the usual computer-guidance system, J.B. had been forced to fire the missile on manual sighting. Fortunately the range was less than half a mile, so accuracy wasn't too much of a problem. And the target was some thousand feet long by two hundred feet high.

The explosion came nearly dead center between the middle towers, roughly a third of the way down from the top of the dam.

To J.B. Dix, standing only a little below the level of the reservoir, the effect was spectacular.

To Ryan Cawdor, halfway down the valley, it was stunningly powerful.

To Uchitel and the rest of the Narodniki, at the bottom of the valley, the sight of the explosion was totally, lethally paralyzing.

A mighty column of foaming water ripped through the hole. Immediately great cracks appeared in the main structure of the dam as the pressure began to tell. Within ten seconds a huge hole appeared, destroying the top walkway of the concrete structure. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of frothing, surging water roared into the valley, washing away everything before it.

For a few heartbeats, Ryan thought they'd miscalculated. The reservoir emptied faster than they'd figured it would, and the flood swept by only forty feet below where they hid. The noise was deafening, like the roaring of a thousand enraged animals. At his side, Krysty held her hands over her ears.

The guerrillas' camp vanished.

All but half a dozen of the Narodniki were buried under the avalanche of water, mangled and pulped by the stones that the dam burst carried with it. The corpses bobbed and danced across the plain, slowing as the water began to spread out.

The dead were borne along for a couple of miles until the water became more shallow, and the carcasses snagged on rocky outcrops. The river turned sluggish and gray at its edges, finally solidifying into ice, so the corpses rested, hands and heads sticking out from the hardening slush.

Pechal went farthest of all. Sorrow, the torturer, was on his back, legs broken, hip smashed, but miraculously still living. Only his face and one hand protruded from the ice, which set around him like stone, crushing his chest, slowing his breathing. To the last, his eyes remained open and staring. Uchitel survived.

Bedraggled and freezing, the leader of the killers clung to a rock as the water tore at his legs. He'd climbed away from the tumbling wall of bubbling death, as had three other survivors: Bizabraznia, weeping, naked below the waist from the plucking river; Zmeya, who had climbed highest of them all, wriggling to safety like a skinned eel; and Krisa, the Rat, his red eyes wide in shock.

All the rest were gone — all the animals, provisions, guns and ammunition, swept away to destruction. Uchitel looked around, seeing that the river was already dropping fast to its original level. But the land beneath it was scoured clean.

"Damnation take you! Faster, you fumbling dolts! We must get there before they can escape us."

The blowing of the dam had taken Zimyanin by surprise. Until he'd seen the silver missile sprout its fiery tail, he hadn't known then any weapon that could wreak such devastation still existed. As the smoke and spray cleared, Zimyanin made out several of his prey still alive and clinging to the sides of the valley. But he'd also seen movement on the far side, where he believed there might be more of the poverty-stricken American peasants who inhabited the region. It would be as well if he got to his countrymen first.

But so early in the morning, the cavalry were slow and clumsy in saddling and mounting. He heard moans about the cold and about the lack of food, not even a hot drink for breakfast.