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.There was still time to do a littledigging.Mark pushed away from the door."Damn spider-sense," he muttered to himself.Leaving the room, he hurried downPage 27ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlthe hallway to his office.To see what-if anything-was going on in Alaska.Chapter 9Blind panic blazed like wildfire across the snowy streets of Kakwik.Forty ofColonel Robert Hogue's men had been slaughtered in the initial attack.Thestink of blood swamped the frozen air.As the dead multiplied, those still living loosed blind bursts ofautomatic-weapons fire into empty air.There were no targets to hit.Betweenthe shadows and the snow and the perpetual gloom of the swollen twilight sky,Hogue and his men were fighting ghosts.At first it was gunfire.Blindingflashes like focused lightning screamed from out of the thinning snowstorm.Barking orders all the way, Hogue and his remaining National Guard troopssought refuge behind the tin walls of the Kakwik hovels.Crouching,frightened, they waited as the gunfire stopped and silence descended once moreon Kakwik.The sergeant who had recognized the old hammer-and-sickle design squattedbehind Hogue.When the silence lingered too long, the two men peeked around the side of thehouse.Light dribbled onto the main drag from the shanty homes.Steam rosefrom freshly killed bodies."Maybe they're-" the sergeant whispered.Hogue threw up a silencing hand.Hisears were trained on the Alaskan night.For an instant he swore he'd heard thecrunch of a foot on fresh snow.A blur of movement.Something flashing through the snow just before his eyes.Almost simultaneously came a startled intake of air from the sergeant.Hogue's head snapped around.One of the sergeant's eyes was open wide inshock.The other eye was nowhere to be seen.In its place was a drippingcavity where an invisible knife had plunged deep into brain.With a hiss of air, the sergeant flopped to the snow.And as he fell, theslaughter began anew.Men screamed and bodies fell, trails of blood staining snow to red slush.Guns vanished, yanked from hands by invisible demons.No.Not invisible.As Hogue watched in impotent horror he saw a masked manhere, another there.Spiraling, pivoting.Always away from gun or bayonet.In no time the forty remaining soldiers were cut to twenty, then ten.When thewhite-haired man with the red-flecked brown eyes finally appeared from thedwindling storm, ten had become four.Including Colonel Hogue.A terrified soldier lunged screaming at the apparition.His head bounced tothe ground as his body made a beeline for a snowbank.Colonel Hogue couldn't believe how fast the stranger had moved.His eyes hadbarely registered the death of the first soldier before the other two wererushing forward.Another lost his head.For an instant while the latest body dropped, the white-haired man seemed tolose his footing on the snow.But if that was the case, he quickly regainedit.The final Alaska National Guard soldier was thrusting with his bayonet when hebecame aware of a lightness to his hand.He quickly realized that thelightness stemmed from the fact that he no longer had a hand.His wrist nowended in a raw stump.His hand, still clutching his knife, lay in the snow athis feet.The soldier had no time to ponder the horror of what had justtranspired.As he stared down numbly at his own severed appendage, he wasfinished off with a punishing blow to the forehead.As the crumpled body fell, the white-haired young man turned slowly to ColonelRobert Hogue.Behind him came the others, dressed now in snow-white fatigues.Black goggles and ski masks covering their faces, they swarmed in like antsaround their queen.The Colonel backed against the nearest shanty, breathing puffs of frightenedwhite steam into the cold air."Who are you?" Colonel Hogue demanded.The white-haired man smiled."I am the Master," he said in an accent that was unmistakably Russian."YouPage 28ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlneed know me by no other name.I have been sent to give you notice that yourdays of sowing decadence are over.Tell those who hold your leash that theSoviet Union has reclaimed Russian America." His eyes took on the dementedglint of a zealot."Long live the new Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik," theMaster said coldly.And as Colonel Hogue felt his blood run to ice, the white-haired Russianflashed a toothy smile.In spite of his great fear, the Army Colonel couldn't help but notice thatthis fearsome fighter with the flashing deadly hands was, at least in onesmall way, a typical Russian.Even after ten years without communism, withaccess to all the bounty the West had to offer, there apparently still wasn'tone damn toothbrush or tube of Crest in the whole godforsaken Bolshevikcountry.Chapter 10Mark Howard gained entry to the White House through the Old Executive OfficeBuilding.He followed subterranean corridors to the main mansion.Men and women swarmed busily all around him.Some were hired guns who werestill on hand to help with the transition from the previous administration,but most had the fresh-faced, starry-eyed look of political ideologues.With his bland young Midwestern face, Mark fit right in.No one gave him somuch as a second glance on his way through the labyrinthine tunnel system.He clutched a small black valise tightly in one hand.It looked neither newnor old, just ordinary.His knuckles were clenched white, and the handle wasslick with sweat [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]