Doomsday Warrior 02 - Red America Read Online Free PDF Page B

monstrous Ilyushin-9 and Tupelov-180 long range jets. They walked as unobtrusively as possible into the halls of Congress, into the Senate chambers where rows of guests, mid and upper-level bureaucrats from the Soviet provinces throughout the world, sat and listened to boring plodding speeches about the greatness of the Russian Empire.
    Where once Democrats and Republicans had debated the issues of a free society, now Red speakers made a mockery of the slogans carved in stone around them. Slogans such as THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE and ONE NATION UNDER GOD. The Soviet delegates approved of everything that was said with thunderous applause, knowing full well that any speeches given were already policy, approved on high. The main speaker of the illustrious gathering, president of the U.S.S.A., General Zhabnov, would speak last. To walk in late on his words was treading on dangerous ground. But the preliminary speakers going on endlessly about improvements in transport and food production, here in the U.S. and the like, were already into their second day of nonstop talking.
    The lower level functionaries who had to listen attentively to these dry messages daydreamed of their soon-to-be fulfilled desires: a Washington D.C. party. The delegates who had attended the bashes in earlier years came back with tales that were unrivaled anywhere in the world for their sumptuous debauchery. The delegates to the 2089 A.D. convention squirmed in their seats, waiting, listening to the plaudits and audits, the pundits and digits, droned out by Pushkins and Drubkovs. They yearned to hear the last words of President Zhabnov’s speech and be off to the parties. Parties supposedly to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Red occupation of America.
    A cold wind began blowing outside and a few desultory snowflakes fell to the ground with a swirling grace. But the delegates felt suddenly cheered as word passed around that the speeches were to be curtailed as Zhabnov was anxious to begin his speech, a speech the drab brown and gray-suited red-faced commissars from around the globe would listen to attentively. Something was up. Something big. Although two huge banners with pictures of Colonel Killov, the head of KGB in America, stood on both sides of the dilapidated Sanitation Building on the outskirts of the capital, barely visible on the ride in from the airport, there was not another KGB emblem or picture in all of the assembly halls and chambers—an unprecedented snub. Moreover, stiff-collared, blackshirted KGB officers were in a distinct minority among the delegates. Something was going on and it had to do with a power struggle between the two most powerful men in America, Killov and Zhabnov.
    Everyone knew that the Grandfather, Premier Vassily, who ruled the entire world from the Kremlin, was dying. The power struggle of succession had begun already. And both Killov and Zhabnov were vying for the top post. The two were at each other’s throats. Assassination attempts had been tried on both and failed over the past year. But still the two had pretended to have amicable relations, if only to keep Vassily from becoming involved. But here, for the first time, it was out in the open. Would Zhabnov not just remove the banners of the KGB but actually come out and attack Killov in his speech—a speech ostensibly a State of the Union speech—a tradition since pre-war days, devoted in the past to praise of food production under Zhabnov and his benign ability to keep the peace?
    The nearly two thousand delegates rose slamming their hands together in thunderous applause as Zhabnov, sporting a neatly trimmed goatee, appeared at the edge of the stage in full dress uniform, his chest covered with gold and silver medals. He strode jauntily to the podium and stared down at the assembled dignitaries with a beneficent smile. The applause didn’t die for several minutes as none of the delegates wanted to be noticed as being the first one who stopped