Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum Read Online Free PDF Page A

dinner comes first.”
    “Start powdering your nose, baby,” Rock commented. “You know I’m more scared of you than the whole damned Red Army. I’ll meet you at the Sky Lounge at, say,”—he checked a wall clock—“six-thirty.” With that he turned and started double timing along with the huffing messenger back across the exercise level.
    There were over twenty levels of the underground Century City, an entire subterranean city of Freefighting men, women, and children buried in the Rocky Mountains. Each level specialized in a different function: living cubes, commissaries, a hospital, libraries, and armaments factories which turned out the Liberator Rifle, submachine gun, and various other military weapons which were shipped out to other Freefighting cities around America. Century City had been founded by highway commuters who had gotten trapped inside an interstate tunnel complex when World War III had begun over a century earlier. It was a far different place now, with its multiple levels and functions and over 50,000 inhabitants, than it had been then. Rock was always impressed with the ever-advancing city when he moved through it.
    Still, even though it was the most advanced of all the guerrilla cities, not everything always functioned quite as it should. Although there was an elevator system which could carry a man in seconds to any of the complex’s levels, it wasn’t functioning right now. A recent disturbance in the thermal heat ducts which the city used to partially power itself had sent up geysers of superheated steam right into the main power circuits for the lift system. So the whole Freefighter city had to use the walk ramps which, thank God, had been built many decades earlier—way before the city even had elevators or moving walkways. Men and women were pushing carts up and down the ramps, and using small vehicles to carry supplies back and forth around the city. Its vital functions couldn’t stop even for a day. Not if America was to triumph over the Reds.
    It was clearly hard work for the messenger, who was so red faced by the time they reached Intel Chief Rath’s main war room that Rockson ordered the guy to sit down and take a breather.
    “Should really get your men into better shape, Rath,” Rockson said as the dour hawk-nosed Rath paced impatiently around a table filled with men monitoring radios and satellite frequencies. Rock knew they were there twenty-four hours a day, trying to increase their information on Russian troop movements, convoys, and other intel.
    “Right, Rockson. I’ll take all my men off their command posts and have them jog five times around the city.” He said it without the trace of a smile. The two men had had their differences many times, but they had to work together.
    “So what’s the emergency?” Rock asked with his own scowl. He would have vastly preferred working out with Chen for another hour than playing around with Intel Chief Rath.
    “We’ve been getting a repeated message being played over half the Red intercontinental-transmissions comm satellites. It begins with your name, and then goes right into a code that none of us have heard before. The Reds aren’t the greatest cryptics experts, so we can’t figure out how they developed this one—and why they’re so damned impatient to get this info to you. Here, listen.” Rath flipped a switch on one of the comm units that filled a long metal table, and immediately a voice came over the speakers that were mounted up on the walls.
    “17, numbers 3, 9, 15, 27, 89, 121, 189. 19, numbers 11, 17, 84, 87, 99, 122, 143, 155. 347—”
    “What the hell is it?” Rath blurted out after a few seconds. “Do you know?”
    Rockson looked confused as well as he tried to zero in on the voice that was reciting the numbers. It was a deep basso voice that read off the “meaningless” numbers.
    “You say this is coming from Russia? From what city, comrade?” Rock asked with a smirk. Rath’s mouth didn’t