Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion (24 page)

“If they cut the power, Dieter Bern’s dead anyway.”

The bag on the floor beside him, Rourke crouched, drawing out his gunbelt with the Python and the magazine holder. He slung the belt around his waist. Then the double rig for the twin stainless Detonics pistols.

Already reloading the fired-out Detonics Combat Master, Rourke eyed the floor counter above the doors.

He glanced to Natalia;—she was buckling on her own guns. As she finished, she ripped the peaked BDU cap from her head, her almost black hair cascading to her shoulders.

Rourke threw off his own hat. He smiled. It somehow wouldn’t have the same effect to someone watching.

Mann was on his right knee, reloading the machine pistol. “Ready!”

Rourke nodded, licking his lips.

The elevator stopped—the doors opened. Rourke had one of the Scoremasters in each hand as he stepped through—two uniformed guards at the far end of the corridor. Rourke did a double tap with each pistol, at hip level, both guards going down, one man’s machine pistol discharging into the ceiling, chunks of accoustical tile littering downward.

Rourke ran forward, shouting to Natalia, “Fix the elevators!”

“Of course!“The sound of rapid bursts of machine pistol fire. “They are fixed!”

A doorway at the far end of the corridor—Rourke ran for it. No one visible—a switch on the wall beside it.

Rourke twisted half right, his left foot snapping up and out, a double tae kwon do kick and the glass panel over the switch smashing, then the button depressing. The door glided open.

Mann’s information was good so far, Rourke reflected.

He ran through the open doorway—at the far end of the well-lit room was a cot, and a very frail-seeming form was on the cot, a chain leading from a collar around the figure’s neck to the wall. It was Deiter Bern and two feet in front of where Rourke stood were the first of the photoelectric eyes that would release the synthetic curare-tipped spikes.

“To further diminish any chance of Deiter Bern being freed, the entrance to and from the section in which he is confined—the only means in or out, and my best commandoes have confirmed this—constantly broadcasts an identical electronic impulse. Should the current at the doorway be disrupted, an effect occurs similar to that of the claymore-type mines used prior to the warfare between the Superpowers. Thousands of tiny needles the size of slivers which have been positioned at strategic locations throughout the walls and ceiling and floor of the room are released, traveling at such high velocity and of such infinitesimal size that they will penetrate up to a six millimeter thickness of armor plate.”

Wolfgang Mann’s words when he and Rourke had first spoken that night at the outskirts of the camp—for some reason Rourke remembered them, he felt, almost verbatim.

But John Rourke had planned ahead.

Photoelectric eyes were visible framing the room, on both walls and on the ceiling and on the floor, forming what he realized and had realized from the start was an impenetrable spider web of light.

But John Rourke had planned ahead. “Natalia—let’s get at it.” She nodded.

Wolfgang Mann lay prone by the entry door, four machine pistols beside him, one in his hands. He looked up. “Be careful—both of you.”

“Do you want something for your foot? A pain killer— there’s not time to do much else,” Rourke asked him.

“Pain will sharpen my senses, Herr Doctor. I will take nothing which would dull them now.”

John Rourke only nodded.

The figure chained to the wall, lying prostrate on the couch, began to stir—Rourke looked back to Wolf Mann. “Does Deiter Bern know you?”

“Yes, he was my professor many years ago.”

“Call to him. Tell him to lie still—that help is coming,” and Rourke turned on his heel and walked past Mann and from the room into the corridor. Mentally, he was calculating how long it would take impassioned fully equipped storm troopers to race up fourteen flights of stairs with some infuriated Nazi officer shouting at them.

He shrugged it off—time had always been the critical factor at any event.

He started to jog toward the cylindrically shaped outside wall at his right. Natalia was already there, setting charges of the German equivalent of piastique. “I think it is ready. Mann explained the chemical composition of their explosives—they are roughly sixty percent more potent than what I am used to with American C-4. We should take cover,” she said, turning, running as she strung out wire behind her. Rourke joined her, running toward the main corridor, rounding the corner there, taking cover alongside the useless elevator banks.

She touched two exposed wires together, Rourke folding her into his arms as the explosion rocked the floor beneath his feet.

He looked around the corner from the elevator banks—a cloud of smoke and dust, and there were acrid fumes on the air.

He ran toward the source of the explosion, Natalia’s boot heels clicking on the hard floor surface beside him.

A hole—approximately five by five—had been blown in the wall.

Rourke peered out. Below him troops were forming—but no marksman would hit a moving target fourteen floors straight up.

He took Natalia’s bag from her, securing it crossbody with his musette bag, opposite the heavier bag which contained his medical equipment and more spare ammo.

Natalia had Mann’s bag, open, uncoiling rope from it and setting the rope beside it.

She extracted what looked like a large C02 pistol, a three-bladed spearlike object protruding from the muzzle.

Natalia pushed past him, leaning out the hole in the wall. Gunfire cracked uselessly from below.

Natalia looked upward. She raised the pistol with the peculiar projectile toward the parapets which crowned the tower, some twenty feet above them.

“Merde.” He grinned.

“Hmm.” She smiled, settling the pistol in both hands. She fired.

The spearlike projectile shot upwards, the rope secured midway along the shaft uncoiling from the light grasp in Rourke’s hands. Rourke tugged at the rope then, the rope going taut—the rappelling hook had taken hold along the parapets. He hoped.

Natalia took the rope from his hands, Rourke helping her up into the sill of the five-by-five hole made by the explosion. Mann’s bag—was slung again from her side, a length of rope knotted about her waist. Rourke still held the other rope.

“Be careful.”

She looked at him and laughed, then kissed him hard on the mouth, swinging out on the rope now, her legs extending, her feet impacting the stone wall of the medievallike structure, pushing her off again. She swung out into air space, then toward the wall again, her feet wide apart, the rope secured around her waist in a hitch.

Natalia’s gloved hand reached to Mann’s bag. Rourke looked beneath her—some sort of heavy equipment was being brought in below.

He looked back along the corridor toward the main corridor—no movement there.

Rourke turned his attention back to Natalia—she was edging over slightly, a surveyor’s transit, only smaller. She began securing an amorphous mound of plastique against the wall. Mann had shown her photographs of which building to site on to be certain of the spot where to place the charge.

She was connecting the wires now.

“Ready,” Natalia shouted.

Rourke tugged at the rope, drawing Natalia back along the wall surface, Natalia using her feet to rappel along it, near to the hole in the wall now. Rourke reached for her. His hands closed around her waist and he pulled her inside.

From her belt, she unhitched the wire connections.

“Stand back,” she whispered, touching the wires together. The building seemed to tremble, the floor beneath Rourke’s feet shaking.

Rourke peered through the opening again—a hole, almost five feet in diameter, in the exterior wall—he hoped blown all the way through.

Below them, fourteen stories down, men were scattering, bricks and debris raining down still.

Rourke felt a smile cross his lips.

Gunfire from the main corridor. It would be Mann, repelling SS security forces.

“Ready?”

He looked at Natalia. “Yeah, ready.”

Natalia with Rourke’s help climbed back into the opening, Rourke climbing up behind her. Her arms folded around his neck, her face inches from his. He kissed her, then closed his gloved hands along the rope and launched himself outward, Natalia’s legs tucked up, his feet taking the impacts of both their body weights against the wall, then pushing out again. Again, their bodies crashed back toward the wall surface, Rourke’s feet taking the impact, his knees flexing with it. Three feet from the hole leading into Deiter Bern’s cell.

Rourke could see the cot through the hole.

His arms ached with the combined weight of Natalia’s body and his own. He edged along the wall surface, looking down once. Whatever the piece of heavy equipment was, it seemed in position.

The hole—he was nearly to it. Another foot.

He could barely straddle it, one foot at each edge. Natalia—she edged her feet out, slipping down, through the hole. He could feel as she drew in the slack from the rope.

Rourke swung his feet outward, then through the hole, bracing with his left hand, edging off the base of the hole in the wall, then dropping down to the floor.

Sixteen feet from Deiter Bern’s bed, debris less than a foot from the bed. It had been a gamble with Bern’s life— but so far they had won, he reflected. Good luck always worried him.

Rourke ran toward Bern’s bed, setting down his medical and spare ammo bag, opening it as Natalia bent beside Bern on the opposite side of the cot. She touched gingerly at the shackle ring around Bern’s neck. “I’ve never seen a lock quite like this. I don’t know, John.”

“Just be ready,” Rourke hissed, handing her the surgical gloves. Natalia held them as he inserted his already pow

dered hands inside them. The clamp for the artery—if he left it clamped too long, death. He was gambling that he could work without it.

The carotid was located approximately one and one-half inches below the surface of the skin. Unconsciousness would result if the artery were blocked for five seconds. Death would result in twelve.

Natalia scrubbed over the incision mark with antiseptic, Rourke drawing the pre-sterilized scalpel from the sheath which Natalia held for him. “If I ask for that clamp, be real quick.”

Bern asked in German, “How are …” Rourke merely nodded, Natalia administering the injection which would render the old man unconscious.

He looked at her eyes—their blueness—love, assurance. Even if Sarah were pregnant, he still couldn’t abandon Natalia, because she had surrendered the rest of her life to be with him. And he loved her in a way he had never loved, never could.

He touched the scalpel to the skin, beginning the incision over the exact spot of the scar. “Sponge,” he hissed, reaching to Natalia’s outstretched hand, drawing the sponge from the sterile packing—blood. He threw down the sponge. He thought he could see the device—set beside the artery in a cyst cut in the flesh. Its mere presence—he shuddered thinking. There was no way to tell if dislodging it would cause it to explode—and cause Bern’s death and the loss of Rourke’s fingers.

He folded back the skin flap, using the tiny forceps. It was like removing a bullet, and no more complicated than that. Unless …

He closed the forceps over the capsule—slowly now, he started to extract it. The forceps caught against the steel collar circumscribing Bern’s neck. “Damn,” Rourke snarled.

“Here, I’ll tug up on it. It’s—it’s coming,” Natalia

whispered.

Rourke twisted, Bern’s body lurching once—it was not a proper anesthetic, but had it been there would have been no time to revive him. Rourke tugged—the forceps came, and with them, the pellet.

Rourke rose from his knees, running toward the hole in the wall, flinging the pellet and the forceps out through it.

He recrossed the room, gunfire again from the doorway beyond the invisible web of photoelectric eyes. Mann was returning gunfire. A stray shot could trigger the photoelectric eyes.

Rourke dropped to his knees beside Deiter Bern, Natalia already offering a sponge, Rourke filling it with blood, throwing it down to the floor beside him. He folded back the skin flap, looking to Natalia again. He took the surgical stapler from her, stapling the wound closed—no time for stitches. He drew his hands back, Natalia spraying the wound with the antiseptic/healing agent Munchen had given them. The instruments were Munchen’s as well.

Rourke threw down the stapler; Natalia began to bandage the incision. Rourke tore the surgical gloves from his hands, casting them down.

“Here—let me finish,” Rourke told her, completing the dressing. He glanced at Natalia’s hands—the left held a probe, the right a pick as she attacked the lock on the collar around Bern’s neck. To have severed the chain by some other means and interrupted the electrical current could have triggered the claymore-type devices secreted in the walls and ceiling, Mann had told them—and Rourke had no idea of the range or direction.

“This isn’t a normal lock, John. I don’t think—”

“You’ve got to,” Rourke told her quietly.

She looked up at him. “Yes, I do, don’t I?” She exhaled loudly, peering again at the lock, working the probe. “Wait—wait a minute. Maybe—yes.”

Gunfire again. Mann shouted, “Herr Doctor, I can’t

hold them much longer. Hurry!”

Rourke didn’t answer, securing the dressing in place with tape.

Natalia was twisting the pick. “This could take hours, but—I don’t think—I don’t think that it will.” She withdrew the pick and twisted the probe once, the lock popping open. “Five points,” she said, smiling, “for the KGB’s Chicago espionage school, hmm?”

Rourke leaned across Bern’s unconscious body and touched her face with his hands. “I love you very much. Remember that always. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but remember that—now help me with him.” Natalia put away her picks as Rourke pried the collar open and slowly removed it from Bern’s neck, lest some booby trap were present even Wolfgang Mann hadn’t known of.

None was.

Natalia threw down Mann’s bag, Rourke reaching into it for the web harness, slipping it onto his shoulders, Natalia straightening the straps. It gave him a feeling of deja vu— the rescue of Paul from the burning helicopter. How many days ago?