Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (13 page)

Michael Rourke’s left fist balled more tightly to his knife, the bracken of trees and brush nearing, his feet hammering down the snow, sometimes slipping, Michael manipulating his body weight to keep his balance, sometimes a near thing. He didn’t glance skyward, running at full speed as he was, the stiffness of the cold, the stiffness from crawling those hundreds of yards gone, replaced with a rush of energy, a pounding of the blood. But he would know if the clouds passed from in front of the moon—because he would be immediately visible for the enemy to see and fire upon.

A hundred yards, he judged it. He kept running, the smaller man, Han, beside him. A good runner, Michael Rourke decided. They were racing each other, he suddenly realized, Han trying to pull ahead of him, Michael Rourke almost starting to laugh which would have broken his stride. Instead, he used the last of his kick, the left fist with the knife

in it extended at his left side, his right hand holding the muzzle of the rifle away from him, his head back and high, shoulders thrown back, mouth gulping more air than he should have, he knew.

The snow was washed with light. They reached the trees, Michael sagging against one of them, his lungs aching with the cold air he had sucked in. He was breathing so rapidly, he could feel his heart thudding in his chest and there was a moment of lightheadedness and then terrible chill. The lightheadness passed, but not the chill. Han was beside him, smiling.

Michael had won the race.

The next question dealt with staying alive, he thought ruefully, considerably less fun and vastly more difficult. He heard movement at the far side of the stand of trees, both he and Han so consumed with the run that neither he nor Han had swept the area for sign of the enemy they hunted. Michael Rourke edged to the side of the tree against which he had sagged, stripping away the assault rifle, passing it to the Chinese. Han took it, Michael making himself disappear into the snow laden trees, the snow falling from the pine boughs, dusting his face and chest and hair and shoulders. He shook some of the snow free and pulled up the hood of the parka against the cold. He kept moving.

He heard movement, from the same direction as before. He stopped moving, listening.

The sounds were of two men. He had learned how to use a knife —for killing and for many other purposes — from his father. And then Natalia had taught him refinements in the use of a blade for killing or disabling an opponent. Even his father conceded that Natalia was the vasdy better of the two of them with a knife.

Michael shifted the knife to his master hand, flexing the fingers of his left hand against the cold, tightening his right fist on the knife, waiting.

Someone whispered something in a language sounding

unintelligible to him and he assumed it was one of the Mongols rather than Han speaking to himself. Michael waited. The sounds seemed to shift their pattern, as though one were moving to his right and one were moving to his left. He would have to rely on Han to take the one on the left, who would be nearer to the Chinese at any event. Michael Rourke began moving, dropping to his knees to stay below the level of the pine boughs and the noise they might make if he brushed against them and dislodged snow.

He kept moving, as swiftly as he could, more swiftly he judged on hands and knees than the Mongol would move on two feet. He heard betraying sound again, a twig breaking. The Mongol was almost even with him. Michael leaned against a tree trunk, beneath the level of the branches, closing his eyes for an instant, evening his breath. When he opened his eyes and looked to his left he saw the Mongol, coming, dodging pine boughs, his pistol in his left fist, a long, curved blade sword in the other. The curve of the blade was more pronounced than that of a saber, yet less so than that of a scimitar. There would be no wisdom in matching the man blade for blade, though Michael would have trusted the strength of his own knife over any blade except perhaps the one his father now carried. And the noise of a fight would betray their position.

He wished for Natalia and her Walther PPK/S and silencer, but he had neither. The Germans were good at that sort of thing. He made a mental note to see if they could build a sound muffling device that might work with one of the Berettas he regularly carried, but it would require a slide lock because of the open design of the slide. And he disliked contraptions which complicated the blissfully simple. He shelved the thought, returning to the tactical problem at hand. He would have to kill the man instantly. The question was how. He could think of no comparable situation related to him by his father. Michael Rourke looked at the knife in his hand. The first time he had ever taken the life of an

enemy he had been but a little child, and he had used a boning knife that was simply a very sharp kitchen utensil and stabbed a man who had been about to sexually assault his mother. The kidney.

Michael closed his eyes for an instant, summoning all of his energy into his imagined center, to transmit it to his right hand and the knife. He opened his eyes, the Mongol dead even with him. If he could penetrate the neck at the spinal column and then quickly move to so immobilize the gun as to avoid a death spasm triggering a shot —

He lunged forward, the Mongol starting to turn, Michael’s knife thrusting into the rear of the neck, a crack that sounded almost as loud as a pistol shot. But it was bone. Michael let go of the knife and reached for the pistol, dodging as the sword swiped toward him in the Mongol’s spasm of death. But his left fist closed over the gun, the hammer falling against the web of his hand. Michael followed the dead man down, his right hand recocking the hammer—it was an old Government Model .45 with Chinese markings or a copy of one. He wondered if he were holding something which dated to World War II, ancient history to him. He raised the hammer, freeing his hand, then freed the gun, then lowered the hammer. He shoved the pistol into his belt, not desiring any spare magazines for it, simply getting the gun under his control rather than leaving it for someone else. He took the sword from the dead man’s grip. The sword seemed unremarkable. But he took it anyway. He freed his knife from the dead man’s neck, then made a quick search of his clothing. A picture of a naked girl that smelled vaguely like someone had ejaculated on it. “What a prince,” he murmured. He unlimbered the assault rifle. It was like the one Han and the others carried, and if anything in worse condition. He wiped his knife clean of blood on the dead man’s clothes, then wiped the knife clean of the dead man’s clothes with snow. He held the knife in his left fist, the inferior but longer sword in his right, the assault

rifle slung across his back, muzzle down. He had heard no sounds, which either meant Han and the second Mongol had not yet met or that one of them was very good. In the event it wasn’t Han, he was doubly alert. He reasoned that had it been the Mongol who was very good, there would have been no need for silence and so he would have heard the fight. Unless the Mongol were really good.

He moved slowly, crossing a small path through the pines and stopping abruptly. Han stood bent over a dead Mongol, a long, thin bladed dagger in his right fist, literally dripping blood. It was apparendy Han who was good. Or at least better …

His hands were free of the ropes, had been for, as Otto Hammerschmidt reckoned it, at least fifteen minutes. He had been massaging his wrists and flexing his fingers, at first painfully, ever since.

His feet were still bound and the feeling in his feet and legs was such that he doubted he could move very rapidly if at all. But his hands and arms would be all he needed now.

One of the five men —they all danced about a fire now some distance from him. He had seen Maria Leuden as they had taken her toward it. But one of the five, who had taunted him several times during the day, hooked the tip of a knife blade in Hammerschmidt’s nose, laughed, punched him, slapped him. This would be the man Hammerschmidt would eradicate to get a weapon. He would be sure of that death at least before he took Maria Leuden’s life. And Hammerschmidt, in that instant, questioned his own resolve. To kill Fraulein Doctor Leuden would be inexcusable, but to let her live for the fate these barbarians offered would be worse.

He wondered if he were a victim of the old thinking, that some beings, however human, were unremittingly inferior. He had tried to purge himself of these doctrines even as they had been taught to him under the old Nazi rule, ever since

his earliest childhood memories in school, in pre-military training. He had somehow known this thinking was wrong, immoral. But these men who had taken him and Fraulein Doctor Leuden were human beings only because they walked about on two legs and could speak. But they were without any of the qualities which made humans human.

He was not a superman destroying a racial inferior, but a man destroying vermin for a cause that was good —to save Fraulein Doctor Leuden. And in killing her, he was giving her the gift of mercy.

Otto Hammerschmidt felt himself ready. He began to bend to work at the knots which bound together the ropes encircling his ankles, and the sudden change in posture made him lightheaded and he nearly fainted.

There was no hope of escape. Only to do what had to be done. With fingers that shook from cold and still felt thick from the constriction of blood, he began to work at the knots at his ankles, forcing himself to stay conscious. He must …

They had crossed from the pines to a large outcropping of rock, expecting that some of the Mongols might be hidden here, but there were none. Now, on knees and elbows, Michael Rourke, Han beside him, crawled the distance separating the rocks from the next pine bracken.

The enemy would be there. How many, how few. It was of no importance. He would fight and win or fight and die. And if he won, he would find —he realized that what he felt for Maria Leuden was more than friendship and he resisted this. He told himself he was tired, horny—love was something he had experienced once. He would not experience it again.

He kept moving, the liberated assault rifle strapped to his back, the one he had field stripped and reassembled and at least marginally cleaned in both fists now, at the level of his head as he crawled. He had seen the few movies his father

had on tape which dealt at all with the theme of war, and in one he had seen men crawling beneath barbed wire during training, holding their rifles like he held his. His father had told him that live ammo was fired over the heads of the men. Michael had thought that sensible for realistic training, if somewhat reckless. It had seemed unpleasant to do. Experiencing it now, minus the machinegun fire, it seemed no more pleasant. They were nearly up to the pines, Michael starting to move into a standing position, taking cover at the farthest edge, Han beside him then.

Michael saw three of them here at the leading edge of the pines, huddled in blankets, their rifles leaned beside the trees against which their bodies leaned. Further out, huddled beside their dead horses, he saw at least three more.

A logical plan suggested itself, but with these ill-maintained long guns, its logic was more than questionable. Instead of long-distancing the three men who huddled behind their mounts from here, it would be necessary to get closer, at least as close as where the three men within the tree line lounged.

One of them sat down.

Another lit a cigarette.

Michael judged the distance to the three men by the dead horses as a hundred yards. If he could somehow fire from the position of the three other men, he would cut the range to fifty yards.

Michael Rourke drew the Chinese toward him, cupped his hand beside the man’s ear and whispered, “When I say so, spray both your assault rifle and your pistol toward those three men there by the trees. Keep your fire concentrated to your right, their left. I’ll be coming up on them fast from their right, your left. Once they’re all down, stop shooting immediately. I’m going for the second three as soon as I can get close enough. All right?”

“Yes, American.”

Michael nodded. “Give me about fifteen seconds, then go

for it.”

Han looked puzzled for an instant, then nodded, a smile crossing his lips.

Michael Rourke left both Beretta pistols in the leather, the sound of unholstering possibly enough to betray their position.

He would draw them as he ran. He looked at Han, the Chinese raising the assault rifle in his right fist, the pistol in his left. Michael planned to use the assault rifles he carried not at all.

And Michael Rourke dodged left into the trees, beating his way through the pine boughs, drawing as much attention as he could, counting as he ran, “one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three.” Gunfire came at him through the trees. Pine boughs laden with snow snapped and broke and slapped against him. “One thousand nine, one thousand ten.” He ripped both Beretta pistols from the leather. He knew these worked. “One thousand fourteen, one thousand fifteen,” and he dodged right, toward the gunfire, and now there was more gunfire, Han opening up with his assault rifle and his pistol, the gunfire that had been aimed toward Michael Rourke now aimed toward the Chinese intelligence agent.

Michael broke through the trees into the small clearing where the three Mongols huddled beside their trees, all three of their bodies clear shots. He fired both Berettas from the hip, double taps, the bodies of the three men lurching, twisting, one of the men making to fire toward him, Michael shooting him again.

Michael Rourke ran forward, safing both Berettas, kicking a pistol from the hand of one of the Mongols who might still have been alive, drawing the four-inch Model 629 from his crossdraw belt holster, bringing it up in both fists. The three Mongols beside the dead horses were at an angle to him, clear shots. He double actioned the first one, the Mongol’s body twisting, lurching forward across the dead

animal behind which he had taken cover. The second man turned to fire at Michael and Michael shot him in the chest, the man’s hands snapping out and away from his body, the assault rifle sailing into the night. The third Mongol started to run.