Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (26 page)

“Listen, Courier. Can you get airborne? Over.”

“This is Courier—affirmative. Can be airborne in under sixty seconds. Over.”

“Get airborne—“John Rourke looked at the younger man beside him, then embraced him …

Because of the high speeds at which the Chinese train traveled, the track ahead was constantly scanned by radar and by other more sophisticated means for obstructions and the like. Trains on a parallel track could scan the second set of tracks in order to warn oncoming trains of perils. This system John Rourke ordered implemented to watch out for the oncoming Russian controlled train. But he had hoped it would not have to be used.

If the J-7V’s pilot was good enough …

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna worked the Soviet light machine gun free of its mounts. The ammunition was belt fed from a box, but the box made the weapon so muzzle

heavy that despite the fact that she considered herself considerably stronger than the average woman, she realized that manipulation of the weapon would be impaired. She dismounted the box and started pulling out the link belt. She discarded the box, then took the box from beside the tripod and began to open it to do the same. With the ammunition link belts draped around her shoulders, she could carry more.

She picked up the reloaded Walther PPK/S from the floor beside her and holstered it in the Ken Null rig, then went to the second LMG and began to systematically disable it, to have left such a weapon operational behind her the sort of unpardonable sin that only heroes of twentieth century American adventure films survived.

Natalia draped the belts crisscross fashion over her, her parka discarded, stripped down now to the black battle gear she normally wore, a loose-fitting black woolen turtleneck sweater over it, the shoulder holster concealed beneath the sweater, the F38 in the center of her abdomen under her gunbelt, her revolvers at her hips, the M-16s slung across her back. The weight was still enormous as she added the musette bag with the spare magazines for the M-16s.

But the weight would diminish rapidly, as soon as the battle was joined. She started for the next car in the train.

The Soviet controlled train had passed through Lushun, Chinese troops forming a cordone sanitaire around it, leaving the train and its occupants unmolested, Han had told them. The German J-7V dual mode fighter radioed that Lieutenant Keefler and the corporal with him had radioed that Major Tiemerovna had boarded the Soviet-controlled train, and that Keefler had been unable to get aboard in time, the train accelerating so rapidly under the control of a captured Chinese engineer, apparently.

The second train, carrying them, Rourke had ordered to proceed at maximum speed until it was sighted by the J-7V, then begin braking.

Michael, Paul and John Rourke himself took turns enduring the terrific cold and 150 mile per hour slipstream, fortunately partially shielded from the full force of the wind by the body of the train, alternating on the radio until the J-7V reported having them in sight.

As the train began its braking action, John Rourke bundled into his parka, leaving the snow pants behind, intending to ditch the parka as soon as he was aboard the

train, Michael and Paul opting for the same, Han and his troops readying themselves in the next two forward cars.

As the train slowed, John Rourke reviewed the plan, such as it was. “When we get aboard the other train, Paul—you and this man Wing who speaks English like Han —take the six men we spoke about and cut through the train to find Natalia. Don’t be diverted by anything else no matter what happens. When you get her, signal on Michael’s radio. I’ll be ready to receive you. Get a defensible position near an exit and be ready. Michael and I, since Michael has been learning how these trains run, will go after the engine. Once the engine is secured we stop the train. Han has ordered his men to kill every Russian trooper aboard the train. As soon as the train is stopped, Michael and I will look for the warheads and if they aren’t already secured, take out whoever is guarding them and hold the area until the resistance is crushed. Things may change rapidly. We have to be alert for that.” And John Rourke unfolded the map of the rail line given him by Han, the three of them crouching beside the seat on which Rourke had previously laid his weapons. “Now —again to review. The train carrying the Russians will be crossing this forty mile stretch where the Yellow Sea has formed a natural reentrant just north of forty degrees latitude — here,” and Rourke gestured with his right trigger finger. “A plate shift or some other geologic activity has altered the coastline here drastically from the pre-war geography we’re all used to. Originally, we were going to block the tracks to slow down the train and board it, but that could have given a desperate man all the impetus needed to try to get one of those warheads going and that would have been all he needed to get them all to blow. But this way, whoever their field commander is shouldn’t have that much advance warning. Michael —you checked with the engineer.”

“This train can go just as rapidly in reverse, but it’s dangerous because the radar and sensing equipment aren’t operational that way.”

Rourke nodded.

“All right —right here then, with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other side. Any Russians who get off can be killed or captured. They’ll have nowhere to go. And there won’t be any place to haul one of the warheads off to, either. If the scale on this map is correct, and Han assures me it is, for this forty mile stretch, the distance from the wall of granite where they blasted into the mountains to form the road bed and the water is a maximum of thirty yards, the two tracks less than five yards apart. This is the only place. Karamatsov probably had gunships enroute to rendezvous with the train just beyond here, about where we’re at now. If any of those warheads gets airborne then the entire thing — well, we all know that,” and John Rourke folded the map and stood to his full height. “Ready?”

The train was nearly at full stop. Paul nodded. So did Michael.

John Rourke started for the rear door of the car, the train all but stopped as he clambered over the railing and dropped to the snowy ground, the wind howling across the icy wilderness, the J-7V starting its vertical descent, Han and his men, armed with caseless ammo bullpup style assault rifles and submachineguns, piling out.

Rourke broke into a run for the J-7V. It could only hold him, Paul, Michael and fifteen others, Han among them. If eighteen men weren’t enough …

Natalia’s left hand was bleeding where a flying splinter from one of the seatbacks had grazed her, but she had killed sixteen men in this second from the last car.

But now she was pinned down, men from the forward cars having poured back, smoke grenades used, acrid smoke which burned her eyes and stung her throat and her nostrils, filling the car even though she had shot out three windows. And it was bone-chillingly cold, the wind of the train’s

slipstream lashing at her as she huddled behind three dead bodies and two crates of rations, the bodies riddled with more bullets than she could have counted, the gunfire from the front of the rail car incessant.

She pushed up, firing the LMG, the cyclic rate amazingly fast because with caseless ammo as was used in all of tl.e Soviet weapons, there was no true ejection cycle. She had fired through the first of the belts, the discarded links clustered around her everywhere as profusely as pine needles in a forest.

She could have withdrawn to the last car, but it would have accomplished nothing. There was no place to go, and even if she were able to escape the train, doubtful at the enormous speed at which it traveled without sustaining fatal injury, her mission lay ahead. She fed the new link belt into the action of the LMG.

Another smoke grenade, then another and still another, were hurded toward her. As she coughed, closing her eyes against it, but firing a burst with the LMG to keep her attackers away, she knew they could not try high explosives. Not with the cargo in the boxcar two cars ahead. Natalia kept firing …

The J-7V lifted off vertically, then changed into its horizontal flight mode, seemed to hesitate for a brief instant, then shot ahead, Rourke feeling himself pushed slightly back against the copilot’s seat he had expropriated for the flight to the Russian-held train.

“I saw it, Herr Doctor. It appeared to be moving at best speed.”

“A hundred and fifty miles per hour or so. Can you match it?”

“To match their speed exactly considering the power of the slipstream around them will be most difficult, Herr Doctor.” “If you don’t we will have lost the war—and Major

Tiemerovna.”

The German pilot’s face split with a grin. “I said difficult, Herr Doctor. I did not say impossible, nor did I imply that.”

Rourke nodded to him. “Good man.”

“There!” Paul was crouched between the pilot’s and copilot’s seat and gestured toward the southwest in the distance. And Rourke saw it too. The Soviet-controlled train, nearer than expected.

The train was about to enter a steep walled mountain pass that the map had indicated ran for some thirty miles.

And beneath them, in the grayness now that despite the still swirling snow had replaced the darkness of night, Rourke could see the forty mile expanse that was their target zone.

Sheer walls of granite rose hundreds of feet into the air, the newness of their peaks sharp, threatening, and at the very base of the granite walls, the rail bed, two tracks looking from this elevation to be side by side, and a short distance beyond them to the southeast, waves lashing furiously high, was the Yellow Sea.

The pilot circled the J-7V and then banked to the east, Rourke squinting against the pencil thin line of sunrise beneath the gray blanket of the storm, the aircraft banking steeply again. “These winds will not help us, Herr Doctor.”

“I know that. You’ve got to do it.”

“And I know that, Herr Doctor,” the pilot nodded somberly.

The aircraft banked again, behind the Soviet-controlled train now, following it along the tracks still at least a quarter mile below them.

Rourke’s eyes moved to the altimeter. It was dropping rapidly.

The map Han had given him showed the mountain pass through which the tracks now crossed, but even from the map, Rourke had never envisioned it as this narrow, the J-7V dropping into it, flying on an angle because level flight

would have brought the wingtips within mere feet of the rock wall on either side of them.

The pilot was slowly dropping speed as the J-7V overtook the train, almost matching it now, matching it, the rear car beneath them, the mountain pass extending for several miles yet. “Can you get us over the car just rear of the engine?”

“Yes, Herr Doctor,” and almost imperceptibly, the J-7V moved ahead, a pale shadow of it visible on the snowless roofs of the cars over which the aircraft passed, the granite walls suddenly closer together, the pilot increasing air speed, rocketing ahead and up and out, passing over the engine. From the front car, immediately behind the engine and ahead of the solitary boxcar, there was gunfire coming now.

“It was too narrow, Herr Doctor.”

“You’ve gotta try it, man!”

The pilot looked at Rourke, then at Rubenstein between them, then at Rourke again, his eyes wide, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. He nodded, the plane banking sharply, diving, back into the pass, flying, it seemed, mere feet over the tracks now, smoke billowing from the second to the last car of the train from windows that appeared shot out. Natalia? — Rourke wondered.

The aircraft was over the last car, over the second to the last car, the rock faces to either side of them seeming to squeeze together again, the angle of flight changing sharply, the pilot not flinching. Paul Rubenstein clung to the two seats between which he crouched, Rourke looking to the younger man’s face, Rubenstein’s eyes seeming to say, “It’ll be all right, John.” Rourke prayed that it would.

The J-7V was over the boxcar now, gunfire coming at them from the lead car just behind the engine, Rourke hearing the sounds of ricochets off the J-7V’s armored skin.

The German aircraft was over the lead car now, the end of the mountain pass just ahead.

“As soon as we’re through,” Rourke shouted. “Then go to it.”

“Yes, Herr Doctor.”

They were through, the J-7V’s angle of flight changing abruptly and sharply, level now, the speed seeming dead even with the train. And suddenly the J-7V shot ahead. “What are you doing?” Rourke shouted.

“I fly my aircraft to perform your mission, Herr Doctor. Trust me, Herr Doctor.”

The pilot manipulated a bank of switches and suddenly the J-7V seemed to stall, switching into the vertical mode, the train nearly beneath them as the J-7V dropped, the aircraft buffeted and veering to port, the pilot playing the controls, the vertical descent continuing, and suddenly stopping.

“We have landed. Hurry and good luck, Herr Doctor!”

Rourke was already out of his seat, Rubenstein ahead of him near the egress hatch, Rourke clapping the pilot on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

Rourke and Rubenstein together jumped through the egress hatch, Rourke nearly losing his balance as he impacted the roof of the train car, the engine dead ahead. Bullets whined through the roof of the car, Rourke realizing it would be grisly luck if one got through with sufficient remaining velocity to kill anyone, the roof of the train car dimpling with them, Rourke swept from his feet as he turned into the slipstream, to his knees. “Shit!” He was up, bending into the wind, his eyes squinted tight shut against it, the wind hammering him down again, to his knees, Rubenstein beside him, Han and the others clambering down from the J-7V as Rourke turned his face from the wind.

Despite the parka hood, the wind howled in his ears, deafening him. He crawled forward. As he looked up, Soviet personnel were clambering onto the roof from the car below, as soon as one would reach the roof, swept over by the wind, their assault rifles clattering away across the roof line, falling over the side. Rourke reached under his parka, one of the Scoremasters coming into his fist. He jacked back the