Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (28 page)

He had him down and shouted, “Careful with the body. No sense breaking bones!” His father had died in combat and so had his younger brother, and his brother’s body had been a mass of broken bones after it had been dragged back and never looked right in the coffin. His mother had said that.

Aldridge pushed the second Marine through ahead of him, then, his feet almost on the other man’s head and shoulders, he threw himself down after him, swinging the hatch shut under a hail of gunfire. “Blow that damn balcony to hell!”

“Yes, sir!” The APC vibrated around him and he lost his balance, caught himself, then threw himself into the control seat, gunning the engine. The second APC with Lisa Belzer running it was already moving. She was a gutsy lady. If she ever got herself promoted, he could ask her out sometime. But it looked bad an officer and a— and Aldridge started laughing.

“What’s so funny, captain?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” and Aldridge worked the levers and the APC started rolling forward and left, Lisa’s APC ahead of them, Aldridge stomping the accelerator and, following her, aiming the APC for the tunnel… .

She had crawled from where she had fallen, chunks of debris raining around her, her revolvers in both hands, her left leg already numbing from the Sty-20 round she’d taken.

She saw him for an instant, her consciousness going.

His body had caught up in some trees and, even as she watched, it had slipped from the boughs which had cradled it and fallen to the ground below.

There was no movement.

There was no life.

She had turned away from him, firing her revolvers as they had charged toward her, getting two of them at least until the rifle butt came and impacted the side of her head.

She lost her guns, but not consciousness—adrenalin, she thought. “Kill me!” John Rourke was dead.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna knew she had died inside too… .

Aldridge turned out of the tunnel, Lisa’s APC dead ahead of him and moving fast. He hit the radio controls and could pick up somebody named Feyedorovitch calling for everything and everyone available to rendezvous at the lagoon. Aldridge worked the levers and swerved the APC into an almost too-tight hook onto the right side of Lisa’s APC, then accelerated, his rear end fishtailing, evening out, passing her now. “How we doin’ behind us—speak to me!

“Corporal Belzer’s APC is accelerating too, captain— she’s right on our tail. Don’t see anything—belay that— got five—make that six APCs just turning out of the tunnel and about the same number of Gullwings.”

“These guys never give up, do they?” Aldridge shouted back rhetorically—he knew they didn’t. His people and their people had been fighting the continuing battle of World War III since the night that it all went down, almost 500 years if he remembered his dates right. They never gave up. You killed them and more came. You blew up one of their submarines and there was always another one. And now—they had missiles. The nuclear ones just like five centuries ago. And they’d win—he felt the pres

sure around his eyes. He kept driving. He’d led a commando raid against the Stalin, one of the big ones, one of the monster submarines, and they’d ridden the damn thing almost into port to place their explosives and hit the missile factory, but they hadn’t made it, had been gassed, and he’d awakened a prisoner and they’d started playing with him with electric shock, with sensory deprivation. His dreams had become more horrible than being awake, and that was saying a lot.

There was a line of Gullwings blocking the roadway and there was an APC behind them. “Take the cannon—that APC,” he shouted to the Marine beside him who had worked the gun against the balcony. “Kill it!”

He floored the accelerator now, realizing that even electronically controlled guns would have a harder time hitting a faster-moving target.

“Fire, damnit!”

The cannon fired, smoke and fire engulfing three of the Gullwings, the enemy armored personnel carrier firing back. Aldridge swerved his machine hard right. When the explosion came, he almost lost control, skidding, jumping the sidewalk, sideswiping the building walls on his right, every bone in his body feeling as if it were vibrating. The APC fired again, Aldridge shouting, “Shoot now!”

His gunner fired as the Marine at the rear monitoring the video screen there shouted, “They got Lisa Belzer! God damn ‘em to—aww, nothin’.”

The road surface beside the enemy APC turned into a rising fireball, gushing toward them and away from them along the tunnel ceiling, Aldridge keeping the accelerator to the floorboard, through the fireball, past the enemy vehicle.

“Disabled—what! Get specific!”

The man called back. “Corporal Belzer’s APC got flipped over on its side and rammed into the far tunnel wall. The superstructure’s half blown away. They got her, captain—the motherfuckers!”

“Let’s see they don’t get us,” Sam Aldridge called back

lamelv There were te.Arft wellincr un in hie flvac He r»rwnlrl

never ask her out now. “I’m sorry, Herb,” he said. And he glanced at the Marine beside him. “You making it, Bernie?”

“Yes, sir—making it—just.”

Aldridge could see the fence ahead. There were Gullwings there and there were troops behind every imaginable sort of barricade and there was a phalanx of APCs closing from the right.

He cut left, jumping the curb, punching the Russian machine through the fence leading to the main sub pens. He was starting to slow since he was traversing ground now and not a hard road surface.

“APCs closing fast, captain,” the man at the rear called out. “Those other six are still dead behind us.”

“Just pray the guns in the Scout subs are waitin’ for us and be ready to move.”

“How about the dead guy, sir?”

Aldridge looked at Corporal Bernie Richter. “The body goes with us—right?”

“Yes, sir!”

Aldridge could see the tunnel between the Scout pens and the lagoon dead ahead, nothing blocking it except two Gullwings. “Vaporize ‘em, Bernie!”

“You got it, captain!”

The cannon fired, the pulse of the thing making the superstructure vibrate, the two Gullwings vanishing in a ball of flame the next instant. Aldridge drove through the flames, knowing he couldn’t stop now.

“Gettin’ a readout off the rear tires, captain—they’re hot—on fire!”

“Hang in there, Herb!”

He realized his knuckles were going stiff on the levers which controlled the APC, his neck aching, his eyes burning him because he couldn’t blink. It was a narrow walkway here, not made for traffic at all. He bounced a curb, was in the tunnel.

“Be ready!” Come on, baby, he almost said aloud to the machine. He was starting to lose the steering.

The lagoon was dead ahead, another APC there. “Fire

around it—make a ring around it—do it now!”

The cannon fired, then again and again and again, the APC almost out of control as Aldridge slowed her, the lagoon less than a hundred yards ahead, just beyond the dock. “Now!” He stomped the brake and skidded, “Hold on to something tight!”

The APC fishtailed, the rear end sweeping right, Aldridge bracing himself. If he did it just right, maybe they wouldn’t die just yet.

He felt the impact. “You hit the thing, sir!” It was Herb shouting from the rear of the APC. “She’s—she’s gone over, into the lagoon!”

“Out!” Aldridge hit his seat-belt release and slid from behind the controls, their APC smoking now, on fire. Flames were starting from some of the overhead panels, and he could smell burning insulation. He grabbed up Rourke’s body—one of his two men had strapped it into one of the other seats. He hit the seat-belt harness release and it sagged toward him. Aldridge shouted to Bernie Richter, “Up the hatch—watch for enemy fire and he grab him.”

“Right, sir!” Richter disappeared through the hatchway, Aldridge realizing Herb Koswalski was helping him with the dead man. “Ready, sir!”

“Just thrills me no end you’re ready, corporal!” Aldridge pushed, the Marine with him lifting, and they had Rourke’s body through the hatchway.

“Got him, sir! We got company—those damn APCs!”

Aldridge was the next one up, the AKM-96 going ahead of him.

They were ten yards from the water.

Aldridge jumped from the smoldering superstructure to the dock, shouting, “Pass him down!”

His two Marines slid Rourke’s body down, Aldridge getting the tall, lean white man over his right shoulder. It was stupid, hauling a dead body. He did it anyway, running, his two men outdistancing him, dropping into kneeling positions beside the water at the end of the dockside. Gunfire tore into the dock bumners. Aldridce

heard an explosion—one of the APCs firing—and felt the dock vibrate under him.

“Into the water, guys! Hubba-hubba!” Aldridge tossed his rifle away and jumped, letting the body slip from his shoulder as he impacted the water, tucked down.

He had never liked diving. He opened his eyes. Rourke’s body wasn’t floating.

As Aldridge’s head broke the surface, he started to drag Rourke up. “He’s alive, damnit! All right!”

Assault-rifle fire peppered the water around him and grabbed Rourke across the chest and under the left armpit and shouted, “If you can hear me, take a deep breath, Rourke!” Aldridge pulled Rourke with him under the surface, air escaping Rourke’s mouth in great bubbles. Aldridge felt something hit the water’s surface. The APCs firing, he knew. He dragged Rourke with him, breaking the surface, gulping air, drawing Rourke’s head toward him, rocking the head back, forcing air into Rourke’s lungs from his own.

Two of the monster subs were crossing the lagoon, a deck gun firing. Aldridge could see Richter, but not Herb Koswalski. “Herb! Where are you? Koswalski! Koswalski?”

“Captain!”

Aldridge swallowed water, choking as he twisted in the churning lagoon, one of the Scout subs coming dead on for him. But he could see Martha on the deck, another of the escapees at the deck gun. The deck gun opened fire, long volleys, the noise of the thing deafening. She had disobeyed orders being in this close. He’d kill her after he kissed her.

A line—he couldn’t reach it, swam toward it, the line snaking out again, this time his right hand catching a whole coil. He twisted the coil around his upper body and Rourke’s, shouting, “Reel us in!”

The water around him exploded again and he dragged himself and Rourke under, the sound even more deafening beneath the waves.

He was being dragged up and he pushed Rourke’s head

to the surface. “Get him first—he’s still alive or he was a second ago!” Aldridge slipped the rope from his own body, shoving Rourke up under the rail, Martha and another woman and a Chinese reaching for him. “Get him some mouth to mouth—but he could have a shot-out lung—be careful!”

Aldridge was halfway up himself when the hands reached for him and he fell forward to his knees onto the deckplates.

APCs were firing from the dock and the monster subs were closing, both their deck guns firing now. “Richter and Koswalski? You see ‘em?”

Martha turned away from him, snaking out the line again, and Aldridge vomited up water across the deck plates, then looked after her. Richter and Koswalski, something wrong with Richter, the same rope that had reeled him in hauling them in now. He grabbed the rope and started to pull.

Richter was passed up first—his left arm was limp and his mouth was trickling blood. Koswalski—as Aldridge and Martha reached down to him, the deck guns of the monster subs opened up again, Koswalski’s body jerking, slamming against the Scout sub, then falling away.

“Koswalski!”

“He’s dead, Sam—come on!”

Aldridge looked at Martha, then back to the water—he could see Koswalski, floating face down.

Aldridge clambered to his feet, lurching toward the deck gun, shoving the Marine away from it, swinging it round. “Eat shit, you bastards!” he started pumping the deck gun, the pounding of it something he could feel inside himself.

Martha—she was hitting him with her little fists. “Damnit, captain! You gonna stay up and swim?”

He looked at her and started to laugh. “Lieutenant— you got balls!” He secured the deck gun, then headed for the main hatch.

“Sonar’s picking up Soviet Scout subs, Captain. But the odd thing is that it looks as though their own Island Class submarines are pursing them.”

Sebastian’s dark chocolate-colored hands were splayed over the illuminated plotting board which dominated the control station.

“Sonar—talk to me.”

“Sir, I’ve got four Soviet Scout subs proceeding at full flank speed but rather erratically, it appears. I have three Island Class—correction—four Island Class submarines in the classic Soviet pursuit formation. None of the Island Class submarines is dragging a sonar array.”

“Very good, Lieutenant Kelly—keep on it.”

He swung his chair left. “Communications—what are you getting, lieutenant?”

“I’m starting to get low-frequency transmissions on the Soviet distress band, Captain. But the signal is too weak, sir. I can’t make anything out of it.”

He turned his chair toward the Warfare Station. “Lieutenant Walenski—what’s the status on the torpedo tubes?”

“Forward torpedo status—numbers one and four empty, numbers two and three loaded with High Explosive Independent Sensing, Captain. One and four can be loaded. Aft torpedo status—numbers one through four loaded with HEIS, Captain.”

Louise Walenski had confirmed what he already knew. “Very well, lieutenant. Order forward torpedo tubes one

and four loaded with HEIS as well.” “Aye, Captain.”

He looked back to Sebastian. “Commander Sebastian— anything further?”

“Negative, Captain—still monitoring.”

“Order the ship to Battle Stations, Mr. Sebastian.”

“Aye, Captain. Ordering the ship to Battle Stations.” Sebastian reached down the intraship communications microphone. “Now hear this. Now hear this. Battle Stations. I repeat, Battle Stations. This is not a drill.” The klaxon sounded.

He got out of his chair and moved aft between the sonar and computer stations, Seaman First Class Tagachi at periscope station. “Mr. Tagachi—attack periscope.”

“Aye, Captain,” Morris Tagachi responded, activating the control panel. He was already at the attack periscope, folding down, the tube rising. At this depth it was hard to see anything even with vision intensification and computer enhancement. But just off the starboard bow, he thought he could make out one of the great hulking shapes of the Soviet monsters. He snapped the handles back to closed, not bothering to tell Tagachi to lower the periscope.