Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal (22 page)

The sound of elevator doors opening. Then the sounds of Russian voices. Boot heels clicking against cement.

Through the opening, she could see men moving, black Battle Dress Utilities, Soviet assault rifles.

In their midst was a man dressed in the uniform of an Elite Corps colonel.

For one split second she caught his face in profile.

It had to be.

Sarah Rourke loosed her rifle and drew the Trapper Scorpion .45, as she stepped from hiding whispering, “Back me up, but only when I say to.” She felt Mann’s hand reach for her, but she slipped out of his grasp.

Sarah Rourke dodged between two KGB Elite corpsmen carrying assault rifles slung at patroling positions, then punched the muzzle of her .45 against the face of the man in the colonel’s uniform, praying it was Antonovitch, the new commander, with Karamatsov dead. “Freeze!” She didn’t know the word for it in Russian but shrieked the word in English as loudly as she could, thumbing back the Trapper Scorpion’s hammer to full stand as she said it, the hammer

going back making a loud click.

Rifle muzzles were pointed at her from all sides. If Mann would only trust her as much as he said he did, trust her that way now.

Her left hand was knotted into the back collar of the colonel’s uniform blouse.

For an instant, no one moved.

‘Tell ‘em I’m a Rourke and I’ll kill you, so help me God!”

The colonel spoke, first in English. “What can you hope to gain, Mrs. Rourke?” But sweat was beading on his forehead.

‘Tell them!” She pushed the muzzle harder against his cheek, drawing the pistol back then just a little because she remembered something John had told her, that a Colt-Browning pattern .45 wouldn’t fire with firm backward pressure against the muzzle because it pushed the slide out of battery.

It had to be Antonovitch. She prayed it was Antonovitch. He spoke in Russian.

There was a blur of movement from the entryway to the storage room, Colonel Mann and his two commandoes stepping out, assault rifles going up, getting the drop on the dozen or so KGB Elite corpsmen.

“What do you—” Antonovitch began in English to her.

“Shut the hell up. You do exactly as I say or this gun goes off and even a dumb Commie like you knows what a .45 will do at this range. Colonel Mann!”

“Yes, Frau General?”

She almost started to laugh. “Disarm these guys and if anybody gives you any lip, Antonovitch here gets it.” And said to Antonovitch, “Tell your people. Tell them!”

Antonovitch spoke to them and she relied on Mann’s knowledge of Russian—which was very little—to recognize whether or not Antonovitch was playing it straight.

Quickly then, Colonel Mann and his two commandoes began stripping the Russians of their weapons, tossing rifles, pistols, individual explosives, knives, all into the storage room.

1

I

“Now,” she told Antonovitch, “out of their uniforms, down ‘ to their underwear. Men don’t fight so well without their pants.”

Antonovitch smiled a little thinly. And, she gave him credit, he had guts. “What if they aren’t wearing underwear, Mrs. Rourke?”

“I worked as a nurse, I’ve got a husband a fully grown son and I’m pregnant. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Tell them to strip! Now!”

Again, Antonovitch spoke, the looks on the faces of his men telling her that he’d said exactly what she’d told him to say.

Quickly, but with obvious reluctance, the Elite corpsmen began to undress. She was almost surprised they didn’t wear black underwear.

Colonel Mann, who was obviously enjoying himself, ordered his men to throw the uniforms into the storage room as well.

“No—get one of them to help you. All the guns and other stuff into the elevator. That’s where we’re going.”

“There are troops up there—” Antonovitch began, panic filling his eyes, his voice shaking a little.

“Good. And the chairman?”

He didn’t answer her. Mann was having the clothing and weapons moved.

“And the chairman?” Sarah Rourke repeated, punching the .45 against his face again.

“Yes.”

“Good.” My God, she thought, she had to urinate again …

Maria Leuden sat at the computer console. “I can’t read Chinese. It won’t do me any good.” There was nothing in John Rourke’s musette bag that would revive Han Lu Chen. But— “Michael!” John Rourke called across the temple floor to where Michael Rourke was tending to Prokopiev’s wounds with materials from Rourke’s musette bag. The Russian was , sitting up, very weak-looking but as likely to live as any of

them. “Michael? Did you bring a first aid kit from one of the Specials?”

“Yes. There are enough—”

“Bring it over to where Paul’s tending to Han.”

Rourke left Maria Leuden—she was half dressed but decent—and ran across the temple toward where Paul was using the German antiseptic healing spray on Han Lu Chen’s back. John Rourke dropped to his knees beside the man, his own back spasming with pain.

As Michael joined them, Rourke took the first aid kit Michael carried and searched for the pre-prepared syringe of synthetic adrenaline.

He could kill Han Lu Chen by injecting it directly into the heart, but if he didn’t risk the Chinese agent’s life, then the whole world might die.

‘Turn him over and hold him down. If I don’t do this right, he’s dead and so are we,” John Rourke almost whispered to Paul and Michael.

He prepared the syringe.

If only Michael were here, Annie thought, almost verbalized. He was such a strong swimmer. But it was miles to shore. She told herself she shouldn’t have told Otto Hammerschmidt to ditch in the water. She should have taken their chances with the Russians over land.

“Help us!”

She screamed the words, swallowing water and almost starting to choke.

The raft was so deflated now that, by treading water, she was barely able to hold up Natalia’s and Otto’s heads, keeping them out of the water.

She had stripped away her heavy clothes and was only in her blouse and her underwear.

Her pistols and Natalia’s were suspended on their pistol belts over a still floating piece of wreckage a few yards distant. The little Cold Steel Mini-Tanto was still strapped to her ankle.

What if sharks came? The little knife—that was all.

“Help!”

The signaling device was in the pocket of her blouse, over her left breast. It probably didn’t even work anymore after the prolonged exposure to salt water.

Her father had told her about the sharks when they had traveled to Mid-Wake for the medical examinations, and she had even seen one (at least she thought it was one) through the video monitors at the front of the submarine.

But none of the friends he’d made were there except the cute little nurse who had told her that her father was so stubborn, and of course. Mid-Wake’s president. Handsome and such a wonderful voice. But none of the others had been there, all off in their submarines fighting the Russians or whatever they did.

And suddenly, Annie Rourke Rubenstein was seized with panic. What if the signal had worked and, instead of summoning help from Mid-Wake, it had summoned the Russians they fought beneath the sea?

She looked around, the surface of the sea churning slightly, definitely less calm than it had been. What if—

The raft was all but totally deflated and she supported the weight of Natalia and Otto almost completely, her arms weary with it. What would she do when she could no longer support them both? How would she choose who was to die?

She was crying.

“Help!”

But no help came …

Sarah Rourke kept the .45 against Colonel Antonovitch’s temple as the elevator doors opened on the upper level of the government building where the chairman’s apartment was, where the rooms she and John used and all of them used were located.

In a strange way, it was like returning home.

“You will never escape here alive,” Antonovitch said with surprising calm as she pushed him out of the elevator and into the corridor.

“What happens to us, happens to you,” she advised, wondering how long she could keep this up.

KCB Elite corpsmen began running toward them along the main corridor.

“This is where you decide to live or die,” Sarah Rourke whispered to Antonovitch. His eyes flickered toward her. “Tell them to lay down their arms and use the elevator, then send it

back for the next batch of your guys.” His men were closing rapidly, Colonel Mann and the two German commandoes armed with their own weapons and Soviet weapons taken from the men they had disarmed, ready to open fire. “You’ll die first. I swear it!”

Antonovitch shouted something in Russian and the Elite corpsmen slowed, stopped, waited, their rifles at high port, ready to swing on line and fire. “After everybody’s out of this building,” Sarah Rourke said hastily, “and Chinese troops have retaken this section of the city after your men evacuate here and all the rest of the city, then withdraw beyond the mountains. You have my word as a Rourke that you’ll be freed, unharmed, allowed to rejoin your men outside the city. We’ll even give you free transportation.” She just realized she had never disarmed Antonovitch of his pistol. But it was too late to try that now.

“The German—he will listen to you?”

She shouted to Colonel Mann. “I told him—”

“I heard what you told him, Sarah.” And Wolfgang Mann looked directly at Antonovitch. “I will honor Frau Rourke’s pledge, Herr Colonel. You have my word as a German officer.”

Antonovitch started to say something, apparently thought better of it.

“Bring out the chairman. And if somebody puts a gun to his head, you die,” Sarah told Antonovitch.

“This time, it appears that you win. It is too bad that history has dictated that the Rourke family should be the intractable enemies of the Soviet people. Otherwise, but—”

“History didn’t dictate anything,” Sarah Rourke told him, the pistol still at his head. “Men like Karamatsov and you, just ordinary thieves and killers until you put on uniforms and tell yourselves you’re heroes and what you’re doing is for the good of some crazy historic destiny—men like you made the choice. And this time, you’ll live. Next time you won’t. Bring out the chairman.”

Antonovitch barked orders and an officer from among the

corridor guards put down his rifle, issued more orders, and the men around him, slowly at first, put down their weapons. The officer and two other men disappeared along the corridor and, for a moment, she forgot she had to urinate because she thought that maybe Antonovitch had some trick up his sleeve.

The seconds seemed to wear on forever.

One of Colonel Mann’s commandoes began offloading the Soviet weapons from the elevator, then began gathering up the weapons the guards had put on the floor.

Her head ached. Her hand felt stiff holding the pistol so rigidly. Her knees were locking because Antonovitch was taller than she was and she had to stand as tall as she could to keep the gun at his head properly.

And then, his robes mud-splattered, hair uncombed, the chairman of the First City was brought into the corridor. He glanced once to either side of him and the Soviet guards left him. With his customary dignity, he walked alone down the corridor, past the Russian troops who had held him prisoner.

He stopped before Sarah Rourke, bowed slightly and smiled. “How good of you to come, Mrs. Rourke.”

Sarah Rourke wanted to laugh and cry at once—and she still had to go to the bathroom—but she held the pistol to Antonovitch’s head while his men started filling the elevators.

Han Lu Chen, Michael and Paul holding him up, leaned forward in the chair before the console. “That button on the keyboard. Try that button.” His voice was so weak that it was barely audible.

Maria Leuden pushed it and the monitor screen flickered, a mixture of Chinese symbols and English words appearing. Immediately, Maria began accessing the program.

Vassily Prokopiev’s voice came from behind them. “I apologize for killing the woman. It is likely she knew the program you seek to invade.”

“Likely,” John Rourke said without turning his head to look back. “Prokopiev?” And now Rourke did look back.

“Yes, Doctor Rourke?”

“I notice that this computer seems to be set up for guidance systems monitoring.”

, Prokopiev, head bandaged heavily but face alert-seeming, leaned against the wall beside the doors, a brace of Clock pistols on the floor beside him. In the last several minutes, there had been the sounds of concerted hammering on the doors. Mao’s guards, Rourke imagined, trying to retake the temple. At mention of monitoring the missile while in flight, Prokopiev sat up straighter.

“Would you and Paul,” Rourke began again, “be able to convert the monitoring system so you could contact your forces outside the city? Alert them to pull back in the event we

can’t stop this—although, in honesty, that wouldn’t do much good for them, just buy them a few moments, perhaps. But—” And he followed Prokopiev’s eyes as they moved upward along the length of the missile. “I could call down a gunship to land near the opening through which the missile would launch.”

“You could, yes. But I don’t exactly relish the idea of getting killed by the KGB any more than dying here.”

Prokopiev smiled. “Certain death is always the poorer option.”

“Get Paul to help you. He’s good with electronics. Then go call your friends. And I’m going to need Paul as soon as you have it set up.” And John Rourke looked at Paul Rubenstein.

There was an odd look in Paul’s eyes.

Maria Leuden spoke. “I accessed a monitoring program. The missile will launch in eighteen minutes. I don’t think I can stop it.”

“What about the meltdown?” Rourke asked her. He sat beside her, as calmly as he could, fresh loading the magazines for his pistols.

“I do not know yet,” she answered, her voice low.

‘Try that line—with the character that looks like a tree,” Han advised.

Maria began working the keyboard again …

Annie Rourke sank below the surface, realizing instantly that she had passed out or fallen asleep, and as she forced her head above the water, she gagged, her eyes scanning the water for sign of Natalia or Otto. She held to the deflated life raft. She started under the surface again, though, coughing as she gulped air.