Survivalist - 18 - The Struggle (2 page)

John Rourke lay prone in the snow on a flat promontory of rock overlooking the ridge and the gorge below. In a normal springtime, if there were such things still, the gorge would likely be a torrent. But, as it was, a stream approximately a dozen yards wide at most cut violently down the center of the gorge, Whitewater splashing out of wide, deep-looking pools, in the smaller pools surface ice formed, starkly white beneath the gray sky.

On either side of the gorge a man could lead a horse, but only a desperate fool or a person with a death wish would have ridden one there, the surface too uneven.

Michael, lying beside him, spoke. “How soon?”

“Tell you in a second,” Rourke almost whispered, shifting position, scanning along the length of the gorge with his binoculars, at last finding the party of horsemen, the German binoculars automatically adjusting focus as Rourke depressed the focus button. In

another quarter mile, Paul and the others would be forced to dismount, be such easy prey that even the most lackluster marksman armed with an assault rifle of even marginal quality could pin them down and eventually kill them.

He refocused on the Mongols along the ridgeline. For a moment, his mind was drawn back to his early boyhood, when the radio would be turned on and he would hear the thunder of hoofbeats, the crack of pistol shots. The Lone Ranger. He had followed the program almost religiously on radio and then on television. What he saw below him reminded him of the massacre of the Texas Rangers in the origin story of the Masked Man, evil killers lying in wait for slaughter. But John Rourke and his son Michael were in position to stop a bloodbath of innocents, to ambush the ambushers.

“We have to hurry, Michael. They’ll be into that gorge on foot before we know it.” And John Rourke cased the binoculars, then on knees and elbows worked his way back from the edge …

In the spate of superspy films in the middle and late ( 1960s, there was always a suppressor or silencer handy when the situation required silence. Given the time and some basic, otherwise innocuous materials, John Rourke could have built such a device. But there was no time and such once ordinary items as orange juice cans or power mower mufflers or even potatoes (at least in this icy wilderness) no longer existed.

What needed doing was a job for a knife.

Stripped of all firearms except for his twin Detonics mini guns, the two Scoremasters and the Smith & Wesson revolver at his right hip, John Rourke moved as quietly as he could up the back of the ridge. There

was evidence of considerable erosion here and he moved through a chest-deep rill, at times forced to place one foot directly in front of the other because the rill was so sharply V-ed.

He could not see Michael, Michael moving up from the opposite side of the ridgeline, likely not as high yet because there had been greater distance for Michael to travel to his starting point. But the ridge was lower farther west, so with any luck Michael should reach the top at approximately the same time John Rourke did. Rourke had set a precise time for the process of removing the Mongols from the ridgeline to begin, whether both he and his son were in place or not. Much after that, and it might be too late.

Clenched tight in John Rourke’s right fist was the Crain Life Support System X …

Less than ten feet from him, the nearest of the Mongols lay in wait. From just below the ridge where Rourke hid, he could see that his initial estimate of their numbers seemed close to correct—about eighteen of them. Even in the bitter cold of the thin mountain air, when the wind blew in the right direction, the man’s smell was like that of an animal fresh from rolling in its own excrement. In the man’s hands was a Soviet assault rifle, beside him a half dozen spare magazines for the weapon and a single Soviet high explosive grenade.

Rourke glanced at the black face of the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist.

It would be time in less than a minute.

Rourke reached to the small of his back, unsheathing the A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome, the Crain knife still in his right hand.

His eyes traveled to the second hand of the Rolex.

Time.

Rourke rose to his full height, coming up over the lip of the ridgeline in a dead run, cutting the distance to the Mongol by half before the man began to turn around. As the Mongol opened his mouth to shout a warning or a scream, the tip of the LS-X entered him—in the mouth, punching through the back of the neck as Rourke thrust, severing the Mongol’s spinal column.

Rourke wrenched the blade free, the body falling, gravel crunching, the Mongol nearest looking around, raising the pistols in his hands, wheeling toward Rourke as Rourke lunged, the Crain knife impaling the man just below the right breast, Rourke drawing the man up and toward him on the knife, raking the smaller Sting IA across the right side of the Mongol’s throat, Rourke turning away as the blood sprayed, with his right foot kicking the Mongol off the blade of the Crain knife.

Rourke let the smaller knife fall from his left hand, shifting the LS-X from his right, then drawing the .44 Magnum revolver from the Milt Sparks flap holster at his right hip. As another of the Mongols spun toward him, Rourke double-actioned the 629, the six-inch tubed Smith rocking in his fist, the Mongol taking the hit, going down, rolling. Rourke was on him as the Mongol drew his pistol to fire, the upper left side of his torso drenched in blood, the Mongol dying but too stubborn to let go. Rourke backhanded the Crain knife’s primary edge from the left cheekbone and down across the Adam’s apple, severing the windpipe.

A burst of assault rifle fire hammered into the rocks near him, Rourke hurtling the LS-X down like a spike into the dying Mongol’s chest, punching the 629 forward, firing once, then again and again, the Mongol firing at him from fifty feet away falling, sprawling back.

Rourke could see Michael, Michael’s knife hacking wildly outward, half severing the arm of one of the Mongols, Michael stepping into him, the Beretta in Michael’s left fist firing again and again, punching the body away as Michael turned toward the next man.

Rourke emptied the 629 as his left hand ripped one of the twin stainless Detonics mini-guns from the double Alessi shoulder rig, his thumb jacking the hammer back, his right hand holstering the 629 as the first round from the Detonics .45 was fired. As he fired the second round, one of the Mongols grasping his abdomen and going down, Rourke’s right hand swept cross body, his fist closing on the Pachmayr-gripped butt of the second Detonics, the first emptying as he cleared the second gun from the leather, jerked the hammer back and fired.

The slide still locked back empty, he thrust the Detonics mini-gun into the waistband of his trousers, his left hand moving inches, tugging free one of the Scoremasters, firing out the Detonics Combat Master in his right hand, dropping it into the hip pocket of his pants, drawing the second Scoremaster as he fired the first.

The heavy claps of his .45s, the lighter, sharper cracks of Michael’s Beretta 92Fs. And no more of the Mongols remained alive to kill.

The day-lights which glowed from within the high dome of the flower-shaped First City’s administrative Petal normally appeared to the naked eye as natural as sunlight. Now, the lights flickered maddeningly, reminding John Rourke fleetingly of the cheap urban neon signs which only he and few others still alive could remember. No great loss. These lights cast sinister shadows over the pain-etched faces of the wounded who lay everywhere, like broken and discarded dolls flung aside by some careless child in a fit of temper.

All about them as they walked, Rourke saw death, suffering and incalculable physical damage, from the most heroically posed shattered statue to a trampled garden of once exquisitely delicate flowers, from blackened, explosion-cratered streets and walkways where normal lives and commerce had been conducted instants before the carnage to the glitter and crunch beneath their booted feet of the shattered glass from now windowless buildings. Chinese troops in irregular numbers, attired in ragged, smoke-smudged uniforms, ran to reinforce defensive positions against renewed attack while others aided the men and women in dirty and bloodstained hospital attire who tended the

civilians and military personnel who had some even slight chance to be saved.

Rourke’s son Michael, and Maria Leuden, the German archaeologist who was Michael’s mistress, had left Rourke and Rubenstein as they had entered the city, personally placed the Chinese Intelligence Agent Han Lu Chen on a commandeered monorail car so he could be speeded to the medical center. Han’s injuries were grave, sustained at the hands of the barbarians in the Second City, requiring the sort of immediate medical attention that under the circumstances could only be gotten if forced.

John Thomas Rourke dropped to one knee beside an old woman who lay beside an overturned flower cart, her inner thigh bleeding heavily. But the bleeding was not arterial. He applied pressure with his fingertips and the flow of blood eased as a Chinese soldier who evidently spoke no English but recognized him nodded, said, “Rourke,” and smiled, then continued plowing through a medical kit of the type used in the field by the Defense Forces of the First City. The private soldier at last found what he sought and began to apply a pressure bandage, Rourke nodding to Paul Rubenstein who bent over beside them, dropped to his knees, helped the soldier with the proper application of the dressing. Paul had seen him—Rourke—do it often enough, Rourke supposed. And Paul Rubenstein had hands that were good, obeyed him well, were strong, and a mind quick to learn.

The bandage in place, the old woman’s eyelids flickered, shy dark eyes probing bis and Rubenstein’s face; and her frail hands clutched at theirs, inadvertently smearing her hands with her own blood. Rourke smiled down at her, stood to his feet, wiped his hands clean of the blood, then picked up his parka and began walking again, Paul beside him. Paul’s right arm was crudely slung with a shirt-sleeve, much of the not-too

badly burned area exposed, but none of the Chinese stopping to marvel at the wound, because so many of the Chinese were themselves wounded.

There had been heavy fighting here in the First Chinese City. P.A. systems blared instructions in Chinese, the words Rourke understood for “wounded” and “dead” repeated often.

Rourke kept walking.

At last, he and Paul Rubenstein reached the steps of the government building. An immaculately dressed woman in modestly high heels and equally modestly slitted chong-san waited at the base of the steps, the look of distraction bordering on frenzy in the eyes set in her otherwise serene face unnerving. Rourke recognized her, a personal aid to the Chinese Chairman. The epicanthic lids closed and opened, the movement like the fluttering of a bird’s wing. She was very beautiful.

The Chinese/ English interpreter told him in her singsong soprano voice, an unreal but somehow sincere smile on her carefully made-up face, “The helicopter which purportedly carried your daughter, Doctor Rourke, and Major Tiemerovna and Captain Hammerschmidt—it has unfortunately not been heard from and is presumed to be lost somewhere over the Yellow Sea.”

John Thomas Rourke began running as she uttered the word “unfortunately,” tossed aside his parka and other temporarily unnecessary gear as she said the simple word “lost.” As he reached the steps leading into the government building, taking them three at a time in a dead run, Paul Rubenstein was beside him. Rourke glanced at his friend as the woman’s voice behind them droned on. “A Soviet helicopter reportedly was encountered and there was an exchange of fire and—”

“I know” was all Rourke said, not in response to the spoken condolences of the female interpreter but to

the unspoken words of Paul Rubenstein beside him. Annie, Rourke’s daughter, was Paul’s wife.

Rourke reached the height of the steps, running faster now, Paul nearly staying abreast of him. Rourke merely eyed the First City guards who momentarily interposed themselves in the open doorway, not needing to shove past them because they moved aside before him unbidden.

Rourke saw his wife Sarah standing at the head of the staircase, legs spread apart, face smudged. The staircase widened gradually, leading upward from the far end of the great hall through which Rourke and Rubenstein ran, upward toward the executive offices. A pistol was belted to Sarah’s pregnancy-swollen midsection, a black T-shirt visible beneath an open German camouflage BDU blouse.

“There’s been no word, John. No word at all.”

“Are you sure they went down over water, weren’t blown up when the missiles or whatever struck?”

He was taking the staircase like a hill, charging up its midsection, taking Sarah into his arms as he reached the top.

“I’m afraid, John.”

John Rourke held his wife in his arms, tightly.

Forcing himself to walk rather than run because she was beside him was the most difficult thing he had ever done. And Paul Rubenstein walked with them…

“But Comrade Colonel—”

“Ground forces.” With more ground forces he could have conquered. Nicolai Antonovitch walked quickly over the freeze-hardened, snow-packed ground, extemporizing orders to the aide who almost ran beside him. “Withdraw all functional personnel and equipment from the area surrounding the Second Chinese City, leaving only what is necessary to cover with

drawal of the wounded. Whatever the nature of the explosion there, it has likely neutralized the preponderance of their forces. I want to be able to attack the First City in full strength within twelve hours from now. They must still reel from the blow they have already sustained. Order the commander of our army in Lydveldid Island to consolidate his forces within the Hekla volcanic cone itself and to abandon, then destroy the German Base outside Hekla. I want a full airborne assault force ready to move at a moment’s notice against Eden Base in American Georgia. I want that force ready within twelve hours. A coordinated attack will further sap German military strength. I fly to the Underground City. For troops.”

Antonovitch quickened his pace to a run, his gunship’s rotor blades turning, snow swirling cyclonically in their downdraft. There was one other possibility, if he could carry it off without losing everything. If he could make contact…