Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm (21 page)

She kept moving …

Their horses moved single file, now, Wolfgang Mann at the head of the short column, Jason Darkwood behind him, then Otto Hammerschmidt followed by Sam Aldridge.

A second ago, Darkwood had thought he’d seerunovement in the rocks to their right and slighdy above them, but it could also have been a trick of his imagination.

Both Sam and Otto were in radio contact with the remaining twenty men of their force, ten behind them at the base of the long defile through which they had ridden now for some time and ten-by now they should have reached their destination - on the far end of the defile. When the KGB Elite Corps unit struck, Sam and Otto would signal for the two ten-man elements to close in. Then it would merely be a matter of holding on until help arrived. At most, as Colonel Mann had assessed it after Sam Aldridge proposed the plan, five minutes at a gallop. The J7-Vs were on call as well, and they would reach the site of any ambush in under three minutes.

Jason Darkwood tried to feel reassured. But five minutes, or even three minutes, could be a terribly long time, long enough certainly to die.

Colonel Mann’s horse moved ahead, the V-shaped stream bed through which they rode rising sharply and flaring outward dramatically now into rippling waves of snow splotched granite. It was almost possible again for two men to ride abreast. And, if the Soviet force were going to attack, they would attack now.

Sam Aldridge started to speak. Tf they’re going to hit us-” The blast into the rock wedge on their left choked off all other sound. Darkwood averted his eyes, feeling rock chips pelting at him after a wash of heat blew across them like a wind. His horse, Fritz, reared and Darkwood nearly lost his rifle as he clung with both hands to die animal’s mane and the pommel of the military saddle.

Fritz slipped as the second blast came, showering man and animal alike in suddenly melted snow turned to steam and a blinding spray of rock chips and dust, only Darkwood’s snow goggles saving his eyes as he plummeted from the saddle. The assault rifle fell with him.

He hit the side of the rock wall and skidded downward, catching himself as conventional automatic weapons fire laced across the

granite inches from him, Wedging his boot heels against a rock ledge, he stopped, drew his pistol, stabbing it upward toward the obvious source of the enemy fire, returning fire in short, two round semi-automatic bursts, what Doctor Rourke so picturesquely called “double taps.” Sam Aldridge’s Palomino bolted past Darkwood, Aldridge clinging to the saddle with both hands, his assault rifle slung across his back, his feet dragging over the icy granite defile. There was a burst of assault rifle fire and Darkwood glanced right. Otto Hammerschmidt, horse under perfect control with Hammerschmidf s left foot stomped on die reins, was half-crouched, firing upward into the rocks.

There was a flash of light and, instinctively, Darkwood dodged, not knowing where to, but reasoning that moving was his best option. The granite less than a yard from where he had been exploded, a shower of steam and dust and rock chips obscuring everything for an instant.

The energy weapon.

In the snow at the dead center of the defile lay Darkwood’s assault rifle. He started for it, but another blast from the energy weapon vaporized it and the rock around it. Darkwood edged back, shouting over the din of conventional small arms fire, “Sam!”

Tm all right! Got you covered, Jase! Run for it!”

Darkwood didn’t think twice, turned, and started in a dead run for the sound of Aldridge’s voice. Assault rifle and machine gun fire tore into the rock on both sides of him, the ricochets like a swarm of bloodthirsty insects surrounding him. His left sleeve ripped. He felt a crease of pain on the outside of his right thigh. He slipped, but from ice and the uneven surface beneath his feet, caught himself, ran.

Colonel Mann was firing from horseback, bis animal rearing suddenly as conventional small arms fire cut a ragged swath along the rocky surface near its forelegs. Mann half fell, half leapt from the saddle, his assault rifle in his hands as he crashed to his knees, rolled, fired. Then he was up and running.

Darkwood could see Sam Aldridge crouched in the rocks where the defile widened, Aldridge’s horse dead in the snow beside him, eyes staring blankly at nothing. Assault rifle fire tore into the animal’s body, making it lurch as though somehow reanimated. Darkwood’s own horse was racing toward him and Darkwood pulled himself up from the ground to which he’d slipped again a split second earlier, reached outward as he threw himself toward the animal and caught his left hand in the animal’s reins.

Darkwood fell, dragging the horse down as well. Another blast from the energy weapon, the horse scrabbling to its feet, Darkwood grabbing at the saddle, throwing his right leg over as the horse stood, shook, then vaulted ahead along die defile.

Darkwood could see a trail leading upward, not much of a trail but with the energy weapon and the heavy conventional weapons fire they wouldn’t last the three minutes, assuming that Sam or Otto Hammerschmidt had had the chance yet to use their radios and summon reinforcements. Darkwood realized he was still holding his pistol and he used the weapon now like a whip or stick and slapped it against Fritz’s sweat-gleaming right flank.

He started the animal up die trail, toward the summit from which the energy weapon’s fire seemed to originate. “Gyaagh!”

Jason Darkwood didn’t know what “gyaagh” was supposed to mean, but a lot of cowboys had used the expression when exhorting their horses to greater speed in the western videos he’d watched as a boy. “Gyaagh!” And it seemed to be working.

She waited the better part of ten rnmutes for the orders to be given for the six remaining men in the immediate vicinity of the Retreat to reassemble after fruidess attempts at contacting by radio the two men she had murdered.

And now it would have to be very quick and there would be no second chances. Because, if it didtft work, she would be fully exposed to six assault rifles and have only two six-shot revolvers for defense against them. That would not be enough. There wouldn’t even be time to reach the suppressor-fitted Walther .380 beneath her coat.

Her own assault rifle and the rifles of the two dead men would not help either, because she would have to walk into the tiling barehanded. She had learned the technique from John. In these days, and in those days five centuries ago, no one expected to be braced in a stand-up gunfight as in the era of die American wild west, face to face, live or die.

She called out from the darkness, in German, intentionally stilted. “I have come to talk wim you. I am without a rifle. My hands are empty.”

The six men turned to face her as one.

She hadn’t lied, after all, because her hands were empty and her rifle and die rifles of the two dead men were hidden back in the rocks. And so were her holsters, but not the belt she usually wore them on. The belt was cinched around her waist, over her sweater. The twin stainless L-Frame Smith .357s with die American Eagles engraved upon the right barrel flats were stuffed into the belt, in the front, just the way John did it with his Scoremasters.

And, if she could pull it off the way John did it, she’d live-maybe.

“I am coming out to speak with you. We have wish to discuss terms for your surrender.”

She kept her rmdsweU away from her rxxly plane, so they’d be visible. She was counting on audacity, too, the sheer audacity of proclaiming that the six heavily armed men were surrounded by a group of women.

One of the six took a short step forward, raising his assault rifle to hip level.

Tire a single burst and before I fall, there will be more gunfire from die rocks surrounding you than you can imagine.” It sounded rather lame, especially in intentionally clumsy German. But, in a way, that could be good. The more over-confident die six men felt, the easier they would be to deal wim. “Which is your leader?”

The one who had stepped slighdy forward spoke. 1 command this patrol. Our leader has your friend surrounded. She will (tie at the slightest provocation.”

That was a possibility, of course, however remote, tiiat upon hearing gunfire and after attempting radio contact with these six, the men near Annie’s position would simply do their best to kill her immediately. But, with these six alive, the situation had no hope at all.

She stopped when she was thirty feet from the six men. They were bunched up tighdy, which was better for her. “WiU you lay down your weapons and surrender?”

The man who had stepped slighdy forward laughed and turned to look at the other five. Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna reached for her pistols.

One of the five men behind the leader started to shout.

She double actioned through die Smith and Wesson in her right hand, die revolver bucking slightly in recoil as she shot the wouldbe shouter in the chest. He started to fall back as she fired the revolver mat was in her left hand, hitting the selffroclaimed team leader somewhere near the thorax, the precise location of her shot hard to gauge in the poor tight and heavy snow.

The revolver in her right hand-she snapped a shot into the man at her far right, his assault rifle starting to fire as she stepped away and left, then fired the revolver in her left hand, the first shot spinning him around, die second shot punching him into a chest-high snow drift.

Gunfire tore into die ground less than a meter from her right foot and she spun toward it as she stepped left, both revolvers at chest level, firing simultaneously, her ears ringing with the sound, the man who had fired at her sprawling back, dropping to bis knees, his gun firing into the remaining two men. Natalia wheeled toward them, firing a double tap from the revolver in her right hand into the nearer of die two men, then a double tap from the second revolver into the last man, both men falling down dead. Ten shots, six dead. She breathed.

Jason Darkwood leaned bard over the neck of his horse, the animal stumbling, righting itself, vaulting ahead along the upreaching trail toward die height overlooking the defile within which his comrades still fought for their lives.

The hood of Darkwood’s parka blew back and he ripped the Navy-blue stocking cap from his head, the wind lashing across his face as he shouted the magic word again to Fritz, “Gyaagh!” He lashed at the animal with the reins, kicking his heels against its pulsating flanks, spurring Fritz upward along die ice-slicked granite. “Gyaagh!”

The energy weapon fired again. He couldn’t see the flash, nor the resultant explosion, but could feel the concussion almost simultaneously with the blast which assailed his wind and cold numbing ears. “Gyaagh!”

The Lancer 2418 A2 was still bunched tight in his right fist. He made it that there were nine or ten rounds remaining in the pistol, reminding himself he should count his pistol shots as carefully as he counted the torpedoes aboard bis submarine, the Reagan. “Gyaagh!”

The horse beneath him half jumped, half stumbled over a dislodged pile of granite slabs, down to its haunches, Darkwood half out of the saddle, his right foot on the rocky surface beneath them, wedging into the rock, pushing Fritz upward, “Come on, boy! Come on!”

Fritz lurched to a standing position, knees skinned and bleeding, Darkwood in the saddle again without remembering exacdy how, digging in his heels, shouting the magic word again, “Gyaagh!”

Fritz jumped forward and into a dead run along the flatter rock-bed, a bend just ahead, Fritz’s hind feet skidding on the ice, the animal nearly going down, regaining its balance, then into the bend and around it. “Gyaagh!”

As Darkwood and his mount rounded the bend, Darkwood’s eyes narrowed against the icy slipstream around them despite the protective goggles, just out of reflex action; he saw the leading edge of the Soviet line.

Two of die Elite Corpsmen in their white snow smocks, rifles to their shoulders, wheeled toward him. In Darkwood’s mind flashed visions of all the cowboys of bis youth, their pistols flashing fire in their hands as they rode. He stabbed die Lancer 9mm past his animal’s head and fired once, then again, then again and again, bringing one of the men down, sending the Elite Corpsman spinning back over the edge of the overlook, a scream rising, falling, dying.

The second Elite Corpsman fired. Fritz lurched sickeningly, falling, Darkwood half-falling, half-jumping from the saddle, hitting the rocks, skidding down into a snow bank, bis right ear packed with the freezing white crystalline substance, his mouth filling with it, his goggles obscured by it. Another burst of assault rifle fire.

Darkwood wiped his left sleeve across his goggles as he spat snow, then stabbed his pistol toward the Elite Corpsman, firing it, again and again, emptying the weapon into the man’s upper body.

The man fell down dead in a heap.

Darkwood clambered to his feet, slipping, righting himself, standing.

Fritz rose, shook, stood there, a long but not too deep looking bullet crease along the left side of the animal’s chest.

Darkwood ejected the empty magazine from his pistol, putting one of the extension spares up the well in its place, letting the slide slam forward. Another blast from the energy weapon, perhaps as close as a hundred yards ahead of him. It was deafeningly loud, his eardrums vibrating with it. Darkwood scrambled over the rocks and out of the snowbank, his gloved left hand getting the snow out ofhis ear. He looked at the horse. “Well probably both get it, fella. Wanna tryr

The horse, of course, didn’t answer him. But somehow, Darkwood sensed Fritz was game if he was. Darkwood swung up into the saddle, caught up the reins. He hammered his heels against the animal’s sides and Fritz started ahead, gathering momentum. More of the Elite Corpsmen were visible now, rising

from their defensive positions. Darkwood fired his pistol at the nearest of diem, lolling die man or putting him down-Darkwood couldn’t tell which-with a single shot.

Darkwood’s animal seemed to be moving faster, the Elite Corpsmen swarming toward them all a blur. Darkwood fired into die blur of bodies, no time to count shots, rifle butts hammering at him, at the horse, bullets burrowing into his saddle, a slug tearing across Darkwood’s right thigh and right hip. Darkwood slumped, did not fall. “Gyaagh!” The pistol was empty. Darkwood clubbed at the face of an Elite Corpsman as Fritz body-slammed the man.