Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (5 page)

“It is.” There was a timer, Natalia examining it in as minute detail as circumstances allowed. “I can’t disarm this. So, we can either get it as far away from here as possible in—” And she looked away from the timer, turning to Annie. “We have four minutes and sixteen seconds.”

“Or what?”

“We can give it back to the Nazis.”

“I’d have to deliver it in person, wouldn’t I?” And Annie smiled, the smile deceptively gende when Natalia considered what her friend must be thinking. “All right.”

Natalia double-checked the device, making as certain as she could that it was not rigged with some sort of gyroscopic contraption that would cause it to detonate when moved. In the end, it was a gamble, but she moved it and the timer didn’t instantly accelerate, nor did the device explode in her hands.

They moved together along the side of the road, away from The Retreat, looking for a first glimpse of the German gunship that would be bringing more of the Nazis. As they took cover, they saw it.

The helicopter was touching down, skidding in almost el-liptically toward the road. Annie and Natalia crouched in the rocks together, waiting for touchdown. “When I open fire and draw them off toward me, youll have about thirty seconds. Run out there and get the device as close to the gunship as you dare, then get to cover. Youll need a good hundred yards to be safe, if we want to do it this way. More distance would be better and youll need cover.”

The sound of gunfire and the accompanying muzzle flashes would certainly have alerted the occupants that there was trouble in store. Natalia worked quickly with the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, before the enemy gunship took action with which she could not deal. Because of the heavily falling, wind-swirling snow, the SSG’s 3X9 variable scope’s objective lens would instandy cover. She flipped up the switchlike lever both forward and rearward on the base, the levers locking the base to the milled rails at the top of the receiver. She slid the entire assembly forward and off, handing it to Annie.

Annie took the scope, securing it in one of the musette bags she wore. Then she picked up the bomb that now lay between them in the snow.

Nearly two and one-half minutes remained on the timer, Natalia knew, watching Annie for a second longer, then bringing the butt of the SSG to her right shoulder and squinting through her snow goggles along the simple iron sights. She speed-cocked the bolt, chambering the top round out of the five-shot rotary magazine.

The helicopter was down, men starting to pile out. In the next instant, Natalia snapped off the set trigger, then rested her right first finger just beside the trigger guard. “Ready?”

“Two minutes left on the timer. Fm ready.”

“All right.” Natalia barely touched the forward trigger. In the cold, crisp air, the sound of the .308 was an earsplitting

crack, and the SSG rocked against her shoulder as one of the snow-smock-clad Nazi personnel took the hit and tumbled back into the chopper’s fuselage.

Natalia already had the bolt cocked, fired, killing another of the men, cocked, fired a third time, felling a third man. Then she dropped the rifle in the snow as she called to Annie, “Be ready!”

Natalia ran along the side of the road, away from The Retreat, firing the M16 that was slung to her side, keeping to short bursts, just long enough to attract the attention of the men from the helicopter. Gunfire hammered into the rocks near her, furrowing the snow… .

Annie was moving the instant Natalia dropped the SSG into the snow, the bomb—with a litde under ninety seconds remaining on the counter—ticking in her hands. She ran back along the side of the roadbed, at first in the direction of The Retreat, glancing over her shoulder every chance she had, watching as Natalia drew off the personnel from the commandeered German helicopter.

The wild card in the thing, she knew, was that the helicopter might go airborne, in pursuit of Natalia. If it did, her gambit of using the bomb against the machine would prove impossible and she’d be forced to pitch the bomb over into the defile paralleling the road.

As she half stumbled through a drift, her eyes were riveted on the timer. Only seventy-four seconds remained until detonation.

She could no longer see Natalia as she stood up, and there was no time to look for her.

The bomb under her left arm, like she’d seen men carry a football in videos at The Retreat, Annie broke for the road, well away from the helicopter’s personnel now, many of whom were on foot, chasing Natalia, a few standing perhaps twenty-five yards distant from the machine, as if not quite knowing what to do.

Annie ran, which was difficult to do with the heavy snow. Raising her feet high enough to move at all was a challenge, the exertion telling on her before she’d gone half the distance

she needed to go. Sixty-three seconds on the timer. “Football,” Annie panted.

She ran, shifting the laser-sighted Taurus from her right hand to her belt, hefting the bomb.

It was heavy, but not inordinately so.

And every step she didn’t have to take to deposit the bomb was a step she wouldn’t have to take to escape its blast. There was always the chance that if the bomb were hurled and received a strong enough jar, it might detonate prematurely, but the snow was soft and she was running out of time.

Fifty-five seconds.

The bomb in her hands, the helicopter fifty yards away.

Annie ran, hauling her right arm back, her left hand still supporting the device as she drew her right hand level with her shoulder. She’d never paid that much attention to the football videos, but throwing was throwing, Annie reassured herself.

And she pivoted on her left foot, nearly losing her balance, hurtling the bomb toward the helicopter gunship.

Her right arm felt as if it were almost jerked from the shoulder socket. She turned, stumbling, catching herself, running now through the drifted snow covering the road, trying to retrace her original footprints as much as possible so she would have easier going.

She couldn’t glance back.

There wasn’t time.

But she counted seconds in her head… .

Natalia threw herself down into the drifted-over rocks, hauled the M16 up, and fired out the last few rounds in the magazine.

As she fired, she saw Annie running.

To herself, Natalia had been counting the seconds.

She was finished counting.

It the next instant the explosion came, starting about fifteen to twenty meters from the German gunship, a fireball,

yellow and black with an orange corona gushing skyward and outward in all directions.

Natalia saw Annie running, then throwing her body over the rocks at the side of the road and down into the drifts.

The fireball grew, rolling outward, the helicopter seeming to start moving but too late, the fireball engulfing it. And, suddenly, there was a second explosion, even louder than the first, and a fireball even greater than before, belching upward on a column of black smoke, the helicopter consumed.

Natalia chambered the top round out of the fresh magazine in her M16 and opened fire on the Nazi personnel, some of them standing in the roadbed merely staring, some of them running, none of them thinking about the fleeing figure they’d been chasing seconds earlier, she knew.

And gunfire came from the edge of the roadbed … Annie.

Natalia took one of the grenades from the musette bag she carried and yanked out the pin, hurling it toward the men clustered between her position and the all-but-incinerated helicopter.

As the first grenade exploded, Natalia pulled the pin from a second one, threw it, then brought her M16 to her shoulder again.

The Nazis from the gunship did little more than abortively try to run for their lives, then die.

He loved his best friend like a son or brother, and loved his son like a brother or best friend. Each had become the other yet was still unique, an individual.

He was the most fortunate of men, John Rourke realized. His eyes were still closed but he was awake now, summoning strength to be fully so, at the same time assessing his body’s condition. He felt weary in bone and muscle, but otherwise unimpaired. And the weariness would pass.

There was the smell of food cooking. He corrected himself—cooked. Aboard the Atsack, everything was microwaved, hence never a smell until it left its preparation medium. Like the coffee aboard the submarine vessels of Mid-Wake, the coffee here was made in its own microwave device. The food packets—vasdy better-tasting and more nutritious five-centuries-removed counterparts of the old G.I. M.R.E (Meal, Ready to Eat) —were individually microwaved in units resembling large toasters, the side of the unit folding open instead of popping up when completed.

“Dad?”

Michael. John Rourke opened his eyes.

“Could you use something to eat?”

John Rourke didn’t ask his son their tactical position. He assumed Paul was at the Atsack’s controls and that, already, they had gotten well away from the site of their batde with the Soviet-armored missile unit. He wanted to urinate, but the smell of the food was somehow more urgent. “Yeah. You can stop yelling, Michael. My hearing seems to have returned to normal.”

“Great. Let me help you sit up.”

Rourke let Michael assist him. “I’m a litde woozy.”

“I gave you a very mild muscle relaxant/sedative cocktail

by injection. You’ve been asleep for three hours.”

John Rourke shook his head, exhaling slowly. He took the packet—which had become rigid during the cooking process, forming its lower side into a bowl —and peeled the spork off the side, tasting the food—beef stew—and realizing his mouth was dry, cottony-tasting. “Give me something to drink, huh?”

“Right.” John Rourke leaned back into the bulkhead as Michael went toward the service console. “Coffee?” “Water.”

“Right.” Michael foot-pedaled the cold water spigot, filling a cup. As he brought it back, he said, “We’re well away from any Soviet activity, best we can tell. Paul and I agreed that radio silence would be a good bet, so we haven’t contacted Captain Hartmann’s forces yet.”

Rourke’s son took the meal, exchanging it for the water. Rourke drank the water. Now he had to urinate. “I’ll be right back.”

“Stay off your feet. Wait.” Michael took the cup, set down the meal on a small foldout table about the size of a Thompson chair desktop, and went off. John Rourke leaned his head back, closing his eyes. When he opened them, Michael was back, in his hand a disposable unit into which his father could urinate.

John Rourke took it, fumbled his way under the blankets swathing him, used it, sealed it, then handed it back. Michael took it back and went off to the disposal. John Rourke took his food from the small foldout table and tasted it again.

Microwaved food still lost its warmth quickly, but it was hot enough. He ate hungrily as Michael rejoined him. “After you get a shower, once you feel up to it, then maybe we can put our heads together and figure out our next step.”

Through a mouthful of stew, Rourke told his son, “You and Paul seem to have things pretty well in hand.” He swallowed. “We have to get somewhere where we can contact Hartmann’s command for evacuation of the energy weapon by air, without bringing the Russians down on us first.”

“Paul and I were talking, Dad. The Russians won’t know we’ve got this, will they?”

The thought had crossed Rourke’s mind, too. If the energy weapon could be duplicated by utilizing the in-the-flesh article along with the plans Vassily Prokopiev had brought them at the behest of Antonovitch, there might be a onetime surprise use advantage. Antonovitch’s motives, as Rourke understood them, were clear, however convoluted bringing them into reality might be; the Soviet military commander, one of the survivors from Karamatsov’s pre-Night of the War KGB Elite Corps, had realized that another nuclear confrontation was in the offing unless he could give the allies pitted against the Soviet Underground City—the Americans of Mid-Wake, the surviving Icelandics, the First City Chinese, and the Germans—the means by which to achieve parity in the field without resorting to theater nuclear weapons.

“What are you thinking about, Dad?”

Rourke looked at his son and smiled. He was still a little fuzzy from the sleep and the sedative. “You were too young to remember then. But before the Night of the War, there was a strong move afoot in the Soviet Union toward democratization and toward stepping down from a war footing. Then things got out of hand, as you know. I was thinking about Antonovitch, how possibly he’s lived to regret what the KGB Elite Corps did behind the scenes to bring about the war. Maybe he’s thinking that preventing a final round of nuclear destruction is worth the price.”

“Price?”

Rourke nodded, putting down his food on the litde foldout table. “He’d rather have the Soviet Underground City lose this war than win it and destroy the entire planet for good this time.”

Sarah Rourke sat with her hands cupped around her swelling abdomen. Her arms formed something reminiscent of a collapsed ballet bubble, she thought.

Maria exited the room in which the young helicopter pilot was resting, a grim look on her beautiful face. Annie asked, “How is—?” But then, Sarah realized, it was as if Annie already knew.

Natalia said it. “Dead?”

Annie bit her lower lip, nodding. “So young.”

“Wars are fought with the young, Annie, remember?” Sarah volunteered. She stood up from the couch, her back aching, the palms of her hands pressing against her kidneys as she straightened up.

Annie wore one of her ankle-length robes, the pink one, a dark blue towel turbanned over her hair. She sat down on the steps that lead from the bedroom she shared with Natalia and into the Great Room. “I’ll get dressed. We need to bury him.”

Natalia, her boots off but otherwise still attired for batde, lit a cigarette. She said, “We cannot stay here any longer. We were very fortunate this time that we were able to kill them all. Good luck is never something to be counted upon. If we remain at The Retreat, there will be other Nazis sent after us perhaps. Originally, Sarah, Rausch wanted to kill you because you killed his brother. But now, Annie and I have killed Rausch, and Annie recounted that Rausch told her she had killed a man who was very high up in their party.