Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (15 page)

spoken. A string of High Explosive Anti-Armor snaked toward the Eden fighter and laced across its portside wing igniting the synth-fuel tanks. Emma rolled right of the fireball. “Five more Eden fighters approaching from—” “Never mind, I’ve got ‘em, Gorgeous.” “Yes, Commander.”

She had them but she’d worry about them in another few seconds. For now, the two remaining fighters out of the original three were coming onto her in a big way. She pulled out of the bank and climbed, outdistancing them easily, levelling off, then diving down onto them while they still climbed after her, the G-forces making her regret the small meal she’d consumed before embarking.

She saved her missiles, these two in gun range and handily so. As the two Eden fighters started their predictable peels away from her trajectory, Emma Shaw let the one on her right have a burst, knowing she would miss, then banking after the one on her left. She came out of the dive just under him and about two hundred yards back. She fired.

The Eden fighter’s exposed fuselage underbelly took a string of hits, the plane seeming to skip across the clouds as if it were airbraking. Instead, it spun to starboard and the portside wing sheered partially away.

One of the three originals to go. Emma Shaw didn’t even look, which was dangerous but there wasn’t any time for looking. Instead, she dove, knowing that the Eden fighter would expect her to use her aircraft’s superior speed and climb away.

He was already climbing in order to intercept her.

Wrenching her body into near nausea, Emma Shaw brought the Blackbird out of the dive and looped upward. Buzzers sounded from her computer systems, Gorgeous announcing, “This aircraft has been targeted. There is lock on by incoming enemy missile. Impact in thirty-eight seconds, Commander.”

She snarled under her breath, locking her gunsights on the third aircraft as it started levelling out. She fired, fired again.

“Thirty seconds.”

Emma Shaw banked to port and away from the fireball and burning debris of the third Eden fighter. “Twenty-five seconds.”

The buzzers persisted. These were not Spider Sevens after her, the Spider Sevens surface-to-air missiles. Instead, these were laser-locking Penetrator Twos, air-to-air combat missiles which doubled as tank killers. Once fired, they were independently guided, like torpedoes, homing in regardless of the distance involved until they ran out of propellant.

Her only hope was to outrun them.

Climbing as she was now, she levelled off and, in the next instant started the Blackbird into a full power dive. The leading edges of the Blackbird’s wings glowed red.

Twenty-seconds until first impact.

Emma Shaw brought up the Blackbird’s nose and banked to starboard, throttling out.

“Enemy missile falling back. Second and third enemy missiles fired on vectors—”

“Shut up, Gorgeous! You’re depressing me.”

The Blackbird’s top speed was so classified that only the program test pilots knew the top end. Although

she’d flown in some of the testing, she’d never been involved in speed trials. Mach Nine and past it.

“Alert, Commander. Spider Seven surface-to-air missiles have acquired the aircraft.” “Shit.”

Below her, barely visible and well off to starboard yet were the contrails of three—make it four—surface-to-air missiles.

“Additional incoming Spider Sevens have been launched, Commander Shaw. They are on intercept trajectory with this aircraft’s current flight path.”

Below her, there was nothing but snow, ice.

“Gimme my position on headsup and calculate position with continuous updates, Gorgeous.”

“Yes, Commander Shaw.”

The headsup display in her windscreen showed Tennessee rolling away beneath her. The Blackbird’s speed was still increasing. The red coloration on the leading edges of the wings was bleeding back across the surface. Friction was giving her the effect of turbulence, the Blackbird becoming more difficult to control by the second.

Kentucky would be under her soon.

“A total of nine Spider Seven surface-to-air missiles have locked on to this aircraft as target, Commander Shaw. Impact will begin in exactly thirty-four seconds. Probability of evasion zero per cent.”

“Fuck off, pal!”

But Emma Shaw knew that Gorgeous, however reserved he might seem, wasn’t an alarmist. This was it.

She congratulated herself for getting Eden Plant 234 blotted off the map. She congratulated herself for John

Rourke’s almost loving her.

There was one possible textbook solution to her dilemma. That was to launch all aft firing missiles in unison, thus giving her aircraft a speed boost and providing multiple targets for the incoming.

Also according to the manuals, to do so had a better than ninety percent probability of ripping off the aircraft’s wings.

“Gorgeous, two things. First, you’re a hell of a guy and if I fly again, I’ll get your program, honest.”

“Thank you, Commander Shaw. It has been a pleasure working with you.”

“Second thing, Gorgeous. On my mark, computer fire all aft firing missiles and jettison forward firing missiles to reduce friction drag and lighten the aircraft.”

“As you order, Commander Shaw. I am obligated to warn you however—”

“I know the odds. Sorry I got kinda gruff with you.”

“Good luck, Commander.”

Emma Shaw only nodded, as if he could see her somehow. “Four … three … two … Mark!”

There was a roar so loud that she screamed and the Blackbird’s controls suddenly died, but the aircraft shot forward, its airspeed indicator going wild. Every alarm system in the aircraft went off, buzzers buzzing and bells ringing, systems overload announced by Gorgeous, then the plane went banking off steeply to starboard, northward.

Emma Shaw forced her right hand to move, her gloved fingers arming ejection control. First there would be cockpit separating, then retro firing, then canopy ejection and, if everything worked, maybe she

wouldn’t be torn limb from limb by the G-forces and her chute would open. Maybe.

Behind her, in the aft view display, she could see the enemy missiles fizzling out, falling away.

The needle of her airspeed indicator was stuck all the way to the right. The starboard wing was vibrating, tearing away.

She folded back the firing panel.

The first finger of her right hand poised over the fire control button. She ran a mental checklist. She had both pistols, her survival knife, survival kit maps. Shit. Emma Shaw closed her eyes and pushed the button. No one had ever reported on ejection at this speed because the crash test dummies couldn’t talk and, even if they could they were ripped apart.

There was a roar almost as loud as the roar when all aft firing missiles went, and a pressure in her ears that even screaming didn’t help. Automatically, a distress signal would be sent out, if the equipment hadn’t failed. The United States was very good about going after pilots downed in enemy territory, she reminded herself. She spoke the language, could pass—if she made it to the ground at all.

Canopy separation.

“Ohh, Jesus!”

The rush of wind against the few exposed patches of facial skin was bitterly cold.

There was a roar and she felt herself shooting upward, her body molding into the contours of the cockpit seat.

The roar stopped and there was an instant of total deathly silence.

Now there was a new roar, the roar starting as a hiss, the hiss becoming a wail, then a scream, then so loud that again she screamed to protect herself from it but she couldn’t hear herself screaming at all.

The seat restraints would release her automatically if everything worked right. That would be in seconds.

Below her and far to the northeast she saw the Blackbird, the starboard wing breaking off, the aircraft bouncing through the clouds as if it were rolling over obstacles, then the wing totally gone. Now the Blackbird flipped left, the portside wing snapping away. The fuselage began to tumble then, end over end, cartwheeling, then just exploding.

Emma Shaw’s main chute billowed out but did not open and in the pit of her stomach she had a sinking feeling like she’d had when her mother died. The seat restraints had not released her and her chute would never open.

Falling. She was falling and she was trapped in her damn cockpit seat and she was going to die. No!

Falling, spinning, then tumbling head over heels her stomach churning, the blood racing to her head she groped for the knife that was her one hope. Her survival knife was impossible for her to reach. But there was a little knife she always carried in her flight suit, a little knife she’d found in Lancer’s once. Just recently, and years after she had purchased it, she’d discovered John Rourke had one just like it only his was an original. It was a B&D/Executive Edge Grande. The size of an ordinary pen, it locked open to a full length scalpel-sharp blade of 420 stainless steel. It was clipped, like a pen, into one of the little pouches on her sleeve.

She had taught herself to open it one-handed, but wouldn’t risk that now, couldn’t, her body still rolling head over heels.

Emma Shaw was close to blacking out.

She had the Executive Edge Grande open, slipped it under the seat restraint near the edge closest in to the seat, but still accessible. There would never be time to cut the X of harness fully apart, but she was small enough that if she could just cut this one segment, she might be able to wriggle free under the harness.

Then, if the chute she wore on her body would work—if there was enough time—she could—

She had it, almost. “~

The Executive Edge Grande sawed through the last portion of the webbing and immediately the seat was out of balance and the spinning turned to radical tilting and lurching and she thought for an instant that her body would be ripped to pieces, like the test dummies had been.

There was no time to close the knife. She threw it away promising herself that if she made it she’d buy another one. Her body was already slipping out of the chair and she lurched downward, the V which formed the uppermost portion of the harness X fouled in her oxygen mask. She was slipping still further, choking now. Her hands fought the webbing, twisting, tearing at it, all futilely.

The chair flip-flopped and suddenly she was free of the rigging and she was tumbling. She forced apart her arms and her legs, trying to stabilize herself, spread-eagling, like a snow angel in the mountains that rose above her little house. If she tried opening her chute now, it would foul and never open at all.

The ground was racing up toward her so fast that there would never be time for the auxilliary chute, maybe wasn’t time for this primary chute either. But to give up was the ultimate sin. There was an automatically activated altimeter on Emma Shaw’s chest pack, but there wasn’t the time for her to look at it.

She was stable.

She flipped the release for the safety. She pulled the cord.

Emma Shaw was snapped upward, shoulders wrenching, neck aching, her back on fire with pain for an instant.

Her hands reached up, to grab the shroud lines.

She was slowing.

Her chute was fully opened and she swayed sickeningly over the snowfield below. Emma Shaw breathed.

It was likely that she had been picked up on some aircraft sensing device employed by the Eden forces. And that would mean the bad guys would be looking for her sooner than the good guys. She would have to move. But as her eyes surveyed the unrelieved whiteness below her, Emma Shaw had no idea which way to go.

Thirty

There was nothing for it but to leave Annie and Natalia behind to protect Michael’s cryogenic chamber from Zimmer’s Nazis.

John Rourke knew that, but as the Nazi aircraft which he had just boarded—a V-Stol that was identical except in its markings to the state-of-the-art models of New Germany—went airborne, he looked past Paul’s shoulder and honestly wondered if he would ever see his daughter and his dear friend again.

Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz called to him from the other side of the fuselage, “Herr Doctor General! What is your first order?”

John Thomas Rourke looked at the man and smiled. “To stop addressing me as ‘Herr Doctor General.’ Doctor or just Rourke will be fine. And my second order is that you remember one thing: Anyone who doesn’t do exactly as Mr. Rubenstein or I say gets killed. If you or your men try anything after we have recovered the remains, they’ll be of very little use to Dr. Zimmer because they’ll be destroyed. And my third

order is just as important. Centuries ago, there was a wonderful television series and subsequently there were movies as well; they dealt with a group of men and women going off to explore the stars. They had what was called a ‘prime directive’ which had to be followed at almost any cost. This is yours: Don’t go into this thinking that we’re going to kill everyone who happens to get into our way. Judging from what intelligence data I was given by Dr. Zimmer, the society where the remains you seek may be hidden has been unmolested by outside influences for more than six hundred years. There is no reason to destroy it. We’ll do what we must in order to achieve the objective and nothing more. The first man of you who violates that dictum will pay with his life in the very next instant.”

Hauptsturmfuhrer Spitz leaned back in his seat, drumming his fingers on the table near him. The interior of the aircraft was luxuriously appointed, much as then-Colonel Mann’s craft had been more than* a century ago. It was designed to be a highly mobile office, an “Air Force One” as it were.

John Rourke looked at Wolfgang Mann now, the Generaloberst sitting alone, staring off through one of the windows as the aircraft climbed. Rourke knew the feeling of disorientation Mann must be experiencing only too well. One closed one’s eyes in one era and opened them in what could only be viewed as the distant future.

And, this future was hardly appealing.

The last coded transmission Rourke had seen from the deep dive mission assisting Thorn Rolvaag before embarking, indicated that Rolvaag had discovered a previously undiscovered suboceanic trench of incredibly vast proportions.