Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (27 page)

fucker!” Both Detonics pistols bucked twice in his fists, Kerenin’s eyes blowing out of their sockets, chunks of blood-flecked brain matter spraying against the wall behind him, the body flopping to the floor, the arms still vibrating, pulsing.

John Rourke sagged against the wall.

He looked down at his stomach, the uniform tunic blood-drenched. His left lung ached and it was hard to breathe. These were mortal wounds, he realized. Maybe if—and he laughed, blood rising in his throat, and as he coughed, blood sprayed against his hand.

He leaned his head heavily against the wall.

He had very little time until loss of blood would bring on unconsciousness and then death. The Detonics pistol in his left fist. He let it fall to the floor, moving his left hand over his left thigh. More blood. But he didn’t think anything was broken.

The leg should still work.

Rourke leaned forward, pain surging through him, his eyes squeezing tighter against it than they had against the light.

“Natalia!”

There was no answer.

Rourke forced himself to his knees. His little Detonics pistols—one was still in his right fist, the other on the floor beside him, the stainless steel of the two pistols splotched with his own blood.

No artery was hit—he would have been under a quicker death sentence if it had been. He found spare magazines for the pistols and, from force of habit, saved the emptied ones. “Michael,” he whispered. Michael could use them if Natalia got away. She could give them to Michael. He lowered the hammers on the fresh-loaded pistols, wiped the blood from them against his right thigh, and holstered them.

The two AKM-96s he had dropped. Rourke started to crawl toward them, coughing again, more blood this time, his head swimming, dizziness seizing him. He closed his

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reaching the first, then the second of the assault rifles. He safetied each of them, slung them cross-body this time so they couldn’t be lost to him. The wound in his right arm was bleeding only slightly—a flesh wound, he told himself. It seemed to extend along the length of his forearm. He wondered clinically what had happened to the bullet— or was it still inside him? It really didn’t matter. There were enough bullets inside him already. One more wouldn’t …

Rourke pushed himself to his feet, falling against the wall, coughing, blood spraying along the wall.

He pushed away from the wall, his left arm reaching out, his left hand pressing hard against the wall for support.

Awkwardly, he stepped over Kerenin’s body, nearly fell, then stopped, leaning heavily against the bedroom door frame.

Natalia. Her perfect right cheek bruised, a rag balled in her mouth. But her head was moving. “You were right. We aren’t getting out of this one. Not together anyway.” And John Rourke collapsed toward the bed onto which she was tied.

As he had fallen onto the bed, she had opened her eyes. And she had wished she were dead.

His left hand moved, the knife he had gotten for his son but his son had not needed in his bloodied fingers. For a moment she had been afraid for herself and she was ashamed of that. He moved the knife, perilously close to her. But in the end, he brought the primary edge of it down against the headboard where her left wrist was bound and severed the plastic cord and she was free.

“John! John!”

“Bag strapped to my back. Clothes for you. Your guns. Take my stuff. Give my guns to Michael. The knife—you keep the knife. Tell—tell Sarah—tell her—I always—she knew.” His head sagged forward and the knife fell, the flat of the blade against her bare left arm. She took the knife in her left hand and cut her right wrist free, then freed her ankles. Naked, she moved her body into a fetal position beside his head and held his face against her breasts… .

“You and you—go ahead along each side of the corridor. Slowly. Carefully. Stop before entering Major Kerenin’s apartment.”

The men moved out, their AKM-96s in hard-assault positions.

Feyedorovitch stayed inside the doorway, waiting. He had heard the gunfire from Kerenin’s floor, known what it had to be, then assembled a dozen men from the head

quarters offices, and out of the dozen he had four armed with assault rifles, his own making the fifth, the others armed only with Sty-20 pistols.

Inside himself, he wondered who had won. John Rourke? He smiled at the thought… .

Natalia had packed the abdominal wounds with the blanket, folded into a tight, thick rectangle, then secured it over the wounds with the uniform belt he wore. The wound along his outer right forearm she bound with strips cut from the bedsheet, spraying it and the abdominal wound with the German antiseptic-healing agent taken from Rourke’s musette bag. The leg wounds she bandaged like the arm, spraying them as well. Neither the leg wounds nor the wound to his arm were even potentially fatal -unless they were just allowed to bleed. But the abdominal wounds. They were fatal. She knew that.

She had dressed quickly then in the uniform he had brought for her, buckled on her L-Frame revolvers, taken her Bali-Song knife.

She took both AKM-96s from him and started for the hallway door to make certain the way was clear.

Natalia fired a burst from each and tucked back, gunfire ripping into both of the apartment hallway walls. She fired back and ran along the hallway, back toward the bedroom.

“John—you must get up.”

He was still conscious. She knew that. “John—get up.”

He raised his head, looked at the Rolex on his wrist. She had taken back her watch from Kerenin’s dresser, where he had put it. Apparently he had kept it as a pretty bauble to give some woman. “John!”

“You have two minutes. A woman—black—U.S. Marine Corporal. That APC out on the lawn. She’ll wait for another two minutes.”

“Bullshit.” Natalia took his knife, one eye going to the bedroom door for a moment, then sheathing the knife, securing the safety strap.

She had sometimes regretted her height. It had kept her from the ballet, sometimes made clothing awkward. When mini-skirts had been popular, she had looked like she had nothing but legs. But now she was thankful for it. As she drew him up from the bed, her own height made it easier to hold him up, his left arm drawn over her shoulders.

“Forget me. Tell Annie I love her. Tell Michael the same. Tell Sarah I always loved her.”

“Shut up, John—you can tell her yourself.”

And John Rourke’s left arm pulled tightly around her and her face was next to his. “And I love you—I never loved anyone the way I love you. Leave me a gun and I’ll hold ‘em off. Get out through the window. There’s a balcony out there. You can work your way down.”

“No.”

John Rourke kissed her, harder than he had ever kissed her, then pushed her away from him, her body slamming against the wall, the breath knocked out of her. “Leave me. I’m dead.”

She pushed away from the wall and walked up to him. “No you are not! You taught me never to give up. So, goddamnit, you can’t either!”

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna grabbed his left arm. He was weaving, about to collapse again. She hauled his left arm across her shoulders and started for the window… .

Aldridge turned the stolen armored personnel carrier into the tunnel, little traffic except for Gullwings, the plexiglas guard booth at the end of the tunnel all but destroyed, the energy barrier down, he hoped inoperable. “Hold tight—we’re goin’ through!” He stomped the accelerator and aimed for dead center in the tunnel, the few Gullwings swerving away to give him wide berth, the APC sideswiping one of them, hurtling it against the tunnel wall.

Aldridge cleared the tunnel, seeing an APC parked on the grass near the officers’ residence on the far side of the dome. He cut left. It was ringed by four Gullwings, men

visibly hidden behind the Gullwings. And as he watched, the APCs cannon opened fire, one of the Gullwings exploding, a fireball belching toward the dome roof. At least two men were firing assault rifles toward the APC, uselessly, he knew.

“Let’s get our weapons systems onto those Gullwings,” Aldridge ordered. He’d bet Lisa was inside the defending APC. And on his video screen now, he saw something happening on the top floor balcony of the officers’ residence beyond the little firefight. “My God—I think that’s Rourke—”

John Rourke started to fall, Natalia whispering beside him, “I have you, John,” and as she helped him to remain upright, he touched his lips to her hair. He closed his eyes tight against the pain, almost stumbling again, walking with her.

He reassessed his wounds. She had staunched the bleeding of the abdominal wounds. And there were no exit wounds. Which meant the projectiles were still inside him and would have done considerable damage. The prognosis was still the same—death. But it was easier now to go along with her than to further delay her by insisting that she leave him behind. He would likely die on the way down, or certainly inside the APC if they made it that far.

“How are you feeling, John—don’t slip away from me— please!”

“I’m fine—much better. You—you always were a good nurse,” he reassured her. “How much further?”

“Not much further—getting through that window was the tough part, wasn’t it?”

He looked around them, not remembering getting through the window at all. They were on the patio-like balcony, entered from Kerenin’s apartment. There had to be a doorway to it—but he hadn’t seen where that was. The emergency lights were still on and that was good. Aldridge, Martha, the Chinese—all of the escaped prisoners would be long gone by now, but Natalia was amazing in her adaptability and her wealth of technical knowledge. She could steal one of the little submarines he

had seen coming into the lagoon and she could get away. He knew she could get away.

“All right—we’re at the railing, John—now—I have to make some sort of harness so I can get you down. The slings from the rifles will do it, I think.”

He nodded, licking his lips. His mouth was terribly dry. There was a second APC down there now, on the grass. “Was there cannon fire a minute ago?”

“Yes—that APC—the girl you spoke about. She vaporized one of the Soviet cars—she must be pretty good. I can’t wait until you introduce us. You’ll do that, won’t you, John?”

“Yes—of course.”

“Good—now I’m counting on you. Don’t forget.” “I—ahh—”

He leaned forward, against the railing—it was at waist height.

“Careful—let me do this now—you just stand still, John.”

“Yes, Mother.” He laughed, and as Natalia started putting the harness of rifle slings around him, she kissed him on the cheek. He heard something, shaking his head and turning around. “They’re in the apartment, Natalia. Get outta here.”

“Not without you.”

Rourke turned himself around, leaning against the railing now. “Gimme—gimme a rifle.”

She had two of them—his? His, he told himself. She handed him one.

The window shattered and Natalia started to throw herself in front of him and John Rourke pushed her aside, shouting, “Jump for it!” as he lurched toward the window, the light brighter than it had ever been. He fired the AKM-96. The two men in the window fired back, bullets ripping chunks out of the concrete of the balcony surface, Rourke still firing, Natalia’s assault rifle opening up. Rourke kept firing, one of the men down, Rourke’s rifle empty. He threw it down and started to reach for the twin stainless Detonics pistols. The second man went down.

And he saw Feyedorovitch and at least two other men coming through the window and Natalia screamed. “John!” Why had she screamed? Feyedorovitch had an assault rifle. Rourke couldn’t bring his arms up enough to get to his guns. He was trying—he knew he was trying. Natalia screamed his name again or was it the same scream? Feyedorovitch’s rifle fired. The stupid little Sty-20s fired.

John Rourke’s head suddenly hurt very badly and he knew he was falling backwards. Natalia was running toward him, in slow motion and she was moving her mouth, saying something he knew but he couldn’t hear the words, just the tremendously loud explosion inside his head. It just kept going on and on and on and he was falling, Natalia’s fingertips touching his fingertips and then they weren’t touching and the blur in front of his eyes was suddenly faster and he saw the wall of the building and he saw Natalia looking down at him and he thought she was screaming and then everything just stopped and there wasn’t anything anymore at all.

“I think he’s dead, captain.”

“Damnit, we didn’t come this far—”

“They got the woman—I know that. But I didn’t hear any more gunfire.”

“Fuck it—we’re takin’ him with—move it, Marines!”

Aldridge shoved Lisa Belzer into motion, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Get back in that damn APC and follow orders—you and you,” he shouted to the two Chinese, “get in there with her. Keep tight on us.” Aldridge clambered up the APCs superstructure, two of his Marines still hauling Rourke’s body out from beneath the trees through which he had fallen from the top floor of the officers’ residence. Rourke’s face was covered with blood and if he was breathing, Aldridge couldn’t detect any sign of it. No pulse in the neck. “Shit,” he snarled, shouting to the Marine he’d left inside his APC. “Lay some rounds on that balcony—now!”

He didn’t want to kill the woman that Rourke had died trying to save, but he didn’t need his men shot either. The APCs cannon roared and Aldridge covered his ears with his hands, the superstructure vibrating under him. Lisa and the two Chinese were into the other APC, the hatch closing.

Aldridge reached down, his two men passing up the body, and he caught it under the armpits. Rourke had been a big man and heavier than he looked. But deadweight was always heavier. He hauled him up, the two men scrambling up onto the superstructure, one of them helping him. “In the hole, move!” The second Marine

dropped through the hatchway and Aldridge dragged Rourke’s body across the superstructure, gunfire coming at them now from the balcony—or what was left of it— and bullets ricocheting off the APCs superstructure. He was tempted to leave the already dead man behind, but he couldn’t bring himself to. The body would be flushed out into the ocean to feed the fish. The man deserved full military honors at Mid-Wake. And as Aldridge began stuffing the body through the hatchway, he vowed inside himself that if he got out, so would Rourke’s body.