Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal (13 page)

“Negative! Negative! Follow Retribution One down. We

have them on the run. But there is no time for both of us. I know this countryside. I will be all right. I have the portable radio and survival kit and I am armed. You have your orders.”

There would be barely time to get Gunther and his doorgunner from Retribution One, barely time before the Soviet gunships reassembled, then counterattacked.

The ground was coming up fast.

Kurinami felt for the Beretta in the holster at his side, his bag with the heavy coat strapped to it. His eyes flickered up— the fire extinguisher, his only way out. The fuselage wall-mounted survival kit. He knew its contents. German survival knife, emergency food, first aid kit, fire starting and signaling devices. A solar battery radio.

Kurinami had lost ninety percent of tail rotor control, and the fuel line off the main tank was spraying now, the part of the bubble he could see through because the wiper blade still worked slicking over.

The fire—he could smell it—advancing. But there was no time to look around.

The ground.

Kurinami banked, the machine responding slowly. He was crashing toward the canyon wall. He cut tail rotor power and immediately the craft began to spin.

He changed pitch radically, the gunship slipping away from the canyon wall at a sickening angle.

He braced himself.

Impact.

Akiro Kurinami shook his head, hit the quick release on his seat restraint, reached for the extinguisher.

Flames gushed toward him as he fell against the control panels, aiming the extinguisher at their base, spraying. The fire retreated a foot or so.

He reached for his bag, had it. The survival kit. Had it.

Kurinami sprayed the base of the flames again, running, hurtling over what he realized was his doorgunner’s burning body, his right shoulder impacting the door flange, his left

jumpsuit leg aflame.

He shot out the last of the extinguisher’s contents against his leg as he half fell, half jumped from the machine. He rolled across the snow, heaping whole handfuls of it over his left trouser leg.

He was up, slipped, grabbed the bag and the survival kit and ran, feeling the heat rush and the slap of air pressure against him, his footing going. The explosion roared through his head as he fell.

Sarah Rourke somehow felt better about herself. It was always better to be useful. And, with the borrowed German Battle Dress Utilities (the coat open) she barely looked pregnant. As much as her daughter, Annie, favored skirts and dresses, she herself had always taken every chance she could to get into a comfortable pair of Levi’s or something similar.

She remembered her high school days. Like all the other girls she went to school with, she had longed to be able to wear pants in the winter and shorts when the weather was warm, but the dress code—no pants, no shorts, skirts or dresses so much below the knee.

There had never been a dress code for Annie, and maybe that was why. And for Annie, for all she had known then the only female actually living on the surface of the earth (she, Sarah, and Natalia were in the Sleep), attire had become a means of identity.

Sarah Rourke picked up her German gunbelt. The holster was a big fit for her Trapper Scorpion .45, but a safe carry. She buckled the belt on, and even with the bulge the baby made, the belt was a comfortable fit.

She walked to the entry flap of the tent, opened it and passed through the airlock.

Colonel Wolfgang Mann and a dozen German commandoes, men like Otto Hammerschmidt who she wished was going to be with them, waited for her.

“Frau Rourke. If I may say so,” Colonel Mann began, bowing slightly as he smiled, “our field uniform looks most appealing on you.”

“Thank you. I’m ready now,”

“Very well, Frau Rourke.” And Mann turned to address his men, doing so in English out of respect for her, she realized; but since all of the men seemed to be either officers or senior noncoms, it was wholly likely their knowledge of English wasn’t being strained. “Frau Rourke will guide us after we penetrate the section of the First Chinese City which is now controlled by the Soviets. It is reasonable to assume that some chance exists that the chairman of the Chinese Republic was taken there after his capture. Other friendly force personnel may be held prisoner there as well.” He removed a cigarette case from beneath his uniform blouse.

“We must assume,” Mann went on, lighting a cigarette after offering one to her that she declined, “that our adversaries will not hesitate to execute hostages, most particularly the chairman himself. Since the Herr Chairman was under German protection at the time of his capture, his capture is indeed a German responsibility. This condition must be rectified. Once inside the facility, Frau Rourke will conduct our tour, as it were, until we confirm the location of what hostages may be present and have correlated the needed details to effect their rescue and to retake the facility. There are questions?”

There were no questions.

He turned to her. “Frau Rourke—if you would be so good as to accompany me then. I believe our aircraft and a small force of Chinese soldiers await.”

She took his offered arm, feeling ludicrous doing it dressed as she was.

But she also felt excited.

Annie Rubenstein stopped the Special and gazed skyward toward the sound she had thought she’d heard. She pulled her helmet off, her hair cascading to her shoulders, wisps of her hair blowing across her face in the stiff, icy cold wind. She shook her hair and the wind caught it, taking it away from her face.

Through the swirling snow, she saw the black shape.

A Soviet gunship.

“Shit!”

Catching up her hair and packing it into the helmet as she pulled it on, she glanced back once again.

From the rifle boot on the Special, she pulled her M-16, worked the charging handle, set the selector to safe, then rammed it back into the boot, securing the cover only so she wouldn’t lose it.

Her hands gripped the handlebars and she gunned the Special, starting off across the windswept side of the defile, the snow vastly less deep here and more navigable.

The helicopter was fully audible now.

With an earsplitting crack, it raced over her, momentarily darkening the pre-dawn gray to black.

The helicopter turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, hovering over the trail. Annie accelerated, nearly fifty miles per hour now, the gunship following over her.

A voice came over the helicopter.

Annie looked up.

“Stop your vehicle!” The words were in Russian and she’d learned a little of that from Natalia, studied it more in Lydveldid Island.

She gunned the Special ahead, over sixty now, the bike handling well but not made for speeds like this on terrain like this.

“Stop or be fired upon!” She kept going.

The helicopter passed her, hovering so low over the ground she couldn’t pass under it, snow swirling around it in great clouds, cyclonically. She veered the Special right, toward the higher ground, less snow there still. But the side of the defile was shaley, the Special slipping laterally, her feet out, bracing the machine. She kept going.

“You will stop your machine or be shot!”

She reached to the rifle boot, almost losing the machine, but kept it going.

The Soviet gunship skipped over her, so close the slipstream around it nearly ripped her from the saddle.

A roar like that of some sort of wounded beast back in the days when there were beasts besides those which masqueraded as men. She kept going, the roar louder, mini-guns gouging across the path over which she took the Special. She had to veer from the path, twisting the fork hard left, almost losing control. But as she gained full control, her right arm passed through the sling of the M-16, her right fist closed over the pistol grip of the five-centuries-old Colt assault rifle, her thumb working the selector to full auto, her right arm thrusting upward. She fired into the underside of the Soviet gunship’s fuselage. It was armored, she knew. But she wasn’t about to die without firing a shot.

The gunship banked sharply and disappeared over the ridgeline.

Annie knew she’d bought time.

She safed the M-16, letting it fall to her side on its sling as

she had seen her father do so many times. She wanted to shout for him or for Paul—she thought of her father, of Natalia.

She increased her speed, seventy-five now, the machine bumping and twisting over the rough terrain.

The gunship. “Damn you!” She raised the M-16, almost losing control, stabbed it toward the Soviet gunship’s chin bubble, fired out half the magazine. Still the gunship came, coming right at her.

The mini-guns plowed furrows on both sides of her. She let go of the M-16, the rifle slapping against her right thigh.

The helicopter’s downdraft of swirling snow would have blinded her except for the face shield built into the helmet. It passed lower over her this time and she almost lost her nerve, almost lost the bike. She didn’t.

Her fist gripped the M-16 again and she rammed it toward the gunship, firing in a ragged, upthrusting line, toward the main rotor, but the odds of hitting anything were more than remote, ludicrous.

Ahead of her, the ground broke. Annie Rourke Rubenstein twisted the fork right and made for it, not knowing what lay beyond, but hoping for cover. The M-16 swung empty and temporarily useless at her side.

The ground did more than break—there was a drop. She didn’t know how far. Annie threw all her body weight into the fork, feet going to the ground, soles dragging over the shale, bulldogging her machine to the ground, dragging it back as it started over the lip of a precipice. She fell, the M-16’s sling slipping from her shoulder.

She shook her head, the helmet falling from her head as she forced herself to her knees.

Her right hand grabbed for the butt of the Detonics Scoremaster.

To her feet. She stumbled, staggered, shook her head to clear it. Her left hand closed on the butt of the military Beretta.

The gunship was bearing down on her, mini-guns blazing, the ground ahead of her ripping up in waves. She thrust both

pistols toward the gunship, hissing, “Eat lead, you Commie—” And there was a sound so loud that her ears rang with it and

the ground seemed to shake, the Soviet gunship veering north,

climbing, the sky darkening. Her body shook as she looked up.

Directly above her, not more than fifty feet, hovered a second

Soviet gunship.

She raised both pistols to fire at it.

A voice came over the speaker. “Annie—it’s me, and your father!”

It was her husband’s voice. “Paul!”

The gunship shot forward and touched ground, Paul darting from the opening gunner’s door, ducking his head as the gunship slipped left across the ground and rose almost straight upward.

Paul ran toward her. She ran toward him and he took her into his arms. “Thank God you’re alive,” she shouted.

“Get to cover!” And he was dragging her now, the guns still in her hands, her eyes not watching as she ran, but looking back toward the gunship. It had to be her father or Natalia at the controls. She had memorized the black shape’s registry numbers, would know it when the other gunship— It was back.

They hovered, hundreds of feet above the ground, like two bulls pawing at the ground preparing to charge each other in some fight to the death. She had seen a bullfight once in a movie her father stored on videotape.

Paul was still dragging her and he dragged her down, holding her tight against him, both her hands still holding her pistols, her eyes riveted to the sky.

The Soviet gunship that had harassed her, meant to kill her, moved first, a missile launched, the contrail moving straight as an arrow or a beam of light, moving straight for the gunship piloted by— “Is Daddy at the controls?”

“Yes. Cover your ears.”

She obeyed, but she watched, the second gunship, the one her father flew, already out of sight, the missile impacting the side of the defile, a shower of rock spraying upward,

raining downward.

Her father’s gunship was suddenly back, rising from behind the wall of the defile, firing one missile, rotating one hundred eighty degrees, launching an aft-firing missile, the enemy gunship taking evasive action, slipping left and going for elevation, the first missile missing it cleanly, the second missile—

For an instant, the enemy gunship just seemed to stop, and then there was no gunship anymore, only a fireball, and the ground trembled and flaming debris fell and Paul drew her closer to him, his hands and arms protecting her head and upper body, her face against his chest.

Sarah Rourke’s hands trembled, the weight of the weapon she carried all that kept them from shaking violently. It was not fear; she knew that feeling; it was anticipation of action, a building adrenaline rush. She moved through the darkness behind Wolfgang Mann, the entry tunnel into the most recently exposed of the First City’s “petals” without electrification and the enemy too close to risk a hand-held flashlight or other form of illumination. All of the men, Colonel Mann included, wore a type of vision-intensification goggles. She had almost chosen not to, anticipating they would be heavy and awkward, but they proved to be just the opposite, the “guts” of the system attached to the front of the uniform blouse by means of a clip and feeding up to the goggles with a thin spiraling wire much like a miniature version of a twentieth-century telephone cord. She could see clearly, and as she walked behind Wolfgang Mann, she was glad she had decided for the goggles, for their very existence made illumination unnecessary. A struck match would have appeared as bright as a beacon here. Everywhere about the tunnel debris was scattered, the dust of centuries of disuse dating from the time the First Chinese City was built as a shelter against World War Three.

The weapon she carried was one of the newest German assault rifles, these, as Mann had told her, not yet general issue. It fired the new 7.5mm caseless round from forty-round