Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm (18 page)

“Is there much chance young Hammerschmidt survived?” “Very little, but he is a good soldier, so we shall not count him among the dead yet.” And he clapped Darkwood on^wigte^T realize you are the veteran of many combats, but there cooM be intense fighting here. We must leave the machines and travel on foot for approximately two kilometers. If the KGB Elite Corps raiders who attacked the Long Range Mountain Patrol are still in the area, there could be considerable difficulty.”

Jason Darkwood smiled. “I threw away the pills your friend Doctor Munchen gave me. My head aches like someone hit it with a rifle butt, but at least my head’s my head again, if you know what I mean, Colonel.” Colonel Mann smiled, then started to rise. “Good man!”

Michael Rourke’s eyes hurt from staring and he forced himself to blink.

On the horizon, becoming visible out of a swirl of snow from the north, he saw three of the six Soviet armored personnel carriers.

If his father were right (and that was usually a foregone conclusion), these might well be armed with the new Particle Beam weapons. What possible defense there could be against them was simple and obvious: run.

Running was exactly what Paul Rubenstein, still at the controls of the vehicle Michael’s father had dubbed the “Atsack,” was doing now. But in case that didn’t work-Michael Rourke’s hands moved over the dorsal gun’s targeting computer controls, another headsup display showing targeting data appearing in the bullet proof glass dome beneath which Michael sat. All six Soviet APCs were visible to the computer’s sensing devices and, eyeballing the snow for visibility, Michael assumed that the second three would be visible to the naked eye in under sixty seconds.

He had only test-fired the Atsack’s guns prior to leaving the German base where Vassily Prokopiev was hospitalized, but this test firing much like racking and firing a burst from the Lewis guns mounted on World War One vintage bi-wing aircraft. Yes, the gun system worked.

As to how well the gun system worked, he would shortly find out, Michael Rourke thought. He ran the computer for updated status on the guns, number of rounds, spacing of electronic tracer rounds.

And his palms sweated…

ing upward then, to the windshield and the headsup sensor display there. All six Soviet APCs, perhaps fitted with the new Particle Beam weapons, were closing, boxing them in on the plateau.

Snow dispersed grudgingly before the Atsack, the all-terrain vehicle’s three meter high wedge of titanium assaulting the drifts as if the snow plow and the snow were living things, locked in mortal combat spawned of hatred. But the wind blew at such velocity and the snow fell so unremittingly, that despite the titanium plow’s tenacity each inch of ground taken from the wind-sculpted drifts was a major engagement.

The headsup display showed more activity now, new Soviet T-91 tanks closing from the west, the Soviet armor so huge that were the Atsack and one of the tanks to be side-by-side, the Atsack, for all its immensity, would be dwarfed. There were at least a dozen blips on the headsup display identifiable as T-91s, more blips farther away to the west, still not fully identifiable, the readouts on giving probability ratios, the percentages for correct identification rising: a weapon-system German intelligence overflights had only recendy confirmed, its capabilities still not fully known, tactical missile launchers, designated AV-16s.

Suddenly John Rourke stood up, shouting to Paul Rubenstein, “Stop dead and kill all heat emitting systems and anything that makes noise or an electronic impulse. Do it now! It’s our only chance.”

John Rourke sat beside Paul Rubenstein, watching the younger man’s hands move over the Atsack’s controls, Rourke’s eyes glanc-

He was not the victim of acrash. Of that, Nataha was certam from the first The shrapnel wound in the young officer’s left shoulder clearly showed evidence that the metal fragment-about three inches in length and better than aninch wide-had been stabbedm,likeaknifewouldbe. But the head wound was the most d^rrming evidence. She had seen men beaten before, and he had been beaten, struck severalty area of the head, befiind the left ear, with the proverbial blunt instrument It was doubtful he had regained consciousness since. And, of course, there were die effects of die terrific cold to consider. He suffered from frostbite, hypcttherrnia, shock.

He was in trouble. But they were in worse trouble, she knew.

Tve got him as bundled up as I can,” Annie whispered, kneeling beside her m the meager sheltered the gutto^

Then here’s what we do,” Natalia began, rearranging her head coverings against the cold. Til leave you here. Theyllthinkrm going backto the Retreat to get help to bring him in. So, theyflfoUow me ami they’ll leave some of their people to watch you. Unless they’re stupid, they won’t move against you, just in case they lost me, they’d warn to be certam that whenlbringbackhelplwon’t suspect something is wrong, ni lead them in the general direction of the Retreat, then turn off and wah for d^ catch up. Youl just have to have faith I haven’t lost my touch,” Natalia smiled.

Annie looked at her, pushing her hood back for a moment, tightening her scarf. “You’re like Daddy. You were bom with die touch,” and she reached out and embraced Natalia.

Natalia smiled again. If it works, rn come back, circle around into the field out there and try to pinpoint their location.”

“Ifs Rausch, isn’t it, flat man who wants tokfll my mother?”

“Yes. I think so. From what your mother said, he must be very good, so we shouldn’t underestimate him. He led your father on a merry chase and eluded him. Ordinary men dont slip through your fathefs fingers” Then she looked at die injured pilot. “Keep him as warm as you can. Thafs all we can do. If we can do this fast enough and well enough, maybe well get him back to the Retreat in time to save his life.”

Natalia touched at the young man’s face. He was a beautiful boy, and probably younger than she thought.

Then she looked out into the darkness as she rjuUed the scarf up over the lower portion of her face and tightened her hood. The men who had beaten this boy were hardly to be called men at all. And they were out there. She felt a queasiness in her stomach, wondering if srje still did have it.

And blowing there was only one way to findout…

Jason Darkwood’s knowledge of horses was limited to movie and television videos with such legendary stars as John Wayne, James Stewart, Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. They rode proud animals, many with silver mounted saMes and names steeped in courage and romance-Silver, Scout, Trigger.

He’d asked if the horse he rode-neither a partly Arabian albino, nor

brown and white paimrioragolctenPalo^ He was told

he could call die animal “Fritz.”

No silver mounted saddle either, merely soniething that looked reminiscent of the McClellan saddles John Wayne and his men had ridden in afl those cavalry versus the Indians m m^placecaUedMonurneiit\yiey girl who was quite the student of film and televisionmthedecaate to the Night of the War and me trivia attendant to these rjroductions had made interesting conversation at times). As they rode, Wolfgang Mann at Darkwood’s right and Otto Hammerschmidt immediately behind mem, Darkwood found himself humming Elmer Bernstein’s famous theme from The Magnificent Seven.” But, in fact, there were forty of them, a thirty-six man Reinforced Long Range Mountain Commando Group, die colonel, Hanmierschmidt, himself and a doctor skilled at treating for exposure, hypothermia and the like.

And they didn’t ride to some distant village to save the people there from marauding bandits. Their goal was approximately ten minutes farther ahead, a high mountain plateau, a man who was probably dead and-somewhere out there, marauding to be sure-a KGB Elite Corps Commando Unit armed with a weapon that seemed too frightening to contemplate but, nonetheless, so frightening it could not be ignored.

“You are humming under your breath? A song you like?”

Darkwood looked at Wolfgang Mann, nodded, only just then aware mat the theme had become audible. “Yes, but from very far away.”

Centuries.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna walked as deliberately as she could, ncwr turrung to lookback, riever taking her rig^ stick and shirring it to the pistol grip of her rifle (as much as every fibre of her being wanted to), her palms fjerspiring slighdy inside her gloves.

She focused her mind away from me drudgery of the walk thr^ shifted high snow, away from the rx>ssibihty that at an seen enemies would strike, preempt her own planned attack.

She thought abcrtJohn Romke, brt of him, as some unattainable romantic ideal, butasacomrade, someone she had learned a great deal from. His motto, of course, was “plan ahead.” And she had done that as best she could. Her revolvers were visible to her watching enemies over her coat, as was the rifle, but the suppressor fitted Walther PPK/S .380 in the Null shoulder holster beneath her parka was not, and lashed with dressmaker’s elastic to the inside ofher left forearm so she could get athquicldywitiiher right hand (butcouldworkit free withher left, ifneedbe),wast!ieWee-Hawkblade Bali-Song Iockknife.

She kept walking, the Retreafs main entrance, its access already drifted over with so much snow mere was no sign that it was a human habitation, clearly in sight for split seconds at a time as the wind would shift for an instant and the blowing snow would dissipate.

John Rourke had planned ahead there, too, because the rough road

leading uptotheRetieatforked and she walking past safety

andsecurny-theRetreatwasaU-brt

along the height of the mountain. There was a niche of rockthere, perfect for her purposes. If she could get that far…

John Rourke and Paul Rubenstein dropped into snow that was chest deep, the wind which blew it across the high plateau like a knife edge slicing through cfothing and flesh to the bone, despite any preparations against it.

The Atsack was, for all intents and purposes, dead, although ready to instandy revivify, all systems off. And John Rourke was banking on a minor miracle. With the intensity of the snowfall, the constandy shifting drifts and die Atsack, once stopped sinking into the snow as snow, blown against it, walled around it, any radar profile might be obscured enough to be missed. The only system which was operable aboard the Atsack was the radar countermeasures package, computerized, calculating the frequency and strength of any incoming enemy radar emission and instantly duplicating it, in effect absorbing the radar signal rather than bouncing it hack to its origin, then broadrasting an identical signal so there would not even be a radar shadow.

In theory, at least, the system worked like that. But if the combination of falling snow, drifting snow and counter-radar measures would work to

pass die Atsack by was another question, and indeed the stuff of which miracles were made.

Rourke’s M-16 would be useless to him against the vehicles themselves, but if his plan worked he’d be close enough to their occupants for the assauk rifle to be effective.

And have the secret to the Soviet Particle Beam technology…

Nkolai Antonovitch considered another sexual encounter with the beautiful Svetlana Alexsova, her blond hair fallen loose to her shoulders and her blue eyes just a little glassy as she sipped at her vodka.

They were alone in the hermetically sealed environment tent, but even while they were “off-duty,” other members of the joint military and scientific team continued the attempt to make contact.

The helicopters which towed the enormous floating platform constructed for just this purpose floated idly on the surface of the ocean a minimum distance of fifty meters from the sides of the platform, ready to bring the platform to its next location or to evacuate the occupants of the platform if needed.

Despite the platform’s size, it shifted as the surface of the sea shifted. Antonovitch had lost the feeling of nausea this caused early on, as had Svetlana Alexsova, but other members of the party had not. And so one hem” changed into the next, one day into another.

And no answer from their possible comrades beneath the sea.

Svetlana, although she was using him, was very beautiful’, and, although he doubted the depths of her passion, she was satisfyingtohim nonetheless.

As he started to get up, he heard the shouts from outside the tent. have made contact! A submarine. The red star!”

Nkolai Antonovitch finished standing, straightened his uniform. So much for passion.

the night.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna kept her same steady pace as she crossed around the tight bend in the right fork of the road, some several hundred meters beyond the entrance to the Retreat.

But as she passed the bend, she veered left, swinging her Colt assault rifle forward and, along with the climbing stick, utilizing its capped muzzle as a probe within the drifts to find her footing as she pushed herself up from the trail.

If they were far enough behind her and the wind kept steady, her footprints would obliterate quickly.

She moved through the rocks now, as quickly as she could without more than ordinary risk of breaking a leg or twisting an ankle on the uneven surface below die snow. The niche. She angled toward it and dropped from sight of the path.

She rolled onto her back and looked up into the swirling snow, the snow within seconds covering over her goggles. Natalia smiled, already removing the M-16’s muzzle cap, but keeping the dust cover closed against the snow …

Eight men in a classic Viet Nam era American Special Forces patrolling formation moved through the snow below here, their weapons at the ready, each guarding the other’s back, the muzzles of their weapons rising and falling as they turned, never crossing the body planes of their fellows.

It was like a ballet, nearly that graceful; and, like ballet, it told a story. These men were very good and very experienced working with each other, a troupe, as it were, which knew each other’s capabilities so well that they were anticipated and compensated for so automatically that they were almost like lovers well-used to each other’s slightest desire, the cues which made them react so subtie that no observer would ever notice them.