by Ahern, Jerry
“But there were a few of the real gunfighters,” John
Rourke had gone on, “who made it their business to be really good at their craft, not just talk big and backshoot someone. If you can get good with both hands, with both guns, there are a lot of tricks. Here’s one.” And his father had taken the two stainless steel Detonics .45s, after first making Michael verify with him that they were empty, and shown him the trick he would try now.
Michael stopped at the midpoint of the steps. There were some three dozen men assembled here, but only two of them, beside the man who stopped two steps below him, were Elite Corps officers.
Madame Jokli and the Icelandic police were still inside the building. He’d go out with a big finish, and maybe draw enough of them off that Bjorn Rolvaag and the other Icelandic police officers could try making a break for it with Madame Jokli, into the greenway.
There were places to hide there in the gigantic park, and a good man might just be able to smuggle Madame Jokli to the cone where there were the vents and the tunnels beyond leading to the outside.
“Your pistols.”
Michael Rourke looked at the Soviet officer—he was a captain—and he smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider that?”
“Your pistols, Rourke!”
Slowly, Michael Rourke moved his hands to unzip his jacket, making the butts of the Berettas visible.
In the distance, he thought he heard something, an engine noise. But he couldn’t be sure.
“You just want me to hand them to you?”’
“And you will do so now, Rourke, or you will be shot where you stand!”
“Captain. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
“Yes!”
“Captain. You’re an asshole.” And Michael Rourke smiled again, his hands very slowly grasping the pistols, gently, evenly rolling them butts forward toward the Soviet officer. “Go ahead and take them.”
The Soviet officer reached for the pistols with both hands. Michael Rourke could swear he heard the sound of a helicopter gunship, and something odd about it. There was a flicker in the captain’s eyes, but his hands still reached.
And then the ground began to shake, a low rumble from the bowels of the earth it seemed, murmurs from the men at the base of the steps.
As the Soviet captain’s fingertips nearly touched the butts of the guns, Michael Rourke’s hands jerked, the Berettas rolling outward on his index fingers, his shoulders shrugging, the butts of the pistols into his hands. Automatically, because he’d learned the thing with his father’s single action Detonics .45s instead of double action 9mms, his thumbs jacked back the hammers, in the next instant his fingers jerking the triggers, the Soviet captain’s eyes widening, his mouth starting to open, whatever scream he started drowned out in the simultaneous pistol shots.
It was called the “Road Agent Spin.”
Michael Rourke took a step up, the pistol in his right hand firing from the hip downward, into the chest of the nearest of the two remaining officers, slamming him back into two of his men.
Michael’s left arm raised and moved to full extension, the Beretta in his left hand firing, a head shot on the last officer.
Michael moved sideways along the steps. He could hear it now, a German gunship, maybe more than one.
.The ground trembled violently now. Michael nearly lost his footing. He fired both pistols, taking down two more of the Soviet soldiers. The railing of the steps. Michael safed both pistols and stabbed the one from his left hand into his trouser belt, vaulting the railing, landing in a crouch, the ground shaking so violently, he fell forward to his knees. A Soviet noncom was raising an assault rifle to fire. Michael’s right thumb pushed the safety up as his right first finger twitched, his left hand going for the
second pistol, having it as the sergeant began to fall.
To his feet now.Two men. The pistol in Michael’s left hand, then the one in his right, then the one in his left again, both men down dead.
As Michael started to move again, the ground under his feet slipped, a huge crack starting from beneath the presidential palace or beyond it, opening, widening, Michael jumping clear as the ground where he stood fell away.
He landed on knees and elbows, rolled, firing both pistols again, into the face of one of the Russians.
In the sky over the Hekla greenway, he could see German gunships.
Michael clambered to his feet, the pistols tight in his fists. “Madame Jokli,” he hissed through his teeth.
He ran toward the steps, already the half farthest away from him cracking off, starting to slip away. A Soviet trooper was raising an assault rifle toward him as Michael looked back to find the German gunships again. Michael stabbed both pistols toward the man from hip level and fired.
Michael Rourke reached the top of the steps, Madame Jokli, surrounded by her green clad police force, Rolvaag in the lead, starting through the doorway. Michael safed both Berettas and thrust them into his waistband.
The ground shook violently, most of the remaining portion of the steps collapsing, a huge sinkhole opening near the center of the park, one of the Soviet gunships collapsing into it.
German gunships were coming from all directions now, not many of them but streaking in fast, machineguns blazing toward the Soviet personnel on the ground, blowing one Soviet gunship out of the sky as it started to take off. Every Soviet ship that was destroyed might mean that many fewer Hekla residents who could be saved.
Michael pointed to Rolvaag. “Help me!” And Michael grabbed Madame Jokli, gesturing to Bjorn Rolvaag to jump.
Rolvaag jumped, Hrothgar bounding after him.
Michael Rourke murmured, “Forgive me, ma’am,” as he swept the Icelandic president up into his arms, dropped to his knees and began lowering her into her brother’s arms below.
Rolvaag had her.
As Rolvaag put her down, one of the Icelandic policemen tossed Rolvaag his staff, Rolvaag catching it one-handed in mid-air.
Michael jumped for it, the ground shaking again. There was a sound like a missile detonation, from the far side of the park. As Michael tracked the sound with his eyes, he saw its origin. A crack, widening even as he watched it, lava spewing from it, geysering skyward. Michael wished for a moment he had the M-16, but he’d given it to one of the Icelandic policemen. Maybe the man would use it.
Michael signaled to Rolvaag, then raced ahead, his pistols back in his fists now. As he ran, he changed magazines, swapping the standard length magazines for twenty-round extensions from his belt.
They were nearly to the closest open area in the greenway, German gunships circling overhead.
Michael gestured for Rolvaag to wait.
There was a Soviet gunship, starting to take off. He wanted it.
Michael Rourke broke into a dead run, a Beretta in each fist, the ground shaking so violently now that he nearly lost his footing, caught himself as the ground trembled again, his left palm with the gun in his hand grating against the dirt. He was up, moving, and he looked back.
A huge crack was forming along the center of the greenway, lava starting to bubble up from it.
He ran toward the Soviet gunship, men clambering aboard it. Twenty yards from it, he fired the Beretta in his right fist, one of the Soviet troopers clasping his hands to the small of his back, falling away. Another Elite Corpsman in the open fuselage doorway opened fire, Michael throwing himself down, firing both pistols, hitting the man several times, bringing him down, the body slamming back into the fuselage.
Michael was up, running again, the gunship starting airborne, men running toward it to cling to it for their lives. Michael shot one man in the face, another in the neck, another twice in the left side.
He jumped, his body sliding across the gunship’s deck, gunfire tearing into the deck beside him, his already wounded left arm spasming. He stabbed the pistol in his right hand upward and fired, a double tap into the chest and thorax of the man who’d fired.
To his knees, to his feet.
Michael Rourke ran forward, the gunship airborne now.
A pilot sat at the controls. Michael shot the man in the head and slumped into the second seat, grabbing for the controls as he safed his pistols and thrust them into his belt. He had it now, letting the gunship slip to port and rise, lava spewing cracks forming a patchwork below him.
He could see one of the German gunships taking off, Rolvaag hanging out the fuselage door, looking downward, another German gunship taking aboard more of the Icelandic police.
The business now was only killing, killing to save lives. Each Soviet Elite Corpsman he killed was one less to evacuate, one less to steal a gunship and escape or necessitate its being shot out of the purple sky.
Fire controls at his fingertips, he began his work.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Rocks began falling from the side of the gorge through which he drove the half-track. The little girl sat up and screamed and Vassily Prokopiev nearly lost control of the wheel.
“Be quiet, child!”
She needed a name, but now was not the time to think of one.
At first, the rocks were small, but more of them came, a shower of snow in their wake, the size of the rocks getting larger.
A rock twice the size of a human head bounced off the hood of the half-track, slammed against the windshield, cracking it but not shattering it.
Ahead of the half-track and behind it now, boulders were falling and more snow, tons of it, Prokopiev thought.
It was not a natural avalanche. Of that Prokopiev was somehow certain. During his alpine training he had seen small avalanches, survived one that was not so small. The rocks and the snow. It was almost as if they fell selectively. The child was crying and there was nothing he could say to it because it would not understand human language, regardless of how precocious it might be, its parents having none beyond a series of grunts and hand signs.
But he spoke to the girl anyway as he twisted the wheel left, trying to avoid a massive boulder. “I will take care of you, little one! I will!” There was a growing roar as the volume of rocks and snow steadily increased. The boulder glanced off the right front fender, the half-track lurching further left than he wanted it to, the track slipping on snow or ice, or perhaps the road’s edge. He cut the wheel right, a shower of smaller rocks and debris pelting across the windshield.
Ahead of them, a boulder of gigantic proportions fell. Prokopiev cut the wheel left hard, the half-track skidding, Prokopiev clutching the little girl to him as the half-track went out of control, slamming into the boulder broadside.
CHAPTER FORTY
Svetlana Alexsova’s blue eyes left her equipment for a moment, staring up at him, that slavish look that wasn’t real, he knew, but was so inviting, there. With the back of her hand, she brushed gossamer blond hairs back from her forehead. It was the first time he had seen her without her hair more severely arranged—except in bed.
With the small caliber pistol wound he had ordered Prokopiev to inflict upon him, there had been no bedroom bribery that night.
Six of the largest of their helicopter fleet had ferried the modular components of the platform, erected by the forces withdrawn to the site of old Beijing, once the Chinese capital, to this site in the Northern Pacific basin.
“Tell me again, Svetlana, how the device will work.”
He knew its system of operation by heart, but she so loved to tell him about it.
The light from the instrument panels lit her face in a green glow that was not at all unpleasing.
He looked about them, the gunships on their floats ready to go airborne in seconds, to abandon the platform, the platform a quarter the size of a soccer field and vulnerable to any sort of attack.
“It will be trial and error, Comrade Marshal,” she smiled, speaking to him so formally only because there were technicians about, he knew. “A conventional laser beam, which is, of course, capable of carrying a communications signal, rides on a particle beam as a carrier. The particle beam is precisely aimed, yet of such small diameter—microns only, Comrade Marshal—that it cannot damage whatever it might strike. As is the laser, low intensity. The particle beam evaporates the water immediately surrounding the laser beam, thus preventing dissipation of the beam in the water, allowing the laser beam to carry its signal to great depths. Thus, after much trial and error, we will discern the approximate area where the underwater facility of our Soviet comrades is located, at the same time communicating our good will and our wish to establish an immediate dialogue. You are so brave, wounded as you are, Comrade Marshal, to give this enterprise your personal attention.”
He smiled at her. Within the hour, they would both leave the platform with an appropriate escort. After this area had been tried, the platform would be towed across the water by cargo helicopters to the next nearest grid location and the procedure tried again.
Perhaps it would succeed that time, or perhaps the next.
But when it did, as it eventually would, a nuclear war might prove inevitable.
And so, then, would mankind’s extinction.
Antonovitch would enjoy Svetlana’s company, because it might well be the last chance for happiness, however shallow, unreal that happiness was.
He lacked one intrinsic, essential quality of the Hero Marshal, Vladmir Karamatsov. He was not a madman. Which was why he had sent Vassily Prokopiev on his mission, why he had had Vassily Prokopiev shoot him with the little .25 caliber Beretta, and then “escape.”
He studied Svetlana’s face.
She looked more beautiful by the minute.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
He felt the little girl’s hand touch at his cheek, surprisingly soft. He opened his eyes, almost total darkness. He found the switch for the dome light and actuated it. The little girl looked up at him strangely, her dark hair matted on her face and ^forehead, the sweater he’d put her into so large for her that it fell half off her right shoulder.
Prokopiev touched his fingertips to her hair, to her cheek. “We are not dead yet, little one.”
The windshield was solidly covered with snow. And it was starting to get cold inside the cab of the half-track, the engine dead. He cut the key switch, to save the batteries.
When he reached for the assault rifle from behind the seat, the little girl sucked in her breath, dark eyes as wide as saucers. He smiled, touched his hand to hers and whispered, though he knew she did not understand “I will not hurt you. No one will hurt you, little one.”
There was an entrenching tool beneath the seat, clamped there. He released it, folding it out, assembling it, sure he would need it. And then he tried the door. It opened, not exactly freely, but well enough that he could, with some effort, push against it and make the opening wide enough to slip out.
The little girl began to cry.
And he realized that she thought he was leaving her.
He turned toward her, to tell her that he was not, and she screamed. There was something in her eyes that he had never seen there.
He turned around, quickly, the club—it was made of bone—smashing down, grazing off his left shoulder as he punched the assault rifle forward into the chest of a man, the man small by comparison to him, but his arms — almost unbelievably in this extreme cold—bare, showing rippling muscles.
The man—he was one from the wild tribes, to be sure—fell back as Prokopiev racked the bolt on the assault rifle, preparatory to firing.
The little girl screamed again and Prokopiev turned around. The door on the other side of the cab was open, another like this first man’s hands reaching for her. She shrieked. Prokopiev fired over her, killing the man with a three round burst that peeled away the top of the man’s skull.
Prokopiev started to turn back, to finish the first man, and he felt the pairi like a wash of cold, then sudden heat, the darkness closing around him, snow touching his lips.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Annie Rubenstein opened her eyes, immediately seeing Paul. He was asleep, sitting in
a chair, and she had the sudden realization she was in a hospital bed. She’d been dreaming, but not with the usual clarity. There were helicopters in the dream and a mountain that looked familiar but wasn’t the mountain where the Retreat was. No faces at all. It had all been a jumble, like watching a videotape played at fast forward, only fragments recognizable before they were gone. She remembered a sedative being administered. It had ruined the dream. She closed her eyes, prayed that nothing was wrong. But there was nothing concrete in the dream, and she wasn’t even certain it was her dream, perhaps only impressions left from using her own mind as a stage for Natalia’s fantasy. The more she thought about it, the more vague the dream became.
She didn’t want to wake Paul. He looked so peaceful; and she was certain he needed the sleep after all he had been through with her father. Her mouth was very dry.
She often envied the others who had taken the Sleep with her. They never dreamed so that after awakening they were conscious of having dreamed.
It was something during the Sleep-Doctor Munchen had guessed that it had to do with the fact that she had not yet pubesced when she slept in the cryogenic chamber, but had admitted it was only supposition, a search for a «
reasonable explanation when none seemed possible. He told her that the area of psychic research was still in its infancy.
But in her dreams, she could see things. And she had gradually come to sense things while she was awake.
Inside her, she didn’t have to be told that Natalia would recover, was on the road to regaining her sanity, control of her own life. Annie Rubenstein watched Paul. If she’d tried, even a little, she could have entered her husband’s thoughts, perhaps awakened him that way. But she didn’t want to do that. The broadening scope of her abilities frightened her. The thing with Doctor Rothstein in his office that first time, when she’d actually read his mind, terrified her even to think about. Sometimes, it was necessary to make a conscious effort to avoid reading Paul’s thoughts, even though some of the times when she slipped, didn’t think about it and actually read his thoughts by accident, they would be filled with delicious thoughts about her.
