Earth Fire

by Jerry Ahern

  Rourke started to run again, past the far side of the Great Room, into the storage area.

  In the dim light, he ran along the room’s length, past the rows of shelves and the provisions there, the ammuni­tion, the spare parts, the clothes—stopping by a small niche in the wall, a steel tool cabinet there. He threw his body against the tool cabinet, budging it aside, then shifting it away from the wall with his hands. There was a steel door, three feet square, a combination lock on it. He twirled the dial on the lock, right, then left, then right, twisting the handle, the door swinging out.

  Rourke walked back to the shelves, pulling down a flashlight. He smiled—it was one of the angleheads he and Rubenstein had taken from the geological supply shop in Albuquerque—when it had all begun. He flicked the switch, nothing. He unscrewed the butt cap, reaching into another shelf, and pulling out two batteries, drop­ping the D-cells into the flashlight and screwing the butt cap closed. He turned toward the small, open steel door, walking toward it. Rourke bent down, flicking on the flashlight, shining it up inside. Rungs were anchored to the living granite, three feet apart, the tunnel inside an­gling steeply upward.

  He turned back to the shelves. From a box he took an American flag. He returned to the escape tunnel.

  Rourke pulled himself inside and started to crawl to­ward the first rung, the flashlight in his left hand. His feet inside, he shone the light toward the door and closed it behind him—there was an identical combination lock on the inside. He wrenched the handle shut, twirling the lock. It was sealed.

  Clipping the anglehead flashlight to the front of his shirt, he started to climb, one rung at a time, upward through the darkness. He stopped, before the second door, identical to the first. But only a simple steel bar was across it and he opened it, rubber gaskets on the door it­self and on the frame. Rourke crawled through. His feet past the door, he twisted in the narrow tunnel confines, wrenching the door closed behind him, the gaskets seal­ing.

  He kept climbing through the darkness.

  The light bouncing, jarring as he moved, he undipped it from the front of his shirt and shone it ahead. The third sealed doorway. Here too, a simple steel bar locked the door. Rourke started to reach for it, then shone the light to his belt, ripping one of the two snap-held double magazine pouches open, off his belt. He slipped the maga­zines from inside the pouch, opening the pouch’s belt slot. With the leather magazine pouch over his left hand like a glove. Rourke reached up for the door handle, twisting away the bar, then wrenching open the handle. The door slid to his right. Above him, the sky rumbled with thunderclaps, massive, unimaginably huge light­ning bolts cutting through the clouds, ball lightning roll­ing from horizon to horizon as he shouldered himself out of the escape tunnel.

  Rourke crouched beside the opening at the top of the mountain, electricity arcing through the scrub brush. In the distance, he could see one of the Soviet helicopters crashing down, struck by the lightning, burning. Only one remained. Rourke started to his feet, running, crouched, toward the center of the mountaintop. His ra­dio aerial, camouflaged in a bracken of scrub pine.

  Small patches of cloth were visible protruding partially from the inside of his shirt—red and white—as he touched at the flag.

  Rourke reached for the antenna mast, electricity sparking from it, Rourke drawing back his hand.

  Below him, far beneath the mountain, massive ball lightning rolled across the ground, the ground itself burning, the remaining Russian soldiers running, clothes burning, electricity arcing from their bodies, their heads, bodies exploding with it.

  Rourke reached for the mast again, the leather maga­zine pouch protecting his hand. He started to tug at the cloth, pulling it from inside his shirt. Red. White. Red and white stripes. A blue field with white stars. A strong wind whipped across the mountaintop as Rourke secured the grommets on the flag to the antenna mast, the flag catching in the stiff wind, unfurling, blowing across the top of the mountain.

  Rourke stepped back, staring out across the valley. The thunder seemed to be in waves, lightning bolts ripping the sky around him.

  Out of the black sky, the last Soviet helicopter came. Rourke started toward the escape tunnel entrance. The helicopter was firing its machineguns, the rocks around Rourke’s feet chipping up, seeming to explode.

  A missile launched from the gunship, a smoking trail. It exploded less than a dozen yards from the blowing flag. Rourke fell to the ground, the concussion stunning him. He started to push up to his feet. The flag was ripped, tattered—but still there. The Soviet helicopter was making a run, coming low, its coaxially mounted machineguns blazing, slugs impacting around the flag.

  “No-o-o!” Rourke screamed the word, his hands flash­ing up to the twin stainless Detonics .45s, ripping them from the leather. On the horizon, the sky was burning, like a wave, the fire licking across the air, toward him, engulfing the ground.

  Rourke could see inside the cockpit of the helicopter now, past the open cockpit door. “Rozhdestvenskiy,” Rourke snarled. The rock floor beneath Rourke chewed up under the impact of the machinegun slugs, a small wound opening on Rourke’s left forearm as a rock chip impacted against it. Rourke stood unflinching, the pis­tols in his hands as the helicopter closed.

  Rozhdestvenskiy was leaning out the cockpit door, a submachine­gun in his hands, firing.

  Rourke shoved both gleaming Detonics .45s ahead of him at arm’s length, then started to fire, first the right pistol, then the left, then the right, then the left.

  The helicopter was still coming. The slide locked back on the pistol in Rourke’s right hand—empty.

  Rourke, his lips drawn back over his teeth, shouted, “God Bless America!” The pistol in his left hand dis­charged, Rozhdestvenskiy’s body lurching, twisting, the submachinegun in the KGB colonel’s hands firing still, but into the helicopter.

  The fire in the sky was rumbling toward Rourke as he started running toward the open hatch of the escape tunnel. He dove for the tunnel; the fire welled up and consumed the mountain, as it had the sky and the earth below …

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  He stood behind the figures of the mastodons, his left arm folded around the shoulders of Catherine—her body trembled.

  General Ishmael Varakov waited.

  He thought of his niece Natalia.

  He thought of the girl beside him who loved him.

  He thought of God if there was God and he hoped there was.

  He could hear it. The thunder. Outside he could see the lightning in the storm blackened sky.

  He had thought to await it staring out across the lake — destruction and beauty co-mingled.

  But the museum was his home.

  Varakov smiled at the thought.

  He had found love in many places. He had found honor. He had found what he felt was truth.

  General Varakov held Catherine more closely to him.

  He saw it—the wave of fire as it belched through the open brass doors of the museum, washed over and through the mastodons—he did not scream as the fire engulfed him.

  -end-