by Ahern, Jerry
into his belt, grabbing for one of the three grenades he’d taken from the pile. He pulled the pin, broke stride and hurtled the grenade toward the small balcony from which the personnel of the air defense command were firing at him.
It was a lucky throw and Rourke knew it, the grenade going over the balcony rail, the explosion coming in the next instant, bits of people and equipment and the balcony itself raining down around him. He raised his left forearm over his head to protect his eyes. With his right hand, he drew one of the little Detonics CombatMasters from the double Alessi shoulder rig beneath his uniform tunic.
As the shower of debris abated, he drew the second of the twin stainless Detonics .45s.
He was into the driveway now, the downward pitch of the driveway itself drawing him downward at an even faster rate than his normal rurming speed. He kept going, eyes back on the green garage door.
The nearer he came to it, the more massive it appeared.
But he could not afford to use all the new German plastique to get inside the building, because then there would be no point to the exercise, no way to destroy the equipment which controlled the Soviet antiaircraft defenses.
Energy weapons were being fired at him now, the synth-concrete near him taking the hits, blackening as the blue-white flashes of plasma energy passed, the surface beneath Rourke’s feet vibrating with the concussion.
He kept nmning, eyes on the green door, pistols in his hands.
Conventional small arms fire came at him again from above. But Rourke kept ranning this time. To have slowed at all might give the Elite corpsmen who were firing the energy weapons at him just enough time to make an accurate hit.
Machinegun fire rippled across the synth-concrete near his feet, Rourke squinting his eyes, averting them as the dust rose around him. He kept running for the door. A bullet struck his left thigh and he stumbled, but didn’t fall, pressing his hand and the butt of the pistol in it against the wound to staunch the blood.
He heard the sound of a grenade exploding, realizing it must be Natalia, trying to cover for him.
And, at last, Rourke was at the green door…
Antonovitch entered the Commissariat offices, the first time he had ever done so. He was struck by their austerity. There was the customary photograph of the Premier (now late Premier) and the photo of Lenin painted in an heroic pose, chin whiskers pointing defiantly forward.
“Comrade Marshal!” The receptionist was on her feet at attention, her flat chest under her loose fitting uniform singularly unappealing. And Antonovitch still resented this artificial rank which had been bestowed upon him, which he did not feel he had earned, but this was not the time to ignore her, appear odd in any way.
“Comrade. To combat the emergency precipitated by the emergency near the main gate section, I require access immediately to the power grid controls.”
“I shall-“
“You shall summon no one because there is no time. Were there time to waste do you think, girl, that I would have come here myself?”
“No, comrade Marshal, but I have-” “And now you have new orders. Be quick. Lives are at stake here!”
She fetched a small book from within the center drawer of her desk, leafing through it quickly enough as she said, “Follow me, please, Comrade Marshal.” And she started down a narrow corridor with its origins to the right of her desk.
Antonovitch followed her, watching her rather skinny legs for a moment; her stockings-heavy, disgusting looking, very typically Russian-were actually loose on those spindly legs.
And, for some reason, he thought of Major Tiemerovna.
Now, there was a woman, well-practised in a woman’s art, beautiful, perfectly dressed, yet it all seemed so natural for her.
And Antonovitch felt a flash of remorse for the time when he had abetted Major Tiemerovna’s maniacal late husband in entrapping her for torture and death.
He had respected her then, respected her more now.
The receptionist stopped before a vault-like door, with a standard touchtone security lock in place beside it.
She looked at him, imploring, “But Comrade Marshal-“
Nicolai Antonovitch cut her off mercilessly. “Open the door now,
girl.”
She turned on her heel, the movement almost provocative, a body gesture which would have been provocative in any other woman under any circumstances other than these, but not with her, not under any circumstances.
And he realized suddenly, as she tapped out the door entry code, that he was transferring to this girl with the faded blond hair and pale pimply skin, all of the disgust he harbored for the system which had built this girl, made her what she was, made him what he was, too.
She opened the door. Lights came on with an audible click and buzz.
He started to walk past her, but turned and looked into her faded brown eyes. “I am sorry if I spoke rudely to you, but there is something I must do that cannot wait.”
She seemed shocked, and there was the hint of a smile in her eyes that might almost have made her barely pretty if she had allowed it to fully happen.
She did not. She was not.
Antonovitch walked into the room, the lights on the map just as he had been told they looked, just as he had pictured them. And, encased under a plexiglas cover, there was a set of switches. He crossed the room and walked toward these. The cover was merely set in place over the switches. He started to lift it. “Comrade Marshal!”
He didn’t look at the bland girl, merely told her, “Go away.”
He never bothered to look if she did.
He tripped the switch and the entire room was in darkness, just as he knew the entire city would be.
He drew his gun, stood there in the total darkness and waited for the girl to stop screaming at him long enough to grope her way back down the corridor and summon help. By the time all that was done and they came and he shot it out with them, the Allies would have done their work, if they were clever.
If they were not clever, nothing would help them. He tried to think of something happy, knowing these would be the last thoughts of his life.
And he started to cry, because he could think of nothing happy at
all.
John Thomas Rourke froze.
No lights, total darkness except for the flash of the energy weapons, and those were few and far between in these last few seconds.
He was beside the door, and he bent awkwardly, setting out the plastique, wondering why there were no lights, and was the power failure general.
Rourke heard Natalia’s voice from the darkness, shouting to him, “It could be a trick!”
He knew she would not expect an answer.
Although he always carried at least one flashlight, he moved in darkness now, his only light the occasional futile flash of the hoped for lucky shot with one of the energy weapons the Elite Corps still fired sporadically.
Rourke’s left thigh pained him badly, but the flow of blood, as best he could tell in the darkness, had eased; and, since he was not dead yet, he theorized that the bleeding was not arterial.
He kept moving, dragging his left leg slightly, focusing his attention on the job at hand instead of the pain. If all the power in the city were out, either the Hand of Providence had hit the switch or something unfathomable had occurred.
It was possible, just possible, that the power inside the air defense center was down, too …
Natalia moved quickly along the edge of the barricade behind which she had hidden. The jacket of her uniform was off, the grenades inside, the sleeves of the jacket tied together forming a bundle with which to carry them. Already, the air inside the mountain was stuffy, smelled badly, and made her feel slightly nauseated.
She was confident that she could find her way back to their original position where she had left the energy weapons, despite the surrounding darkness which was almost total. She carried a small flashlight in her purse, the purse slung cross body like a musette bag now. An
d, if she could not find her way back, or time did not allow that, if what she planned succeeded, she would have access to all the energy weapons she needed.
In the darkness, with no sounds of electrical equipment aad no flow of fresh air, she could hear tiny noises, and thus moved more carefully. The Soviet uniform skirt was poorly designed and even more poorly executed and impeded her movement as she crept forward. So, the Bali-Song knife already out and silently opened in her hand, she found the side seam by her left thigh and eased the knife’s primary edge against it, splitting the skirt to her hip. The slip beneath it was already bunched up and out of the way, and it was her own so she had no desire to cut it.
She kept moving, her objective a simple one: To reach the enemy position which had been the source of the energy weapon fire and neutralize the men there …
A good three dozen men of the raiding parties-U.S. Marines, German Long Range Mountain Patrol and Commando personnel, Chinese from the Second City, all fighting side-by-side against the common enemy-rallied around Jason Darkwood. Darkwood raised his right arm, sweeping hand and arm forward in a broad arc as he shouted, “Follow me!”
Darkwood started toward the fence gates which separated the lagoon docks from the domes of the Soviet city itself, his Lancer pistol in his left hand, his Randall knife in his right.
Gunfire from the men around him was deafening, and the thought crossed his mind that he hoped the newly-developed low penetration round these men were firing was as safe to fire under the domes as testing indicated. Otherwise, a stray shot and they could all die.
Black uniformed Marine Spetznas personnel held the gates, retorting tire with Sty-20s, PV-26 shark guns and AKM-96 assault rifles. Men fell on either side of Jason Darkwood.
A young black Marine near to Darkwood, left arm limp at his side and streaming blood from a shoulder wound, did something then that took Jason Darkwood totally by surprise.
He started to sing.
The Marine hymnn.
Under normal circumstances, Jason Darkwood would have started looking for people to join him in “Anchors Aweigh,” but instead he joined the young man, and others did, too. Some of the Germans and Chinese mumbling were words that didn’t fit, but
keeping to the tune.
They were at the gates now, the electric gullwing car that was their battering ram, punching through the fence, its windows riddled with bullets, the man driving it probably dead.
The Soviet forces fell back from the fence, but held their ground near a knot of gullwing cars parked near to the gates.
Darkwood didn’t know the second verse to the song, just started singing the first verse again.
Everyone was singing, now, and the words no longer were even distinguishable and, as they ran, weapons firing, they fell into step, charging toward the Soviet Marine Spetznas position.
They closed with the enemy.
At point blank range, Jason Darkwood fired the Lancer 9mm pistol into the chest and neck of a Marine Spetznas officer coming at him with an AKM-96. Two enlisted men charged toward him and Darkwood backstepped, firing the Lancer again, putting down one of the men, sidestepping and using the knife in his hand like a club, crashing the blade flat down across the skull of the second man.
Two Marine Spetznas officers were inside an already moving gullwing car, the doors open.
Darkwood thrust his pistol into his belt and picked up an AKM-96, fisting the weapon in his right hand, bracing the stock between his right elbow and hip. He fired, spraying out the magazine in three-round full-auto bursts, killing the man behind the wheel of the gullwing, the car crashing into the tunnel wall just beyond.
From the corner of his eye, Darkwood spotted the senior among all the Marine Spetznas officers he had seen so far, and Darkwood summoned two of the Marines near him, racing toward the man. A Soviet enlisted man lunged with his bayonet, just missing Darkwood’s right rib cage. Darkwood fired out the last half-dozen rounds in the AKM-96’s magazine, putting the man down.
The Marine Spetznas officer, back to a gullwing car, raised his hands and shouted in Russian, “Do not shoot!”
Jason Darkwood threw down the emptied Soviet assault rifle and pointed the muzzle of his pistol toward the Soviet officer. “Sir, in the name of the United States Government of Mid-Wake and Allied Expeditionary Force command, I order you to instruct your men to lay down their arms and cease hostilities at once or suffer the consequences.”
Darkwood cocked the hammer on the pistol and smiled.
With a tremulous voice, the Marine Spetznas officer began to shout to his men.
And Jason Darkwood decided it was safe to lower the hammer on his pistol…
She was already through the knees of her stockings, and her bare knees were cold against the street surface as she crept toward the very faint outline of a man. Although every light was out, some very mffused illumination came through the tunnel from the gray outside, and when she was very careful, she could make out some shapes.
This shape was clearly human. She went after it with her knife …
His light sensitivity had always been a problem for him during daylight hours, requiring him to use sunglasses ever since his early teens whenever he was in strong sunshine. But, on the plus side, his night vision had always been superb.
He could see now, just barely enough to know that he had his plastique reasonably evenly spaced along the massive green door.
And he stood beside the door, with much difficulty because of his wounded left thigh.
The quickest way to one of the energy weapons was to walk straight up the middle of the driveway. Of course, if the lights came back on, he would be a sitting duck.
He decided to risk it, while his leg still held out. With the added time the darkness had given him, he’d been able to utilize all the plastique in a manner which would obviate ever having to go inside the building.
The pattern and density with which he had been able to plant the charges would do the job he’d intended to do with the other half of his plastique and the grenades, destroying the very bowels of the building and possibly bringing down a wall.
He was walking right up the middle, the twin Detonics mini-guns in his hands, the reloaded Scoremasters in his belt beneath the uniform tunic, elsewhere on his body the suppressor-fitted Smith &
Wesson 6906 and the A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome knife, the S&W Centennial revolver in his hip pocket.
Rourke did not run because he could not run with any degree of comfort, limping badly on his stiffening left leg. The thigh wound had all but stopped pumping and he suspected that the bullet was out, that the wound was just a very deep graze.
He kept moving.
If the antiaircraft defenses were out, Colonel Mann and his forces would know and German air power would be starting its attack at any moment-ground forces from New Germany, Mid-Wake, the Second Chinese City and the Icelandics (a small contingent of Icelandic police) storming toward the city. Nearly as small a force as the men of Lydveldid Island were, the few persons from the Wild Tribes of Europe, these not fighters at all, but cargo handlers and the like, doing what they could to further the cause of freedom.
John Rourke kept walking.
At last, he neared the position where he had left Natalia, slowing his pace, knowing her night vision was good but not as good as his, not wanting to surprise her.
But when he reached the spot, Natalia was no longer there.
The grenades were gone, but both energy weapons and their power source backpacks were there.
“Shit,” John Rourke observed.
He picked up one of the energy weapons, slipping into the straps for the backpack. He powered up the rifle, brought it to his shoulder, squinted his eyes against the flash from the first of two shots he intended to make, the first to light the target for the second.
He shouted in Spanish to Natalia through the darkness, reasoning that there were probably twenty people alive on Earth who spoke that rich and musical tongue now and
none of them were here. “Be careful! I am firing now! Keep down!”
And he touched the trigger of the energy weapon …
Natalia’s left hand was over the man’s mouth, her right knee crashed against his spine, the knife in her right hand gouging into the side of his neck as she heard John Rourke’s voice.
She gave the knife a twist and dove toward the nearest wall, draw
ing the suppressor-fitted Walther PPK as she did so, covering her face and eyes as the hum and buzz of the energy weapon came and went, the faint sound of synth-concrete taking the hit.
There was no explosion, and she realized there should not have been. John would be firing his first shot to illuminate the target area.
The second shot came, and a roar followed it, her eardrums pulsing with it.
“He used it all,” she verbalized to her unhearing ears …
John Rourke raised up from the prone position he’d dropped to, but with considerable difficulty.
Fire burned within the base of the air defense control center now, the fire burning so brightly because there were trucks parked within the below ground area, and the synth-fuel tanks they carried, had caught. The fires licked upward around the exterior of the structure, but synth-concrete did not burn.
While the fires spread-they would be short-lived, he knew-John Rourke hauled himself to his knees behind cover, firing the energy weapon he’d used to detonate the plastique on the green door while he still had sufficient light. This time, his targets were the windows of the structure. Any damage he could do to the equipment inside was a plus, now.
And, from far to his right, there was more energy weapon fire, but not directed toward him.
“John!”
It was Natalia.
Rourke shouted back to her as he fired, Tm working the windows. Help Michael and Paul, then get out of here! 1*11 be right behind you!”
There was no answer, but after a flurry of quick shots from Natalia’s direction, her firing ceased.
The flames from the fire in the substructure of the air defense center were already dying, but Rourke kept shooting, smaller fires started by the energy weapon hits already visible through several of the shot through windows.
