by Jerry Ahern
Rourke picked up the man’s Mini-14 from the floor. He examined the gun—stainless steel, factory folding stock, factory twenty-round magazine in place.
Rourke turned the gun around and handed it to Dumbrowski.
“If we’re here to do you harm, why haven’t we killed any of you? Natalia’s shot could have put out your lights, Natalia’s knife could have killed the man at the doorway. How come? Enemy agents and we don’t like to kill? That make sense to you? Now where’s the goddamned radio, Dumbrowski—call U.S. II and we can quit this idiocy.”
It was Emily Bronkiewicz’s voice—Rourke hearing it from behind him.
“We don’t have no radio here—”
There was gunfire suddenly—heavy caliber assault rifle fire.
“Those are Kalishnikovs,” Natalia almost hissed, turning away from Dumbrowski. “Some of my people—perhaps the plane was spotted.”
“Fuckin’ Commie trick,” Dumbrowski shouted.
Rourke punched Dumbrowski in the mouth, hammering him down into the interview chair.
Rourke looked at Emily Bronkiewicz. “What you said makes sense,” she nodded. “We can talk later—let’s get the hell out of here.”
Natalia had made the Walther return to its shoulder rig, both revolvers in her hands, the M-16s hanging from her sides. “I can’t kill my own—”
There was a roaring sound then, cutting off her words, Rourke beside the windows of the office, then dropping away, shouting, “Hit the floor!”
The doors had been blown through, the floor of the office shuddering with the concussion. Rourke rolled, was up, his M-16 coming into his hands. Natalia, beside the desk, was helping Emily Bronkiewicz to stand—a shower of glass covered the desk—and the Bronkiewicz woman’s left arm was slashed.
“Stop the bleeding,” Rourke rasped, opening the door.
He recognized the uniforms, but more important, the technique—men poured through the blasted open doorways now, green shoulder boards on their brown uniforms—KGB. AKM flashed fire in their hands, the Resistance on the ground level of the machine shop holding them for the moment near the blown-out doors.
“Let’s get out of here—down the steps—fast,” Rourke ordered, jumping through the doorway. Dumbrowski was behind him, half dragging the semiconscious man Rourke had decked in the doorway.
Rourke looked back—Natalia and Emiliy Bronkiewicz, Emily’s arm bandaged with a shirt-sleeve, helping the man Rourke had cold-cocked with the barrel of the revolver, the revolver back in Emily’s right fist, Natalia’s one revolver holstered, but her left hand still holding one as she shouldered half the weight of the man.
Rourke rammed the muzzle of his M-16 forward, throwing the assault rifle to his shoulder, firing down from the top of the steps toward the KGB invaders.
As he started down the steps, gunfire began pouring toward him, the sounds of what glass hadn’t been blown out of the office walls in the explosion now shattering as stray rounds impacted it.
Rourke fired into the KGB invaders again, their knot beside the blown-open steel doors thinning as they drew back.
An officer—Rourke saw the man as he looked up. Rourke heard his shout—in Russian, which Rourke understood. “It is Major Tiemerovna—she is ordered to be killed!”
“Down,” Rourke shouted back to Natalia. “Down, Natalia!”
Rourke made to fire the M-16—a three- or four-round burst and the rifle was emptied.
The Soviet officer was leading a group of a half-dozen men—they had broken through the Resistance fighters, were charging the staircase, the officer holding a pistol, the six men with him AKMs.
Rourke let the M-16 fall to his side on its sling as he took the stairs down two at a time, both Detonics pistols coming into his hands, his thumbs jacking back the hammers.
He discharged both pistols toward the center of mass of the charging KGB officer—once, then once more, the man’s body falling back.
Four AKs were turning on him, Rourke taking a half-step back, his pistols raised.
There was a burst of assault rifle fire, then another and another, from the stairs above him.
Three of the Soviet soldiers went down, Rourke firing his pistols, emptying them toward the remaining three men, more assault rifle bursts—one an M-16 on full auto, the other only a semiauto—coming from behind him.
The last three men were down.
Rourke rammed both pistols into his belt, grabbing the Colt Mk IV already there, jacking back the slide. He looked up the steps—Natalia, and beside her Dumbrowski—and Emily Bronkiewicz was staring at her.
Natalia’s face was ashen—Rourke read it in her eyes. She had killed her own.
As he turned away, raising the Colt, firing twice into the dissipating knot of KGB troops, he heard Emily Bronkiewicz shouting from the top of the stairs. “These two are on our side—make a run for the tunnel—quick!”
Rourke emptied the Metalifed Government Model .45, covering Emily, Dumbrowski, and the two other men—they moved well enough now—as they descended the stairs.
It was almost like moving someone in a trance as, his M-16 reloaded—he half dragged Natalia toward the tunnel.
Behind them was another explosion and more gunfire.
“Hurry!” Rourke rasped.
Chapter Thirty-six
Rourke and Natalia were the last two into the tunnel, except for Emily Bronkiewicz—she was lighting a fuse. “This’ll stop the bastards—but good,” she sneered. “Dynamite—and plenty of it—blow the whole damn place down on their fuckin’ heads!”
She struck the match, set the fuse—it hissed.
KGB men were everywhere on the floor of the machine shop now, assault rifle fire heavy, Rourke dividing his attention between the men and reloading his guns. Without looking at Natalia, he murmured, “You all right?”
Her voice—lifeless. “Yes—I just never thought it would come to this—they had orders to kill me.”
“I speak Russian, remember?” and he looked at her.
She only nodded. “But why kill me?”
Rourke shook his head, not answering.
“Why kill me?”
Rourke looked at her—it was impossible for him to imagine Natalia hysterical—but she was near hysterics. “I don’t know—maybe—maybe they found out some things—maybe your uncle did some things—and we won’t know until we try to reach him—”
“Try?”
Rourke saw it in her eyes—fear, hatred. She raised her M-16, firing out a long burst toward the advancing brown-uniformed KGB.
The weapon was shot out. A moment’s silence. The hissing of the fuse. He couldn’t hear it. Then Emily Bronkiewicz, screaming— “The fuse—it’s out!”
Rourke, stooped over, charged back the few yards down the tunnel, toward Emily Bronkiewicz. “Where’s the dynamite?” Rourke demanded.
“Out there—back inside the mess of machinery—” and she gestured toward the drill presses and lathes Rourke had seen shoved aside earlier. Gunfire hammered toward them, Natalia beside Rourke, ramming a fresh stick up the well of her M-16.
Rourke shifted his box of .223 to the tunnel floor, staring through into the machine shop toward the piled-up machinery and the dynamite there. He couldn’t see it to shoot at it, couldn’t see where the fuse had stopped burning.
“Mrs. Bronkiewicz—take this box of ammo with you—if Major Tiemerovna and I get out of here, we’ll need it.” And Rourke looked at Natalia. “Cover me—I’m goin’ for the dynamite.”
“To kill yourself—that’s fine, but I’m coming with you.”
“Damnit—” Rourke shifted his M-16 forward, shouting to Emily over a burst of Soviet AKM fire, “Lay down some covering fire for us until we get up there—then run like hell.”
Rourke started into the machine shop, running in a long-strided, low-silhouetted lope, his M-16 in one hand, his scoped CAR-15 in the other, firing both assault rifles, Natalia running beside him, Natalia—as he caught he
r at the edge of his left eye’s peripheral vision—firing an M-16 in each hand.
There were two dozen assault rifles firing at them—Rourke made it, bullets ricocheting, zinging off the abandoned machinery, sparks of fire along the concrete floor, Rourke feeling something tear at the sling of the M-16.
He kept running, firing out the M-16, still firing the CAR-15. Natalia was ahead of him now, hidden in the mass of abandoned machinery, Rourke half diving down beside her as the CAR-15 ran dry, assault rifle fire pinging into the machinery, like a swarm of angry insects around their heads and bodies.
Rourke snatched one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars from the left breast pocket of his blue chambray shirt under the battered brown bomber jacket. He lit the cigar in the flame of the Zippo.
“Bad for your health,” Natalia snapped, firing a burst from one of the M-16s, then tucking back down.
Rourke reloaded the M-16, then the CAR-15, working the bolt release almost simultaneously to chamber the first rounds in the guns. He left the safeties off.
He searched the pile of machinery—looking for the dynamite— “There—the fuse,” he heard Natalia call to him.
Rourke looked to her eyes, tracked them, found the thin gray-white line of fuse running along the wall above their heads.
He tracked it forward, the fuse disappearing into the pile of machinery. He shoved aside a small metal platform, a cardboard box visible at the end of the fuse.
Sucking in his breath, inhaling deeply on the cigar—there was more gunfire around them—he backtracked the fuse—it had been cut—perhaps by a bullet, a chunk of the concrete wall dimpled there—midway between the sewer pipe opening into the tunnel and the machinery beside which he hid.
There was barely eight feet of fuse within his reach.
“What are we going to do?” Natalia asked, firing a burst from one of the M-16s. “They’re closing in.”
Rourke nodded, saying nothing, trying to think.
“If I pull down that fuse,” he said finally, “I’ll rip it out, maybe. And if I light it from here, we’ll never make it through the tunnel before it blows—I’ve gotta get up there along the wall—near those shuttered windows—and then light the damn thing.”
“You’ll be killed—nobody could miss a target your size profiled against the wall.”
“A target my size—thanks a lot,” and Rourke grinned at her.
He shifted off the M-16, leaving the scoped CAR-15, his personal weapon in more battles than he wanted to remember, slung across his back, handing Natalia the M-16. “Three of ‘em now—just keep pumpin’ lead toward those guys—keep me covered—and once I get that fuse lit, give a good loud scream and shout something about dynamite, then run like the devil’s chasing you for the tunnel.”
She leaned toward him, quickly, taking the cigar from his mouth, kissed him. “If we live, I don’t know what will happen to us—but I love you, John Rourke.”
He looked at her. Women picked the craziest times for things, he thought. Or maybe they didn’t at all.
“I love you, too—I couldn’t help it—and I’ll always love you—now start shooting,” and Rourke took back his cigar, looked at her once, then shot a glance toward the KGB out beside the blown-open metal doors, running for the near wall across the length of the machine shop.
There were crates there, and if they didn’t collapse under his weight, he could stretch and just maybe reach the fuse—and he did what he had told Natalia to do. He ran as if the devil were chasing him, gunfire in a barrage surrounding him.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Natalia raised one of the three M-16s, firing out the entire magazine, zigzagging the muzzle over the positions of the KGB unit, dropping the empty assault rifle, firing three-round bursts as heads raised from the cover of the machine shop equipment, one three-round burst catching an enlisted man in the upper left side of his chest, blowing his body back, ripping his green shoulder board from his uniform tunic, a second burst slicing across the neck of another enlisted man, the third burst cutting the legs out from under an officer climbing over a packing crate, starting toward her across the no man’s land between them.
She fired a fourth burst, three headshots in a rough diagonal from jawline to left eyeball, a marksman with an AKM—an enlisted man—leveling his rifle at Rourke, she guessed, no time to look, to confirm that the burst the man had gotten off hadn’t killed the man she had loved since first seeing, the man she would always love.
Another three-round burst, against two men starting over some of the packing crates, hammering one man against the other. The machinery around her seemed to explode, a fusillade of automatic weapons fire making her pull back.
She changed the partially spent magazine in the rifle she held, reaching out for the fired-out M-16, the metal hot as the back of her left hand inadvertently brushed against the barrel, changing the magazine there as well.
She looked across the machine shop toward Rourke. He had taken cover near the packing crates beneath the faint thread of dynamite fuse.
Three rifles loaded and ready, Natalia rammed one of the M-16’s up over the lathes and machinery around her, firing it blindly, blowing the magazine, careful not to use the same weapon she’d used the first time lest she burn out the barrel.
She rolled left, another fresh-loaded M-16 in her hands, firing prone, toward the KGB position, kneecapping a man, dropping him, catching another man in the groin, then again in the chest—a three-round coup de grace.
She kept firing, glancing to her right—Rourke was climbing the packing crates, gunfire hammering into the wall on both sides of him, cratering the concrete with blistering pockmarks, thudding into the crates beneath his feet and legs.
She burned out the magazine in the M-16, snatching up the third rifle, firing three-round bursts again, into the KGB position, headshooting an enlisted man as he made to fire his AKM toward Rourke.
Two more of the KGB unit rushed through the blown-apart doors—one man carried what she recognized as the 7.62mm PK General Purpose Machine Gun. It fired the Type 54R cartridge, and although the same caliber as standard Soviet service weapons, and utilizing the Kalishnikov rotating bolt, the cartridge was vastly more powerful, and from the size of the field green box beneath the receiver, she realized it carried either a two-hundred- or two-hundred-fifty-round link belt.
She fired her M-16 toward the two-man machine gun crew, dropping the gunner’s assistant with a long ragged burst to the abdomen, but the machinegunner making it to cover.
“John! Machine gun!” She swapped magazines for all three rifles as she shouted to him.
He was lighting the fuse with the glowing tip of his cigar—she could see him, as if in freeze frame.
And then the machine gun opened up, the noise deafening as the reports echoed and reechoed in the confines of the abandoned machine shop, her heart stopping as the packing crates were shot out from under him and Rourke tumbled to the floor.
“Bastards!” She shrieked the word at the top of her voice, one M-16 slung under her right arm now as she stood, the other two M-16s—one in each hand—firing as she ran from cover, toward Rourke.
The machine gun was chewing into the wall behind her, chewing into the concrete flooring beneath her as she kept firing.
She heard a shout over the din of gunfire. “I’m all right!”
And then semiautomatic assault rifle fire—without looking, she knew Rourke was alive.
She kept firing, crossing the floor of the machine shop, the hammering of the PK’s almost continuous fire maddening.
One M-16 was out, and then the second. Natalia let both weapons drop on their slings, swinging forward the third assault rifle, firing with it.
She was beside Rourke now, Rourke’s CAR-15 spitting, then suddenly still.
There was a blur of motion and then the booming of his twin Detonics pistols.
“Run with me!”
She swallowed hard, moving�
��she would ‘run with’ him forever if he chose it.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Both Detonics pistols were empty as they reached the tunnel mouth, Rourke shoving Natalia ahead of him, then jumping after her, hitting the dirt surface of the tunnel floor hard, on knees and elbows crawling inside as the ground around him rippled with the plowing effect of the machine gun bursts.
He looked up at Natalia—she was changing sticks for all three M-16s. As he worked down the slide stop, ramming both Detonics pistols into his belt, empty, taking one of the M-16s from her, he rasped, breathless— “That fuse is lit—maybe a minute—” he sank forward, breathing hard.
“I know—run like hell,” she laughed.
He looked at her, felt himself grin. “You got it.”
And she was up, stooped over, but running, Rourke firing a burst from the M-16 through the tunnel mouth then running.
The heavy thudding of machine gun fire and the lighter reports of the AKMs was an echo behind them, now the echo diminishing.
But the Soviets would be following if they hadn’t noticed the fuse and shooting down the straight line of the tunnel, and he and Natalia would be slaughtered.
If they had noticed the fuse. . . .
He heard the gunfire, louder than it should have been, shoving Natalia down ahead of him, throwing his body over hers as bullets tore into the dirt and rock walls of the small tunnel, cut waves and ripples across the dirt of the tunnel floor.
Then he heard, feeling it almost before the actual noise reached his ears, burrowing his body even more across hers, his chest over her head, Rourke’s hands going to his ears.
The tunnel floor trembled, shook—seemed to be twisting under them.
The concussion dying, Rourke pushed himself up, dragging Natalia to her feet, shoving her ahead.
He looked back once—a wall of flames behind him.
They were safe, at least until they reached the end of the tunnel and came out through the mouth of the small cave—at least until then.
