Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake

by Ahern, Jerry

  Rourke moved from the hedgerow, firing a burst from an AKM-96 toward the joining of the two doors, chunks of the plexiglas and the locking mechanism falling away, his left foot kicking in against the doors, the doors swinging open. As he stepped inside, he fired an AKM-96 in each fist, cutting down the two guards as they rose from their desk.

  Beyond their desk were potted plants, a table, two chairs, and a couch, all very modern-looking, then a corridor with elevator banks on both sides, and at the end of the corridor a doorway marked “Stairs.”

  Rourke ran for the stairs.

  It was all too easy and he knew he was walking into a trap—or rather running into one… .

  Her tongue felt thick, but she could talk a little and she called out in the red-tinged darkness to Kerenin. “What did—did you …”

  “I did not rape you. There was no time. Lie still. I know he is coming. There is an armored personnel carrier parked outside and I heard gunfire in the hall. He is coming.”

  Natalia tried to move, but she was tied to the bed again, her wrists and ankles bound. “John!” She screamed his name. And Kerenin only laughed… .

  Feyedorovitch climbed into his Gullwing again. The Scout subs that had pulled away from the docks would

  have all of the escapees aboard. He leaned forward, telling his driver, “The military dome—and hurry!”

  From his belt, he took his communicator. “This is Captain Feyedorovitch of the Marine Spetznas. I request a frequency link with Naval Defense. Quickly. This is maximum priority.” The submarines could get them, even if the Scout subs made it out of the lagoon and into open water. It took some time for the submarines to launch, and they could make no real speed in the lagoon, the Scout subs easily able to outmaneuver and outdistance them. But once they were out of the lagoon, there would be no chance of the Scout subs evading the larger craft or defending themselves against the superior weapons which would be used against them.

  But he knew that one man would not be aboard the Scout subs. He was beginning to think there was no Wolfgang Heinz of German Intelligence. This had to be the John Rourke of whom the Russian woman had spoken. And this John Rourke would not leave her behind.

  He got his frequency cleared, “I must speak with the duty officer for the submarine pens immediately. This is Boris Feyedorovitch, Marine Spetznas Captain, and this is a maximum priority communication. I repeat—” But already, he was being switched… .

  Aldridge had circled around to the far side of the Scout sub pens, and there were more than two-dozen armored personnel carriers there, some of them already withdrawing. So far, he thought, so good.

  The crews of the APCs stood about their vehicles, their expressions ranging from intensity to boredom, their individual weapons leaned against the sides of their vehicles or slung over their shoulders.

  “That one,” Aldridge whispered, gesturing toward the APC nearest his five volunteers. It had a clear means of getting from the pens onto the street and the crew looked particularly vulnerable. He thought of the old expression about a marriage made in heaven.

  “Do what I do, unless I do something dumb—move out.” He started ahead, angling between the hedges which separated the drive which ringed the dome from the greenway on which the APCs were parked. There was no traffic on this portion of the driveway, all non-military traffic barred, he assumed, because of the military emergency.

  Aldridge stopped, signaling the men with him to do the same. He wondered if Martha had thought to inquire if all the volunteers could swim, because that was the only way, if they pulled it off, they would reach the Scout subs. He knew his own people could. Citizens of Mid-Wake were taught to be as at home in the water as on dry land from birth. If the Chinese guys couldn’t, they’d learn fast enough.

  He slung his rifle back. He gestured with his hands toward the six crewmen of the APC. His volunteers nodded, understanding, he hoped, that without total silence all was lost.

  Aldridge started from the hedgerow, breaking into a crouching run, eyeballing the largest of the six men and taking him as his own target. The Marine Spetznas started to turn toward him, as if sensing him. The Russian started to open his mouth, as if to cry out. Aldridge slammed his full body weight against the man, hands going for the throat, thumbs closing over the windpipe… .

  Feyedorovitch took his AKM-96 from the seat beside him. Once they had turned into the access tunnel, he had realized he was right, seeing the wreckage of several Gullwings and the destroyed guard kiosk.

  His driver turned the Gullwing toward the officers’ quarters on the far side of the dome, where Comrade Major Kerenin was barracked.

  “Stop the car—now!”

  The Gullwing skidded, stopped, Feyedorovitch activating the doors himself, stepping out, his AKM-96 in his

  right hand. An armored personnel carrier was parked on the grass which fronted Kerenin’s quarters, the vehicle’s engine still running.

  Boris Feyedorovitch started laughing and he couldn’t stop, really didn’t want to stop.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  John Rourke had reached the top floor without encountering resistance, the only shots fired his, after he had entered the building.

  He stood just inside the doorway leading from the stairwell, the dim light perfect for his eyes, less perfect for the eyes of his adversaries—he hoped.

  Rourke opened the door, swinging it in toward him, stepping away from it as it opened and framing himself just inside the doorway so he could see along the length of the hall. The nearest door bore the name of another major. Rourke almost felt like writing the Soviet High Command a thank-you note for being so accommodating as to place names on the apartment doors.

  He reached into the case in which he had the spare magazines for the AKM-96s, extracting one of the partially spent ones he had used when he had entered the building. With his right thumb—the pain in his right hand was something of which he was barely aware, despite its intensity—he edged a half dozen of the caseless 4.86mm cartridges from the magazine lips. He put the magazine away in the case and hefted the six cartridges. He hurtled them into the hallway, across the slick-looking tiled floor.

  Nothing happened.

  John Rourke glanced at his Rolex. Three minutes gone, seven or so until Lisa, if she followed orders, would take the APC and run for it.

  He stepped into the hallway.

  Slowly, keeping to the stairwell side, he walked ahead. In American reckoning, this was the seventh floor. On the way up, he had peered through the small, reinforced plexiglas window in each door and seen nothing, no activity. It seemed the same here. He was beginning to think Kerenin had lied. But at the time there would have been no purpose.

  “She has to be here—she has to be here,” he repeated under his breath.

  John Rourke stopped.

  He saw the right combination of Cyrillic characters— Olav Kerenin, Major.

  It was the door at the end of the hallway, commanding the entire hall.

  And finally, John Rourke thought he understood.

  He stepped away from the wall, swinging the second AKM-96 forward as well now.

  He stood in the hallway. “Kerenin. I finally got here.”

  He heard a scream—Natalia, calling his name, her voice sounding pained somehow. He walked ahead. “Kerenin. Come on.”

  He kept walking.

  Kerenin’s door swung open inward and Rourke stopped in mid-stride, his body tensing.

  “If you want the woman, John Rourke—come and get her. Now!”

  John Rourke started walking again.

  Natalia screamed, “John—he’s waiting for you—” There was the sound of an automatic weapon triggering a short burst and Natalia screamed again.

  John Rourke broke into a dead run for the door, knowing he was doing what Kerenin wanted, not caring, throwing himself through the doorway in a roll, gunfire ripping into the wall inches from his head coming from the end of the apartment’s narrow hallway. John Rourke fired both assault r
ifles and was up, throwing himself against the opposite wall. It was darker inside the apartment. “You missed me, bastard!”

  “I did not miss her!”

  John Rourke fought to control his breathing. His palms sweated. His mouth was dry. He licked his lips and edged forward. “If you killed her, kill yourself now because it will be easier for you than having me do it.” He kept edging along the hallway wall, the rifle in his left fist stabbed forward into the red-tinged grayness, the rifle in his right hand raised slightly and almost against the wall.

  “Are you coming for me, John Rourke?”

  “I am coming for you, Olav Kerenin.”

  And suddenly the narrow hallway was bathed in brilliant light and John Rourke could see Kerenin in the doorway, an assault rifle in his fists. Rourke stepped away from the wall, his eyes squinted against the sudden brightness, and he fired, both assault rifles simultaneously. The image of Olav Kerenin shattered, glass fragments flying as the—a mirror—as the mirror exploded. At the far left corner of his peripheral vision, John Rourke saw the open door and started to wheel toward it and at the same time throw his body left, but Kerenin’s assault rifle opened it, John Rourke feeling as if something were hammering into his chest and abdomen, his body slamming back against the hallway wall as the assault rifles fell from his grasp. Rourke’s body skidded along the wall, another burst, Rourke’s left leg swept from under him, and he fell, both hands going for the twin stainless Detonics pistols, his right forearm taking a hit, but his fist still grasping the little .45. His left hand stabbed forward as Kerenin stepped into the hallway, then his right, Kerenin wheeling toward him, the muzzle of Kerenin’s AKM-96 coming up.

  “You were easier to kill than I thought you would be. Two full-length mirrors and a field floodlight. Now the woman is mine.”

  John Rourke fired both Detonics pistols simultaneously, double-tapping them, then again, Kerenin’s body slamming back along the wall, his AKM-96 discharging into the floor. Kerenin’s rifle fell from his grasp, clattered to the floor.

  In English, the words coming hard through the pain, John Rourke hissed, “Kiss your ass good-bye, mother

  fucker!” Both Detonics pistols bucked twice in his fists, Kerenin’s eyes blowing out of their sockets, chunks of blood-flecked brain matter spraying against the wall behind him, the body flopping to the floor, the arms still vibrating, pulsing.

  John Rourke sagged against the wall.

  He looked down at his stomach, the uniform tunic blood-drenched. His left lung ached and it was hard to breathe. These were mortal wounds, he realized. Maybe if—and he laughed, blood rising in his throat, and as he coughed, blood sprayed against his hand.

  He leaned his head heavily against the wall.

  He had very little time until loss of blood would bring on unconsciousness and then death. The Detonics pistol in his left fist. He let it fall to the floor, moving his left hand over his left thigh. More blood. But he didn’t think anything was broken.

  The leg should still work.

  Rourke leaned forward, pain surging through him, his eyes squeezing tighter against it than they had against the light.

  “Natalia!”

  There was no answer.

  Rourke forced himself to his knees. His little Detonics pistols—one was still in his right fist, the other on the floor beside him, the stainless steel of the two pistols splotched with his own blood.

  No artery was hit—he would have been under a quicker death sentence if it had been. He found spare magazines for the pistols and, from force of habit, saved the emptied ones. “Michael,” he whispered. Michael could use them if Natalia got away. She could give them to Michael. He lowered the hammers on the fresh-loaded pistols, wiped the blood from them against his right thigh, and holstered them.

  The two AKM-96s he had dropped. Rourke started to crawl toward them, coughing again, more blood this time, his head swimming, dizziness seizing him. He closed his

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  reaching the first, then the second of the assault rifles. He safetied each of them, slung them cross-body this time so they couldn’t be lost to him. The wound in his right arm was bleeding only slightly—a flesh wound, he told himself. It seemed to extend along the length of his forearm. He wondered clinically what had happened to the bullet— or was it still inside him? It really didn’t matter. There were enough bullets inside him already. One more wouldn’t …

  Rourke pushed himself to his feet, falling against the wall, coughing, blood spraying along the wall.

  He pushed away from the wall, his left arm reaching out, his left hand pressing hard against the wall for support.

  Awkwardly, he stepped over Kerenin’s body, nearly fell, then stopped, leaning heavily against the bedroom door frame.

  Natalia. Her perfect right cheek bruised, a rag balled in her mouth. But her head was moving. “You were right. We aren’t getting out of this one. Not together anyway.” And John Rourke collapsed toward the bed onto which she was tied.

  Chapter Thirty

  As he had fallen onto the bed, she had opened her eyes. And she had wished she were dead.

  His left hand moved, the knife he had gotten for his son but his son had not needed in his bloodied fingers. For a moment she had been afraid for herself and she was ashamed of that. He moved the knife, perilously close to her. But in the end, he brought the primary edge of it down against the headboard where her left wrist was bound and severed the plastic cord and she was free.

  “John! John!”

  “Bag strapped to my back. Clothes for you. Your guns. Take my stuff. Give my guns to Michael. The knife—you keep the knife. Tell—tell Sarah—tell her—I always—she knew.” His head sagged forward and the knife fell, the flat of the blade against her bare left arm. She took the knife in her left hand and cut her right wrist free, then freed her ankles. Naked, she moved her body into a fetal position beside his head and held his face against her breasts… .

  “You and you—go ahead along each side of the corridor. Slowly. Carefully. Stop before entering Major Kerenin’s apartment.”

  The men moved out, their AKM-96s in hard-assault positions.

  Feyedorovitch stayed inside the doorway, waiting. He had heard the gunfire from Kerenin’s floor, known what it had to be, then assembled a dozen men from the head

  quarters offices, and out of the dozen he had four armed with assault rifles, his own making the fifth, the others armed only with Sty-20 pistols.

  Inside himself, he wondered who had won. John Rourke? He smiled at the thought… .

  Natalia had packed the abdominal wounds with the blanket, folded into a tight, thick rectangle, then secured it over the wounds with the uniform belt he wore. The wound along his outer right forearm she bound with strips cut from the bedsheet, spraying it and the abdominal wound with the German antiseptic-healing agent taken from Rourke’s musette bag. The leg wounds she bandaged like the arm, spraying them as well. Neither the leg wounds nor the wound to his arm were even potentially fatal -unless they were just allowed to bleed. But the abdominal wounds. They were fatal. She knew that.

  She had dressed quickly then in the uniform he had brought for her, buckled on her L-Frame revolvers, taken her Bali-Song knife.

  She took both AKM-96s from him and started for the hallway door to make certain the way was clear.

  Natalia fired a burst from each and tucked back, gunfire ripping into both of the apartment hallway walls. She fired back and ran along the hallway, back toward the bedroom.

  “John—you must get up.”

  He was still conscious. She knew that. “John—get up.”

  He raised his head, looked at the Rolex on his wrist. She had taken back her watch from Kerenin’s dresser, where he had put it. Apparently he had kept it as a pretty bauble to give some woman. “John!”

  “You have two minutes. A woman—black—U.S. Marine Corporal. That APC out on the lawn. She’ll wait for another two minutes.”

  “Bullsh
it.” Natalia took his knife, one eye going to the bedroom door for a moment, then sheathing the knife, securing the safety strap.

  She had sometimes regretted her height. It had kept her from the ballet, sometimes made clothing awkward. When mini-skirts had been popular, she had looked like she had nothing but legs. But now she was thankful for it. As she drew him up from the bed, her own height made it easier to hold him up, his left arm drawn over her shoulders.

  “Forget me. Tell Annie I love her. Tell Michael the same. Tell Sarah I always loved her.”

  “Shut up, John—you can tell her yourself.”

  And John Rourke’s left arm pulled tightly around her and her face was next to his. “And I love you—I never loved anyone the way I love you. Leave me a gun and I’ll hold ‘em off. Get out through the window. There’s a balcony out there. You can work your way down.”

  “No.”

  John Rourke kissed her, harder than he had ever kissed her, then pushed her away from him, her body slamming against the wall, the breath knocked out of her. “Leave me. I’m dead.”

  She pushed away from the wall and walked up to him. “No you are not! You taught me never to give up. So, goddamnit, you can’t either!”

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna grabbed his left arm. He was weaving, about to collapse again. She hauled his left arm across her shoulders and started for the window… .

  Aldridge turned the stolen armored personnel carrier into the tunnel, little traffic except for Gullwings, the plexiglas guard booth at the end of the tunnel all but destroyed, the energy barrier down, he hoped inoperable. “Hold tight—we’re goin’ through!” He stomped the accelerator and aimed for dead center in the tunnel, the few Gullwings swerving away to give him wide berth, the APC sideswiping one of them, hurtling it against the tunnel wall.

  Aldridge cleared the tunnel, seeing an APC parked on the grass near the officers’ residence on the far side of the dome. He cut left. It was ringed by four Gullwings, men

  visibly hidden behind the Gullwings. And as he watched, the APCs cannon opened fire, one of the Gullwings exploding, a fireball belching toward the dome roof. At least two men were firing assault rifles toward the APC, uselessly, he knew.