Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm

by Ahern, Jerry

  If it were, and someone aboard the passing vehicles noticed, he was dead. All that saved the Atsack from electronic recognition was the metallic mass of the armored armada surrounding him—too many signals to interpret, even assuming the Soviet electronics were backed by computers as sophisticated as the system aboard the Atsack. But visual recognition was another matter and, at the distance, potentially more dangerous because the Atsack, without the mounds of snow which Michael Rourke silently prayed still obscured it, would be impossible not to see.

  The T-91 nearest him had rumbled past without slowing, without altering course-at least according to the headsup display he still so unblinkingly watched.

  As his own danger began to pass, his mind began to fill with thoughts of his father, John Rourke, and his brother-in-law and friend, Paul Rubenstein-aboard one of the gigantic AV-16 tactical missile launchers, if they weren’t already dead …

  Clanking noises and groans, of metal striking or pulling against metal surrounded them, the overall ambience of the tunnel-like rust brown colored tube through which they moved, its air clouded with noxious smelling gray-blue wisps of synth-fuel residue, like hell’s

  boiler factory.

  John Rourke’s eyes narrowed as he neared the AV-16’s control cabin, a Detonics Scoremaster .45 bunched tight in each fist, the guns along his thighs, hammers cocked, the respective thumbs of his right and left hands poised over the ambidextrous safeties, ready to drop them. Paul Rubenstein, a Browning High Power in each fist, nodded toward the blue-smoky blackness behind them. John Rourke glanced that way and nodded back. There were new sounds, sounds of booted feet moving along the tunnel.

  They were trapped.

  Rourke hissed an obscenity under his breath and he stuffed both pistols into his trouser band beneath the open parka, his hands moving along the ceiling of the tunnel, over the access panel there. What it provided access to he didn’t know, only hoped. The panel was secured with Phillips head screws. He reached to the musette bag near his left hip, finding die tool he required, unfolding the Phillips blade, putting it to the first screw head as Paul moved deeper back into the swirling synth-fuel smoke trailers, ready to meet the men coming along the tunnel.

  The first screw was out and Rourke pocketed it, his other hand already working on die second screw. Loose. Out. Pocketed. The third screw. He removed it. The fourth screw, his left hand supporting the panel cover as his right hand turned out the screw. The head was slighdy burred. He closed his eyes, inhaled, exhaled slightly, applied more upward pressure to the screw head, at last turning it out.

  The sounds of the men coming along the tunnel were louder now, closer.

  Rourke removed the panel.

  A maze of plasticized tubes and three gauges. The AV-16s ran synth-fuel to power a closed system steam system which turned the massive turbines needed to propel it and provide for the massive demands of electrical energy needed. If the AV-16 were mounted with one of the energy weapons, the system would have to be indeed quite powerful.

  A lot of steam.

  John Rourke signalled into the corridor, hoping that Paul was observing him. The three gauges. Rourke studied them intentiy. One was an emergency bypass. He turned the faucet handle-like

  knob beside the gauge and pressure immediately began to drop. He turned back to normal pressure. The next gauge and the handle below it monitored and controlled recirculating steam. The third processed incoming steam, directing it along an emergency routing system, as best Rourke could discern, and through the main system.

  He heard Paul’s voice whispering into his ear. “Six men. We start shooting, well alert the crew in the compartment there.” Rourke looked at his friend as the younger man nodded toward the control room.

  “I think I’ve got that under control. Be ready to get through that doorway into die control compartment as fast as you can.”

  John Rourke adjusted the emergency bypass control, his eyes moving to the main system route for the steam. If he split the pipe in just the right way-And it was only the modern equivalent of PVC.

  *Be ready.”

  Already, Rourke heard voices from the six men.

  “Have your flashlight ready, Paul. Better zip up and pull your hood as close around your face as possible. Don’t leave any more exposed skin than necessary. Hands, too.”

  Rourke took his own advice, pulling on his gloves as well. The screwdriver tool went into the musette bag by bis left hip. Then his right hand filled with the Life Support System X knife. He turned his face toward the tunnel space behind them. “Goggles,” Rourke rasped, pulling up his own. Even with the precautions, if he miscalculated, he and Paul would be boiled by the live steam.

  “Ready,” Paul Rubenstein whispered.

  Six men. The two in front began to sound the alarm as they raised their rifles. In Russian, Rourke shouted, “Run for your lives,” And he stabbed the LS-X into the steam pipe, letting go of the knife instantiy, just leaving it in the PVC-like material as a wedge to direct the spray of live steam.

  Tve got the door!”

  The lights blinked out in the next instant, a buzzer sounding, a panic light illuminating the tunnel red, with the steam filling the tunnel-Rourke held his breath-the place was more hellish than before.

  His goggles were beginning to cover over with vapor, but he could just see the doorway, Paul beside it. Rourke’s hands went to his mouth and he bit off his gloves as he drew one of the Scoremasters, stepping over the flange for the doorway, his other hand holding the old Kel-Lite with its German batteries. “Don’t move!” Rourke shouted.

  But the crewmen of the control cabin were already moving, stumbling in the darkness that was relieved only by two spot-like panic lights set in the low ceiling, guns in their hands. Rourke opened fire, killing the man nearest him with a shot in the forehead. Rourke’s left wrist and forearm braced bis right wrist, the flashlight in his left hand, the light and the muzzle of Ids pistol moving simultaneously.

  He heard the sharp cracks of Paul’s Browning High Power, seeing die hazy beam from Paul’s flashlight at the far right edge of his peripheral vision as Rourke fired again, dropping another of the crewmen with a single shot to the thorax. A double tap into the chest and heart of a third man.

  Rourke’s flashlight beam swept over the room. “Your left!” Paul snapped. Rourke sidestepped right as he spun left, flashlight and .45 moving as one. An Elite Corpsman, an officer, a short barreled assault rifle in his hands. As Rourke fired, he heard Paul firing from behind him. The Soviet officer’s body twitched back, then doubled forward as Rourke and Rubenstein each fired again, the Russian sprawling sideways over a control console.

  “Paul! Get this thing under our control! Tm killing the steam and restoring power, then ni lock us in!”

  “Right!”

  John Rourke rammed die nearly empty Scoremaster into his trousers, grabbing the second pistol, reaching the door. A man-recognizable as that only by the uniform and the gun-writhed on the tunnel floor near the doorway, nothing human-looking left to his red raw face and hands. Rourke shot him in the head.

  Stepping over the body, Rourke drew up his goggles, die flashlight weaving crazily over the ceiling of the tunnel now, thrust into his belt but still on.

  Gloves. Rourke pulled on the right one, then the left, goggles up. He’d burn himself, most likely. His left hand held the flashlight and he safed the Scoremaster, dropping the pistol into his parka pocket, eyeballing the target for his right hand while he could still see through his fogging over snow goggles.

  Rourke reached into the steam from as far behind its jet as he

  could, pain seizing him as his double gloved hand penetrated the spray, his fingers closing over the emergency bypass control, twisting it, bis teeth gritted against the pain, his goggles nearly fogged over now. Rourke retrieved his knife, hot feeling even through his gloves. His hand shifted, and he groped blindly for the tunnel wall, found it, moved along it, tearing down his goggles, a wash of cold air over his ey
es and upper face.

  He reached the door, the jet of steam slowing as he stumbled over the flange and pulled the door to. *!John-“

  The normal lighting had returned and the contrast to the hell-like exterior nearly blinded Rourke as he stared past Paul Rubenstein toward a Soviet non-com, an Elite Corpsman, in the man’s hands an ; assault rifle. The man’s left temple was bleeding, but he was other-f wise unwounded.

  Paul had both Brownings pointed at the Elite Corpsman, the Russian’s rifle pointed at the AV-16’s master control panel. The monitoring screens were between Paul and the Soviet non-com. On the monitoring screens, like massive windshields but functioning like the viewing ports with which Mid-Wake submarines were equipped-merely giant video screens-Rourke could see the terrain over which they sped. There was no sign of Michael in the Atsack, which was good. But the terrain was familiar. The AV-16 was speeding toward the edge of the plateau, hundreds of feet of sheer drop beyond and below it.

  “John-“

  The Russian, in English so colloquially intensive that the man had to be one of the men who had survived with Karamatsov, ordered, “Drop the damn guns, man, or JT1 waste the control panel and we all go to hell! And you-the pig sticker. Ditch it now!”

  “Pig sticker? You’re obviously no connoisseur of steel, pal. This is a hand-made, marked prototype of a specially designed knife made for me five centuries ago by Jack Crain, one of the most famous knifemakers in the world. Pig sticker? Be serious.”

  “Drop it, asshole. You’re Rourke, aren’t you?”

  “If you know Fm John Rourke, then you know what Tm going to do with this knife, don’t you-asshole.”

  The Elite Corps non-com wheeled toward John Rourke, the control panel no longer his target, in the same instant Rourke’s right hand moving forward in a long, fast arc, Paul shouting, “Down!”

  As die LS-X flicked from Rourke’s gloved fingertips-the pain to his flesh as his fingers flexed moving through him like a shiver-Paul’s Browning High Power discharged simultaneously, the Elite Corpsman’s body sprawling back, bis rifle discharging into the control panel as Rourke hit the floor.

  “Shit!” Paul snapped.

  Rourke was up, moved toward the control panel, kicking the rifle from the dead man’s hands as he retrieved his knife from the dead man’s chest, two bullet holes in the Elite Corpsman’s body, one in the chest inches from where the LS-X had struck and penetrated and one in the throat just under the chin.

  “Hate throwing a good knife,” Rourke remarked as he pushed die body to the floor, wiped the blade clean of blood on the man’s uniform then leaned over the console. The AV-16’s maneuvering controls were shot to pieces. They could be rewired-he looked at the view screens-but net in time. Less than four minutes and the AV-16 would be over the edge of the plateau. “Gimme a hand, Paul-fast.”

  “What do you want me to do?” It was less of a question than a request.

  “See if you can bring up the locations of the rest of the vehicles in this squadron.” “Right.”

  Rourke crossed the compartment to what appeared to be the main computer console, began trying access names-“Missile targeting” brought up the program he wanted after better than one precious minute.

  “John-got all the vehicles I can find located. Might have missed one. I don’t think so. And we don’t have Michael in the Atsack -that’s certain.”

  “Hang on.” Rourke’s eyes scanned the program, his reading knowledge of Russian not nearly so good as his spoken command of the language. “Natalia,” Rourke almost whispered. He missed her, for more than her Russian language skills.

  He had it. “Try this sequence.” And John Rourke began recking a litany of number-letter codes, these in English, just the same way that Soviet missile bunkers before the Night of the War used English tracking symbols. “A-19; C-6; F-13; W-3; K-5; whatchya got?”

  “Bingo! She’s running.”

  Rourke’s eyes left the green screen for the computer console, the whirring of the drives grinding in an almost reassuring harmony. He shifted his gaze to the headsup on die view screens. Each vehicle Paul had located, displayed on the view screen by its sensor impression, was acquiring a target designation, one after the other. There was probably an override program which would allow the AV-16 in which they rode to target itself. But no time was left to find that. And the fall over the plateau would obliterate this machine at any event.

  “Can you hunch?”

  Paul looked at him, saying, They couldn’t be-” They aren’t nuclear. I got that out of the program. High Explosive Anti-Tank.” Rourke smiled, then started for the door, his right hand stiffening, the skin cracking as he moved it within his glove. He pulled the glove away. “Where you going?”

  Rourke glanced at the view screens. About two minutes only remained until the AV-16 rolled over die edge of the plateau. As he doused his right hand with the German-devised antiseptic healing spray, he told his friend, To the turret. Fll get out through there. Soon as you have those missiles launched, get the hell out of here. See you on the outside.”

  Rourke didn’t wait for an answer, throwing open the door, a fresh magazine going up the well of the nearly emptied Scoremaster, the second .45, one round fired, still in his waistband. He jumped the body of the man he’d mercy killed, running along the tunnel now toward the center of the vehicle, ticking off seconds in his head.

  Gunfire tore into the metal of the tunnel wall near Rourke’s head and Rourke dodged the pinging ricochets, then threw himself down, the Scoremaster in his right fist stabbing toward the origin of the gunfire, an Elite Corpsman, the skin of his hands and face scalded. Rourke fired, then again and again, the Elite Corpsman going down, his assault rifle spraying across the tunnel ceiling, Rourke’s hands and forearms moving up to protect his head, ricochets whining everywhere around him like swarms of bees.

  As the singing of the bullets dissipated, Rourke was up and moving, running along the tunnel now, the partially shot out Scoremaster still in his left fist, his right hand nearly fumbling the tactical magazine change because of die pain there.

  Rourke rounded a bend and neared the approximate center of the AV-16, an overhead hatchway there. Rourke started up the ladder, only three steps needed before he could comfortably attack the hatch locking mechanism. He wheeled it open, then pushed the hatch upward, licking his lips as he continued up the ladder. The only item of his equipment he considered expendable was the M-16-there were plenty of those. He loosened it on its sling and flung the weapon through die hatchway opening.

  Pistol fire reverberated from above him as Rourke dove upward through die opening, banging his head on the hatch flange, but not seriously, stumbling back.

  About fifty-two seconds remained before the AV-16 went over the precipice.

  An Elite Corpsman, sitting in a reclining seat that was synchronized to turret movement of the energy weapon, a second man-a gunner’s assistant of some kind-stood crouched beside a small control panel. Both men had pistols in their hands. Rourke’s right hand moved to his waistband as the gun in his left hand fired, three 185-grain hollowpoints impacting the man beside the control panel, Rourke throwing his weight against the gun mounts, die gun shifting, the pistol shots from the man in die chair going wild, spi-derwebbing two gauges on die control panel as Rourke’s right hand-his flesh screamed at him-stabbed upward and his first finger flexed against the trigger twice, the first shot penetrating through the chair’s left armrest, hurtling the man in the chair half out of it, the second shot entering through the left side of the gunner’s neck.

  Rourke safed both pistols as he spun toward the hatchway, kicking it shut as hands-one of the hands held a Soviet pistol-pushed through. There was a scream of agony, fingers severed, skittering across the floor of the turret like living things. Rourke reached to the floor, grabbing up the M-16, the buttstock penetrated several times by pistol shots. He wedged the rifle’s barrel over the hatchway door.

  Twenty-five seconds at the outside.

/>   The energy weapon. Rourke reached for it, eyes moving downward, scanning for the mount system. A simple push through bolt secured with a large cotter pin. Rourke tore the cotter pin free, then pushed out the bolt. He wrenched the energy weapon free of the

  mount, a cable feeding downward from it through the mount. Twenty seconds.

  Rourke glanced overhead. The bubble of the gun turret was partially cocooned in titanium or something like it, partially only the interior covering, something like plexiglas.

  If the material were enough like it—

  Rourke pulled on his gloves.

  The cable extending from the gun was well insulated. Rourke set the energy weapon on the seat, beside the dead man who was half-fallen to the floor. Rourke drew the Crain knife, realizing he might be destroying it.

  His right foot braced the gun downward, the LS-X in both fists as he raised it over his head.

  He focused his concentration through and beyond the tautiy distended cable as he hacked downward. The knife caught for a split second, then cleaved through the cable in a shower of sparks, Rourke’s hands opening, his body lurching back, slamming against the turret bulkhead.

  The cable was severed. Rourke dragged himself to his feet. Ten seconds? He didnt know. Rourke’s gloved hands reached for the sparking main section of the cable, catching it well down from the severed portion, holding it away from his face as he stretched it upward to the plexiglas-like substance, the still flowing power making contact with a steel bolt, the electricity arcing across the transparent material. It began to burn, flames licking outward so suddenly Rourke’s right hand and arm were nearly consumed in them.

  Rourke looked to the floor. His knife. He grabbed it up, the LS-X at cursory glance seeming none the worse for wear. Sheathing it, Rourke reached for the energy weapon. It was about the size of an ordinary pre-War M-60 machine gun.

  There was a cracking sound, the sounds of metal straining against metal and he looked toward the hatchway as the M-16 bent and snapped away from the hatch opening. Rourke left hand stayed on the energy weapon, his right moving to his mouth. He bit his gloves away and drew the 629, double actioning it down the hatchway, the noise in the confined space of the turret deafeningly loud.