by neetha Napew
children who may have survived the war; I do not know. If you capture him,
I should be interested in meeting him. But that is your affair."
"Yes, Comrade General. That is my affair." Rozhdest-venskiy dropped his
cigarette to the marble floor and started to grind it out beneath the heel
of his boot.
"But this is my headquarters building, Colonel; pick up that cigarette."
"Bat surely, a prisoner used for janitorial service can—"
"That is not the point; pick it up."
The boyish smile was gone from Rozhdestvenskiy's face. He hesitated a
moment, then stooped over and picked up the cigarette butt, holding it
between two manicured fingernails. "Will there be anything else, Comrade
General?"
"No—I think not." Varakov turned and started back
across the main hall toward his office without walls.
Thousands of troops were moving inland to escape the raging storm fronts
assaulting the eastern coast of what had been the United States—regrouping
and searching, he hoped. That Natalia would be safe as long as she was
with John Rourke, Varakov took as a fact. It was after that—with this
Rozhdestvenskiy-—that Varakov worried about her safety.
"Catherine!" He called out the name before he remembered he had told her
to go and rest. He shrugged, deciding he would do the same thing himself.
There might not be time for it in the future.
His hands stabbed into his pockets as he walked away from his office and
he stopped once, glancing back over his right shoulder. The offensive
SS-Hke KGB officer was gone from view. Varakov smiled, remembering the ego
satisfaction he had given himself in making Rozhdestvenskiy pick up the
cigarette. He realized as he glanced once more at the mastodons that he
would likely pay for it, too, and perhaps so would Natalia.
Rourke's knuckles were white, Ms fists bunched on the yoke now as the
twin-engine cargo plane skimmed low over over the icy roadway, his
starboard engine hopelessly iced. His mind went back to the only other
time in his life he had crash-landed a plane—the in the New Mexico
desert on the Night of the War. He remembered Mrs. Richards, her husband
gone in the destruction of the West Coast, her compassion in caring for
the dying captain, her tireless help that long night while they had fought
to keep airborne—then her death when the had—Rourke wrenched back on
the controls, trying to keep the nose up. The brakes held, but the plane
started to skid as it hit the ice- and snow-covered road. "Get your heads
down!" Rourke shouted to Paul, strapped in near the midsection, and to
Natalia in the copilot's seat beside him.
"John!"
Rourke didn't look at her; he was feeling the tendons in his neck
distending, his body suddenly cold, the air temperature finally getting to
him. The plane was going out of control. He worked the flaps to
decelerate, the brakes starting to slow him as well now. The straight-
away stretched for perhaps another quarter-mile yet and if he slowed the
craft too quickly the skid would become uncontrollable. The aircraft
zigzagged under him, the tail of the craft whipping back and forth across
the three-lane width of Kentucky highway. The straightaway was rapidly
running out. Eyes squinted against the glare of the plane's lights on the
snow, he could see ahead of him where the road seem to end, to curve in a
sharp S-bend, running to his left. The plane coasted right across the icy
road, toward the drop-off on the far end of the S-bend, a meager metal
guardrail there and beyond it, from what Rourke could see, a drop.
Two hundred yards, perhaps less. Rourke controlled the plane with the
flaps, the braking action worsening the skid. Rourke reached across to
Natalia, punching the release button on the seat harness, grabbing her by
the left shoulder, shouting back along the fuselage, "Paul— we're bailing
out—get the cargo door and jump for it— jump as far out as you canl"
Rourke didn't wait to see that the younger man was complying, but grabbed
Natalia, shoving her roughly ahead of him toward the fuselage door.
"John!" Rourke glanced to his left. Rubenstein was struggling with the
seat belt, its buckling mechanism apparently jammed. "Save yourselves!"
Rourke glanced toward Natalia; the Russian woman was already working the
handle on the cargo door with her left hand, in her right hand something
metallic gleamed—a knife. She reached the butt of it out to Rourke. Rourke
snatched it from her hand, wheeling, the aircraft's lurching and bumping
throwing him toward Rubenstein. Collapsing against the fuselage, Rourke
reached the knife blade under the webbing strap across
Paul's left shoulder, sliced it; then, as he started for the leg strap, he
could feel the rush of arctic-feeling air, hear the slipstream. The
fuselage door opened. Rourke's borrowed knife slashed apart the last of
the restraints.
The knife still in his right hand, he snatched at his CAR-, yelling to
Paul, "Jump for it, Paul—go on!"
As Rourke was moving toward the door, the younger man was already on his
feet, the Schmeisser in his right hand; Natalia was starting to jump.
Rourke, at the fuselage door, wheeled, reaching toward his strapped-down
Harley, cast a glance at it because it would likely be the last, and
snatched his leather jacket. He turned and dove, the snow slamming up
toward him as he rolled onto the road surface, his left shoulder taking
it, aching as he hit, the rear stabilizers sawing through the air toward
him as he flattened himself, .the tail of the fuselage passing inches over
his head.
He followed it with his eyes for an instant, then pushed himself to his
feet, slipping on the ice, running, lurching forward. He could see
Natalia, lying in the middle of the road, Paul running toward her. Rourke
heard it, the wrenching and groaning of metal. He wheeled, skidding on the
heels of his black combat boots across the ice, to watch as the plane
crashed through the metal roadside barricade and disappeared over the
side. He waited— there was no explosion. But there wasn't much hope
either, he thought. Three people, one jacket, a rifle with no spare
magazines and a submachine gun with no spare magazines. A few pistols. He
looked into his hand—and a Bali-Song knife. He turned, starting back
toward Natalia.
But like a little girl after taking a spill on an ice rink, she sat, legs
wide apart, her right hand propping her up, her left hand brushing the
hair back from her face,
hair already flecked with snow. Beside her Rubenstein crouched, as if
waiting.
Rourke stopped walking, a yard or so from her still. He held up the knife.
"Never told me about the Bali-Song knife."
She only smiled. Rourke glanced back where the plane had disappeared; if
anything could be salvaged, it would have to wait. The leather jacket was
bunched in his left hand along with the CAR-. He approached Natalia,
squatted down beside her, and draped the coat across her shoulders. She
was already shivering, as was Paul Ruben-stein. And so was
Rourke. . . .
"I had the Bali-Song for a long time. For some reason I didn't carry it
when you found me in (he desert. I don't remember why- But I took it with
me to Florida, just in case.
"Are you good with it?" Rourke asked her, shivering.
"Yes. If my hands weren't so cold—I could show—" She shook from the
freezing air temperature; sub-freezing, perhaps close to zero, Rourke
thought as he started down the side of the embankment, carefully, slowly,
for the rocks that formed the purchases for his hands and feet were
ice-coated. "Be careful, John."
"Once I get down there, I can snake up a rope; then you and Paul can join
me and at least we'll have some shelter—unless it looks like it's going to
blow or something."
"I can—" Rubenstein began.
"You stay with Natalia. If I break every bone in my body doing this, I
want someone in one piece to take care of her." It was getting dark as
Rourke started climbing again, the aircraft still some thirty feet below
him, its portside wing broken in two, the starboard engine
snagged in a clump of rocks some fifty feet farther below it and
half-obscured now by snow.
Rourke's hands were numb as his fingers played along the glistening
iced-over rocks, his shoulder still ached from where he'd hit the road
surface, and one desire suddenly obsessed him—to urinate. Rourke's right
foot edged down, then his left. The left slipped as loose shale under him,
crusted over with ice, broke away from the dirt that had held it. His
fingertips dug into the rock surface against which they pressed as his
right foot braced against the coated rock against which only the toes now
pressed.
"John—I'm coming down," Natalia shouted.
"No—I'll be—" Rourke swung his left leg out, finding a purchase against a
gnarled stump of bush growing out of the dirt embankment. "I'm all right."
Rourke edged his right hand down onto a lower ledge of rock, then his left
foot, then his left hand, then his right foot. Slowly, methodically, his
kidneys screaming at him to let go, he kept moving.
His hands were numbed to the point where he could barely sense the rocks
under his fingertips, and his feet were becoming chilled as well. A
numbness was setting into his thighs. But the plane was nearer.
He glanced up once; Natalia and Paul, peered down at him, over the edge.
The thought crossed his mind that even if one of the bikes had remained
serviceable, how would they ever get it up to the road surface? And the
freak storm—when would it end?
The plane was a few yards away from him now, across a wide break in the
ground and below the break, a drop of seventy-five feet or more. Rourke
settled himself against the rocks, checking his footing, then awkwardly
because
of the narrowness of the ledge, swung his left leg around behind him,
found a purchase for the left foot, then simultaneously swung his left arm
out and around, twisting his body. He moved his feet slightly, firming the
position he had, his back now against the rocks and dirt of the
embankment. The snow, falling in larger, heavier flakes, covered his
shoulders, lingered on his eyelashes-freezing him.
The jump to the opposite side of the break in the ground was only ten or
eleven feet. But there was no running room. He would simply hurtle his
body off the ledge and that would be it.
He sucked in his breath hard, glancing up one nfiore time; he couldn't see
either Natalia or Paul cleariy because of the heaviness of the snowfall.
"Now!" he rasped, pushing himself away from the embankment wilh his hands.
His knees slightly flexed as he half-jumped, half-fell forward, his
fingers reaching out. His righl hand, then his left touched the opposite
side of the open space, his hands clawing at the dirt and loose rocks
there. His hands slipped, his thighs slamming down hard against the
surface of the ground, his body starting back down the incline, slipping.
He couldn't dig in his heels—his feet dangled in the air. As he started to
slide backward, he spread-eagled his arms, his fingers clawing for a
purchase on the ice-coated ground. A rock—he held it, then the rock
dislodged and he was slipping again.
His left hand snaked behind him, snatching for the A.G. Russell Black
Chrome Sting IA he carried in the little inside waistband holster. His
fingers closed stiffly around it as he slipped toward the edge, his left
arm swinging around his body in a wide arc. The point of the Sting IA bit
deep into the ground, penetrating the ice. His right
hand grasped for the knife handle as well now, both fists bunched around
it; his body below the breastbone dangled in midair.
He sucked in his breath, flexing his arm muscles as he tried pulling
himself up. There wasn't time; the knife was already slipping from the
soft dirt beneath the ice, and his cold-numbed fingers were slipping from
the slick steel of the knife's handle.
"No!" Rourke heard the shout come from his lips and for the first time
became conscious of it. Summoning all his strength, he drew himself up.
The knife slipped from the dirt; his body lurched forward, onto the ice
and snow. He rolled, flattening himself, the knife still clutched in his
left fist.
He couldn't see through the snow now to the road thirty feet above, but
through the whiteness he heard a voice. "Answer me, John—John!" It was
Natalia.
"I'm all right," Rourke shouted back, already starting to edge across the
ice.
Two yards from the still intact fuselage, he stood up, slowly edging
forward. He started into the plane, but stopped.
His stiff right thumb and first finger worked at his zipper; there was
something more important than inspecting (he plane that instant. . . .
He stood inside, shivering with the cold, but at least out of the wind.
Natalia's borrowed motorcycle, a vintage BSA, had been the first of the
three, farthest forward in (he fuselage; the other two bikes had hammered
against it in the crash. It was twisted, as was the underside of the
fuselage where apparently the craft had gouged against a large rock, or
one of the supports for the steel guardrail.
But his own jet black Harley-Davidson Low Rider appeared undamaged, as was
the bright blue Low Rider he had found for Paul Rubenstein after the
younger man's motorcycle had been abandoned to lighten the plane during
the Florida evacuation.
With effort, still shivering, he got Rubenstein's bike aside so he could
get to his own. The Lowe Alpine Systems Loco Pack was still strapped in
place behind the seat. Rourke got to it, opening one of the pockets. There
was a red-and-silver Thermos Space Blanket, the kind larger than the
original disposable models developed for the astronaut program. The silver
reflective side toward him, he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders,
leaning heavily against one of the fuselage ribs. Rourke rammed his hands,
palms inward, down inside the fr>nt of his trousers, warming them against
his testicles to reduce the numbness o( his fingers
so he could move them
well enough to work. He stood there, the blanket around him, his hands
starting to get back feeling, his eyes flickering from one part of the
fuselage to another— the damage.
The plane was a total loss, as he had realized it would be from the first
moment he had decided to abandon it, when stopping it on the ice-slicked
road surface had proven impossible. It would have been unlikely that the
iced and stalled engine could have been successfully repaired in any
event. It had been the single-engine landing that had caused the problem
with stopping in the first place—not enough power. Aside from Natalia's
motorcycle, everything that was important seemed relatively unscathed.
He could move his fingers more now, so he withdrew his hands from inside
his pants, then quickly started
going through his things and the packs of Natalia and of Paul Rubenstein.
. . .
A pair of vintage, heavy leather Kombi ski gloves on his hands, a
seen-better-days gray woolen crew-neck sweater on over his shirt, Rourke
fed out part of the climbing rope from his pack, a rock secured to the
free end. "Stand back from the edge up there—got a chunk of rock on the
end of this for weight."
"Understand," Paul Rubenstein's voice called back through the snow. Rourke
still could not see sufficiently well through the heavily falling snow to
view the road surface above him. He started swinging the free end of the
rope, the end weighted with the rock, feeding out more and more of the
line. He made the toss, then heard the sound of the rock slamming against
something metallic—one of the supports for the guardrail? The rope slacked
and he started reeling it back in. He would have to try again. . . .
On the fourth try, the weighted end of the rope didn't move. "Paul—look
for it!"
For a moment, there was no answer, then Rubenstein's voice responded,
"I've got it, John."
Rourke nodded to himself, then shouted, "Secure it to something really
sturdy—have Natalia help you!" He waited then. Telling Paul to get