by Jerry Ahern
He looked down, firing a burst from the AK-47, Natalia beside him now. “Get into the cab. We have to make it to the airfield— come on!”
He shoved Natalia in, climbing back behind the wheel. The door still open, he released the emergency brake, gunning the engine as he let out the clutch. The half-track lurched ahead along the gravel drive.
The cab door slammed as Rourke cut the wheel into a hard right, a truck blocking his path. He took the half-track up over a small rock barrier and onto the lawn of the estate, then across it, Natalia firing out the opposite window. He could hear the Russian coaching the Wiznewski girl in how to change magazines for the AK-47s. Rourke cut the wheel hard left, shouting, “Hold on!” He turned the truck from the grass and back onto the gravel driveway, toward the closed iron grillwork gates at the far end. The shaking of the ground was something inescapable now— he could feel it even as the half-track lurched ahead.
Rourke fumbled for the windshield wiper switch. The rain was starting to fall in sheets now. The double iron gates were just yards ahead and Rourke, double-clutching to upshift and get some speed, shouted to the women, “Get your heads down— we’re going through!”
Less than a yard from the gates the brick support columns began to crumble as the ground running along side the driveway started to crack. Rourke hammered his right foot down on the accelerator, released, double-clutched, and upshifted, then stomped the accelerator again. The crack in front of them widened. He had no choice but to drive over it.
He could feel the front tires go into the crack, hear the engine groaning, then feel the half-track bump and lurch ahead. He stomped down hard on the gas pedal as the front of the truck smashed into the gates, the brick support columns already crumbling down on the cab, the windshield cracking across its entire length.
The gates split open and Rourke cut the wheel into a sharp right along the road paralleling the estate. He glanced to his right at Natalia, her hair streaming rain water as she leaned from the cab window firing at their pursuers.
He could see the crack in the ground widening and running alongside them now, seeming to move faster than they were.
“I’ve got to outrun that fissure!” Rourke shouted over the roar of the engine and the howling of the wind and rain. “Natalia, get back inside!” Rourke lessened his pressure on the gas pedal, worked the clutch and shifted into fourth, the engine whining. He shot a glance to his right. He was gaining on the widening fissure in the earth; but silently he wondered if he could pass it before it cut the road ahead of him and blocked his only chance of escape— the airfield ten miles away.
Chapter 44
Sarah Rourke could just see the faces of her children, Michael and Annie, in the back of the fisherman’s boat, packed there with Harmon Kleinschmidt, two of the women, and the dozen or so other children. Sarah had reasoned that once the attack against the Soviet prison compound had taken place, the island would no longer be safe. Mary Beth had surprisingly, she thought, agreed with her.
Mary Beth was at the wheel of the boat Sarah had stolen earlier, taking it coastward. And again, Sarah smiled at the thought, she was wearing borrowed clothing. She had reasoned that the best way to reach the prison and free the men who were to be executed that day was to appear as innocuous as possible. Most of the women were wearing dresses; some of them, herself included, had bundles wrapped up to look like babies. Inside Sarah’s was a borrowed MAC-10 .45 caliber submachine gun. Under the long, ankle-length skirt of the borrowed dress she wore, the .45 Colt automatic was strapped to her left thigh with elastic.
Mary Beth had beached the boat, and Sarah and the seven other women had fought their way through the surf. The tides were high, and the wind strong for some reason. From the shore there had been a two mile walk into town, and at Sarah’s urging the women had split up into three groups to attract less attention to themselves and to avoid blowing the entire operation should one group be captured.
Now, as Sarah rocked the imaginary baby in her arms a half-block from the factory gates— the factory that was now a prison— she looked at the borrowed watch on her wrist. If a Soviet officer did not come along in another five minutes, she would have to scrap plan “A” as she called it and go to plan “B.” The second plan called for an assault by herself and the rest of the women on the prison gates. It was suicide.
She sucked in her breath. There was a Soviet officer walking with a noncommissioned officer, turning into the street and walking toward her. She quietly wondered if she’d have the nerve. Still rocking the swaddled submachine gun in her arms, singing to it softly as she moved, she walked toward the Soviet officer.
She had no idea what rank he was, but since he was older-looking, she assumed the rank was high enough that his life would be important— she hoped so, at least.
She stopped, standing a few feet to the right and ahead of the Soviet officer and the soldier with him. “Sir?”
The officer stopped talking to the soldier, stopped walking and turned to face her. He nodded. “If you need help with your child, madam, there are doctors in the city who will offer what medical aid they can. The nearest facility is—“ and he started to gesture down the block behind him.
“No, sir,” Sarah told him, forcing a smile: “It isn’t that. But it has to do with my baby. Please, would you look at him?” She hoped to appeal to the officer’s vanity, to his ego. The helpless woman asking his advice— she hoped he saw it that way. She was committed now. There was little time before the execution was to take place.
The officer looked to the soldier beside him, shaking his head, saying something in Russian. “Very well, madam. But I fail to see...”
She started walking slowly toward him, watched the soldier’s eyes, watched them shift as she moved her “baby” in her arms into a better position. The Soviet soldier started to open his mouth and Sarah swung the “infant” into position, letting the faded blue blanket fall to the ground at her feet. The MAC-10 swung in a firing position, the stubby muzzle aimed at the soldier, her right first finger twitching against the trigger, the soldier falling.
Sarah, her feet braced apart, turned the muzzle of the weapon against the officer, whispering, “I’ll kill you too if you move.”
There were soldiers running up from the prison gates, the gates open, and she turned back to the Soviet officer. “What is your name?”
“I am Major Borozeni.”
“Major,” she began, not attempting to pronounce the last name, “tell those soldiers to stop where they are and drop their guns, or you’re dead.”
The Russian officer smiled, beginning to laugh. “Madam, I am not so important that I can be used as any sort of bargaining—“
Sarah fired a burst into the cobbled street in front of the officer’s gleaming boots, then looked up into his eyes. “For your sake you’d better be.”
The major shouted something in guttural Russian and the soldiers stopped in their tracks. Sarah smiled at him. “See— you’re more important than you thought. Doesn’t that make you feel good?”
The Soviet major had ceased to smile.
“Let’s go,” she said. As the major began walking ahead of her in the direction in which she’d gestured with the submachine gun, the other women started coming from the doorways and alleys, their guns in their hands, advancing toward the Soviet soldiers and the open prison gates. Sarah’s stomach churned. She had just murdered a man— for all she knew a good man, perfectly innocent, not trying to harm her.
She promised herself she would vomit later— there was no time now.
The soldiers parted in a wave in front of her, one of them moving and gunfire— from Mary Beth— cutting him down. “Nobody should try that again,” Sarah screamed,” or he gets killed!” Then, on second thought, she shouted to the major a few paces ahead of her, his hands upraised, “Major, repeat that in Russian. And remember that if anyone tries anything, you die first— I swear it.” She heard the conviction in her own voice, realizing that she actually m
eant what she said.
The major passed through the gates, Sarah a few paces behind him. There were at least fifty Soviet soldiers there, all with guns, but Sarah kept walking.
The major said, “What is it you want, madam? Surely, you cannot—“
“You’re right,” she interrupted. “That’s what I want. Those fifteen Resistance fighters. Get them out here, let them take arms, and we leave— nobody gets hurt.”
The major stopped, not turning around, but looking over his shoulder at her. “You are insane!”
“Don’t you forget it, either, Major,” she told him, her voice trembling slightly.
“If you make it away from here alive, madam, I will find you,” the major said, his voice velvety with hatred, she thought.
“You know you won’t. If I thought that I’d kill you. Now give the orders.”
“I— I cannot. I am not the commandant here.”
“Give the orders— now!”
He looked at her again over his right shoulder, then just nodded.
The major shouted something in Russian. None of the soldiers moved. Then, his face reddening, he shouted again, louder. One soldier, then another started moving, and soon the ranks of Soviet soldiers opened and beyond them she could see the fifteen men, faces drawn, clothes torn and incredibly filthy. She listened as the major barked another command, then saw the first Russian soldier hand over his weapon to the Resistance man nearest him.
She almost fainted with relief. She shouted then, “No killing unless we have to!”
The haggard Resistance fighter turned, glared at her a moment, then lowered the muzzle of the rifle, just nodding. In a moment, the other fourteen men had armed themselves. “Order us a truck, Major,” she told the officer still standing, hands up, in front of her.
“No!”
“Major, please. I’ll kill you,” she said softly.
He turned and looked over his shoulder at her again, then nodded. She heard him shouting in Russian, then in a moment heard the sound of an engine starting. She shouted, “Mary Beth, get everybody on board. Have them keep their guns trained on the courtyard here-and no shooting unless the Russians start it!”
She watched over the major’s shoulders as the truck loaded, Mary Beth at the wheel.
Sarah said softly, “All right, Major, you come with us. Behave and you’ll come out of this alive and unharmed. I promise.”
He turned and looked at her. “And what if I do not?”
“This.” She gestured with the muzzle of the submachine gun in her hands.
“Agreed,” he almost whispered, his voice tight, as though he were about to choke on the words.
“Thank you.” Sarah Rourke smiled.
In another two minutes, she judged, she and the major had boarded the truck, the major sitting between her and Mary Beth behind the wheel. She said to the major, “I know they’ll follow us, but say something to make them follow at a distance. Tell them I’ll kill you if I see anyone following us.”
“Would you, madam?” he asked her.
“Of course,” she said with a smile.
The major shouted in Russian and the Soviet troops by the gates fanned back. Mary Beth started the truck forward, then between the gates. It was starting to rain and Mary Beth had the windshield wipers going as the truck cleared the gates and turned into the street beyond. Then she cut a hard left into the intersection.
“Step on it, Mary Beth!” Sarah shouted.
“You’ll never escape,” the major told her, smiling.
“Better hope we do, Major,” she answered, looking out the window behind her into the road. Whatever the major had said was working, she thought, and there were no Soviet vehicles in sight.
But she had learned well since the Night of the War. The Soviets were there, on parallel streets, waiting to make their move or calling in helicopters to keep the truck under observation. And now that she had gotten the fifteen Resistance men out of the prison, she felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had no further plan— the rest of the way would have to be on guts and luck.
Chapter 45
Paul Rubenstein looked down at the ground below the low-flying aircraft. There were cracks in the ground-widening, it seemed, by the instant. Rain was falling in sheets and he silently prayed for the pilot. With Tolliver and Pedro Garcia and the others, Rubenstein had fought all the way to the airport, the other camps having spilled open as their Cuban Communist guards and warders had fled for their lives. Hundreds of men, women, and children were freed.
Many of the Cuban troops had fled by boat, the crafts visible as Rubenstein and the others had moved along the highway. Then Rubenstein had dropped off, going overland to retrieve his Harley, cutting back to the road again just ahead of the comparatively slow going convoy of every sort of land vehicle imaginable. Men hung on the outsides of the trucks, rode on the hoods of the cars and on the rooftops. It had taken two hours to reach the airport, and the airport itself was the greatest scene of mass confusion the young Rubenstein had ever witnessed. Cuban planes were loading Cubans, Soviet and American planes were loading the American refugees, some of the people from the camps having to be forced aboard the Soviet planes. The ground’s trembling had been incessant, the cracks appearing everywhere in the runway surfaces.
And then Rubenstein had spotted Captain Reed, working to load one of the American planes impressed into the evacuation. Rubenstein had threaded his bike across the runways and buttonholed Reed, demanding to know what was happening.
And when Reed had told him, Rubenstein’s heart sank. The tremors were the beginning of one massive quake that would cause the entire Florida Peninsula to separate from the rest of the Continental United States— what was left of it at least. Rubenstein had almost throttled Reed, demanding some kind of plane to get him to Miami where his parents were. Then Rubenstein had learned about Rourke. Rourke and the woman seismologist who had first brought the news of the impending disaster had gone to Miami to convince the Cuban commander of the reality of the impending disaster. Although Reed assumed they had been successful since the evacuation had been ordered, there had been no word from him since.
Again, Rubenstein had demanded a plane. Reed had agreed. There was a six passenger Beechcraft Baron specially altered to add almost another fifty miles per hour to its airspeed, the plane Reed himself had arrived in.
And now, as Rubenstein watched the ground cracking below the plane, watched the pilot manipulating the controls, and watched the sheets of rain, he wondered if by the time they reached Miami there would be a Miami to reach. Rourke was there, his mother and father were there. Even Natalia was there, Reed had told Rubenstein.
If Rourke died and he, Rubenstein, somehow survived, he would be honor bound, he knew, to continue the search for Rourke’s wife, and the two children.
And what would he do, Rubenstein wondered, if the plane could land? Would he offload the Harley Davidson Reed and the pilot had grudgingly helped him get aboard? Would he somehow be able to find his parents, or John Rourke, or Natalia— but then simply die with them as the earthquake continued and the entire peninsula went under the waves?
A chill ran up Rubenstein’s spine. It would be better to die— despite the chill, despite the sweating of his palms— than to live and never have tried to rescue the people— He stopped, a smile crossing his lips as he pushed his wire-framed glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “The people I love,” he murmured softly.
Chapter 46
The main runway was beginning to crack. Rourke snatched the young child from the refugee woman’s arms and handed the little girl aboard the DC-9, then helped the woman to follow. He should never have let Natalia go, he thought. They had reached the airfield, the evacuation already under way and most of the Cuban personnel aiding in the civilian evacuation or too busy trying to save their own lives to offer resistance. Rourke and Natalia had gotten Sissy Wiznewski on one of the first planes to take off after they had reached the field, then Natalia ha
d gone off to aid a party of refugees, Rourke working with a Soviet captain and an American major to bring some order to the airfield and speed up the take-offs. More planes hovered overhead, ready to land as they made a wide circle of the field. It was a miracle that so far there had been no mid-air collisions.
He loaded the last child aboard the aircraft, then the little boy’s crying mother, then slapped his right hand against the fuselage as the crewman by the door started closing up. Rourke snatched the borrowed walkie-talkie from his hip pocket. “Rourke to tower— DC-9 ready for take-off pattern!”
“Tower here. Roger on that.”
Rourke shoved the radio into his pocket, then turned around scanning the field for Natalia. The rain was pouring down, and as the propellers of a plane passing along the runway near him accelerated, the rain lashed at Rourke’s face. Pushing his streaming wet hair back from his forehead, he started to run, sidetracking a small, twin engine plane that was landing. He looked from side to side along the runway’s length. There were more planes loading refugees at the far end of the field, and Rourke started running toward them. It was more than the promise he’d made Varakov, to see Natalia get away alive. But Rourke forced the thoughts from his mind as he ran on, sloshing through puddles on the runway, the wind blowing the rain at near gale force now, gusts buffeting his body as he dodged incoming and outgoing planes, making his way across the field.
Rourke reached the planes still loading, but Natalia was nowhere in sight. He grabbed a passing Soviet airman by the collar, shouting in Russian, “The Russian woman— where is she?”
The man looked uncomprehending a moment, a strong gust of wind lashing them both, catching the Soviet airman’s hat and blowing it across the field. “Wait,” the young man stammered. “A beautiful woman— dark hair, blue eyes?”
“Yes— where?” Rourke shouted over the wind.