by Ahern, Jerry
conical shape of the grappling hook device disappeared into a swirl of snow. Hammerschmidt fell to tugging at the rope, Rubenstein helping, the rope suddenly going taut.
They both threw their weight on the rope, trying to pull it free lest it work itself free. The rope was taut as a flat piece of metal.
Together, they tied it off into the rocks near them, then further secured it to a tree, discarding the launcher, Hammerschmidt saying, “I’ll bury the launcher in the snow once you are across.”
“Hopefully that’s all you’ll bury. Gimme a hand.” Together, they manipulated one of the Specials into position beneath the stretched taut rope, Paul Rubenstein tightening the sling of his Schmeisser submachine gun, tightening the strap of the musette bag in which he carried its spare magazines. He checked the safety strap of the tanker-style holster in which his battered Browning High Power was carried. These two firearms and his Gerber MKII knife were all he would take, the bulk of his arctic gear and the need to move fast and potentially far on foot defining his practical limits.
“Are you certain that you will not change your mind, Paul? I could rope over a rifle and a small pack and—”
“No—gotta travel light. Gimme a leg up.” He mounted the saddle of the Special, then grabbed the rope with his gloved hands, Hammerschmidt taking his feet, helping him as he swung them up and over the rope. The rope was already crusting with ice.
“Any famous last words?”
“Yeah, but I’m too polite to say them.” Rubenstein made himself laugh. And he started moving out, feet first, handover-hand, Hammerschmidt helping him the last three yards or so until he reached the edge; then he was out, over the gorge, the wind shrieking like a tortured soul, lashing at his body, at the rope, the flat rope vibrating with it. “I think I can, I think I can,” he murmured, already short of breath, moving steadily, not daring to stop.
Below—he cursed his stupidity for looking down—white water crashed over the rocks and flickered up toward him with beckoning fingers. He shook his head, kept moving, gauging it now that he was at the approximate center of the gorge, at the point of no return where it no longer made sense to even attempt to turn back. But he could not in any event. He kept moving, wishing suddenly he still smoked, thinking about Annie—he loved her and she loved him, and if none of the other things that had happened to him since meeting John Rourke aboard that flight into Atlanta that was diverted to New Mexico on the very Night of the War could be considered miraculous, then their love could. She was so exquisitely pretty, brilliant, headstrong, gentle, loving—everything he” had ever wanted in life was part of her. Paul Rubenstein kept moving.
Someday, they’d have a child—more than one. He found himself smiling—John a grandfather.
Paul looked down again, his fingers stiffening, his legs and forearms cramping, his shoulders aching. He remembered—he actually remembered nothing of it beyond what he was told after he recovered—John Rourke edging across just such a precarious rope to rescue him from a flaming helicopter in the aftermath of Karamatsov’s attack on the landing Eden Project shuttle crafts. The pain was something John had felt. John hadn’t given up. Paul kept going, his fingers barely able to close, the cold numbing him too now, the wind gusting, tearing at him. His hood blew down and his ears and face suddenly tingled with the cold.
He kept moving. And then the rope vibrated more strongly than it had before and he didn’t move. Upside down, he looked back, barely able to see Hammerschmidt by the very edge, Hammerschmidt gesticulating wildly, evidently shouting but his words lost on the wind. But the understanding was there. Hammerschmidt evidently thought the grappling hook was working loose.
Paul Rubenstein looked ahead, the rope vibrating strongly
again, rocks of immense size and jagged shape on the opposite wall of the gorge. He could cut the rope, swing toward the opposite wall of the gorge, hope to cling to something.
The rope lurched and Paul Rubenstein felt a sudden sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, an instant of total weightlessness, then a shock to his arms and legs and back.
The rope swayed maddeningly.
He realized the grappling hook’s position had shifted.
Cut the rope and swing toward the wall?
And what if he struck against the rocks so hard that he died? Annie a widow in a world like this? And John. And Natalia. “No!” Paul Rubenstein shouted into the wind. He started moving again, but the ice on the rope now that it swayed was making him lose traction, and for each inch he moved forward, he slipped an inch downward, his relative position unchanged.
Rubenstein licked his lips. His cheeks and ears were numb with the cold. With his right hand, he reached out, as far ahead of his torso as he could. And then he swung his left leg from the rope, the rope vibrating maddeningly. He hung there, his left knee carrying much of his weight, both fists clenched to the ice-slicked synthetic rope.
With difficulty—nothing he knew compared to what lay ahead—he cleared his left leg of the rope, hanging there for a frightening instant by his hands alone, gusts of wind ripping at him, snow and spicules of ice pelting his exposed flesh.
He snarled at the wind, as if somehow it were a mortal enemy, at the night, at the snow, at the rocks and the raging white water below him, then pulled. He’d never been the world’s greatest athlete, having discovered muscles in his adulthood he’d never known he had as a child, but he swung his right elbow over the rope, the rope, despite its flatness, gouging through his parka and into his flesh and musculature, his arm tingling with the pain.
He threw himself up and forward, hurtling his left leg over the rope, for an instant what little balance he had gone as he slipped forward, his right arm moving quickly, his gloved fist
closing over the rope. He hung there, breathing, glad for the opportunity.
His right leg—he swung it upward.
He was now faced in the opposite direction, could use his feet for leverage against the rope, its very flatness now his enemy. He hung there, but only for another moment, the numbness of exhaustion which was overtaking him an enemy still worse. He started moving again, wedging the rope between the outer edges of his crisscrossed feet, pushing with his feet as he pulled upward and forward with his hands.
He was moving.
He thought of Annie. Was she warm?
John and Natalia. They had to be alive. He could see Hammerschmidt faintly, waving to him. Why? Encouraging him onward, cheering his survival?
Paul Rubenstein kept going.
And then, as he narrowed the gap to the far side of the gorge to under ten yards, he heard a rifle shot, coming from Hammerschmidt’s side. Had the German commando gone mad? “Otto!” A bullet whined off the rocks ahead of him, only faintly audible under the keening of the wind.
He kept moving.
As Paul Rubenstein looked up—more gunshots, bursts of rifle fire now—he saw what Hammerschmidt was shooting at.
He saw why the rope had slipped, why it vibrated again even now.
The Chinese of the Second City had the most peculiar ideas of animal husbandry, he thought absently. Not only had they released wolves into the environment.
But they had released at least one bear.
Chapter Fifteen
John Rourke’s eyes opened. “Shots—” He had fallen asleep, he realized only now.
Shots—but not a helicopter’s mini-guns. Automatic rifle shots, some distance away but not too terribly far, because outside, as his senses came fully alert, he realized that the wind howled, in its ferocity even greater than before. The log—he pushed it into the fire, a shower of sparks rising, but the dampening effect of the snow on their shelter was enough that there was no concern for fire. It wasn’t so warm within the shelter that he would have felt comfortable removing his shirt, but it wasn’t so cold that he felt uncomfortable without his sweater.
John Rourke sat up, his right hand automatically closed on the butt of one of the little Detonics .45s, his left hand resting on
Natalia’s blanketed right leg. After feeding her, he had gone over the rock ledge into the deep drifts there by the height of the gorge and washed her clothing after she had dirtied herself and her garments, then brought the things back, suspended them over the fire to dry.
Natalia was sleeping still, and he realized she was sleeping too much and that he was only keeping her body alive while her mind kept slipping farther away.
More shots.
He was standing.
Rourke reached for the shoulder harness for the twin
stainless Detonics and shrugged into it, holstering one gun, then the second. The Scoremasters. He grabbed them, thrust them into his belt.
He looked at Natalia.
He grabbed his gunbelt …
Paul Rubenstein hung onto the shuddering rope with his left hand and both knees and feet, biting off the other glove from his right hand, his helmet slung from his musette bag, slamming into his abdomen as he twisted round, his right hand moving under his coat, grasping for the butt of the Browning.
The creature was not so large as bears he’d seen in zoos or stuffed in museums, not a Kodiak or a polar bear, just a black bear of huge proportions and bulk, a white airfoil-shaped mask of fur beneath his eyes and over his mouth, giving the effect of some hideously inane smile.
Paul thumbed back the hammer. The sub-machinegun would have been better, but there was no way to release the sling one-handed without risking dropping it into the river below.
More automatic weapons fire from Otto Hammerschmidt’s side of the gorge.
“Get outa here!” Rubenstein shouted as the animal grabbed at the rope with one huge paw, then another. It stood nearly upright, stared at him, then bent over the rope, pulling at it, the rope slipping again, Rubenstein nearly losing his pistol, the grappling hook visible now, barely wedged in the rocks near the animal’s feet.
Paul Rubenstein fired a double tap, then again and again, the bear howling with rage, stepping back, then reaching downward to swat at the rope once again.
Rubenstein fired again, the grappling hook starting to dislodge …
* • *
John Rourke ran, the pistol shots he’d just heard convincing him that it was something other than Russians or fleeing Second City Chinese. The 629 in his right fist, he clambered up into the natural rock wall which separated the wooded area in which he had made camp from the river, the shots coming from a considerable distance upriver along the course of the gorge, his hearing placing the origin of the rifle shots and the pistol shots some distance apart. A gunbattle between two men?
He kept running, along the river’s edge now, the snow falling more heavily, movement more difficult than it had been before. Snowshoes would be mandatory by morning. He kept running, more pistol shots, something oddly but unconsciously familiar about them. More assault rifle fire, the sound not right for an M-16, more like the German weapons— “Hammerschmidt”—Rourke quickened his pace, pulling his parka hood up against the numbing cold, running.
If help were coming, then Natalia—
He kept running …
The Browning High Power’s slide locked open, the pistol empty, the bear howling with rage, swatting at the grappling hook as if somehow the hook itself were the source of the pain the animal had to be feeling from the multiple hits it had sustained without going down.
Paul Rubenstein’s cold-numbed right thumb worked the battered Browning’s slide release downward, the slide skating forward. There was no chance to reload, and no time either. As quickly as he could, he shoved the 9mm back into the tanker holster, closing the safety strap against loss, taking his outer glove from his teeth, working his hand into it, then starting along the rope again.
More assault rifle fire from Hammerschmidt’s side of the gorge, the bear—as he neared it, it seemed larger—hammering so mightily at the grappling hook that the flat Kevlar-like rope was swaying now like some sort of hammock in a breeze.
Seven yards now, five. The bear seemed to be losing interest in the grappling hook, taking interest in him.
Paul Rubenstein thought of the Gerber knife, a stout blade but slim defense against a creature this size.
His only defense. There would be no time for the subgun and no time to reload the High Power. No time to run either.
The grappling hook slipped again and he almost lost his handholds, the rope bellying out and down, his body slamming against the rocks, skidding.
He wedged his right foot and stopped himself, embracing the firmness of the rocks with his body, breathing.
He looked up. There was a natural path, and the bear was starting down along it, growling more fiercely than before.
Rubenstein tried remembering everything he could about bears. Generally poor eyesight. Not all bears hibernated, although in extreme temperatures like these— But what was an extreme temperature for a bear?
He had never been a hunter, had shot men before he’d ever shot game. He tried to gauge its weight—at least five hundred pounds. If a five hundred pound angry man were coming at him, immune to pain, interested only in ripping him to shreds, what would he do? He laughed despite it all. The likely answer to his self-questioning was obvious: he would most likely die. With the foothold, he was able to reach for the High Power, buttoning out the magazine into his left hand as the hand still held the rope, but unable to twist himself around sufficiently to get at the musette bag.
In his pockets. He searched his outside pockets, finding a spare thirteen-round magazine, bracing the magazine between his heaving chest and the magazine well, pushing it up and home. The slide was closed. “Damn!” He shagged the pistol against his pants, having seen John Rourke doing that once— “Sight snubbing is what they used to call it, Paul. It’s something to practice occasionally in the event you need to work the slide of your pistol and have only one hand operable enough to do it. I used to teach the technique to women who
insisted on keeping to a pistol they ^weren’t physically strong enough to operate. Only in that case, I’d have them brace the rear sight against a table edge or some other hard object. Not too good for the rear sight and only useful in a home defense context and not very sure. But anything in a pinch if you have to.
Paul Rubenstein stabbed the rear sight of the Browning into his thigh and rammed the pistol downward, the slide coming back, then, as he released, snapping forward.
The bear was three yards above him on the rocky path that would take the creature into range with its long front limbs, into range to rip his body to shreds with its enormous claws—a bear’s claws had to be enormous. He realized his hand was shaking as he took aim with the High Power.
From above him, Paul Rubenstein heard a familiar voice. “Is it good to see you, Paul!”
He looked toward the sound, for an instant saw John Rourke bending over the edge of the precipice, then in John’s hands he saw the .44 Magnum revolver (John had begun carrying the 629 after the accident involving his Colt Python). And then there was an earsplitting crack, the rocks ringing with it and the sound, despite the wind, echoing and re-echoing with it, the creature’s forehead seeming to burst, exploding in a cloud of pink and red and gray. And the bear just swayed there for what seemed like forever, clawing toward the snow-obscured sky, then tumbling forward suddenly. And suddenly, Paul Rubenstein felt shame and rage that this creature whose species had survived so much had had to die.
He looked up into the face of John Rourke. John Rourke spoke to him over the keening of the wind. “I know what you’re thinking; I didn’t want to kill it, but there wasn’t any choice. I need your help.” And John Rourke began clambering down the path the bear had followed, holstering his revolver, still talking. “Does your helmet radio work? Can you reach the base radio?”
“We didn’t want to use it. The Russians could pick it up.
And I’m out of range now, but we have a rendezvous. How’s Natalia?” He was almost afraid to speak her name. Where was she?
“Very sick,” his friend tol
d him as he reached out from the path and Paul, his pistol holstered, reached back and their hands clasped. “Thank God you came.”
Chapter Sixteen
There was substantial likelihood that the gunfire would draw enemy personnel, either Russian or from the scattered forces of the Second Qty which had borne the brunt of the initial phases of the Soviet attack.
Paul Rubenstein walked beside John Rourke, although his muscles screamed at him to rest. John had simply said, “We’ll have to hurry—there isn’t much time.”
Using his helmet radio, Paul had relayed to Otto Hammerschmidt on the other side of the gorge that John Rourke was well but that Natalia was somehow injured and they were going now to aid her and that he—Hammerschmidt— should stand by and watch for possible interdiction by enemy forces.
It was bitter cold, but with the hood of his parka restored, at least his ears and cheeks were beginning to thaw. He noticed that the left sleeve of John’s parka was torn and carefully resewn, and noticed as well bloodstains on John’s right sleeve. “What happened?” he said over the howling of the wind.
“Everything that could possibly go wrong did—almost. We were pursued by Second City Chinese forces and there were Soviet gunships on us as well. I did the only thing I could.” John Rourke stopped dead in his tracks and looked at him very earnestly.
“What happened?” Paul asked, not wanting to know. “Natalia was already behaving strangely,” John Rourke
resumed, resuming walking as well. “We went over the side into the gorge. We lost the Special, got soaked to the skin. All she was doing was repeating my name, over and over again—” “Han said something about—”
“She’s completely withdrawn into herself. I’m no psychiatrist, but I think she’s suffering from manic depression.” “She snapped—”
John Rourke wheeled toward him and for a split second Paul Rubenstein thought that his friend might strike him, the energy in John Rourke’s eyes then like something he had never seen before. “Yes—I think so. Come on.”