by Ahern, Jerry
The third man was moving. Rourke fired. He stopped moving.
The fourth man was shouldering his assault rifle. “John— he’s—”
“I know,” Rourke almost whispered, firing again, the Mongol’s rifle falling from his hands, his head twisting around, his body seeming to be dragged after it, falling.
The fifth man was running toward the tunnel the heat-sensing device had picked up. John Rourke tickled the trigger once again, the fifth man’s body skidding off balance, forward, the man’s hands grasping toward the small of his back as he fell.
The sixth man fired his assault rifle, spraying it into the rocks where John Rourke and Paul Rubenstein were, missing them by a good ten feet. John Rourke thumbed the selector to auto. “Help me out.” As Rourke fired, Rubenstein fired, the sixth man’s body racked with hits, twisting, lurching, slamming into the rocks behind him, his assault rifle still spraying, but skyward now, his right arm twisting with the torque, the gun finally falling as it fired out empty.
John Rourke was already moving, half diving into a snowbank, Paul coming after him.
Although the sounds of the battle between the Soviet attackers and Second City Chinese defenders were everywhere, the remote possibility existed that sounds of this brief battle might somehow be detected and bring more of the Chinese or, worse still, KGB Elite Corps commandoes.
As Rourke ran, he looked to right and left through the swirling snow, his eyes squinted against the huge flakes. No one was coming. He signaled to Paul to break left as he broke right, ramming a fresh magazine up the M-16’s well, coming onto the concealed mouth of the tunnel in what some called a pincer formation, from the sides, closing on the objective. Rourke’s right hand was numbing with the cold, but he hadn’t trusted to a glove and there had been no time to replace it once removed.
They reached the Mongol position almost simultaneously, Rourke stepping over one of the dead bodies to aid the seventh man. But the eyes, wide open, staring upward, were already splotched with snowflakes.
Rourke exhaled over the eyes to melt the snow, then closed the lids. There had been no need to tell Paul to cover him; such was implicit. As Rourke looked up, then stood, Paul was methodically checking each of the other six. Rourke aided him.
“Mine are all dead.”
“Mine, too,” Rourke told him. Rourke looked behind them, toward the nearest location where there was a great concentration of troops from both sides fighting. But still, no one came.
Rourke safed his rifle and let it fall to his side on its sling, then found his glove.
“If I were starting a Glock pistol collection, I’d be in business. Same for the assault rifles. The sabers look terrible, almost as terrible as the rifles. No documents.”
“I’ve got a Glock 17 at the Retreat. Fine pistol. Really durable, too. As I suppose the very existence of these proves. Leave the bodies—no time anyway,” John Rourke concluded, walking quickly through the trampled-down snow toward the
concealed entrance his sensing device had shown was there, working his hand into the glove as he walked, opening and closing his hand to restore proper circulation.
Finding the entrance proved no challenge, a steel door— stainless, of reasonably good finishing qualities—was hidden half-heartedly at the rear of an out-of-place-looking stand of pines. Some boughs were broken where the tunnel had apparently been used recently. He examined a partially broken bough and from the liquidity of the pine sap, especially considering the cold weather, he judged within hours.
Rourke called to Paul. “Bring me one of those sabers— whichever one of them looks the stoutest.” There was no reason to get his knife full of pine tar again. He turned, waiting for Paul to join him. As Paul ran up, Rourke took the saber from him, eyeballing it for an instant, then stepping slightly back from the stand and with a few downward cuts, hacking away a sufficient number of the pine boughs that they had clear access to the tunnel door beyond. He took the saber and tossed it javelin fashion into a snowbank a few feet away.
The door was, as expected, closed.
A ring handle was in place to the far left of the door, equidistant between top and bottom. John Rourke reached for it with his right hand as he heard Paul changing magazines in his M-16, Rourke’s own rifle bunched tight in his left fist.
Rourke moved the door slowly open, inward. There was a terrible stench, strong-seeming even as the snowladen wind dissipated it.
Dull yellow light glowed faintly in the distance, between the meager light cast inward through the door, and the yellow light, nothing but blackness.
Rourke’s right hand closed over the butt of one of the German anglehead flashlights. “Watch out.” And Rourke depressed the switch, shining the light into the darkness of the tunnel. As quickly as he flicked it on, he flicked it off.
“What’s the matter?” the younger man asked him. “What did you see in there?”
John Rourke flicked the light on again and he told Paul Rubenstein what he saw. “Human bones. Come on. Close the door behind you and mind you don’t trip on a femur or something.”
John Rourke stepped through the doorway, shining the light about him on all sides now. Oddly, he didn’t instantly see a femur, but he saw human bones of all other descriptions. His left boot inadvertently rested on an anterior segment of a human skull. Human vertebrae crunched under his feet as he moved ahead.
“My God,” Paul whispered.
“No—I think it has something to do with their god.” Rourke moved into the darkness. And from deep within the darkness ahead through which they had to pass, he heard something that sounded like growling.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sarah Rourke’s temples hurt from the sudden absence of the pressure associated with the vision-intensification goggles. But here, in the light of a vast recreation hall beyond a kitchen in which they had taken cover as one of the Soviet murder squads passed, there was light enough and wearing them was no longer required. She pocketed them in the BDU jacket, immediately setting to checking her rifle as the commandoes (only nine remained?) under Wolfgang Mann’s command set to checking ways in and out.
As she satisfied herself as to the condition of her weapon, she suddenly realized she was terribly hungry. But there was nothing to eat, despite the fact she had just passed through a large, modern kitchen and that she was in a hall where, like as not, banquets were often held. All the weight of her rucksack was ammunition. A solitary canteen of water was on her belt. She didn’t want to drink because, if she did, she might have to urinate and where could she do that? Sarah Rourke shook her head, disgusted. Where were the Chinese?
Wolfgang Mann’s voice came to her through the radio and echoed her own thoughts. “Where are our Chinese friends?”
“I hope they brought Chinese food with them,” Sarah told him. And then she shut off the radio. In the hall, they were close enough that they could speak to one another naturally. “I’m turning off my radio,” she announced to anyone within earshot. Perhaps the radio chatter was giving her the headache.
There were two other sets of doors, besides the set through which they had entered, out of the kitchen, and a pair of Colonel Mann’s commandoes flanked these doors now, preparatory to opening them, she assumed. One man from each team placed a suction-cup-like device, several inches in diameter, against the doors, the black rubber piece functioning like the bell to something analogous to a stethoscope, listening devices to detect what might lie beyond the doors.
There was considerable risk that the Chinese unit they were to have met had encountered one of the roving Soviet patrols, been killed or captured or even just delayed. Which would mean scrubbing the mission or penetrating the government center themselves without reinforcements and making the attempt to rescue the chairman of the First City on their own.
He was a decent man, the chairman, if somewhat naive, and deserved their best efforts.
She heard a snapping of fingers, started to speak aloud as she turned toward the sound, then
, on impulse, hit the button to reactivate her radio. She nodded toward Wolfgang Mann, saying softly into the microphone, “I’m receiving.”
“There is activity beyond the doors. This way,” and he gestured for her to join him on the other side of the recreation hall.
She moved quickly, toward him, mildly surprised that she wasn’t feeling greater fatigue as a result of the relatively sedentary lifestyle she’d been forced into by her pregnancy.
She stopped beside Mann and he raised a finger to his lips, signaling silence. Her eyes moved around the room. Colorful murals covered the upper portions of the walls, their theme apparently Chinese folklore, because there were dragons, princesses, scraggly-bearded men in flowing robes who looked like some cross between monk and wizard.
Mann’s voice through her radio: “Schmidt—come in. Schmidt?”
There was no answer from the tall, very Nordic-looking Sergeant Schmidt whom Colonel Mann had left guarding the
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kitchen to the corridors just fronting the end of the tunnel. “Schmidt?” Still no answer.
Mann’s face seamed with worry lines and he said, “Quickly—into the hallway. Standard entry pattern. On my mark!”
The remaining men of Wolfgang Mann’s command moved out as if they were pre-programmed automatons, but she realized that it was training instead. One man on each side of the doorways, the others in an arc just behind them, weapons ready.
Mann joined the team on the left, Sarah stopping beside him until he pushed her behind him. “Close your coat. It has bullet-resistant properties, or did I mention that?” Awkwardly, with his left hand, he withdrew the antique Walther P-38 he carried, the STG-101 in his right hand only.
“No.”
“Close it, then.” And he turned his head toward the men at the other doors. “Be ready— Now!”
As her eyes moved to the doors nearest her, for the first time she realized the stethoscope-like listening devices had been removed and, where the doors seamed, there was a small rectangular object, black in color. She guessed an explosive charge and, in the next instant, both sets of doors blew open outward and in the well-lighted corridor beyond, she saw a dozen Soviet Elite Corps commandoes in their black BDUs, assault rifles at the ready, wheeling toward the explosions. But Mann’s people fired first.
There was gunfire from behind them and Sarah automatically turned toward it, more of the Soviet commandoes pouring into the recreation hall through the kitchen doors.
She hit the bolt to cycle one of the grenades into the assault rifle’s launcher, then pulled the trigger, the butt of the weapon braced against her hip.
As the first grenade exploded she was already launching a second, Mann beside her, spraying one of the forty-round
magazines empty, the P-38 9mm firing from his left hand.
There were voices shouting commands, everyone speaking at once. Sarah Rourke kept firing the grenade launcher, unable to understand anyone clearly enough to know what was being said.
The Russians coming through the kitchen doors fell back.
Mann tapped her arm with the muzzle of his pistol, the slide locked back, the gun empty. “Sarah! Come with me!” And he was running, toward the blown-open doors. Sarah ran after him …
They had reached a landing and at the end of the landing, a long, high-ceilinged tunnel ran perpendicularly to the tube. It looked like a possible way into the Second City, perhaps through the missile-launching station itself.
The tube they had worked their way down seemed to go on forever.
Han Lu Chen carefully enunciated each word, as though his normally perfect English might be insufficient to the task of translating writing from his native language. The Chinese characters—each several inches high—covered approximately one hundred twenty degrees of arc of the tube’s total diameter. “Any unauthorized access beyond this point will activate the defense system. Unauthorized persons should turn back immediately. Warning. Dangerous. Turn back.”
“They’re certainly explicit enough,” Michael remarked.
Vassily Prokopiev volunteered. “Since I am less physically capable than any of you at the moment because of my earlier wounds, I am the logical person to go first.”
“That’s a great and noble thought, Vassily. But you’re also less capable of running away from whatever gets started and we need you alive if we bump into any of your troops.”
Prokopiev’s broad shoulders shrugged under his torn Soviet uniform. ■’ I can—
! I
Michael looked at Maria Leuden. “No. Aside from the fact I ‘ won’t let you, you’ve got the best chance of making enough sense out of their computer that we can enable an abort program.” And Michael looked at Han. “And don’t you start. I’ve gone first since we started down the chimney and there’s no reason to change that now.” Michael began loosening the knot holding the rope about his waist. “This may be bullshit,” and Michael Rourke nodded toward the wall. “Or the defense system hasn’t survived the centuries. Or maybe it still works. I’m going to put a lot more distance between us and we’re changing the order, here. Han—you rope in behind me, but keep about twenty-five or thirty feet back. We’ve got rope to spare. Then Maria—you and Prokopiev rope onto Han. If they have electronic traps, they might have trap doors, anything. This way, if the floor goes out from under me, I’m covered but nobody’s so close that if it’s something else they’ll be hurt. The important thing is that Maria’s computer knowledge and Han’s knowledge of Chinese come together at the fire-control center for the Chinese missiles. If they really are planning on detonating, that’s the only chance we have to stop them.”
Michael looked at Vassily Prokopiev and shot the KGB Elite Corps commander a smile. “And guess what that makes us, Vassilyf’
“The word—it escapes me, but I understand.” Michael looked at him a moment longer. “The word’s ‘expendable.’”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The growling in the tunnel darkness grew louder. “If we use guns, we’ll attract whatever’s human anywhere within a quarter of a mile at the inside, if the gunfire outside hasn’t attracted them already.”
“I understand, but I’m more worried about what isn’t human,” Paul Rubenstein whispered beside him.
John Rourke let the M-16 fall to his side on its sling. His right hand closed over the haft of the LS-X and he unsheathed it. He heard the snap closure on Paul’s Gerber MK II fighting knife popping open, the sound of steel against fabric.
They began walking again.
From the darkness outside the cones of their flashlight beams, Rourke heard the sounds of footfalls and breathing so heavy it sounded labored. John Rourke wheeled toward the sounds, calling out to Paul, “Watch out from the left!” As Rourke swung the light, something out of a nightmare materialized less than a yard from him. It was a bear, he knew, on a rational plane, but the creature was horribly disfigured, one eye gone, the wound where the eye had been obviously from a burn. The bear’s right front paw slapped toward him and Rourke dodged back, the bear coming at him again.
“Holy shit!” Paul Rubenstein half shouted.
“Watch out!” The bear turned awkwardly toward Paul Rubenstein, snarling at the flashlight in the younger man’s hand, growling now as though somehow it were in pain.
John Rourke lunged, the LS-X held in his right fist as if it were a rapier, thrusting into the bear from behind against the area which in a human would have been the branches of the external carotid. But he felt the primary edge of his knife slip against muscle, the bear shrieking its anger and spinning toward him, Rourke backstepping just in time.
He aimed the light toward the animal’s remaining eye, Paul visible in silhouette to its right side. Paul’s knife stabbed downward, buried halfway to the hilt. The bear twisted, its face contorted in a rictus of agony, the right forepaw slapping backward, Paul Rubenstein catching its full force and thrown against the tunnel
wall and down.
Rourke’s right arm flashed forward again, the flashlight in his left hand still aimed toward the bear’s solitary eye, the LS-X stabbing into the bear’s throat. The hulking body twisted, Rourke still holding to the knife, wrenched from his feet, his fist still locked to the knife, the bear starting to fall on him. Rourke ripped at the knife, pulling it free, rolling right as the animal crashed downward, paws clawing at the tunnel floor, visible in the wildly gyrating beam of the anglehead which had fallen from Rourke’s grasp.
Rourke threw himself onto the animal now, the LS-X in both fists, hammering down into the neck and head and shoulders, stabbing again and again, the animal’s body heaving under him, the cries emanating from the creature at once frightening and pitiful.
The body seemed to convulse, and as the head turned right, Rourke drove the knife half the length of its foot-long blade into the side of the neck.
And suddenly all movement ceased.
Rourke let go of the knife and fell back from the animal to the tunnel floor.
“John? John!”
“I’m all right,” Rourke answered the voice from the darkness. “How about you?”
“Knocked the wind outa me—holy—”
“Yeah.” Rourke reached out for the anglehead flashlight, picked it up, shone the light toward the sound of Paul’s voice, and already his friend was getting shakily to his feet. “Your light’s over there,” Rourke told him, seeing the second anglehead a few yards distant.
“I see it.”
Rourke shone the light on the dead bear. There could be more creatures like this confined in the tunnel, but somehow he didn’t think so. Paul’s knife was still buried in it and, bracing his left foot against the dead animal, Rourke wrenched the blade free, then set it on the floor just out of the growing blood pool. His own knife had bitten deeper and was harder to extract, but he got it free.
“Should have tried grinning him to death like Davey Crockett did,” Paul suggested, his voice still unsteady-sounding, no humor in it.