Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal

by Ahern, Jerry

  He sat up, his head swimming, stabbing the pistol toward his bare legs, firing once to free the right ankle, two shots before he hit the rope binding his left ankle.

  A third Mongol was coming and, as the saber crashed toward him, Michael Rourke tumbled from the altar, hitting the floor hard, the stone cold to his nakedness …

  Paul Rubenstein twisted his body weight left, throwing his already injured right arm against the doors, figuring he had nothing to lose.

  As the doors burst inward, John Rourke stepped through.

  Both Scoremaster .45s came to John Rourke’s like living things coming because they were called.

  And both spoke.

  Paul Rubenstein, the pain in his right arm like a thousand toothaches, rammed the Schmiesser forward, taut against its sling, firing.

  Mongol guards were going down.

  Women in long white dresses who looked as if they were late for some sort of prom rushed across the room—it was a temple—and brandished torches. It was shoot at the women or burn, but he fired into the temple ceiling. Some of them fell back.

  John laced one of the women across the jaw with his fist, a pistol still clenched in it as he dodged a torch.

  Maria Leuden was lashed to some sort of pagan altar, naked, screaming. One of the prom girls came toward her in a dead run, stabbing a torch toward her face. “John!” Paul swung the Schmiesser on line with the torch bearer’s chest.

  But there was the crack of a pistol shot, then another and ‘ another. !

  Paul’s eyes shifted left. Michael, stark naked, one of the ‘ Chinese Glock 17 pistols in his left hand.

  As Michael just stood there for an instant, two Mongols charged him, guns and sabers drawn.

  “Paul! Get them!”

  The boom of John Rourke’s .45s, emptying as Paul stabbed the Schmiesser in the men’s direction and sprayed.

  Paul saw it coming and dodged, a saber slash, but his footing went and he sprawled back. Paul fired out the Schmiesser, the Mongol going down.

  Doors on the far side of the temple were opening, more Mongols streaming through.

  John Rourke’s .45s were still. Rourke rammed both pistols, the slides still locked open, empty, into his pistol belt, drew the 629 and fired from the hip like some sort of western gunfighter, one of the Mongols down, then another and another, the temple walls echoing and re-echoing with the concussions.

  Michael Rourke passed like a blur across Paul’s field of vision as Paul found the butt of the Browning, thumbed back the hammer and shot another of the Mongols twice in the throat.

  As one of the Mongols charged John Rourke, John fired, the Mongol’s body jackknifing but, incredibly, not falling, carried forward by momentum. John Rourke raked the barrel of his revolver across the man’s forehead as he came, the Mongol going down.

  A man all in black, a wide strap half like a whip, half like a belt of enormous proportions, rushed forward, the belt lashing out, John’s left shoulder taking the impact as John tried to turn. Paul Rubenstein fired as he clambered to his feet, then fired again and again and again, the black-robed man stumbling to his knees, the whip falling from flaccid fingers, the body tumbling forward.

  John Rourke’s revolver emptied into another of the Mongols, then Rourke sidestepped, twisted awkwardly right, his left leg rising, his left foot double-kicking another Mongol in the groin and abdomen as the man charged.

  John Rourke dropped the revolver into its holster, both hands moving, the twin Detonics mini-.45s coming from under his coat.

  One of the temple maidens in the white prom dresses hacked toward John’s face with a torch, John stepping back and firing the little .45 in his left hand, the torch splitting in two, sparks showering the woman, her dress catching fire.

  She ran, screaming.

  Paul Rubenstein threw himself toward her, onto her, smothering the flames with his body, the woman reaching up to claw at his eyes. “Sorry—” Rubenstein backhanded her across the jaw with his left fist which still held the pistol.

  John Rourke was moving through the crowd of Mongol mercenaries like someone wading through a pool, the little Detonics .45s barking once, then again, then again, men falling on either side of him.

  Paul was on his feet, firing the Browning High Power. At the far left edge of his peripheral vision, he saw Michael Rourke, Michael looking at once ludicrous and deadly. Michael was naked except for his double shoulder holster. The Berettas Michael carried were in his fists and firing, men falling as Michael fought his way toward his father, killing at point-blank.

  Rubenstein emptied the High Power, dropped to his knees as he rammed the pistol into his belt, then grabbed up one of the docks still holstered on the belt of one of the Mongol mercenaries.

  Paul Rubenstein got to his feet, the Glock tight in his left fist. He fired, fired again and again, fighting his way now toward John and Michael.

  Maria Leuden shrieked, “Help me!”

  Paul wheeled toward her where she was still bound at the opposite end of the altar. As he turned, he saw Michael turning, John moving, a blur. A Mongol with a torch rushed down on her. Paul fired and, as he fired, heard almost simultaneous shots from beside him, the Mongol’s body jerking, jerking, twisting again, flowers of blood at the Mongol’s forehead, his throat and his right cheek.

  Paul turned quickly back toward the doors through which the additional Mongol mercenaries had come.

  No movement, except for a few of the Chinese women in their prom-like dresses who ran toward the corridor beyond.

  “Paul! Help me close those doors!” Michael streaked toward the door and, despite it all, Paul Rubenstein almost laughed, because streaking was exactly what it was, Michael Rourke still naked.

  John called, “I’m freeing Maria—my God! Han! Paul. Michael. You get Maria.”

  Paul looked back as he threw his weight to the door, Michael against the other door. The doors were twelve feet high at least, but easily enough moved. But, as Paul closed his door of the pair, his eyes swept across the room and found John Rourke. John was freeing Han Lu Chen of chains which bound him to the black marble wall nearest to the altar, Han’s body striped by the whip, almost unrecognizable as human.

  The doors slammed to with a clang, Paul’s eyes shifting from the beaten Han Lu Chen toward the walls on either side of the doors, searching for a brace with which to keep them closed.

  “Paul! Here!”

  Michael Rourke was tugging at a mighty bar, resting along the joint between floor and wall on the far side from where Paul stood. It looked to be at least eight by eight inches and as many feet in length.

  Paul ran to him, bent to the bar, tried lifting it.

  Without warning, John Rourke was beside them, at the center of the bar. “Ready! Lift!” The bar was up and they guided it toward the doors, raising it still higher to drop it into

  the cleats on the door.

  It fell into place and the doors trembled.

  “Han’s in desperate shape,” John Rourke rasped. “But we’re in worse shape if we don’t stop that meltdown.”

  Michael was shouting and Paul couldn’t understand why until he noticed the bloodstains beneath Michael’s left ear and, as Michael turned his head, a similar blood trail under his right ear and along his neck and onto his chest. “What meltdown?”

  “A series of nuclear reactors—” Paul began, but realized Michael couldn’t hear him. “Reactors! A bunch of them! Could screw up everything! Boom!” And Paul gestured outward with both hands and his right arm seized with pain.

  “Right.” Michael nodded.

  Vassily Prokopiev was on the floor, seriously wounded as well, it appeared, and Michael dropped to his knees beside him. “Paul? Cut Maria loose?”

  Paul finished reloading the Schmiesser, started to speak, only nodded, drawing the Gerber and going toward the altar to cut Maria loose. He couldn’t help but notice—and didn’t think Annie would really mind—but Maria Leuden had a very pretty body. Between Maria and, earlie
r, helping to dress Natalia, he was seeing a lot. But there was only one woman he wanted to see and, by now, Annie would be safe somewhere with Otto Hammerschmidt and Natalia, too…

  Annie Rubenstein clung to the life raft, but the raft was going down, one of the Soviet gunships passing over them moments earlier, strafing the raft, wounding Otto Hammerschmidt, then flying away, leaving them to die in the water.

  The raft, partially deflated already, could barely hold Otto and Natalia well enough to keep their unconscious forms sufficiently above water to be able to breathe.

  Annie had gone into the water to reduce the downward pressure on the leaking raft.

  The signaling device her father had given to her—Annie had

  activated it the moment the stolen Soviet gunship Otto piloted had almost shattered against the calm surface of the Yellow Sea.

  No one was coming.

  “We need you! Damnit! Help us!”

  No one was coming.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Sarah Rourke had found a place to go to the bathroom and she felt better now.

  “Sorry,” she said, rejoining Wolfgang Mann and the other two men.

  “For what are you sorry, Sarah?”

  “I mean, holding you guys up.”

  Colonel Mann smiled that very nice, very sincere smile of his and told her, “Each of us is a unique person. Your persona happens to be female and biological needs cannot be ignored. You have nothing to feel sorry about. If I had at my disposal one hundred commandoes with your courage and skill, no enemy of freedom would ever stand before me and survive.”

  “You’re very nice.” It sounded lame to her as she said it, but it was the only thing she could think of to say.

  Mann smiled again, saying nothing.

  With the two remaining commandoes, they set out again, the terrain familiar to her here, the lower levels of the government building where, presumably, the chairman of the First City was being held prisoner. She hoped he still lived, prayed that he did, because the chairman was now their only hope. There had been three sentries near the entrance she had selected—a service access—and using silenced pistols the sentries were dispatched almost too easily.

  It was then, after entering through the service access, she had found a bathroom and used it. Something was making her

  stomach very queasy and she kept telling herself it was the baby.

  They walked along the.corridor toward the service elevators now.

  The feeling of unease grew in her. They passed a storage room.

  She heard a sound that she couldn’t identify, from the elevator bank.

  “Inside here—it’s a feeling—”

  Mann rasped to his men, “Follow Frau Rourke! Hurry!”

  She passed through the doorless doorway quickly, flattening herself against a stack of crates just inside the opening, Mann and the others just behind her. She could hear their breathing through the radio. She hissed, “Shh,” once and held her breath.

  The sound of elevator doors opening. Then the sounds of Russian voices. Boot heels clicking against cement.

  Through the opening, she could see men moving, black Battle Dress Utilities, Soviet assault rifles.

  In their midst was a man dressed in the uniform of an Elite Corps colonel.

  For one split second she caught his face in profile.

  It had to be.

  Sarah Rourke loosed her rifle and drew the Trapper Scorpion .45, as she stepped from hiding whispering, “Back me up, but only when I say to.” She felt Mann’s hand reach for her, but she slipped out of his grasp.

  Sarah Rourke dodged between two KGB Elite corpsmen carrying assault rifles slung at patroling positions, then punched the muzzle of her .45 against the face of the man in the colonel’s uniform, praying it was Antonovitch, the new commander, with Karamatsov dead. “Freeze!” She didn’t know the word for it in Russian but shrieked the word in English as loudly as she could, thumbing back the Trapper Scorpion’s hammer to full stand as she said it, the hammer

  going back making a loud click.

  Rifle muzzles were pointed at her from all sides. If Mann would only trust her as much as he said he did, trust her that way now.

  Her left hand was knotted into the back collar of the colonel’s uniform blouse.

  For an instant, no one moved.

  ‘Tell ‘em I’m a Rourke and I’ll kill you, so help me God!”

  The colonel spoke, first in English. “What can you hope to gain, Mrs. Rourke?” But sweat was beading on his forehead.

  ‘Tell them!” She pushed the muzzle harder against his cheek, drawing the pistol back then just a little because she remembered something John had told her, that a Colt-Browning pattern .45 wouldn’t fire with firm backward pressure against the muzzle because it pushed the slide out of battery.

  It had to be Antonovitch. She prayed it was Antonovitch. He spoke in Russian.

  There was a blur of movement from the entryway to the storage room, Colonel Mann and his two commandoes stepping out, assault rifles going up, getting the drop on the dozen or so KGB Elite corpsmen.

  “What do you—” Antonovitch began in English to her.

  “Shut the hell up. You do exactly as I say or this gun goes off and even a dumb Commie like you knows what a .45 will do at this range. Colonel Mann!”

  “Yes, Frau General?”

  She almost started to laugh. “Disarm these guys and if anybody gives you any lip, Antonovitch here gets it.” And said to Antonovitch, “Tell your people. Tell them!”

  Antonovitch spoke to them and she relied on Mann’s knowledge of Russian—which was very little—to recognize whether or not Antonovitch was playing it straight.

  Quickly then, Colonel Mann and his two commandoes began stripping the Russians of their weapons, tossing rifles, pistols, individual explosives, knives, all into the storage room.

  1

  I

  “Now,” she told Antonovitch, “out of their uniforms, down ‘ to their underwear. Men don’t fight so well without their pants.”

  Antonovitch smiled a little thinly. And, she gave him credit, he had guts. “What if they aren’t wearing underwear, Mrs. Rourke?”

  “I worked as a nurse, I’ve got a husband a fully grown son and I’m pregnant. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Tell them to strip! Now!”

  Again, Antonovitch spoke, the looks on the faces of his men telling her that he’d said exactly what she’d told him to say.

  Quickly, but with obvious reluctance, the Elite corpsmen began to undress. She was almost surprised they didn’t wear black underwear.

  Colonel Mann, who was obviously enjoying himself, ordered his men to throw the uniforms into the storage room as well.

  “No—get one of them to help you. All the guns and other stuff into the elevator. That’s where we’re going.”

  “There are troops up there—” Antonovitch began, panic filling his eyes, his voice shaking a little.

  “Good. And the chairman?”

  He didn’t answer her. Mann was having the clothing and weapons moved.

  “And the chairman?” Sarah Rourke repeated, punching the .45 against his face again.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” My God, she thought, she had to urinate again …

  Maria Leuden sat at the computer console. “I can’t read Chinese. It won’t do me any good.” There was nothing in John Rourke’s musette bag that would revive Han Lu Chen. But— “Michael!” John Rourke called across the temple floor to where Michael Rourke was tending to Prokopiev’s wounds with materials from Rourke’s musette bag. The Russian was , sitting up, very weak-looking but as likely to live as any of

  them. “Michael? Did you bring a first aid kit from one of the Specials?”

  “Yes. There are enough—”

  “Bring it over to where Paul’s tending to Han.”

  Rourke left Maria Leuden—she was half dressed but decent—and ran across the temple toward where Paul was using the Germa
n antiseptic healing spray on Han Lu Chen’s back. John Rourke dropped to his knees beside the man, his own back spasming with pain.

  As Michael joined them, Rourke took the first aid kit Michael carried and searched for the pre-prepared syringe of synthetic adrenaline.

  He could kill Han Lu Chen by injecting it directly into the heart, but if he didn’t risk the Chinese agent’s life, then the whole world might die.

  ‘Turn him over and hold him down. If I don’t do this right, he’s dead and so are we,” John Rourke almost whispered to Paul and Michael.

  He prepared the syringe.

  Chapter Forty

  If only Michael were here, Annie thought, almost verbalized. He was such a strong swimmer. But it was miles to shore. She told herself she shouldn’t have told Otto Hammerschmidt to ditch in the water. She should have taken their chances with the Russians over land.

  “Help us!”

  She screamed the words, swallowing water and almost starting to choke.

  The raft was so deflated now that, by treading water, she was barely able to hold up Natalia’s and Otto’s heads, keeping them out of the water.

  She had stripped away her heavy clothes and was only in her blouse and her underwear.

  Her pistols and Natalia’s were suspended on their pistol belts over a still floating piece of wreckage a few yards distant. The little Cold Steel Mini-Tanto was still strapped to her ankle.

  What if sharks came? The little knife—that was all.

  “Help!”

  The signaling device was in the pocket of her blouse, over her left breast. It probably didn’t even work anymore after the prolonged exposure to salt water.

  Her father had told her about the sharks when they had traveled to Mid-Wake for the medical examinations, and she had even seen one (at least she thought it was one) through the video monitors at the front of the submarine.

  But none of the friends he’d made were there except the cute little nurse who had told her that her father was so stubborn, and of course. Mid-Wake’s president. Handsome and such a wonderful voice. But none of the others had been there, all off in their submarines fighting the Russians or whatever they did.