by neetha Napew
next cross, the CAR-15 coming up empty, Rourke ramming a fresh magazine home,
firing it out, the men at the base of the cross starting to break up, running in
different directions. Two of them ran toward the last cross—one man still lived
hanging there.
Rourke started to run. "Come on, Paul." He reached to the shoulder rig, grabbing
out one of the Detonics pistols with his left hand, the Detonics in his left,
the CAR-15 in his right held just by the pistol grip. There was gunfire
everywhere—as if somehow more of the wildmen were coming out of the woods. As
Rourke raced toward the last cross, firing the CAR-15 into the wildmen's group,
he could see that more were coming—perhaps late arrivals for the "fun" of the
torture, perhaps from other camps nearby.
He stopped at the base of the cross, ramming another magazine into place for the
Detonics he'd fired out, the CAR-15 empty, hanging on the sling at his side. He
grabbed the second Detonics, one pistol in each hand, at hip level, firing
toward the attackers.
Paul was already starting to climb the cross. Rourke heard him shout, "This
one's dead."
Rourke glanced up once, then brought the pistol in his left hand to eye level,
snapping off a shot at a wildman getting too close.
"Paul—get the men you released earlier—if any of them are left—meet me at the
far side. I'll get the guy with
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the carbine."
"Right!"
Rourke glanced at Rubenstein once as the younger man jumped to the ground, then
started to run.
Rourke ran as well. He was out of ammo for the CAR-15. There were only a few
loaded magazines left for the Detonics pistols, the guns in each hand nearly
empty.
He slowed his run, ducking down, catching up a riot shotgun on the ground.
His right fist wrapped around the pump, the Detonics from his right in his belt,
he snapped his right hand down then up, the pump tromboning a round into the
chamber, the spent plastic high brass shell popping out of the ejection port.
Rourke tossed the shotgun up, catching it at the small of the stock, his fist
wrapping around the pistol grip. He started to run again, firing out the
Detonics in his left hand, then wheeling toward three of the attacking wildmen
rushing toward him.
The riot shotgun—a Mossberg—in his right hand, he snapped the trigger, the gun
bucking violently in his hand, the muzzle climbing. He slapped at the fore-end
with his left hand, pumping it as one of the men went down. He fired the second
round, jacking the slide again, chambering another round. He fired as the second
man went down, nailing a third. He tromboned the Mossberg once more—the shotgun
was empty.
A wildman was racing toward him with a spear made from a pole or piece of pipe
and a long bladed knife.
Rourke flipped the shotgun in his hands, starting a baseball bat swing, hitting
the spear carrier full in the face with the butt of the riot shotgun, then
dropping it, running. Ten yards to go until he reached the injured man with the
Ml carbine who fought from his knees at the base of the cross from which he had
been hung.
Five yards to go, the man taking a hit, then another and another.
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The Detonics in Rourke's right fist barked twice, one of the wildmen going down.
He fired again, hitting a second man in the chest, the body flopping back,
spinning out and falling, the slide of the Detonics locked back, empty.
Rourke reached the man with the carbine, prying it from his hands, inverting the
jungle clip. He pulled the trigger, three rounds firing when one should have.
The gun had been modified for selective fire.
Rourke pumped the trigger, one wildman down, then another and another.
He looked to the man on the ground beside him, trying to prop the man's head up
against his thigh.
"Cole—Cole—"
"It's me—John Rourke," he rasped.
"Yeah—know that—Cole—ain't who he says he is—ain't Cole—you did me good, you and
the other guy—did me—" The man coughed once, blood trickling from the corner of
his mouth, the eyes open wide, staring, reflecting the light from the bonfire.
Rourke thumbed them closed, then got to his feet, running, firing out the
thirty-round magazine in the carbine.
He was nearly at the far edge of the circle of crosses, could see Rubenstein
with two other men, Rubenstein and one of the men half carrying the third
between them.
The carbine came up empty as Rourke pulled the trigger for a short burst on one
of the wildmen.
He had a rifle. It was a lever action. Rourke snatched it up, no time to search
pockets for loose ammo. He cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger, nothing
happening, then found a target. The last three fingers of his right hand in the
lever, the first finger locked against the trigger guard, he started working the
action, keeping his trigger finger stationary to automatically trip the trigger
as the lever closed.
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The rifle bucked in his hands, Rourke eyeing the brass as it ejected as he
worked the lever forward—some type of pistol cartridge—likely .44 Magnum he
guessed, not having time for a closer look.
He jerked back on the lever as a machete-wielding man raced toward him. The
rifle bucked again, the body of the man with the machete folding forward at the
waist, tumbling then still on the ground.
Rourke started to run again, levering the rifle at targets .of opportunity, at
last the tubular magazine coming up empty.
But he was beside Rubenstein.
"You got any ammo left for that AR?"
"Empty—"
"Makes an okay club," Rourke shouted, wheeling, lashing out with the lever
action's barrel, catching a knife wielding wildman in the face. Rourke inverted
the gun, to use it as a club, another man rushing them, but Ruben-stein had the
AR turned around and was halfway through his swing. The buttstock connected, the
man's head snapping back.
Rourke started to run—"Let's get outa here—up into the rocks."
He slowed, two of the wildmen approaching, spears in their hands, both men
crouched low.
Rourke swung the lever action, feigning, one of the spears snapping out toward
him as he sidestepped, the .rifle in his hands crashing around, impacting
against the man's neck. Rourke backstepped, a shot nailing the second man. It
was Rubenstein with the Browning.
"Still got a little left for this!"
"Save 'em till we need 'em!" Rourke started to move, stopped, the man on
Rubenstein's far side taking a hit in the leg, going down.
"You get the other guy out," Rourke shouted, running back to the second trooper.
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"I'll get this one."
Rourke dropped to his knees beside the man, the knee apparently hit, blood
pumping from it between the man's interlaced fingers. Rourke shifted magazines
in his pistols—counting the half spent magazines, he judged he had three dozen
rounds left.
"Lean on me," Rourke rasped, hauling the man's left arm across his shoulders,
holding the left wrist i
n his left hand to keep the man up, a Detonics pistol in
his right hand.
The wildmen were- consolidating—at least Rourke judged it as that looking behind
him.
Had the men who tortured their victims on crosses had the slightest amount of
organization, he realized full well he and Rubenstein would have been dead in
the first minute of battle.
But they seemed intent on personal bloodletting rather than victory, using their
knives rather than guns—they were insane, he thought absently as he hobbled
under the added .weight of the wounded man.
The man was talking. "My knee—my knee—Jesus help me—my knee!"
"Not much farther," Rourke !ied, reaching the base of the rocks—but the rocks
were still there to climb, Ruben-stein now only a few yards ahead, helping his
wounded man up into the rocks.
There would be little chance to run for it, but run for it they must, Rourke
realized—to the beach, and hope that Lieutenant O'Neal would have dispatched
another boarding party.
He heard a high pitched scream—a woman's voice. "Kill the heathens!"
Heathens—despite it all, a smile crossed his lips as he ran.
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"Captain—the gunfire's pretty much died out."
"Hope those men haven't died out with it, O'Neal," Gundersen panted, pulling
himself up over a breadloaf-shaped rock and starting for the next one.
Gundersen judged the distance remaining to the height of the rocks as some
twenty yards—twenty yards that could well take another five minutes to traverse.
"O'Neal—take your men and spread 'em out—both ends of the rocks. We get up there
and there's an ambush waiting for us, don't want 'em having too easy a time of
it."
"Like a pincer movement, sir—"
"Don't give me that Army crap," Gundersen laughed, panting, his breathing coming
hard. He realized now—shifting his weight to pull up over another rock—what a
soft life it was to be a submariner.
O'Neal was shouting orders, the men of the landing party fanning out. Gundersen
silently wished he had Marines with him—he'd used Marines in a shore party once
and despite the massive Navy-Marine Corps rivalry, he considered them consummate
fighters.
He was nearly to the top of the rocks, to the ridgeline there and he stopped,
leaning against a slab of flat rock, taking the Government Model .45 from the
shoulder holster strapped across his chest, jacking back the slide. He still
wished he hadn't lost the Detonics.
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He raised the thumb safety, then turned toward the rocks again, inhaling deeply,
resigning himself to the last part of the climb. As he started it, he shouted to
O'Neal and the others, the words coming in gasps because of his breathlessness.
"We reach the—reach the top—con-consolidate on me and on O'Neal—consolidate on
us before fanning out." He didn't know if that was proper tactics, but he didn't
want his men too scattered. He reached up with his left hand,-then his right,
the pistol in his right hand scraping across the rock. "Kiss off the finish," he
murmured, peering up over the ledge.
He could see Rourke, Rubenstein and two men—the men looked butchered and half
dead—running, limping, pursued by what seemed like a hundred men who looked even
more terrifyingly feral than the prisoners brought back to the submarine. They
brandished knives, guns, torches. And faintly, as the running bands came even
closer, he could hear shouts—savage cries. "Kill the heathens!"
"Holy cow," he swore. "Christ—"
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Chapter 39
Rourke dropped the man to the ground, turning toward the mob, a Detonics pistol,
freshly loaded, in each hand.
"Paul—we can't haul these guys any further!"
"I know," Rubenstein's voice came back, sounding odd.
"If I don't get out—and you do—"
"I'll get back—I'll find them—I swear it to God, John—"
"And Natalia—"
"I'll take care of her—"
The younger man was beside him now—no rocks to hide in, nowhere to run, out in
the open, the savage horde of wildmen running toward them brandishing spears,
clubs, knives, a" bizarre assortment of guns—and the torches lighting the night,
their glowing brilliance leaving floaters on the eyes as Rourke watched.
"John—"
Rourke stabbed one of the pistols into his belt, his right hand going out, to
Rubenstein's shoulder. He said nothing, just looked at the man—his friend.
He moved his hand away, retaking the Detonics .45 in his fist, his fingers
balling on the checkered rubber of the Pachmayr grips.
Rourke had predetermined it—he would save one round, to shoot Paul if somehow it
looked the wildmen would take him alive. It was better than the cross, far
better.
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He held the pistols at his hips, ready.
The mob was slowing its advance, the leaders or front runners—Rourke couldn't
tell which—waving their torches in the air.
The mob stopped, then began to advance, slowly, at a determined walk. The
isolated shouts and curses were gone, but the voices now becoming one voice, a
chant, the words chilling his soul. "Kill the heathens! Kill the heathens! Kill
the heathens! Kill—"
"John—remember how you used to tell me—trigger control?"
Rourke nodded, words hard to come for him, his throat tight. "Yeah. I remember."
"It's been like a second life anyway, hasn't it," the younger man's voice
murmured, Rourke not looking at him.
"Yes."
Rourke turned to look at Rubenstein, the pistol—the battered Browning High
Power—clutched in his right fist. His left hand, as if an automatic response,
moved to the bridge of his nose, to push back the wire-framed glasses.
"It has—a second life," Rourke nodded, seeing his friend he judged perhaps for
the last time.
The mob was less than fifty yards from them now, the smell of the torches acrid
on the night air, the faces of the men and women who held them gleaming and
reddened, glistening sweat.
The chanting of the mob had stopped.
One man stepped out of the front ranks, a torch in his right hand, a long bladed
knife in the left, the torchlight glinting in streaks of orange and red from the
steel—blood was there. He shouted, the crowd otherwise hushed.
"Kill the heathens!"
Rourke snapped the pistol in his right hand to shoulder height and fired once.
The 185-grain JHP brought the man down, the body
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lurching into the crowd, the torch igniting the animal skin covering a woman
near him. Her scream was loud, but died in the shouts of the mob as they broke
and ran— toward Rourke and Rubenstein.
Rourke waited, remembering a tine his father had quoted often, but only as a
joke. It was no joke now. "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."
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Chapter 40
Rourke could see the whites of their eyes in the torchlit glare reflected from
their steel. He opened fire, Ruben-stein's pistol barking from beside him, the
pistol sounding louder to him than his own guns, despite the difference
in
objective noise volume between .45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum merely because of the
Browning's position relative to his ears.
The twin stainless Detonics pistols bucked, bucked again and again, bodies
tumbling, spinning out, falling, more bodies swelling the ranks behind them—a
wave, a human wave that seemed endless.
The Detonics pistol in his right hand was locked open, empty.
He fired the pistol in his left, the round slamming into the chest of a man less
than twenty yards from him, the man going down, the slide of the second Detonics
locking open, empty as well now.
Rubenstein's pistol was still discharging, Rourke changing to his last full
magazines for both guns. He would have to scrounge the partially loaded spares.
As he raised the pistol in his right hand, Rubenstein's pistol suddenly still,
the forward element of the wave, of the mob so near he could feel the heat of
their torches, vthere was a shot burst, then another and another.