The Web s-5

by Ahern, Jerry

" told you." He heard Martha Bogen s voice shout hysterically. "I told you so, John!"

  The fireworks. Rourke remembered her saying they would come just before the explosions, just before the end.

  The pickup truck had thrown a part from the engine— she wasn't sure what—and the radiator had burst and the pickup had stopped dead.

  For the last three miles, as she judged it, she and the children had walked hugging the side of the farm road— &he had been too tired to cross country. With her, she carried the stolen M-rifle, her husband's .—the gun now covered with a light layer of brown that she considered to be rust—and among her few personal effects the photographs she had taken from the farmhouse on the Night of the War. Her wedding picture with John was among them.

  She sat staring at it now, folded, creased, cracked. He wore a tuxedo and she a floor-length white gown and a veil. The children were resting. It was not far to theMul-liner farm now, but they had needed to rest. She felt as though she were entering a new stage of her life, and somehow staring at the wedding photo had seemed necessary before going to the farm.

  She put it away, seeing the picture more clearly in her mind than in the photograph. She remembered their wedding night, John's body next to hers—

  "Mamma?"

  She turned and looked at Michael in the predawn gray-ness. "Yes, son?"

  "Will Daddy find us here—at Mary's?"

  "I think so—if anyone can find anyone, Daddy will find us. Come here, Annie." Annie came beside her and Sarah hugged both children to her body.

  She heard the barking of a dog, released the children, and grabbed for the rifle. But the dog stopped on the rise of ground, a golden retriever—the one her children had run with, played with. The dog ran up to them.

  Michael, and then Annie—always a little more afraid of dogs-hugged the animal, and were in turn licked in the face, Sarah stood up, slinging the rifle across her back—shf could rest now, at least until John found them. "Until/ she repeated aloud.

  Natalia placed her hands on her waist, just above the Safariland holsters carrying the twin Smith & Wesson revolvers. She looked at Paul Rubenstein, saying, "I don't see anything, Paul."

  "When John brought me up here the first time, he told me that was the whole idea." Rubenstein smiled in the gray predawn. "I can't really explain it as he does—but I guess he did a lot of research. He said it was the way Egyptian tombs were sealed, and things like that. He wanted the place tamper-proof. Watch this." Rubenstein approached a large boulder on his right. He pushed against it, and the boulder rolled away.

  He walked to his left, pushing a similar but not identical boulder. It was more squared off. As Rubenstein pushed, the rock on which Natalia stood beside him began to drop down. As the rock beneath them dropped, a slab of rock—she compared it to a garage door—opened inward.

  "John told me it's just a system of weights and counterbalances,"

  Rubenstein told her. "Maybe you understand it better—didn't you have some training as an engineer?'

  "Nothing like this," she said, feeling literally amazed.

  Rubenstein shined a flashlight—she remembered it as one of the angleheads he and John had said they'd taken from the geological supply house in Albuquerque just after the Night of the War. In the shaft of yellow light, she could see Paul bending over, flicking a switch. The interior beyond the moved-aside slab of rock was bathed in red light now. "All ready for Christmas." Rubenstein laughed. "Red light? That was a joke."

  "Yes, Paul," Natalia murmured.

  "HI get the bike. Hold this." He handed her the flashlight.

  She studied the rock, murmuring, "Granite," as she heard the sounds of Rubenstein's Harley Low Rider being brought inside.

  "Now watch this," Rubenstein said, suddenly beside her.

  "Yes, Paul." She nodded, giving him back the flashlight. He moved over beside a light switch, then shifted a red-handled lever downward, locking it under a notch. He left the small cave for an instant and she could both hear and see him rolling the rock counterbalances back in place outside.

  Rubenstein returned to the red-handled lever, loosed it from the notch that had retained it, and raised il. The granite slab—the door—started shifting back into place, blocking the entrance.

  "What are those steel doors for?" Natalia asked, | gesturing beyond the pale of red light.

  "The entrance inside." Rubenstein moved toward the doors, then began working a combination dial, then another, all in the shaft of yellow light from the anglehead. "John installed ultrasonic equipment to keep insects and critters out—"

  "And closed-circuit television," Natalia added, looking up toward the vaulted rock above her.

  "Can you find that switch for the red light back there?" Rubenstein asked her.

  "Yes, Paul," she nodded, in the dim light found the switch, then worked it off. There was near total darkness now. "Paul?"

  "Right here—wait." She heard the sounds of the steel doors opening.

  She stepped closer to the beam of the anglehead flashlight, staring into the darkness beyond it.

  "Ya ready?" she heard Paul's voice ask.

  "I don't know . . . for—" She heard the sound of a light switch clicking.

  She closed her eyes against the light a moment, then opened them.

  "I don't believe it." She heard her voice; she couldn't remember it having ever sounded quite so astonished to her.

  "That's the Great Room." She looked at Paul, watched the pride and happiness in his face.

  "Great—yes," she repeated.

  She started to walk, down the three low steps in front of her, a ramp to her left, her eyes riveted on the waterfall and the pool it made at the far end of the cavern; then she drifted to the couch, the tables, the chairs, the video recording equipment, the books that lined the walls, the weapons cabinet.

  And on the end table beside the sofa . . . She stopped, approaching the couch, picking up the picture frame there.

  "Would you like a drink, Natalia?" Rubenstein's voice came to her from across the Great Room. "I can show the

  rest to you after a while,"

  "What? A drink—yes," she called back.

  The little boy in the photo—he was a miniature twin of John Rourke.

  "Michael," Natalia murmured, feeling herself smile. So fine, so beautiful, so strong. And the little girl—the face of an imp, a smile that— Natalia felt herself smiling more broadly.

  And John, his arm around a woman who looked abou! Natalia's age, perhaps older by a few years. She was pretty, with dark hair and green eyes, or so it seemed in the picture.

  "Sarah Rourke," Natalia murmured.

  'That's them," Rubenstein said, suddenly beside her. "I didn't ask what you wanted. Figured Seagram's Seven would be all—"

  "Perfect. That's perfect, Paul."

  "That's Sarah and Michael and Annie. I feel almost as though I know them."

  Rubenstein laughed.

  "Yes, Paul—so do I," Natalia said, putting the picture down on the end table. "So do I." She stopped talking then, because she felt she was going to cry and didn'! want to.

  Rozhdestvenskiy looked at the Army major, Ivan Borozeni. "Major—it is immaterial to me if the population is unarmed essentially."

  "But, Colonel, I see little need for going in firing— we—"

  "Major, I will remind you of your rank—and also of one salient point you may not have considered. The Morris Industries plant was a highly secret Defense Department installation and manufacturing facility. If it still stands, it would seem obvious that the civilian government of the town is aware of its strategic importance to one degree or another. Hence, if we do not put down any thought of resistance as we enter the valley, they will likely use demolitions to destroy the plant.'

  "But, Comrade Colonel—"

  Rozhdestvenskiy dragged heavily on his cigarette. "Your objections shall be noted
in my official report. Now—lead your men into the assault."

  The Army major stiffened visibly, then saluted, Rozhdestvenskiy, still dressed in civilian clothes, nodding only.

  Rozhdestvenskiy turned and started back toward his command helicopter. In the far distance, he had been seeing fireworks illuminating the dawn sky.

  Peculiar, he had thought, surprised that Major Borozeni hadn't mentioned it. ...

  Below him now, he could see the helicopter gunships shadows hovering like huge black wasps over the lip of the dish-shaped mountain valley, and beyond the rirn, the first of Borozeni's attack forces were moving up. It was like a gigantic board game, he thought—this thing of being a field commander. He rather liked it.

  Rozhdestvenskiy spoke into the small microphone in front of his lips.

  "This is Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy; the attack has begun!"

  His jaw tightened, his neck tensed, and he nodded to his pilot, watching the man's hands as he worked the controls, feeling the emotion already in the pit of his stomach. They were starting down.

  The mists on the ground rolled under the downdrafts of the helicopter rotors—he watched them swir! beneath the long shadow of his machine as they came from the sun. Surprise—there would be surprise, he thought.

  Already, he could see the factory looming ahead and below them, the only large industrial building in the town, at its far edge.

  "Down there," he rasped into his headset microphone. "There—get us down there." Then he switched channels, into the all-bands monitoring system so both Borozeni's ground commanders and the pilots of the other helicopter gunships could hear him. "This is Rozhdestvenskiy—we will converge on the factory due west of the town. Only KGB personnel will be allowed

  inside the factory complex itself, and only those with a clearance level over CX Seven will be allowed within the factory. Crush any resistance."

  He glanced through the bubble in front of him as another skyrocket soared up, exploding, as if the fools—he thought—were celebrating the attack.

  Into the microphone again, he snapped, "And find the source of those fireworks; I want them stopped!"

  As he judged it, the factory was less than a mile away now so again he spoke into the microphone, but on the aerial-force band only. "This is Rozhdestvenskiy. Commando squad ready! Pilots take up positions!"

  His own ship was hanging back as a half-dozen helicopter gunships, their cargo doors open, formed themselves into a crude circle around the factory fence, perhaps one hundred feet in the air.

  Rozhdestvenskiy saw the first of the ropes being let down; then suddenly, like dozens of spiders sliding on filaments of web, dark-clad forms started down the ropes, rappelling toward the ground. "Good man!" he rasped, unconscious that he had spoken into the microphone.

  The first of the men were on the ground, establishing a perimeter, their assault rifles and light machine guns ready.

  The last of the commando team was down. "Move out, commando force ships,"

  he barked into the microphone. "Take up positions two hundred yards from and around the factory fences."

  Rozhdestvenskiy turned to his own pilot, tapping the man on the arm, then jerking his thumb downward.

  The pilot nodded, then started the machine ahead and down.

  Rozhdestvenskiy's mouth was dry, his palms sweating.

  He snapped up the collar of his windbreaker, checking

  I

  the AKM across his lap.

  He had never been in mass combat before.

  The helicopter gunship was hovering, then dropping, gliding forward slightly and stopping.

  He felt the lurch, felt the impact; then he released the restraint harness, throwing open the side door and stepping out near a squad of the commandos already on the ground, his own personal KGB team surrounding him.

  "We enter the factory. Follow me!" He started to run, remembering as he ran to raise the rifle into an assault position.

  The gates of the factory complex were locked with a chain, a massive padlock securing them.

  "Stand back." He raised the assault rifle, firing into the lock. The sound of the jacketed slugs tearing into the metal of the lock was deafening, but the lock seemed to have been broken.

  He reached for it, feeling the heat of the metal despite the gloves he wore, wrenching it open, then twisting it free of the chain.

  "Get the gates opened—now!"

  The chain-link twelve-foot gates swung inward, and Rozhdestvenbkiy stepped into the service drive of Morris Industries—a giant step, he felt, in history.

  He started to run, shouting again, "Follow me!" Above him, there was a spectacular burst, a skyrocket of blue and red and gold in a starburst, massive, exquisite.

  He continued running, reaching a set of double doors. They would be locked. He raised the assault rifle again, firing into the locking mechanism. A burglar alarm sounded.

  "Idiots," he shouted, then reached the doors, twisting

  on the outside handle, wrenching the door open outward. He stepped into the factory complex, his men surrounding him. The building was in reality a series of interconnecting buildings.

  "The loading docks," he shouted, then started running. It the materials he sought would he anywhere, they would be by the loading docks. There would be time then to search out precisely where they were manufactured. Gray light shafted through wire mesh-reinforced glass windowpanes as he ran the length of the first building; and occasionally through one of the windows as he looked out, he could see fireworks in the sky—more rockets, more starbursts. Were the people here insane?

  He reached the end of a long corridor, already breathless from the running. Glancing to right and then to left, he looked right again.

  "There—hurry." For some reason, some reason he couldn't understand, he felt the need to hurry that much greater each time one of the skyrockets would explode. He felt—he couldn't define it.

  Ahead of him he saw massive garage doors of corrugated metal, and between the doors and the corridor through which he ran, he could see crates—coffin-shaped and roughly the same size. He stopped running, leaning heavily against the wall, his breath coming in short gasps.

  "Victory," he shouted. "The final victory over the Americans!" Suddenly the glass from the wire-meshed corridor windows shattered over his head, shards of it falling on and around him.

  He stepped away from the wall, looking through the corridor windows into the dawning sky—a huge starburst, the largest firework he had ever seen—pale colors against a pale sky. And the concrete beneath him began to

  tremble, the walls to shake, dust and infinitesimally small chunks of debris drifting down.

  "My God!" Where had he learned that? he thought. "They're blowing it up!"

  He started to run, the crates— the precious crates—behind him. Survival was more immediate now as the cross supports began crumbling and a three-foot section of concrete killed the commando beside him—just beside him.

  Squads of assault rifle-armed Soviet infantrymen were pouring through the streets.

  "Damn it," Rourke rasped, both of the twin Detonics stainless .s in his fists. Suddenly, the ground beneath him began to rumble, to shake.

  He glanced at the black luminous face of the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist, then squinted skyward— full dawn. The explosions had begun just as Martha Bogen had said they would.

  There was no time now—no chance to save the town. Russian troops—why?

  The explosions. Already, in the distance near the high peaks of the rim of the valley, he could see rock slides starting.

  He had waited near the school, still several blocks from Martha Bogen's house—and the garage where his Harley should still be hidden.

  But waiting for the Soviet troops to clear the street in front of him would be suicidal now.

  Thumb-cocking both pistols, he started to run, the ground shaking
beneath him still more violently.

  Gunfire. Soviet AK series assault rifles, firing toward

  him, glass shattering in the louvered classroom windows beside him as he jumped a hedgerow, running.

  Rourke wheeled beside a concrete vertical support for a portico rooi. He fired the pistol in his right hand, then the pistol in his left, bringing down an assault rifle-armed soldier. The man's body spun, his assault rifle firing wildly, into his own men.

  Rourke started to run again. Past a flagpole. During the day there would have been an American flag there and a Kentucky state flag as well.

  He was nearly to the street beyond the school front lot. The ground trembled again.

  He tried envisioning what the men and women of the town would have done to ensure their mass suicide. The ground trembled again and he saw a black disk sail skyward out of the street. There had been a large natural-gas storage area. . . .

  "Natural gas," he rasped, throwing himself to the grassy ground beneath him.

  The gunfire, the shouts, the commands in Russian and in English to halt—all were drowned out. Rourke dropped his pistols, covering his ears with his hands.

  The street a hundred yards ahead of him was a sea of flame, chunks of paving hurtling skyward. They had mined the gas system.

  Rourke grabbed for his pistols, pushing himself to his feet, running, stumbling, running again. A line of explosions—smaller ones—ripped through the road ahead of him in series. He had to cross the road to reach Martha Bogen's house on the other side.

  He ran, bending into the run, arms distended at his sides. The gunfire resumed from behind him; he couldn't hear it, but could see the grass and dirt near his feet

  chewing up under it.

  He hit the pavement, still running, the explosions gutting the road drawing closer. Debris—bits of tarmac and cement and gravel—rained down on him. His hands, the pistols still in them, were over his head to protect it.

  The road was now twenty-five yards away; his body ached; the waves of nausea and cold were starting to take hold.

  "Narcan," he rasped. He needed the Narcan shot. He tripped, sprawling, pushed himself up, then ran on.