by Ahern, Jerry
Behind him, he heard shouts, curses. Paul shouted too. “John! Look out!”
Around a bend in the tunnel into another, run
ning — he shot the light back — Rolvaag, his eyes lit like the eyes of a demon, his blood-glistening sword upraised in his right fist, his knife in his left, his staff secured across his back, Russians behind the modern-day Viking, running.
Paul stumbled, caught himself, ran crashing into something—he started to move the knife. It was Michael. “Russians! Watch out!”
A blur as John Rourke dove past him, the flickering glint of steel in the light of the hand torch.
Natalia — Paul smelled her somehow, the warm feminine odor of her, heard the click-click-click of the Pacific Cutlery Bali-Song she always carried, heard the sound of steel against leather.
He swung the light—John Rourke locked in combat with a Russian officer, the Russian’s rifle bayonet fitted, John Rourke wrestling the rifle away with his left hand, his right hand snapping forward with his knife.
Madison’s voice — it was her voice that screamed — at the edge of the shaft of his light, a Russian with a knife the size of a short sword. Paul dove for him, tackling him downward, another body impacting against him. The flashlight rolled across the floor of the tunnel.
Paul grabbed a handful of cap and hair and facial skin, raking the blade across what he hoped was a throat, a hiss, a sigh, the wetness of blood on his hands, the body lurching beneath him.
Paul rolled —Annie, the Mag-Lite in her hand, her other hand holding a blood-dripping knife in front of her. They had simultaneously killed the same man, he realized.
“Madison!”
“Here-all right!”
“Stay put,” Paul shouted.
From the darkness —Annie’s voice. “I love you, Paul!”
Paul dove into the darkness at a body that smelled of body odor, tackling it, hands suddenly on his throat, his knife pinned beneath him now, the hands loosening on his throat.
The flashlight. Annie —“Let go of him, you son of a bitch!”
She was charging through the darkness, tracking the beam of light. But suddenly the body crushing the life from him was wrenched away, and in the edge of the flashlight he saw Michael, a knife in one hand, his inverted revolver in the other. The knife blade into the Russian trooper’s abdomen, the butt of the six-inch barreled Smith used like a hammer, impacting the side of the man’s face, snapping the head ninety degrees as the body fell.
Darkness — Annie screamed.
Paul started to his feet, his knife lost, but his hands grasping —a Russian. He could tell from the clothes. “Annie!” Paul tore at the body, falling back with it.
“I’m all right!”
The click-click-click sound — Natalia. Paul punched his left straight into the kidneys of the man on top of him, heard a muttered curse.
The click-click-click sound — Natalia’s voice, Russian—something that sounded dirty. A scream —the scream of a man, unnatural, full of fear.
Paul was to his feet — he felt something brush against him — something soft, but the hair didn’t feel like Annie’s hair as it touched his cheek. He heard the click-click-click—hut from far away now. “Madison!”
“Look out-Paul!”
There was a groan, the sound of something hard hitting something soft, a curse, a thud —Paul tripped, a Russian beneath him now. Madison — something in her hands, beating at the Russian’s head. Paul found the Russian’s face, found the nostrils, his fingers
gouging into them as he ripped, the head snapping back, a curse. His left hand found the exposed Adam’s apple, the larynx beneath it —his fingers closed together, gouging, crushing into it.
John Rourke’s voice.“Everybody all right?”
A light —the Soviet soldier’s eyes glaring bright, the light catching in the retinas —and suddenly the eyes were dead and Paul released the grip of his hands, the gurgling sounds something he only realized had been there when they were gone.
Madison — kneeling beside him, her pistol —the Walther P38 Natalia had liberated from the Place — inverted in her hands, the butt of it dripping blood.
The light moved, to Paul’s left —Natalia, her knife still open in her right hand, the long-bladed Randall Bowie in her left, the blade glinting red.
Rolvaag—his sword and his knife buried into the chest of two Russians impaled against the far wall. Sarah and Annie, Annie holding a knife, Sarah with a knitted scarf twisted around the purple neck, more-purple face of a Soviet soldier. Michael — quietly standing, his weapons gone from sight.
John Rourke’s voice was a low whisper. “All right — unless we believe in dumb bad luck, this isn’t the only patrol. Must be at least one more, maybe more than that, in one of the other tunnels. Natalia —try Russian, anything else you can think of on Mr Rolvaag — get his opinion if you can. We’re going to split up. Sarah, Annie, Madison — you’ll go back with Rolvaag —alert the police, Captain Hartman’s people —the Russians are doing exactly what we’re doing. Do it, Sarah. Natalia, Paul, Michael —the four of us —we’ll carry out the original plan. Natalia—get working on Mr. Rolvaag. Sarah —you and Annie and Paul —check bodies with me —anyone who isn’t dead, let me know and 111 do what I can for them. Michael —take a flashlight — go
up the tunnel —be careful — don’t go more than a hundred yards. Whistle three times if anyone’s coming. Keep the light out. I’ll whistle three times as we come up the tunnel. Hurry!” Rourke turned the light. “Madison—start picking up weapons. Knives, guns, ammo —you and Sarah and Annie and Rolvaag can take ‘em back to the crater —extra ordnance might come in handy. Let’s move, people!” The light flickered away.
Paul Rubenstein sagged forward, brushed his lips against Madison’s forehead in the gray at the edge of the cone of light. “You’re tough, Madison —all right.”
“Thank you very much, Paul —you are very nice to say that.”
“Right,” Paul groaned, trying to catch his breath. He started to his feet —there was no need to check this body. He already knew its condition, his hands the cause of it. He found his small flashlight and went to work.
Chapter Thirty
Michael Rourke flattened himself against the rock — his body shook with the cold. At least, he told himself it was that. Natalia ran up beside him, dropping to her knees, the flat rising portion of the rock not wide enough to give them both concealment.
“A lot of them, Michael,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Michael nodded, staring through the steadily falling snow toward the perimeter of the Russian camp. They had trekked three miles from the tunnel, the camp now less than a half-mile away, Michael’s body numb with cold, exhaustion. He wondered how his father did it.
“You sound like your father—you look like him, Michael.”
“I wish I had his stamina,” Michael laughed, keeping his voice low.
“When I first saw your father —it was years ago, a long time before The Night of The War” — She laughed suddenly, Michael looking at her. Her eyes were barely visible beneath the swathing of scarves, the snorkel hood that covered her head almost completely — but she was unbelievably beautiful. His father was made of strong stuff, Michael suddenly realized. “He was very young—your age, I think.”
“I’m older than you are,” Michael told her, trying to
keep the defensive edge from his voice. They were waiting —his father and Paul would not move out until —he checked the Rolex on his left wrist —until another four minutes had elapsed. There were four minutes to kill. “You’re a beautiful woman —I was just thinking how strong my father is.”
“He is strong—yes,” she nodded, settling onto her rear end against the rock, her M-16s crisscrossed over her thighs to keep the muzzles clear of snow.
Michael looked down at her. “The two of you are alike.”
“A propensity for violence?”
“No — superhuman abilities sometime
s.”
“Training is a lot of it. And there’s something inside some people. Your father is the one who really has it. I think you do too — you just have to make sure that it’s there. And you will.” And her eyes smiled up at him.
“Stubbornness?” Michael suggested.
Natalia laughed. “Part of it —tenacity is a nicer word in English, I think. But it’s tenacity coupled with innate ability. Anyway —youU know it when you see it in yourself, the same way you know it each time you see it in your father.”
He looked at his watch, noticing Natalia looking at hers. Two more minutes. Because they were reasonably certain that electronic-perimeter-defense systems would be in operation, the possibility of total stealth had been ruled out. In precisely two minutes, Paul would radio back to the forces of Captain Hartman. Eight long-range gunships. Hartman’s force was comprised of four, plus the two his father and Natalia and Akiro Kurinami had flown. The number of men in the camp was impossible to estimate — because of the inclement weather, too many of them would be indoors, inside the prefabricated, dome-shaped shelters that ringed the helicopters.
The plan his father had announced was simple. At zero hour, if that was what the moment of attack should be called, they would converge on the base from opposing directions, killing everyone in sight and fighting their way toward the center of camp where the eight gunships were. It would be his job — Michael’s — to defend one of the choppers while Natalia got it started. The helicopters were being kept running —that was clear to see, their rotors still but their engines idling, exhaust-gas clouds billowing from them in the cold. Either it was the only way to keep the engines from freezing —which Michael doubted —or they were prepared to move out. This latter choice was the more likely in view of the penetration team they had encountered and fought in the tunnel.
But it would be his job to keep one of the machines clear while Natalia got ready to get it airborne. Paul would have the same job for Michael’s father. Once the machines were airborne, Michael knew, his father and Natalia would utilize them against the Soviet machines still on the ground, calling for Hartman to launch his attack.
If it worked, it would take the Russian force by surprise. If it didn’t — Michael tried to avoid thinking about that alternative. Madison. The baby she carried in her—their baby.
Natalia spoke. “It’s almost time, Michael.”
“I know.”
“Dark of the moon —they used to say that.”
“What moon?” he asked her, smiling. “Don’t worry — IH cover you long enough to get airborne. The trick is getting to the machine.”
“It should take us about eight minutes of brisk walking, with this snow and the heavy gear we have and wearing snowshoes — until we hit the perimeter. It could start anytime.”
“It starts now,” he told Natalia, looking up from his watch.
She pushed to her feet, working the bolts on her M-16s as she started ahead. They would be in cover for the first five hundred yards, rocks, drifted snow against them, grotesque shapes of ice. It was after that, in the open, when it would —he ignored that, working the bolts of his M-16s, walking after her…
John Rourke moved ahead on his snowshoes, Paul Rubenstein beside him, the radio message alerting Hartman already sent. Rourke’s fists were balled tight through his thinner gloves on the pistol grips of the M-16s, his snorkel hood pushed back to prevent its limiting of his peripheral vision, his eyes squinted through the snow goggles —not against light, because there was little of that, but straining to see each detail of the camp.
Paul Rubenstein was at his left, the Schmiesser — as Paul called it and Rourke sometimes found himself thinking of it —in both Paul’s fists, in an assault position.
Perhaps a hundred yards remained of cover, another four hundred yards beyond that when they would be in the open, either spotted visually or by electronic sentry devices.
Rourke walked ahead. He could not see Natalia and Michael, but that was as it should be.
He could see no movement about the camp, except for the wisps of gray-white smoke from the helicopter exhausts. The huts would be filled on a morning like this. When Rourke had last glanced at his watch, it had been nearly eight, and that the camp was not stirring merely further attested to the foulness of the weather. The gray blackness of the sky had not lightened since
they had left the tunnel beneath the mountain, and would not lighten, Rourke judged, while this snow fell.
Electronic security would finger them —but he doubted their peripheral system would be more than a hundred yards out. And he doubted that it would be closely monitored. Only someone paranoid would expect attack here.
He kept moving…
Annie ran, Madison, her mother Sarah, Bjorn Rolvaag in the “pack” with her. Her mother had advised taking the extra moment to change from the heavy arctic gear to normal clothing and Annie was happy now she had taken the advice. They had run where they could in the tunnel, not daring to risk the radio, and after exiting the tunnel inside the volcano’s wall, they had begun to run in earnest, still not risking radio communications lest such communications be monitored by the sensing device implanted by the Soviet troops.
After leaving the tunnel, they had taken the most direct path possible, Natalia having used a mixture of English, Russian, and modern Norwegian to converse with Bjorn Rolvaag. The conversation had been only one way. When Rolvaag would talk, Natalia admitted it had been impossible to understand more than an occasional fragment of a word.
But he had understood well enough to take them along the most direct path now, as best Annie could tell, understood well enough to appreciate the urgency of alerting Captain Hartman and Madame Jokli that the city here inside Mt. Hekla was likely being invaded by Soviet shock troops.
Her M-16s rattled and bumped and banged together across her back, against her pack, her right arm
pumping as though it would somehow heighten her speed, her left hand hitching up her skirts, the combat boots she wore, although natural-feeling to her and comfortable enough, still weighing her down as she moved.
She looked at her mother—almost starting to laugh. Her mother was keeping up with her, Madison a little behind, Rolvaag outdistancing Annie and the other two women easily, the dog Hrothgar loping effortlessly beside him.
She told herself it was the length of his stride, and that his sex had nothing to do with his physical superiority of speed. She told herself that, but didn’t really believe it.
Running. She judged they had another ten minutes before they would encounter any of Hartman’s troops or Madame Jokli’s police.
Running. The brightness of the lavender lights was having a psychological effect on her, making her feel warmer than she should have, despite the heaviness of her clothes, despite the run. But she kept at it, feeling her heart pounding near her left breast, running.
Rolvaag —he lurched violently to his right, his staff flailing out.
Armed Soviet troops — three of them were closing on him, bayonets fixed to their rifle muzzles, more of them coming from the high shrubbery on both sides of the flagstone path, Rolvaag’s dog going for a throat.
Rolvaag’s staff flickered out, clipping one man alongside the head, impacting another in the base of the jaw, both men falling back, his staff locking now against the bayonet-fitted rifle of a third man.
“Bjorn!”
Annie screamed the word, the time for subtlety gone now. The M-16 at her right side was coming forward in her tiny right fist, her left hand moving to sweep back
the bolt.
Annie’s mother sucked in her breath —not quite a scream —men poured from both sides of the trail. It was Madison who shrieked.
Annie started to swing her M-16 toward Madison, two men grappling with her.
A blur of movement — Annie saw it, felt —
Chapter Thirty-one
They were a hundred yards from the perimeter when the claxon began sounding and John Rourke threw him
self into a shuffling run on his snowshoes across the fresh-fallen virgin whiteness that seemed so stark against the gray of the low sky.
Men —some of them without coats —were starting from the huts, broad shafts of yellow light breaking from the doorways now, the snowflakes impossibly large seeming as they formed a lazy curtain within the light, assault rifles bristling in the hands of the men.
The hut nearest him now was seventy-five yards. Rourke didn’t fire —each second he bought before their precise position was located was a few more yards, a few yards nearer the helicopters at the center of the compound.
Fifty yards from the nearest hut, perhaps five hundred yards from the nearest of the choppers.
Assault rifle fire sprayed into the snow near his feet. Rourke throwing himself down, throwing one of the M-16s to his shoulder, Paul impacting the snow beside him, Rourke firing a full-auto burst toward the sound of the gunfire, then spraying out the magazine toward the yellow light of the doors. The German MP40 was opening up in Paul’s hands, a furrow of short bursts impacting the snow as Paul tracked toward the target,
then longer bursts, men going down.
Rourke dropped the spent M-16 on its sling, reaching to one of the musette bags at his side. Something special he had borrowed from Captain Hartman. Rourke pulled the pin on the fragmentation grenade and counted to five, then hurled it toward the hut, to his feet, shouting, “Gome on, Paul!” The grenade went, Rourke stumbling forward slighdy, catching his balance, glancing back once as he changed sticks in the M-16 —the hut was vanished behind a wall of orange and yellow flame. “Good grenades,” he rasped, running on, Paul beside him at the edge of his peripheral vision, changing sticks for the Schmiesser. Rourke had obtained for Paul six extra magazines for the weapon before leaying New Germany in Argentina. They were museum relics there — practical here. He kept running.
More gunfire, but from the far side of the camp now —it would be Michael and Natalia.