Earth Fire ts-9

by Jerry Ahern

  Rourke spoke. “Try anything to stop Major Tiemerovna and I empty both magazines into the serum bottles. It won’t do much good to pick it up off the floor and even if you chemically analyze it, it’d take too long to reproduce a suf-ficient amount.”

  “They do not have the proper chemicals — my uncle told me this. The one factory which produced the key ingredient was destroyed during the Night of The War. The chemical cannot be reproduced because its formula was top secret and it is the one portion of the Eden Project plan they have never found.”

  “You are so well informed, Major,” Rozhdestvenskiy shouted. “That traitorous bastard of an uncle—were there time remaining, I would personally execute him.”

  She stopped walking, raising the rifle at her right side slightly. “Another word about my uncle and I destroy the serum—all of it. I’m still close enough.”

  “Get out of here,” Rozhdestvenskiy rasped.

  Natalia kept walking, Rourke never moving the muzzles of the two M-16s. If he fired he would cut down Natalia as well. But she knew that.

  She was nearly beside him—it was the most dangerous part. Once they felt she was sufficiently far from the serum bottles not to damage them, they would make their play.

  Rourke shouted, “A little change in the plan, Colonel. Anybody blinks an eye and I blow away all the bottles.”

  “That was not the agreement, Doctor.” Rozhdestvenskiy started forward. Rourke pulled the trigger on the rifle—Na-talia was clear now, his right hand raising as he blasted three of the serum bottles with the burst.

  “A warning,” Rourke shouted.

  “Don’t shoot,” Rozhdestvenskiy commanded his men.

  Natalia stood beside Rourke now.

  “You plan what I think?”

  “You plan what I think?” he asked back.

  “Yes—I love you, John.”

  She dropped the bottle at her side to the floor. It shat-tered, the liquid inside splashing up on Rourke’s feet and hers.

  “What are you doing?” Rozhdestvenskiy screamed the words.

  Rourke never moved the muzzles of his rifles, but Natalia wheeled beside him, her rifles pointed toward the truck. “There are five bottles in the truck, Colonel. John will now destroy the serum in the bottles by the wall. You cannot stop him before he empties both rifles and destroys the bottles utterly. If you attempt to do so, I shall destroy those bottles in the truck.”

  “You would kill Rourke with the explosives!”

  “You would kill him by shooting him—and the rifles were never loaded with explosives—I fooled you, Colonel. The master spy duped—what a tragedy!”

  “Bitch—”

  “Right now I’m planning to shoot the serum bottles,” Rourke snarled. “I can shoot you, too. Look at it this way— as long as we have the five bottles in the truck, you’ve got a chance.”

  Rourke emptied the assault rifles into the serum bottles at the far side of the laboratory—not a move made to stop him. The bottles seemed to shatter in slow motion, shards of glass everywhere, bottles shattering other bottles, the shelves starting to collapse.

  One bottle remained.

  Rourke let the emptied M-16s fall to his sides. He drew the Python, saying, “If only a few ccs are needed for each injection, well, we probably have enough in the truck to in-ject your entire Elite Corps and all of the women—think about that. This is a Colt—Natalia tells me you carry one, too. A Colt is a very American gun—Colt’s sort of like apple pie, baseball, motherhood.”

  He thumbcocked the Metalifed and Mag-na-ported six-inch, firing once, the last bottle shattering.

  Rourke let himself smile.

  “Now, Colonel, Natalia’s going to get on the truck in just a minute here, and I’ll keep one of my assault rifles trained on the five bottles that are left. She’ll drive off and I’ll fol-low her. Then we’ll see what happens.” Rourke holstered the Python, then dumped the empty magazines from the as-sault rifles, letting them clatter to the floor. He reloaded. He backstepped through the doorway, Natalia still aimed both rifles at the five bottles in the truck bed.

  Rourke turned, running along the loading dock, jumping aboard the fire engine red Ninja bike, swinging both M-16s toward the truck bed. He couldn’t miss at the range. He let the rifles fall to his sides, “Not yet, Natalia.” He started the bike, turning it around to face the ramp. He leveled one of the M-16s toward the five bottles. “Now—remind our friends.”

  He couldn’t see inside, but he heard Natalia calling over her shoulder, “Doctor Rourke has the five remaining bottles under the muzzle of his rifle. I am boarding the truck. At the first shot, the first attempt to stop us of any kind, he shall destroy the remaining five bottles. Maybe you can scrape some off the floor and filter out the broken glass — but I don’t think so.”

  “Damn you!” It was Rozhdestvenskiy’s voice. But Nata-lia only walked ahead, slowly, down the ramp, around the cab of the pickup, setting both rifles inside, climbing in be-hind the wheel. The engine started. The truck lurched slightly forward. Rourke turned and looked behind him, but the rifle’s muzzle unswerving. He shouted, “Natalia, get moving—Rozhdestvenskiy, bite my ass,” and Rourke swung the second M-16 toward the laboratory doors, firing half a magazine, the Elite Corps dropping back, Rourke let-ting both rifles fall to his sides, putting himself low over the Ninja’s body, letting the bike out and taking it down the ramp — he was trying to match the zero to sixty figures he’d read of.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Rozhdestvenskiy jumped from the loading dock, tossing his car keys in his hand. “What about the force that fought at the small corridor?”

  “They were Russians, Comrade Colonel,” the lieutenant answered. “They were Special Forces—the unit known as Fight—they—”

  “Are they dead — I did not ask for them to be eulogized.”

  “They are dead—but so few of them, Comrade Colo-nel—they killed sixty-three of our men.”

  Rozhdestvenskiy looked at the young lieutenant. “And what of the particle beam facility?”

  “The Americans have all been killed. But the doors lead-ing into the facility were mined, and have only just been gotten through.”

  “Idiots, so some of the Americans are inside.”

  “Only one it is thought, Comrade Colonel—but Com-rade Colonel—”

  “What?”

  “In the battle between our men and the Special Forces unit, Major Revnik was killed by the Special Forces Cap-tain.”

  “Then Revnik is dead—if he were stupid enough to die, he was too stupid to live.” He gestured after Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna. “Seal off all passages. The women can fight as well. Leave a wide path for them. They must be heading for the doors to the airfield elevators. We shall pur-sue them, overtake them and kill Rourke before he can de-stroy the serum bottles. Then our assault vans can box in Major Tiemerovna’s truck and she can be killed. We shall still be triumphant. But there is to be no shooting at the truck itself. No one but this unit is to attack them. The func-tion of the rest of my forces is merely to contain them—no risks can be taken with the bottles. I want one hundred men—or men and women— it doesn’t matter—I want them on the field in the event Rourke and the major slip through our fingers. If the airplane should reach the field before in-terception, it should be destroyed.”

  “But the serum, Comrade Colonel—”

  “Better no one should survive than Rourke and Major Tiemerovna, Lieutenant. We can easily catch them. The motorcycle is capable of great speed, but the truck is not. In the corridor straightaways, we can catch them. And we can kill them.”

  He started to walk across the boxlike chamber. Near the far corridor, in a storage compartment, the vehicles were garaged.

  He checked the revolver in his belt. He would get Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna—it was more important now than life itself.

  Rozhdestvenskiy started to run.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  The truck, with its heavy load, would ba
rely do sixty steadily, Rourke judged, comparing the truck’s speed with the matching speed of the Ninja, and only on the straight-aways. It was necessary in the curves, to preserve the load, to slow to thirty.

  Behind him he heard what he had expected to hear—vehi-cles.

  Rourke looked back. Coming around the curve behind them, into the straightaway were what he counted as an even dozen more or less Honda Gold Wings, fast, power-ful, painted black. Behind the wedge of bikers a single auto-mobile—a black Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am. Behind this, two abreast, black painted vans. Visible on the roofs of the vans some type of weapon—he imagined Soviet RPK light machineguns.

  “Natalia! Company. Hustle,” he shouted.

  He saw her through the open window, turning her head, glance at him once—her eyes in the pale green of the over-head lighting system—their blueness riveted him.

  The truck began to pick up speed, but it couldn’t pick up much with the specialized emission control equipment it carried, and acceleration was pitifully slow.

  He looked behind him again—the KGB armada was clos-ing.

  They would target him, so he couldn’t destroy the serum in the truck bed. Then close in on Natalia and box the pickup in, killing her and rescuing the serum. It was Rozhdestvenskiy’s only option.

  The thought flashed across Rourke’s mind, to abandon the motorcycle and jump into the pickup bed, but it wouldn’t prevent them from stopping the truck. He could destroy the serum, but he needed the serum to keep his wife, his children, Paul alive.

  And Rozhdestvenskiy would know Rourke wanted at least some of the serum intact.

  “May as well get started,” he whispered into the slip-stream around him. He stabbed the left side M-16 toward the KGB armada and opened fire, emptying the half spent magazine, one of the bikes swerving, spinning out, crashing against the concrete surface of the walkway on the left side of the corridor.

  Rourke let the rifle fall empty to his side, making the bike accelerate, outstripping Natalia and the truck for an in-stant, the road surface around him that formed the corridor floor taking the impact of bursts of machinegun fire, slugs whistling, ricocheting maddeningly.

  Rourke pulled in front of the truck, using the serum bot-tles it contained as a shield, the gunfire ceasing, but as he looked back, the motorcycles and the Firebird speeding ahead.

  Rourke let the Ninja drift right, bringing up the second M-16, firing behind him—spraying the assault rifle left to right and back again, three of the bikers down, their ma-chines spinning out, crashing against the walkway bases, others of the machines slowing, skidding, another bike out of control, crashing.

  Rourke let the Ninja drift left as machinegun fire raked the road surface, but it meticulously avoided Natalia in the truck.

  Mentally he ran the scorecard—seven bikers remaining, the four vans and the Firebird.

  “Shit,” he snarled into the wind.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Natalia was honking at him, Rourke looking back—she was waving her right hand. Rourke shook his head, not un-derstanding.

  Natalia began to honk her horn again—long and short-blasts of the horn—suddenly Rourke realized. Morse code. Rourke turned to her again moving his right hand as if in a wiping out motion, then nodding his head.

  She nodded back.

  Dash—dot—dash—dot.

  Dot—dot—dash—dot. Dash—dash—dash. Dot—dot—dash. Dot—dash—dot.

  “C-4,” Rourke whispered. “C-4.”

  He turned to her, nodding. The musette bag on his left side—the five pounds of C-4 he himself had taken. He reached into the musette bag, awkwardly one handed claw-ing at the brick of plastique, ripping away approximately a third of it. He kneaded it in his hand, like some persons use a rubber ball to exercise their fingers. It was becoming soft from his body heat.

  Rourke kept kneading it, already knowing what he would do with it.

  Rourke let the Ninja drift right, the ball of C-4 in his right hand—he snapped his right arm back and outward, the C-4 leaving his grip, edging slightly left in the bike’s saddle, keeping his balance, drawing the Python.

  The seven bikers were coming—he let them come, past the C-4 almost. He stabbed the Python behind him, gunfire from the vans hammering into the pavement around him. He double actioned the Python once. A miss. Again. Another miss.

  The bikers were nearly past it. He fired the Python once more—there was a roar, screams drowned in it, Rourke nearly losing the bike, swinging his balance right again, looking back, a fireball belched upward toward the corri-dor ceiling, chunks of human beings and motorcycles rained downward.

  The Trans-Am had swerved, taken one of the small ramps leading to the walkway, moving along the walkway, now, coming fast, bouncing between the wall to the right and the walkway guard rail to the left, sparks flying as the fenders grated against the railing, the driver’s side window rolling down, the muzzle of a submachinegun poking through it. And his lips drawn back against the slipstream of the wind, Rozhdestvenskiy screaming the word, “Die!”

  Rourke made the bike swerve, the chattering sound of glass—he looked to his left—Rozhdestvenskiy was shoot-ing at Natalia, the windshield cracked, the pickup swerving, then steadying.

  The Python still in his right fist, Rourke stabbed it to-ward the black sportscar, firing twice for the window, miss-ing, seeing the sparks as the bullets glanced off the hood.

  The subgun opened up again, Rourke ramming the Py-thon into the leather, making the bike speed ahead.

  He glanced behind him—one of the vans had somehow become disabled. Only three remained, machinegun fire coming toward him now as all three formed a single rank across the corridor floor.

  Subgun fire from the Pontiac to his right. The Firebird was speeding up, past Natalia, even with Rourke.

  Rourke swung the M-16 outward, pumping the trigger, emptying the magazine toward the Firebird, the Firebird veered left—the railing on the walkway peeled away, chunks of it flying outward into the corridor road surface, Rourke dropping the empty M-16 from his fist, making the Ninja swerve away.

  He looked back and right—the Firebird was still coming, and behind him now, the three vans had stopped shooting; they were closing with Natalia.

  More subgun fire from the Firebird, Rourke reaching to the small of his back to the Thad Rybka holster and the two-inch Colt Lawman. He had it, pointing the little .357 toward the Firebird, firing, but not for the passenger com-partment and the open window there—for the tires instead. At the speeds with which the car moved, the tires were high speed radials, not run-flats. He aimed for the area by the rims, the left front so he would affect the steering. He dou-bled actioned the little Colt. A miss.

  Subgun fire from the window again. Rourke fired the little Colt—once, twice, a third time—four rounds were gone.

  Subgun fire—he could smell gasoline—the submachine-gun Rozhdestvenskiy used had hit the Ninja’s gas tank. It could explode at any moment.

  Rourke pumped the last two rounds from the Lawman— the tire seemed to explode, the Firebird crashing through the guard rail, bouncing back against the concrete to the right of the car, then away, punching out the railing, crash-ing down to the road surface, rolling, sliding along on the roof. Rourke swerved the Ninja, the little Colt shoved into his belt.

  He let the bike skid, away from him, jumping clear, the bike skidding now toward the Firebird, the bike impacting against the passenger door of the inverted street machine— the gasoline tank—a small explosion, flames scorching up-ward for a brief instant, the Firebird’s tires on fire.

  Rourke rolled across the road surface, stopping on his back, remembering to breathe.

  He was up—no time to finish Rozhdestvenskiy if he weren’t already dead—the vans were coming, closing in on Natalia. Rourke reached for the C-4 in his musette bag— about three pounds of it, molding it quickly into a ball, the C-4 already slightly warm from his body heat.

  He threw the C-4 into the roadway, one o
f the vans skid-ding away, hitting the walkway to Rourke’s right, explod-ing, flames belching upward.

  Rourke drew both Detonics pistols simultaneously, fir-ing, aiming for the C-4, machinegun fire from the two re-maining vans hammering at him, around him, chips of concrete flying, bullets ricocheting.

  The two vans were near the C-4 now, Natalia well past it.

  A hit—the C-4 exploded, Natalia’s truck swerving, the left fender glancing off the walkway, the truck bouncing, lurching, but moving ahead.

  One van gone. The other still coming.

  The pickup slowed, Rourke running for it, stabbing both pistols into his belt, jumping, clawing for the side of the truck bed, his fingers closing for it, hurtling his body weight over and inside, rolling, crashing against the coffin-shaped boxes of the cryogenic chambers.

  Rourke picked himself up to his knees, changing sticks for the Detonics pistols. As the pickup swerved to avoid the wreckage of the Firebird and the motorcycle, Rourke saw Rozhdestvenskiy, crawling, alive, away from the wreckage, and for a second their eyes met.

  The last van was still coming. Rozhdestvenskiy’s voice echoed through the corridor. “Kill them!”

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Reed climbed, glancing to the Timex on his left wrist, smudging away the blood from the crystal. If what he had done to the particle beam system worked, the system would explode in a matter of minutes, he reasoned.

  He was still only a third of the way up the gantry, the American flag beneath his fatigue blouse still, his .45, half-loaded only, in the military flap holster at his belt. The sec-ond .45 he had carried for a time he had lost in battle.

  He kept climbing, his right palm bloody and raw from scraping against the metal, his left arm blessedly numbed to the pain there, his abdomen hurting—he felt like throwing up but didn’t dare. When he coughed, blood spurted out.

  He kept moving.

  Soon—very soon.

  The sun was truly setting and he noticed it more than he had ever before—very red, very beautiful.