Survivalist - The Web Part 16

She wondered what his last name was.

He hadn't hit her because he hated her. It was because he hadn't wanted to die with her.

"I hope you live, John," she said, suddenly feeling a weight slip from her.

The manhole cover in the street outside rocketed skyward, the flame under it rising, spreading. The floor under her shook; the plate-gla.s.s window in front of her shattered.

She had one more injection-one she had saved in her desk drawer.

It would make her sleep. She gave it to herself, letting the needle fall from her hand, her hands b.l.o.o.d.y from the gla.s.s that had cut her as the window shattered around her.

There was a cool wind and as she closed her eyes, she could see her dead husband's stern face. He was scolding her for what she had tried to do, but there was love in his eyes. * .

Rourke settled himself on the seat of the Harley, the motor purring under him, the tanks full, the Detonics stainless .s reloaded and holstered in the Alessi rig across his shoulders. He was slightly cold-the exhaustion, the drugs coursing through his veins. The collar of his Drown leather jacket was snapped up.

Under the jacket he carried the musette bag on his left side, spare magazines for the Detonics pistols and for the CAR- slung under his right arm.

On his right hip was the Python, Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported; spare ammo for the big Colt was in the musette bag, too, in Safariland Speedloaders.

There were Soviet troops on the ground, Soviet helicopters in the air above. The ground beneath him trembled. Fire was everywhere-in the houses on both sides of the street, a wind whipping it up as he looked out of the garage.

He had been breathing, slowly, evenly, getting the house (hat was his body in order, summoning up the reserves of strength he would need.

It was that or die.

His left fist worked in the clutch, his right throttled out, and the Harley started ahead.

With his right thumb he worked the CAR-'s safety off, then moved his left hand quickly, securing the dark-lensed aviator-style sungla.s.ses.

He squinted through them as he braked in the middle of the street.

In an inside pocket of his leather jacket were some of his dark tobacco cigars.

He took one and placed it between his teeth, rolling it into the left corner of his mouth, unlit.

"Ready," he whispered to himself.

He throttled the Harley, working through the gears, lowering his frame across that of the bike, reaching the end of the street, making a sharp right, then accelerating again. In his mind's eye he could see the way he'd entered the town and that was the only way he knew to leave it.

He pa.s.sed the post office. As he cut another left, into the street angling past the library, it was a sea of flames.

"Martha," he rasped, looking away as he gunned the jet black Harley ahead.

Despite it all, he felt a sadness for the woman.

Soviet troops on the right, two of them aflame from the gas fires, three of them wheeling toward him, started to fire their a.s.sault rifles. Rourke gave the Harley gas then s.h.i.+fted his grip to the CAR-. Firing rapid two-round semiautomatic bursts, he nailed the nearest of the men, then the one behind him.

Gunfire from the third man's a.s.sault rifle ripped into the street surface beside him. Rourke throttled out, cutting a broad arc as he made a hard right, then angled off the street and into the gra.s.sy shoulder paralleling it, Fires still raged on the far side by the school building. Soviet troops ran haphazardly about, an officer in their midst; Rourke spotted him, a tall man, his hat gone, his face dirt-smudged.

There was an overturned jeep, and though the officer called to his men, they were scattering. The officer was tugging at something under the jeep.

Rourke sped past, glancing left, seeing a form half under the jeep, the officer working with a pry bar, trying to get someone out.

Rourke slowed the Harley, cutting a wide arc. The jeep was close to the fires raging down the center of the street; the gra.s.s on the far side of it was burning.

"s.h.i.+t," Rourke rasped, gunning the Harley back toward the jeep.

The officer dropped the pry bar, s.n.a.t.c.hing at a full-flap military holster on his right hip.

Rourke slowed the bike, stopping, the CAR- pointed straight at the Russian.

"Shoot me, then. But first help me get this man out; he's still alive!"

Rourke said nothing. His right thumb flicked the safety of the CAR- on, and he let down the Harley's stand, the engine cut off.

He walked toward the Russian, saying, "I'm ill-not as strong as I usually am. You work the pry bar; I'll pull him out."

"Agreed." The Soviet officer nodded.

The man-a major, Rourke noticed-ieaned against the pry bar. Rourke dropped to his knees in the street beside the injured man pinned under the overturned jeep.

An older man-a senior noncom of some kind. The face, unconscious, was pleasant-looking.

Rourke grabbed the man's shoulders, "Now, Major," Rourke ordered, feeling the jeep rising slightly beside him, hearing the groaning as the Soviet officer strained on the pry bar.

Rourke put his own right shoulder to the end of the overturned jeep, then threw his weight back, sprawling backward into the street with the older man, getting him clear as the jeep fell.

"I could not hold it anymore!"

Rourke ignored the officer, looking to the older man. "He's gonna need a hospital and quick."

"There are helicopters-cargo helicopters. They can be used for the wounded."

"You get him outa here fast," Rourke rasped. "This whole town's gonna blow."

"What are you doing?" The major's right hand went out to Rourke's right forearm.

Rourke shook it away, then opened the leather case which had Martha Bogen's shot kit.

"Morphine," Rourke rasped. "Relax. Vm a doctor. Put a compression bandage on that right leg-not a tourniquet unless you want him to lose it." Rourke pulled his knife, then cut at the noncom's sleeves, first the right, then the left, using one sleeve folded over as a bandage, the second to secure it to the leg. "Not too tight. Looks like you've got somebody to baby-sit with, Major." Rourke stood up.

The Soviet officer's right hand moved and Rourke started for his rifle, but the hand was extending toward him.

Rourke took it.

"I should arrest you-or have you shot."

"That last part"-Rourke smiled-"I was kinda thinkin the same thing myself. But I'll pa.s.s on it."

Rourke loosed the Soviet major's hand and turned to walk away. There was a chance the man would pull a gun and shoot; Rourke decided he wasn't going to count it a possibiiiiy.

He stepped aboard the Harley, gunning the engine to life, Setting up the kick stand.

The major was looking to his injured sergeant.

Rourke gunned the Harley ahead. . . .

He was at the end of the town now. Only the road leading up into the mountains and out of the valley was ahead.

Explosions rocked the ground under and around him, and behind him there was a growing fire storm, already edging into the wooded area around the town.

He looked at the town one more time-Bevington, Kentucky. "Sad," he murmured, then started the Harley up ahead.

The road was steep going; rock slides were starting to his right, his attention focusing there as he steered the Harley around boulders that had already strewn the road.

Overhead, above the thundering of the explosions and the hissing roar of the fire storm behind him, he heard a sound-familiar. He glanced skyward-helicopters.

"That's what I get for being a good Samaritan," he rasped, shaking his head. But he didn't blame the major, or the injured sergeant. Like most things in life, he thought, gunning the Harley on, the exhaust ripping under him and behind him, there was no one to blame.

The helicopters were clearly after him; he didn't know why. Maybe the KGB, he thought-but why had they been in Bevington, Kentucky, to begin with?

He swung the CAR- around, the safety off. There was a sharp bend in the road and Rourke took it at speed, cutting a sharp left onto the shoulder because half the width of (he road was strewn with boulders. There was a rumbling sound to his left and Rourke looked that way- a rock slide, shale and boulders skidding down for as far as he could see, a rock slide paralleling the roadway.

"s.h.i.+t," he rasped, glancing up at the helicopters. There was a chattering sound; he didn't have to look again. Machine-gun fire.

The road dipped, Rourke accelerating into the grade. The rock slide was coming inexorably closer, closer. The area to his right was heavily wooded; fire swept through it.

Rourke skidded the bike hard left, then right, avoiding a deer that ran from the flaming forest on his right. He accelerated, the rock slide still coming.

Machine-gun fire tore into the road beneath him, bullets ricocheting off the rocks to his left.

The road took a fast cut left and Rourke arced the Harley into it. As he hit the straightaway, he twisted in the Harley's saddle, the CAR--stock retracted- pointing skyward at the nearest of the helicopters. He let off a fast semiauto burst-six shots in all. The helicopter pilot pulled up.

Rourke let the rifle drop to his side on the sling, then throttled out the Harley, the rim of the valley in sight, perhaps a mile ahead.

Gravel and smaller rocks were pelting at him, hammering against the road surface, their effect almost indistinguishable from the machine-gun fire from the choppers above. The fire on his right was up to the roadside, and the trees flanking the road on his right were torches, columns of fire; the heat from them scorched at his skin as he drove his machine upward-toward the rim of the valley.

Ma.s.sive boulders were falling now. Rourke steered the bike around them as they impacted on the road before him. A tree, still a ma.s.s of flames, fell; Rourke gunned the Harley full throttle, his body low over the handlebars, as he pa.s.sed under it, burning branches and chips of bark spraying his hands, his face, his clothing.

Rourke squinted back, beyond the burning tree trunk and skyward. The helicopters were still coming.

He cut the Harley sharp left, taking the grade that would take him to the rim, boulders rolling across the road before him now, missing him by inches, the Harley's exhaust like a cannon, like a trumpet, strident, tearing at his eardrums, the wind of the slipstream las.h.i.+ng at him, hot from the fire raging to his right.

More machine-gun fire, the helicopters above him now, one of them ahead of him.

Rourke couldn't free a band to shoot back. The very fabric of the mountains was cras.h.i.+ng down toward him, dust and smoke in a cloud around him as he hit the rim.

Rourke skidded the bike into a tight turn, breaking, balancing the machine with his feet as he stopped it, tele* scoping the stock, then shouldering the CAR-. There was no escape from the helicopters, as he had just escaped the rock slides and the fire storm.

He rammed a fresh thirty-round stick into theColt and ripped away the scope covers, sighting on the nearest of the bubble domes as the helicopter closed with him, machine-gun bullets ripping into the dirt and rocks around him.

"Come in, Colonel! Borozeni calling Colonel Rozhdest-venskiy. Come in.

Ground to air ... come in!"

There was no answer, then, "Major Borozeni . . . Lieutenant Tiflis calling Major Borozeni!"

"Come in, Tiflis, over."

"Comrade Major, we cannot contact Colonel Rozh-destvenskiy. . . . What are the orders? Over."

"Tiflis, bring your helicopters back." Tiflis had commanded the helicopter force, not the special guns.h.i.+p fleet that had brought in Rozhdestvenskiy's commando team for seizing the factory, but the medivac and cargo helicopters. "Tiflis, listen carefully. . . . Use your radio. . . . It's stronger. Contact the entire helicopter fleet. ... I am a.s.suming command in the apparent absence of Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy. Over."

"Yes, Comrade Major. Over."

"Tiflis." Borozeni remembered to work the push-to-talk b.u.t.ton on his radio. 'Tiflis, contact me on how many s.h.i.+ps. . . . We have hundreds of wounded. . . . Hurry. Out."

"Tiflis out, Comrade Major."

There was only static. Borozeni glanced down to the unconscious sergeant beside him. Borozeni's knee ached. He s.h.i.+fted position, but could not move his bloodstained right hand lest the bleeding increase. He a.s.sumed the man on the motorcycle really had been a doctor-or at least had known what heM talked about. The shot of morphine had helped the sergeant.

"Tiflis to ground. Tiflis to ground command." "Borozeni here. . . . What is it, Tiflis?" 'Tiflis to ground ... All but four-repeat four, Comrade Major-all but four of the helicopters returning. . . . Landing will begin in two minutes. Tiflis over." "We need them all. . . . What are they doing? Over." "In pursuit of man riding motorcycle out of valley, Comrade Major . . . May be the American agent Rourke, wanted by KGB. Over."

Borozeni smiled. A man on a motorcycle. So his name was Rourke. "Tiflis, tell the commanders of those four s.h.i.+ps to-" 'Tiflis out."

Borozeni worked the push-to-talk b.u.t.ton, then stared skyward at the chopper. What had happened? "Tiflis to ground . . . Tiflis to ground . . .

Over."

"What was the meaning of that? Borozeni over." "Tiflis to ground . - - The suspected American agent just shot at the helicopters, Comrade Major.

Over."

"Tell them to pull back ... or I will personally have them on report to General Varakov. Borozeni out." Borozeni smiled, murmuring in English, "Even."

Rourke squeezed a single shot toward the dome of the nearest helicopter, the ground around him now erupting with the impact of the machine-gun fire from the four guns.h.i.+ps.

Squinting through the three-power Colt scope, he could see the gla.s.s dome take the impact of the slug. Rourke fired again, the recoil hammering at his right shoulder, his arms almost too tired to hold up the gun. The gla.s.s spider-webbed again.

The four s.h.i.+ps were circling him now. Rourke concentrated on the one he could hring down, taking aim for a third shot at the same area where the Plexigla.s.s would be weakest.

Sarah. Michael. Annie. Paul would find them, care for them.

"Die," Rourke shouted at the helicopter. The machine swerved and his shot went wild, all four machines rising rapidly, hovering, and turning into a ragged formation, then disappearing back toward the valley.

Rourke let the rifle sink down.

He didn't believe in luck-but he didn't argue with it either. He worked the safety on for the Colt a.s.sault rifle, then gunned the Hariey over the lip of the valley and down toward the highway. . . .