Survivalist - 15 - Overlord Read online

  “When I give the word, we move out separately toward the ditch. You will cover me, then I will cover you. Once we have reached the ditch we will move along its length until we reach its furthest extent, then make for the train.”

  “Yes, Fraulein Major.”

  She slung both M-16s forward, trying to wait for the split second that seemed better than the last and perhaps better than the next. But the guards, despite the cold, seemed immutable in their positions. She pushed herself up from behind the drift and ran now, her tiny fists balled on the pistol grips of the M-16s.

  The snow made movement feel sluggish, slow, awkward, but she reached the ditch, throwing herself down into it after a glance, the snow so deep here that she almost smothered in

  it, the snow crusting over her eyelashes as she blinked it away.

  She set one of the M-16s on safe, thrusting the second one over the lip of the ditch as she waited for Lieutenant Keefler. Most of the Soviet personnel were boarded on the train, and she saw among them an officer, in high collared greatcoat rather than a parka, his black uniform denoting to her, even after five centuries, her husband’s KGB Elite Corps. He rose to the steps of the lead car. She could barely see him now. He seemed to look along the length of the train front and back. Though she could hear nothing over the keening of the wind, she realized he had issued a command, his form disappearing inside the car, the guards which flanked the train on both sides peeling off and clambering aboard.

  Keefler was coming, in a dead run, his German assault rifle in both hands, his body vaulting into die ditch beside her.

  “They prepare to move, Fraulein Major.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “And so do we. Catch your breath.”

  Her heart sank, a guard armed with an assault rifle appeared in the rear door of the rear car, yellow light backlighting him for a moment, then the light gone, but the guard remaining. There was nothing for it but to do as planned. Natalia moved the second M-16’s selector to safe, telling Keefler, “I will go ahead of you. I have a weapon for the job at hand.” From under her parka, not bothering to reclose it, she extracted the silenced Walther PPK/S .380. She pushed herself up, running through the snow toward the rear of the train car, the Walther tight in her right hand, the thumb safety off.

  Forty yards. Then thirty. Then twenty. The guard turned. He tried to move his rifle. She threw herself to the snow and fired, the Walther’s sound barely audible as the sounds of the train increased, the squeak of wheels, the groan of metal against metal. The man’s body lurched back, then flopped forward as she shot him again, the body falling over the side

  and into the snow.

  To her feet, running, the train starting to move. There was no time to look for Keefler. If he made it aboard, he did. If not, she was alone. It was a natural state for her.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Natalia Tiemerovna would have no choice but to enter the rail car. And the German, Keefler, had not made it aboard, the train picking up speed so rapidly that it reminded her of one of the Japanese bullet trains from before the Night of The War. As she entered the car, slowly, her silenced pistol in her left hand, her M-16 in her right, she had no plan. Only to live long enough to accomplish her mission of stopping or slowing the train so that John Rourke and the Chinese military force that was accompanying him could reach it and prevent the nuclear warheads from falling into her husband’s hands.

  Realistically, she doubted the warheads would be serviceable as they were, no matter how carefully they had been stored. But the plutonium used in them would still be usable in freshly constructed weapons and this was obviously what Vladmir Karamatsov sought.

  She had seen only two of the Elite Corps enter this last car, the car’s purpose uncertain to her. As she entered the car, she realized its purpose. Two men on each side of the car crewed one light machinegun respectively, each mounted on a tripod and aimed to the flanks of the railcar, the windows in front of the muzzles closed but easily enough smashed or shot through, a female officer, pretty, walking up and down the

  center aisle. Was she Vladmir’s woman?

  The female officer wheeled toward the sound of the opening door and Natalia fired as the woman drew her pistol, Natalia firing before the woman’s handgun cleared the holster, a double tap to the forehead and nose, the woman’s body falling back. One of the LMG crewmen at Natalia’s left tried to swing the weapon in the direction of the doorway through which Natalia had come. Natalia snapped the silenced muzzle of the Walther toward his head and fired again, a single shot through the left cheek and into the eye.

  She thrust the M-16 toward the remaining three, in her most vulgar Russian snapping, “Move and your fucking brains will be all over the walls!”

  The three men froze, Natalia’s mind racing, the Walther in her right hand down to three shots remaining. It was murder^ but if she tried to have the men bind each other or tried to force them to exit the train by the doorway through which she had come, she might be forced to use the M-16, and the sound of gunfire would bring more of the at least forty men she had counted outside the train. She eyed the three men. In one man’s eyes, she could see that he knew. He made for the assault rifle on the car floor beside him. Natalia fired, the hollow point into the left nostril, Natalia wheeling left, a single hollow point into the second man’s right temple. The third man had an assault rifle swinging up toward her and she fired the last round from the Walther, impacting his throat just below the chin, his head snapping back against the wall, his body sagging to the floor.

  Natalia lowered the muzzle of her pistol and breathed …

  Michael Rourke had asked to be allowed to ride in the engine with the train’s engineer and although the noise of the train speeding over the rails was intense, he didn’t regret it. The machine was a marvel of simplicity. The entire forward fourrfifths of the engine comprised the fusion reaction cham

  ber, water passed through the chamber and converted to steam, steam driving the pistons which made the train move. The instrument panel looked like the instrument panel of one of the J-7V fighters or one of the German helicopters. The engineer, rather than looking like the crusty fellows he had seen in videotapes of western movies, was a slightly built Chinese who wore wire rimmed glasses similar to the type Paul Rubenstein had worn before the Sleep. His appearance seemed more appropriate for a professor rather than a man who drove a train such as this through the night.

  Han had accompanied Michael in the cab, to serve as translator to the many questions, Han had remarked, he knew Michael would have. And questions Michael did have.

  How could they speed along the tracks when heavy snow was drifted on all sides — the tracks were clear? The engineer had explained, Michael realizing that in fact this man was an engineer in the truest sense of the word. The Chinese had electrical power to waste with their conquest of fusion power. The tracks, whenever there was snow anywhere along the line and the snows here were heavy, were utilized as convection coils and melted the snow from the bed over which they travelled. He had perhaps noticed that the cross ties were of steel as were the rails. Wouldn’t such a system be dangerous to animals, as he understood there were, or to the inadvertent rail worker who might contact the rails? But the system used such a low charge, electrical hazard was out of the question and the heat produced would feel pleasantly hot to the touch, not burningly hot. Where were the water towers which would be necessary to replenish the supply needed to produce more steam? The system was totally enclosed and once charged, never needed replacement of the water unless the entire system was to be dismantled for periodic maintenance.

  As they entered the second hour of the ride, the engineer asked Michael if he would care to take the controls. Michael had begun to laugh at himself. He had stopped being a kid

  so long ago he had almost forgotten what it was like. Almost. He took the controls …

  The Schmeisser, the M-16, all were cleaned and checked. With time on his hands, Paul Rubenstein drew the battered Browning
High Power from the black ballistic tanker holster he wore for it and popped the magazine, then worked the slide to clear the chambered round. Mechanically, he started to disassemble the pistol, moving the slide rearward so he could lock the safety into the proper notch to hold the slide back while he began to tug out the slide stop.

  If Karamatsov had nuclear weapons, it would all be over. Paul would fight beside John Rourke until the last and then, if all were lost, he would take Annie and find the last place on earth that would be destroyed and stay with her there and die with her there. He wanted children. She wanted them. He worked down the safety and eased the slide forward off the frame, then jiggled the barrel free of the slide and began wiping the bore.

  John Rourke had been silent since boarding this bizarre train. And Paul Rubenstein knew why. Normally, John would have been in the engine cab with his son, just as eagerly asking questions and learning the workings of the new magnificent machine. But the silence. John Rourke thought that he had sent Natalia to her death, perhaps, and already, before the fact, blamed himself.

  Paul wondered if he could have told Annie that for the good of all mankind she should put her life in almost certain terrible jeopardy. It required a strength Paul Rubenstein prayed he would never have to find out if he possessed or not. He began reassembly of the High Power.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  John Rourke opened his eyes.

  He realized that he had subconsciously accepted the fact that there was nothing which could be done to avert Natalia’s possible death, that there was no way to more quickly intercept the oncoming Soviet train.

  John Rourke stood up abruptly, snatching up his guns. “Paul! We’ve got a chance!”

  He thrust both Scoremasters into his trouser band and began buckling on the pistol belt with the Python and the Sparks Six-Pak of spare magazines for the little Detonics pistols.

  “What-“

  Rourke shrugged into the double Alessi rig, the weight of the twin stainless Detonics .45s somehow more comforting to him than it had ever been.

  “The J-7V. We can use it. Save Natalia. Stop the Russian train and keep Karamatsov from getting the warheads.” He picked up the little Sting IA Black Chrome and positioned it in its sheath inside the waistband of his Levis, then took the massive Crain Life Support System X from the seat. He wore the sheath on his trouser belt and had simply unsheathed the knife rather than removing steel and leather. He stared at the twelve-inch blade for a moment, then

  looked at Paul Rubenstein, standing almost beside him. “The J-7V. If it can get off the ground and that pilot is as good as he seemed, we’ve got a chance. A damned good one.” He sheathed the knife.

  He caught up his parka and started for the rear of the car shrugging into his parka, finding the radio transmitter in the interior pocket, working up the antenna as he stepped into the arctic blast, Paul Rubenstein beside him.

  “Courier. This is Rourke. Come in, Courier. This is Rourke. Do you read me? Over.”

  He closed his eyes and prayed. There was static and when the voice finally came it was almost impossible to hear over the roar of the slipstream around them, but it was the pilot’s voice. “This is Courier, Herr Doctor. Reading you with some static. Over.”

  “Listen, Courier. Can you get airborne? Over.”

  “This is Courier—affirmative. Can be airborne in under sixty seconds. Over.”

  “Get airborne—“John Rourke looked at the younger man beside him, then embraced him …

  Because of the high speeds at which the Chinese train traveled, the track ahead was constantly scanned by radar and by other more sophisticated means for obstructions and the like. Trains on a parallel track could scan the second set of tracks in order to warn oncoming trains of perils. This system John Rourke ordered implemented to watch out for the oncoming Russian controlled train. But he had hoped it would not have to be used.

  If the J-7V’s pilot was good enough …

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna worked the Soviet light machine gun free of its mounts. The ammunition was belt fed from a box, but the box made the weapon so muzzle

  heavy that despite the fact that she considered herself considerably stronger than the average woman, she realized that manipulation of the weapon would be impaired. She dismounted the box and started pulling out the link belt. She discarded the box, then took the box from beside the tripod and began to open it to do the same. With the ammunition link belts draped around her shoulders, she could carry more.

  She picked up the reloaded Walther PPK/S from the floor beside her and holstered it in the Ken Null rig, then went to the second LMG and began to systematically disable it, to have left such a weapon operational behind her the sort of unpardonable sin that only heroes of twentieth century American adventure films survived.

  Natalia draped the belts crisscross fashion over her, her parka discarded, stripped down now to the black battle gear she normally wore, a loose-fitting black woolen turtleneck sweater over it, the shoulder holster concealed beneath the sweater, the F38 in the center of her abdomen under her gunbelt, her revolvers at her hips, the M-16s slung across her back. The weight was still enormous as she added the musette bag with the spare magazines for the M-16s.

  But the weight would diminish rapidly, as soon as the battle was joined. She started for the next car in the train.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  The Soviet controlled train had passed through Lushun, Chinese troops forming a cordone sanitaire around it, leaving the train and its occupants unmolested, Han had told them. The German J-7V dual mode fighter radioed that Lieutenant Keefler and the corporal with him had radioed that Major Tiemerovna had boarded the Soviet-controlled train, and that Keefler had been unable to get aboard in time, the train accelerating so rapidly under the control of a captured Chinese engineer, apparently.

  The second train, carrying them, Rourke had ordered to proceed at maximum speed until it was sighted by the J-7V, then begin braking.

  Michael, Paul and John Rourke himself took turns enduring the terrific cold and 150 mile per hour slipstream, fortunately partially shielded from the full force of the wind by the body of the train, alternating on the radio until the J-7V reported having them in sight.

  As the train began its braking action, John Rourke bundled into his parka, leaving the snow pants behind, intending to ditch the parka as soon as he was aboard the

  train, Michael and Paul opting for the same, Han and his troops readying themselves in the next two forward cars.

  As the train slowed, John Rourke reviewed the plan, such as it was. “When we get aboard the other train, Paul—you and this man Wing who speaks English like Han —take the six men we spoke about and cut through the train to find Natalia. Don’t be diverted by anything else no matter what happens. When you get her, signal on Michael’s radio. I’ll be ready to receive you. Get a defensible position near an exit and be ready. Michael and I, since Michael has been learning how these trains run, will go after the engine. Once the engine is secured we stop the train. Han has ordered his men to kill every Russian trooper aboard the train. As soon as the train is stopped, Michael and I will look for the warheads and if they aren’t already secured, take out whoever is guarding them and hold the area until the resistance is crushed. Things may change rapidly. We have to be alert for that.” And John Rourke unfolded the map of the rail line given him by Han, the three of them crouching beside the seat on which Rourke had previously laid his weapons. “Now —again to review. The train carrying the Russians will be crossing this forty mile stretch where the Yellow Sea has formed a natural reentrant just north of forty degrees latitude — here,” and Rourke gestured with his right trigger finger. “A plate shift or some other geologic activity has altered the coastline here drastically from the pre-war geography we’re all used to. Originally, we were going to block the tracks to slow down the train and board it, but that could have given a desperate man all the impetus needed to try to get one of those warheads going and that wou
ld have been all he needed to get them all to blow. But this way, whoever their field commander is shouldn’t have that much advance warning. Michael —you checked with the engineer.”

  “This train can go just as rapidly in reverse, but it’s dangerous because the radar and sensing equipment aren’t operational that way.”

  Rourke nodded.

  “All right —right here then, with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other side. Any Russians who get off can be killed or captured. They’ll have nowhere to go. And there won’t be any place to haul one of the warheads off to, either. If the scale on this map is correct, and Han assures me it is, for this forty mile stretch, the distance from the wall of granite where they blasted into the mountains to form the road bed and the water is a maximum of thirty yards, the two tracks less than five yards apart. This is the only place. Karamatsov probably had gunships enroute to rendezvous with the train just beyond here, about where we’re at now. If any of those warheads gets airborne then the entire thing — well, we all know that,” and John Rourke folded the map and stood to his full height. “Ready?”

  The train was nearly at full stop. Paul nodded. So did Michael.

  John Rourke started for the rear door of the car, the train all but stopped as he clambered over the railing and dropped to the snowy ground, the wind howling across the icy wilderness, the J-7V starting its vertical descent, Han and his men, armed with caseless ammo bullpup style assault rifles and submachineguns, piling out.

  Rourke broke into a run for the J-7V. It could only hold him, Paul, Michael and fifteen others, Han among them. If eighteen men weren’t enough …

  Natalia’s left hand was bleeding where a flying splinter from one of the seatbacks had grazed her, but she had killed sixteen men in this second from the last car.