Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins Page 24

  He’d known numerous real Federal lawmen Before the War, FBI personnel included. To a man, they would have cringed at being compared to what likely went on here—repression.

  The hedges in which the long guns, the one-man helicopter like device and their other unmanageable gear were stashed seemed untouched. But Rourke did not approach them.

  As he turned back toward the street, he spotted several bicycle-mounted police officers collecting near the corner.

  And wagons, black and enclosed, drove up, their

  horses reined in quickly, men clambering out of the backs through black double doors, the men in riot gear.

  The staircase to the side of the library—Paul was there, starting out, but then falling back.

  John Rourke’s palms sweated.

  He had judged wrong: Spitz was not only more vile but more stupid than John Rourke had supposed.

  In the very moment when he thought the name, he looked toward a carriage which had just reined up near the curb. Sitting in it, beside a chubby-looking, rather officious-seeming man, he saw Gunther Spitz. Two uniformed policemen sat opposite them.

  And Spitz stood up, extended his arm toward John Rourke, pointing Rourke out.

  John Rourke turned on his heel and ran the few steps to the hedges and threw himself up and over, rolling across the grass in his new suit—but it was some synthetic which felt like wool and seemed sturdy enough. Rourke reached into the hedge, pulling against the rain poncho in which the HK-91 and the other gear was wrapped. He would need all the weapons he could muster.

  He had misjudged Spitz but John Rourke had formulated a plan lest Spitz should perpetrate some treachery, such as he had.

  Gunther Spitz’s voice rang out across the park, shouting, “If he is there, the other filthy Jew cannot be far away!”

  The corners of John Rourke’s mouth raised in an involuntary smile. He could think of no finer man on earth than Paul Rubenstein, his best friend and his daughter’s husband.

  Quickly, as the uniformed police in full 1950s-style riot gear—helmets and clubs and revolvers and shotguns but no visible body armor—ran in formation toward him, John Rourke checked his rifle, making certain it hadn’t been spiked and left as a trap. It was as he’d left it, one of the hairs from his own head over the closed breech.

  Rourke slung it, slung on his musette bags, Paul’s as well, the combined weight considerable with the loaded magazines and loose ammo, but he could afford to leave nothing behind. He opened the sling on the HK rifle, ran the sling through the briefcase handle, then resecured it.

  His gunbelt, with the Model 629 and the Crain LSX knife—he strapped it around his waist under his now open suitcoat. Screwing his fedora down tightly on his head, Rourke grabbed up the flying rig and Paul’s submachinegun. The poncho was Nazi issue and Rourke didn’t worry about leaving it behind.

  As the policemen started to close, Rourke rose to his full height from behind the bushes, racked the bolt on the Schmiesser and fired, a long ragged burst cutting into the front rank of the riot police, putting down four of the men, the rest scattering, falling back.

  Rourke ran, his burdens slamming against him, slowing him, ran for the low wall overlooking the chasm which surrounded the spiral of the city. He glanced back once as he heard shots. Paul was firing a pistol from each hand, cutting down the riot police from behind, drawing off their fire. Rourke turned as he ran, firing the submachinegun again, taking out another two men with a short burst. If Paul saw where he was going, Paul would have to realize what he planned—Rourke hoped.

  Rourke reached the wall, putting down the flying rig, firing the German MP-40 submachinegun empty, taking out another three men. Pistol shots rang toward him now, Rourke letting the Schmiesser fall to his side on its sling, grabbing the ScoreMasters from his belt, thumbing back the hammers, returning fire.

  Tear gas grenades were lobbed toward John Rourke, but there was no time to fish out the lightweight, ultracompact protective suit or the mask from his belongings. He fired again, killing two more of this twisted society’s riot police.

  In the same instant, there was an almost deafening roar from above.

  Deitrich Zimmer’s attack had begun …

  Paul Rubenstein drew back into the stairwell, bullets whining against the synth-concrete surrounding him. John would try the flying rig as his means of escape, Paul realized. A fresh magazine up the butt of each pistol, Paul Rubenstein stabbed the guns around the corner and fired high, no desire to shoot at innocent, however perverted, civilians. He tucked back as more gunfire poured toward him. There was no way he could cover John without knowing the precise moment in which John would attempt to use the flying rig.

  It was time to withdraw.

  Ten rounds left in each pistol and more spare magazines secreted on his body, Paul licked his lips, screwed his “liberated” fedora down tight on his head and took off in a dead run up the stairwell, hoping some of the riot police would follow him.

  As he hit the landing, he saw a flash of blue uniform.

  Paul threw himself flat and rolled, a shotgun blast impacting the wall beside which his head had been a split second earlier. Paul fired, a double tap from each pistol, putting down two uniformed riot police, their bodies sprawling down the stairwell toward him. As Paul pushed up to one knee, two more men charged down toward him, revolvers in hand. Paul fired, catching one man with a double tap to the chest and thorax, the second with a shot to the abdomen and the left side of the chest, over the heart.

  Paul thumbed up the safety on the pistol in his right hand, grabbed for the shotgun from the dead man nearest him, taking hold of it at the pump, snapping it to rack it. At the same time, he twisted his left thumb round behind the second High Power’s tang, upped the frame-mounted safety, belting this pistol as well.

  He had been taught survival in battle by the man who should have written the book on it. Never leave weapons behind you which can be used against you again. He grabbed up the police revolvers, shoving them into the side pockets of his suitcoat. He scavenged ammo for the shotguns and the revolvers as quickly as he could from the bodies of the men near him.

  The second shotgun would be more than he could handle comfortably and there was no sling for it. Setting down the first shotgun, he cleared the second shotgun’s chamber by working the slide release lever near the trigger guard—the gun was a copy of the Remington 870—and then inverted the gun, smashing it against the wall. Its synthetic stock splintered away. Paul flung the gun down the stairwell after him, then started up again, the first shotgun in his hands.

  Beside the bodies of the second two riot police, Paul

  paused, taking their revolvers and the loose ammo from the pouches on their belts. There were no police radios.

  He kept going, the guns in his pockets dragging his suitcoat down at the shoulders.

  He reached the next level. There were four police bicycles there, but no visible signs of more police.

  Paul Rubenstein started up the next flight of stairs…

  There were more explosions, now, every few seconds, at times the synth-concrete of the city spiral trembling under his feet. Sirens, like the ones from the 1950s which sounded once each week with clockwork precision for testing, sounded now, and the street behind the riot police, cordoned off, was the sight of a panic. Men and women poured from shop fronts and along the sidewalks.

  Now was his chance, and he stepped from cover to the wall.

  John Rourke was into the flying harness, eyeballing the controls while he pushed his gear as clear as he could. There was a central shaft which split into an off-angled Y shape. The frame was like a man’s bicycle, the main strut rising straight upward to the main rotor past maneuvering controls set up like a solid triangular shaped handlebar. The secondary strut, to which the perchlike rest/seat was attached, extended aft, the tail rotor set into its end.

  The rotor blades fanned upward and outward when powered up.

  Riot police were closing on him now
in a flying wedge, their revolvers and shotguns blazing. With projectiles impacting off the wall near him, John Rourke stepped over and onto the ledge. The added weight of his burdens might be too much for the little craft. If it was, he would plummet to his death.

  If he stayed where he was he would be shot to death.

  John Rourke jumped, both hands on the control bar. There was a sickening rush before the rotor blades fanned out, the machine evidently not designed for so abrupt a start. As the blades opened, began to spin, there would be no hope. Keeping his legs rigid, elbows tucked in, he brought the machine to full power.

  And no longer was he falling. But, he wasn’t actually flying, either, more gliding and straight toward the wall on the opposite side of the chasm.

  It was then that John Rourke made a decision.

  Testing the controls gingerly but rapidly, he started the machine upward, nearly attaining the height of the level he had just left before the wedge of riot police reached it and started firing. Rourke stabbed the Schmiesser toward them and fired a long, ragged burst, no hope of accurate fire while he was strapped into the zigzagging machine. But the riot police, unused to automatic weapons, it seemed, or any real combat either and without body armor, fell back.

  The explosions John Rourke had heard, felt, came from above. Level One, Sector A had to be on ground level. As he and Paul and the others had been led to the trolley and the rest of Spitz’s men had been led off in a different direction, they would have been taken straight ahead to Level One.

  And that was where Zimmer’s attack would originate, of course, because it was the only site for which

  Zimmer had coordinates.

  And it would be the only way out.

  John Rourke kept the machine climbing, at last seeing Paul’s face peering out over an identical wall to that on the level he had just left. But this was the ground level. And black smoke billowed out over the wall. Concrete dust fell everywhere in the chasm surrounding the spiral city now, and large pieces from the ceiling above were collapsing into the chasm. Rourke dodged the machine this way and that as best he could to avoid the rotor blades being struck.

  Gunfire came at him from below, but he was powerless to respond to it. Above him, he could see Paul stabbing a shotgun downward, firing toward the personnel firing at him from below. The flying rig was straining at full power. But John Rourke was nearly there.

  From his right there was a blur of motion. A man appeared, then another and another, in flying rigs identical to his own, but these men were unburdened with additional pounds of equipment and they knew their machines’ capabilities, Rourke realized.

  As the nearer of the three made a pass toward him, a submachinegun in the fellow’s hands, John Rourke swung Paul’s submachinegun forward, punching its muzzle toward the man. Rourke and the enemy trooper in the flying rig fired simultaneously. Rourke’s burst of submachinegun fire struck across the tail rotor strut and into the tail rotor itself.

  The man’s flying rig started spinning, twisting and contorting, pieces of the tail rotor flying everywhere. Two things happened almost at once. The man’s flying rig impacted the far wall of the chasm and explosed, a black and yellow fireball belching up hot and fast, Rourke veering his own machine away from it. And a piece of flying debris struck John Rourke’s main rotor. The rotation speed immediately dropped, and the machine began to drop as well.

  The remaining two enemy personnel in flying rigs arced toward John Rourke. As Rourke looked up, he saw Paul firing the shotgun. The man in the rig nearest to Rourke took a hit, man and machine slamming into the far wall, exploding.

  John Rourke fired his submachinegun toward the last man.

  Bullets whined off the metalwork of Rourke’s flying rig. And still, it was falling. As the last man started a pass, Rourke fired what he judged to be the last few rounds left in Paul’s submachinegun. Rourke and his opponent were so close that their rotor blades nearly touched. The burst from Paul’s submachinegun struck across the handlebar control, sparks flying, bullets ricochetting upward and downward, peppering the man’s chest and abdomen. Rourke banked left, still falling, the now-dead man’s machine plummeting downward and downward into the seemingly bottomless chasm between the spiral and the outer wall.

  Rourke’s machine sputtered and stalled, started. Rourke’s eyes shifted over the controls in a frantic search for some means by which he could avoid his enemy’s fate, a killing fall into the chasm.

  •There was a fuel mixture control. Logic dictated that it would increase oxygenation, hence the burn rate. Rourke throttled back one quarter, then turned the mixture control to full rich, simultaneously cutting

  power to half on his tail rotor, then throttling the main rotor all the way out as he angled his body toward the inner wall.

  With a wrenching that tore at his spine, the flying rig lurched upward and began twisting so strongly that Rourke felt his lips curling back from his teeth. He was turning with the machine with the increased power from the main rotor and the diminished tail rotor revolutions, spiraling upward toward the ceiling above.

  Explosions were rocking the interior of the mountain now, but Rourke was only vaguely aware of them, the sheer force of his movement pushing him toward blackout. In seconds, he would impact against the ceiling and crash.

  The fingers of his right hand edged across the bar to the platform control. It had to be dismounted, aimed. There wasn’t time for any of this, he was telling himself, but not to try was to give up, the abdication of life. His fingers closed over the remote and he wrenched it free, stabbing it outward, punching the control constantly, unable to see if he was having any effect, extending any of the minilaunch platforms used as takeoff and landing pads for the flying rigs. They wouldn’t be everywhere, might only be on the outer wall side.

  He had not experimented with the platforms. Paul had not used one when Paul utilized the flying rig to cross the chasm.

  John Rourke was nearly to the ceiling and nearly unconscious. He kept punching the platform control unit with his right hand and cut all power to the rotors with his left.

  Still spiraling, he started to fall.

  His right hand let go of the remote and his left fist punched against the quick release for the harness which was against his chest.

  And he was free of the flying rig, tumbling, everything around him a blur now, black, edged with unconsciousness and nausea.

  His arms flailed and hands groped.

  The fingers of his left hand touched at synth-concrete. His body slammed against something hard and bounced away from it, no longer spiraling, just dropping. Rourke’s hands clawed at the wall.

  His right hand caught at something and the falling stopped for a fraction of a second.

  He thought he heard Paul’s voice.

  He wasn’t sure.

  His right hand was holding something, like a ledge.

  The blackness was closing around him. John Rourke swung his left arm outward and arced it upward, his left hand catching hold.

  “Damn stupid of me,” Rourke rasped.

  He could barely breathe.

  He looked up, nausea and fear gripping him tighter now, cold and wet on his flesh, because he had the chance to think.

  As Rourke’s eyes focused, he almost laughed. His fingers were locked over the lip of one of the four foot walls; all of his efforts with the remote platform activator were for naught. He looked down. There were platforms open everywhere on both sides of the chasm, but he wasn’t near any of them.

  Rourke looked up again. He was three levels down, and smoke billowed from the two highest levels. There was no sign of Paul.

  Rourke looked at himself, his “liberated” suit in tatters.

  His shoulders ached. He shook his head and spasms of pain shot through it. But the pain brought him back fully to reality.

  And he started climbing upward. As he got his right arm over the wall, then started hauling his body after it, Paul was there. “You almost died!”

&n
bsp; “I know.”

  “That was crazy! And then there you were, hanging onto this wall! Know what happened to your hat? You wouldn’t want to know.”

  John Rourke was over the wall, half-collapsed into his friend’s arms. More explosions. The smell of smoke. Muted screams, the frantic clopping of horses’ hooves. Gunfire and energy bursts from above.

  He looked at Paul. “So? What happened to my hat?”

  “You’re the luckiest man alive. A rotor blade sheered it away when you jerked free of the flying rig. An inch lower and it would have trimmed away the top of your head.”

  “Probably could use a haircut anyway.” And Rourke rose to his full height, leaned against the wall and against Paul. “How much trouble we in?”

  “The police are poorly armed. But the defense forces—or army or whatever—have a lot of firepower. Their tactics look like a Chinese firedrill in the making, but I think Zimmer’s probe got more than it bargained for. Zimmer’s people got into Level One from the tunnel—must be what happened to Spitz’s force. They were brought straight in and we were taken downward by trolley. What passes for the FBI here is on Level One, but near as I can make out military headquarters is several levels down. Anyway, Zimmer’s forces are being driven back. We’re gonna be trapped.”

  Rourke pushed away from the wall. “Take some of this stuff, huh?” and he started dividing his burdens with Paul. “Toward the center of Level Five I saw a kind of spiraling street.”

  “I saw it too, but from Level One.”

  “Fine—ever steal a carriage?”

  Fifty-Seven

  The briefcase discarded, his clothes stuffed into his musette bags, his boots knotted together and slung over his shoulder and his leather jacket on instead of the tattered suitcoat, John Rourke ran along a service alley on Level Three, toward the street out front. Paul Rubenstein ran beside him.

  Rourke’s right hand was bleeding a little still, his skin scraped from the encounter with the wall, but when he had the time he’d use one of the antiseptic/rapid-healing sprays and bandaged it. Now he was running out of time.