Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins Read online

  As long as the battle raged, there was a chance of escape. Once it stopped, they would be trapped in the city.

  The explosions still came, but more distant. Part of that was because they were near the inner core of Level Three, .not at its outer edge. But the explosions were less frequent now, too.

  The city itself was like a living organism, seemed seized with panic. Riot police battled civilians in the

  streets. There were overturned carriages and wagons and some small fires, perhaps from natural gas, perhaps electrical.

  Zimmer’s forces had not penetrated far, but they had disrupted this city’s apparently fragile infrastructure so severely that all the 1950s-style self-control was gone, the panic of upwelling suppressed anxiety replacing it.

  As they reached the street, coming out between a ma and pop style restaurant and a hairdressing salon, Rourke spotted a horse-drawn cab, the driver and two policemen fighting on the curb. One of the policemen tried to jump aboard the cab, but the driver pulled him down, fighting him back onto the sidewalk. Near to the cab were two bicycles.

  “The cops are trying to steal that guy’s cab!”

  Rourke looked at Paul and nodded. “Let’s prevent them from doing that, and take it ourselves. Come on!” And Rourke broke into a dead run down the middle of the street, Paul beside him. Rourke’s HK rifle was in his right fist and he stabbed it toward the men fighting at the curb, shouting, “Everybody back up!”

  Paul covered them as they stepped back, while John Rourke climbed into the driver’s box.

  Rourke let bis rifle fall to his side on its sling, grabbing a pistol from his belt and pointing at the two policemen and the cab driver. “Stay back and you won’t get hurt. Try to stop us and you’ll die. Simple as that.”

  Paul scrambled up into the passenger compartment and Rourke handed off his rifle to his friend. “Use it if you need it, Paul. Keep them covered while I get us out of here.”

  Then Rourke started backing the team—a nice-looking matched pair of bays, looking more like saddle stock than harness animals—and got the cab fully into the street. There was a long-handled whip. Rourke pulled it out of its receptacle in the boot.

  The spiraling roadway at the core was straight ahead. And John Rourke cracked the whip over the animals’ heads and shouted, “Gyaagh!”

  The team lunged forward and the cab was off into the street, Rourke’s body thrown deeper into the box. But he kept his balance, half standing, feet spread wide apart, the reins in his left hand, the whip in his right. He’d driven a farm team once in Indiana and he’d ridden horseback ever since his childhood and considered himself a good horseman, but bis knowledge of wagoneering was limited.

  He didn’t mention that to Paul.

  Across an intersection now, nearly colliding with an overturned produce wagon. Policemen were dismounting their bicycles, opening fire. “Discourage them, Paul!”

  Paul fired a burst from his submachinegun. Then he shouted to John Rourke, “What are we going to do if we get out of here?”

  “Ditch the cab and the team and steal a vehicle from the Nazis, that or an aircraft. They should be in a row out there if we’re lucky. We couldn’t do anything else. We don’t have clothes for the temperatures we’ll encounter. Hang on!” And Rourke slowed the team, took it into a turn and they headed into the spiral at the core.

  It was steep here, well paved, wide, but the turns quick and Rourke kept the team at the best speed he could. He had to save them for when they reached the

  tunnel leading out, because it was then that he would need all the speed they had.

  They reached Level Two, passed it and went on.

  The walls here were decorated with murals depicting the counterfeit warfare between the forces of this city and hordes of evilly drawn black men with savage looks in their eyes, amid them hawk-nosed grey-complected men with leering expressions, driving the black men onward.

  The team was running evenly, not seeming to strain. As Rourke turned them into what he guessed was the final bend, ahead of the cab, half blocking egress from the spiral, he saw men in the environment suits of the military personnel who had captured them at the city entrance. The men were in a pack, not a formation, firing indiscriminately it seemed toward whatever lay beyond. “Stay down, Paul—and be ready!”

  Rourke hauled the reins close against his chest, twisting his body against them, the team turning, arcing right, straight toward the soldiers. Rourke cracked the whip in the air over the horses’ ears and they dashed ahead at top speed.

  The fighting men of the city within the mountain fell away in a wave on both sides. There was some gunfire, the rattle of Paul’s submachinegun part of it, but John Rourke could not divert his attention from the team long enough to look back. He cracked the whip again.

  They were into Level One now, fires burning everywhere, smoke billowing outward from buildings on both sides of the street here. Bodies of men and some horses were strewn about, as though discarded. Rourke cracked the whip again. Men in Nazi uniform, evidently the ones who had been in battle with the men from the city Rourke had just passed, started running from the path of the team. There was more gunfire.

  As Rourke hauled the team round a curve and through an intersection, he nearly lost control, tugging hard on the reins, swerving the team in order to avoid an overturned wagon which was on fire in the middle of the street, half blocking it. The front wheel on the offside hit the curb, rolled over it. The cab nearly overturned.

  They kept going.

  Ahead lay a barricade, intense fighting around it. And John Rourke saw their chance. On the other side of the barricade, perhaps five hundred yards distant along the tunnel opening beyond the barricade were two armored Nazi staff cars. The barricade was the problem, but John Rourke shouted to Paul, “We’re shooting our way through! It’s the only way!”

  “I’m with you, John!”

  John Rourke put the whip into his teeth, drawing one of his ScoreMasters with his right hand, thumbing back the .45’s ring-style hammer. And he thwacked the reins over the horses’ backs, urging them onward toward the barricade.

  Small units were in knots everywhere, exchanging fire, energy pulses and projectile ammunition. Smoke, grey and acrid and foul, obscured everything to Rourke’s right, two buildings on fire there. The team tore forward, Rourke crouched in the box, nearly but not quite seated.

  And they were into it, Rourke relying heavily on the element of surprise. But he had no choice. As men raised weapons toward the cab, Rourke fired toward them, little hope of hitting anything. The horse on the

  right faltered, nearly dragging the other horse down. But, it ran on, a wide bloody crease across its neck. An energy burst impacted the pavement in front of the team and the animal on the left reared, Rourke firing his pistol into the road surface behind the animal’s hind legs, the horse bolting onward. Bullets tore into the box.

  The sounds of Paul’s submachinegun, then Rourke’s HK-91, boomed out behind Rourke. A man—one of the Nazis—ran toward the charging team, about to fire his energy rifle. Rourke emptied the ScoreMaster into the man’s chest.

  The man fell away, the right front wheel of the cab rolling over his body.

  Rourke stabbed the pistol into his trouser band, its slide still locked open. And he grabbed at the whip, cracking it over the ears of the team. “Gyaagh!” They were nearly to the barricade now, a knot of soldiers from the city storming toward the cab, evidently to seize it and the team as their own means of flight. Rourke cracked the whip across the face of one of the men who was jumping for the box, driving him down.

  The whip back in Rourke’s teeth, the reins transferred to his right hand, he grabbed for the still-loaded second Detonics ScoreMaster. He punched its muzzle toward the face of a man grabbing for the reins of the offside horse. Rourke fired, then fired again, killing the man.

  The horses ran wildly now, of their own volition, not from Rourke’s urging he knew, running it seemed to get away from the gun
fire and the energy weapon bursts and the smoke and fumes. More gunfire from the passenger compartment. A man charged toward the team from the front. Rourke could not fire, upping the ScoreMaster*s Safety, stabbing it into his belt. As the animals started to turn their heads, Rourke cracked the whip, driving the horses over the man, trampling him. There was a hideous scream, the cab bouncing wildly as it careened over him.

  A Nazi jumped toward the box on the right side, Rourke lashing at the man with his whip in the same instant that there was a burst from Paul’s submachinegun.

  Rourke cracked the whip over the ears of the froth-soaked team, driving them onward, faster.

  They were past the barricade, into the tunnel.

  There were Nazis here, most of them retreating, some senior noncoms supervising them. But whatever swell of victory was being felt by the defenders here would vanish with the next attack, because this had only been a probe to feel out the city’s defensive capabilities; from the paucity of equipment and personnel on the Nazi side, that was obvious. A knot of Nazi personnel raised their energy weapons almost in unison as Rourke drove the team near them. Rourke shouted, “Paul! On our left!” and put the whip back into his teeth, redrawing the second ScoreMaster. Rourke fired it out toward the men as he heard the heavier cracking of the HK-91 from behind him. Two of the Nazis were down, the others breaking and running.

  Rourke belted the empty pistol, and as he looked forward grabbing at his whip, there was a blur of motion at the far right edge of his peripheral vision. A man in Nazi uniform, his bulk tremendous, sprawling over John Rourke and knocking Rourke back into the box’s seat. The whip fell from Rourke’s teeth as the

  wind was knocked out of him by sheer force. A ham-sized fist hammered toward Rourke’s face, Rourke blocking it with his left forearm, his arm numbing for an instant from the impact. Rourke’s right knee smashed upward, impacting flesh. There was a groan, the smell of hot breath, the Nazi’s body slumping back.

  Rourke threw his body toward the man, both of them on their knees, hammering at each other as they tried to stand. Rourke’s right fist pistoned forward, once, twice, a third time, hammering at the man’s abdomen. The Nazi noncom’s right crossed Rourke’s jaw, snapping Rourke’s head back. Rourke stumbled, reached out, catching a handful of the man’s uniform with his left. As Rourke threw his weight forward, he freed his fingers from the uniform, bunched his hand into a fist and short-armed the man with a left across the nose, smashing it. Rourke’s right came up, catching the Nazi just under the tip of the chin. Rourke backhanded his left across the man’s mouth, knocking him out of the box, between the team and the cab itself. The cab lurched as it rolled over the Nazi noncom’s body.

  Standing full upright in the box, Rourke cracked the reins over the animals’ backs, shouting, “Come on! Come on! Faster!”

  One of the armored staff cars Rourke had spotted was already in motion, escaping the tunnel to join a flow of vehicles well ahead of it. Rourke urged the animals onward, a spray of sweat from them like mist on the air. The armored staff car was picking up speed. Paul had read the intelligence data on these vehicles. Their gear ratio gave them horribly slow pickup, but they could top out over one hundred miles per hour on smooth, level surfaces. “Paul—jump for it! Be ready! Gyaagh horses! Gyaagh!” They were nearly even with the staff car, but in seconds its engine would outpace the team.

  Rourke edged the cab closer. The staff car’s turret hatch opened on top, a man with an energy rifle sticking up through it, about to fire. “Look out, John!” Paul shouted, firing a long burst from his Schmiesser. The Nazi’s body snapped back, the energy rifle still in his hands, firing upward into the tunnel ceiling. In the distance, Rourke could see the interior boundaries of the airfield taxi zone, some from the number of this eclectic collection burning or already gutted to blackened ribs.

  The team was running even with the armored car. Rourke glanced back and saw Paul jump. Paul caught hold of a grab handle, his feet dragging for an instant. Another man appeared at the turret hatch, a pistol in hand. As the man aimed his pistol toward Paul Rubenstein, John Rourke’s left hand darted under his battered old brown bomber jacket, to the Detonics minigun under his right armpit. Rourke tore the little stainless steel .45 from the leather, thumbing back the hammer as he drew, then firing cross body toward the Nazi in the turret. Rourke’s bullet struck the man in the face and he fell, rolling over the hood of the staff car and down to the tunnel floor. Paul pulled himself up, aboard at last.

  Rourke safed the little Detonics and shoved it into his left front trouser pocket, then gave the reins one final crack, hauling right on them. Rourke balanced himself on the edge of the box and the seat, then threw down the reins and jumped. He missed his mark,

  landing hard, sprawling over the armored staff car’s hood. His hands grasped at the barrel protruding from the gun turret above him. He clung there, the hood surface steeply angled, hard for his feet to find purchase there.

  Paul was up by the hatch, firing downward.

  Rourke hauled his body up, clambering over the gun barrel and onto the turret, beside his friend at last.

  Rourke reached to the small of his back, grabbing for the old Metalifed Colt Lawman .357. It was the perfect gun under the circumstances, short-barreled against a close quarters scuffle, and powerful, loaded with 158-grain semijacketed soft points. Paul fired a last burst downward, nodded, shouted, “Ready!”

  “Cover our backs!” And John Rourke grabbed to the turret ladder and vaulted through into the hatchway the revolver in his right fist, his left hand clinging to the rung of the ladder.

  A half-dozen dead bodies littered the interior of the armored staff car, some of them officers.

  A man, bleeding badly, sat at the automobile-like controls of the machine. He twisted round and began raising a pistol.

  Rourke shouted in German, “Do not make me shoot!”

  But the man punched his pistol forward, toward Rourke’s chest.

  Rourke fired first, double actioning the .357 only once, slamming the driver’s body back against the control panel.

  On the video monitor by which the man steered, Rourke saw the burning wreckage of one of the aircraft coming up fast—too fast. Rourke stabbed the stubby .357 into his hip pocket as he threw himself forward, then wrestled the dead man away from the steering controls. The armored staff car was nearly into the flames.

  Rourke cut the yoke hard left as he shouted to Paul, “Hold on tight, Paul! Hold on!” The armored staff car veered suddenly left, away from the burning aircraft, into the tunnel roadway.

  Rourke dropped into the driver’s seat and stomped the accelerator control pedal, the armored staff car picking up speed.

  From behind him, he heard Paul Rubenstein asking, “And now? Zimmer’s headquarters after we find an aircraft?”

  There was the sound of the hatch closing as Rourke turned the staff car into the flow of traffic, minitanks, more staff cars, a few trucks. There was comforting anonymity here. On the indicator panel in front of Rourke, the hatch’s sealing was confirmed and the environmental system automatically kicked in, a rush of pleasantly warm air surrounding Rourke.

  Ahead lay the mouth of the tunnel, Nazi vehicles and foot soldiers funneling through it. It would be easy to continue to mingle with them, avoid detection—except for serial markings, all the staff cars looked alike. Already, Rourke was slowing down, letting the staff car drift to the rear of the force. He would break off at the first opportunity after they were outside.

  John Rourke was thinking aloud. “We’ll have to get in touch with the SEAL Team that’s shepherding Natalia and Annie near Zimmer’s headquarters, have them get the women and Michael out of there.”

  “But what about Sarah?And Wolfgang Mann? We’ll

  have to go in after them; Zimmer might kill them for spite.”

  Rourke nodded his agreement. “With that SEAL Team helping us, and assuming Zimmer’s down to a significantly reduced garrison at his headquarters, it sho
uldn’t be too bad. And after we get Sarah and Wolf out, then we destroy the place if we have to, or hold it as a staging area against Eden.” Soon, Eden and its Nazi allies would attack. With any luck Eden City’s bio-warfare facility was already destroyed, perhaps setting back the timetable for the attack on Hawaii—Hawaii and the United States forces assembled there, the true linchpin of the Trans-Global Alliance.

  It was war again. John Rourke put one of his cigars between his teeth, but he didn’t light it. “And then we come back here, Paul, to stop Zimmer before he makes himself invincible and we’ll never be able to stop him at all.”