Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Read online

  Aldridge and Stanhope appeared on the bridge now, a Russian officer between them, his hands bound. The uniform was familiar to John Rourke, the black uniform of the KGB Elite Corps.

  Sam Aldridge was dressed in some of his scuba gear— it looked fascinating and Rourke was determined to try it if he could—and Tom Stanhope was outfitted as a Soviet Naval officer.

  Darkwood smiled at the Russian. “Ahh, Captain Serovski—so happy you could join us. I had such fun the last time you joined us on the bridge.” Darkwood massaged his rib cage where an hour ago Doctor Barrow, the Reagan’s Medical Officer, had sterilized and bandaged it.

  “You will all die.”

  “Ahh—then Captain Aldridge and Lieutenant Stanhope have been filling you in, I see.”

  John Rourke studied Serovski for a moment, and Serovski turned his eyes toward him. “You!”

  John Rourke smiled. “Captain—you know my fondness for your organization. And you doubtlessly know how I would have felt had you succeeded in turning over Major Tiemerovna to Marshal Karamatsov so he could torture her and execute her. I’d suggest you consider something. The one thing that is keeping you alive is the fact that we need your assistance with our operation. We could get along without you, but with you present it will make things a little more believable. Major Tiemerovna and I will both be posing as prisoners. We will both be heavily armed. Commander Darkwood, Lieutenant Stanhope, and some others from Captain Aldridge’s Marines will be posing as officers and men of this vessel, assisting you in delivering us to Karamatsov. Captain Aldridge and the rest of his Marines will come up behind Karamatsov’s position after exiting this vessel and swimming in. By the time we surface, they’ll be in position. I’m not so naive as to assume that this will all go like clockwork and Karamatsov’s fate is already sealed, but I’d say we have a good chance. You do exactly as you’re told and you’ll get out of this alive—we can send you back to Karamatsov’s army or drop you anyplace else. That’s immaterial. You cooperate and you have my word on your freedom and good health. Don’t cooperate, and I’ll personally break your damned neck. Is that clear?”

  Serovski nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then here’s how we do it. You will be completely uniformed and have your pistol at your side with a magazine in place. The magazine will be empty, as will the magazines on your belt. We’ve already taken care of that. You will do as you normally would—take us right up to your Hero Marshal. When Natalia or I shove you aside, hit the dirt and take cover and just worry about

  staying alive. We’ll do the rest. Play it straight and you’ll have the same chances of getting out of this alive that we have.”

  “The Hero Marshal will have many men there—and helicopters. You will not have a chance.”

  Darkwood said, “But we’ll have the Reagan offshore, and our deck guns can hit with pinpoint accuracy. The helicopters won’t be a factor—although I confess I’d rather take a ride in one than blow one up. I’ve only seen pictures of them. Doctor Rourke’s word will be binding on us all. If you do your part, no matter how this turns out, you’ll be free. We want Karamatsov, not you. No offense.”

  Aldridge looked at his wristwatch. “I’ve gotta go— Captain.”

  “Good luck, Sam,” and Aldridge left the bridge.

  “Mr. Stanhope—leave our friend Captain Serovski here on the bridge while you coordinate with the rest of our party. Meet you by the main hatch.”

  “Will he be okay here, sir?”

  John Rourke looked at Stanhope, then at Serovski. “Trust me—he’ll be just fine.”

  “Be about your business, Mr. Stanhope.”

  “Yes, sir,” and Stanhope did a neat about face and left the bridge as well.

  “Sit down, Captain Serovski. Just make yourself comfortable. Right there by the warfare station. And if you touch anything, Major Tiemerovna has my authorization to cut off your hand. And IH even loan her the knife.”

  John Rourke smiled and reached to his side where the Crain Life Support System X was sheathed. He unsheathed it and handed the knife to Natalia. “She can use mine,” he said… .

  Paul Rubenstein had linked up with Otto Hammerschmidt and the others without considerable difficulty, quickly learned that Han had taken the trucks loaded

  with the freed internees of the camp and gone for help but hadn’t heard from since, then continued on with Hammerschmidt toward a position in some high rocks seventy-five yards to the rear of the Soviet lines.

  Paul had been amazed that Karamatsov had sent an entirely female force against the hilltop, amazed and also sobered. It meant that Karamatsov was willing to explode the gas if he had to in order to prevent anyone else from having it, ready to risk his entire army if the wind were blowing in the wrong direction.

  Hammerschmidt, beside him, gave the order. “Open fire!”

  Paul Rubenstein brought the metal stock of the MP-40 to his right shoulder, concentrating the submachine gun’s firepower toward the nearest mortar emplacement. One of the Chinese, Lieutenant Liu, was operating a multi-barreled grenade launcher with devastating effectiveness.

  Hammerschmidt shouted, “That machine-gun emplacement—attack!” And he was up, running, Paul clambering over the rocks, running beside him. The Soviet forces were starting to respond, small-arms fire plowing into the rocks and ground and sparse snow around them as Paul Rubenstein and Hammerschmidt ran, Hammerschmidt grabbing a grenade from his belt, hurtling it toward the machine-gun emplacement.

  “I thought you wanted the gun!” Paul shouted to him over the noise of the gunfire.”

  “I do—I never pulled the pin on the grenade! Look I”

  The machine-gun crew was running from the entrenched position, Paul opening up with the Schmeisser, Hammerschmidt’s assault rifle thundering beside him.

  Paul reached the machine-gun emplacement first, Hammerschmidt snatching up the grenade as he dove in beside him. Hammerschmidt pulled the pin and hurled the grenade toward the fleeing machine-gun crew.

  “I know.” Paul Rubenstein laughed as he swung the gun on its mounts. “Waste not, want not!” He averted his eyes as the grenade blew, dirt raining down near

  them. And then he touched his finger to the trigger of the machine gun and opened fire… .

  They had heard the noise roughly thirty minutes after overpowering the two-man team with the Soviet half-track truck and subsequently stealing it. Michael Rourke drove, Lieutenant St. James beside him in the cab, some of her Marines clinging to the truck cab on each side riding the running boards, the rest in the truck bed, the tarp pulled away for clear fields of fire when they reached the sounds of the battle.

  The ground rose and fell sharply all around them as he drove, high ridges, shallow, dish-shaped valleys, steeply rising hills splotched here and there with snow. He kept to the low ground for the sake of the vehicle, pushing it, the half-track bouncing and jostling over the ground, vibrating maddeningly with each pothole or large rock. But the battle sounds were getting louder. His sister. Paul. Maria. They needed him… .

  Annie Rourke credited the Soviet commander, Svetlana Grubaszikova, with tremendous courage or abysmal insanity. With Otto’s small force behind her, she had ordered a charge up the hill. She was coming, running at the head of her troops, the bullets from their assault rifles like a swarm of insects in the air as Annie crouched in her position, waiting her chance, the M-16 tight in her fists.

  She looked back once—Maria Leuden was shouting to her but Annie couldn’t hear her. She waved back to Maria, then tucked down again, waiting.

  There was a crack between the rocks behind which she crouched, and she could see Grubaszikova intermittently through it as the Russian woman led her troops. “Come on, lady—just a little more,” Annie cooed to her. “Come on—you can do it. Another fifty yards. Come on!”

  Annie lost sight of Grubaszikova. But then … “Twenty-five more yards, lady—come on!”

  Grubaszikova was running at the head of a dozen females in Elite Corps battle-d
ress utilities, the army troopers behind them. She looked to be turning around, saying something to one of them as she ran. And now six of them broke off at a tangent to the right, Grubaszikova leading the other six left.

  “Close enough,” Annie whispered.

  She moved the safety tumbler to semi and pushed up to her knees, just as she had rehearsed it, resting the rifle, its front handguard wrapped in a section of blanket to make for a more effective contact against the hard surface of the rocks. She cheeked the rifle, seeing Grubaszikova over her sights, then seeing her across them.

  “Good-bye,” Annie Rourke whispered, exhaling, holding the rest of her breath, starting the trigger squeeze, Grubaszikova coming right for her at an angle. The M-16 rocked, the tinny sound of its springs audible to her right ear, Grubaszikova’s run swerving, her legs starting to buckle, her right arm snapping out and her rifle sailing from her hands, staggering now, twisting once, and falling backward.

  Annie Rubenstein tucked down, gunfire hammering into the rocks around her.

  Grubaszikova was dead, and now was the time if ever there would be a time. “Maria! Let’s go!” She looked back, Maria waving back at her, up, running, a half-dozen Chinese soldiers formed around her. And as they neared the rocks, Annie was up, running beside them, her M-16 set to full auto as they started down the hillside, Rolvaag and his dog bringing up the rear, her two huge warriors bounding gracefully over the rocks.

  Paul Rubenstein had taken the machine gun from its mounts. He’d seen guys do it plenty of times in movies five centuries ago and it didn’t look that tough then.

  “This is a heavy sucker!” he shouted to Hammerschmidt, beside the German commando captain, closing now with the forces still at the base of the hill, the enemy mortar emplacements useless against this attack from their rear, but the enemy numbers still too high.

  They threw themselves down behind one of the Russian trucks, Paul rolling from behind it and balancing the machine gun enough that he could fire from beneath the undercarriage.

  The pattern of the gunfire changed and he shouted to Hammerschmidt over the din. “To the left there— what’s—”

  “A single Russian truck—but there are people firing from the truck bed. I don’t recognize their uniforms, but they are firing at the Russian forces, it looks like.”

  Paul Rubenstein had to see.

  He rolled back from beneath the undercarriage, his bare flesh brushing lightly against the barrel of the machine gun, scorching from its heat. To his knees now. He hauled the Russian binoculars to his eyes.

  He recognized the uniforms. But he didn’t believe his

  yes. “They’re—either I’m crazy and blind too or—shit—

  they’re U.S. Marines!” He grabbed up the machine gun,

  Hammerschmidt beside him, and started running up the

  hill____

  Michael Rourke geared down, taking the truck past the left flank of the Russian force along the steeply inclined hillside, gunfire from the truck bed behind him almost deafening him, Lieutenant Lillie St. James beside him firing through the open window into the Russians. And they were all women, he realized. “The gas,” he snarled, stomping the accelerator pedal even harder… .

  Annie Rubenstein closed with one of the Elite Corps women, both their rifles out, the woman inverting her

  rifle like a club and charging for her. Annie stepped back and let the M-16 fall to her side on its sling, drawing the Scoremaster from her right hip. She had holstered it cocked and locked, and she thumbed down the safety and fired as the weapon came on line, the .45 bucking in her fist as the Russian woman’s body impacted her, both of them falling, rolling, Annie on top, stabbing the .45 upward as the woman’s hands went for her throat. Annie fired, the muzzle inches away from the Russian woman’s attractive face. And Annie averted her eyes and felt the wet stickiness as the bullet did its work.

  She fell back, her hand shaking, covered with blood and gore. And as she looked up, she saw the truck coming. To her knees, both fists on the butt of the Scoremaster, the muzzle aimed for the truck cab.

  As she started to fire, she caught a momentary flash of the driver’s face. “Michael?” It couldn’t be Michael. She licked her lips. The men from the truck bed were vaulting off now, closing with the Soviet forces hand to hand, the truck stopping. If it were Michael—

  Overhead—she heard the sounds of gunships and her heart sank. Coming from the coast. Karamatsov was finally committing gunships.

  She got to her feet and looked back toward the truck.

  Michael was clambering across its hood and diving into a half dozen of the female troopers. Annie ran toward him, shouting, “Michael! Michael!” As she ran, she saw the uniforms of the men from the truck—and two of them weren’t even men. The uniforms were camouflage fatigues and emblazoned in olive drab on their chests were—“Marines,” she gasped.

  Michael was to his feet, a rifle butt smashing upward in his hands and impacting the jaw of one of the Russian women. And he was swinging the rifle now like some sort of club, beating the Russians down. There was a Marine beside him—and as the Marine dodged, the helmet fell off and blonde hair cascaded out of it. A woman.

  Annie was beside them in the next instant, a pistol in

  each hand, firing point blank into the Russians.

  The gunships—she heard them again. She looked up— they were coming in low now, and she knew what they would do. “Michael! Soviet gunships!”

  Michael butt-stroked one of the Russians and in a single stride was beside her. “You all right?” He pushed her back toward the truck.

  “Yeah—what the—who are these people.”

  “The Marines have landed, Annie.”

  “The Soviet gunships are coming—look!”

  Michael looked where she pointed and swore. “Shit!” He looked to right and left, then shouted, “Lieutenant St. James! Soviet gunships coming off the horizon!”

  Annie was ramming a fresh magazine into her M-16.

  “Where’s Paul?”

  “He went after you.”

  “No—damnit!”

  “You swear too much,” she advised good-naturedly, not telling him about her conversation with the female Soviet officer earlier.

  “He can’t have come after me! Where’s Maria?”

  “Out there—fighting.”

  Michael’s hands were on her waist and he was picking her up and she was being stuffed into the truck cab. She shrugged and slid across the seat and rested the M-16 against the frame of the open driver’s side window and took aim on the lead gunship… .

  It was Maria Leuden, locked in hand-to-hand combat with a Soviet soldier, and Paul Rubenstein changed direction and ran for her. The machine gun was long since emptied and he had switched back to his Schmeisser, the submachine gun in his right fist, the battered Browning High Power in his left.

  As the Russian woman was driving down with her fighting knife, Paul thrust the submachine gun toward her and fired, Maria Leuden screaming, falling to her

  knees. He safed the Browning and stuffed it into his belt. “Otto! Over here!”

  “Paul,” she shouted up at him.

  With his left hand, Paul Rubenstein hauled her up from her knees and pulled her against him. “You all right?”

  “Yes—where’s Michael?”

  “A long story—not a good one. Where’s Annie?” “She was heading toward that truck.” “We are too—come on—” “My rifle—”

  “Leave it,” he ordered, half-dragging her now as he ran.

  She was screaming at him as Hammerschmidt closed with them. “Where’s Michael? Answer me!”

  He started to tell her and he stopped, almost losing his balance. He felt his face seaming with a smile. “Right here! I don’t know how. But—come on!” And he ran now, Maria and Otto running beside him, toward the truck.

  “Paul! Thank God you’re alive!”

  As Paul Rubenstein looked past Michael Rouke, he almost said, “Not for long.” So
viet gunships. He heard a woman’s voice, in English, shouting orders and it wasn’t his wife. He looked to the sound. A blonde-haired girl, pretty—she was forming up the Marines.

  Paul reached the truck. “Where’s Annie?”

  “In the cab—there—”

  And Paul released Maria Leuden’s hand, a blur of her rushing into Michael’s arms as Paul clambered up into the truck cab, Annie wheeling toward him, crouched on the seat on her knees, then turning around, coming into his arms. “Paul!” she screeched, hugging him tight around the neck.

  “Gunships coming in—look out,” he told her, pushing her down, machine-gun fire ripping across the hood of the truck, the windshield shattering under the impacts, his body covering hers as the glass or whatever the

  Soviets used these days sprayed over them. He let go of her and stabbed the Schmeisser through the shot-out window, firing the submachine gun toward the nearest of the gunships. “Down here!”

  It was Michael’s voice, and Paul grabbed Annie by the hand and dragged her across the seat and out of the cab, then pulled her under the truck with him, Michael, Maria Leuden, Otto, and the woman Marine and some of her troopers already there.

  “They got us good—shit,” Paul snarled.

  “Wait a minute,” Annie said. “Hold on a second.”

  He looked at his wife. “What?”

  “I hear something.”

  “You hear the enemy, lady,” the woman Marine officer said. “No—wait—”

  “I hear it too,” Hammerschmidt shouted.

  “They wouldn’t start the bombardment for another five minutes at least,” the blonde-haired Marine lieutenant said.

  “What bombardment?” Annie snapped.

  “They’re timing a Naval bombardment of Marshal Karamatsov’s base camp with Doctor Rourke’s and Major Tiemerovna’s attempt to capture the marshal—”