Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (18 page)

If that advantage were to be neutralized, right being on the side of the Allied cause or not, the Germans stood an excellent chance of being defeated.

And Darkwood’s only possibility of being able to reverse that potential for disaster was a hatch opening about six feet wide, some fifty yards away.

He waited… .

the elements of his chest pack to reassess his position based on the heads-up display within his helmet visor. A mile or a litde better from at least one of the Island Classers, which one being another question entirely.

So, again, John Rourke took up his injured comrade. He shook his head as a siHy thought crossed his mind. He remembered the pop song of the 1960s. If only the German had been his brother, at least according to the song’s lyrics, he wouldn’t have been heavy.

Using wings and flippers only, John Rourke swam on.

At the height of the abyss, John Rourke lay down his burden—the German commando—and once again worked with

Annie rested comfortably. Natalia at last left her side, telling herself that John had to be alive, that the peaceful, almost joyous look on Annie’s face in repose meant just that.

In the restroom facility, she brushed as much of the dust from her hair as she could, waited for an empty stall—it seemed like half the women there had to use the bathroom at the same time—and did what was necessary. She rezipped her jumpsuit, took her gunbelt and shoulder holster from the hook on the inside of the door, and redonned them. She left the stall, returned to the mirror, ran a brush through her hair again for good measure, then took one of the black silk bandannas from her purse. She tied it over her head, knotting it under her hair at the nape of the neck.

“Babushka,” she smiled, taking a last look at herself in the mirror, then walking out.

Annie would have been a valuable ally in this, but she would be sedated for another several hours.

The bombardment had stopped, which meant one of three possibilities was the likely scenario. Either John’s commando force had succeeded, the city had already fallen, or the bombardment had merely been suspended to allow elements of the Soviet land force to attack.

In either of the last two scenarios, being trapped in this underground vault meant certain death or capture. But, outside of it, there were possibilities. One determined person could make a difference with the necessary skills to back up that determination. Other persons could be found, resistance offered.

In any event, here she was useless.

She walked past Sarah and Maria, the former mouthing a silent “Good luck” and the latter smiling. Annie rested between them on an inflatable mattress.

Some of the other women in safe storage here looked at her oddly as she moved past them, some whispering, some smiling, some casting looks of disapproval.

Many women considered it unfeminine to go about in sturdy high boots and black batde dress and openly quite heavily armed. But Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had never considered doing the right thing unfeminine. Let them watch her, let them remark that she was being a fool or forgetting her place—whatever that was—or anything they liked.

Natalia approached two of the female German officers standing off some distance from the female enlisted guards in the vauldike doorway that sealed the Leader Bunker in which they waited.

As she approached the officers—both lieutenants—they came to attention, the evident senior of the two addressing her as “Fraulein Major!”

“Lieutenant, I wish to leave the Leader Bunker to go to aid in the fighting in the city above us.”

The woman looked nonplussed. “But, Fraulein Major, it is impossible to—”

Natalia shrugged her shoulders, her right palm opening, a click-click-click sound and the Bali-Song exposed, the tip of the Wee-Hawk blade at the woman’s throat. “Have the door opened now, and I wish an assault rifle and twelve loaded magazines. After I have passed through, you will secure the entry, allowing no one to pass in or out except as relates to your existing orders. Any attempt to stop me and you”— Natalia looked the woman straight in her startled cornflower-blue eyes—“die. If you know my reputation, then you know I do not indulge in idle threats, Lieutenant.”

“But-” Natalia let the point of the Bali-Song touch the skin of the woman’s throat, not enough to puncture, but just enough to be felt. “Yes, Fraulein Major!”

“You,” Natalia told one of the door guards, “hurry with the assault rifle!”

Inside the elevator, she checked the assault rifle, the action smooth enough and the firing pin in place, everything as it should be. Periodically, squatted on the floor as she inspected the rifle, she looked at the female German officer whom she had brought along as elevator operator, insurance against getting the power cut off from below, stranding her.

Natalia had the woman on her knees in the opposite corner, hands behind her head, face into the corner, like some bad child being punished in school.

“Fraulein Major?”

“Do not talk, Lieutenant. This is a short enough ride, and then you can resume your duties.”

“But, you cannot—I would like to fight as well, but there are orders, Fraulein Major.”

“I am not in your army, Lieutenant. And there are imperatives higher than any orders.” Natalia was satisfied that the rifle was acceptable to her needs. She inserted a forty-round magazine up the well, a second forty-round magazine of caseless ammunition clipped to the first. As Natalia started to her feet, the German officer wheeled and threw herself across the elevator cabin, tackling her. Natalia’s body slammed against the wall, her breath lost for a second. The German lieutenant’s right knee smashed upward as her left hand slapped outward. Natalia pivoted slighdy right, taking the knee smash in the fleshy portion of her left hip. But the slap caught her, and Natalia’s head snapped back with its force.

The German’s right fist punched into her abdomen, Natalia starting to double over with it but bringing her right hand from above her head downward quickly, backhanding the woman across the right cheek with her knuckles.

As Natalia sank to her knees, the German lieutenant fell back.

But the German woman was quick. She pushed away from the wall, throwing herself toward Natalia.

Natalia let herself fall the rest of the way forward and left, rolling, her left foot snapping out as she took her weight on her right hip, her foot catching the German officer in the rib cage just under the right breast.

The German sucked in her breath in something like a scream, but not loud enough. She was up again as Natalia rolled to her feet and she charged, both hands going for Natalia’s throat and face, her nails like claws.

The principal reason why many women did not adapt well to hand-to-hand combat was that so many of them fought instinctively like women—scratch and claw and gouge and tear and twist and pinch.

Natalia did not fight that way, although she could when the situation called for it.

She wheeled right into a three hundred sixty degree pirouettelike turn on her left foot, her right back-kicking at the German. But the German was quicker than Natalia judged her to be, and Natalia’s foot caught the woman on the right shoulder instead of the right side of the head as the woman dodged back. But there was not sufficient force in the kick to break her collarbone or dislocate her shoulder, because Natalia had no desire to kill an ally who was just trying to do her duty as she saw it.

The woman rocked back.

Natalia feigned another flying kick as the woman charged again, but she halted in mid move, letting the German officer dodge the kick. As the lieutenant moved to block the kick that wasn’t coming, Natalia’s balled left fist hooked upward and right, catching her on the right side of the jaw and knocking her down. Natalia threw herself onto the woman, the heel of her right hand impacting the German officer just below the left ear, knocking her out.

“Sorry,” Natalia almost whispered, looking up from the floor to the elevator level indicator. Nearly there. Natalia got

to her feet, retying the bandanna, which had fallen round her neck, under her hair. She grabbed up the assault rifle, the magazine carrier, and her black bag, then racked the bolt of the rifle.

The elevator stopped.

The doors opened.

Natalia ran, twisting the key for the level of the Leader Bunker, slipping between the doors an instant before they thwacked shut.

She was in the sub-basement of the National Defense Headquarters.

And she stopped.

Around her, there was nothing but silence.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna let her rifle fall to her side on its sling, took her black gloves from her bag—the knuckles of her left fist hurt a litde-and pulled them on.

She eschewed any more elevators, running for the stairs.

The swimmers were returning to the airlock hatch.

With hand and arm movements, Jason Darkwood signaled the others to be ready. Michael Rourke, Paul Rubenstein, and Sam Aldridge crouched beside him.

Darkwood tapped Sam Aldridge and Michael Rourke on the shoulder and at the far right edge of his peripheral vision he saw young Rourke pass the signal on to Paul Rubenstein. Then the four of them were moving, fanning out from cover, swimming as fast as they could toward the airlock, the divers—except for the security personnel — already entering, most having nearly disappeared inside.

In Darkwood’s right hand he held the identical duplicate of the Randall Smithsonian Bowie his ancestor Nathaniel Darkwood had brought with him to Mid-Wake five centuries ago. He glanced at Aldridge first, then at young Rourke, then at Rubenstein. Aldridge carried his copy of the Ka-Bar United States Marine Corps Knife, Rourke the Crain Life Support System I made for him at Lydveldid Island by a swordmaker known as Old Jon, after the design of the Crain knife from five centuries ago. Rubenstein’s knife was the only genuine antique, a five-century-old spear-pointed Gerber Mk II fighting knife, a design conceived during the Vietnam War.

They moved on the shark-gun-armed security team.

There were seven of them, and the two nearest Darkwood, Rourke, Rubenstein, and Aldridge turned suddenly, as if somehow—even though it was impossible—they had heard something. As one of the Soviet security team personnel raised his shark gun to fire, Paul Rubenstein’s body slammed against him. Sea Wings cocooned around Rubenstein’s body, his knife powering forward into the Soviet Marine Spetznas’s

throat. The water around them was clouded dark with blood.

Darkwood was nearest the second of the two already-alerted men, his left arm moving to block the shark gun, his right arm pistoning into the Soviet’s chest.

As Darkwood drew out the knife, Aldridge was already locked in combat with two of the Marine Spetznas, Michael Rourke finishing another of them with a swipe of his fighting knife across the man’s throat. Darkwood moved toward the hatchway, the airlock door closing as the remaining two Marine Spetznas guards moved to seal it.

Darkwood raked his knife across the lower back of one of them, hoping to catch the spine, a cloud of blood obscuring his vision. The second of the two men stroked upward with the butt of his gun, Darkwood twisting away from it, losing his balance, rolling over and right.

As the Marine Spetznas turned his gun around to fire, Darkwood let the Randall fall from his right hand and made ready to draw the Sty-20 from his hip, knowing the man wouldn’t make it.

The security man’s body seemed to freeze, and then his arms snapped away from his~body.

As the body floated forward, Jason Darkwood saw a tall figure, Sea Wings cocooned around his shoulders, a gleaming knife with an impossibly long blade in his right hand, a smaller cloud of blood than that from the dead Marine Spetznas floating around the knife’s blade.

It was Dr. Rourke.

John Rourke rolled left through the water, flexing his shoulders to use the Sea Wings for balance, drawing them tight around him as, hands and flippers, he propelled himself toward the hatchway.

A gloved hand was reaching over the lip of the hatch, pushing it downward to close, and John Rourke hacked upward and outward with the LS-X, chopping the hand off.

Reflexively, regardless of the protection provided by his helmet and visor, Rourke averted his eyes from the blood spray. His left hand reached down to twist free the shark gun still in the grip of one of the dead Marine Spetznas personnel as his right hand sheathed the knife. Rourke fired the shark gun up through the hatchway, hoping to find a target, then rammed the gun between the hatch and the flange, wedging it there as he pushed himself through and came up into the spout rising out of the center of the open hatch. Grab rings above him, Rourke reached up for them. A Marine Spetznas lunged toward him with an issue Soviet knife, Rourke’s hands clinging to the rings as he pulled himself up and swung, both feet impacting the man in the chest, knocking him reeling away.

Rourke was out of the spout, and he jumped clear of the hatch. As the Marine Spetznas brought up his knife, Rourke kicked him in the head, knocking the man senseless against the bulkhead.

Two Marine Spetznas in full diving gear raised shark guns to fire, Rourke drawing his knife with his left hand, hacking outward with it in a long arc, severing the brachial artery of one of the men. Already, Rourke’s right hand moved to free the Sty-20 from the holster along his right thigh, the holster’s release system complicated and slow. The other Marine Spetznas fired and Rourke dodged right.

The shark spear ricocheted off the flange. Rourke’s right hand had the Sty-20 from its holster at last, and he stabbed the dart gun upward and right, firing, impaling the Marine Spetznas with a dart into the abdomen just beneath the sternum. Rourke fired again, hitting the man in the throat.

Two more Marine Spetznas jumped from the secondary hatchway above, Rourke backstepping, firing the Sty-20 three times into the right cheek of the helmedess man nearest him. The second of them body-slammed against John Rourke, the Sty-20 falling from Rourke’s grasp and clattering to the floor. As Rourke and the Marine Spetznas impacted the bulkhead, Rourke’s right knee smashed up, his left fist—still holding the knife — crashing across the man’s jaw, the butt of the knife like a yarawa stick or a roll of quarters from five centuries ago.