Rozhdestvenskiy turned to his own pilot, tapping the man on the arm, then jerking his thumb downward.
The pilot nodded, then started the machine ahead and down.
Rozhdestvenskiy's mouth was dry, his palms sweating.
He snapped up the collar of his windbreaker, checking
I
the AKM across his lap.
He had never been in mass combat before.
The helicopter gunship was hovering, then dropping, gliding forward slightly and stopping.
He felt the lurch, felt the impact; then he released the restraint harness, throwing open the side door and stepping out near a squad of the commandos already on the ground, his own personal KGB team surrounding him.
'We enter the factory. Follow me!' He started to run, remembering as he ran to raise the rifle into an assault position.
The gates of the factory complex were locked with a chain, a massive padlock securing them.
'Stand back.' He raised the assault rifle, firing into the lock. The sound of the jacketed slugs tearing into the metal of the lock was deafening, but the lock seemed to have been broken.
He reached for it, feeling the heat of the metal despite the gloves he wore, wrenching it open, then twisting it free of the chain.
'Get the gates opened—now!'
The chain-link twelve-foot gates swung inward, and Rozhdestvenbkiy stepped into the service drive of Morris Industries—a giant step, he felt, in history.
He started to run, shouting again, 'Follow me!' Above him, there was a spectacular burst, a skyrocket of blue and red and gold in a starburst, massive, exquisite.
He continued running, reaching a set of double doors. They would be locked. He raised the assault rifle again, firing into the locking mechanism. A burglar alarm sounded.
'Idiots,' he shouted, then reached the doors, twisting
on the outside handle, wrenching the door open outward. He stepped into the factory complex, his men surrounding him. The building was in reality a series of interconnecting buildings.
'The loading docks,' he shouted, then started running. It the materials he sought would he anywhere, they would be by the loading docks. There would be time then to search out precisely where they were manufactured. Gray light shafted through wire mesh-reinforced glass windowpanes as he ran the length of the first building; and occasionally through one of the windows as he looked out, he could see fireworks in the sky—more rockets, more starbursts. Were the people here insane?
He reached the end of a long corridor, already breathless from the running. Glancing to right and then to left, he looked right again.
'There—hurry.' For some reason, some reason he couldn't understand, he felt the need to hurry that much greater each time one of the skyrockets would explode. He felt—he couldn't define it.
Ahead of him he saw massive garage doors of corrugated metal, and between the doors and the corridor through which he ran, he could see crates—coffin-shaped and roughly the same size. He stopped running, leaning heavily against the wall, his breath coming in short gasps.
'Victory,' he shouted. 'The final victory over the Americans!' Suddenly the glass from the wire-meshed corridor windows shattered over his head, shards of it falling on and around him.
He stepped away from the wall, looking through the corridor windows into the dawning sky—a huge starburst, the largest firework he had ever seen—pale colors against a pale sky. And the concrete beneath him began to
tremble, the walls to shake, dust and infinitesimally small chunks of debris drifting down.
'My God!' Where had he learned that? he thought. 'They're blowing it up!'
He started to run, the crates— the precious crates—behind him. Survival was more immediate now as the cross supports began crumbling and a three-foot section of concrete killed the commando beside him—just beside him.
Squads of assault rifle-armed Soviet infantrymen were pouring through the streets.
'Damn it,' Rourke rasped, both of the twin Detonics stainless .s in his fists. Suddenly, the ground beneath him began to rumble, to shake.
He glanced at the black luminous face of the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist, then squinted skyward— full dawn. The explosions had begun just as Martha Bogen had said they would.
There was no time now—no chance to save the town. Russian troops—why?
The explosions. Already, in the distance near the high peaks of the rim of the valley, he could see rock slides starting.
He had waited near the school, still several blocks from Martha Bogen's house—and the garage where his Harley should still be hidden.
But waiting for the Soviet troops to clear the street in front of him would be suicidal now.
