Chapter Thirty-One
Rourke calculated his fuel use to be adequate to make the return trip to the submarine— beyond that perhaps enough to make it back to where he had camouflaged the prototype FB-111 HX for the return trip to Georgia— if his luck held. He flew the 0H58C Kiowas now at maximum speed, not the speed for fuel conservation, but the speed required by the situation. He had been gone from the missile control bunker and the underground silos vastly longer than he had anticipated. He glanced to his right— the dull green of the second helicopter was there, Natalia almost visible at its controls.
They flew low to give as little advance warning of their arrival as possible, in case somehow, something had gone wrong. He followed the contours of the ground with his altimeter, rising over a low ridge.
In the distance he could see that something had gone wrong.
Wildmen were everywhere, and at their center were two crosses— O'Neal and Rubenstein?
He overfiew the crosses, glancing below him now— Paul, perhaps dead, certainly close to unconsciousness. O'Neal, his body twisting against the ropes that bound him to the cross timbers.
Near the crosses, he could see Cole, Cole's two men Armitage and Kelsoe, and a bizarre, squatlooking man wrapped in a bearskin robe. Cole beckoned to the sky— Rourke knew why.
'Natalia—'
'Yes— I see— do we go in?'
'We pull back along the other side of that ridge line,' he said into his microphone. 'Then I go in— that's what Cole wants.' He exhaled hard into the microphone. 'And that's what Cole is going to get.'
Rourke banked the chopper sharply, shouting past his microphone to the men near the open chopper doors, 'Hang on to the seats, guys—' He chewed harder on his cigar...
The rotor blades from Natalia's helicopter still moved lazily in the breeze, but it was not the breeze that moved them. Natalia stood beside him, dressed in her dark clothing and boots, her pistols on her hips, seeming to accentuate their roundness— she had trained to be a ballerina, she had told him once, and her martial arts skills were past the level of the ordinary and almost elevated to the artistry of the dance. There was a perfection about her— he saw her eyes quickly flicker to his— their blueness overwhelming him. He turned away, looking at the men of the shore party.
'A lot of you saw Lieutenant O'Neal strung up on that cross down there. The other man most of you know— he's my best friend, Paul Rubenstein. So we've all got a very personal stake in getting them out alive if we can. I didn't see Colonel Teal. If Cole and the wildmen have formed some kind of alliance, then Teal might already be dead. I don't know who this Cole is— but I know what he is. In his own way, he's more of a savage than those wildmen we've been fighting, you've been hearing about. I recognize some of you from the landing party that night that came in with Gundersen. So you know how these people are— crazy, suicidal— deadly.
'I have to go in— Cole wants it that way, and if we all go in shooting, Paul and your lieutenant will be killed— they'd do that. Cole would. I know it. Natalia is staying here—'
'No,' she snapped, almost hissing the word. Their eyes met.
'Yes,' he ordered. 'Major Tiemerovna is a pilot— we need at least one here to cover you guys from the air. You'll have to break up into two elements— one Natalia can fly in over the wildmen, drop on the far side. That way you'll have them set up for a kind of enclosement— if you do it right. Natalia'll need a gunner—'
'I'm the man who runs the deck gun on the submarine.'
'Then you're the man,' Rourke told the young, blond-haired seaman with the oddly brushed mustache. Rourke supposed the young man had grown it either to show he could or to look older.
'Then Natalia and you'll give air support. We'll need one man to stay with the second helicopter— the one I flew. If the wildmen break through, put a burst into the machine—
Natalia'll show you where to shoot so you can blow her up. In case Cole or one of his men knows how to use a chopper, we can't let him have it. If you do blow the chopper, run like hell and you're on your own. Volunteer?'
Three men took a step forward. Rourke picked one— a seaman first he'd seen in the fighting on the beach against the wildmen— he seemed to have a cool head. 'You're it, Schmulowitz.'
'Aye, sir.'
'Natalia'll pick squad leaders for the ground action— do exactly as she says. If any ten of you guys had between you as much battle experience as she has, you'd be doin' great.'
'And what about you?' Natalia asked him suddenly.
Rourke swung the CAR-15 forward on its cross-bodied sling, the scope covers removed already, the stock extended.
He unzipped the front of his bomber jacket so he could get at his pistols. He reached into his pocket and took out the little Freedom Arms .22 Magnum Boot pistol with the three-inch barrel, the one he'd taken off the dead Brigand back in Georgia before they had met Cole, before Natalia had been wounded and they had been forced to take to the nuclear submarine, then transported under the icepack to the new west coast— before he had ever heard of wildmen.
He slipped the pistol up his left sleeve, just inside the storm-sleeved cuff.
'I'll go see what Cole wants— try to get something going with Paul and O'Neal— I'll be there.'
He reached into his jeans pocket, found his Zippo lighter, turned it over in his hands a moment and flicked back the cowling, rolling the striking wheel under his thumb, making the blue-yellow flame appear, the flame flickering in the breeze as he lit the cigar clamped between his teeth.
'I'll be okay,' he said. Her eyes didn't look like she believed it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rourke walked slowly ahead, having stopped for a moment at the top of the rise, looked down toward the missile bunker— a half-dozen wildmen were posted there as sentries— and then stared at the crosses. Rubenstein was still unmoving, his left arm red-stained along the entire length of the sleeve of his jacket. O'Neal had stopped moving, and Rourke saw the man's eyes at the distance— pain and fear. He kept walking.
He reached the height of the rise, beside the twin crude crosses, and stopped. He reached out with his right hand, feeling Paul's ankles for a pulse— there was one.
'Give me your guns.' A wildman, large, armed with an AK-47— where he'd gotten it Rourke didn't know— stepped from the far side of the crosses and reached out his left hand.
Rourke, the cigar in the left corner of his mouth, reached up his left hand and took the cigar. He stared at the wildman's hand for a moment, cleared his throat and spit, the glob of spittle hitting the wildman's palm.
'You son of a bitch,' the man snarled, Rourke sidestepping half-left and wheeling, his left foot snapping up, feigning a kick at the head, the wildman dodging to his left, Rourke's right, leaning forward, Rourke wheeling right, both fists knotted on the CAR-15, his right fist pumping forward with the butt of the rifle, the rifle butt snapping into the wildman's chest, Rourke arcing the flash-deflectored muzzle down diagonally left to right across the man's nose, breaking it at the bridge.
Rourke stepped back, short of killing him, his right foot stomping on the barrel of the AK-47 as the wildman— huge— seeming even in collapse— tumbled forward and sprawled across the ground.
The wildmen were starting to move, Rourke's rifle's muzzle on line with Cole. 'Call em off, asshole!'
'They'll rip you apart,' Cole shouted back.
'Let's see what the man wants first, shall we?' Rourke shifted his eyes left— to the man in the bearskin, the squat man he had seen beside Cole from the air. 'Cut 'em both down— now!'
'No!'
Rourke's eyes met Cole's eyes. 'You're a dead man already— on borrowed time.'
'Cut them down,' the squat man in the bearskin commanded.
Rourke stepped back, his eyes flickering from Cole to the wildmen starting toward the two crosses.
A burly, tall man started up the cross where Rubenstein hung, hacking at the ropes, Rourke snarling to him, 'Let him down easy or you get a gut full of this,' and he gestured with the CAR15.
The man climbing the cross looked at him, nodding almost imperceptibly.
Others of the wildmen started forward, catching Rubenstein as the ropes were released, helping him down, setting him on the ground. Rourke shot a glance to his friend's face. The eyelids fluttered, opened, the lips— parched-seeming— parted and— the voice weak— Rubenstein murmured, 'John?'
'Yeah, Paul,' Rourke almost whispered. 'It's okay.'
