Below him on the roadway, three of Vladov’s men were already boarding the sentry vehicle, three others of his men dragging the bodies of the dead to the side of the road to-ward the varied assortment of large sized fallen rocks. To his right on a track which would intersect the trail down from the higher rocks, he could see Natalia, running, be-hind her the remainder of the American force.
If he could set it up properly, Rourke realized, they would have a solid chance against the convoy, but after that once they reached Cheyenne Mountain and tried to bluff their way in, he didn’t know. But it was the sort of thing one had to play a step at a time, he thought, saying it under his breath as he ran, “A step at a time.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Two of the Americans and two of the Russians were sent back up into the rocks, with them were left the assault rifles, backpacks and other heavy gear of the remainder of the force.
Rourke, Natalia beside him, Reed, then Sergeant Dressier behind her, waited in the drop of the far side of the road from the high rocks where Rourke had waited earlier with the Dragunov. The next patrol had been waved past by Vladov, the Jeep’s hood up, Vladov proclai-ming a loose battery cable.
Vladov himself had assumed the driver’s slot aboard the sentry vehicle, Corporal Ravitski and Lieutenant Daszrozinski with him, the lieutenant manning the RPK in the back of the vehicle.
Once again Natalia had her silenced stainless Walther, freshly loaded. None of the AKS-74s were silencer fitted, nor the M-16s. Putting a silencer to a .45 was something Rourke had always felt absurd and revolvers could only rarely be effectively silenced. For the rest of them, beyond Natalia’s pistol, it was nothing but knives and hands.
In Rourke’s right hand now, he held the Gerber MkII fighting knife, the spear point double edged blade given a quick touch up on the sharpening steel carried on the out-side of the sheath.
Rourke still carried his hand guns, but had no intention of using them. A shot fired would blow the entire opera-tion, because in the mountains as they were, sound could carry for great distances.
They waited, Rourke listening for the first rumbling sounds of the convoy. Three trucks, U.S. Army deuce and a halves, and two motorcycle combinations, these Soviet M-2s, the sidecars fitted with RPK light machineguns with forty-round magazines only as best Natalia had been able to observe from above the road.
What the trucks carried or how many men beyond the two men visible to Natalia earlier in the truck cabs, there was no way of knowing.
They waited.
Rourke shifted position, tempted to tell Natalia to hang back, let him and the other men join the battle.
But it was a ridiculous thought and he dismissed it almost instantly. She would not — and he doubted he’d be able to cold cock her so easily a second time. And she fought better than most men fought to begin with. So she was more useful in battle than any of the others.
He said nothing.
But he looked into her eyes — she winked at him once.
He winked back.
They waited.
Then he heard it—the sound of a two and one-half ton truck’s gearbox, the roar of an engine. Then the sound of one of the motorcycle combinations.
There was no need to signal to the remainder of Vladov’s men, who occupied positions in the rocks on the other side of the road. They would have heard it, too.
There was the sound—a sound of steel being drawn against leather—Sergeant Dressier with what Rourke recog-nized as a Randall Bowie.
There would be no sound of Natalia’s Bali-Song being opened — she would open it when she needed it and not be-fore. It was usually her way.
No one said, “Ready,”—none of them was fully ready but they were as ready as possible. Knives against assault rifles and light machineguns.
Rourke pricked his ears, listening as Vladov shouted to the convoy. “There is trouble along the roadway—we must see your papers.”
There was the screech of brakes, the sounds of transmis-sions gearing down. Rourke didn’t dare to raise his head above the lip of rock and peer across the roadway.
“We must see your papers—who commands this con-voy?” Vladov’s voice.
Another voice, the voice with a heavy Ukranian accent. “I command this convoy, Corporal—what is the meaning of this? These materials are consigned to the Womb Project.”
I must check your papers, Comrade Major—I am sorry, but I have my orders—from Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy himself, Comrade Major.”
“This is preposterous—what sort of trouble along the road?”
It was like a stage production, waiting in the wings for the cue line to enter—stage right and stage left, Vladov’s men and some of Reed’s men on stage left, Rourke and Natalia and the others below the level of the road on stage right.
Vladov had been fed the proper line.
“The trouble, Comrade Major—it is very grave. A group of Americans and renegade Russian soldiers have infil-trated the area and are preparing to attack one of the con-voys in order to gain entrance to the Womb and sabotage the efforts of our leaders.”
“This is criminal—these men—they must be stopped.”
“No, Comrade Major—they must not be stopped. Not yet—”
“Yet”—Rourke jumped up from the rocks, rolling onto the road surface, to his feet now, the Gerber ahead of him like a wand—a wand of death.
Vladov was scrambling over the roof of the patrol vehi-cle, jumping, hurtling himself at the KGB officer.
There was a plopping sound from behind Rourke— Natalia’s silenced Walther, he knew, the AKM armed man beside the KGB officer going down as he raised his assault rifle to fire.
Rourke dove the two yards distance to the man standing beside the nearest truck, Rourke’s right arm arcing forward like a fast moving pendulum, the spear-point blade of the Gerber biting into the throat of the man, Rourke twisting the blade, shoving the body away to choke to death on blood, Rourke clambering up into the truck cab—the driver was pulling a pistol, a snubby Colt revolver. In that in-stant — Rourke guessed the man had taken it off some dead American—Rourke thrust forward with the knife, hacking literally across the man’s throat, blood spurting from the sliced artery, the blood spraying across the interior front windshield, Rourke’s left hand grabbing at the man’s gun-hand, his left hand finding the revolver, the web of flesh between thumb and first finger interposing between the hammer and the frame as the hammer fell.
“Asshole—gave me a blood blister!” Rourke snarled.
He freed the Colt of his hand — a Detective Special.
There would be a blood blister.
Pocketing the little blued .38 Special, Rourke shoved the body out on the driver’s side to the road, rolling back, jumping down to the road on the passenger side, onto the back of a KGB man with an AKM. The man was a Lieuten-ant. Taking the man’s face in his left hand, as Rourke dropped back, he wrenched the head back, slashing the Gerber from left to right across the exposed throat, then ramming it into the right kidney, putting the man down.
Natalia fired the PPK/S, the slide locking back, open as the man in front of her went down to the silenced shot.
She wheeled, raking the silencer across the face of an-other man, then switching the pistol into her left hand, the right hand moving back. Rourke saw it, knew it was com-ing, the right hand arcing forward, the click-click-click sound of the Bali-Song flashing open, then her right hand punched forward, the Bali-Song puncturing the adam’s apple of the man whom a split second earlier she had hit with the pistol. He fell back, Natalia wheeling right, three men rushing her, Rourke diving toward them, snatching one man at the shoulder, bulldogging him down, imbedding the knife into the chest, twisting, withdrawing.
Natalia’s Bali-Song was opening, closing, opening, clos-ing, opening—it flashed forward, the second of the three men screaming, blood gushing from his throat where she’d opened the artery.
