Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (7 page)

Rourke shouted to the pilot, Rourke’s radio set already stripped away before he had entered the open doorway. “Bring her down now!” It was convenient that the German officer corps spoke English, but for himself and Natalia, though her accent was better and her vocabulary broader, German was not a problem at any event.

The pilot made a hand signal showing recognition, Natalia joining John Rourke at the fuselage door, holding to the same safety strap that he did. Paul Rubenstein wedged himself just inside the door as he pulled up his parka hood then regripped the M-16s. The German MP-40 submachinegun was strapped to and snugged tight against his chest.

The rotor pitch shifted abruptly and Natalia was thrown slightly off balance, Rourke feeling her impact against him. “Be careful,” she shouted over the slipstream.

“I love you too,” he told her.

“I know that,” she nodded, leaning up quickly, tugging away the scarf which protected the lower portion of her face against the wind and the cold, kissing him full on the lips,

but briefly, then pulling away and raising the scarf again. Rourke glanced at his friend Paul. Paul nodded.

The helicopter was nearly down, but attracting no noticable attention from the rear of the Soviet lines as it swept in. The chopper skimmed the glacier crusted surface now, stopping abruptly to hover in mid-air, then seemed to skid into touchdown.

Rourke loosened the security strap and jumped, nearly losing his balance on the glacial ice, breaking into a dead run as he regained it. Paul and Natalia jumped out side by side as Rourke glanced back, Rourke diving for cover behind a wide ice ridge which signalled a crevasse below, looking back again. Paul and Natalia had taken up positions nearer the landing, side by side behind the protection of a massive upthrust boulder. Rourke worked the safety tumbler of the M-16 to full auto, shouldering the rifle, waiting. He glanced right, across the snowfield, the light nearly bright enough to read now that the clouds above which had darkened the sky during most of their journey from Europe had broken to reveal a three-quarters full moon. Natalia nodded and Paul loosed one of his M-16s, gave a handsignal and then shouldered the other assault rifle. Rourke moved his right first finger inside the trigger guard.

There was a whooshing sound, then a whistling sound and then a roar, the first grenade from the multi-barreled German grenade launcher impacting, exploding, into the core of the Russian rear. Bodies sailed into the night sky, plummeting downward, in whole or in fragments, a puff of orange tinged white smoke belching upward. The whoosh, the whistle, the roar again, another grenade detonated; some of the Russians dodged to take cover, others turned to fire. Rourke touched his finger to the trigger, spraying, burning through at least ten rounds, shifting the muzzle, doing it again, confident against burning out the barrel with the sub-zero temperatures. He blew out the entire magazine, bodies falling as the Russians rushed their position.

The grenade launcher again, assault rifle fire from Paul’s position as Rourke changed sticks, ramming the fresh thirty-round magazine up the well, continuing firing. The whoosh, the whisde, the roar, more Russians down. Rourke was up on his feet, spraying out the entire magazine, then dropping as enemy soldiers fell and others rushed toward him to take their place. Paul was up, an M-16—one his and one of them one of the two Natalia carried —blazing from each hand, the guns on full auto, Russians going down. Paul ducked’down, Rourke up to his knees, the M-16 to his right shoulder, spraying death again. The whoosh, the whisde, the roar, then the whoosh, the whistle, the roar again—then again and again.

Rourke changed sticks and was on his feet. He glanced toward Paul, the younger man doing the same now, but an M-16 in each hand, Rourke and Rubenstein firing simultaneously into the attacking Russians.

Bodies fell and men died. The whoosh, the whisde, the roar, then again and again.

Rourke changed sticks for the M-16 again and started forward around the edge of the crevasse. He felt it, shouted over the roar of gunfire, “Paul!”

His footing was suddenly gone and he was plummeting downward, into the crevasse …

Annie Rourke felt something stabbing her, dropping to her knees, loosening her rifle from her grasp, her hands going to her temples as she screamed.

They had been moving across the greenway searching for what remained of the Soviet infiltration team, her mother near enough to her that she was beside her the next instant. “What is it, Annie?”

“Daddy—oh my God, Momma!”

John Rourke let go of the M-16 the instant he realized what was happening, before he even shouted. The impact of the explosions had forced apart the crevasse and the ice-bridge had disintegrated beneath his feet. His right hand had grasped upward for the surface, his gloved fingers slipping across it, his body hurtling downward, his left hand reaching to the butt of the Crain System X knife he had just recently added to his gear from his supplies at the Retreat. And he silently thanked God that he had. There was no time to verbalize. As his body skidded downward, the space surrounding him narrowed dramatically with each foot, the light ebbing even faster. His left hand tore steel from leather and as his left fist balled over the tubular haft, he stabbed, his right hand splaying outward, his feet twisting outward, his legs spreading. The Crain knife bit deep into the ice, his shoulders and neck taking the shockwave as it engulfed his body, his full weight with its acceleration abruptly stopping, Rourke’s body swinging by his left fist from the haft of the Crain survival knife.

Rourke’s eyes closed and he breathed.

He opened his eyes. The darkness was near total. He couldn’t shout, could barely breathe. Rourke’s right foot was wedged into the crevasse and he realized that had he fallen

any further he would have broken the foot, or dislocated his hip. He flexed the toes of his right foot inside his combat boots. They were numb with cold and pain but moved. His left shoulder was screaming at him to let go of the knife as he pried his boot free, struggling for a new, less punishing purchase against the glass-smooth wall of glacial ice which could at any moment close above and around him, entombing him.

Rourke’s right hand moved slowly along the ice, toward the bottom edge of his arctic parka, then raising it, his gloved hand searching against the small of his back, near his right kidney. He found the vastly smaller knife he always carried, had always carried even before the Night of The War. The Sting IA Black Chrome. He tugged it free of the inside-the-pants sheath, balling his right fist over the skeletonized handle, then drawing his right arm up and back and stabbing forward, gouging the A.G. Russell knife into the ice, his body weight suspended from both hands now, swinging free as his foot lost its purchase.

Rourke tested his weight against both knives. Both knives held.

Both knives were at approximately the same level. He began to pull himself up, his shoulders seeming to burn with the pain. There were times he wished he were still Michael’s age.

If Natalia and Paul had seen him fall, if Paul had heard his shout—but the distractions of battle. They had just begun their advance. The ice groaned around him, shifting, Rourke feeling it push against him. The crevasse was closing.

He had his shoulders to the level of both knives, holding on with his left hand to the larger handle of the Crain knife, shifting his right hand for a terrifying instant to get his forearm above the Russell knife. The little knife held. Rourke inhaled, shifting his grip on the Crain knife, his body thrusting upward, above the level of the knives. He

pushed himself upward, to maximum extension of his arms, nearly locking his elbows.

John Rourke closed his eyes for an instant, trying to ignore the groaning of the narrowing walls of ice in front and in back of him, then ripping the little Russell knife free of the ice with his right hand and, -as his left elbow locked, his grip started to go, stabbing the smaller knife into the ice above him, clinging there, taking some of the weight off his left hand and arm and shoulder.

John Rourke breathed. He could not see the opening in the ice above him, but he ignored the possibility that it had already closed and encased him here forever. But forever wouldn’t be very long. He would freeze to death quickly enough.

Already, his limbs were numbing from something else than pain.

But there was no time and each second he hung suspended here the ice would close that much more. He started pulling himself up on the little Sting IA Black Chrome, getting his left foot up, onto the hollow handle of the Crain Life Support System X. He stood, catching his breath, the knife not shifting beneath him.

To climb this way would be too time consuming, deadly. There was no way to gauge the exact distance remaining to the top, but he judged he had fallen some thirty feet, perhaps more than that. Rourke’s mind raced. The little Sting IA had a ring through its butt for attaching a lanyard. Rourke shifted slightly on his purchase, with his left hand grasping at the sling of the M-16. The sling was not made to be removed one handed. But he started working at it, prying, the sling of the clip type rather than one which threaded through the swivels and was bound by the buckle. He had one clip all but free — free now, the rifle starting to slip away. He caught the end of the sling in his teeth.

With his left hand, Rourke caught up the rifle and loosed the sling from his teeth. It was the waste of a perfecdy

serviceable M-16, but there was nothing else for it. He held the M-16 between his legs, working loose the other clip which was at the buttstock. He had it, as the rifle slipped away into the darkness of the abyss below, Rourke nearly losing his balance, catching himself. He reached up his left hand, snapping the sling into the hole at the base of the skeletonized handle of the Sting I A. Rourke breathed.

He was starting to grow numb all over from the cramped position, from the cold, from the —he had never seen any logic in self-deception — fear. Rourke started feeding the slack in the sling through the buckle to give himself as much length as possible with the sling.

If the sling held and if the short blade of the Sting IA bit deeply enough into the ice —Rourke was shivering. The darkness seemed to be increasing—was it the ice closing over him or simply a cloud passing in front of the three-quarter full moon?

He told himself the latter. Sometimes, self-deception was necessary, however illogical.

He worked the method through his mind several times.

Using the massive Crain Life Support System X, he would gouge into the ice surface while hanging by one hand from the sling attached to the little Sting IA, then get a foothold and raise himself up, then regrasp the sling and free the Crain knife, then repeat the process all over again. A third knife would have made it easier, pitons made it almost a practical means of traverse.

John Rourke reached to maximum extension, his booted feet balanced on the handle of the Crain knife, his right hand wrenching out the Sting IA, then his right arm extending upward, driving the knife into the ice like a stake into the heart of a vampire. He wrapped the sling around his right fist and tugged. The knife moved slightly, then held, locked in the ice —he hoped at least. Holding to the sling, he eased himself down to where his knees could bend, searching for a

toehold against the ice, finding none but wedging his legs against the narrowing walls which were glass slick. He used his left hand and fought at the Crain knife, ripping the Life Support System X free, swinging crazily for a moment as the force of his exertion freed his body from the wedged position he had taken.

Instantly, he modified his plan of attack against the sheer ice face. Instead of driving the Crain knife into the same wall, he would drive it into the opposite wall, using a modified rock chimney technique.

Rourke balled his gloved left fist more tightly still over the handle of the Crain knife and drove it into the ice almost at chest height, pulling himself up against the sling’s tension, getting his left foot into the handle of the Crain knife, raising himself up, the walls closer together here, an advantage for what he had determined as his means of locomotion, but a growing danger. Rourke ripped the smaller Russell knife free, then stabbed it into the ice at the maximum extension of his right arm’s upward reach.

Again, he half swung, was half wedged —and he wrenched the Crain knife free, then drove it in again at nearly chest height, raising his left leg, getting a foothold, starting to drag himself up — his boot slipped. Rourke started to lose his hold on the sling, but caught himself as his left hand grasped for the haft of the Crain knife.

He swung there, knowing that at any moment one of the knives might lose its bite into the ice and he could fall.

The ice groaned around him again, a sound like tortured metal under great strain.

Again, he brought his left foot up, getting it as firmly as he could into position on the haft of the Crain knife, then pushing himself up. There was no time to rest. He tore the smaller knife free, then hammered it into the ice with all the force he could summon, at maximum reach above him. Again, he grasped the sling/lifeline, again he tugged the Crain knife free of the ice, each time the task more difficult,

his strength ebbing, he knew.

He drove the Crain knife home, again rising to stand on its handle. His shoulders were touching the walls of ice which confined him and the crevasse seemed even narrower in the gray light above him.

John Rourke repeated the process — drive the smaller knife into the ice, swing from the sling, wrench out the larger knife and then drive it into the ice, then climb up to stand upon it, then begin again —he didn’t know how many times, realizing at one level of consciousness that he was moving automaton-like, marveling at still another level of consciousness that he was moving at all. His arms ached with weariness; his legs cramped.

As he rose to perch precariously again on the handle of the Crain knife, his head impacted something above him —ice.