Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (21 page)

He could just see one of the men posted at the top of the stairwell now, the right arm and right side of the chest cavity. Although Rourke was for all intents and purposes ambidextrous, he was still right-handed and, despite the injuries to his right hand, felt more confident of a one-shot hit with that hand considering the difficulty of the shot. His left thumb swung behind the tang of one of the pistols, upping the safety. He stuffed the pistol into his belt, shifting the other pistol from his right hand into his left, flexing the hand at once to work out the stiffness and to inure himself to the pain that he would experience when he made the shot.

The bandage he had wrapped over the hand was soaked through with a mixture of blood and what smelled like pus. He shifted the little .45 back into his right fist, closing his hand over the nearly smooth Pachmayrs. He

cupped his right hand into his left, closing his eyes against the pain for an instant, then edging further out into the stairwell.

The target was gone. He waited.

Rourke would periodically lower his pistol, periodically take his eyes off the height of the stairwell.

Then … Rourke saw the man now, a Sty-20 held lazily in the right fist, the right arm over the railing, the right side of the chest cavity exposed.

“Good-bye,” John Rourke whispered, his right thumb whisking down the safety, settling just below the mating of slide to frame, the first finger of his right hand starting to move slowly rearward, taking up the slack. Because of the angle from the target at which he stood and the height of it over him, Rourke held high. If the bullet impacted the precise point of aim—which it most certainly would not— it would enter the right shoulder near the base of the neck. He was hoping for a center-of-mass hit to the chest.

There was no more slack left and he held his breath in his throat. The normally mild recoil sent tremors of pain along his right forearm, his ears ringing from the gunshot in the confined space, a scream emanating from the top of the stairwell, a Sty-20 clattering along the stairs and down, angered shouts. Then the body came, tumbling, John Rourke dodging back, the man dead before he hit the floor, the body bouncing once, arms and legs flapping like wings from an injured bird, then still.

Rourke drew the second pistol, firing both pistols now toward the height of the stairwell, a useless fusillade of Sty-20 projectiles peppering the base of the stairwell, Rourke emptying both pistols, shouting, “Now!”

The team with the combination weapon and shield was already into position, and now they started up the stairwell, not firing yet, another fusillade of Sty-20 fire coming at them, the darts bouncing harmlessly off the plexiglas, the team already to the first landing. Beside Rourke now were the men and women of the fire-extinguisher brigade. Rourke started up the stairs, the fire-extinguisher brigade behind him. both his oistols reloaded. There was nrer.ir.nc

little ammunition left for them, considering the enormity of the task ahead once clear of the prison. He took the stairs three at a time, hanging back as he reached the first landing, the team beneath the plexiglas shield opening fire now, the volley of Sty-20 fire launching toward the height of the stairwell, curses shouted in Russian, the static of a communicator briefly heard.

Rourke took the communicator from his own belt. The idiots were using the same frequency. He shook his head in disbelief. He monitored the signal. They were Marine Spetznas at the height of the stairwell, apparently part of a larger unit that was guarding the maintenance level. And the Spetznas commander on the communicator now was calling for the AKM-96s to be broken out.

John Rourke started running up the stairs, three at a time, nearly dead behind the team operating the volleying Sty-20s from behind the shield, the height of the stairwell nearly clear now, Rourke edging past them, firing the Detonics pistols, dropping two more of the Spetznas, the last half dozen fleeing for the doorway, Rourke dropping two more of them. “Into the walkway now!” Rourke flattened himself against the wall beside the doorway, the fire-extinguisher brigade climbing up into the grillwork over the stairwell, readying their “weapons.”

The team behind the plexiglas shield charged into the corridor, the thumping of Sty-20 darts against the plexiglas shield, then the sound of live gunfire. “Withdraw! Withdraw!” Rourke commanded, the shield team ducking back, Rourke noticing one of the team with blood coming from his right arm, the arm limp at his side. “I’ll see to it in a minute if we live that long,” Rourke told the woman. “Get some pressure on it. Martha! Take her position!”

Martha came forward, getting behind the shield, some of the others reloading the Sty-20s as Rourke started clambering up into the grillwork. “As soon as they’re inside, get the hell away!”

There was another burst of automatic weapons fire from the walkway/corridor outside, and Rourke hissed to his companions in the grillwork, “Wait until I open fire. And

try to avoid hitting me with the crap in those extinguishers because I’m going down after the assault rifles. Be ready!”

Rourke was loading the last of the magazines from his musette bag into his pistols. All he had left were the ones in the Milt Sparks Six-Pak and the spare box of fifty rounds in his bag. It could go fast, all of it.

The first of the Marine Spetznas burst through from the walkway, chunks of wall surface breaking away under the three-round bursts from their AKM-96 assault rifles, another of the shield team hit, then another, this one going down, Martha shouting, “Break off now!” The shield team fell back. Rourke, a .45 in each fist, opened fire into the men below him, four of them with AKM-96s, Rourke backshooting them because it was the easiest way, one of them turning toward the grillwork to open fire, Rourke putting a double tap into the man’s wide-open mouth.

His pistols empty, Rourke stuffed them into his belt, the slides still locked open, then dropped from the grillwork, the fire-extinguisher operators spraying white chemical foam over the Marine Spetznas below them, Rourke’s right foot finding the face of one of the Marine Spetznas, kicking the dying man into unconsciousness as Rourke’s hands wrestled the rifle from the man’s grip. There was a shoulder-slung bandolier of spare magazines and Rourke took it.

Rourke found the selector, the weapon still on full auto as he started for the doorway, more of the Marine Spetznas suddenly filling it, but armed only as far as he could tell with the Sty-20s. Rourke opened fire, spraying the AKM-96 into the nearest bodies. Marine Spetznas fell, Rourke stepping over the dead, continuing to fire, the rifle equipped with what Rourke had grown up calling a “jungle clip,” a device clamping two magazines together.

As Rourke emptied one magazine, he buttoned it out, not inverting, but shifting the spent magazine right, ramming the full one up the well, working the bolt release by guesswork and overall weapons experience only, then opening fire again. Darts from Sty-20s impacted the wall

surface around him and he ducked back, firing again into more of the Marine Spetznas.

And now Aldridge was beside him, one of the AKM-96s almost alive in the U.S. Marine’s hands.

Together, Rourke and Aldridge advanced into the walkway corridor. Marine Spetznas were closing from both sides, most armed only with the Sty-20s, some few with AKM-96s. Rourke’s rifle was empty and he rammed the flash-deflectored muzzle into the eye of an advancing Spetznas, killing him. A fresh magazine from the bandolier. Rourke rammed it up the well as the spent one fell away, firing the dead man’s weight from him, advancing.

Martha’s team with the plexiglas shield and volley-firing Sty-20s was onto the walkway now, flanked on either side by more of the escapees armed with fire extinguishers, more men and women filling the walkway behind him now as Rourke glanced back, some armed only with pieces of their cages, or using empty fire extinguishers like cudgels, some using the riot stick cattle prod devices and just beating at their enemy.

The enemy AKM-96s were opening up from a defensive line formed along the walkway near steps leading down to the maintenance-level floor, Rourke shoving through the throng of escapees, advancing, Aldridge beside him again, advancing to reach the assault-rifle-firing Soviets before their weapons could do their work.

One of the Soviets went down, then another, Rourke’s left upper arm feeling a hit tearing across the bicep. He kept going. Another of the Soviets went down, trying valiantly to hurtle his assault rifle out of reach of the escapees. Rourke sprayed him again, kicking the rifle toward the escapees so it could be picked up and used. Someone picked it up—he didn’t know who—because he heard the rifle opening up, more of the Soviets, now fleeing down the metal steps toward the maintenance floor, dropping.

John Rourke reached the head of the steps, ramming a fresh magazine into his expropriated rifle, hosing the steps below him, Marine Spetznas turning to fire up at him,

Rourke killing them before they could. Aldridge jumped the railing to the maintenance floor below, firing into the fleeing Soviets. Rourke, his left upper arm cramping on him, flipped the handrail along the steps, jumping only half the distance Aldridge had, coming out of it in a roll, firing out the AKM-96 into the backs of a half dozen of the Soviet defenders.

His rifle was empty. No time to reload now, one of the Spetznas hurtling his body at Rourke, his bare hands going for Rourke’s throat. In his left fist John Rourke had the big Crain knife, and he rammed it through the man’s abdomen up to the double-quillon cross guard, then shoved the body away, ramming a fresh magazine up the well of the AKM-96, firing again.

A good fifty of the escapees, some of them wounded, had made it down from the walkway now, some of them using the steps, some hurtling themselves onto the backs of Soviet fighting men below them. There were pockets of hand-to-hand combat everywhere, Rourke bracing his right foot against the stomach of the man he’d stabbed, wrenching his knife free. The knife in his left fist,’ the nearly fully loaded AKM-96 in his right, he waded into the thickest of the fighting, a short burst to one man, a downward slash from his knife to another.

He kept going.

Screams of death filled his ears, the escapees taking no prisoners as they finished the Soviets who had been their tormentors. As Rourke turned away from shooting one of the Spetznas who had been locked in combat with a woman escapee, he saw another of the escapees—a Chinese—ramming an electrified riot stick down the throat of his Russian adversary, the Russian’s face purpling, the Chinese kicking the Russian repeatedly in the face until the body stopped moving.

Rourke stood where he had stopped. He looked from side to side. Some of the Russians were still being finished off. But the battle had been won.

Bodies littered the floor, were draped over the walkway railings and over the handrails for the steps, prisoners and

their former jailers as well.

He had tried earlier to determine which pipes carried the electrical current that supplied the domes and which were the emergency circuits. He crossed toward the locked control panels at the center of the maintenance level, studying the piping in greater detail now. As he walked, he loaded a fresh magazine up the well of the AKM-96, let it fall back on its sling, then began reloading magazines for his pistols from the spare box of 185-grain JHPs in his musette bag. Six rounds to one magazine, then he loaded it up the butt of one of the twin Detonics pistols. Six rounds to another, then up the butt of the pistol. In turn, he worked the actions, chambering fresh rounds, lowered the hammers, and holstered his guns in the double Alessi shoulder rig he wore. He continued reloading magazines, some of the spares that were loose in his musette bag, taking from the rapidly depleting box of fifty, reloading partially spent magazines as well.

He stopped before the locked control panels. Aldridge joined him. “Open that,” he told the black Marine captain.

“Sure, doctor.” Aldridge stepped back from the panel doors and fired a burst into the locking mechanism, the thin substance, metal-like, that formed the cabinet cracking. Aldridge rifle-butted the lock away. Rourke approached the panel, studying it.

“It looks like these control the main power supply for the domes and these control the emergency power supply. Now we’ll need emergency lights on to get through that passageway into the Institute for Marine Studies. That leaves two other systems—this and this. Now, if you look here at these diode readouts, only the main system is showing a fluctuation in power. And this one. The emergency system is just on and that’s all, ready to kick in. And this one—the one I mentioned a second ago—it’s got less leading out of it but is evidently in use. Must be for the electronic monitoring system. And having it on a different circuit board only stands to reason. Agree?”

“Ohh. sure.” Aldridce lauabed.

“All right. So—we cut this one and the main power supply is off and the emergency power supply kicks in. And I bet when we do, this other one that’s in reserve kicks on. If everything here is geothermal, they won’t be running anything off fossil fuels, synthetics or nuclear. You agree?”

“Everything’s gect .rmal here. That I know.”

“So—if the geothermal energy supply just cuts out, they’d be up shit’s creek without a paddle. Assuming they assume that won’t happen, then they need a power source, probably off batteries, that’ll allow them to have the power to restart their machines and generate power to restore full power. This should kick on then.” Rourke shut off the main system. There was sudden, inky blackness, but only for a second, and shouts and muted screams from the survivors of the b.-ttle. Emergency lights came on with an audible click, red like those used at night in submarines to allow for maximum visual acuity when going onto the surface. Rourke could see the panel again. “All right. Both of these reserves are activated. Now—we switch off this.” He closed down the one original panel that still had unchanged power levels. “And we kill the surveillance cameras. Now—watch which one of these goes to a higher reading and hope it’s the one for the emergency start-up power.”