Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal (12 page)

He tried to flex his fingers, but almost allowed a slip to port that would have been disastrous. He was flying for all of them if their instruments were on him as they should be.

The minute was up. At any second—

He heard the whoosh of the missile and reacted, shouting into his headset as he took what evasive action he could, “This is Retribution Leader. I am under attack from the east side of the canyon rim. Attack! Attack! Stand by!” Kurinami’s starboard machine guns. He swept them over the canyon wall and over the rim, the missile exploding in mid-air perhaps fifty yards away, a muted shout from the German corporal who was his doorgunner. Kurinami started to climb, cutting over to intraship on his headset. “Corporal!”

“I am all right, Herr Lieutenant!”

And there was a sudden roar as the fuselage integrity was compromised by the open door, a rush of cold air sweeping in. Kurinami shivered.

Machinegun fire impacted the rock wall to the west, another missile contrail. Kurinami started climbing, still not enough maneuvering room to use his own missiles. But these surface-to-air missiles weren’t that terribly fast. He targeted the missile with his guns, then led it, then fired, the enemy missile exploding in mid-air dead ahead of him as he wrenched at the controls, leapfrogging over it.

He changed pitch, sweeping up out of the canyon near its west wall, an updraft catching him, almost losing it, rotating ninety degrees and crossing over the canyon, intentionally exposing himself so the others behind him could get the elevation needed to maneuver and respond.

Another missile. Kurinami began evasive action, radically altering pitch into a dive for the east-side rim, one of the machinegun emplacements visible. Kurinami hit fire control for one of the forward-firing missiles on the portside pod, the gunship’s frame vibrating with it for an instant, the contrail streaking toward the emplacement. Already, Kurinami was rising. A missile impacted the canyon wall just below him, at the very edge of the rim, great boulders and clouds of granite dust belching upward, Kurinami going for elevation.

One of his squadron was in trouble, smoke billowing from the tail rotor, control visibly going. Kurinami banked to starboard and started into a dive.

Machinegun fire was ripping across the already partially crippled chopper’s fuselage. Kurinami acquired the emplacement’s coordinates and opened fire with his own guns, sweeping over the emplacement, snow and rocks plowing upward in a wake under his guns, something near the emplacement exploding, Kurinami climbing his machine to get away from it.

Another of the German gunships rose up from inside the

canyon walls and fired a missile, the missile battery that was its apparent target exploding, a huge yellow and orange fireball rising, missiles tracking erratically out of the flames.

“This is Retribution Leader. Retribution four is going down on the west rim. Number three—pick up. One and two stay on me and proceed to primary objective. Retribution Leader out.”

In seconds, he expected the first of the Soviet gunships to come over the horizon line.

The snow was as heavy as it had been, his instruments showing an increase in windspeed. “Corporal?”

“Yes, Herr Lieutenant?”

“Be ready.”

“Yes, Herr Lieutenant.”

And Kurinami heard the action cycling on the doorgun.

The rotor blades stirred lazily over them, snow swirling in little cyclonic formations around them. John Rourke’s best friend stood before him. “You dropped this,” Paul Rubenstein offered, smiling, handing over the lost Scoremaster. But the smile looked somehow forced. “It doesn’t look any the worse for wear. Dug it out of about a foot and a half of snow.” The Detonics .45, indeed, seemed almost miraculously unscathed, Rourke’s eyes quickly scanning its exterior in the green light from the Soviet gunship’s control panels and overheads. But when one considered the heavy snow covering the ground and its cushioning effect on a falling object, it was more understandable. And the Detonics pistols were notoriously well-made, from the best materials.

John Rourke took the gun in his fist, grateful that Paul had been able to recover it, Rourke’s hands moving over it. “Thank you,” and he turned toward Natalia.

She was standing up, laughing hysterically, but with a vacant look in her eyes that was maddening, her eye color perverted by the lights from the gunship.

Rourke’s eyes drifted down to the .45’s rear sight, his fingers moving over it, Natalia’s laughter creeping through him. And he realized his hands were trembling. He told himself it was just that he was coming down off the adrenaline rush. But he knew he was lying to himself.

“Are you feeling better?” John Rourke asked Natalia Tiemerovna.

She laughed, the laughter unbroken, not a response but a continuation.

Rourke looked at Paul Rubenstein. “Help me with her. We’ll fly across the gorge and get Otto picked up, then show me that designated rendezvous. We can plot the most likely course between where you left them and the rendezvous and backtrack until we pick them up. Tell Otto we’re on the way,” Rourke concluded, “and I’ll get Natalia started.”

The younger man nodded, pulling on his helmet to use the radio headset more conveniently, John Rourke walking slowly toward Natalia, his palms open as though approaching a threatened animal. And at once she stopped laughing, pulling her knees up close against her chest, her arms hugged around them, her face angled away from him, almost as if she somehow anticipated he would strike her. “We have to go and get Annie and Michael now. Isn’t it great to see Paul? Did he tell you Michael was all right?”

But Natalia, still hugging her knees, only began laughing again …

John Rourke sat at the controls of the Soviet gunship, Paul Rubenstein beside him, Natalia’s laughter all but subsided, a sedative from the medical kit of one of the Specials quieting her.

“What are you going to do, John?” Paul Rubenstein asked him.

Rourke clenched one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars unlit in his teeth, terrain-following with the Soviet helicopter, his left hand searching his pockets for the battered Zippo windlighter. But he remembered it was without fuel. “You don’t have a match, do you?”

“You?”

“I don’t like using Lifeboat Matches just to light a cigar. And

these Russian choppers don’t come with a cigar lighter.”

“Otto?” Rubenstein began, twisting around in his seat, calling across the fuselage, “got a light for John?”

“Certainly!” In the next moment, Hammerschmidt was leaning between them, a cigarette going in his mouth as he cupped a lighter in his hands, John Rourke thrusting the end of the cigar just above the flame, drawing it upward into the tobacco.

“Thank you,” Rourke murmured.

“How much longer until we intersect their line of travel, Herr Doctor?”

Rourke smiled. As often as he told Hammerschmidt to call him “John” or just “Rourke” and as often as Hammerschmidt would, the German commando captain more often reverted to formal address. “I think we’ll hit it in another fifteen minutes if the winds don’t pick up or the storm doesn’t worsen.” The windshield wipers clicked and clacked back and forth relentleslsy and snow was wedged where it had some protection against their slipstream, the wedges growing.

“If you do not need me, I shall try to sleep a bit, then.”

“Go for it,” Rourke nodded, exhaling a thin stream of gray smoke through each nostril.

As Hammerschmidt moved away, Rourke looked at Paul beside him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Natalia. I know she can’t go without more help than we can give her. And with everything around us falling apart, there’s a limit to where I can safely take her. Mid-Wake, maybe. Or maybe New Germany. I’m going to check with Dr. Munchen as soon as we get out of here and see what he recommends. He was very impressed with Mid-Wake’s medical technology and he knows what New Germany has to offer. And I trust him. You agree?”

“Yeah. What, ahh—”

Rourke smiled, but inside he felt burned out, hollow, and from the reaction evident in Paul Rubenstein’s eyes, it showed. “Do I have a prognosis?”

“Yes—a prognosis—I guess.”

John Rourke’s eyes returned to the storm, consulted the windshield, then the terrain-following radar, then the windshield again. “Doctors don’t use crystal balls, and as far as this is concerned I’m little more qualified to hazard a guess than the average layman. I’ve got some training in recognizing symptoms, I’ve got the vocabulary, I don’t have the skills. And if I did, I’m too close to her. And I’m the cause of the problem—”

“That’s bullshit, John—”

“No—but thanks.” And Rourke exhaled smoke through his nostrils again, the smoke dissipating on the streams of air from the forward ventilation blowers. “You know exactly what I mean. More than anybody besides Natalia and me, you know.”

“So—what?You saying that because you’re an honorable man and you wouldn’t cheat on your wife, you did something wrong? I mean—my God!”

“I’m saying that what happened wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for me. That’s what I’m saying. I broke it, and I’m going to fix it.” And he intended to do that, no matter what it meant.

Gunships rose ahead of him, a black wall only brought into existence, Kurinami realized, to give the appearance of impenetrability. It gave that appearance indeed.

“Retribution Three—this is Retribution Leader. Status report. Over.”

‘This is Retribution Three, Retribution Leader. Crew of Retribution Four safely aboard. Doorgunner sustained minor injuries. We are coming up behind you. Over.”

“Prepare to execute Attack Plan Three—I repeat, Attack Plan Three. Do all other elements copy? Over.”

“This is Retribution One, Retribution Leader. I copy. Over.”

“This is Retribution Two, Retribution Leader. Copy that. Over.”

“This is Retribution Three, Retribution Leader. Affirmative. Attack Plan Three. Over.”

“This is Retribution Leader,” Kurinami whispered into the teardrop-shaped microphone just before his lips. “Execute—I say again, execute. Retribution Leader out!” Kurinami changed main rotor pitch and banked the machine sharply to starboard, coming about ninety degrees and climbing, the phalanx of Soviet gunships breaking up into a less than imaginative-looking evasive plan if he read their maneuver correctly. “Retribution Two—on your tail. Do you copy?”

“I copy, Retribution Leader. Over.” Retribution Two

rotated a full one hundred eighty degrees and fired missiles from port and starboard forward-facing weapons pods, the Soviet gunship that had come up under it vaporizing in the instant the missile contrail crossed.

Strafing fire crossed the nose of Kurinami’s machine at the level of the chin bubble, Kurinami banking to starboard and climbing again, coming about one hundred eighty degrees and firing his starboard mini-guns, the enemy gunship’s tail rotor spinning away from its mounting, the Soviet machine rotating uncontrollably on its axis, climbing and diving. If the Soviet were a good pilot, he might be able to land it, but the machine was out of action.

Kurinami ignored the gunship. Killing was for assassins.

He banked his machine to port and dove, Retribution Three coming down into a hover at the center of the enemy gunship pack, rotating on the axis of its main rotor and firing fore and aft missiles, then changing pitch and diving to port, Soviet mini-guns firing into their own machines, others of the Soviet machines exploding.

Kurinami redlined his craft, banking to port, firing forward missiles from both pods. Another two of the enemy gunships were gone.

At the edges of his peripheral vision, he saw them coming, aerial mines hurtling downward on small parachutes from a Soviet craft above him. If one should contact even the tip of a rotor blade— Kurinami dove, changing pitch, banking to starboard, under two of the Soviet gunships, machinegun fire etching across the bubble, disabling one of the wiper blades.

The corporal who was his drafted doorgunner was firing, stitching machinegun fire into a Soviet gunship coming off the west rim of the canyon. A hit into the fuel system, the gunship exploding, consumed now in a black and orange fireball, the fireball rising in the canyon updraft.

Kurinami’s German gunship rocked as one of the mines contacted one of the Soviet machines.

Kurinami’s vision through the bubble obscured now, snow

icing over it, he started to climb, another of the Soviet gunships taking a hit from one of the aerial mines, its tail section blowing in two, the machine plummeting downward leaving a tail of fire.

Retribution One was coming down out of the low-hanging snowclouds, firing aft-facing missiles, two Soviet gunships in close pursuit. Kurinami banked to starboard and dove on them, saying into his radio, “Retribution One—Gunther! They are on you!”

One of the Soviet gunships exploded, a direct hit to the underside of the fuselage, the other aft-firing missile from Retribution One sputtering away, lost in the cloudbank. But Retribution One was on fire. The second Soviet gunship was closing.

Kurinami checked his weapons status. Most of his remaining missiles were aft-firing. “Damnit!” Kurinami banked to port and interposed his own machine between Retribution One and the Soviet gunship. As Kurinami fired, the Soviet gunship fired as well.

“Gunther—get down and away from your machine!”

Kurinami felt the vibration rattling through him, heard the rattle of his corporal’s doorgun, saw the fireball behind him as the Soviet aircraft took the missile hit and exploded, felt his ears ringing as there was a scream, then the scream was cut off in the loudest sound he had ever heard.

Kurinami looked back.

The dporgunner—“My God!”—was impaled, a shrapnel fragment through his chest and throat, eyes wide open beneath his goggles, fire starting in the tail section, spreading forward as the open fuselage door fanned it.

Kurinami started down, already losing some control from his tail rotor.

Retribution Three flew past. Kurinami’s radio came alive. “This is Retribution Three, Retribution Leader. I will follow you down.”