Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (19 page)

The Soviet’s head snapped back, Rourke’s right fist pistoning upward, catching him full beneath the jaw, driving die man back. Rourke hacked outward with the Crain LS-X and tore open the man’s throat.

He was inside and John Rourke was suffocating, the hemosponge useless in atmosphere. Rourke tore off his helmet, lightheaded at the sudden change in pressure and air quality.

The interior airlock door. Rourke ran toward the ladder, grabbing up another of the shark guns from a dead Marine Spetznas. He kicked out of his flippers, scaling the ladder as quickly as he could, then bracing the shark gun against the operating wheel so it could not be turned until he wished it so.

Grabbing onto a vertical, the Crain LS-X in his left hand, Rourke swung down back to the level of the outer lock.

Water spouted there in a heavy white stream more than two feet high now, the force of the sea around them being held back by air pressure alone.

A figure was breaking through the water spout and John Rourke leveled the Sty-20 toward it, but he recognized the suit markings as Mid-Wake in origin. The man grabbed onto the ring grips above and swung out of the spout, Rourke lowering the muzzle of the Sty-20.

The figure removed the helmet, which obscured his face. The face was Jason Darkwood’s.

“You all right, Doctor? I thought—”

“I thought I was, too, Jason. Come on!” More of the Mid-Wake personnel were coming up through the hatchway, Paul and Michael leading them. “Michael! Airlock!”

“Right!” And Michael began shouting orders as Paul moved to the controls for the outer lock, two of the other men aiding him, closing it manually as the unconscious German whose life Rourke had saved was pushed through, Sam Aldridge following him. The lock was sealed. “They’ll kill pressure in here! Hurry!” Michael shouted to the three men helping him.

“Hatch secure!” Paul sang out.

Sam Aldridge barked orders to the rest of the commando team, “Be ready to give ‘em something they don’t expect once that interior hatch is blown! Look sharp!”

John Rourke looked to the hatch above, the rope of what was the German equivalent of plastic nearly out of the waterproof tube in which it was packed. Darkwood assisted Michael in setting the detonator, others erecting the blast shield. “Hurry with that!“John Rourke ordered, physically assisting in mating the pieces together.

“Almost ready, Dad!” Michael called.

Paul was beside John Rourke now, aiding in assembling the roof panels. The end result looked.like an igloo without a doorway, domed to deflect both Shockwave and debris, constructed of a petroleum-based metalized plastic material that was both fireproof and bulletproof, the entire structure assembling in under a minute in experienced hands and weighing less than nine pounds.

“Timer on!” Darkwood shouted.

“Shelters up!” Paul ordered.

John Rourke and Paul Rubenstein raised the shelter above them, Michael, Darkwood, Aldridge, and all the rest of the team moving under it and the second, identical shelter brought by the second team. Rourke’s eyes followed the injured German commando as he was carried in. The man’s color looked better and he was visibly respirating.

“Shelters down!”

John Rourke and Paul Rubenstein turned, stepped under the shelter, and dropped to their knees, lowering the shelter over them and the others.

“Brace!” Paul ordered.

Rourke turned his back to the shelter wall, the heels of his palms going downward over the interior lip of the shelter, Michael beside him doing the same. Across from him, Rourke could see Paul, Darkwood, and Aldridge, could see them clearly, the shelter dome translucent.

Michael was counting off. “Five… four… three… two … one!”

The explosion came, Rourke ducking his head involuntarily as the fireball rolled over the dome, then a section of the ladder leading to the interior hatch lashed across the shelter’s roof, the entire structure vibrating with it but keeping its integrity.

The noise stopped.

“Gas grenades!” Darkwood shouted, pulling his mask over his head, Rourke and the others doing the same, shouldering the shelter onto its side as Aldridge, a German officer, and Han Lu Chen raced to the opening beneath the porthole, bracing stubby-barreled launchers about the size of witness protection shotguns against their thighs, firing, each launcher sending an eight-inch-long gas grenade up through the well of the airlock and through the opening just made when the hatch was blown away.

The gas was odorless and tasteless, but possessed of a deep rose color. Its knockout agent would put anyone who breathed it to sleep for better than two hours, according to the German scientists.

As they fired the gas cartridges, Rourke stripped out of his chest pack and environment suit, buckling on his utility belt around the waist of the black surface suit he wore beneath the dry suit. He rammed one of the Scoremasters into his belt and drew the second one from the interior thigh holster.

Gas billowed downward now, purplish wisps of it in layers near the overhead.

“Stun grenades!” Rourke ordered, his son and his friend moving forward, hand-lobbing sound and light grenades upward through the hatch opening. Rourke rammed both Scoremasters into his utility belt. “Watch it!” Rourke averted his eyes, cupping both hands over his ears as the first of the grenades detonated.

There was a succession of high pitched, earsplittingly loud whines, and even with his eyes squinted shut, Rourke could still detect a heightened light level for a split second.

And then it was over. As he turned around, Michael and Paul were moving under the hatchway, John Rourke right behind them. Michael and Paul dropped to their knees, Rourke climbing onto their backs, reaching up, grasping for a handhold, pulling himself up and through, careful about the ragged outline where the hatch had been blown from its flange.

Rourke pushed away a fallen body—dead—and rolled onto the deck. There was rid resistance here. Rourke’s left hand racked the slide of one of the Scoremasters. He upped the safety, put the gun into his belt, then racked the second pistol. He drew the first gun again.

Now Paul, then Michael, then Darkwood, then Aldridge rose out of the hatchway.

Purple smoke hung heavy everywhere around them, both fore and aft in the ready room.

A watertight doorway was shut just beyond.

“Demolition!” Aldridge ordered. “Fix that!”

“Bring that injured German up here and assign a man to stay with him,” Darkwood ordered.

“Yes, sir!” Aldridge snapped back.

Rourke moved toward the doorway, Paul and Michael flanking him. Behind them, Darkwood was announcing, “Let’s have more gas ready and more sound and light!”

Time was the commodity most precious to them now, Rourke realized. If the Soviets had the chance to electronically seal each watertight doorway, fighting to seize the Island Classer would be compartment by compartment, and still the Soviet commander would be able to continue launching the rest of his missile complement against New Germany.

“Stand back!” Aldridge shouted as the marine by the doorway gave a hand signal.

Rourke turned away, taking shelter beside an equipment rack.

There was the sound of a small explosion, the center of the watertight doorway blown outward, Aldridge and Han Lu Chen running up, firing gas grenades through the opening.

As Aldridge and Han stepped away, Michael and Paul lobbed sound and light grenades through the opening. “Watch it!” Rourke ordered.

This time there was no need to close his eyes, just avert them. Still grasping his pistol, he covered his ears as best he could, but the remaining portion of the door effectively shielded him and the others from the largest part of the stun grenades’ effect.

A German commando ran to the doorway as the sound died, stabbing the muzzle of his assault rifle through the opening, firing, turreting the weapon right and left and up and down.

A marine from Mid-Wake worked the lock mechanism, three men racing through the opening as soon as the door swung back.

John Rourke followed them, stepping over the flange and into the corridor beyond. “More gas! Lots of it!”

Two of the Germans now, along with Han and Aldridge, began firing gas grenades in both directions along the corridor.

Darkwood pointed forward and shouted, “Follow me!”

John Rourke sprinted after him, Paul and Michael running along on either side.

The corridor was interrupted at another watertight door, but this one was only closed, not locked. “Just routine during combat. So far so good,” Darkwood announced.

Paul worked the locking wheel, John Rourke and his son giving cover as Han and the other three gas grenadiers fired their rounds through into the companionway beyond.

Aldridge started over the flange, but John Rourke and Michael beat him, taking up flanking positions on the opposite side of the doorway as Sam and a half dozen other men passed through.

No resistance here.

Darkwood, his issue Mid-Wake Lancer 9mm in hand, stepped over the flange. “The reactor room, gendemen. Let’s move!”

Darkwood started along the corridor in the wake of a wedge of marines led by Sam Aldridge, Rourke walking quiedy after them, his son and his friend on either side of him. His knowledge of Island Class submarines was limited, but assuming their layout followed a pattern similar to that outlined in

Darkwood’s briefing, the logical place for an ambush would be between the reactor complex and the crews’ quarters. Access to the command deck could be restricted merely by closing a hatch access, and the commander of the Island Class submarine would assume—perhaps rightly—that an explosion could not be risked lest navigational and other instrumentation be damaged or destroyed. Fighting into the crews’ quarters, or officers’ quarters farther forward, could be sealed off or at least stalled by personnel in the crews’ and officers’ mess above.

The only danger would be that invaders would sabotage the reactor room, but the results of such an action could threaten every life aboard —officers, crew, and attackers.

John Rourke caught up with Darkwood, whispering to him, “Paul and Michael and I are taking a different route. That way, if you get boxed in, we may be able to attack from the rear.”

Darkwood looked at Rourke for an instant, then nodded his head. “Good idea, Doctor. But be careful.”

“See you.” And Rourke dodged into a side companionway just ahead, Paul and Michael after him.

“What’s up, John?”

Voices sounded oddly hollow filtered through a gas mask, and more unnerving still were the clouds of purple gas through which they walked, the gas here relatively diffused. “Darkwood and his people won’t be getting slowed down by intruder defense systems, because they’re all gas-related and we’re masked and the surface suits protect us from skin absorption, but there should be armed resistance once they’ve passed into or through the reactor room. We can leave the machinery spaces and reach the science labs if I remember Darkwood’s briefing well enough.” He looked at Michael.

Michael nodded. “Yeah. There’s an access tube. Then what?”

“From the science, it’s an easy shot to medical,” Paul said slowly, “and then just forward of that’s the con.”

“But from the back door,” John Rourke added, breaking into a jogtrot down the companionway, his son and his friend with him.

Everywhere Natalia looked there was devastation, the main level of the National Defense Headquarters building all but destroyed, piles of rubble littering the marble floors, columns toppled, the ceiling above her head groaning, ready to collapse, as she picked her way among the piles of debris and the dead.

She quickened her pace, stopping only to check the occasional German defender who might possibly still live. None did.

The pattern of the devastation eluded her until she reached the main entrance, which led onto the central street of New Germany’s capital. Black-clad Elite Corps shock troops controlled this segment of the city and were everywhere in considerable numbers. The main gates to the city—just barely visible to the naked eye from her vantage point—had been overrun.

About two hundred yards from the farthest of the Soviet positions, Natalia spied a row of tanks, parked side by side and blocking further access into the city.

As yet, there was no Soviet armor in sight. Buildings everywhere were in ruin, but she guessed the destruction was not so much from the bombardment as from the explosives the force she observed had utilized during their ground attack.

It was unlike Soviet strategy for armor to be so conspicuously absent.

She drew back, deeper into concealment, considering the alternatives.

Carefully evaluating them one at a time, then discarding them, she arrived at what seemed the only logical conclusion.

As if to support her reasoning, there began a shrieking sound, so piercingly loud that her ears ached from it. And then there was a roar, but it was lost in the sound of an explosion. The floor under her feet shook with it, the ceiling above her head beginning to collapse.

She looked into the street again.

The bombardment had not ended.

Instead, John and Darkwood’s plan of assault on the Soviet Fleet had only brought about a temporary cessation. But when the missiles stopped raining down, some overzeal-ous Elite Corps commander had ordered in his troops, thinking to beat the armor by only a few moments perhaps, to have the main gate taken and, with it, honors for his leadership.

She would have laughed if the results were not so deadly.

And now the Elite Corps unit was stranded, unable to push ahead, under the same bombardment leveled against the German defenders and unwilling to withdraw.

But, if John and Darkwood’s plan was working, why had the bombardment begun again?

No answer presented itself, and the ceiling—the entire National Defense Headquarters—was about to come falling down on her. She harbored no fear for Sarah and Annie and Maria and the other women in the Leader Bunker. There was no means by which she could contact them, and she knew that there were several alternative methods for evacuating the bunker rather than coming straight up through National Defense Headquarters. And if the Leader Bunker had withstood the previous bombardment, it would withstand the collapse of the building above it.