Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (4 page)

There was an extra muzzle cap in the same bag in which she carried spare magazines for the M16. She kept moving… .

As Natalia kicked away from the rock wall, there was a lull in the wind and she heard the unmistakable sound of a silenced

German helicopter gunship in the night.

“Damn,” she hissed under her breath.

It was like the sound of a fly buzzing in one’s room in the darkness, distinct, annoying, recognizable. With all the time she’d spent working with Vladmir Karamatsov on behalf of KGB interests in Latin America, the sound of a fly buzzing in a room was nothing strange to Natalia.

If the Nazis had commandeered one of the German military gunships for the purposes of drawing them — the women—out of The Retreat, it was logical to assume that they could have commandeered a second or third gunship as well. Evaluating the situation empirically, she could arrive at no other more likely conclusion than the gunship being manned by Nazis having come to reinforce Freidrich Rausch in his intended assault against The Retreat’s main entrance.

Natalia let herself descend more rapidly than was wise, nearly more rapidly than was prudent toward the drifted-over ground below… .

Annie was as close as she dared without being detected.

She checked the laser again, shining it into the snow.

Her father had taught her many things, some of which she’d recalled tonight. One thing he had told her in those five years when, for all they knew, the lives in The Retreat were the only lives on Earth, she remembered now. “If you are ever placed in the position of having to take human life —and God only knows, we might be the only people left on Earth—remember this: If the necessity for taking life cannot be avoided, you must determine the morality of striking first. In other words, if you’re good enough and willing to risk your life, then give your adversary a chance. But, even if you are good enough, and more than your own fate hangs in the balance, don’t masturbate your honor or your conscience —and who’s to say they aren’t the same, really —but don’t do that by sacrificing lives that may depend on yours to give a known enemy a so-called ‘even break.’ Usually, if an enemy is worth killing, he’s worth killing by whatever means necessary to achieve the end result of his death and the preservation of your life or what other lives may depend on your success. So, ifyouhaveto, shootingaman in the back is just about the same as shooting a man in the front; the important consideration is not that he deserves to die, usually, but that the event of his death will achieve the desired result. If the result is worth killing for to begin with, the direction from which the bullet or knife or whatever comes that ends his life is largely immaterial. Do you understand, Annie?”

She hadn’t understood then, because in the videotapes of western movies, the good guys never ever shot the bad guys when their backs were turned.

But she’d come to understand juxtaposing the values of lives, determining which was better, a troubled conscience or wasting the lives of the good and the innocent.

So Annie Rourke Rubenstein setded the laser-fitted pistol in her right fist, sitting back on her hind end. She spread her legs apart in a way that was unnatural for her because she so rarely wore slacks or pants. With her back propped against a snow-packed rock, her elbows rested just inside her thighs. She brought her left hand up, pulled back the hammer on the pistol, thumbed up the safety.

She forced her shoulders to relax, taking control of her breathing.

She could see both men through a niche of rock about eighteen inches wide.

The taller, brawnier of the two men was doing something with the cannister, which was likely some explosive device. The soft whirring of the helicopter rotor blades was louder now, almost audible between the lulls in the driving cold wind.

She moved her right thumb to just over the pad, which was the switch for the laser.

Her left thumb moved down the pistol’s safety.

She wrapped her double-gloved left hand over her single-gloved right, around the front strap of the 9mm pistol.

Her right thumb depressed the switch for the laser, and the red dot appeared between the shoulder blades of the man with the supposed explosive device.

She let out half her breath, catching the rest in her throat,

blinked once, then touched her right first finger to the trigger.

He was already pitched forward, as if she’d hit him with a vasdy heavier caliber than 9mm. Either she’d hit him in the spine, or …

The pistol bucked and the laser beam danced a zigzag pattern across the man’s back and neck as she brought the gun down, swinging her entire body a few degrees right, firing again as she settled the laser beam over the juncture of the second man’s neck and shoulder. He was already turning toward the sound of the first shot as she fired.

Again, the pistol rocked a litde, the laser zigzagging.

She fired once more on the second man as she brought the pistol down, the laser beam just below his thorax as his body spun away.

She thought she’d hit high and off center because of the speed with which his head was turning away from her, possibly striking him in the jaw.

She swung the pistol toward the first man.

But he was gone.

“Damnit,” Annie snapped. She moved the laser beam onto the second man again. His body was still, but she couldn’t afford to leave him alive with the first one still in motion. She fired twice more into his thorax and head, killing him for certain.

As she triggered the second shot, she realized her error.

As she brought the pistol out of its mild recoil from that shot, she was already starting to move.

Either she’d hit the first man in the spine, or …

Whatever it was that had hit her on the side of the head made Annie’s entire body vibrate with the impact and she sprawled right, barely holding onto the Taurus as she fell.

And then there was tremendous pressure on her, and there was a knife beside her left eye and a voice saying, “I will make you ugly before I kill you, Frau!”

Natalia threw herself into the snow at the sound of the first shot, the icy wind rendering her unable to exactly peg the direction from which it had come.

The subsequent shots gave her her bearings.

And they were clearly just pistol shots, likely 9mms.

Annie had the laser-sighted Taurus from the arms lockers. If she’d had the opportunity to take out both men spotted earlier on the microwave closed circuit video monitors, she would have taken it, in all probability having elected to use the pistol.

The helicopter was much louder now, likely homing in on an open radio frequency. The road leading up to The Retreat became almost level for a short span, perhaps five hundred yards away from the entrance.

A skilled helicopter pilot could land there, even in those conditions.

But Annie would have been on the radio by now, announcing her success if she’d had any. Or she would have called out by voice to her.

But there had been no such radio transmission and no such call.

Natalia told herself she’d waited long enough, that she should have never put Annie in a position where the girl might have to brace someone her own father had so far been unable to best.

Natalia reached into the right side pocket of her parka, extracting the Bali-Song. She wedged the knife, still folded closed, inside the fold-around tab that secured the buckle of her gunbelt to the belt itself. Blousing up her parka slighdy, she was able to mask its presence there from casual observation.

Swinging the M16 forward off her back, she clenched her right fist around the pistol grip, her right thumb poised over the selector for a split second.

The helicopter would land within minutes or less.

There was almost no time.

She flicked the tumbler to auto. Then, with her right first finger just outside the trigger guard, she started out of the snowdrift to find Annie and Freidrich Rausch… .

It was Freidrich Rausch. He said to her, “You are the daughter, are you not?”

Her eyes flickered from the point of the knife, less than an inch away from her left eye, to his face, and then back. His eyes were darkly gleaming pinpoints of light seen through his snow goggles. shot you,” Annie whispered, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I was bending over and, as luck would have it—good luck for me and bad for you—the bullet tore away part of my parka but did not harm me at all. You are the daughter of Frau Rourke, the one who fornicates with the subhuman.”

Annie moved her right hand, still holding the gun, and Rausch almost drove the knife through her snow goggles and into her eye. She sucked in her breath and froze, not daring to even breathe. He kept the knife so close to her eye that it actually touched her snow goggles as he reached out with his left hand and took the Taurus from her grasp.

“You are the Rourke daughter?”

“Yes.”

“And you chose to despoil your own body by—”

“Fuck off! Understand that in English?!” He was going to kill her anyway, she realized.

Rausch laughed. “My men will be here. They will not be happy. You have just cold-bloodedly murdered one of the top officials in the party.”

“Nazis eat shit three times a day,” Annie hissed through the scarf covering her lips.

“And what if I blind you in both eyes and set you off somewhere in this icy wilderness to wander about in darkness and anguish and pain?”

“Better than your company,” Annie told him honestly.

Rausch laughed. “How did you escape the mountain fortress of your father without being detected?”

She had the distinct impression that he hadn’t seen Natalia. Annie fought to keep her expression fixed, not to show any relief, even in her eyes. “I won’t tell you.”

“We could blind you in one eye first, and of course my men are very lonely. If you will let this Jew lie with you—”

“You’d better kill me, because if you don’t—”

He stabbed the point of the knife through the left lens of Annie’s snow goggles, and she screamed as she reached to her belt for the Detonics Scoremaster .45 to kill him.

Natalia’s voice rang out across the snow. “Hold it! Or I shoot!”

Annie lay still.

Her left eye was squinted tightiy shut and she told herself she could feel the tip of Rausch’s blade against the lid. Tears were forming involuntarily in her eyes. The fingertips of her right hand were on the butt of the .45.

She’d never make it.

Rausch smiled as Annie looked at him with her right eye. “Major Tiemerovna, the Communist agent. Welcome!”

“Major, not anymore. Communist, not anymore, either. Move and you will surely die.”

“I think not, Fraulein Major! If you do not move into my line of sight and carefully lay down your weapons, I drive the knife forward, through her eye and into her brain. It is strong enough steel for that. And, if you shoot me, I will fall toward her and you will have done my work for me.”

“Kill him!” Annie screamed.

But she didn’t move.

“All right,” Natalia said.

Annie wanted to shake her head in disbelief, to scream, to kill Rausch herself. She didn’t move.

She could barely see Natalia, edging around on Rausch’s left, lowering the muzzle of her M16. “Natalia!”

“I have no choice but to do what I must do, Annie!”

Rausch laughed again. “Keep coming, Fraulein Major.

And be quick about it.”

Natalia kept moving, letting the muzzle of the M16 all the way down.

Finally, Rausch ordered, “Stop there!”

Natalia stopped.

Rausch commanded her, “Drop onto your knees, Fraulein Major.” Natalia obeyed.

Annie was too frightened to breathe.

Rausch said, “Gendy let the rifle fall to your side.”

Natalia obeyed.

“Now, easily, so there is no chance that I will have to kill the Jew lover yet. Unsling your weapons and let them fall beside you.”

Natalia began to comply.

Annie’s body shook with cold and rage. Her head ached, her muscles felt tied in knots. Out of the far corner of her right eye, she could watch Natalia clearly.

Rausch commanded, “Now the gunbelt, and very slowly.”

Natalia began to unbuckle it, then shouted, “Fall back!”

Annie threw her body weight rearward, her right eye never leaving Natalia’s hands. Natalia’s right hand flew outward to full extension of her arm and something gleaming left her fingertips.

Annie felt downward, outward pressure on her goggles and twisted her head back and left.

As she turned away fully, she saw the knife as it plunged into Rausch’s chest.

Annie’s gun was out, firing point-blank as she heard a simultaneous shot, then another and another, from where Natalia still knelt.

Annie touched her snow goggles, ripping them from her face.

She opened her left eye.

Natalia trudged forward, her gunbelt over her left shoulder, her long guns still in the snow.

Annie started to cry, angry with herself for it but knowing it was a release of tension. And she remembered the words of her father: “Women generally live longer than men because their emotions are closer to the surface, less botded-up; never be ashamed to cry.” And, something else he’d said: “There were eight people in the United States who could throw a Philippine Bali-Song knife while closed and have it impact the target open; but when Natalia first came here, that made nine.”

Annie secured the dead Freidrich Rausch’s snow goggles over her eyes, saying, “Daddy would have enjoyed watching you, I think.”

Natalia smiled. “Don’t make such a big thing out of my getting Rausch. The circumstances were just right, that’s all. Your father would have done it at least as well, if not better.”

Annie said nothing more about it, except, “Thank you.”

“Friends never have to say that, but it is very nice when they do.”

“I think they may have placed an explosive device near the main entrance.” Natalia only nodded, strapping on her gunbelt, fetching up the sniper rifle and the Colt M16, running as rapidly as she could through the drifted snow toward the main entrance and the large rock before it. As Natalia bent over the metallic cylinder, Annie was beside her. “That’s what I meant. It looks like—”