TOTAL WAR
THE SURVIVALIST #1
By Jerry Ahern
(c) 1981
Chapter One
“Now!” Rourke shouted, pushing himself up from a low crouch and waving his left arm. He burst into a long-strided, loping run down the steep gravel embankment, past the scattered granite outcroppings, and toward the packed dirt highway below. The dozen men close behind him wore the khaki fatigues of the Pakistani Counter-Terrorist Strike Force. Fierce threats of death and violence issued from them. Small H-K MP5SD3 integral silencer, collapsible stock 9-mm submachine guns in their white-knuckled fists, they stormed the two dozen turban-clad opium smugglers on the highway, clinging to the four stake trucks.
As Rourke’s strike force reached the midway point to the highway, the smugglers began returning fire. Oil-smeared tarps were whisked from their heavy machine guns mounted on tripods in the back of each of the opium-packed truck beds. Small-arms fire bristled from the opened windows and doors.
Rourke fired the Heckler & Koch P2A1 flare pistol clenched in his right hand. Its 26.5-mm projectile soared high into the gray winter sky, then exploded.
From his vantage point along the embankment, Rourke could see the heavily armored Pakistani military half-track moving into position and blocking the road about half a mile further down the mountain. Stuffing the emptied flare pistol into the outside pocket of the borrowed leather sheepskin coat he wore, Rourke swung his own H-K SMG into a firing position, then ran down the last hundred yards of the embankment, leading his men and firing.
Already, he could see the lead vehicle of the four-truck caravan swerving into a U-turn under the withering machine gun fire from the half-track. Two of its wheels spun precariously near the ditch on the near side of the road, then the truck lumbered back onto the road, coming toward him. Emptying the H-K’s thirty-round magazine Rourke crossed the road in a dead run, then hit the gravel on the drop-off side of the road, and threw down the H-K. His right hand, then his left, reached for one, then another of the brace of stainless steel Detonics .45 autos from under his coat.
Thumbing back the hammer on the scaled-down .45 in his right hand, he closed his fist tightly over the rubber Pachmayr grips. He triggered one round toward the cab of the truck. The pistol in his left hand spit fire at the same instant. Both shots connected. The driver’s body bounced away from the wheel.
Rourke rolled back from the lip of the highway, sliding down along the edge of the steep slope. The truck was out of control and careening toward him. As it rocketed over the edge of the road, Rourke fired his pistols into the fuel tank, and the truck exploded. The blistering flames of the fireball scorched his face.
Glancing up toward the highway, clambering along the slope, Rourke spotted one of the three remaining trucks going into a skid, half climbing the embankment and flipping onto its side. The fortune in opium that was its cargo spilled out along the highway. The guard from the truck’s passenger seat tried to climb out the window, but stopped halfway and brought up a stubby muzzled submachine gun to spray the roadside.
Rourke saw two of his newest strike force men go down. Dropping and skidding on both knees toward the truck, Rourke fired both Detonics 45’s. The sub-gunner turned toward him, and Rourke fired twice again. The sub-gunner’s upper torso snapped back, the automatic weapon in his hands flew skyward, his body bent at a tortuous angle.
Rourke got to his feet and ran down the road toward the two stopped trucks. More than a dozen smugglers were exchanging automatic-weapons fire with the half-track. “Grenades!” Rourke shouted over his shoulder to the men running close behind him. There was a belching roar from one of the H-K 69’s. Its 40-mm high-explosive projective whistled overhead. Rourke dropped to the road, tucking his head down as the grenade exploded just yards in front of him. He glanced up as the truck exploded. Bodies and severed arms and legs soared into the air. The sky rained opium and bloody flesh. One of the H-K 69’s whooshed again. The second truck exploded.
Pushing himself up onto his elbows, then getting to his feet, Rourke shouted to his men, “Finish ’em!” His team closed in on the surviving drug runners. He fired both Detonics pistols until they went empty, then stuffed them into the waistband of his trousers and reached to his hip for the Metalifed six-inch Colt Python .357 holstered there, firing it point blank into the chest of the closest of the drug smugglers, then emptied it into two more of the men coming at him.
Using his empty Colt like a truncheon, he smashed down hard on the head of the nearest of the smugglers, then wheeled around. A turban-clad man with a long-bladed knife charged toward him. Rourke sidestepped. He dropped the Python back into its holster-no time to reload. As the Pakistani smuggler charged toward him again, Rourke edged back and grabbed his AG Russell Sting 1A boot knife.
The smuggler slowed, then dove forward. Rourke sidestepped the knife and whipped down with his small, double-edged blade against the right side of the man’s neck, slicing open an artery. Wheeling again, Rourke drew his right arm up, deflecting a blow from another nearby smuggler. He lost his blade and now, tucked into a crouch, his left fist smashed up, into the Pakistani’s stomach, while his right hand knifed forward, palm upward, fingers extended. The blow connected with his attacker’s throat and crushed the windpipe. Then, wheeling around, in the classic T-stance, Rourke stopped.
To his left, one of his men was knocking the last drug dealer down to the road with the butt of his sub gun.
Drawing up his shoulders, Rourke breathed deeply. Turning and snatching one of the spare six-round magazines from a double pouch at his trouser belt, Rourke dropped the empty magazine from one of the Detonics .45s into his hand, rammed the fresh magazine home and worked the slide stop, stripping the top round and loading the chamber. Carefully, he lowered the little stainless gun’s bobbed hammer and then slipped it into the speed break holster under his left arm.
As Rourke started reloading the second pistol, he glanced up at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Your men-and you, yourself, John Thomas, were superb!”
A smile lighting the brown eyes in his lean, clean shaven face, Rourke said, “From you, Captain, that’s the finest of compliments. But we lost two. They bunched together-I warned them not to.” The other man nodded.
Rourke added, “But maybe the others’ll learn by it. You and I both know that the stuff that’s hardest to remember is the stuff than’ll usually keep you alive or get you killed.”
“You’re right, John Thomas. But I think these men you trained will do well in this opium war we fight.” The Pakistani captain, shorter than Rourke and with a bushy black moustache, lit a cigarette for himself, then offered one to Rourke.
“No, thanks, Muhammed,” Rourke muttered, then reached into his shirt pocket and plucked a tiny cigar and put it between his teeth. “I’ll take a light though,” he said, leaning toward the Pakistani’s cupped hands, sucking in the flame of the match, then leaning back and exhaling the gray smoke slowly. He watched it catch on the wind and blow down along the road to vanish where two of the trucks still smoldered.
Rourke ran the fingers of his left hand through his dark brown hair, pushing it back from his high forehead. “You still planning a mop-up operation here?”
Hunching his shoulders against the raw wind, the Pakistani nodded. “I think then that it is good-bye for you to your men.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Rourke said, glancing over his shoulder as he finished loading six fresh rounds into the cylinder of the Python, then putting it back into its holster on his right hip. “Hang on a minute,” Rourke told the Pakistani, then turned and walked back up the road toward the ten men remaining from his force.
The young military policemen came to attention as Rourke approached, but he gestured for them to remain at ease. “You guys did good,” he said. “That’s why you’re still alive. Muli and Achmed-they didn’t remember what I taught you guys, and that’s why they’re dead. They were good men, no worse, no better than any of you here. I want you to understand that. Surviving-whether it’s a fight like this or just gettin’ home at night in traffic means keeping your head, remembering what you’re supposed to do, learning to react the way you know you should-then just doing it. I won’t be seeing you guys again. I told you, I’ve gotta get back to the States. Maybe someday we’ll all get together again. And if you guys remember that the first rule-in this or anything in life-is to keep your head, you’ll all be alive so that we can get together.”