“But, Comrade Colonel—”
Rozhdestvenskiy dragged heavily on his cigarette. “Your objections shall
be noted in my official report. Now—lead your men into the assault.”
The Army major stiffened visibly, then saluted, Rozhdestvenskiy, still
dressed in civilian clothes, nodding only.
Rozhdestvenskiy turned and started back toward his command helicopter. In
the far distance, he had been seeing fireworks illuminating the dawn sky.
Peculiar, he had thought, surprised that Major Borozeni hadn’t mentioned
it. …
Below him now, he could see the helicopter gunships shadows hovering like
huge black wasps over the lip of the dish-shaped mountain valley, and
beyond the rirn, the first of Borozeni’s attack forces were moving up. It
was like a gigantic board game, he thought—this thing of being a field
commander. He rather liked it.
Rozhdestvenskiy spoke into the small microphone in front of his lips.
“This is Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy; the attack has begun!”
His jaw tightened, his neck tensed, and he nodded to his pilot, watching
the man’s hands as he worked the controls, feeling the emotion already in
the pit of his stomach. They were starting down.
The mists on the ground rolled under the downdrafts of the helicopter
rotors—he watched them swir! beneath the long shadow of his machine as
they came from the sun. Surprise—there would be surprise, he thought.
Already, he could see the factory looming ahead and below them, the only
large industrial building in the town, at its far edge.
“Down there,” he rasped into his headset microphone. “There—get us down
there.” Then he switched channels, into the all-bands monitoring system so
both Borozeni’s ground commanders and the pilots of the other helicopter
gunships could hear him. “This is Rozhdestvenskiy—we will converge on the
factory due west of the town. Only KGB personnel will be allowed
inside the factory complex itself, and only those with a clearance level
over CX Seven will be allowed within the factory. Crush any resistance.”
He glanced through the bubble in front of him as another skyrocket soared
up, exploding, as if the fools—he thought—were celebrating the attack.
Into the microphone again, he snapped, “And find the source of those
fireworks; I want them stopped!”
As he judged it, the factory was less than a mile away now so again he
spoke into the microphone, but on the aerial-force band only. “This is
Rozhdestvenskiy. Commando squad ready! Pilots take up positions!”
His own ship was hanging back as a half-dozen helicopter gunships, their
cargo doors open, formed themselves into a crude circle around the
factory fence, perhaps one hundred feet in the air.
Rozhdestvenskiy saw the first of the ropes being let down; then suddenly,
like dozens of spiders sliding on filaments of web, dark-clad forms
started down the ropes, rappelling toward the ground. “Good man!” he
rasped, unconscious that he had spoken into the microphone.
The first of the men were on the ground, establishing a perimeter, their
assault rifles and light machine guns ready.
The last of the commando team was down. “Move out, commando force ships,”
he barked into the microphone. “Take up positions two hundred yards from
and around the factory fences.”
Rozhdestvenskiy turned to his own pilot, tapping the man on the arm, then
jerking his thumb downward.
The pilot nodded, then started the machine ahead and down.
Rozhdestvenskiy’s mouth was dry, his palms sweating.
He snapped up the collar of his windbreaker, checking
I
the AKM across his lap.
He had never been in mass combat before.
The helicopter gunship was hovering, then dropping, gliding forward
slightly and stopping.
He felt the lurch, felt the impact; then he released the restraint
harness, throwing open the side door and stepping out near a squad of the
commandos already on the ground, his own personal KGB team surrounding
him.
“We enter the factory. Follow me!” He started to run, remembering as he
ran to raise the rifle into an assault position.
The gates of the factory complex were locked with a chain, a massive
padlock securing them.
“Stand back.” He raised the assault rifle, firing into the lock. The sound
of the jacketed slugs tearing into the metal of the lock was deafening,
but the lock seemed to have been broken.
He reached for it, feeling the heat of the metal despite the gloves he
wore, wrenching it open, then twisting it free of the chain.
“Get the gates opened—now!”
The chain-link twelve-foot gates swung inward, and Rozhdestvenbkiy stepped
into the service drive of Morris Industries—a giant step, he felt, in
history.
He started to run, shouting again, “Follow me!” Above him, there was a
spectacular burst, a skyrocket of blue and red and gold in a starburst,
massive, exquisite.
He continued running, reaching a set of double doors. They would be
locked. He raised the assault rifle again, firing into the locking
mechanism. A burglar alarm sounded.
“Idiots,” he shouted, then reached the doors, twisting
on the outside handle, wrenching the door open outward. He stepped into
the factory complex, his men surrounding him. The building was in reality
a series of interconnecting buildings.
“The loading docks,” he shouted, then started running. It the materials he
sought would he anywhere, they would be by the loading docks. There would
be time then to search out precisely where they were manufactured. Gray
light shafted through wire mesh-reinforced glass windowpanes as he ran the
length of the first building; and occasionally through one of the windows
as he looked out, he could see fireworks in the sky—more rockets, more
starbursts. Were the people here insane?
He reached the end of a long corridor, already breathless from the
running. Glancing to right and then to left, he looked right again.
“There—hurry.” For some reason, some reason he couldn’t understand, he
felt the need to hurry that much greater each time one of the skyrockets
would explode. He felt—he couldn’t define it.
Ahead of him he saw massive garage doors of corrugated metal, and between
the doors and the corridor through which he ran, he could see
crates—coffin-shaped and roughly the same size. He stopped running,
leaning heavily against the wall, his breath coming in short gasps.
“Victory,” he shouted. “The final victory over the Americans!” Suddenly
the glass from the wire-meshed corridor windows shattered over his head,
shards of it falling on and around him.
He stepped away from the wall, looking through the corridor windows into
the dawning sky—a huge star-burst, the largest firework he had ever
seen—pale colors against a pale sky. And the concrete beneath him began to
tremble, the walls to shake, dust and infinitesimally small chunks of
debris drifting down.
“My God!” Where had he learned that? he thought. “They’re blowing it up!”
He started to run, the crates— the precious crates—behind him. Survival
was more immediate now as the cross supports began crumbling and a
three-foot section of concrete killed the commando beside him—just beside
him.
Squads of assault rifle-armed Soviet infantrymen were pouring through the
streets.
“Damn it,” Rourke rasped, both of the twin Detonics stainless .s in his
fists. Suddenly, the ground beneath him began to rumble, to shake.
He glanced at the black luminous face of the Rolex Submariner on his left
wrist, then squinted skyward— full dawn. The explosions had begun just as
Martha Bogen had said they would.
There was no time now—no chance to save the town. Russian troops—why?
The explosions. Already, in the distance near the high peaks of the rim of
the valley, he could see rock slides starting.
He had waited near the school, still several blocks from Martha Bogen’s
house—and the garage where his Harley should still be hidden.
But waiting for the Soviet troops to clear the street in front of him
would be suicidal now.
Thumb-cocking both pistols, he started to run, the ground shaking beneath
him still more violently.
Gunfire. Soviet AK series assault rifles, firing toward
him, glass shattering in the louvered classroom windows beside him as he
jumped a hedgerow, running.
Rourke wheeled beside a concrete vertical support for a portico rooi. He
fired the pistol in his right hand, then the pistol in his left, bringing
down an assault rifle-armed soldier. The man’s body spun, his assault
rifle firing wildly, into his own men.
Rourke started to run again. Past a flagpole. During the day there would
have been an American flag there and a Kentucky state flag as well.
He was nearly to the street beyond the school front lot. The ground
trembled again.
He tried envisioning what the men and women of the town would have done to
ensure their mass suicide. The ground trembled again and he saw a black
disk sail skyward out of the street. There had been a large natural-gas
storage area. . . .
“Natural gas,” he rasped, throwing himself to the grassy ground beneath
him.
The gunfire, the shouts, the commands in Russian and in English to
halt—all were drowned out. Rourke dropped his pistols, covering his ears
with his hands.
The street a hundred yards ahead of him was a sea of flame, chunks of