He didn’t wait for an answer, the scraping of magazines out of and into magazine wells the only answer needed, the thwacking sounds of the magazines being seated.
Rourke was at the edge. There was a diagonally sloping shelf, ridged as if some vastly harder rock had gouged across it, the ridges ice filled and slicked, this immediately below him, one solitary piton —no crampon could have been placed there —set near the center. “Now!” Rourke shouted, rolling over, the rock surface tractionless, his footing gone for one terrifying instant, his body skidding laterally, his arms and legs spread-eagling, finding a purchase. He started creeping downward, skidding again, his right arm lashing out, his right first closing around the piton, his body swinging from it pendulum-like.
Rourke flipped over onto his back, his mind racing, the gunfire still coming from the foot of the mountain. And in a moment, he knew, there would be the whooshing sound of a rocket being fired, and if it were Annie down there —it had to be —she would be dead. Gunfire from above, Paul Rubenstein firing through the defile, toward the climbers below.
Rourke’s left hand edged to his pistol belt, opening the buckle, ice and snow clotting it, his hand holding it at the buckle end. As he tugged at the belt, what he knew would happen happened, what was unavoidable because there was no time to prevent it happening, because his left hand couldn’t even reach to the gun and snatch it from the leather and secure it in his waistband, his body so distended, the flap holster with the Python inside it sliding free of his belt, holster and gun skidding down along the rock face, disappearing over the edge —
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gone forever? But his daughter’s life was at stake. Rourke had the belt, nothing else on it this time out, his left fist tight over the buckle as he swung his arm outward and upward, almost contacting his right hand.
Rourke swung his left arm again, hand contacting hand, the buckle going over the piton, his left first balling in the leather, then his right as he let go of the piton. Quickly, because time was gone, Rourke edged downward.
He was at the base of the long, sloping ledge and he found a purchase for his feet, letting go, wedged there, the rope that was the climbers’ lifeline perhaps fifty feet below him now. He started down, hand over hand, his left hand slipping, his body skidding along the rock surface, his right booted foot ramming into a ledge, shale and ice dislodging, his descent slowing, his left hand finding a groove in the rock surface. He was stopped. Rourke looked down. Another twenty feet, gunfire coming toward him, chipping the rock face near his hands and feet and near his face. More gunfire from above. Paul. And gunfire from the base of the peak-Annie! Rourke kept moving downward, the rope vibrating under the weight of the climbers who clung to it, the missile tube fully extended, to the shoulder of the bottom man perhaps fifty yards below.
There was no time left. Rourke turned his back to the mountain, almost tearing open his parka, biting off his right outer glove through the toque over his mouth, his inner-gloved right hand finding the butt of the Detonics mini gun under his left armpit, ripping it from the Alessi leather, his thumb jacking back the hammer.
Rourke stabbed the pistol downward toward the man with the rocket tube, firing, then again and again, the man’s body seeming to go rigid, then the tube falling from his right shoulder, going into the abyss below where the Python had vanished, the body flopping out-
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ward and away from the rock face, the climbing rope shuddering. Rourke looked to the rope, answering gunfire coming from below him, his eyes behind the goggles squinting involuntarily against the rock spray, his face turning away, his shoulders hunching.
More gunfire from above, and he thought he heard Paul’s voice shouting a warning. Rourke stabbed the Detonics .45 outward and fired, toward the two crampons from which the climbing rope was suspended. His first shot rocked one of the crampons free of the rock, the rope snapping downward, his second shot a miss, only one shot remaining. There was no chance to grab at the second Combat Master. Rourke settled the muzzle, front and rear sights on line. As a hail of assault rifle fire from the two still living climbers impacted the rock face around him, his right first finger twitched against the trigger, the little stainless pistol rocking in his hand, the 185-grain jacketed hollow point whining as gilding metal coated lead impacted high tensile strength steel and the rock into which it was set, the crampon rocketing away from the mountainside, the rope snaking outward, a scream from below him piercing the night air, a last burst of assault rifle fire, two men falling away below him,
John Rourke closed his eyes, his head sagging back against the cold of the rock face.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They had pressed on from their uneasy campsite in the shadow of the mountains which sheltered the Second City, even the tiny Pryzwalski-like horses they rode seeming to sense the imminent danger, more unsettled than during the previous day’s ride.
Michael Rourke rode beside Han Lu Chen, whose family had died at the hands of Second City invaders, stonily silent, Otto Hammerschmidt riding drag with two of the six enlisted men of their force, one of the men Chinese, the other German.
The mountains which had been distant and gray now seemed twice their original size, the gray deeper but with more pronounced shadings and the granite upthrustings almost menacingly close.
There was light snow here and the wind was driving harder, through the niches between the rock chimneys making eerie whistling sounds, and when a stronger gust blew and the unearthly howling seemed unnaturally heightened, the animals would shudder and hesitate, edging nervously right or left. At these times, it was more necessary than usual to hammer at the animals’ sides with the knees, to dig in the heels and urge them unwillingly ahead.
Michael Rourke was reminded of the Valley of Death from the Twenty-third Psalm, but it was not a valley into which they had ridden, kept riding now.
At last, Han spoke. “They will know we are here.
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They will be waiting for us. But perhaps we can kill some of them.”
“If you have such a lack of faith in this, why are you here? Orders only?”
“If Mao and his cutthroats and that evil bitch, his mistress, do not ally with us, they will ally with the Russians and then there will be nuclear war. It is better to die for one insane chance than to die huddled in a hole, I think.”
“I’ve seen nuclear war. You’re right,” Michael answered, almost whispering.
Michael’s mount shuddered violently, all but refusing to proceed, Han reining in a few feet ahead, the animal Han rode rearing slightly, Han fighting it down.
Michael Rourke licked his lips, looking upward into the rocks. There had been no howl of wind, no deathlike whistling. His eyes squinted and for a fleeting instant, he thought he detected movement in the rocks above to his left.
“Han —up there? Did you see it?”
“I saw nothing, Michael, but that means nothing.”
Michael Rourke dug in his heels and the animal beneath him vaulted ahead, reared, swinging left, Michael leaning hard forward over the saddle, hands knotting in the animal’s mane . . .
Prokopiev looked at Yaroslav and then spoke into his helmet mounted radio headset. “This is Prokopiev. The riders are entering the killzone. On my command, all elements open fire. Be ready.”
Prokopiev settled the small of his rifle’s stock more comfortably into his left hand, waiting, watching as the two men in civilian clothes and the seven others, almost evenly divided between two uniforms (four of
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the uniforms recognizable as German), rode ahead.
“Be ready, Comrades,” Prokopiev hissed.
The riders were coming. With the Chinese army advancing he and Yaroslav and the men of his force had all but encountered them several miles distant. The horses of the men in the gorge below them were the only obstacle against rendezvousing with the extraction helicopters. Even if the gunfire were heard, as well it might be, the Chinese army was on horseback as well.
Prokopiev had never ridden a horse, doubted that any of his men ever had, but the horses could be ridden, even a few of them, the rest of his force staying behind to hold off the enemy forces while others went to meet the gunships that were to extract them, then come back with the gunships. There was no possibility of radio contact with the gunships, because they would be out of range and under enforced radio silence. But, Prokopiev smiled, either he or old Yaroslav could “persuade” the pilots to fly back for the others and engage the Chinese forces if necessary, even if they couldn’t be lawfully ordered to do so. That, or shoot the pilots and take the helicopters and fly them themselves. He could explain it away to Comrade Colonel Antonovitch.