Michael Rourke began banging on the door. “Hey —he’s sick, maybe dying—get him the hell out of here! He’s throwing up all over everything! Come on, damnit!” If one of their number spoke English, however stiffly, like the woman with the dead eyes, then it was always possible someone outside the door spoke English as well, “Come on! It smells in here! Open up!”
The door began to open, the two unpleasant; looking Mongols he had seen earlier stepping partially into the room. One of the men began to crinkle his nose at the smell of the vomit.
“See what I mean? This smells like shit —worse than that! Maybe I’m gonna be ripped limb from limb, but I shouldn’t have to put up with this. Come, on — ”
The other guard — apparently the smell bothered him less—gestured for Michael to step back, grunting something Michael didn’t understand. Michael stepped closer to the hidden bowl of soup. The guard passed him, the second man coming closer.
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Each was armed with a pistol and a saber, both men with their pistols drawn. As the second guard came even closer, Michael let one of the chopstick pairs slide out of his cuff, the other pair more secure under the band of his Rolex.
Michael turned to face the guard, saying, “The poor guy’s dying, but what a smell —” Michael’s right hand arced upward and both chopsticks in his right hand rammed into the Mongol’s left eyeball, the Mongol’s gun discharging as Michael threw himself to the floor, flipping the pillow away, the first guard wheeling around toward him, Michael hurtling the bowl of hot soup—it wasn’t scalding — into the first guard’s face. As the first guard’s mouth opened to scream or curse, his pistol discharged, but Michael was already moving, the second pair of chopsticks in his hand. He threw himself against the first guard, fluid from the eyeball dribbling down the man’s cheek, the chopsticks that had been rammed into the eye gone. Michael stabbed the second set of chopsticks into the first man’s throat, both hands, one holding the pistol, automatically moving to protect the face. Michael’s right knee smashed upward and his hands grabbed for the saber, tearing it from the leather scabbard, wheeling toward the first guard, throwing the saber like a javelin, the saber impaling the first Mongol through the chest. Michael’s body slammed into the second man, knee smashing him again as they fell to the floor.
There was another shot, but there was no time to wonder about it, Michael’s hands closed over the Mongol’s gunhand and his right elbow snapped into
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the adam’s apple, the fingers of his left hand closing over the little finger of the Mongol’s right hand, snapping it back, breaking it, the gun falling away. With the heel of his right hand, Michael punched upward against the base of the Mongol’s nose, breaking the bone, driving it upward into the brain. His left hand closed on the butt of the Glock 9mm and he rolled.
Vassily Prokopiev was kicking the first guard in the face repeatedly.
The eyes were already wide open and the saber was still thrust through the Mongol’s chest. “We’ve gotta get outa here. Grab his extra ammo. Hurry.” Michael was to his knees, quickly searching the dead Mongol beside him. The eye still oozed fluid and Michael felt more nauseated than he had before.
He found two spare magazines for the pistol. He ran across the room, helping Prokopiev with getting the magazines. “Just pull the trigger. Totally passive safety system,” Michael Rourke advised.
The corridor outside would be filled with guards in under fifteen seconds, he guessed. His left hand closed over the saber and wrenched it from the Mongol’s chest. “Take the one at his belt. Hurry.”
“You go ahead —I—”
“Nuts,” Michael declared, running for the door, the Glock 17 in one hand, the saber in the other. He could hear sounds of running feet, but saw no one yet, the corridor bending less than ten yards away. There could have been an army around the bend. Vassily Prokopiev was beside him. Michael stepped into the corridor. “That way,” and he nod-
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ded toward the opposite end of the corridor from which he heard the sounds of running feet, Prokopiev beside him, moving too slowly. But Michael Rourke had no intention of leaving the man behind, KGB officer or not. Human beings, he had been raised to believe, didn’t do that sort of thing to other human beings, regardless of who they were.
They reached the end of the corridor, the sounds behind them louder now. There, where the corridor abruptly stopped, was a stairwell, the stairs leading interminably downward it seemed, corridors branching off from the ever circling stairs periodically. But at the center of the stairwell, reachable by walking out on a wheel-spoked shaped platform, was a firepole.
“Time to play Batman?”
“Batwhat?”
Michael looked back down the corridor, coming around the bend a small army of Mongols, rifles and sabers brandished, animal-like noises coming from their lips.
“Tell you about the Caped Crusader later, okay. Shove the gun in your pants and give me a thirty second start, then do what I do.”
“All right-”
With the saber’s edge, Michael cut away the bandages beneath the sling which braced Prokopiev’s dislocation, keeping the right arm bound to the right side at the upper arm, the forearm slung. “Hold onto the sling for later. But you’ll need both hands now. This won’t feel good.” And he moved Prokopiev’s arm outward.
Prokopiev sucked in his breath like a scream and
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his knees buckled, but with Michael’s help he remained standing.
“Get out there —and give me your saber.” Prokopiev started out along one of the spokes of the wheel, the spoke ending at a large central ring, within which the pole was set. “You have to hold on just tight enough to slow your rate of descent, or otherwise you’ll hit bottom like a stone.” “You have done this before?” “Nope —but 1 watched a lot of television in the last five hundred years.” The Mongols were coming, Michael took up his saber and hurtled it down the corridor, the saber fended off by one of the Mongol rifles, “Be ready! Thirty seconds — remember!” He threw the second saber, the blade slicing across the right arm of one of them, the man falling back. Michael fired the Glock 17, a half-dozen rounds sprayed down the corridor, the Mongols falling back for an instant. Stuffing the Glock into the side pocket of his BDU pants, he flipped the railing and entered the wheel, stepped over the central rail and held to the pole. He looked upward, the staircase spiraling several stories higher, the pole jutting to the top floor as well. The Second City had, he presumed, been built into a mountain upward, similar to the German enclave in Argentina, and was of totally different design than the First Chinese City. “Give them a half-dozen shots, watch how I do it and go for it. Good luck.” “And to you, Michael Rourke.” Michael grabbed the pole more tightly and jumped, the pole’s composition of some sort of plastic, not unlike that used in the chopsticks he
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had improvised as weapons. His hands felt no heat from friction, his knees and ankles locked around it easily, the sensation of a controlled fall not totally unpleasant. He looked up, hearing shots, seeing Prokopiev take to the pole.
Michael looked below him, and suddenly there was a Mongol face and a saber pointing upward at him. Clutching tighter to the pole with his left hand, his chest pressed against it, Michael’s right hand went to the side pocket of his BDU pants for the gun, the snag-free design of the Glock 9mm paying off as he tore it free. He fired, then again and again, the saber point mere feet below him now as he sped downward toward it, then the saber falling away and the Mongol tumbling after it, down along the length of the pole toward the bottom still more than a hundred feet below. He tried stuffing the pistol away, but couldn’t, taking his finger out of the trigger guard, clutching the gunhand to the pole as well, skidding, sliding, heat finally starting to build up on his flesh. He was going too fast.
Below him, the Mongol’s body impacted the floor surface, bounced, then jammed half inside the wheel at the base of the pole.
Michael tried slowing himself, but when he had clung to the pole with only one hand, he had gathered too much momentum. He couldn’t slow himself.
The bottom was rushing up toward him as he clutched his booted feet to the pole, a scraping sound filling his ears, then impact, his feet crashing against the Mongol’s shoulders, dislodging the body,
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Michael sprawling to the ground, the wind knocked out of him.