“I can get her, Herr Doctor!”
“No —only me!” Rourke was out of the saddle, shifting Michael’s unconscious form onto the back of Hammerschmidt’s bike, giving Hammerschmidt half the length of rope by which he had tied Michael in place. “Get up into the rocks, start marshalling people together. Get Maria on a bike. Start heading
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out. Cut a tangent to the east and you should avoid Soviet gunships. I’ll catch up to you. Be on the lookout for Han. Hurry. Paul’s in charge.” Rourke didn’t wait for a reply, jumping back aboard his machine, pulling down the visors. He sheathed his Grain knife and stuffed the rope down inside his sweater.
As he gunned the machine into a tight turn, Rourke rasped into his headset, “Take off out of here on a tangent from here in the direction of me First City but eastward. I’ll catch up with you. Don’t wait. I’m bringing Natalia.”
“Daddy — what’s wrong with her — ”
“Never mind — Paul? Can you hear me?”
“Gotchya.”
“You’re running things until I catch up. Get everybody outta there quick and don’t use the radio you left with Maria. They could triangulate in on us”
“Let me-”
“I’m doing this alone. Take care of Annie.” Already, Rourke’s machine was bearing down on Natalia’s position, his guns still carrying over a half load.
Behind him, troops were pouring from inside the Second City. He decided to fix that, activated the high explosive weapons pod, blowing out the first package, the ground vibrating around him and, as he glanced back, smoke and flames belching skyward.
“John – I’m -John -John -John – ”
Natalia’s voice.
Rourke cut a swath between her position and the
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advancing Maoist regulars, firing off the second high explosive package, driving them back. Han was riding toward her on horseback.
Rourke arced back right, throwing up his visors. “Han! Take Natalia’s machine! Han!”
The Chinese Intelligence agent waved back at him, his mount drawing up short as he dropped from the saddle, falling prone beside Natalia, grabbing up one of her M-16s and firing, drawing her back behind her machine, firing again, the M-16 empty now, Rourke looking back, the Maoist regulars advancing once more. Rourke fired one of the gas/smoke mixes, to hold them off.
And, with his visors raised, he could hear something in the sky above. As he looked up, the sky seemed black with the insect-like shapes of Soviet gunships, strafing runs starting across the ground, Rourke accelerating, cutting a wide arc around Natalia and Han, decelerating, braking, skidding the machine to a halt, jumping from it as he put out the stand.
Rourke skidded to his knees beside Natalia and Han Lu Chen, a Scoremaster in each fist. He fired them out through the smoke and clouds of gas toward the advancing Maoist foot soldiers.
“You take Natalia’s bike. Get out of here. Head away from here on a tangent to the east. Catch up with the others. I’ll be right behind you. I think her weapons systems are exhausted, so just drive like hell.”
“I have never — ”
“Twist the right hand grip and it’s the throttle, work the left side and it’s the brakes. Once you
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catch up, let Maria Leuden drive, you ride behind. Don’t let the speedometer get up over sixty and don’t try to do anything abruptly. Otherwise, just like riding a horse. Help me with Natalia. Hurry.”
Her voice droned on and on in his head, ‘John — John-”
He was into the saddle, Han balancing Natalia behind him. “Now —Natalia —” He pushed up her visor. “Can you hear me.”
Tears streamed from her eyes, the eyes widely dilated, her neck vibrating with her pulse. If she heard him, she didn’t know it.
John Rourke had planned ahead, using only half the rope. “Tie her to my shoulders. Hurry!”
Rourke took the rope ends, tied them himself, Han running for Natalia’s machine. Rourke pulled down the visor, pushed down hers, strafing runs from above, gunfire from the Chinese troops on the ground. They thought that his attack had been part of the Soviet attack, he realized, gunning the Special.
Han was into the saddle, the Special almost lurching out from beneath him. But Han held on, low over the handlebars, the machine zigzagging maddeningly.
John Rourke spoke into his headset. “Natalia — hold on, darling,” and he let the Special out, cutting in behind Han Lu Chen, Han’s machine evening out, speeding away, Rourke holding back.
Han was nearly to the edge of the valley, Soviet gunships hovering there, ropes dropping from them, black clad Elite Corps airborne elements rappelling fluidly to the ground.
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Han was clear.
Rourke looked back. The only way out lay through the Maoists and Mongols, the way he’d come in.
Rourke checked his fairing mounted guns. Maybe enough ammo. One more package of smoke and gas. The 629, his M-16, the two Detonics Mini-guns still loaded.
He whispered to Natalia, so that only she would hear. “And I’ve always loved you.”
She kept crying, moaning his name.
Rourke began to accelerate, working the machineguns in short bursts, the ground around him furrowing under strafing runs from the Soviet gunships above, Maoists and Mongols in front of him and on either side firing handguns and rifles, bullets whining off the fairing, his head reeling, his ears ringing—he realized a bullet had glanced off his helmet. He kept the Special rolling, faster and faster, the digital speedometer at forty now,
A concentration of Mongols closing in behind him on horseback, rifles firing after him. They could hit Natalia. Rourke activated his last smoke and gas package, accelerating now, to sixty, firing his machineguns, firing, firing, the dead falling in waves before him.
A Soviet gunship was directly over him, he realized, machinegun fire on both sides of him, explosions rocking the ground on either side.
He freed his right hand for an instant, drawing the 629, shifting it to his left. He throttled up, the helicopter matching his speed, Rourke rammed the revolver into his belt and braked, the helicopter
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passing over him, the revolver back in his fist. He stabbed it toward the gunship’s underbelly and fired, then again and again, aiming for the rotor now, firing it out, the helicopter veering suddenly to starboard, whether it was hit or not he didn’t know.
The revolver into his belt, He gunned the Special ahead, his left hand snatching at one of the mini-guns in the double Alessi rig. A Mongol hurtled himself down from the saddle, Rourke firing into the Mongol’s face, the Special bumping up and over the body.
A Maoist officer with an assault rifle, spraying toward them, Rourke’s right arm stinging with a grazing hit, the Special wobbling under him. Rourke fired out the little Detonics Combat Master into the officer’s chest, then dropped the little pistol into a stowage compartment in the fairing.
The ground was beginning to rise, the rocks ahead. An explosion threw up a shower of dirt and gravel. Rourke accelerated. A Soviet gunship crossed nearly at eye level in front of him and he swerved the Special, accelerated out of the skid, up into the rocks,
Gunfire from the helicopters tore into the rocks around him, the speedometer reading one hundred ten, a straight run ahead now, Rourke accelerating. One hundred twenty. One hundred thirty. One hundred thirty-five.
The ground rippled and furrowed on either side of them, and as he looked up, there were two gunships in pursuit, aerial mines falling, exploding to either side of them, Rourke swerving the machine right and left, recovering just in time to
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almost lose control again.
One hundred forty.
One forty-five.
The ground was starting to drop off.
His only hope, he had realized since the pursuit had begun moments ago, was to give the gunships nothing to pursue.
He angled the fork left, the ground dropping quickly now, rising steeply ahead. He accelerated, one hundred fifty-two.
The machine, with the added weight of-a second rider and the bumpy terrain was almost impossible
to control now.
Natalia kept calling his name. “John — ”
“I’m here, Natalia,” John Rourke whispered.
The ground rose sharply, the terrain slick rock beneath him, high rock walls on either side of him, and suddenly nothing there in front of him.
John Rourke had planned ahead, gunning the last mile per hour of speed out of the Special as it jumped, Rourke’s hands leaving the controls, tugging open the knot binding Natalia’s body to his, the rushing water of the river fifty feet below, forty, thirty, as he twisted in the saddle, folding Natalia into his arms, then throwing them clear as the machine impacted the turbulent surface., Rourke’s body taking the force as the machine broke the water for them, Rourke still holding tight to Natalia as they went under, the water above them exploding under the impacts of machinegun bullets.