Rourke looked back—Natalia and Emiliy Bronkiewicz, Emily’s arm bandaged with a shirt-sleeve, helping the man Rourke had cold-cocked with the barrel of the revolver, the revolver back in Emily’s right fist, Natalia’s one revolver holstered, but her left hand still holding one as she shouldered half the weight of the man.
Rourke rammed the muzzle of his M-16 forward, throwing the assault rifle to his shoulder, firing down from the top of the steps toward the KGB invaders.
As he started down the steps, gunfire began pouring toward him, the sounds of what glass hadn’t been blown out of the office walls in the explosion now shattering as stray rounds impacted it.
Rourke fired into the KGB invaders again, their knot beside the blown-open steel doors thinning as they drew back.
An officer—Rourke saw the man as he looked up. Rourke heard his shout—in Russian, which Rourke understood. “It is Major Tiemerovna—she is ordered to be killed!”
“Down,” Rourke shouted back to Natalia. “Down, Natalia!”
Rourke made to fire the M-16—a three- or four-round burst and the rifle was emptied.
The Soviet officer was leading a group of a half-dozen men—they had broken through the Resistance fighters, were charging the staircase, the officer holding a pistol, the six men with him AKMs.
Rourke let the M-16 fall to his side on its sling as he took the stairs down two at a time, both Detonics pistols coming into his hands, his thumbs jacking back the hammers.
He discharged both pistols toward the center of mass of the charging KGB officer—once, then once more, the man’s body falling back.
Four AKs were turning on him, Rourke taking a half-step back, his pistols raised.
There was a burst of assault rifle fire, then another and another, from the stairs above him.
Three of the Soviet soldiers went down, Rourke firing his pistols, emptying them toward the remaining three men, more assault rifle bursts—one an M-16 on full auto, the other only a semiauto—coming from behind him.
The last three men were down.
Rourke rammed both pistols into his belt, grabbing the Colt Mk IV already there, jacking back the slide. He looked up the steps—Natalia, and beside her Dumbrowski—and Emily Bronkiewicz was staring at her.
Natalia’s face was ashen—Rourke read it in her eyes. She had killed her own.
As he turned away, raising the Colt, firing twice into the dissipating knot of KGB troops, he heard Emily Bronkiewicz shouting from the top of the stairs. “These two are on our side—make a run for the tunnel—quick!”
Rourke emptied the Metalifed Government Model .45, covering Emily, Dumbrowski, and the two other men—they moved well enough now—as they descended the stairs.
It was almost like moving someone in a trance as, his M-16 reloaded—he half dragged Natalia toward the tunnel.
Behind them was another explosion and more gunfire.
“Hurry!” Rourke rasped.
Chapter Thirty-six
Rourke and Natalia were the last two into the tunnel, except for Emily Bronkiewicz—she was lighting a fuse. “This’ll stop the bastards—but good,” she sneered. “Dynamite—and plenty of it—blow the whole damn place down on their fuckin’ heads!”
She struck the match, set the fuse—it hissed.
KGB men were everywhere on the floor of the machine shop now, assault rifle fire heavy, Rourke dividing his attention between the men and reloading his guns. Without looking at Natalia, he murmured, “You all right?”
Her voice—lifeless. “Yes—I just never thought it would come to this—they had orders to kill me.”
“I speak Russian, remember?” and he looked at her.
She only nodded. “But why kill me?”
Rourke shook his head, not answering.
“Why kill me?”
Rourke looked at her—it was impossible for him to imagine Natalia hysterical—but she was near hysterics. “I don’t know—maybe—maybe they found out some things—maybe your uncle did some things—and we won’t know until we try to reach him—”
“Try?”
Rourke saw it in her eyes—fear, hatred. She raised her M-16, firing out a long burst toward the advancing brown-uniformed KGB.
The weapon was shot out. A moment’s silence. The hissing of the fuse. He couldn’t hear it. Then Emily Bronkiewicz, screaming— “The fuse—it’s out!”
Rourke, stooped over, charged back the few yards down the tunnel, toward Emily Bronkiewicz. “Where’s the dynamite?” Rourke demanded.
“Out there—back inside the mess of machinery—” and she gestured toward the drill presses and lathes Rourke had seen shoved aside earlier. Gunfire hammered toward them, Natalia beside Rourke, ramming a fresh stick up the well of her M-16.
Rourke shifted his box of .223 to the tunnel floor, staring through into the machine shop toward the piled-up machinery and the dynamite there. He couldn’t see it to shoot at it, couldn’t see where the fuse had stopped burning.
“Mrs. Bronkiewicz—take this box of ammo with you—if Major Tiemerovna and I get out of here, we’ll need it.” And Rourke looked at Natalia. “Cover me—I’m goin’ for the dynamite.”
“To kill yourself—that’s fine, but I’m coming with you.”
“Damnit—” Rourke shifted his M-16 forward, shouting to Emily over a burst of Soviet AKM fire, “Lay down some covering fire for us until we get up there—then run like hell.”
Rourke started into the machine shop, running in a long-strided, low-silhouetted lope, his M-16 in one hand, his scoped CAR-15 in the other, firing both assault rifles, Natalia running beside him, Natalia—as he caught her at the edge of his left eye’s peripheral vision—firing an M-16 in each hand.
There were two dozen assault rifles firing at them—Rourke made it, bullets ricocheting, zinging off the abandoned machinery, sparks of fire along the concrete floor, Rourke feeling something tear at the sling of the M-16.
He kept running, firing out the M-16, still firing the CAR-15. Natalia was ahead of him now, hidden in the mass of abandoned machinery, Rourke half diving down beside her as the CAR-15 ran dry, assault rifle fire pinging into the machinery, like a swarm of angry insects around their heads and bodies.
Rourke snatched one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars from the left breast pocket of his blue chambray shirt under the battered brown bomber jacket. He lit the cigar in the flame of the Zippo.
“Bad for your health,” Natalia snapped, firing a burst from one of the M-16s, then tucking back down.
Rourke reloaded the M-16, then the CAR-15, working the bolt release almost simultaneously to chamber the first rounds in the guns. He left the safeties off.
He searched the pile of machinery—looking for the dynamite— “There—the fuse,” he heard Natalia call to him.
Rourke looked to her eyes, tracked them, found the thin gray-white line of fuse running along the wall above their heads.
He tracked it forward, the fuse disappearing into the pile of machinery. He shoved aside a small metal platform, a cardboard box visible at the end of the fuse.
Sucking in his breath, inhaling deeply on the cigar—there was more gunfire around them—he backtracked the fuse—it had been cut—perhaps by a bullet, a chunk of the concrete wall dimpled there—midway between the sewer pipe opening into the tunnel and the machinery beside which he hid.
There was barely eight feet of fuse within his reach.
“What are we going to do?” Natalia asked, firing a burst from one of the M-16s. “They’re closing in.”
Rourke nodded, saying nothing, trying to think.
“If I pull down that fuse,” he said finally, “I’ll rip it out, maybe. And if I light it from here, we’ll never make it through the tunnel before it blows—I’ve gotta get up there along the wall—near those shuttered windows—and then light the damn thing.”
“You’ll be killed—nobody could miss a target your size profiled against the wall.”
“A target my size—thanks a lot,” and Rourke grinned at her.
He shifted off the M-16, leaving the scoped CAR-15, his personal weapon in more battles than he wanted to remember, slung across his back, handing Natalia the M-16. “Three of ‘em now—just keep pumpin’ lead toward those guys—keep me covered—and once I get that fuse lit, give a good loud scream and shout something about dynamite, then run like the devil’s chasing you for the tunnel.”
She leaned toward him, quickly, taking the cigar from his mouth, kissed him. “If we live, I don’t know what will happen to us—but I love you, John Rourke.”
He looked at her. Women picked the craziest times for things, he thought. Or maybe they didn’t at all.
“I love you, too—I couldn’t help it—and I’ll always love you—now start shooting,” and Rourke took back his cigar, looked at her once, then shot a glance toward the KGB out beside the blown-open metal doors, running for the near wall across the length of the machine shop.
There were crates there, and if they didn’t collapse under his weight, he could stretch and just maybe reach the fuse—and he did what he had told Natalia to do. He ran as if the devil were chasing him, gunfire in a barrage surrounding him.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Natalia raised one of the three M-16s, firing out the entire magazine, zigzagging the muzzle over the positions of the KGB unit, dropping the empty assault rifle, firing three-round bursts as heads raised from the cover of the machine shop equipment, one three-round burst catching an enlisted man in the upper left side of his chest, blowing his body back, ripping his green shoulder board from his uniform tunic, a second burst slicing across the neck of another enlisted man, the third burst cutting the legs out from under an officer climbing over a packing crate, starting toward her across the no man’s land between them.