Natalia sprinted ahead, toward Lake Shore Drive, no traffic there—nothing as she ducked under the horizontal safety lines and into the street. Rourke followed her, hear-ing Vladov snap from behind him, “Look there, Dr. Rourke—from the south!”
Rourke drew up to his full height— coming up Lake Shore Drive now from the south was first one, then another, then another, and he imagined still more behind—trucks. “KGB,” Vladov murmured.
Rourke looked ahead— Natalia was nearly across the drive. Rourke broke into a dead run behind her, rasping, “Come on, Vladov!” His M-16 at high port, the CAR-15 banging against his side as he ran, Rourke reached the far side of the drive, Natalia still sprinting ahead, crossing be-yond the sidewalk and onto the grass, heading toward the lake side of the spit of land beyond the aquarium, roadway, parkway strip, then roadway and more parkway, then fi-nally the lake to Rourke’s right. But the shelter of the rocks was beyond the aquarium. “Come on,” Rourke shouted. “Hurry— follow Major Tiemerovna!” Rourke picked up his run, glancing once to his right and behind him—the trucks, KGB personnel on motorcycles flanking them—he could recognize them by the green tabs of their uniforms. He hit the grass, running alongside the aquarium now, Natalia dis-appearing behind the aquarium, Rourke running after her.
Rourke reached the back end of the building, taking a quick left behind it, running. Ahead the ground dropped off, Rourke reaching the edge, remembering what lay be-yond well enough not to jump for it. But he flipped down, picking his landing spot in the instant before he moved, missing an eight-inch wide crack between the slabs of tan colored natural rock and chunks of concrete which formed the low sea wall against the Lake Michigan waters. He ducked down, Natalia already there, one of her M-16s up, ready.
Vladov was the first of the SF-ers down, then Lieutenant Daszrozinski and like something choreographed, one after the other, the remaining ten Soviet SF-ers.
“What do we do, Comrade Major?” Vladov asked, sounding slightly out of breath. Rourke couldn’t be certain, but the pounding in his own chest led him to the conclusion. “Do we wait here or proceed?”
“Those trucks,” Natalia panted. “They—they are heading for Meiggs Field?”
“Yes, Comrade Major. Each day the KGB have been ship-ping out supplies by nine-fifteen —
we do not know what.”
“How big are the planes they use?” Rourke interrupted.
“They are American Boeing KC-135Bs.”
Rourke nodded, thinking. “There were steel mills beyond the bend in the shoreline—could be billets of steel—maybe Rozhdestvenskiy wants some laid in at the Womb to handle early construction after the awakening.”
“Perhaps,” Natalia mused. “There were also automotive assembly plants — perhaps engine parts.”
“Whatever the hell it is, what do you think?” Rourke asked her, his voice low. “You know the KGB better than any of us.”
He watched her eyes. “My uncle has the boats waiting just beyond the planetarium. Some of the GRU men he trusted are with them, but they are not insane. If we wait and do not make our rendezvous—” and he saw her eye the gold ladies Rolex she wore on her wrist for an instant—
“they will leave and we will be stranded here.”
“No choice for it then,” and Rourke turned to Vladov. “Have your men keep low and have ‘em watch their footing. We’ll follow this out all the way to the land’s end—”
“Agreed,” Vladov nodded, saying to his men, “As the doctor has said—keep low—be careful of your footing among these rocks—we follow the major and Doctor Rourke.”
Natalia started up from her knees, Rourke grabbing at her right forearm, looking at her for an instant. “I’m sorry—sorry this had to happen. All of it—except meeting you.”
“I as well—except for that,” and she pulled away from him, breaking into a crouching run along the rocks, Rourke after her.
Chapter Ten
Sam Chambers, president of U.S. II spoke slowly. “This is butchery—pure butchery—”
Reed closed his eyes, inhaling on his cigarette, slowly say-ing to the president, “It proves what I’ve been saying, Mr. President—a major Soviet offensive directed against us. They’re softening us up. That’s why they did this. Demoral-ize us. For the last two weeks at least, there’ve been all the signs. Airborne reconnaissance shows units of the Army and KGB units too massing in east Texas and in central Lou-isiana. They’re going to bite us right between ‘em—”
Reed looked at Chambers—it was better than surveying the bodies in the elementary school driveway, better than watching the few surviving medics working with those who weren’t quite dead yet. Chambers’ helicopter’s rotor blades beat slowly, rhythmically at the far side of the drive. Then Chambers spoke. “Your efforts to contact the reorganized Texas volunteer militia—”
“I don’t know, sir. I sent Lieutenant Feltcher out three weeks ago—we haven’t heard from him since. If he did make contact, they could have killed him as a spy—I don’t know. Since the death of Randan Soames, the leadership has changed at least a half-dozen times—could have been infiltrated with more of the Communists—we don’t know. And there were the rumors some of the larger brigand bands had formed some sort of alliance with the militia. We just don’t know, sir.”
“But they’re the only hope we have, aren’t they, Reed—”
Reed nodded, dropping his cigarette to the gravel, heel-ing it out. Suddenly the nausea passed over him again—stuck to a piece of the gravel near his boot was what looked like a pink piece of human flesh, burned at the edges. He breathed deeply, to make the feeling pass, then tried to an-swer. “If they come and link up with us before the Russians strike — somehow — then we can beat this Russian force. If they get caught up with the Russians in east Texas, then we can take on the Russians in central Louisiana. If they don’t come at all, it’s either surrender or be crushed. It’d be a slaughter.”
“We won’t surrender,” Chambers said firmly.
“I didn’t think we would, sir,” Reed told him. Because there were other members of the civilian cabinet nearby, and some younger officers as well, Reed didn’t add that all surrender would mean was a firing squad or worse. It was better to die standing up, fighting for what you believed in.
Reed lit another cigarette—where the hell was Feltcher, he thought. Had he reached the Texas Volunteer Militia or just died trying?
Chapter Eleven
They had reached land’s end, the lapping of the waves loud against the rocks beneath them; Rourke peered round the rock border along which they had moved, seeing three six-man Avon rubber boats, the kind divers sometimes used. All three boats, fitted with impressively large out-board motors, were moored to the rocks, a solitary man holding an AK-47 standing guard beside them, using the wooden buttstock of the AK to push the boats away from the rocks when the waves forced them too close. Two other men stood further in on the rocks, away from the Avon in-flatables, AK-47s at the ready position.
Rourke turned back to Natalia, using hand signals to re-veal his findings. She nodded, murmuring the three letters, “GRU.” Rourke nodded. Natalia peered around the edge of the rocks for a moment, then looked back at Rourke. She repeated the three initials, “GRU,” then stood up, the rocks shielding her from view further back along the land.