Rourke rammed the muzzle of his M-16 for-ward, 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 im-pacted 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 an-other 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 Na-talia, 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 si-lence. 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 machin-ery—” 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 to-ward 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 Nata-lia. “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, run-ning 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 fir-ing 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 ma-chinery, like a swarm of angry insects around their heads and bodies. Rourke snatched one of the thin, dark to-bacco 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, fir-ing a burst from one of the M-16s. “They’re clos-ing 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.”