“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 ci-gar 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 col-lapse 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 equip-ment, 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 cut-ting the legs out from under an officer climbing over a packing crate, starting toward her across the no man’s land between them.
She fired a fourth burst, three headshots in a rough diagonal from jawline to left eyeball, a marksman with an AKM—an enlisted man—lev-eling his rifle at Rourke, she guessed, no time to look, to confirm that the burst the man had gotten off hadn’t killed the man she had loved since first seeing, the man she would always love.
Another three-round burst, against two men starting over some of the packing crates, hammering one man against the other. The machinery around her seemed to explode, a fusillade of auto-matic weapons fire making her pull back.
She changed the partially spent magazine in the rifle she held, reaching out for the fired-out M-16, the metal hot as the back of her left hand inadver-tently brushed against the barrel, changing the magazine there as well.
She looked across the machine shop toward Rourke. He had taken cover near the packing crates beneath the faint thread of dynamite fuse.
Three rifles loaded and ready, Natalia rammed one of the M-16’s up over the lathes and machin-ery around her, firing it blindly, blowing the mag-azine, careful not to use the same weapon she’d used the first time lest she burn out the barrel.
She rolled left, another fresh-loaded M-16 in her hands, firing prone, toward the KGB position, kneecapping a man, dropping him, catching an-other man in the groin, then again in the chest—a three-round coup de grace.
She kept firing, glancing to her right—Rourke was climbing the packing crates, gunfire hammer-ing into the wall on both sides of him, cratering the concrete with blistering pockmarks, thudding into the crates beneath his feet and legs.
She burned out the magazine in the M-16, snatching up the third rifle, firing three-round bursts again, into the KGB position, headshooting an enlisted man as he made to fire his AKM to-ward Rourke. Two more of the KGB unit rushed through the blown-apart doors—one man carried what she recognized as the 7.62mm PK General Purpose Machine Gun. It fired the Type 54R cartridge, and although the same caliber as standard Soviet serv-ice weapons, and utilizing the Kalishnikov rotat-ing bolt, the cartridge was vastly more powerful, and from the size of the field green box beneath the receiver, she realized it carried either a two-hundred-or two-hundred-fifty-round link belt. She fired her M-16 toward the two-man ma-chine gun crew, dropping the gunner’s assistant with a long ragged burst to the abdomen, but the machinegunner making it to cover.
“John! Machine gun!” She swapped magazines for all three rifles as she shouted to him. He was lighting the fuse with the glowing tip of his cigar—she could see him, as if in freeze frame. And then the machine gun opened up, the noise deafening as the reports echoed and reechoed in the confines of the abandoned machine shop, her heart stopping as the packing crates were shot out from under him and Rourke tumbled to the floor.
“Bastards!” She shrieked the word at the top of her voice, one M-16 slung under her right arm now as she stood, the other two M-16s—one in each hand—firing as she ran from cover, toward Rourke. The machine gun was chewing into the wall be-hind her, chewing into the concrete flooring be-neath her as she kept firing.
She heard a shout over the din of gunfire. “I’m all right!”
And then semiautomatic assault rifle fire—without looking, she knew Rourke was alive. She kept firing, crossing the floor of the ma-chine shop, the hammering of the PK’s almost continuous fire maddening.
One M-16 was out, and then the second. Natalia let both weapons drop on their slings, swinging forward the third assault rifle, firing with it.
She was beside Rourke now, Rourke’s CAR-15 spitting, then suddenly still. There was a blur of motion and then the boom-ing of his twin Detonics pistols.
“Run with me!”
She swallowed hard, moving—she would ‘run with’ him forever if he chose it.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Both Detonics pistols were empty as they reached the tunnel mouth, Rourke shoving Nata-lia ahead of him, then jumping after her, hitting the dirt surface of the tunnel floor hard, on knees and elbows crawling inside as the ground around him rippled with the plowing effect of the machine gun bursts. He looked up at Natalia—she was changing sticks for all three M-16s. As he worked down the slide stop, ramming both Detonics pistols into his belt, empty, taking one of the M-16s from her, he rasped, breathless— “That fuse is lit—maybe a minute—” he sank forward, breathing hard.
“I know—run like hell,” she laughed.
He looked at her, felt himself grin. “You got it.”
And she was up, stooped over, but running, Rourke firing a burst from the M-16 through the tunnel mouth then running.
The heavy thudding of machine gun fire and the lighter reports of the AKMs was an echo behind them, now the echo diminishing.
But the Soviets would be following if they hadn’t noticed the fuse and shooting down the straight line of the tunnel, and he and Natalia would be slaughtered.
If they had noticed the fuse. . . .
He heard the gunfire, louder than it should have been, shoving Natalia down ahead of him, throw-ing his body over hers as bullets tore into the dirt and rock walls of the small tunnel, cut waves and ripples across the dirt of the tunnel floor.
Then he heard, feeling it almost before the ac-tual noise reached his ears, burrowing his body even more across hers, his chest over her head, Rourke’s hands going to his ears. The tunnel floor trembled, shook—seemed to be twisting under them. The concussion dying, Rourke pushed himself up, dragging Natalia to her feet, shoving her ahead. He looked back once—a wall of flames behind him.
They were safe, at least until they reached the end of the tunnel and came out through the mouth of the small cave—at least until then.