Rourke was up, stabbing both pistols, slides still locked back, into the side pockets of his uniform, jumping into the Jeep.
He found the key, pushing a dead man from the seat, snatch-ing away the man’s M-16—how many rounds the thirty round magazine still contained he had no way of telling exactly, but from the weight as he slipped the Jeep’s clutch, it felt like it was about half full.
He let the clutch all the way out, stomping the gas, stomping down the clutch again, upshifting, taking the ramp as he let out the clutch and floored the accelerator—the vault door was nearly closed now—Rourke wrenched the transmission into third, stomping the gas, bracing the pedal down with the butt of the M-16—it was half empty anyway—jumping clear as the Jeep hit the vault doorway, Rourke rolling to the loading dock surface, the screech of rubber, the sound of metal tearing, rip-ping—but as he looked up, the vault door had bitten into the Jeep, the Jeep partially crushed, but the vault door open three feet wide at least.
Rourke started to his feet. One of the KGB guards was lung-ing for him, Rourke’s left foot snapping up and out, against the muzzle of the M-16, kicking it to Rourke’s left, Rourke’s right hand hammering forward, the middle knuckles finding the ad-am’s apple, crushing the windpipe, blood gushing from the man’s mouth through his clenched teeth, Rourke’s fist snapping back, then forward, the middle knuckles impacting the base of the nose, driving the bone up and through the ethmoid bone and into the brain.
Rourke’s left hand snatched the M-16, Rourke’s right hand finding the little AG Russell Sting IA black chrome, Rourke hacking the sling free of the dead man’s body with it as the body fell.
Rourke wheeled, the M-16 still not in a firing position, an-other KGB guard lunging toward him. Rourke underhanded the knife the six feet separating them into the center of the guard’s chest.
The M-16 in his right fist now at the pistol grip, he eared back the bolt—this one hadn’t been chamber loaded. He’d bet on that and won—and he fired, spraying out half the magazine into the KGB defenders on the loading dock.
Two of Reed’s men were down, one dead and one wounded.
Rourke fired toward the KGB force assaulting their position, emptying the rest of the magazine, killing three more of the KGB guards.
He leaned down, retrieving his knife from the dead man, shouting to Reed as he wiped the blade clear of blood, “Get your men through the doorway—hurry!”
As he rammed fresh magazines into the Detonics pistols—all he had on him were two spares and he was using them now—he searched for Daszrozonski. “Lieutenant,” Rourke shouted, see-ing him leading a small force of the Soviet Special Forces troops— “The vault door—hurry!”
Rourke started to run, firing the Detonics pistols at targets of opportunity, seeing Natalia reach the vault door, watching as she clambered up and over the half crushed Jeep. He shouted to her over the rattle of assault rifle and pistol fire, “Natalia—blow the Jeep so the door will close—get ready—” Like himself, she carried on her five pounds of the C-4—it would be more than enough to vaporize the Jeep—she was good at blowing things up.
Rourke glanced at his watch, then he looked to the center of the three trucks. Corporal Ravitski was running from the back of it, shouting, “It is set—the charge is set!”
As Ravitski swung his AKS-74 toward the KGB, three of the guards opened up on him, Rourke seeing it as if in slow motion, Ravitski’s body seemingly cut in half by the assault rifle fire, his left arm severed from his body, his face shot away.
Rourke’s pistols were up—he fired both simultaneously—the left ear of one of the three guards, the back of the neck of an-other.
He swung both pistols as the last of the three KGB men wheeled toward him, the M-16 already starting to make fire. Rourke fired both pistols at once—both eyeballs in the KGB man’s head seeming to explode, and then the whole head ex-ploding.
Rourke wheeled toward the vault door—a half dozen of the KGB guards were charging Natalia behind the Jeep—Rourke emptied the one round left in each pistol, taking out two of the guards, the slides locked open.
He jammed the pistols into his uniform pockets, not bothering to close the slides, running, diving to the loading dock sur-face as gunfire rained toward him. He rolled—a dead KGB guard, an M-16 in his right hand—Rourke wrenched it free, wheeling on his knees, firing out the M-16
toward the remaining guards assaulting Natalia’s position. He threw the rifle— empty—into the face of another man rushing him, took three steps and jumped to the Jeep, rolling across the deformed hood, falling to the floor beside Natalia. “Take my rifle—I’ve got to finish this,” and Rourke snatched her M-16, Natalia sliding under the front of the jeep, murmuring, “I’m wiring the explo-sives into the engine—it should create a shrapnel wave effect outward—get as many of them as we can.”
“Right,” and Rourke shouldered her assault rifle, firing as an-other group of the KGB guards charged their position. He had to clear it for Reed, Daszrozinski and the others. Rourke glanced at his watch—less than a minute until the trucks blew.
Rourke fired out the magazine. “Gimme a spare—”
“I don’t have any,” she shouted from beneath the Jeep.
“Wonderful,” Rourke snarled. A KGB man was coming over the Jeep—Rourke rammed the flash deflectored muzzle of the M-16 into his right eye, snatching the just dead man’s M-16, firing point blank at a Soviet guard less than a yard away, sever-ing the man’s head from the body at the neck.
The M-16 belched fire again in his hands, the guards falling back.
“Where did you get the fresh magazine?” Natalia shouted up.
“A nice man happened along and loaned me his gun—you almost done?”
“Almost—”
“Get up here—I need someone else shooting at these guys— hurry it up!” Rourke burned out the magazine, pulling another from the dead man’s utility belt, ramming it home, working the bolt release, firing again.
Then Natalia was up from under the Jeep, beside him. “All I have to do is touch this one wire to the positive terminal of the car battery—”
“How the hell you doin’ that without blowing yourself up?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Rourke glanced at his watch—ten seconds maybe, Reed com-ing up at the left corner of his peripheral vision, others of the Americans and some of the Russians following him. “Where the hell is Vladov—”
“I haven’t seen him since he got inside—I don’t know—but I heard machinegun fire from deeper inside.”
Why weren’t their people attacking from their rear? Rourke wondered. Perhaps Vladov and his man.
Reed was over the top of the Jeep, a .45 in each hand, Daszrozinski and three of the Russian SF-ers and the GRU ma-jor and the GRU sergeant behind him, running the ramp. Rourke shouted, his throat aching with it, “Move it, Lieuten-ant! Move it!”
Daszrozinski was up, diving across the top of the Jeep, his men following him, doing the same, Rourke tucking back, wingshooting beyond them toward the KGB personnel.
The flash of light—Rourke turned his face away, shielding Natalia against him, the sound of the explosion momentarily deafening him despite the insulation of the vault walls around them, the Shockwave slapping at Rourke, forcing him down, still clutching Natalia.
Rourke rolled on his back as the sound of the three explo-sions died, debris raining down just beyond the cracked open vault door. “I have an idea,” Natalia shouted. Rourke could barely hear her. “Ill just shoot into the engine block—to hell with the battery wire.”
“Everybody up—away from the door,” Rourke shouted. “Now!”
“You heard the man—move,” Sergeant Dressier ordered, even Reed to his feet, running, Daszrozinski firing an M-16 over the top of the Jeep as more of the KGB attacked.