positions sporadic now. Rourke shifted his right eye from the scope, squinting it closed, opening it, searching for Natalia and Vladov. They were beside the garage door nearest, planting charges, one on each side. Rourke shouted to the men beside him, “Keep pourin’ in the lead — we gotta cover Natalia and the captain—hustle!”
Rourke let the CAR-15 drop to his side, swinging forward one of the M-16s —on full auto, he made it spit death.
Chapter Forty-six
Reed and Sergeant Dressier had planted plastique charges—five pounds apiece—to each side of the corridor wall, the rear guard called in, joining the others as they ran for the garage door, no fire coming from the mezzanines now, only gunfire from the mouth of the corridor where a large KGB force—Daszrozinski had recognized Rozhdest-venskiy leading them—was starting an attack. Rourke hus-tled the others ahead of him, staying behind at the end of the corridor, getting as far back from it as he could, gunfire hammering toward him now as the KGB assault force ran the length of the corridor, at least fifty of them to the best he could count.
Twenty-five yards from the end of the corridor, Rourke swung his M-16 forward, spraying it laterally from left to right, cutting a swatch across the corridor, hitting first the charge to his left, then the charge to his right, then letting the gun fall to his side, running, a fireball belching from the corridor toward him—but it would belch toward the mouth of the corridor as well, and likely make the corridor impass-able. He ran on, two more explosions now from ahead, smaller ones, both sides of the garage door buckling.
The smoke cleared as Rourke reached the door. Already, Reed, Vladov, and men from both the U.S. and Soviet con-tingents were working to raise the door.
Rourke threw his left shoulder to it, heaving, the door starting up, Natalia beside him, pushing against the garage door—it was up. And inside were a half dozen golf carts, connected to charging units. And, a Ford pickup truck, olive drab in color. And a solitary motorcycle. There were other cycles, but these really motorized scooters. But only one cycle. Rourke liked Harleys, but some of the Japanese bikes were very good. And the one real motorcycle inside the garage was a fire engine red Kawasaki Ninja.
“All right,” Rourke whispered. “All right!”
He looked behind them. The corridor was still in flames.
He looked back to the bike. It was a racing machine— fast, responsive, perhaps one of the KGB
officers had ‘liber-ated it’ from some showroom or some garage. Perhaps it belonged to Rozhdestvenskiy himself.
If the latter were the case, so much the better.
He looked to Reed and Vladov. “Gentlemen, like they say, start your engines. Let’s get all these electric carts roll-ing. We can use them to block off corridors with the help of a little plastique. The truck—that can haul the bulk of us. I’ll take the bike.”
“Just like horsemounted cavalry,” Natalia murmured.
Rourke looked at her. “You’ve got it.”
He approached the fire engine red Ninja, the Kawasaki GPz900R, water cooled with transverse four-cylinder en-gine would redline in top gear at 145 mph or better. It was capable of doing a quarter mile from a standing start in under twelve seconds reaching speeds in excess of 120 mph.
For outdistancing the electric carts, he judged it would be adequate.
“Should we sabotage the other garages. Perhaps there are more trucks there?” Rourke looked to Vladov.
“I’m sorry—”
“I asked—”
“Ohh—no. No time. Just put charges on the doors and blow the opening mechanisms—that’ll slow them down. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Rourke, what the hell you plannin’ on doin’ with that bike?”
Rourke looked at Reed. “Riding it, soon as I hotwire it so she’ll run.” There was the roar of an engine and Rourke looked around. Natalia, a smudge of oil on her right cheek, bent up from under the hood of the Ford pickup. Rourke started to work on the GPz900R Ninja.
But on a hunch, after a second, he felt along under the faring — his right hand stopped. One of the little magnetized boxes. He opened it. “The key,” Rourke said to himself.
He shifted off his pack, tossing it into the rear bed of the pickup. “Natalia, you drive the truck. I’ll stay right with you.”
Rourke handed her the CAR-15 and one of the M-16s and she placed them into the truck.
For safety sake, he removed the Colt’s magazine, jacking out the round chambered in the .45
and replacing the round in the magazine, then reinserting the magazine up the well. He snapped the trigger, letting the hammer fall over the empty chamber, returning the pistol to his waistband.
He mounted the Ninja, bringing the bright red bike’s en-gine to life, the machine vibrating between his legs, throb-bing, ready to spring ahead. Reed’s men were operating the electric golf carts, Vladov’s men riding shotgun with them, Reed and Vladov in the truck bed with the rest of the men.
“Ready?”
“I placed the charges,” Vladov nodded. “Daszrozinski and I.”
Rourke nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and very slowly he let the Ninja out.
Chapter Forty-seven
Revnik turned to look at Rozhdestvenskiy. “They have sabotaged all of the garage doors, Comrade Colonel, six of our men were killed in attempting to open them—trip wires and—”
Rozhdestvenskiy snarled, “Shut up, Major. The contents of the third garage—”
“Nothing was harmed, Comrade Colonel, but the door is destroyed and blocks the—”
“Have the door removed. The assault vans, my car, the motorcycles—I want them out of there—now. Not five minutes from now—now!”
Rozhdestvenskiy turned and walked toward the first ga-rage. The Ford pickup truck which had been inside would be of little consequence. He doubted with all of the pollu-tion control equipment it was capable of any great speed. The electric cars—golf carts—would have been taken to form corridor barricades as Rourke, Major Tiemerovna and the others fought their way toward the cryogenics labo-ratory at the heart of the Womb. If they took the most direct route, they would have four miles to travel. An indirect route would consume as many as twenty miles, the passages winding as they did from one level to another.
But the motorcycle was very fast. There had been no room for it in the third garage where his car was kept and so he had left it in the first garage. He mentally scourged him-self for the laxness.
All about him was rubble, the terraced mezzanines which formed connecting bridges from one side of the mountain to the other in this section of the Womb complex were destroyed. More than one hundred and fifty of his men were dead or critically injured.
Their goals would be twofold—to destroy the cryogenics equipment, perhaps to steal some of it for themselves. And to destroy the particle beam weapons atop the mountain.
“Revnik!”
Rozhdestvenskiy turned around, calling to his aide.
“Yes, Comrade Colonel?”
“Revnik. You will finish your duties here as quickly as possible, then take one hundred men to the access corridor leading to the particle beam installations atop the moun-tain. I estimate that the force will split into two groups—of necessity if nothing else. Your force will anticipate this, lie in wait and when a portion of the invasion group makes their way to the particle beam weapons, you will counter them, destroy them. I will personally command the motor-cycle detachment and the assault vans, to cut them off at the cryogenics laboratory. They cannot be more than five min-utes ahead of us and I can take my force by the most direct route. Do not hesitate to call up reinforcements should they be required. I want all but the American doctor and Major Tiemerovna dead. If there is any way, these two individuals should you encounter them are to be brought to me.”