against the door frame—he had to cause part of the wall to collapse. This would block the door. A gunshot would be the detonator. He worked quickly—his men would soon be dead and the Elite Corps would be at the door—and at his heels.
Chapter Sixty-one
He had ridden the motorcycle up the ramp onto the small loading dock beside the cryogenics laboratory, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. He stopped the fire en-gine red Ninja, dismounting then, letting down the stand.
An M-16, selector set to full auto, filled each hand.
The truck brakes — he heard them and he glanced back— Natalia had backed the pickup to the dock.
He heard the door slam and looked back again—she was out — his CAR-15 was slung across her back, an M-16 was in each hand as she turned a full three hundred sixty degrees.
“Where are they, John?”
“Inside, maybe,” Rourke told her.
There had been no resistance as they had left the small corridor, no resistance as they had entered the huge concrete box which formed the chamber, the cryogenics lab. It had once been an ordinance lab, dominating the far wall.
“Perhaps they—”
“What?” Rourke asked her.
“All of their forces—perhaps they are committed there with Vladov and against Reed. Perhaps—”
“No, I don’t think so.” She had mounted the ramp lead-ing from the floor level to the loading dock. She stood back to back with him now.
“What do we do?”
“We go inside — what we’re expected to do, I guess.”
Rourke approached the double swinging doors, pad-locked from the outside. He loosed a burst from his M-16, the lock disintegrating. He took a step back, then two steps forward, a roundhouse double Tae Kwan Do kick to the center portion of the two doors, at the joint where they mated, the chain falling free, the doors swinging inward, only one swinging back. There was no gunfire, from inside, from anywhere.
“We’re walking into a trap, John.”
“We don’t have any choice, Natalia.” Rourke shoved the rifle in his right hand through the doorspace — nothing hap-pened.
He followed the muzzle of the rifle inside. “Stay here for a second,” telling Natalia.
The cryogenics laboratory’s lights were lit. There was no one that he could see.
He looked up—the false ceiling was ten feet from the floor—There was no one in the vast laboratory.
“Come inside and watch the doors from here,” Rourke called to Natalia.
Rourke started across the laboratory, both rifles ready in his hands.
The far wall was dominated by rows of shelves, three litre sized bottles there, the apparent color of the bottles a very pale green, like the color of Rhine wine.
“The cryogenic serum,” he said under his breath. His palms sweated. He walked toward it. To his far right, as he scanned the room, were wooden packing crates, some large, the size and shape of coffins. Some smaller, like the size of a bedroom-sized color TV portable. Some of the crates were open, most were not. To his left, running as far as the extent of the laboratory, were ranks of what he judged were cryo-genic chambers—translucent lids, open, some few closed, monitoring equipment rigged to them.
He started toward the cryogenic serum again.
There was a sound from above him—Rourke wheeled— the panel of ceiling overhead had slid open—the muzzles of automatic rifles pointed down at him. “Run for it, Nata-lia!” Rourke stabbed both M-16s upward to fire.
A voice, “Doctor Rourke, a moment, please!”
Rourke looked to his right. Near the cryogenic sleep chambers a man stood, having hidden behind them, Rourke guessed. Two dozen others stood near him, all armed. “You will die, my dear Doctor Rourke, but I first wanted to talk.”
Rourke licked his lips. Natalia stood at the entrance to the laboratory, both M-16s hanging on their slings at her sides. There was something that was not right about her, but guns were pointed at her from the ceiling above and from the area near the cryogenic chambers.
More of the ceiling panels opened, men dropping down from the ceiling now, M-16s pointed toward Rourke and toward her.
“You see, Doctor, however daring your plan, it was doomed to failure,” Rozhdestvenskiy smiled. “I won’t de-grade you both by ordering you to drop your weapons, you would not have time to use them.” Natalia was walking to-ward him, both fists balled at her sides, the KGB Elite Corps personnel falling back from her as though somehow afraid of her.
“And you, my dear Major, what a lovely creature you have always been. And how traitorous.”
“You are the traitor,” Natalia barely whispered. “You, and my husband, he was like you.”
“Ohh, such a way to talk, Major, about someone who is dead and can no longer champion his good name.”
“His good name—his perversions, his evil, the way that he beat me—his good name indeed.”
“The affairs between a husband and wife,” and he smiled gesturing palms upward and shrugging. “These are not my affair, Major. But without him, there would have been no knowledge of the Eden Project, no knowledge of the cryo-genic serum which allows the cryogenic sleep to save lives rather than take them—without him,” and he gestured ex-pansively around him, “none of this. He was my dear friend—though I am aware of his shortcomings. But no one is perfect. Except perhaps for you and Doctor Rourke. And you shall both soon see what perfection can profit you.”
Slowly, Natalia had been moving her hands to the pistol grips of her rifles. Rourke still held both his M-16s in his fists, but a Shootout would have netted nothing, he real-ized. He waited for Natalia—she had something, he knew that, some play ready.
Her hands were nearly to her rifles.
Rozhdestvenskiy laughed, “Major, hold your rifles if you wish, point them at me even, you will not get off a shot be-fore you are cut down.”
Natalia’s hands closed on the pistol grips. “Thank you for letting me hold my rifles.”
“If you draw comfort from them in these, your last mo-ments alive, feel free, my dear. You see, we anticipated the arrival of yourself and the Doctor.”
“Who?” Rourke asked suddenly.
“Ahh,” Rozhdestvenskiy laughed. “Your American pub-lic television—the British television series—you have a ready wit, Doctor. But I’m afraid neither that nor anything else shall save you and the major from retribution,” and he smiled ingratiatingly, obviously enjoying what he was do-ing.
Rourke shrugged, “All my life, you know, I’ve never re-ally been able to make jokes, to make people laugh, I con-sidered it a character flaw. But just recently, I’ve been doing better.”
“Too bad you won’t have the time to develop the talent, Doctor.”
Rourke shrugged.
Natalia said nothing.
Rozhdestvenskiy continued. “We anticipated your ar-rival, as I indicated. The actual ceiling goes up some twenty feet. The false ceiling was installed for better temperature control. But we installed the ceiling to already existing girders which spanned the laboratory. So it was simple to position some of my men above you.”
“Yes,” Rourke nodded.
Natalia spoke. “You were very kind, Colonel, to let me hold my rifles at the pistol grips. Both rifles have their selec-tors set to full automatic.”
“My dear, it is useless, before you raise them toward me, you’ll be dead.”
“But I don’t have to raise them,” Natalia smiled, her voice like honey. “I anticipated this would be a trap. Do you re-member the C-4 explosives which we have used so effica-ciously against you?”
Rozhdestvenskiy smile started to fade.
“The muzzles of both rifles are packed with one pound apiece. All I have to do is twitch my finger against either trigger and the explosions will destroy the cryogenic serum for you. It is only perhaps fifteen feet away and I doubt the glass in the bottles will withstand the shock.”