“You lie—kill—”
“Try me!” She shrieked the words. No one moved.
“You would not —”
“Why not,” Rourke almost whispered.
“Even if your gunfire should sever my arms from my body, the involuntary nervous responses will cause the fin-gers to twitch against the triggers—your serum, your life—gone.”
“But—but yours, too.”
“We came here for some of the cryogenic chambers and monitoring equipment, and a supply of serum for our-selves. And to destroy your serum. So you’d die when the holocaust comes. We’ll settle for the first two—some of the chambers—we need six, we’ll take six along with the spare parts kits, the monitoring equipment. We’ll take six bottles of the serum.”
“Each recipient needs only a few ccs,” Rozhdestvenskiy began.
“We’ll take six anyway—we’ll leave the rest for you. Com-promise?”
“John!”
“Leave it, Natalia. It’s my plan now.”
Rozhdestvenskiy licked his lips. “You’ll never get out of here alive.”
“You have your boys play cops and robbers with us after we load up—in fact, have them load us up—but they don’t have to check the water and oil. We’re just fine and the truck runs great—and I love the bike—yours?”
“Yes.”
“I leave it for you. Ride around on it for the next five hundred years and have fun. I’ll walk toward the doors — and grabbing me will just make Natalia blow up the serum. I’ll keep an eye on the loading, make sure nobody tampers with the vehicles. And once we’re loaded up, I’ll aim my rifles at the serum until Natalia gets free—wouldn’t want half the bottles shot up, would you?
If we make a play for the rest of the serum, you’ve got nothing to lose by killing us. And why would we risk a gunfight after we have the se-rum and the chambers we need.”
“Then we will meet again in five centuries, Doctor. To re-sume the battle, you fresh from your Retreat in the Georgia mountains if you get there and me fresh from the Womb?”
“If you get there,” Rourke smiled. “And make sure your guys are real careful loading the stuff. We wouldn’t want to waste any of the serum, would we?”
Natalia stood her ground.
Rourke gestured with his M-16s to the KGB men nearest the serum. “Move away, guys. The lady’s gonna stand right there near the serum.” As Natalia moved slowly past him, Rourke winked at her.
Chapter Sixty-two
There had been a gunbattle with the weapons crew — four men. Reed had killed them all. He leaned heavily over the controls panels now — he had been shot three times in the abdomen and was dying.
He worked the controls, knowing just enough Russian and just enough about the mechanics of a laser charged par-ticle beam system to know which control to work, the infor-mation on the weapons system courtesy of Samuel Chambers’ best scientific guesswork. Reed hoped the man had been right.
There was a loud humming noise from the vault behind him, the vault extending for perhaps a quarter mile, mas-sive diameter tubes coiling back and forth. These were used to generate the speed for the particles which formed the beam.
He kept working the controls. There would likely be serv-ice personnel in the charging area itself—they would come to kill him. But he doubted they were armed, only one of the crewmen had been armed, and that only with a pistol.
He set the controls, using his bayonet to pry off the dials without moving the dial stems leading into the control pan-els. He crushed the plastic dials under the heels of his com-bat boots, then left the consoles, the humming a loud whine now.
He went to the entry doors, setting out more of the plas-tique—the last that he had—against the locking mecha-nism. He had destroyed the lock by hammering it out of shape with the butt of the dead Russian’s American pistol. The lock would have to be shot through to enter the control room—and a shot would blow the plastique.
He returned to the control panels, picking up the 1911 Al pistol again, using the butt to hammer out the faces of gauges and digital readout panels—the numbers had been climbing steadily. The gauges were gone.
A voice from behind him—a man. A pipe wrench in both hands like a club. Reed fired into his face with the .45, kill-ing him. Reed picked up the wrench, swinging it against the control panel, shattering the casings—the humming grew steadily louder. The fire control console—he smashed it with the wrench—there would be no way to fire and release the charged particle. Without putting a new control panel into place.
The humming, the whining was a roar now.
He wondered how long until the overloaded system would explode. Perhaps it would rip away the top of the mountain. At least it would destroy the weapons system ut-terly. He had read an intelligence memo about particle beam devices—similar to a neutron explosion—perhaps the life in the Womb would be destroyed as well.
He closed his eyes against the pain inside him—his abdo-men, his left arm.
Reed prayed Rourke and Natalia would have the time to carry out their mission, but there was no waiting now.
No time left.
He used the wrench one more time to smash out the glass ahead of and above the control panels, the particle beam weapons stretching skyward. It was nearly dusk he real-ized—the last night?
Awkwardly, blood spurting between his fingers as he held in his intestines, he dragged himself across the control pan-els and through the opening, breaking out the rest of the glass with the slide of his .45.
The rocks below were navigable. Then perhaps a fifty yard walk to the base of the nearest gantry-like structure which housed the particle beam weapon and raised it skyward.
Before he started down from the rocks, he felt under his fatigue blouse, through the blood feeling the plastic bag which covered the flag. There would be bullet holes in it. Blood on it.
But it wouldn’t be the first time. He started down the rocks and toward the gantry.
Chapter Sixty-three
The truck was loaded with six of the U.S.-made cryo-genic chambers which Rourke himself had personally in-spected as best as possible to determine their functional capabilities. Six spare parts kits. Six monitoring equipment kits, six spare parts kits for the monitoring equipment.
Five of the serum bottles, packed in wooden cases were aboard the truckbed, Natalia had let one of the rifles drop to her side and carried the sixth bottle now, Rourke stand-ing in the doorway, both assault rifles aimed across the lab-oratory toward the bottles of cryogenic serum as Natalia walked free.
Rozhdestvenskiy and a bearded man in a lab coat stood far to one side. The KGB Elite Corps flanked her on both sides, their rifles lowered.
Rourke spoke. “Try anything to stop Major Tiemerovna and I empty both magazines into the serum bottles. It won’t do much good to pick it up off the floor and even if you chemically analyze it, it’d take too long to reproduce a suf-ficient amount.”
“They do not have the proper chemicals — my uncle told me this. The one factory which produced the key ingredient was destroyed during the Night of The War. The chemical cannot be reproduced because its formula was top secret and it is the one portion of the Eden Project plan they have never found.”
“You are so well informed, Major,” Rozhdestvenskiy shouted. “That traitorous bastard of an uncle—were there time remaining, I would personally execute him.”
She stopped walking, raising the rifle at her right side slightly. “Another word about my uncle and I destroy the serum—all of it. I’m still close enough.”