“Get out of here,” Rozhdestvenskiy rasped.
Natalia kept walking, Rourke never moving the muzzles of the two M-16s. If he fired he would cut down Natalia as well. But she knew that.
She was nearly beside him—it was the most dangerous part. Once they felt she was sufficiently far from the serum bottles not to damage them, they would make their play.
Rourke shouted, “A little change in the plan, Colonel. Anybody blinks an eye and I blow away all the bottles.”
“That was not the agreement, Doctor.” Rozhdestvenskiy started forward. Rourke pulled the trigger on the rifle—Na-talia was clear now, his right hand raising as he blasted three of the serum bottles with the burst.
“A warning,” Rourke shouted.
“Don’t shoot,” Rozhdestvenskiy commanded his men.
Natalia stood beside Rourke now.
“You plan what I think?”
“You plan what I think?” he asked back.
“Yes—I love you, John.”
She dropped the bottle at her side to the floor. It shat-tered, the liquid inside splashing up on Rourke’s feet and hers.
“What are you doing?” Rozhdestvenskiy screamed the words.
Rourke never moved the muzzles of his rifles, but Natalia wheeled beside him, her rifles pointed toward the truck. “There are five bottles in the truck, Colonel. John will now destroy the serum in the bottles by the wall. You cannot stop him before he empties both rifles and destroys the bottles utterly. If you attempt to do so, I shall destroy those bottles in the truck.”
“You would kill Rourke with the explosives!”
“You would kill him by shooting him—and the rifles were never loaded with explosives—I fooled you, Colonel. The master spy duped—what a tragedy!”
“Bitch—”
“Right now I’m planning to shoot the serum bottles,” Rourke snarled. “I can shoot you, too. Look at it this way— as long as we have the five bottles in the truck, you’ve got a chance.”
Rourke emptied the assault rifles into the serum bottles at the far side of the laboratory—not a move made to stop him. The bottles seemed to shatter in slow motion, shards of glass everywhere, bottles shattering other bottles, the shelves starting to collapse.
One bottle remained.
Rourke let the emptied M-16s fall to his sides. He drew the Python, saying, “If only a few ccs are needed for each injection, well, we probably have enough in the truck to in-ject your entire Elite Corps and all of the women—think about that. This is a Colt—Natalia tells me you carry one, too. A Colt is a very American gun—Colt’s sort of like apple pie, baseball, motherhood.”
He thumbcocked the Metalifed and Mag-na-ported six-inch, firing once, the last bottle shattering.
Rourke let himself smile.
“Now, Colonel, Natalia’s going to get on the truck in just a minute here, and I’ll keep one of my assault rifles trained on the five bottles that are left. She’ll drive off and I’ll fol-low her. Then we’ll see what happens.” Rourke holstered the Python, then dumped the empty magazines from the as-sault rifles, letting them clatter to the floor. He reloaded. He backstepped through the doorway, Natalia still aimed both rifles at the five bottles in the truck bed.
Rourke turned, running along the loading dock, jumping aboard the fire engine red Ninja bike, swinging both M-16s toward the truck bed. He couldn’t miss at the range. He let the rifles fall to his sides, “Not yet, Natalia.” He started the bike, turning it around to face the ramp. He leveled one of the M-16s toward the five bottles. “Now—remind our friends.”
He couldn’t see inside, but he heard Natalia calling over her shoulder, “Doctor Rourke has the five remaining bottles under the muzzle of his rifle. I am boarding the truck. At the first shot, the first attempt to stop us of any kind, he shall destroy the remaining five bottles. Maybe you can scrape some off the floor and filter out the broken glass — but I don’t think so.”
“Damn you!” It was Rozhdestvenskiy’s voice. But Nata-lia only walked ahead, slowly, down the ramp, around the cab of the pickup, setting both rifles inside, climbing in be-hind the wheel. The engine started. The truck lurched slightly forward. Rourke turned and looked behind him, but the rifle’s muzzle unswerving. He shouted, “Natalia, get moving—Rozhdestvenskiy, bite my ass,” and Rourke swung the second M-16 toward the laboratory doors, firing half a magazine, the Elite Corps dropping back, Rourke let-ting both rifles fall to his sides, putting himself low over the Ninja’s body, letting the bike out and taking it down the ramp — he was trying to match the zero to sixty figures he’d read of.
Chapter Sixty-four
Rozhdestvenskiy jumped from the loading dock, tossing his car keys in his hand. “What about the force that fought at the small corridor?”
“They were Russians, Comrade Colonel,” the lieutenant answered. “They were Special Forces—the unit known as Fight—they—”
“Are they dead — I did not ask for them to be eulogized.”
“They are dead—but so few of them, Comrade Colo-nel—they killed sixty-three of our men.”
Rozhdestvenskiy looked at the young lieutenant. “And what of the particle beam facility?”
“The Americans have all been killed. But the doors lead-ing into the facility were mined, and have only just been gotten through.”
“Idiots, so some of the Americans are inside.”
“Only one it is thought, Comrade Colonel—but Com-rade Colonel—”
“What?”
“In the battle between our men and the Special Forces unit, Major Revnik was killed by the Special Forces Cap-tain.”
“Then Revnik is dead—if he were stupid enough to die, he was too stupid to live.” He gestured after Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna. “Seal off all passages. The women can fight as well. Leave a wide path for them. They must be heading for the doors to the airfield elevators. We shall pur-sue them, overtake them and kill Rourke before he can de-stroy the serum bottles. Then our assault vans can box in Major Tiemerovna’s truck and she can be killed. We shall still be triumphant. But there is to be no shooting at the truck itself. No one but this unit is to attack them. The func-tion of the rest of my forces is merely to contain them—no risks can be taken with the bottles. I want one hundred men—or men and women— it doesn’t matter—I want them on the field in the event Rourke and the major slip through our fingers. If the airplane should reach the field before in-terception, it should be destroyed.”
“But the serum, Comrade Colonel—”
“Better no one should survive than Rourke and Major Tiemerovna, Lieutenant. We can easily catch them. The motorcycle is capable of great speed, but the truck is not. In the corridor straightaways, we can catch them. And we can kill them.”
He started to walk across the boxlike chamber. Near the far corridor, in a storage compartment, the vehicles were garaged.
He checked the revolver in his belt. He would get Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna—it was more important now than life itself.
Rozhdestvenskiy started to run.
Chapter Sixty-five
The truck, with its heavy load, would barely do sixty steadily, Rourke judged, comparing the truck’s speed with the matching speed of the Ninja, and only on the straight-aways. It was necessary in the curves, to preserve the load, to slow to thirty.
Behind him he heard what he had expected to hear—vehi-cles.
Rourke looked back. Coming around the curve behind them, into the straightaway were what he counted as an even dozen more or less Honda Gold Wings, fast, power-ful, painted black. Behind the wedge of bikers a single auto-mobile—a black Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am. Behind this, two abreast, black painted vans. Visible on the roofs of the vans some type of weapon—he imagined Soviet RPK light machineguns.