Rourke sat at the controls now, the plane ready as it would ever be, Natalia working the elevator controls.
Overhead, the sky was darkening. At any moment, the bombproof shields would slide in place automatically, blocking the elevator shaft.
There had been no sounds of gunfire from the field above, and as the overhead section of the runway slipped further and further apart, there was still no sound.
His only sensation was the purple darkness.
He looked out. Natalia ran to board the aircraft, jump-ing, the elevator already in motion, Natalia reaching the el-evator and running for the aircraft.
She was aboard, Rourke hearing the sounds of the hatch being closed.
“I’m all set,” she called out, breathless sounding. Rourke nodded, both M-16s loaded, his pistols checked. Natalia took up her position by the co-pilot’s controls, two M-16s beside her. There would be no way to have a protracted gun battle from the aircraft—it would be take-off or lose.
Rourke raced the engines, the plane starting to inch ahead, the elevator nearly to the level of the field.
Already, he could see KGB Elite Corps ringing the open-ing for the elevator pad, M-16s in their hands. Behind them, Jeeps fitted with RPK light machineguns.
Rozhdestvenskiy’s face in the lights of the field as the ele-vator pad settled.
Rourke hit both engines, starting ahead, Rozhdest-venskiy’s voice loud over a bullhorn,
“Surrender now and you will have merciful deaths. If you force us to destroy the last of the cryogenic serum, you will take weeks to die in agony, Rourke. Hear me. And you will watch Natalia Tiemerovna die first. I will flay her skin an inch at a time, I will have my men rape her before your eyes. Surrender or face this.”
He could run down the men with the airplane, but the bodies were so densely packed together that they would eventually block the aircraft’s wheels. The Jeeps formed a solid wall beyond that.
They were trapped.
“Be ready to fight,” Rourke whispered. “I can’t get us off the ground. And I’ll kill you just before it ends—Rozhdest-venskiy meant what he said.”
Natalia whispered, “Yes.”
“Turn one of your M-16s against the bottle of the serum. Do it now.” Rourke still had almost full power to the en-gines, ready for take-off. “Damnit,” he swore.
He saw Rozhdestvenskiy’s face, the KGB colonel stand-ing in the front passenger side of one of the Jeeps, his left arm casually draped over the RPK—he was smiling.
Perhaps, Rourke thought, before they swarmed over the plane, he could get off a shot to kill Rozhdestvenskiy.
He—Rourke—and Natalia and, the ones who had died had won in a way, Rourke thought. Rozhdestvenskiy and his men were doomed without the serum. Perhaps succes-sive generations of them could breed inside the Womb until it was safe to return to the surface, perhaps somehow they would not be so horribly evil. That the Womb still was capa-ble of hermetic seal was the only defeat. His own death. Na-talia’s death—considering they had destroyed Rozhdestvenskiy’s plans for survival—these mattered little. Paul. Sarah. Michael. Annie. That they would die, that he had failed them consumed him, burning in him, angering him.
“The hell with this. I’ll blow up the damned plane all over them—hold on—don’t shoot the serum bottle yet,” and Rourke throttled forward, the aircraft starting to move.
“Surrender, Rourke!”
Rozhdestvenskiy couldn’t hear him, but Rourke shouted it anyway, “Bite my ass, you bastard!”
He gave the plane full throttle, the KGB guards moving back, but the Jeeps unmoving, the machinegunners moving their weapons into position. It was all about to go.
An explosion, louder than anything Rourke had ever heard before. He looked to his left—the top of the moun-tain—a mushroom shaped ball of fire rising skyward—and in its light on one of the twin gantries there, a figure. Some-thing about it—it had to be Reed. And in the instant of light, draped across Reed’s body nearly to the top of the gantry but not quite reaching it, blew an American flag in the heat wind.
Rourke gave the craft more throttle, the Jeeps starting to move now, Rozhdestvenskiy nearly falling from his perch beside one of the RPKs, the vehicle streaking away from the mountain. Already, Rozhdestvenskiy was screaming through the bullhorn, “You will die for this —”
“That’s just like a neutron bomb, that’s why they’re run-ning like hell to get out of here—hang on,” and Rourke pushed the throttle all the way forward, working the flaps, steering the craft along the field, threading his way through the maze of running men and fleeing vehicles, the end of the runway nearing as he straightened out. Only one vehicle followed them—the Jeep Rozdestvenskiy had been on, Rozhdestvenskiy driving it now—a pistol in his hand, fir-ing. Rourke gave the aircraft full throttle, the barricade fences coming up fast.
In the sideview mirror of the fuselage, Rozhdestvenskiy, the Jeep skidding, Rozhdestvenskiy’s face twisted with rage, his mouth open, screaming words Rourke didn’t need to hear to understand.
The barricade fences—full power, the nose coming up. “Hang on,” Rourke rasped, Natalia answering nothing, the nose staying up, the barricade fences beneath them now, Rourke hitting the landing gear, hauling it up, banking the aircraft—and as he turned it, the top of the mountain was a ball of flames, the particle beam weapons gone, Reed gone, the flag gone.
On the field beneath them, the Jeeps and figures of run-ning men were like something seen through a microscope.
The neutron radiation would have been minimal and the likelihood of contamination remote. He felt no ill effects, nor apparently did Natalia as he looked at her.
“We made it,” she whispered.
“He’ll come after us, try to find the Retreat—he’ll come.”
Rourke said nothing else. It was full night and the world might end before dawn the next day was through.
Chapter Seventy
Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy leaned against one of the Jeeps, staring, staring at his mountain without a top, his mountain that no longer could be hermetically sealed, the Womb that was now useless to him.
One of his officers, Captain Andreki, was calling to him. “Comrade Colonel—the radiation—we must escape before it can reach the airfield—when the cloud settles—”
“I will kill him, then I will die. But I will kill him. It is Doctor Rourke who has done this. And it is Rourke who will die for it. All radar installations which still function are to search for his plane. All ground forces are to search for it above them. We shall take whatever means at our disposal and go to northeastern Georgia. We shall search the moun-tains there throughout the night. We shall find this Retreat, we shall destroy it, destroy Rourke and Major Tiemerovna, destroy Rourke’s family. We shall have the last victory—we shall have the last victory—”
He realized that Captain Andreki was leading him away—but he would pursue Rourke—and inside him he knew this would be the last night of earth.
Chapter Seventy-one
General Ishmael Varakov listened to her words, carefully. “Moscow is gone. The radio was full of static and then for an instant it cleared. All the radio operator could say was ‘fire’—and then there was nothing more, not even static, not a sound as though—”
“Enough, Catherine. It has begun. Come stand beside me and we shall talk. You can tell me of your childhood per-haps. We have one night in which to tell each other all that we might ever wish to tell each other,” and he smiled at her, taking her hand, slowly walking from his desk toward the figures of the two mastodons at the center of the museum’s great hall. His feet hurt.