Survivalist - 22 - Brutal Conquest (25 page)

And he made a decision.

“Drop!Drop!”

Paul threw himself down to the ground, the others around him doing the same, returning fire to the rear of the house.

On their immediate right were the stables, a large exercise corral beside it. Between the stables and the house lay the enormous garage he’d seen in the aerial photos. Gunfire came from the deck on the near side of the garage as well.

They were pinned down.

Jfe activated the signal, calling in the unmarked helicopters with Lieutenant Commander Washington’s civie-clad SEAL team aboard… .

Annie Rubenstein hit the brakes, causing the car to skid off the grass into the hedge, coming to a dead stop just

short of the Edison Seven her father had driven. She could see him disappearing through the doorway and into the house.

Beside Annie, Natalia was already pulling on a flak jacket as she slid out the passenger side, Annie sliding out the same way after her. Annie grabbed her flak jacket from under the back seat cushion, the jacket longer than her miniskirt. Under the seat cushion as well were two of the short-barreled German assault weapons. Natalia handed her one, along with a musette bag loaded with magazines. “Ready? You take the left, Fll take the right.”

Annie was up, running as fast as she could with the stupid-looking boots and their higher-than-normal heels, almost stumbling in the gravel driveway.

But she reached the steps on the right side.

As she looked, Natalia was on the’ left side.

They gave each other a nod, then started off, Annie following the building’s perimeter along the right side… .

John Rourke made a decision. There was a heavy concentration of gunfire coming from the rear of the house. If Paul hadn’t already called in added personnel, he would. He activated the signaling device that was clipped to his belt.

Diplomacy be damned.

Rourke moved along the wall of a large entrance hall, rectangular in shape, the ceiling extending upward through the second floor.

A balcony traversed it from one side of the house to the other, and as Rourke looked he saw movement on thejfteajr side. /

Rourke tucked back into a doorway opening, checking on the inside as he did. A man’s shape appeared from behind an overturned table and fired an energy weapon, the blue-white bolt of electricity impacting the door frame, flames licking upward. Rourke pulled away, firing the H-K 91 from the hip, catching the man with the energy weapon in center of mass, flipping him back against the wall.

The movement he had seen a second before along the balcony appeared to be three men, clearly visible now, running from the near side of the balcony toward the other side of the second floor.

Rourke had the H-K 91 to his shoulder and fired… .

Natalia Tiemerovna advanced along the wall of the building. There was sporadic gunfire from inside, but there was a heavier concentration, sounding like enough for a small war, emanating from the rear of the house… .

Michael Rourke opened his eyes and vomit rose in his throat.

There was heavy gunfire from the rear of the house, some from within the building. He spat the vomit onto the carpet. He was light-headed and sick from the loss of blood. With some difficulty, he rolled onto his right side, keeping his left arm elevated in that manner, hopefully slowing the flow.

His trousers were beldess, the plastic holster he’d worn for the miserable litde energy pistol a clip-on style. He wore a T-shirt and windbreaker, no tie.

“Shit,” he groaned.

His eyes traveled to the dead body lying beside him. Schmidt’s gun, a P38K. Worn in a shoulder holster? Michael Rourke pushed with his feet and pulled with his right hand, dragging himself toward Schmidt’s body. The Nazi’s bony face had a slighdy waxy look to it, but Michael realized this was mosdy his imagination; Schmidt hadn’t been dead that long. Michael started to reach under the blood-drenched coat to search for a shoulder holster harness, but

his hand stopped. Schmidt wore a belt, easier to access and easier to utilize for his purpose.

The fingers of Michael’s right hand felt thick and stiff; clumsy, but he managed to undo the belt buckle. Then he braced one foot against Schmidt’s chest as he pulled, freeing the belt, falling back as he did so.

Michael managed to sit up, his head swimming with the sudden movement. The belt. He began to wrap it around his arm, between the wound and his heart… .

Paul Rubenstein fired the Schmiesser from his shoulder, catching two of the men on the garage’s sun deck, one of them careening over the balcony. He started running again, along with Ed Shaw and five of the TAC team, moving in a low crouch, their weapons firing alternately toward the house and toward the garage. As of yet, the helicopters were not in sight, but time was becoming critical, so the reinforcements were a luxury they could not afford.

Shaw shouted to one of his men, “Use your grenade launcher, Jake! On that sun deck! Hurry!”

There was a whooshing sound, Paul Rubenstein ducking involuntarily as the grenade whistled over him. It arced downward now, and as it hit the sun deck, the near end of the open structure seemed to dissolve within the explosion’s fireball… .

fire. Rourke threw his left shoulder against a doorway just past, the door rocking inward under his weight as he went through in a roll, coming up on his knees. There was no one in the room.

Rourke moved toward the wall separating him from the next room. He reached under his windbreaker, on the opposite side from the sling for the Witness Protection shotgun, freeing one of the small plastique charges… .

His arm wound in an improvised tourniquet, Michael Rourke lurched toward the windows behind the desk. The F38K Schmidt he had used was in his right hand, a fresh eight-round magazine up the well, the partially spent one pocketed.

As he parted sheer curtains, he could see through the windows helicopter gunships coming in, over the trees beyond the house. Men occupied positions of cover on a bricked patio, firing toward other men on the ground, storming toward the house. As of yet, no bullet had struck these windows, but it was only a matter of time.

The gun still in his hand, he rubbed his fingertips over the window. It felt like real glass.

He stuffed the pistol into his trouser band and reached for the desk chair. The chair was heavy, but he convinced himself he could lift it weU enough to crash it through the window… .

John Rourke ran along a long corridor, at the end of which was a room, the doors wide open. But there were sin-gle-doored rooms on either side of the corridor, and despite the speed with which Rourke moved, he was cautious as he went from doorway to doorway.

Halfway along the corridor’s length, doors opened on either side. Men armed with German assault rifles of the type Natalia had been using recendy jumped out, opening

Natalia reached the far end of the house, and as she did she saw a man. He saw her in the same instant, wheeling toward her with an energy pistol in each hand.

Natalia fired, two three-round bursts into his center of mass.

Then she threw herself over the hedge and to the ground.

More men were coming around the side of the house, firing toward her. …

John Rourke set the detonator to ten seconds, then ran back across the room, dropping behind a sofa, drawing his body up into a fetal position in order to protect bare skin.

His hands covering his ears, the concussion from the small charge of plastique was still incredibly loud. As the sound started to abate, Rourke was up, the air in the room clouded with plaster dust, a hole in the far wall.

Rourke ran toward it, the H-K 91 in both hands.

As he reached the opening, the man who had fired at him from the doorway was picking himself up, raising his weapon.

John Rourke fired first, two rounds, one to the chest and the other to the head, the man’s body flying back against the doorjamb.

Rourke advanced to the doorway, a rifle raised toward him from the door on the opposite side of the corridor. Rourke fired first, two rounds, throwing the man’s body back into the room.

Rourke shifted the partially spent magazine out of the well, instead putting in the full one clipped to it.

He stepped to the doorway.

There was the sound of glass shattering from the room at the far end of the corridor. Rourke ran toward the sound… .

Michael Rourke pushed the muzzle of the P-38K through the shattered window and fired, the gun held almost at full extension of his arm. He put a single round into one of the house defenders just as the man turned toward the sound of breaking glass, Michael’s bullet catching him in the left cheek, his nose exploding outward in a cloud of blood.

Michael swung the muzzle of his weapon, finding another target and firing, putting the man down.

In the hands of a third man, an assault rifle was coming on line toward his body. Michael fired a third time, a bullet into the man’s throat.

Behind him, Michael Rourke heard the sound of his father’s voice shouting, “Get down!”

Michael threw himself right, gunfire hammering toward him, what remained of the glass in the window shattering, raining down around him.

John Rourke grabbed for one of the plastique charges, flipping the detonator to five seconds, hurtling it left-handed through the shot-out window as he ran toward his son, throwing his body over Michael’s. In the next instant, there was the concussion and the roar.

Rourke’s left hand felt for a pulse. Weak, but steady. Michael was unconscious, not dead.

Rourke was up on his knees, the H-K 91 to his shoulder. As gunfire tore into the window frame, he fired, again and again and again, putting down man after man.

The H-K was empty, and Rourke buttoned out the clipped-together magazines, letting them fall to the glass surrounding him on the floor. As he rammed one of the two remaining spares up the rifle’s magazine well, two of the house’s defenders charged toward him. With the rifle in his left hand, Rourke grabbed for the Detonics mini gun at his waistband, the hammer cocked, the safety on. He thumbed down the safety and fired, one double tap to each man.

The slide locked open, empty, both men going down.

Rourke rammed the pistol into his belt, the H-K to his shoulder again, the chamber charged. He fired… .

Natalia Tiemerovna crawled along through the dirt,

dropping to cover behind an apron of concrete running up to the patio. Gunfire tore into the hedges near here, chipping the concrete as well.

She pushed the muzzle of the assault rifle up over the concrete and fired blindly, spraying the muzzle right and left. …

Annie Rubenstein reached the rear end of the house… .

There appeared to be an outdoor barbecue of red brick built here, about four feet high and closed on three sides. She took up a position beside it, shouldering her rifle, then opened fire on the defenders of the house.

John Rourke stepped over the window frame and down into the patio, the H-K tensioned on its sling so he could fire the rifle one-handed, his second Detonics mini gun in his left hand.

Men were trying to escape the patio now, but there was nowhere to run, helicopters coming in from the woods behind the house, some of Washington’s civvies-clad SEAL team already out of the choppers and storming the house, more men coming.

Rourke fired out the Detonics pistol, stuffing it, slide open, into his waistband, firing the last three rounds from the H-K almost simultaneously with the last round from the .45.

He let the rifle fall to his side on its sling as he swept up one of the stubby-barreled German assault weapons from beside a dead body on the patio.

He fired out a long burst, then another and another, putting four more men down, a fifth throwing away his weapon and dropping to his knees, shouting in German, “I surrender! I surrender!”

Rourke approached him, threw down the spent assault rifle, and took up the man’s weapon, then crossed the adversary’s jaw with his left fist, knocking him unconscious, saving him for later. He couldn’t leave the man awake behind him to change his mind.

Rourke crossed the patio toward a concrete apron extending away from the house, picking up another of the light-caliber, stubby-barreled German rifles.

A half-dozen men were charging toward a hedgerow about thirty yards away.

“Natalia,” Rourke whispered.

From behind him, he heard Annie shouting, “Daddy! Natalia’s over—”

“Cover my back!” Rourke ordered. He broke into a run, the rifle in his right hand going out with one burst, two bursts from the one in his left, three of the men down.

Rourke cast away both rifles, reaching under his windbreaker with both hands and freeing the Witness Protection shotgun slung there, racking the pump, the pistol grip butt at his right side.

He aimed his body toward the nearest of the men, not just fifteen yards away, firing, the shots going low, hitting the man in the kidneys rather than between the shoulder blades.

Rourke racked another double-0 buck, pushing the shotgun out ahead of him, firing, tromboning the action, firing again as one of the men wheeled toward him and fired.

He saw Natalia on her feet behind the hedgerow. Her pistol and his shotgun discharged simultaneously, the man’s body twisting, falling.

Natalia stepped out from behind the hedgerow, her left arm hanging limp at her side, dripping blood, her black stockings shredded over her thighs.

Rourke left the shotgun with an empty round in the chamber, shifted it under his left arm, and reached under his jacket to the small of his back, where he had a single double-magazine pouch.

He reloaded one of the Detonics Combatmasters, then the other, both pistols cocked and locked in his belt for an instant as he pocketed the last of the spent magazines.

Natalia approached.

He offered her the shotgun.

She shoved her pistol into the waistband of her skirt and took it.

Rourke handed her four loose shells from his pocket.

Her left arm moving slowly, she began inserting the shells beneath the action.

As he turned back toward the patio, he saw Annie, her assault rifle in one hand, her pistol in the other.