The End is Coming

Chapter Thirty-six

Rourke and Natalia were the last two into the tunnel, except for Emily Bronkiewicz—she was lighting a fuse. “This’ll stop the bastards—but good,” she sneered. “Dynamite—and plenty of it—blow the whole damn place down on their fuckin’ heads!”

She struck the match, set the fuse—it hissed.

KGB men were everywhere on the floor of the machine shop now, assault rifle fire heavy, Rourke dividing his attention between the men and reloading his guns. Without looking at Na-talia, he murmured,

“You all right?”

Her voice—lifeless. “Yes—I just never thought it would come to this—they had orders to kill me.”

“I speak Russian, remember?” and he looked at her.

She only nodded. “But why kill me?”

Rourke shook his head, not answering.

“Why kill me?”

Rourke looked at her—it was impossible for him to imagine Natalia hysterical—but she was near hysterics. “I don’t know—maybe—maybe they found out some things—maybe your uncle did some things—and we won’t know until we try to reach him—”

“Try?”

Rourke saw it in her eyes—fear, hatred. She raised her M-16, firing out a long burst toward the advancing brown-uniformed KGB.

The weapon was shot out. A moment’s si-lence. The hissing of the fuse. He couldn’t hear it. Then Emily Bronkiewicz, screaming— “The fuse—it’s out!”

Rourke, stooped over, charged back the few yards down the tunnel, toward Emily Bronkiewicz.

“Where’s the dynamite?” Rourke demanded.

“Out there—back inside the mess of machin-ery—” and she gestured toward the drill presses and lathes Rourke had seen shoved aside earlier. Gunfire hammered toward them, Natalia beside Rourke, ramming a fresh stick up the well of her M-16.

Rourke shifted his box of .223 to the tunnel floor, staring through into the machine shop to-ward the piled-up machinery and the dynamite there. He couldn’t see it to shoot at it, couldn’t see where the fuse had stopped burning.

“Mrs. Bronkiewicz—take this box of ammo with you—if Major Tiemerovna and I get out of here, we’ll need it.” And Rourke looked at Nata-lia. “Cover me—I’m goin’ for the dynamite.”

“To kill yourself—that’s fine, but I’m coming with you.”

“Damnit—” Rourke shifted his M-16 forward, shouting to Emily over a burst of Soviet AKM fire, “Lay down some covering fire for us until we get up there—then run like hell.”

Rourke started into the machine shop, run-ning in a long-strided, low-silhouetted lope, his M-16 in one hand, his scoped CAR-15 in the other, firing both assault rifles, Natalia running beside him, Natalia—as he caught her at the edge of his left eye’s peripheral vision—firing an M-16 in each hand. There were two dozen assault rifles firing at them—Rourke made it, bullets ricocheting, zinging off the abandoned machinery, sparks of fire along the concrete floor, Rourke feeling something tear at the sling of the M-16.

He kept running, firing out the M-16, still fir-ing the CAR-15. Natalia was ahead of him now, hidden in the mass of abandoned machinery, Rourke half diving down beside her as the CAR-15 ran dry, assault rifle fire pinging into the ma-chinery, like a swarm of angry insects around their heads and bodies. Rourke snatched one of the thin, dark to-bacco cigars from the left breast pocket of his blue chambray shirt under the battered brown bomber jacket. He lit the cigar in the flame of the Zippo.

“Bad for your health,” Natalia snapped, firing a burst from one of the M-16s, then tucking back down. Rourke reloaded the M-16, then the CAR-15, working the bolt release almost simultaneously to chamber the first rounds in the guns. He left the safeties off.

He searched the pile of machinery—looking for the dynamite— “There—the fuse,” he heard Natalia call to him.

Rourke looked to her eyes, tracked them, found the thin gray-white line of fuse running along the wall above their heads.

He tracked it forward, the fuse disappearing into the pile of machinery. He shoved aside a small metal platform, a cardboard box visible at the end of the fuse.

Sucking in his breath, inhaling deeply on the cigar—there was more gunfire around them—he backtracked the fuse—it had been cut—perhaps by a bullet, a chunk of the concrete wall dimpled there—midway between the sewer pipe opening into the tunnel and the machinery beside which he hid. There was barely eight feet of fuse within his reach.

“What are we going to do?” Natalia asked, fir-ing a burst from one of the M-16s. “They’re clos-ing in.”

Rourke nodded, saying nothing, trying to think.

“If I pull down that fuse,” he said finally, “I’ll rip it out, maybe. And if I light it from here, we’ll never make it through the tunnel before it blows—I’ve gotta get up there along the wall—near those shuttered windows—and then light the damn thing.”

“You’ll be killed—nobody could miss a target your size profiled against the wall.”

“A target my size—thanks a lot,” and Rourke grinned at her.

He shifted off the M-16, leaving the scoped CAR-15, his personal weapon in more battles than he wanted to remember, slung across his back, handing Natalia the M-16. “Three of ‘em now—just keep pumpin’ lead toward those guys—keep me covered—and once I get that fuse lit, give a good loud scream and shout something about dynamite, then run like the devil’s chasing you for the tunnel.”

She leaned toward him, quickly, taking the ci-gar from his mouth, kissed him. “If we live, I don’t know what will happen to us—but I love you, John Rourke.”

He looked at her. Women picked the craziest times for things, he thought. Or maybe they didn’t at all.

“I love you, too—I couldn’t help it—and I’ll always love you—now start shooting,” and Rourke took back his cigar, looked at her once, then shot a glance toward the KGB out beside the blown-open metal doors, running for the near wall across the length of the machine shop. There were crates there, and if they didn’t col-lapse under his weight, he could stretch and just maybe reach the fuse—and he did what he had told Natalia to do. He ran as if the devil were chasing him, gunfire in a barrage surrounding him.