The Nightmare begins

Chapter Thirty-Six

Rourke opened his eyes, glancing down at the watch on his left wrist. It was three A.M. The girl was still sleeping in his arms, and to see the face of the Rolex he'd had to move her. He heard the sound again, a shot, then another and then a long series of shots—submachine gun fire, light like a 9mm should sound.

"The damned fools," Rourke said aloud, feeling the girl stirring in his arms, then feeling her sit up beside him.

"Shots?"

Then Rourke heard Rubenstein, sliding off the pickup truck bed, beside them suddenly under the shelter. The rain was still pouring down outside, and Rourke stared out from the shelter flap, then pulled his head back inside, his face and hair wet. Without looking at either Rubenstein or the girl, Rourke said, "The damned fool paramils—it's a blasted night attack. Damn them!"

As Rourke pulled on his combat boots, whipped the laces tight and tied them, the sound of the gunfire became more general, shouts sounding as well from all sections of the brigand camp, the engines of some of the big eighteen-wheelers roaring to life and, as each did, the shots were drowned out for a moment.

Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, over the din, "Paul, start getting this shelter taken down and get the truck ready to roll—Natalie, give him a hand! I'm going up by the road." Rourke slipped into his leather jacket, got to his feet in a low crouch and started through the shelter flap, then dove back inside, shouting, "Mortars!"

He dove onto the girl and Rubenstein, knocking them to the shelter floor. The shelter trembled, the ground trembled, the blast of the mortar was deafening.

Then came the sounds of rocks and dirt hitting the shelter, added now to the drumming of the rain. Rourke pushed himself up on his hands, rasped, "Hurry!"

and started back toward the shelter flap, then into the rain. There was the whooshing sound of another mortar round, and though the pouring rain muffled the sound, he instinctively dove left, the mortar impacting behind him and to his right. Rourke pushed himself up out of the mud, the CAR-15 diagonally across his chest in a high port as he ran zigzag across the mud, avoiding the brigand men and women running everywhere around the camp in obvious confusion and panic.

Some of the eighteen-wheelers were starting to move, inching forward, then backward, the very shape of the circle in which they'd parked prohibiting them from maneuvering. Some of them were entrenched deep in the mud of the plateau, and mud sprayed into the air as the wheels bit and slipped and dug themselves deeper.

Ahead of him, from the glare of the truck headlights and the few lanterns, Rourke could see a knot of several dozen men by the head of the single road leading up to the top of the plateau, and he could see the flashes of gunfire and hear more small calibre automatic weapons fire.

Rourke spotted Mike, the brigand leader, without a shirt, his body visibly trembling in the cold, the riot shotgun in his hands. As Rourke ran up to the men around Mike, the brigand leader stopped talking and glared at him a moment, then nodded slightly, and went on. The words were hard to make out with the missing teeth and the stitched, swollen lip. "… ey can't get up here after us. I figure maybe we got fifty or a hundred of 'em trapped halfway up the road down there in the dark—we keep shootin' into 'em, we're, ahh—we're gonna pin 'em down all night— first light we get we can finish 'em."

"What about the mortar rounds—all you need is one hittin' a fuel tanker and this whole spot is a huge fireball. I don't think that can wait till morning." Rourke heard some of the brigands grunting agreement, one from the rear of the knot of men around Mike shouting out, "One of them mortar rounds almost hit my truck—I was parked right next door to one of the diesel tankers. The new guy's right!"

"All right, smart ass," Mike said, turning to Rourke, "what do we do—huh?"

"You're the leader," Rourke said, hunching his shoulders against the rain. "But if I were you, I'd take about fifty or seventy-five men, maybe in two groups, and work my way down both sides of the road—right now. No shooting at all until you reached those fifty or so guys in the middle of the road. Try and get 'em by surprise, maybe, then from their position, you can just dig in and start pouring out a heavy enough volume of fire to push that mortar crew back out of range of the top of the plateau. If you dig yourselves in well, by the sides of the road rather than by the middle, you can keep your casualties down, then just before dawn, pull back. Hold your fire then until the mortar crew gives the middle of the road a good enough workout to figure you've pulled back, then start firing from the rims of the plateau here—you might even catch 'em out in the open trying to retake the position in the middle of the road. Simple."

Mike didn't say anything for a long minute, then, "You volunteering to lead one of the two groups?"

Rourke sighed heavily, then said, "Yeah—wait 'til I tell my lady what's up. You line up the guys—I'll meet you back here in five minutes." Without waiting for a comment, Rourke started in a slow run back across the camp and toward the pickup truck. He had no intention of sitting out the rest of the darkness in a foxhole in the middle of the road.

Another mortar hit off to Rourke's right as he took shelter beside one of the truck trailers, then he started running again—back toward the pickup truck.

Natalie and Rubenstein—their differences, Rourke judged, put aside—were drenched, the girl's hair alternately plastered to her forehead or catching in a gust of wind, Rubenstein's glasses off and his thinning hair pushed back in dark streaks. The lean-to was down and Rubenstein was just closing up the gate of the truck bed.

"We gotta get out of here—fast," Rourke said, standing between them both. "I don't have any kind of good plan, but it's the best I can think of—now listen,"

and Rourke leaned forward, saying, "I'm leading a group of the brigands down along one side of the road, there'll be another group on the other side—kind of pincer-type thing. When we reach the paramils—there are maybe fifty of 'em in the middle of the road about halfway up to the summit—we're going to knock them out, then lay down some fire on that mortar crew to push 'em back out of range of the plateau. Before they hit one of the fuel tankers. Now," Rourke continued, "once I get down there and you hear the mortars stopping or pulling back, you and Paul take the bikes—"

"Wait a minute—shh, I hear something," the girl said.

Rubenstein looked skyward, saying, "Yeah—so do I, John. Listen."

Rourke looked skyward. He could see nothing but blackness, the rain still falling in sheets across his face and body and the ground on which he stood. "I hear it, too," Rourke almost whispered. "Helicopters—big ones and a lot of them—the paramils don't have that kind of equipment—"

Suddenly, the entire campsite, the whole upper surface of the plateau was bathed in powerful white light, and there was a voice, in labored English, coming over some kind of loudspeaker from the air above them. Rourke turned his eyes away from the sudden brightness. The voice was saying, "In the name of the Soviet People and the Soviet Army of Occupation you are ordered to cease all hostilities on the ground. You are outnumbered by an armed force vastly superior to you—lay down your arms and stay where you are."

Behind him, Rourke heard Paul Rubenstein, muttering, saying, "You can all go to hell!" And as Rourke started to turn, Rubenstein had the "Schmeisser" up and had started firing.

Rourke shouted, "Down!" and grabbed at Natalie, forcing her down into the mud, the roar of heavy machine gun fire belching out of the darkness above him, Rubenstein crumpling to the mud, doubled over, the SMG in his hands still firing as he went down. Rourke crawled across the mud toward the younger man, then the voice from the helicopters shouted over the speaker system again, "No one will move! Lay down your arms and surrender or you will be killed!"

Rubenstein's eyes were closed and Rourke could barely detect a pulse in the neck. Natalie was beside Rourke in the mud. As Rourke raised Rubenstein's head into his lap, he glared skyward. Still, he could see nothing but the light.