Ahern, Jerry - The Web

"Would you like a drink, Natalia?" Rubenstein's voice came to her from across the Great Room. "I can show the

rest to you after a while,"

"What? A drink—yes," she called back.

The little boy in the photo—he was a miniature twin of John Rourke.

"Michael," Natalia murmured, feeling herself smile. So fine, so beautiful, so strong. And the little girl—the face of an imp, a smile that— Natalia felt herself smiling more broadly.

And John, his arm around a woman who looked abou! Natalia's age, perhaps older by a few years. She was pretty, with dark hair and green eyes, or so it seemed in the picture.

"Sarah Rourke," Natalia murmured.

'That's them," Rubenstein said, suddenly beside her. "I didn't ask what you wanted. Figured Seagram's Seven would be all—"

"Perfect. That's perfect, Paul."

"That's Sarah and Michael and Annie. I feel almost as though I know them."

Rubenstein laughed.

"Yes, Paul—so do I," Natalia said, putting the picture down on the end table. "So do I." She stopped talking then, because she felt she was going to cry and didn'! want to.

Rozhdestvenskiy looked at the Army major, Ivan Borozeni. "Major—it is immaterial to me if the population is unarmed essentially."

"But, Colonel, I see little need for going in firing— we—"

"Major, I will remind you of your rank—and also of one salient point you may not have considered. The Morris Industries plant was a highly secret Defense Department installation and manufacturing facility. If it still stands, it would seem obvious that the civilian government of the town is aware of its strategic importance to one degree or another. Hence, if we do not put down any thought of resistance as we enter the valley, they will likely use demolitions to destroy the plant.'

"But, Comrade Colonel—"

Rozhdestvenskiy dragged heavily on his cigarette. "Your objections shall be noted in my official report. Now—lead your men into the assault."

The Army major stiffened visibly, then saluted, Rozhdestvenskiy, still dressed in civilian clothes, nodding only.

Rozhdestvenskiy turned and started back toward his command helicopter. In the far distance, he had been seeing fireworks illuminating the dawn sky.

Peculiar, he had thought, surprised that Major Borozeni hadn't mentioned it. ...

Below him now, he could see the helicopter gunships shadows hovering like huge black wasps over the lip of the dish-shaped mountain valley, and beyond the rirn, the first of Borozeni's attack forces were moving up. It was like a gigantic board game, he thought—this thing of being a field commander. He rather liked it.

Rozhdestvenskiy spoke into the small microphone in front of his lips.

"This is Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy; the attack has begun!"

His jaw tightened, his neck tensed, and he nodded to his pilot, watching the man's hands as he worked the controls, feeling the emotion already in the pit of his stomach. They were starting down.

The mists on the ground rolled under the downdrafts of the helicopter rotors—he watched them swir! beneath the long shadow of his machine as they came from the sun. Surprise—there would be surprise, he thought.

Already, he could see the factory looming ahead and below them, the only large industrial building in the town, at its far edge.

"Down there," he rasped into his headset microphone. "There—get us down there." Then he switched channels, into the all-bands monitoring system so both Borozeni's ground commanders and the pilots of the other helicopter gunships could hear him. "This is Rozhdestvenskiy—we will converge on the factory due west of the town. Only KGB personnel will be allowed

inside the factory complex itself, and only those with a clearance level over CX Seven will be allowed within the factory. Crush any resistance."

He glanced through the bubble in front of him as another skyrocket soared up, exploding, as if the fools—he thought—were celebrating the attack.

Into the microphone again, he snapped, "And find the source of those fireworks; I want them stopped!"

As he judged it, the factory was less than a mile away now so again he spoke into the microphone, but on the aerial-force band only. "This is Rozhdestvenskiy. Commando squad ready! Pilots take up positions!"

His own ship was hanging back as a half-dozen helicopter gunships, their cargo doors open, formed themselves into a crude circle around the factory fence, perhaps one hundred feet in the air.

Rozhdestvenskiy saw the first of the ropes being let down; then suddenly, like dozens of spiders sliding on filaments of web, dark-clad forms started down the ropes, rappelling toward the ground. "Good man!" he rasped, unconscious that he had spoken into the microphone.

The first of the men were on the ground, establishing a perimeter, their assault rifles and light machine guns ready.

The last of the commando team was down. "Move out, commando force ships,"

he barked into the microphone. "Take up positions two hundred yards from and around the factory fences."

Rozhdestvenskiy turned to his own pilot, tapping the man on the arm, then jerking his thumb downward.

The pilot nodded, then started the machine ahead and down.

Rozhdestvenskiy's mouth was dry, his palms sweating.

He snapped up the collar of his windbreaker, checking

I

the AKM across his lap.

He had never been in mass combat before.

The helicopter gunship was hovering, then dropping, gliding forward slightly and stopping.

He felt the lurch, felt the impact; then he released the restraint harness, throwing open the side door and stepping out near a squad of the commandos already on the ground, his own personal KGB team surrounding him.

"We enter the factory. Follow me!" He started to run, remembering as he ran to raise the rifle into an assault position.

The gates of the factory complex were locked with a chain, a massive padlock securing them.

"Stand back." He raised the assault rifle, firing into the lock. The sound of the jacketed slugs tearing into the metal of the lock was deafening, but the lock seemed to have been broken.

He reached for it, feeling the heat of the metal despite the gloves he wore, wrenching it open, then twisting it free of the chain.

"Get the gates opened—now!"

The chain-link twelve-foot gates swung inward, and Rozhdestvenbkiy stepped into the service drive of Morris Industries—a giant step, he felt, in history.

He started to run, shouting again, "Follow me!" Above him, there was a spectacular burst, a skyrocket of blue and red and gold in a starburst, massive, exquisite.

He continued running, reaching a set of double doors. They would be locked. He raised the assault rifle again, firing into the locking mechanism. A burglar alarm sounded.

"Idiots," he shouted, then reached the doors, twisting

on the outside handle, wrenching the door open outward. He stepped into the factory complex, his men surrounding him. The building was in reality a series of interconnecting buildings.

"The loading docks," he shouted, then started running. It the materials he sought would he anywhere, they would be by the loading docks. There would be time then to search out precisely where they were manufactured. Gray light shafted through wire mesh-reinforced glass windowpanes as he ran the length of the first building; and occasionally through one of the windows as he looked out, he could see fireworks in the sky—more rockets, more starbursts. Were the people here insane?

He reached the end of a long corridor, already breathless from the running. Glancing to right and then to left, he looked right again.

"There—hurry." For some reason, some reason he couldn't understand, he felt the need to hurry that much greater each time one of the skyrockets would explode. He felt—he couldn't define it.