Ahern, Jerry - The Web

"Yes, Comrade General. That is my affair." Rozhdestvenskiy dropped his cigarette to the marble floor and started to grind it out beneath the heel of his boot.

"But this is my headquarters building, Colonel; pick up that cigarette."

"Bat surely, a prisoner used for janitorial service can—"

"That is not the point; pick it up."

The boyish smile was gone from Rozhdestvenskiy's face. He hesitated a moment, then stooped over and picked up the cigarette butt, holding it between two manicured fingernails. "Will there be anything else, Comrade General?"

"No—I think not." Varakov turned and started back

across the main hall toward his office without walls.

Thousands of troops were moving inland to escape the raging storm fronts assaulting the eastern coast of what had been the United States—regrouping and searching, he hoped. That Natalia would be safe as long as she was with John Rourke, Varakov took as a fact. It was after that—with this Rozhdestvenskiy-—that Varakov worried about her safety.

"Catherine!" He called out the name before he remembered he had told her to go and rest. He shrugged, deciding he would do the same thing himself.

There might not be time for it in the future.

His hands stabbed into his pockets as he walked away from his office and he stopped once, glancing back over his right shoulder. The offensive SS-Hke KGB officer was gone from view. Varakov smiled, remembering the ego satisfaction he had given himself in making Rozhdestvenskiy pick up the cigarette. He realized as he glanced once more at the mastodons that he would likely pay for it, too, and perhaps so would Natalia.

Rourke's knuckles were white, Ms fists bunched on the yoke now as the twin-engine cargo plane skimmed low over over the icy roadway, his starboard engine hopelessly iced. His mind went back to the only other time in his life he had crash-landed a plane—the in the New Mexico desert on the Night of the War. He remembered Mrs. Richards, her husband gone in the destruction of the West Coast, her compassion in caring for the dying captain, her tireless help that long night while they had fought to keep airborne—then her death when the had—Rourke wrenched back on the controls, trying to keep the nose up. The brakes held, but the plane started to skid as it hit the ice-and snow-covered road. "Get your heads down!" Rourke shouted to Paul, strapped in near the midsection, and to Natalia in the copilot's seat beside him.

"John!"

Rourke didn't look at her; he was feeling the tendons in his neck distending, his body suddenly cold, the air temperature finally getting to him. The plane was going out of control. He worked the flaps to decelerate, the brakes starting to slow him as well now. The straight

away stretched for perhaps another quarter-mile yet and if he slowed the craft too quickly the skid would become uncontrollable. The aircraft zigzagged under him, the tail of the craft whipping back and forth across the three-lane width of Kentucky highway. The straightaway was rapidly running out. Eyes squinted against the glare of the plane's lights on the snow, he could see ahead of him where the road seem to end, to curve in a sharp S-bend, running to his left. The plane coasted right across the icy road, toward the drop-off on the far end of the S-bend, a meager metal guardrail there and beyond it, from what Rourke could see, a drop.

Two hundred yards, perhaps less. Rourke controlled the plane with the flaps, the braking action worsening the skid. Rourke reached across to Natalia, punching the release button on the seat harness, grabbing her by the left shoulder, shouting back along the fuselage, "Paul— we're bailing out—get the cargo door and jump for it— jump as far out as you canl"

Rourke didn't wait to see that the younger man was complying, but grabbed Natalia, shoving her roughly ahead of him toward the fuselage door.

"John!" Rourke glanced to his left. Rubenstein was struggling with the seat belt, its buckling mechanism apparently jammed. "Save yourselves!"

Rourke glanced toward Natalia; the Russian woman was already working the handle on the cargo door with her left hand, in her right hand something metallic gleamed—a knife. She reached the butt of it out to Rourke. Rourke snatched it from her hand, wheeling, the aircraft's lurching and bumping throwing him toward Rubenstein. Collapsing against the fuselage, Rourke reached the knife blade under the webbing strap across

Paul's left shoulder, sliced it; then, as he started for the leg strap, he could feel the rush of arctic-feeling air, hear the slipstream. The fuselage door opened. Rourke's borrowed knife slashed apart the last of the restraints.

The knife still in his right hand, he snatched at his CAR-, yelling to Paul, "Jump for it, Paul—go on!"

As Rourke was moving toward the door, the younger man was already on his feet, the Schmeisser in his right hand; Natalia was starting to jump.

Rourke, at the fuselage door, wheeled, reaching toward his strapped-down Harley, cast a glance at it because it would likely be the last, and snatched his leather jacket. He turned and dove, the snow slamming up toward him as he rolled onto the road surface, his left shoulder taking it, aching as he hit, the rear stabilizers sawing through the air toward him as he flattened himself, .the tail of the fuselage passing inches over his head.

He followed it with his eyes for an instant, then pushed himself to his feet, slipping on the ice, running, lurching forward. He could see Natalia, lying in the middle of the road, Paul running toward her. Rourke heard it, the wrenching and groaning of metal. He wheeled, skidding on the heels of his black combat boots across the ice, to watch as the plane crashed through the metal roadside barricade and disappeared over the side. He waited— there was no explosion. But there wasn't much hope either, he thought. Three people, one jacket, a rifle with no spare magazines and a submachine gun with no spare magazines. A few pistols. He looked into his hand—and a Bali-Song knife. He turned, starting back toward Natalia.

But like a little girl after taking a spill on an ice rink, she sat, legs wide apart, her right hand propping her up, her left hand brushing the hair back from her face,

hair already flecked with snow. Beside her Rubenstein crouched, as if waiting.

Rourke stopped walking, a yard or so from her still. He held up the knife.

"Never told me about the Bali-Song knife."

She only smiled. Rourke glanced back where the plane had disappeared; if anything could be salvaged, it would have to wait. The leather jacket was bunched in his left hand along with the CAR-. He approached Natalia, squatted down beside her, and draped the coat across her shoulders. She was already shivering, as was Paul Rubenstein. And so was Rourke. . . .

"I had the Bali-Song for a long time. For some reason I didn't carry it when you found me in (he desert. I don't remember why-But I took it with me to Florida, just in case.

"Are you good with it?" Rourke asked her, shivering.

"Yes. If my hands weren't so cold—I could show—" She shook from the freezing air temperature; sub-freezing, perhaps close to zero, Rourke thought as he started down the side of the embankment, carefully, slowly, for the rocks that formed the purchases for his hands and feet were ice-coated. "Be careful, John."

"Once I get down there, I can snake up a rope; then you and Paul can join me and at least we'll have some shelter—unless it looks like it's going to blow or something."

"I can—" Rubenstein began.

"You stay with Natalia. If I break every bone in my body doing this, I want someone in one piece to take care of her." It was getting dark as Rourke started climbing again, the aircraft still some thirty feet below him, its portside wing broken in two, the starboard engine