Free Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend by Jerry Ahern

froze.
    No lights, total darkness except for the flash of the energy weapons, and those were few and far between in these last few seconds.
    He was beside the door, and he bent awkwardly, setting out the plastique, wondering why there were no lights, and was the power failure general.
    Rourke heard Natalia’s voice from the darkness, shouting to him, “It could be a trick!”
    He knew she would not expect an answer.
    Although he always carried at least one flashlight, he moved in darkness now, his only light the occasional futile flash of the hoped for lucky shot with one of the energy weapons the Elite Corps still fired sporadically.
    Rourke’s left thigh pained him badly, but the flow of blood, as best he could tell in the darkness, had eased; and, since he was not dead yet, he theorized that the bleeding was not arterial.
    He kept moving, dragging his left leg slightly, focusing his attention on the job at hand instead of the pain. If all the power in the city were out, either the Hand of Providence had hit the switch or something unfathomable had occurred.
    It was possible, just possible, that the power inside the air defense center was down, too …
    Natalia moved quickly along the edge of the barricade behind which she had hidden. The jacket of her uniform was off, the grenades inside, the sleeves of the jacket tied together forming a bundle with which to carry them. Already, the air inside the mountain was stuffy, smelled badly, and made her feel slightly nauseated.
    She was confident that she could find her way back to their original position where she had left the energy weapons, despite the surrounding darkness which was almost total. She carried a small flashlight in her purse, the purse slung cross body like a musette bag now. And, if she could not find her way back, or time did not allow that, if what she planned succeeded, she would have access to all the energy weapons she needed.
    In the darkness, with no sounds of electrical equipment aad no flow of fresh air, she could hear tiny noises, and thus moved more carefully. The Soviet uniform skirt was poorly designed and even more poorly executed and impeded her movement as she crept forward. So, the Bali-Song knife already out and silently opened in her hand, she found the side seam by her left thigh and eased the knife’s primary edge against it, splitting the skirt to her hip. The slip beneath it was already bunched up and out of the way, and it was her own so she had no desire to cut it.
    She kept moving, her objective a simple one: To reach the enemy position which had been the source of the energy weapon fire and neutralize the men there …
    A good three dozen men of the raiding parties-U.S. Marines, German Long Range Mountain Patrol and Commando personnel, Chinese from the Second City, all fighting side-by-side against the common enemy-rallied around Jason Darkwood. Darkwood raised his right arm, sweeping hand and arm forward in a broad arc as he shouted, “Follow me!”
    Darkwood started toward the fence gates which separated the lagoon docks from the domes of the Soviet city itself, his Lancer pistol in his left hand, his Randall knife in his right.
    Gunfire from the men around him was deafening, and the thought crossed his mind that he hoped the newly-developed low penetration round these men were firing was as safe to fire under the domes as testing indicated. Otherwise, a stray shot and they could all die.
    Black uniformed Marine Spetznas personnel held the gates, retorting tire with Sty-20s, PV-26 shark guns and AKM-96 assault rifles. Men fell on either side of Jason Darkwood.
    A young black Marine near to Darkwood, left arm limp at his side and streaming blood from a shoulder wound, did something then that took Jason Darkwood totally by surprise.
    He started to sing.
    The Marine hymnn.
    Under normal circumstances, Jason Darkwood would have started looking for people to join him in “Anchors Aweigh,” but instead he joined the young man, and