Free Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal by Jerry Ahern Page B

Hammerschmidt prepared to cross the river, Hammerschmidt saying, “Idle speculation, I know, my friend, but if only I had the facility to call up our combat engineers. We would have a bridge across which a tank could be taken and it would be erected in under ten minutes.”
    “The Russians had machines like that five centuries ago.”
    “I studied them. German is better.” Hammerschmidt smiled wolfishly. Paul Rubenstein just shook his head. There was no bridge-laying equipment, just the rappeling gear from the emergency equipment aboard the Specials. And he smiled at the thought of the person at whose insistence each item of emergency equipment had been included. John Rourke, his friend, his father-in-law, in the most real sense of the word his mentor, had, once again, planned ahead.
    With the ropes there was a grappling hook which fired from a disposable launcher, the launcher disposable because it was not repackable in the field, the rope under mechanical compression. The ropes were flat, made of something which reminded Rubenstein of the Kevlar material John had once shown him in a bullet-resistant vest. The launchers were designed to fire upward, so he assumed they would fire outward as well. But, before Otto Hammerschmidt had mentioned it, Paul had realized it was a matter of trajectory, holding high enough that the spring-loaded grappling hooks would deploy over the object to which they hoped for
    attachment rather than level with or below it.
    They had traveled down along the river’s course for more than an hour, scouting a potential crossing, at last settling on a gap perhaps twenty-five yards across. But it was the depth that bothered him. The gorge through which the river cut so violently was at least seventy-five feet below them, and white-water rapids made the water glow eerily despite the otherwise poor visibility of the snowstorm.
    Since it was impossible to get the Specials across, they had argued over it, then eventualy flipped a German coin for it. Paul Rubenstein had won. He would cross, explore the opposite bank on foot, Hammerschmidt waiting with the Specials.
    “Are you ready, Paul?”
    Rubenstein brushed snowflakes from his eyelashes and nodded. Before he had taken the Sleep he’d worn glasses, and in snow or rain they naturally became wet and were difficult to see through. But without them the snow or rain assaulted the eyes directly. He reflected that one couldn’t win.
    “I’m ready,” he lied, because he was at once impatient to be gone but reluctant to crawl across the rope spanning the gorge when it would be attached on the opposite side only by an almost randomly positioned grappling hook.
    Hammerschmidt put the launcher to his right shoulder. “A pity it doesn’t have sights,” the German commando captain remarked.
    “A real pity, yes,” Rubenstein agreed, wiping more snow from his eyes.
    “Then here it is.” And as if punctuating his words, the launcher fired with a pneumatic hiss so flat-sounding that it reminded Paul Rubenstein of someone passing gas.
    His eyes tracked the roughly conical shape as it shot over the gorge, the flat rope uncoiling in its wake like a snake run over by a truck on some country road five centuries ago. He realized absently that he was wondering if somewhere on earth snakes survived. But before he decided anything concerning that, the
    conical shape of the grappling hook device disappeared into a swirl of snow. Hammerschmidt fell to tugging at the rope, Rubenstein helping, the rope suddenly going taut.
    They both threw their weight on the rope, trying to pull it free lest it work itself free. The rope was taut as a flat piece of metal.
    Together, they tied it off into the rocks near them, then further secured it to a tree, discarding the launcher, Hammerschmidt saying, “I’ll bury the launcher in the snow once you are across.”
    “Hopefully that’s all you’ll bury. Gimme a hand.” Together, they manipulated one of the Specials into position