Free Survivalist - 15 - Overlord by Jerry Ahern Page B

his right fist. The ice walls shuddered, closing around him again. Rourke turned sideways, the walls against his chest and back. The pistol overhead, he worked the trigger as fast as it could be double-actioned, the howling roar in his ears intensifying, the pelting of chunks of ice intensifying, his glasses pocketed, his eyes averted, closed.
    The Python was empty.
    John Rourke looked up.
    Moonlight.
    Rourke rammed the Python into the full flap holster at his right hip, closing the flap so he wouldn’t lose the revolver. The Crain knife—he must get it. The walls of ice started to shudder, closing, faster now, Rourke pushing himself up, finding the Sting IA in his right pocket, gouging it into the ice overhead, holding to the sling.
    He let his feet slip from the handle of the Crain knife, using almost the last of his strength to pry it free of the ice, then throw his arms up sideways in a ragged arc and thrust the knife into the ice overhead. He pulled himself up, still holding to the sling with his right hand.
    He pulled —his head pushed through the crack in the ice.
    The crevasse was shuddering closed.
    John Rourke wrenched the Crain knife free of the ice as he thrust his upper body into the sub-zero night, a strange warmth rushing over him. He rolled his body free, his legs barely responding, jerking at the sling which was still attached to the Russell knife, the smaller knife arcing up and out of the crevasse as the crevasse sealed, the ice beneath
    Rourke’s body shuddering violendy, Rourke sagging to his back, his left fist still clutching the Crain knife. “American!”
    The English was bad, but it was heavily accented with Russian and Rourke couldn’t hold that against the speaker.
    He saw the man, one of the Soviet assault rifles in both the man’s fists, the man less than six feet away, levelling the rifle to fire.
    The Life Support System X was not made for throwing, was not balanced for throwing. A good man, Rourke’s father had once told him, could underhand anything from a kitchen knife to a shortsword at small distances. Rourke snapped his left hand and arm forward as he rolled toward the man, his left hand loosing the haft of the Crain System X, the foot long blade snapping into the moonlight between them, burying itself in the Soviet soldier’s chest as the assault rifle sprayed into the ice. John Rourke tried to stand, but couldn’t. His eyes started to close.

Chapter Eleven
    Paul Rubenstein had elected to go, Natalia providing covering fire for him with two of the M-16s, friendly forces to close for use of the grenade launcher. “Ready?”
    “Ready,” Rubenstein answered, swinging the M-16 forward on its sling.
    “Now!” Natalia shouted, Paul Rubenstein pushing up from the crouch and sprinting away from the rocks behind which they had taken cover, heavy light machinegun fire coming at him as he dodged and ran, the sound of Natalia with an M-16 behind him.
    He was making toward the sparsest portion of enemy resistance behind them, going back to look for John Rourke. Natalia told him that somehow she sensed Annie and somehow she sensed that something was wrong about John. She didn’t know how or why.
    And Paul Rubenstein ran. The Soviet forces were nearly finished, but fighting to the last man as Rubenstein had anticipated they would, as John Rourke had soberly predicted, bitterly predicted. It seemed ingrained in the Soviet military mentality to fight until resistance was no longer possible, then to continue to fight. He wondered if it were a subconscious racial memory of the Sege of Stalingrad, or just indoctrination, or perhaps both. He kept running, two
    Soviet troopers opening up from behind an ice ridge to his left. Rubenstein threw himself down, firing, spraying into the ice ridge, huge chunks of ice flying; Rubenstein found one of the German grenades, baseball shaped and copied after American grenades he had seen in movies —how long ago. He pulled the pin, hurtling the grenade