"Ahern, Jerry - Survivalist 003 - The Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ahern Jerry)

He walked back to his desk, lifted the red telephone to his day room and waited. It rang less than once. A voice answered with the formal identification of place, rank and last name, and the inevitable "Sir!"

He cut the man off. "This is Colonel Korcinski. Alert the counter-terrorist force to move out within five minutes."

Korcinski hung up the telephone, walked back to the closeted mirror and took his cap, adjusting it at a slight angle over his left eye, smoothing back the white hair, smoothing his uniform jacket under the gunbelt, opening the flap holster, working the slide on the pistol and chambering the first round, then setting the Makarov's safety, the hammer down. Reholstering the gun, glancing once more into the mirror, he closed the closet door and started across his office.

As he opened the door into the hall, the sirens began sounding. He strode purposefully, he was conscious of himself and had always been, down the hallway, the sounds of running feet in the hallway of the journalism building and now his staff headquarters reassuring to him.

Narcissism, some called it that. He called it pride and realization of his destiny. He turned the corner into the side corridor, the glassed wall on one side looking out into the central square where the counter-terrorist force was already forming. He walked along the hallway, staring into the glass, seeing his own image half-reflected and superimposed on the glass over the figures of running armed men, motorcycle units, and troop vehicles. He walked to the end of the hallway and through the glass doors, adjusting his hat to a bit more rakish angle in the reflection, then started down the steps, his boots gleaming in the reflected artificial lighting.

He reached the base of the steps, turned left, pushed briskly through the double-glass doors, and took one last glance. He stepped out onto the brick porch and walked down its length, surveying the men, the officers saluting as he passed. Korcinski returned the salutes with a studied casualness. He could see his aide running up to him, bringing his greatcoat and his swagger stick. He stopped, letting the man hold the coat for him. Korcincski left the collar up, the coat hanging open, the swagger stick under his left arm as he pulled the skin-tight leather gloves over his manicured fingers.

He slapped the swagger stick against his right thigh, glancing with great drama at the watch on his wrist. It was only four minutes, and the men were already assembled, the troops boarded into the trucks, the motorcycle patrols mounted, his staff car waiting.

He stepped to the edge of the porch, speaking at the top of his voice, carefully listening to it for the tone, the life in it. He liked the way it resonated through the square, the stone buildings making it reverberate as though he were speaking from some far loftier height.

"We have been notified of a full-scale terrorist assault to be conducted at a location not far from here." He liked to preserve an element of mystery, the very ambiguity he'd learned to imbue his men with a sense of the importance of it all. "We are to contain the terrorists until their ammunition is exhausted, then to take them in hand-to-hand combat and preserve as many of their lives as possible. There is one man, he is tall, his hair is dark, rising from a high forehead, he frequently wears sunglasses even at night, he will be wearing several handguns and be skilled in their use. No one man is to attempt to take him, squad action only. If any man kills this man, he will himself be shot. This man, at all costs, must be taken alive and as uninjured as possible. I can explain no further for reasons of security. We will move out toward the helicopter staging area and supply depot."

He stood then, quietly, surveying the faces of his men, then shouted, "We toil for the liberation of the workers of the world, and for this reason we ourselves are invincible!"

A cheer, spontaneous he thought, went up from the assembled troops and he waved the swagger stick in his gloved hands. He had always admired the incantation the Nazis had used: spirit was important. He saluted the swagger stick against the peak of his hat and strode toward the steps at the far side of the brick porch leading down to his men, his staff car,, and to his destiny.

Chapter 30.

Rourke stared at the moon and the curious, ghostlike haze around it. He shuddered slightly. The night was cold, the air here on the river was damp and chill, but the shudder was for some other reason he couldn't quite define. He glanced skyward at the haloed moon. The shudder came again and he knew why.

The water of the river made tiny, wavelike lapping sounds against the hull of the rubber boat as in silence and darkness Rourke's boat and three more similar to it stayed to the middle of the river, searching the blackness and shadow on the right bank for. the outlet of the storm drain. In the darkness, he felt the safety on the CAR-15, checked the security of the twin stainless Detonics pistols in their shoulder holsters, checked the security of the flap on the Ranger rig holding the Metalifed Government .45 on his hip. He forced himself to slow his breathing. He was nervous; the mission held something that smelled bad to him, tasted foul. There was something very wrong with it, and it wasn't just the poor planning or the inexperienced people. He half-wished Paul Rubenstein had been well enough to come along. At least he trusted Paul, and for what Paul lacked in experience, he compensated well in intelligence and initiative.

Rourke pulled up the collar of his leather jacket, snapping closed the second highest button on the off-white cowboy shirt he wore beneath it. He snatched off the sunglasses, securing them in his shirt pocket, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the difference in light. He almost laughed aloud; if he hadn't been so sensitive to light all through his life, he would have thought it symptomatic of radiation sickness. He checked the closure on the canvas musette bag hanging from his left side over the M-16 Bayonet, the closure on the Bushnell Armored 8 x 30s hanging from his right side. The bottoms of his jeans were rolled in with blousing garters over the tops of his combat boots, stuffing the pants in the boots had always been uncomfortable to him. He remembered once, years earlier, having fought his way five miles in subfreezing temperatures through more than two feet of fresh snow on foot, the drifts had been as high as his thighs and he had fallen several times, then the pants had been tucked into the boots to keep the snow out. He had made it then and he thought that somehow he'd make it tonight. He had to. He had come to think of it as a quest, no less important than a search for the Grail, for any treasure ancient or modern, more important because it was a human quest, to find the three surviving humans who meant the most to him in all the world, the woman he had always loved, the son, the daughter, each child part of him and part of her.

"Over there, past those rocks and weeds," Rourke heard Fulsom rasp. Rourke shook his head, searching out Fulsom in the darkness, finding his silhouette, and then seeing in what direction the man pointed.

Rourke, his night vision better than most because of light sensitivity, could see the outline of the upper right quarter of the storm drain's circular entrance clearly. Rats, snakes, wolf spiders possibly, he set his jaw, staring at the entrance as two of Reed's men, doing the rowing on Rourke's boat, changed course from the center of the river toward the marshy, muddy bank.

As the rubber boat skidded into the mud, Rourke was already on his feet and going over the gunwales, the sounds of critters on the land and things in the water something he listened intently for.

Rourke approached the storm drain entrance, Reed beside him and Fulsom behind Reed. Rourke glanced back toward the entrance.

"What the hell is that?" Reed whispered, pointing toward a silver glinting sphere from something reminiscent of thread.

"It's a spider nest. See 'em in trees and branches a lot."

"Hell," Reed rasped, starting to take the bayonet from his belt and hack at the nest.

Rourke caught his wrist, looking at him hard in the moonlight. "If it were blocking the entrance, fine, if it were in our way, fine, never kill anything unless you have to, there're enough things you have to kill these days."

Rourke sidestepped in front of Reed and glanced around him, then took his Zippo and flicked it lit, lighting one of his small, dark cigars, and glanced at the luminous face of the Rolex on his wrist in the light of the flame, then moved the blue-yellow fire toward the entrance, up and down and from side to side, inspecting the tunnel beyond the lip of the storm drain.

"What do you think, Mr. Rourke?" Fulsom asked, his voice low beside Rourke.