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

Rourke heard no noise outside, nothing. The quiet seemed ominous to him. He edged back into the drain, taking a deep breath of the fresher air before he did. He stopped where Reed, Fulsom, and the others crouched along the side of the drain beyond the elbow.

"I need a couple of bayonets and a couple of good-sized rocks. Going to have to hammer our way out."

"Why don't you use that bayonet you got," Reed snapped.

"I paid for mine, yours is issue, we'll use yours," Rourke told him quietly. "And let's get going. Time's against us." Rourke glanced at his watch. It was just past midnight, and they still hadn't even penetrated the base.

Reed barked an order to one of his two men and after a moment, two bayonets and two paving bricks were handed up along the line. "Come on," Rourke said, distributing one set of the tools to Reed.

With the Intelligence captain behind him, Rourke started forward again toward the elbow, through it and then, slowly, toward the grating at the end of the storm drain. Reed started to chisel at the cement and Rourke stopped him, raising a finger to his lips for silence and listening to the night sounds and listening for some sign of activity by the Russians. It was as if the place were deserted, Rourke thought, and that was all wrong. He was tempted to turn back, but realized then that any chance of the Resistance people or the Army Intelligence people helping to find Sarah and the children would be gone. Pausing for another moment, swinging the CAR-15 out of the way, Rourke set the point of one of the borrowed bayonets to the bead of cement and drew back the paving brick in his right hand.

"Watch your eyes for chips," Rourke cautioned Reed, then smashed the paving brick down against the butt of the bayonet, a two-inch fragment of the cement bead breaking way and falling into the muddy water in which they stood. In an instant, Reed was chiseling away at the opposite side.

"Cheap construction," Rourke thought, a six, or seven-inch piece of the cement bead chipping under the impact of his blow. It took both men some ten minutes to get a sufficient amount of the cement chipped away to try pushing at the grating. It budged, but didn't give way. They resumed chiseling at the cement, then when the cement was nearly gone from both sides, threw their weight against the grating a second time. This time it moved and slipped too easily. Rourke and Reed frantically caught at it to avoid letting it fall and clang against the cement of the V-shaped channel in the culvert outside. They edged the grating along the side of the storm drain, conscious of every clang and scrape. Rourke sent Reed back to get Fulsom and the others, Rourke himself moving out of the storm drain, up the side of the channel and peered over the edge of the culvert and across. The parking lot was comparatively huge for a largely rural area, the yellow lines drawn for orderly parking meaningless now. A few rusted wrecks sat in the lot at the far side, but that was all. Closer in, toward the shopping center itself, Rourke could see Soviet-marked trucks, the Red Stars seeming to burn in the night, somehow, psychological he imagined.

"What's up?"

Rourke turned toward the voice: it was Reed.

"You've been around," Rourke rasped, slipping down from the edge of the culvert, leaning back against the steeply sloping cement behind him. "This whole deal smells. We're not going in the rest of the way through the storm drain; we're cutting across this lot and into the buildings. There's a trap out there. Only thing we can do is try and work around it."

"Fulsom's not gonna like that," Reed cautioned.

"Yeah, well, that's too damned bad," Rourke said. "I'll let him lead the war when he lets me sell hardware. Come on."

Slipping back toward the mouth of the storm drain, Rourke put his left hand on Fulsom's shoulder and drew the man aside, telling him, "There's some kind of trap in the wind. I can feel it. We're going through the parking area, to the buildings. Couple of us go up on the roofs after sentries, then everybody piles after us. If it looks possible, some of us can go into the complex through the roof."

"But why not the drain, the way we had, "

"You want to go that route, count me out," Rourke rasped.

Fulsom, the corners of his mouth set down hard, nodded, grim-looking, Rourke thought.

"All right, you keep a handle on things here," Rourke said. "I'll take Reed and his two Army Intelligence guys with me."

Edging back toward the lip of the culvert up the V-shaped channel, he waved toward Reed, the Intelligence captain moving diagonally along the rough concrete surface toward him.

"Get your two boys, then stay with me," Rourke told him emotionlessly. "First shot or anything from us or them, get the hell out. Pass that back along to Fulsom." Rourke snatched the Bushnell Armored binoculars from their case and scanned the parking area, then the roof tops. He assumed there would naturally be sentries though he saw none. Shaking his head as he replaced the glasses, he zipped his jacket against the night air, but the cold feeling in his stomach wouldn't go.

Chapter 31.

"These are the complete details of your architectural survey, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, Comrade Colonel," the ruddy cheeked young man said, still standing at attention beside the open door leading to the back seat of Colonel Korcinski's staff car.

"Excellent. This storm drain, it appears here." He showed the page of the plans through the open door. The lieutenant bent over formally, studying them by the beam from the flashlight Korcinski held in his gloved left hand.

"Yes, Comrade Colonel?"