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

"Shit!" Rourke muttered, then started back toward Reed and reached the roof edge and flipping over the side, dropping and flexing his knees to break the fall.

"Well?"

"Well, kiss your fanny good-bye," Rourke snapped, starting toward the roof line fronting the knoll.

The corporal was just coming over the roof line. Rourke caught the man in his arms against his chest, breaking his fall and turning him around. "Back down, Corporal," Rourke snapped, hitting the roof edge and flipping down on the grass, rolling and tumbling down the knoll, coming up on his knees, the CAR-15 at his hip.

"Come on!" he snapped, breaking into a deadrun across the parking lot. The trap was about to spring, he thought, and there was too much of it to wait it out. There wasn't even time to run.

Rourke saw someone coming up over the lip of the culvert. Fulsom? The man's arms were waving. He was choking, it looked like, his body doubling over, the knees buckling, then the man pushed himself up and ran toward them again. Rourke glanced behind him. First was the corporal, then Reed, then the other soldier.

Fulsom was shouting something and Rourke tried waving him down, signaling him to be still. But Fulsom was still shouting. Rourke couldn't make out the words, but heard the spasms of coughing. Rourke glanced behind him again; the lower roof was swarming now with Soviet troops, and the upper-level parking area was no longer nearly deserted. He could see the canvas roof lines of Soviet military trucks there. In the distance, from the other side of the shopping center, he could make out the revving of motorcycle engines. Rourke could hear Fulsom now, the words still cluttered sounding from the coughing, "Gas! They got all of, " Then Fulsom dropped, a single rifle shot echoing in the night.

Rourke stopped running, looked up at the roof, saw a Soviet trooper, an officer beside him jerking him around, slapping him in the face.

There was a bullhorn, the English very good, the words; "Lay down your weapons and you will be unharmed!"

Rourke snatched the CAR-15 to his shoulder, telescoping the stock, his eye picking up the rifleman who'd triggered the shot from the roof, the crosshairs of the three-power scope settling across the helmeted head, Rourke's trigger finger twitching once, the single 5.56mm rifle bullet's noise as it crossed the air to its target like a thunderclap in the otherwise total silence.

The soldier stumbled back, then fell forward over the roof line to the loading dock below.

Rourke stood, motionless, the rifle still shouldered, waiting. He might be done, he knew, there were too many of them. He settled the crosshairs on the officer who only a second earlier had stood beside the now-dead Russian soldier.

The bullhorn sounded again, "Lay down your arms and you will not be harmed!"

Rourke scanned the roof line for the bullhorn, spotted it, and fired. The bullhorn shattered from the hand of the man, the white metal thing falling from sight.

At the top of his voice, the rifle in front of his chest at high port, Rourke shouted, "Bite my ass!" Then he started to run.

Chapter 33.

Colonel Korcinski shouted to his driver, "Stop! There he is!" And before the car had settled, he was opening the rear passenger door, then stepped out into the parking lot.

He could see the man he wanted. It had to be Rourke, tall, lean, a brown leather jacket, a rifle in his hands, his hair blowing in the wind as he ran. The light mist that Korcinski had noted earlier on the windshield was turning into a steady slow rain and, ignoring it, he started walking forward, shouting to the leader of the motorcycle detachment, "Get that man, alive, the others be damned! Get that man Rourke!"

Then, turning to the driver standing beside him now, he snapped, "Field glasses!" In a moment his chauffeur had returned and Korcinski had the glasses up to his eyes and was adjusting them. He watched Rourke running and shooting, the troopers swarming toward him not returning fire as they closed in, crumpling under the withering accuracy of his bullets.

Rourke made to fire the rifle; it was apparently empty. Three of Korcinski's soldiers were closing on him, then suddenly one went down, and there was a rumbling sound from a heavy-caliber weapon. There was a pistol in Rourke's right hand, dully gleaming in the spotlights from the trucks, belching fire against the darkness behind him, then firing again. Two more of Korcinski's men went down. And Rourke was running again.

"Get him! That man must be stopped." He was tempted, sorely tempted, he realized, to disobey his direct orders, and order his men to shoot rather than get cut down by this American who was somehow so important to General Varakov. Mentally, he bit his tongue, shouting, "Get that man, but do not under any circumstances harm him. Get him!"

Chapter 34.

A motorcyclist was closing in on him. Rourke sidestepped and, as the cyclist missed him by a good two feet, Rourke swung the CAR-15 from the muzzle like a baseball bat, notching the Soviet motorcyclist on the chin and knocking him from the bike. The bike rolled ahead a few yards and spun out.

Rourke snatched a fresh thirty-round magazine for the CAR-15 and rammed it home, shoving the empty in his belt, holstering the Colt .45 Automatic as he ran for the bike, wrestling the bike up and kick-starting it, still settling himself across it as the wheels were already beginning to move.

The CAR-15 slung from his right shoulder and out of the way, Rourke revved the bike, taking it in a wide circle as other Soviet motorcycle troopers started toward him, closing in.