"Ahern, Jerry - Survivalist 009 - Earth Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ahern Jerry)

They walked in darkness, Emily leading the way, Natalia behind her, Vladov and the Soviet SF-ers after them, Rourke, Tom Maus and Marty Stanonik bringing up the rear. The airfield Varakov had arranged for the GRU pickup was still perhaps a quarter mile away, Emily, who knew the countryside best, had told them. They had gone by truck from Waukegan and into the farmland of northern Illinois. They had been walking, Rourke judged, for nearly a mile.
Marty spoke. "It's kinda hard to believe, I bought a house before The Night of The War, I , "
Maus touched at the younger man's shoulder.
Then Maus said, "I've been thinking. Pretty hard about this. I haven't mentioned it to Emily or any of the others yet, but I'm planning on starting an all-out offensive against the Russians in metropolitan Chicago."
"Go down fighting," Rourke commented.
"Something like that, but more than that. Ever since the Russians moved in, they've been using Soldiers' Field Stadium as an internment camp. Some other internment camps there. They treat them well enough, that's where their medical headquarters is at Soldiers' Field. But it's the idea, the people there aren't free. Americans shouldn't die that way if they have to die. Penned up, under guard. Maybe it is that, go down fighting. They should have that chance, the Americans the Communists are holding."
"I'll ask a favor," Rourke murmured in the darkness, pushing aside a low hanging branch, holding it for Marty and Tom Maus and then continuing on. "Don't make a direct assault on Soviet Headquarters at the museum. Let Varakov die his own way."
"Agreed," Maus answered. "That's the funny thing, the way Major Tiemerovna spoke about her uncle, before and in the truck just now, and what he's done now to fight the KGB, General Varakov sounds like a good man."
"He is."
Marty said it, "Kind of stupid, isn't it, I mean, if you assume we're good men, too. Why were we fighting each other all these years?"
Rourke had no answer for him.





Chapter Nineteen.

Sarah Rourke, barefoot, wearing a pair of the blue jeans her husband had stocked for her and one of her husband's shirts, listened to the sounds of her children over the muted sound of the waterfall to the rear of the Great Room. The children were playing poker with Paul Rubenstein and laughing because they were beating him at it, consistently.
He owed Michael thirteen trillion dollars, Michael had run to tell her.
Michael was a boy again. At least for now.
And Annie, there was a sparkle in her eyes and she giggled when Paul would tell her a joke. She had even blushed when Paul had told her she was a pretty little girl.
Sarah sipped at her drink, a book open on her lap, she hadn't begun to read it past the first line.
She had listened to music earlier, her husband's library housed records and cassettes ranging from The Beatles to Rachmaninoff, from original recordings of Enrico Caruso to Charles Aznavour.
The children had watched a movie on the videocassette recorder, she had been surprised that their interest had sustained in the original version of Lost Horizon starring Ronald Coleman. Perhaps it was the novelty of even seeing a television, the last program they had seen was the red haired Atlanta newsman warning of the impending Soviet attack.
They had played.
They had eaten the dinner she had prepared, not using the microwave, but slowly, lovingly prepared on the conventional electric stove. She had baked bread. She had made an apple pie using some of the dehydrated apples she had found in one of the freezers.
She felt human again.
Behind a series of vault doors in a cave inside a mountain in the middle of World War III, perhaps Soviet soldiers or brigands prowling nearby.
But she felt human again.
It was a feeling she did not want to lose.
But she could not concentrate. She worried that John Rourke still lived somewhere out there. That he would be able to come back to her.
And despite the fact the beautiful Russian woman was her rival, she worried, and she found herself smiling at the thought , for Natalia Tiemerovna.
"I'm crazy," she murmured, listening to her children laugh.





Chapter Twenty.

The GRU aircraft, a Beechcraft Super King Air, had made its pass over the field, Vladov radioing to the aircraft, getting the proper recognition signal. There had been a schedule of appointed rendezvous times, five in all and this was the fourth.
The Polish American woman, Emily, who was a self-proclaimed hater of the Russians, had laughed as she had broken out the flares. She had said, "If I'd ever figured I'd be lighting a field so a bunch of Commies usin' a stolen American airplane could land safely I'd have had myself committed to the funny farm." But with Lieutenant Daszrozinski and several of his men helping her, she had done just that.
In the brush at the far edge of the field now, Rourke, Natalia, Vladov, Maus and Marty Stanonik waited, their assault rifles ready, the rest of Vladov's men sprinkled around the field with Daszrozinski and Emily at the far end.
"That GRU man is a good pilot," Rourke commented, watching as the Beechcraft touched down, bouncing across the field, slowing, slowing still more, then turning into a take-off position. "Makes me feel like a drug dealer waiting for a marijuana drop," he laughed, pushing himself to his feet, staying in a low crouch, running, the CAR-15 across his back, the M-16 in his hands, Natalia, Maus, Stanonik and Vladov in a wedge around him.
It was two hundred yards as he reckoned it, a healthy run with a heavy pack, several handguns and knives and two assault rifles. But he didn't slow or stop until he reached the aircraft, hearing Vladov on the small radio giving the code phrase, "Red, white and blue, red, white and blue, "
The irony didn't escape him.
The door in the fuselage opened, a tall, thin man appearing in the shadow and moonlight.
He looked down. "You are the American doctor?"
"I'm Rourke."