Survivalist - 23 - Call To Battle (30 page)

The aircraft was landing vertically.

“Touchdown!” Emma shouted.

John Rourke liked a person who preferred the intimacy of human speech-even shouted-over a radio transmission, the fuselage door opened. In the second after, there was the shudder of contact. Paul called back, Til watch Martin!”

“Right.”

Emma was already walking aft, jumped down from the opening in the fuselage, Rourke behind her. Rolvaag, the pilot and the third man, who had to be Bremen, were corning toward them, the pilot leaning on Rolvaag, the third man walking, failing, getting up.

“You help Doctor Rolvaag with the pilot,” Rourke ordered, running past Emma Shaw, toward Bremen.

Lava flows were moving inexorably down the slope, the flows blending into one another as new vents opened, rivers of enormous width flowing downward. The gas here was less thick, and comparatively litde ash fell. Rourke reached Bremen, letting the man collapse into his arms.

Rourke slung Bremen over his shoulder. Rourke looked back toward the V-stol. Emma was helping Rolvaag get the pilot aboard.

Rourke walked as rapidly as he could. With the added weight of Bremen on his shoulder, running was out of the question, given the state of his lungs and the air quality.

The ground shook. As Rourke looked back, another fissure had opened, wide, blowing lava in an enormous upjetting plume into the purple and orange blackness above.

Rourke reached the V-stol, Emma Shaw and Rolvaag reaching out to take Bremen.

Rourke handed Bremen up, then clambered in after him.

There was a localized control for the fuselage door and Rourke activated it, the door gliding to. Emma started forward. Tm getting us out of here.”

“Right,” Rourke nodded. Already, Rourke was to his knees, beside Bremen.

“This could be a rough takeoff. We’ve got a lava flow bearing down on us,” Emma Shaw called back.

Rourke could hear the engines revving. “Everybody brace yourselves. Martin, get me the oxygen out of the survival kit on the bulkhead there,” and Rourke gestured toward the kit. As Rourke looked back at Bremen-the head injury didn’t appear too severe and Bremen was breathing-he suddenly realized what he’d done.

Rourke started to his feet.

But Martin already had the survival kit open. There was an energy pistol in it. “Fire that in here and-“

Martin leveled the energy pistol toward John Rourke’s head. Rourke dove toward his son, shoving Rolvaag and the injured pilot Buder out of the way. The aircraft was into vertical takeoff mode. There was no stopping now without crashing.

Rourke’s left hand closed over the pistol. Martin’s right knee smashed upward into John Rourke’s testicles.

John Rourke flew back against the bulkhead beside the fuselage door. Martin Zimmer Rourke’s left hand punched outward, not to Rourke’s face, but toward the localized door control.

The V-stol went into horizontal flight and Rourke was thrown back. Martin was on top of him, beating at bis head with

the energy pistol. Rourke’s left elbow smashed upward into Martin’s chest. Rolvaag jumped onto Martin’s back.

Martin twisted round, the energy pistol firing, blasting a hole twice the size of a basketball, in the fuselage opposite the door. The V-stol shuddered, Emma Shaw shouting, “Stop him!”

The dual slipstream though the open fuselage door and the hole opposite it tore at Rourke’s exposed flesh.

Martin was up, leveling the pistol toward the cockpit. “If Tm going to die, you’re all going to die, damn you!”

John Rourke reached up from his knees. Martin kicked at him. Rourke grabbed for Martin’s foot, caught it, twisted.

Martin sprawled back against the bulkhead, swinging the muzzle of the pistol once again toward the cockpit as Rourke, to his feet now, reached for his son. “And damn you, father!”

The aircraft lurched.

Martin fired.

The energy pistol blew a hole in the overhead.

John Rourke’s left fist snaked upward toward Martin’s jaw, catching Martin at the jaw’s tip. Rourke reached for Martin with his right hand, trying to close his hand over Martin’s wrist.

The aircraft shuddered, twisted violently in midair, started into a dive.

Martin’s head snapped back.

Rourke’s hand closed over Martin’s wrist.

Martin slipped backward.

“Son!” John Rourke screamed the word over the howl of the wind.

Martin’s wrist slipped through John Rourke’s fingers.

Their eyes met.

Hatred.

Martin’s body fell away, sucked out into the slipstream. John Rourke lurched after him. The plane was into a dive now.

John Rourke’s hands reached out into the slipstream after his son. The ground, crisscrossed in veins of golden light from the lava, was reaching up to take them.

Hands were on Rourke’s shoulders, dragging him back inside.

Rourke sprawled against the starboard fuselage bulkhead, Rolvaag and Butler, the Navy pilot, grabbing at him, holding him. “You’ll be killed!” Rolvaag shouted.

“I have it under control!” Emma Shaw shouted, the aircraft leveling off, as Rourke and the two men flanking him slammed hard against the bulkhead.

“John! Are you all right?” Paul’s voice.

John Rourke stared out into the purple darkness, where his son had gone.

John Rourke never said to Martin, “I love you.” Now, he never could.

On one level of consciousness, he could hear Rolvaag saying, “It wasn’t your fault.”

He could hear Emma Shaw saying, Tve got radio contact with a helicopter that’ll follow us back to Pearl in case we have to ditch. Major Tiemerovna’s flying it. Your son and daughter are aboard, too, John. It’ll be all right now.”

Son.

John Rourke’s eyes filled with tears. He made the Sign of the Cross. “God forgive me, I killed my own son,” John Rourke whispered, prayed.