Ahern Jerry - Survivalist 01 - Total War Read online

  TOTAL WAR

  THE SURVIVALIST #1

  By Jerry Ahern

  (c) 1981

  Contents

  Chapter One

  "Now!" Rourke shouted, pushing himself up from a low crouch and waving his left arm. He burst into a long-strided, loping run down the steep gravel embankment, past the scattered granite outcroppings, and toward the packed dirt highway below. The dozen men close behind him wore the khaki fatigues of the Pakistani Counter-Terrorist Strike Force. Fierce threats of death and violence issued from them. Small H-K MP5SD3 integral silencer, collapsible stock 9-mm submachine guns in their white-knuckled fists, they stormed the two dozen turban-clad opium smugglers on the highway, clinging to the four stake trucks.

  As Rourke's strike force reached the midway point to the highway, the smugglers began returning fire. Oil-smeared tarps were whisked from their heavy machine guns mounted on tripods in the back of each of the opium-packed truck beds. Small-arms fire bristled from the opened windows and doors.

  Rourke fired the Heckler & Koch P2A1 flare pistol clenched in his right hand. Its 26.5-mm projectile soared high into the gray winter sky, then exploded.

  From his vantage point along the embankment, Rourke could see the heavily armored Pakistani military half-track moving into position and blocking the road about half a mile further down the mountain. Stuffing the emptied flare pistol into the outside pocket of the borrowed leather sheepskin coat he wore, Rourke swung his own H-K SMG into a firing position, then ran down the last hundred yards of the embankment, leading his men and firing.

  Already, he could see the lead vehicle of the four-truck caravan swerving into a U-turn under the withering machine gun fire from the half-track. Two of its wheels spun precariously near the ditch on the near side of the road, then the truck lumbered back onto the road, coming toward him. Emptying the H-K's thirty-round magazine Rourke crossed the road in a dead run, then hit the gravel on the drop-off side of the road, and threw down the H-K. His right hand, then his left, reached for one, then another of the brace of stainless steel Detonics .45 autos from under his coat.

  Thumbing back the hammer on the scaled-down .45 in his right hand, he closed his fist tightly over the rubber Pachmayr grips. He triggered one round toward the cab of the truck. The pistol in his left hand spit fire at the same instant. Both shots connected. The driver's body bounced away from the wheel.

  Rourke rolled back from the lip of the highway, sliding down along the edge of the steep slope. The truck was out of control and careening toward him. As it rocketed over the edge of the road, Rourke fired his pistols into the fuel tank, and the truck exploded. The blistering flames of the fireball scorched his face.

  Glancing up toward the highway, clambering along the slope, Rourke spotted one of the three remaining trucks going into a skid, half climbing the embankment and flipping onto its side. The fortune in opium that was its cargo spilled out along the highway. The guard from the truck's passenger seat tried to climb out the window, but stopped halfway and brought up a stubby muzzled submachine gun to spray the roadside.

  Rourke saw two of his newest strike force men go down. Dropping and skidding on both knees toward the truck, Rourke fired both Detonics 45's. The sub-gunner turned toward him, and Rourke fired twice again. The sub-gunner's upper torso snapped back, the automatic weapon in his hands flew skyward, his body bent at a tortuous angle.

  Rourke got to his feet and ran down the road toward the two stopped trucks. More than a dozen smugglers were exchanging automatic-weapons fire with the half-track. "Grenades!" Rourke shouted over his shoulder to the men running close behind him. There was a belching roar from one of the H-K 69's. Its 40-mm high-explosive projective whistled overhead. Rourke dropped to the road, tucking his head down as the grenade exploded just yards in front of him. He glanced up as the truck exploded. Bodies and severed arms and legs soared into the air. The sky rained opium and bloody flesh. One of the H-K 69's whooshed again. The second truck exploded.

  Pushing himself up onto his elbows, then getting to his feet, Rourke shouted to his men, "Finish 'em!" His team closed in on the surviving drug runners. He fired both Detonics pistols until they went empty, then stuffed them into the waistband of his trousers and reached to his hip for the Metalifed six-inch Colt Python .357 holstered there, firing it point blank into the chest of the closest of the drug smugglers, then emptied it into two more of the men coming at him.

  Using his empty Colt like a truncheon, he smashed down hard on the head of the nearest of the smugglers, then wheeled around. A turban-clad man with a long-bladed knife charged toward him. Rourke sidestepped. He dropped the Python back into its holster-no time to reload. As the Pakistani smuggler charged toward him again, Rourke edged back and grabbed his AG Russell Sting 1A boot knife.

  The smuggler slowed, then dove forward. Rourke sidestepped the knife and whipped down with his small, double-edged blade against the right side of the man's neck, slicing open an artery. Wheeling again, Rourke drew his right arm up, deflecting a blow from another nearby smuggler. He lost his blade and now, tucked into a crouch, his left fist smashed up, into the Pakistani's stomach, while his right hand knifed forward, palm upward, fingers extended. The blow connected with his attacker's throat and crushed the windpipe. Then, wheeling around, in the classic T-stance, Rourke stopped.

  To his left, one of his men was knocking the last drug dealer down to the road with the butt of his sub gun.

  Drawing up his shoulders, Rourke breathed deeply. Turning and snatching one of the spare six-round magazines from a double pouch at his trouser belt, Rourke dropped the empty magazine from one of the Detonics .45s into his hand, rammed the fresh magazine home and worked the slide stop, stripping the top round and loading the chamber. Carefully, he lowered the little stainless gun's bobbed hammer and then slipped it into the speed break holster under his left arm.

  As Rourke started reloading the second pistol, he glanced up at the sound of the familiar voice.

  "Your men-and you, yourself, John Thomas, were superb!"

  A smile lighting the brown eyes in his lean, clean shaven face, Rourke said, "From you, Captain, that's the finest of compliments. But we lost two. They bunched together-I warned them not to." The other man nodded.

  Rourke added, "But maybe the others'll learn by it. You and I both know that the stuff that's hardest to remember is the stuff than'll usually keep you alive or get you killed."

  "You're right, John Thomas. But I think these men you trained will do well in this opium war we fight." The Pakistani captain, shorter than Rourke and with a bushy black moustache, lit a cigarette for himself, then offered one to Rourke.

  "No, thanks, Muhammed," Rourke muttered, then reached into his shirt pocket and plucked a tiny cigar and put it between his teeth. "I'll take a light though," he said, leaning toward the Pakistani's cupped hands, sucking in the flame of the match, then leaning back and exhaling the gray smoke slowly. He watched it catch on the wind and blow down along the road to vanish where two of the trucks still smoldered.

  Rourke ran the fingers of his left hand through his dark brown hair, pushing it back from his high forehead. "You still planning a mop-up operation here?"

  Hunching his shoulders against the raw wind, the Pakistani nodded. "I think then that it is good-bye for you to your men."

  "Yeah, I guess you're right," Rourke said, glancing over his shoulder as he finished loading six fresh rounds into the cylinder of the Python, then putting it back into its holster on his right hip. "Hang on a minute," Rourke told the Pakistani, then turned and walked back up the road toward the ten men remaining from his force.

  The young military poli
cemen came to attention as Rourke approached, but he gestured for them to remain at ease. "You guys did good," he said. "That's why you're still alive. Muli and Achmed-they didn't remember what I taught you guys, and that's why they're dead. They were good men, no worse, no better than any of you here. I want you to understand that. Surviving-whether it's a fight like this or just gettin' home at night in traffic means keeping your head, remembering what you're supposed to do, learning to react the way you know you should-then just doing it. I won't be seeing you guys again. I told you, I've gotta get back to the States. Maybe someday we'll all get together again. And if you guys remember that the first rule-in this or anything in life-is to keep your head, you'll all be alive so that we can get together."

  Rourke shook hands with each of the men, a longer handshake for the corporal, Ahmed. At first, Rourke had confused the man with Achmed because of the similarities of their names. "Good luck, pal," Rourke whispered, clasping his shoulder and returning the warm smile in his eyes. "Here," he added impulsively, handing the man the Heckler & Koch flare pistol from his pocket. "You're the team leader now. You'll be needing this."

  Rourke turned and walked back toward Muhammed. The helicopter coming for them was already looming large on the horizon, the distant whirring of its rotor blades like the drone of an insect.

  They waited together, Rourke and Muhammed, without speaking. The helicopter hovered over the mountain road a moment, then angled down and landed-uncomfortably close, Rourke thought, to the embankment.

  He ran around to the starboard side of the machine and slid in beside the pilot. Muhammed got into the back. Rourke turned and shot a final wave to the men he'd trained.

  They didn't see it. Already, they were clambering back up the embankment, toward the mountains, to attempt to intercept the men who had been destined to receive and transfer the shipment of raw opium.

  The pilot swung the helicopter out over the gorge and flew parallel to the mountain road for several kilometers, then started climbing. Rourke turned to look behind him, feeling at the same moment, Muhammed's hand on his shoulder. "We are flying toward the Khyber Pass-it is not far. One of our border outposts was making its regular transmission, then suddenly the radio went silent. We want to be sure it is only some sort of equipment failure."

  "Fine," Rourke said, nodding, but disinterested. He stared out the bubble dome and down to the valley floor thousands of feet below. After another moment, Muhammed said, "Tell me-I have read your file-but how does a man become a weapons expert, a survival expert, making a living out of teaching counterterrorist techniques?"

  "You read the file," Rourke said, chewing the stump of cigar between his teeth. "Like it says, I did counterterrorist work for the CIA." His eyes crinkled into a smile-he'd actually been a field case officer in the Covert Operations Section. "Weapons," he went on, "were just a natural part of than-I've always been good with guns, ever since I was a kid. Hunted a lot, liked the woods, backcountry camping. Sort of led me into survivalism. And I read the newspapers-scared hell out of me, too. So I learned everything I could about survival. I was on a job like this once, in Latin America," he said, finding himself shouting over the whir of the chopper blades. "Anyway," he went on, holding the cigar butt in his fingers and staring at it as he spoke, "those were my wilder days-back with the Company. With a bunch of anti-Communist partisans, I got ambushed. My right leg got shot up. Everybody else was killed. I was left for dead. I had a .45, an M-16 and a bayonet-no food, nothing in the way of medical supplies except some antibiotics. I couldn't get out of the jungle for six weeks. Then, when I did, the Communists had already taken over the country and I had to steal a boat-spent ten days in open water before I hit the Florida keys. I was dehydrated, infected, sunburned and had about everything wrong with me except athlete's foot."

  "Athlete's foot?" Muhammed asked, "This is a-"

  "You know-between your toes."

  Rourke laughed.

  "Ah, yes, we call it by another name."

  "Yeah, well," Rourke continued, "but in spite of it all, I survived. Pretty proud of myself, I was. I'd learned a whole hell of a lot-particularly how much I didn't know. Went back to reading everything I could, going to every lecture I could, sorting through all the gimmickry and gadgets. There's more stuff to learn every day."

  "But what is the purpose to it all?" Muhammed said. "Learning for itself is a noble purpose, to be sure, but-"

  "Naw-it's a lot more practical than that," Rourke said, lighting the cigar again and getting an angry glare from the tomb-silent pilot sitting beside him. "There are enough loonies loose in the world today to screw up the planet so bad that survivalism training is going to be the only thing than'll keep people alive-maybe. What do you need-a runaway laboratory virus, a global economic collapse, a world crop failure?"

  Below them now, Rourke saw the familiar craggy geography of the Khyber Pass, the historic gateway from Afghanistan to Pakistan. These days, he thought bitterly, Afghanistan was a Soviet satellite or the next best thing to one. Muhammed leaned forward, speaking to the pilot, "Take the machine down-I want to see our border outpost from the air before we land."

  Rourke reached into his borrowed jacket and took the tinted aviator sunglasses from their case and put them on, peering down toward the summit of the mountain.

  "Ahh, Muhammed?"

  "What is it, John Thomas?" Muhammed said.

  Making a sharp, downward stab with his right thumb toward the Pakistani side of the pass, directly below them now, Rourke almost whispered, "Well, remember, I was talking about some of the reasons to study survivalism. I left out one-probably the most likely one as it looks from here."

  The Pakistani officer edged forward in his seat, his face inches from Rourke's right shoulder. The smile which he usually wore degenerated into a blank stare, then froze into a grimace of fear. "Climb. Get us out of here"' Muhammed shouted.

  Bending forward to light his cigar again, staring down as he did at the endless column of Soviet trucks, tanks, and armored personnel carriers rolling across the Khyber Pass below him, Rourke said, half to himself, "Yeah, Muhammed-one of the surefire best reasons for survivalism might be World War Three."

  Chapter Two

  Corporal Ahmed Mahmude Shindi, his voice low, his speech clipped, rasped, "We cannot risk the radio. They may have all our communications channels monitored. You two," he whispered, gesturing to another corporal and a private, "must go back, back to the road. Follow it until you reach an outpost, and report what we have seen. Stop for nothing. Do whatever you must. But it is imperative that you get through."

  The clouds which, throughout the day had been dark gray at the lower elevation, were now a black shroud through which the setting sun winked orange. Heavy snow, each flake the size of a large coin, began to fall.

  Ahmed brushed the snow from his field glasses and hunched lower toward the barren wet ground as he edged up toward the rim of the gorge. A quick glance back over his left shoulder confirmed that his men were already setting out to alert military headquarters. Looking down into the dry rock bed several hundred yards beneath him, he saw Soviet troops half covered by the canvas shrouds of their stake trucks. And Soviet tanks, armored personnel carriers-all moving along the road below in a rapid single column. He refocused his binoculars back along the way from which the Soviets had come. He could see no end to the convoy.

  The wind was gusting. The snow whirled around him like dust devils. Crawling back toward the small cave in the shelter of overhanging rocks under which his seven remaining men huddled, Ahmed's mind raced. Rourke who had taught him more than he had ever learned from anyone else about fighting and survival, had always repeated one admonition-to keep his head; regardless of the task, to do what you knew was the right thing in the right way.

  "What," Ahmed asked himself, "is the right way of this?" Against the thousands of troops pouring along the road, down from Afghanistan, what could eight men hope to accomplish? He found himself shaking his head as, shiveri
ng with the cold and dampness now, he crawled under the lip of the low rock outcropping and into the small cave beside his men. "What do we do, Corporal?"

  It hardly mattered to Ahmed which of his men had asked the question-they all had the question in their minds. He said nothing for a moment-Rourke had been like that. The American had never talked just to talk. He had said little, in fact. But what the American had said when he did speak was always worth remembering.

  Slowly, Ahmed formulated the possible actions he could take. "There are thousands of Soviet troops coming down from the Khyber Pass-you have all seen this. We are eight men only. We cannot stop them. But if we withdraw and simply let them proceed, we will be failing our responsibilities as Pakistanis-as men. If we can do something that delays their invasion of our country by even so much as a single moment, we will have done something to help our people. We will have struck a blow. If we stay here, my friends, we will be safe, at least for the moment. If we fight-and we may achieve nothing-we will most surely die. I cannot make the decision for you. But I...I will fight."

  Ahmed leaned back against the cold rock of the cave wall and took a cigarette from his tunic. His wife had been telling him that smoking so was bad for him, and he had promised her to try to stop. Now, he had passed a sentence of death on himself. The smoking could no longer hurt him. It almost made him laugh. As he sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, he took a photograph, plastic covered, from his wallet. It almost made him cry.

  He stared at the face of his wife, the smile in the eyes of the baby girl she had given him less than a year before. He stared at the photo as if somehow by looking at the picture he was communicating his thoughts to them. "I love you," he shouted but in silence. Not caring what his men saw, he touched his lips to the photo, then replaced it in his wallet.

  The cigarette, burnt down to a tiny, glowing butt, became the focus of his attention. Staring at it, he said to his men, his voice cold like his feet, his hands, his back, "Who goes with me to fight?"