Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend Read Free

father’s meaning with that remark, realizing full well that John Rourke could have meant it several ways.
    He checked his instruments again. The Soviet gunship was playing out its heart, really, and Michael Rourke could feel that in his stomach, the climbing, the diving, the rapid direction changes. But the growing blip of missile still moved inexorably nearer to the center of the green screen with the yellow grid. And the radar screen itself was that center.
    He decided to hang on a while longer, really giving the new system the test it deserved. If the system worked, coundess allied lives could be saved, because the Soviet gunships would, themselves, call on target the missiles sent to destroy them.
    Michael Rourke watched the blip, the blip growing larger because it was coming closer.
    In his peripheral vision, he saw the snow, the sky-the sky was just a darker white-and, at last, he saw a contrail.
    “Sitting Duck to Guardian Angel, Sitting Duck to Guardian Angel. Come in, Guardian Angel. Over.” Michael Rourke switched off auto navigation and cancelled auto pilot interlock, starting the gunship into a high speed dive. “Sitting Duckto Guardian Angel. Come in, Guardian Angel. Over.”
    “This is Guardian Angel, reading you loud and clear, Sitting Duck. Over.”
    “Execute destruct sequence now. I say again, execute destruct sequence now. Over!”
    Michael Rourke had let the missile get too close, he realized. And he banked the Soviet gunship hard to starboard, starting a maximum acceleration climb to avoid the consequences of his error in judgment. The missile itself was visible as a blurred streak of darker gray against the sky, a snow white contrail snaking after it,
    zig-zagging maddeningly but ever nearer.
    At the high point of his acceleration, Michael Rourke dove, the missile visibly streaking past him just over his main rotor. He glanced right, the missile making a near right angle turn, still homing in.
    Michael Rourke grabbed for the knife given him in Lydveldid Island by old Jon, the Swordmaker. It was an identical duplicate, copied faithfully over five centuries, of the Crain Life Support System I, smaller than his father’s original Life Support System X in both blade and handle. And now, it was his only hope. There was something wrong with his auto navigation system, had to be, and in another second or two the missile, still homing in on him, would be remotely exploded. The concussion, at this range would be great enough to damage the Soviet chopper Michael Rourke flew and bring the machine down.
    Michael Rourke took the knife in his right fist and, awkwardly working the machine’s controls with his left, hammered the butt of the Crain knife against the auto navigation console, smashing into it. Michael Rourke wheeled the nine-inch blade knife in his fingers and stabbed into the wiring, the knife flying from his grip, the helicopter’s control consoles starting to smoke.
    The missile shot past him as he wrenched the helicopter out of the dive and slipped to port.
    The missile exploded now, the machine rocking, trembling around him.
    But the controls still worked, although all electronics were dead. The important thing Michael Rourke thought, smiling was that he was not…
    The temperature inside the hermetically sealed tent was, he knew on a rational level, comfortable; yet, in contrast to the outside temperature, it seemed stiflingly warm. He clamped his cigar between his teeth, just keeping it there rather than lighting it.
    He was entering a moment, as it were, for which he had been waiting five hundred years. The Night of The War had come, despite the fact that those persons who considered themselves wise and informed had proclaimed that peace was at hand and that World War Three would never occur. And, after The Night of The War,
    there had been no time to do anything but react. First, the search for his wife and children, with his unexpected but welcome ally, Paul Rubenstein, who was now not