Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (22 page)

His gamble worked. “All right,” Rourke whispered. “Now—we kill this and they can’t restart their generators without a lot of fooling around and—more important for our purposes—they can’t see or hear us as we hit the trail.” Rourke shut down the third panel. The emergency lighting still worked.

“Damn,” Aldridge whispered. “What now? I mean, all they gotta do is turn on those switches and they’re back in business.”

“Nope. Help me follow this piping in and out. Then we cut through the piping—yeah, it’s not metal. Some sort of fireproof plastic substance. We cut through it with these,” and Rourke gestured to the AKM-96. “Got somebody good with electricity?”

“Besides you?” “Yeah.” Rourke grinned. “Yeah.”

“Good. Get whoever it is to crosswire the three dead panels so when they start connecting things they not only start connecting things wrong but they electrify the panel. Get my idea?”

Aldridge laughed. “You wanna job in the Marines when we get back?”

“No—but thanks anyway. I’m too old to enlist.”

“You thirty-five or so?”

“Add five hundred years to that and you’re almost there,” Rourke told him, then started walking the piping, Aldridge doing the same. Tracking the piping took almost ten minutes, but when they were through, Rourke was satisfied and Aldridge went off to find his electrician.

Rourke took the communicator from his belt. He walked away from the area near the panels, getting as far away as he could from the moans of the injured and dying. His doctor’s instincts told him he should be treating these people, but other instincts told him that if he didn’t secure what remained of the operation as best he could, all of them would be dead and he would have helped no one.

When he was a sufficient distance away, he opened the communicator, depressing the push-to-talk button. Aldridge joined him and Rourke touched his finger to his lips to signal the Marine officer’s silence.

Rourke spoke into the communicator. In Russian. “All dead here. Some kind of—of chemical weapon. Coming to surface by way—by way of—of research level tunnels. Followed them.” Rourke coughed into the communicator. “Stop them—stop them, comrades.” Rourke left the circuit open for a moment longer, breathing heavily into it, then released the push-to-talk button.

“I speak Russian. That was cute.” Sam Aldridge grinned. Aldridge’s left arm was bleeding, but not badly, the cut long but not appearing deep. Rourke realized it was the first he had noticed it.

“Yeah, well—hope they believe it. Let’s do what we can quickly for the wounded and then get the hell out of here.”

Aldridge nodded, starting back with Rourke.

As they passed the electrical controls, gunfire was starting, the pipes which carried the electrical feeds being severed. Rourke noticed a woman, as disheveled-looking as any of the rest of the escaped prisoners, but pretty nonetheless, working to crosswire the panels.

As they returned to the base of the steps leading down from the walkway, there were still moans, cries for help. John Rourke found the nearest of the seriously injured and tried to do what he could. All around him, men and women from among the escapees were either caring for the injured as he was or arming themselves from the weapons of the fallen.

Rourke glanced at the face of his Rolex. Time was running out for them to escape—and perhaps too for Natalia. “We move out in five minutes!”

Michael Rourke returned the salute, walking purposefully but not quickly toward the half-track truck where they had left Maria Leuden hidden among containers of synthetic fuel, Paul Rubenstein and Otto Hammerschmidt walking at his left in descending order of apparent rank. It amused Michael slightly that the only one of the three of them who was an actual military officer wore the lowest rank. He had noticed that Karamatsov’s army seemed rank-heavy, and in a quick conference in hushed tones Captain Otto Hammerschmidt had confirmed that deduction.

The sky was darkening, not from the hour but from what appeared to be an approaching storm. And in the comparatively short time since they had left the truck, the temperature had noticeably dropped.

Michael walked on, nearing the truck, whispering to Paul beside him. “We’re going to have to take turns watching the command tent until my dad and Natalia show—” But he was cut off, an officer of major’s rank approaching, Michael stopping, his blood turning colder than the air temperature. Michael came to attention, saluted, the major hurriedly returning the salute, barking orders that were totally incomprehensible, then leaving as abruptly as he had come, Michael saluting again, the major not returning it at all this time.

“What the hell was that?” Paul whispered.

Hammerschmidt, coming nearer, his voice a guttural hiss, said, “I didn’t like the sound of it.”

Michael shrugged, starting for the rear of the truck. There were other vehicles parked in long ranks on either side of it and behind and in front of it. It would take some jockeying to move the vehicle and he was grateful that at least it looked as though the truck could be moved when needed.

Michael looked from right to left. There were people running throughout the encampment, vehicles starting up. He was beginning to get bad vibes. He threw up the tarp covering the rear of the truck and started to clamber up. Then he heard Maria Leuden’s voice. “Michael—if I understood that voice out there, he was ordering Paul and Otto to the assembly area at the front of the camp. Some emergency and he required personnel. I think. And if I’m right and they don’t show up—”

Michael Rourke cut her off. “Hang on.” He threw down the tarp.

Paul looked at once nervous and resigned. “If we’ve gotta hang around here for maybe another six hours or so, we don’t have any choice, Michael. Next time that officer sees me or Otto or you for that matter, we’re in deep shit with him and all of a sudden the center of attention we can’t afford.”

“You are suggesting we go?” Hammerschmidt asked, his voice tinged with urgency.

“I don’t see a heck of a lot of choice in the matter, Otto. Michael?”

“You don’t speak Russian—what the hell are you gonna do?”

“We’re just enlisted guys, right? Whose gonna ask us anything?”

Hammerschmidt answered for Michael. “Other enlisted men—that is who. This could be suicidal. But I agree, we have no choice. Michael?”

Michael Rourke licked his lips. “Yeah—but check it out. If it goes sour, have a way out. Don’t get in over your heads. It looks like …” And Michael glanced toward some of the running men. They were in full battle gear. There was appropriate equipment in the truck for Paul

and for Hammerschmidt. “They may be planning on being gone for a while, guys.”

“If we hide in the truck and that major realizes we didn’t show up or sees us after he gets back—ohh, boy.” Paul’s eyes were pinpoints of light.

“Go for it—get your gear.” Michael looked around them to be certain they were not observed, Paul and Otto Hammerschmidt disappearing into the rear of the truck. Michael clambered in behind them. Hammerschmidt was stuffing his German service pistol under his uniform tunic. Paul was checking the battered old Browning High Power he habitually carried—had carried, he had told Michael, since that first battle near the crashed jetliner when Paul had first joined with Michael’s father—how long ago?

Maria Leuden, in the gray half-light there in the rear of the truck, looked sick with worry. She hugged Hammerschmidt, and then Paul. “This is madness.”

“You’re tellin’ me?” Paul grinned. He was stuffing all the spare magazines he had into his pockets. “This is crazy, but we don’t have any choice.”

“Just don’t get on any airplanes, guys.”

“We’re gonna have to play it straight, Michael—otherwise it’ll lead that major back to you, and when your dad and Natalia do show up here, there won’t be anybody to get ‘em out. We’ll be cool.”

Paul slipped a black-hafted Gerber Mkll fighting knife under his tunic as well, Hammerschmidt doing the same, having adopted the knife as his own after Michael had given him one. “Gonna be up to you and Maria now,” Paul said, starting for the rear of the truck bed. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, Michael, but I will. I know you want Karamatsov dead for causing the death of your wife and the baby. But that isn’t why we came here. Right?”

Michael Rourke clapped his and his father’s best friend on the shoulder. “Right. You’ve been hanging around with my father too long. You’re beginning to think like him.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“That’s how I meant it.” Michael Rourke clasped Paul Rubenstein’s right hand for a moment, then released it. Then he shook Otto Hammerschmidt’s hand as well. “Ahh—”

“I know.” Paul grinned. ” ‘Dark of the moon,’ right?” “You’ve got it.”

Rubenstein started through the tarp, Michael calling to him and to Otto Hammerschmidt. “When you guys get back, don’t hang around here too long looking for us. We may have already pulled it off. If you don’t see us, rejoin Han and his men on the high ground.”

Paul only nodded, Hammerschmidt shooting Michael and Maria a salute, then following Paul out of the truck. Maria stood beside Michael Rourke. “We might never see either of them again,” she whispered, a catch in her voice.

“We’ll see them. You stay in the truck. I’m going back to check on the command tent again. They might be looking for female enlisted personnel out there too. So lay low.”

“Lay low?”

“Hide!” Michael smiled. He touched his lips to her forehead and started for the tarp covering the rear of the truck, but her arms came around him and she kissed him hard on the mouth and he held her tight against him for an instant longer. He had lost one woman that he had loved, always would love. He didn’t want to lose another. “Hide—do it!” And he left the truck, checking the positioning of the two Beretta pistols under his tunic. He had the uncomfortable feeling he might need them soon.

The Chinese with the bleeding gums and blistered forearms had led the way before, but now the woman named Martha had joined him, Rourke and Aldridge keeping to the rear of the mass of humanity for the first several minutes after they had entered the service tunnel, to guard against attack. But after they were well inside the tunnel, Rourke delegated some of the other escapees who had picked up AKM-96s to guard the rear, then with Aldridge worked his way forward.

The deeper they trudged into the tunnel connecting the maintenance level to the Institute for Marine Studies, the hotter and more humid it became. Pipes were everywhere along the ceiling and walls and even along the floor, pipes carrying live steam in and electrical energy out, some of the pipe joints dribbling scalding-hot water, the floor awash in water several inches deep.

They kept going. Rourke took the gym bag back from the young black woman who had volunteered to carry it for him. Her name was Lisa. She was a corporal, like Aldridge a United States Marine. “Who are you after? I mean, must be some friend.” And then she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Rourke asked her.

“I was just thinkin’. You did all this for us and you don’t even know us. I could see you riskin’ your life for a friend.”

“She’d do the same for me, Lisa.” “A ‘she,’ huh?”

Rourke smiled. “That’s not whv.”

“You tell me something, Doctor Rourke?” “If I can,” Rourke said, stepping over a knot of pipes in the growing jumble of pipes, the water deepening too. “How come all the good guys are always spoken for?” Rourke didn’t know what to say to her… .

The red lights, the rising vapors, the wet-earth smell of the place and the intense heat were like the vision of hell John Rourke had conjured in his mind when he had first read Dante. Each time the service tunnel took a bend, he kept expecting to see Virgil standing just beyond and inviting Rourke and the escapees to take the complete tour. Rourke had already decided he would decline the opportunity.

And also beyond each bend, Rourke expected to see Kerenin’s troops waiting. It would not have taken a genius to guess the route Rourke and the others followed, Rourke realized. It was the only logical alternative. But as John Rourke had often realized, before the Night of the War and since, simply because something was logically obvious there was no reason to suppose it would be perceived as such.

They kept moving, Rourke again checking the luminous black face of his Rolex, smudging steam away from the crystal with his thumb just to read it, neither the darkness nor the red light sufficiently intense to read it easily. And so, when he read the time, he had to hold his wrist up to where it nearly touched one of the ceiling-mounted emergency lights. And time was running out for Natalia, he realized. If Kerenin harmed her, he thought … And Lisa, still walking beside him, between him and Sam Aldridge, interrupted his thoughts. “You’re gonna break off from us and try and penetrate the officers’ complex?”

“Yeah.” Rourke only nodded. The water made slapping sounds as he walked through it, the liberated Soviet boots leaking like sieves now.

“You’re gonna need a backup, doctor. You did me a onod turn. T’ll dn on» for vmi Thov hurl mo nn tr, tUa

officers’ quarters once. Hosed me down. Gave me one of those tacky-lookin’ blue pantsuits the women wear around here and let me air-dry while they transferred me. Some of the officers—sometimes they like something exotic, you know. Guess they figured black was exotic. But I saw the place real good. I can help.”

“I can find my way,” Rourke told her good-naturedly. “But thanks for volunteering.”

“You just don’t want any help.”

“That’s not it,” Rourke told her.

“Good—then I can go with you. Me and my new buddy.” And she slapped her open left palm against the forward portion of her AKM-96’s bullpup stock and the assault rifle rattled… .

The tunnel opened ahead, the clouds of steam less intense and already a certain coolness in the air, Rourke shivering once as they walked on. Soon, he told himself. And inside his head, he almost whispered to Natalia, “Soon.” John Rourke quickened his pace… .

Paul Rubenstein remembered Michael’s warning not to get aboard any airplanes. As he looked at Otto Hammerschmidt, he thought the German commando captain must be thinking the same thing. But there were aircraft waiting in the distance across the hardpack of the snowfield over which he, Hammerschmidt, and about 250 armed Russian soldiers marched. To board the planes? That seemed obvious.