Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (35 page)

“Thank you, computer.” The President switched off. “What if that’s the woman?”

General Gonzalez began, “With all due respect, Mr. President …”

“I know.” Jacob Fellows smiled. “Who needs another Russian? But if I remember the story correctly, this Russian woman helped John Rourke to defeat some barbarians or something and a group of military traitors, and then prevented the use of a very substantial atomic weapon. Apparently, she wasn’t all bad.”

Admiral Rahn spoke. “If I may, Mr. President. As you may be aware, I taught history at the Academy on and off over the years. The Rourke story was something I never put great store in, but if my memory serves, somewhere in Gundersen’s original manuscript there is a reference to this Russian woman being someone with whom Rourke was obviously in love.”

Jason spoke. “If I may, Admiral Rahn, were there any details about-Rourke himself that might not be readily apparent from the computer files?”

Maggie looked from Jason to the Admiral. “As a matter of fact, there were a few things, commander. I seem to recall that Gundersen made a great point of telling how fantastic a fighter this John Rourke was, and that he was, of course, a doctor of medicine, an ex-Central Intelligence

Agency man—things like that. And Gundersen gave Rourke some sort of magazine case to use with Rourke’s handguns. They were .45s, in those days, if memory serves.”

Jason Darkwood spoke. “This John Rourke had two guns, which were marked Detonics .45s, on his person. In addition to other items of gear, there was a case which held six—”

“How many, commander?”

“Six magazines for his pistols, admiral.”

Admiral Rahn crossed the room, looked at the President. “May I, sir?”

“By all means, Admiral.”

Admiral Rahn hit the computer button on the com-box. “Computer. Admiral Rahn.”

“Confirming voice print.” Pause. “Voice print confirmed.”

“Computer—extraneous data in Gundersen memoirs. Name of gift Commander Gundersen bestowed on John Rourke.”

“Processing.” Pause. “Milt Sparks Six-Pak for carrying of spare magazines for matching pistols called in Gundersen memoir Detonics .45s.”

“Thank you, computer.” Admiral Rahn switched off. He looked at Jason.

“That was part of the man’s gear, sir,” Jason Darkwood said softly.

The President spoke. “Gentlemen—and Miss Barrow. It appears we have a five-hundred-year-old man who has sustained perhaps mortal wounds in an attempt to rescue a five-hundred-year-old woman who is his lover. Quite romantic, but if my meager knowledge of twentieth-century history serves, it was a period marked by extreme romanticism juxtaposed with radical cynicism, and so perhaps our Doctor Rourke and his KGB major weren’t as odd as they might seem to us.” Maggie thought it was beautiful, that a man would love a woman for five centuries and willingly give his life to save hers. “I suggest we dispatch the Reagan, Admiral Rahn, General Gonzalez,

Commander Darkwood. And I further suggest that the Reagan be commissioned to extricate this woman at all reasonable costs.”

“My sentiments exactly, Mr. President,” Admiral Rahn said vigorously.

General Gonzalez added, “As always, Mr. President, the Corps is ready for whatever the challenge.”

“Darkwood? You game for it?”

“Yes, Mr. President. It seems like a job that needs doing.”

President Jacob Fellows laughed. “I knew your father, commander. I did my military service as an enlisted man aboard the old Reagan and served under him. I remember hearing him say that. You remind me of him. How is your mother?”

“Dead, sir.”

“I saw her once. She was a lovely woman.” “Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Anything you need for the mission, you’ve got. Good luck.” The President extended his hand and Jason took it, and Maggie Barrow sucked in her breath hard and felt fear wash over her, and it made her cold.

Jason Darkwood would never ask his crew to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. And that meant he’d penetrate the Russian domes and he’d probably die and she would grieve him until her own death. She stood up, shook the President’s hand, saluted whom she had to salute and fell in at Jason Darkwood’s side—where she wanted to be forever… .

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had made her decision. Escape was impossible, and with John dead, there was no point to life at all.

When the time came, as she knew it would for just a very brief fragment in time, she would kill herself.

She had become what she had never wanted to become—a woman emotionally barren without the man who

WQC

There were no more tears left and she sat silently, wrists and ankles shackled, on the edge of the bed in the gray detention cell, and waited for her one chance to alleviate her sorrow. Perhaps John Rourke was right and there was a God and somehow there was a life after death. If there was, all the more reason to hurry into death’s arms… .

Annie Rourke Rubenstein edged along on knees and elbows, her stockinged legs feeling the snow working into her boot tops under her heavy woolen skirt, the 9mm Beretta in her right fist, the holster on her right hip still filled with the Detonics Scoremaster. Han was only a few feet ahead of her, and it wasn’t that he crawled faster, but rather that he had started ahead of her.

Han stopped at the lip of the rise and she joined him an instant afterward, giving a quick glance to the terrain below, rolling onto her back, brushing the snow out of the tops of her boots, and then rolling back onto her stomach. He handed her a pair of binoculars. “They have special light-gathering properties, Mrs. Rubenstein.”

She took the binoculars in her left hand, not holstering the pistol from her right hand, but instead stuffing it into the pocket of her coat. No “special light-gathering properties,” as Han Lu Chen had put it, were necessary to observe what most attracted her eye. A quadrangle bathed in yellow light, a smaller quadrangle near to it, also brightly lit, but, rather than tents occupying its center, concrete structures; and parked beside these were truck cabs hitched to trailers which were gleaming gas cannisters. “Do you see that?”

“Yes—you refer of course to the brightly lit area.”

“I know what those tankers are filled with.”

“This fuel which your machines utilize?”

“No—not that. A gas that turns men—only men—into homicidal maniacs who’ll kill anyone. Karamatsov is going to use that gas like he used it before. Maybe against your people. I don’t know. We have to get down there and

ctool it “

“We would need special equipment.” He lowered his glasses as she lowered hers. “If this gas is a weapon such as you describe, it would be insanity to go near it.”

“It’s like I describe. It makes men insane. Animals.”

“Then we will need protective clothing and other specialized equipment. I will—”

Annie cut him off. “You might need it. I don’t. Three trucks. And I can drive one of them. Ma-Lin—she can drive a truck, can’t she?”

“Yes—but …”

“Well?”

“The third woman—who?”

“She’s right down there with my brother and my husband and with Otto Hammerschmidt. Marie Leuden. All we’ve gotta do is find her. If we steal his gas and he does have my father down there and Natalia, too, Karamatsov will be so busy going after us that you and the rest of the men can get in there and get Daddy and Natalia away and free. Karamatsov wouldn’t risk losing the gas and our having it to use against him.”

“How can a gas only have such terrible effects upon men and not women?”

“I’m no scientist. It’s hormonally related.” And Annie let herself smile. “Men may be stronger, taller, or anything else. But this one time the best man for the job is a woman, my friend.”

“Marshal Karamatsov still seeks the missiles that may remain and he wishes to utilize this gas—perhaps to form an army of madmen to unleash against us.” It was as if Han were thinking out loud. “Yes—you are right, Mrs. Rubenstein. You are your father’s daughter too, I think.” And Han Lu Chen’s face seamed with a smile… .

Maria Leuden sat stock still behind the wheel of the truck. She had pulled it off to the side of the road and was waiting now in darkness, the engine running but even the running lights turned off, Michael gone to investigate the

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her at once with terror and revulsion.

He had called it a “death camp,” and every German for five centuries had grown up knowing the phrase. Men like Deiter Bern, whom John Rourke, Michael’s father, had aided in bringing democracy to New Germany, had openly spoken the words as a condemnation of National Socialism. The men who had attempted to suppress Bern and others who spoke of freedom had said the death camps were a myth propagated by the forces which had worked to destroy the Third Reich and wished to subvert the Fourth.

She had never believed the words were just descriptive of some myth, and she had eventually learned they had been reality. And it had terrified her. “Death camp.” She spoke the words under her breath, and the words chilled her more than the night and her fears for Michael and her loneliness, and she clutched the Beretta 92F American military pistol close against her chest, her knees locked together hard in her pants, and she could hear her heart beating.

Michael Rourke had learned from his father that brash-ness was at times the best form of subtlety. He stood at the gate leading into the smaller of the two quadrangles and said nothing, rather looking impatiently at the guard who was coming up to open the gate. If the guard who opened the gate or one of the other guards spoke, he would have to act as imperiously as the late major had, because there was no way he could answer.

The guard swung open the gate and Michael started walking, the guard approaching him, saying something. Michael turned and looked at the man as though he were looking at the lowest creature of which he could possibly conceive. The guard backed off and Michael walked on, hearing an unfinished protest from the man, then nothing more. He walked toward the three trucks with their gleaming tank trailers, his left hand held casually across his abdomen, the button of his uniform tunic open so he could get at the Berettas… .

Paul Rubenstein and Otto Hammerschmidt beside him walked toward the smaller fenced area, where the trucks were parked and men hovered about them and the concrete gas chambers near them like worker bees buzzing in the hive.

There was one hope only, Paul had realized. But there were three trucks and only he and Otto Hammerschmidt to drive them. That was the problem. Hammerschmidt

whispered, “This will not work without a third man to drive the third truck, Paul.”

“I’m thinking—I’m thinking,” Rubenstein hissed.

There was an officer approaching them. “Great,” Paul Rubenstein snapped. He quickened his pace, Hammerschmidt doing the same. He could hear the crunch of gravel and dirt under his own borrowed boots and Hammerschmidt’s, and now he heard a third set of feet following after them. He reached under his uniform tunic for his Gerber, glancing toward Hammerschmidt, Hammerschmidt nodding almost imperceptibly.

Paul stopped and wheeled toward the approaching officer, the Gerber half out of the sheath that Paul had stuffed beneath his uniform.

And then he saw the face of the officer.

He slid the Gerber back where it had been and walked toward the officer, saluting briskly, his voice barely a whisper as he said, “You scared the shit out of me.”

Michael Rourke returned the salute and whispered, “What the hell is going on here?”

Hammerschmidt said it. “This is a death camp, Michael. Those cannisters of gas are here, we believe, to be used against the Chinese who are held in the main compound. We were planning to steal the trucks, but we’re a man short.”

“You aren’t now.” Michael smiled.

“Where’s Maria?” Paul asked.

“Back with the truck. We can get her on the way, drive like hell for where we left Han, and hold them off until the Chinese and hopefully some Germans arrive.”

“We have to free those people,” Paul insisted. “Some of them won’t make it through the night. They’re all naked.”

“The gas first,” Michael said. “Then we can maybe utilize the resultant confusion to—”

“Stay right where you are, gentlemen!”

The voice was in English. Michael’s expression froze. Paul Rubenstein didn’t turn toward the voice.

The voice came again. “You are surrounded. I am

Pr>lr>nol TVir>r>lai Antnnnvitr-h. TnVin Rnnrkp.. Paul Ruben

stein, and the third man—I place you all under arrest. If you move, you will be shot!”

“He thinks you’re your father,” Paul said between his clenched teeth.

“Then they aren’t expecting him here. This was all—”

“Relax,” Paul hissed.

Michael slowly turned toward the sound of the voice. Paul turned toward it as well. They were surrounded, Paul could see instantly. At least two dozen men with Soviet assault rifles. And standing just inside the circle they made was a tall, good-looking man holding a pistol, the pistol held lazily in his right hand as if only for show.

“This great John Rourke and his companion Paul Rubenstein. The Hero Marshal will be pleased. You …” He gestured limply with his pistol toward Otto Hammerschmidt, who stood between Paul and Michael. “Who are you:

Hammerschmidt’s heels clicked together. “I am a German officer, Captain Otto Hammerschmidt, sir!”

Paul’s mind raced. Antonovitch—one of Karamatsov’s senior officers, like Krakovski, the man they had killed on the train during the fight for the missiles. The names of Karamatsov’s staff officers had been in one or another of the Russian dispatches taken from Soviet patrols since this had all begun.

Michael spoke. “Do you think, colonel, that my two friends and I came here alone? I suggest, colonel, that if you know my reputation as well as you recognize my face, you might consider the fact that it it you, not we, who is in considerable difficulty at this moment.”

Michael was bluffing them. Like father, like son, Paul thought. And if this Antonovitch had mistaken Michael for his father—they looked enough alike to be virtual twins—there was perhaps a chance.