Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (38 page)

Jason Darkwood moved the light pencil back to the approximate center of the dome complex. “Leading out more like a large tunnel than an actual dome here is the military-command complex. Living quarters here and here, a small detention area used for special interroea

tions, the military-office complex. This area is highly secure as well. But I’ll draw your attention back to the submarine pens. It is here that several years ago I found a means of entering the Soviet domes. I informed Mid-Wake authorities of the presence of this chink in the Soviet armor, so to speak, and they elected to save it for a rainy day.”

Darkwood put down the light pencil. “The ‘rainy day’ is here, gentlemen.”

“I am Doctor Remquist. I have been asked by President Fellows to speak with you concerning the results of the operations I performed. As one physician to another, I am pleased to report that the operations were an unqualified success, however difficult.”

“I know I should have been dead,” John Rourke told the man. Rourke was sitting up in a chair, and the Venetian blinds were open and he could see Remquist quite clearly. Penetrating eyes, a firm jaw, and a smile of satisfaction. “You must be quite a surgeon and medicine here must have made some enormous strides.”

“I have a reputation for insufferable immodesty, but I’ll admit you are correct on both counts. I am quite a surgeon, and I suppose by comparison to the medicine you studied five centuries ago our capabilities here might seem like magic or witchcraft. Five centuries of constant warfare have made medicine a critical profession, and we can save people now and restore them to a fully useful life who only fifty years ago would have been doomed to death. I always enjoyed medical history. I know that cancer was a dreaded disease in your day. Today, we are able to inoculate against the common forms and cure those that get past us. The stability of our population at Mid-Wake represented at once a unique challenge and a unique opportunity. We were able to accelerate the research processes to what you might well consider an astonishing degree. But as to your operations.

“The Soviet uniform you wore actually saved your life,” Remquist said easily. “The Soviets have only recently

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ant material. It was unable, of course, to stop rifle projectiles at such close range, but it slowed them down to the point where they did not spin as they entered your abdominal cavity, and to the point where they did not penetrate sufficiently to exit. That, my dear colleague, saved your life, admittedly as much as my skill. Whoever originally bandaged you and stopped the majority of the bleeding saved your life at that stage of the game. Lieutenant Commander Margaret Barrow, the Medical Officer of the Reagan, the submarine that brought you here, is a finely competent physician in her own right. Her emergency care, her laser suturing, her perception of the seriousness of your wounds, and hence her restraint also saved your life. Had anyone besides myself operated, had you lived you would have been paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of your life. Try one and one-tenth centimeter from the fifth vertebra for delicate, hmm? We used laser techniques you would be totally unfamiliar with to close your wounds and at once sterilize them, promoting very rapid healing from the inside out—just as it should be, of course. In your day, I venture to say several weeks of hospitalization would have been in order. But not today. By tomorrow morning, the colostomy bag will be unnecessary and you should be able to walk with aid and some care. The IV—”

“It would have been nice if modern medical technology had bypassed that.”

Remquist laughed. “Yes. So far, no. But—by tomorrow the IV will no longer be needed. The IV is feeding you a synthetic substance which works with the body to promote rapid healing. I venture to say that in a few days, your wounds will be all but healed and you will feel more physically fit than you have for some time. Had you noticed lately any sort of overall slowing down, tiredness?”

John Rourke looked at the man. “Yes.”

“What had you self-diagnosed?”

“You weren’t just making idle professional chitchat, were you? With that talk about cancer?”

Rp.mmiist jrestured exnansivelv. “Yon are the luckiest

man I ever met, Doctor Rourke. You had a type of cancer I have only read about, one that dated from the days immediately following World War III. You have what appears to be an abnormally strong constitution, and I know you have not lived for five centuries, so you must have utilized some form of cryogenic sleep.” “I did.”

“That put the disease in remission. Thyroid cancer. But it came back, as it often will. You would have been dead inside of six months if I had not discovered it.”

“You mean …”

Remquist stood up, slapping his hands against his thighs as he did so. “You are cured. You should find rather rapidly a return to your full vigor. I wouldn’t advise going around near high-level sources of radiation again. In that manner you could always give it to yourself again. But, barring that, you are cured. This woman the crew of the Reagan has set out to rescue. I would advise that she and any others who might have survived with you be checked for the same condition. It was one of the most insidious forms of that disease. But now it is easily cured.”

John Rourke extended his right hand. “Thank you, doctor.”

“My true pleasure, doctor. And now—you rest, hmm?” Remquist shook Rourke’s hand and left the room.

John Thomas Rourke leaned his head back in the chair. In the past several weeks, he had realized something was very seriously wrong. And he had tried very hard to ignore it. It was why he had restocked the Retreat, among other reasons. But he had found himself feeling progressively weaker, exertions that he would have taken in stride now telling on him heavily. Occasionally, even a loss of strength resulting in a temporary loss of balance and a fall. The weakness would come on him in a wave and then pass. But the waves had come increasingly more frequently.

Oftentimes, he had heard the expression “given a new lease on life,” and now it appeared that he had been given exactly that, death almost the price of the lease.

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Annie, Paul, and especially Sarah would need to be checked. Especially Sarah with the baby.

There was much to do. Karamatsov needed to be stopped. Forever. And the earth needed to be rebuilt. It was now only a battlefield.

He felt a little tired and accepted the inevitability of that. He was, after all, restored. And he would need his full energies for what lay ahead… .

Jason Darkwood and Sam Aldridge entered the water together, the Scout sub’s underhull airlock hatch whooshing a surge of air and water around them, Darkwood keeping his wings folded still to prevent them fouling in the strength of the current, propelling himself ahead instead by the force of his flippers and gloves. The readouts on his helmet told him the Hemo Sponge was working properly, which was outstanding since it was the only way he could breathe.

He rolled over in the water, backing away now from the Scout sub air lock, Aldridge still beside him, the rest of the commando team exiting the air lock. Their own equivalent of the Soviet Iron Dolphins would not be used because the slightest mechanical noise might betray their presence to the sensing equipment of the Russian domes.

Darkwood rolled over again as the Marines fell into formation in a wedge behind him and Aldridge. He flexed his wings and moved out, the vision-intensification unit in his helmet showing the Pillars of Woe dead ahead… .

A motorized launch was released from the monster-sized submarine and was moving toward shore under a white flag of truce.

Through the German binoculars he had taken from the truck—Maria Leuden had brought them with her—Michael Rourke could see clearly now in the morning light. The submarine had surfaced several hours ago and the number of tanks and men Karamatsov had assembled

overlooking the water had grown steadily. Michael had no idea if there had been radio contact. But he was assuming that at least some action had been taken concerning the escape from the death camp, because approximately a half hour after Michael had reached the rise overlooking the Soviet camp and the water beyond, six truckloads of soldiers and two tanks and one armored personnel carrier had been dispatched in the direction of the compound from which he, Paul, Annie, and the others had extricated the internees and from which Annie, Maria, and the Chinese woman named Ma-Lin had driven the trucks of the deadly gas.

Vladmir Karamatsov still waited at the shoreline with dozens of his huge tanks arrayed there around him, as if the tanks would have had a chance against the submarine. Such a vessel would have been capable of enormous firepower. If he had judged correctly the bore diameter of the deck gun most clearly visible, it was at least thirty-six inches.

The boat—appearing to be of the same material as the submarine itself—skimmed over the water’s surface, into the breakers beneath the overlook where Karamatsov’s army waited.

As the launch had been released, a flag had been raised from the submarine’s sail. The flag bore the Hammer and Sickle… .

Vladmir Karamatsov made a decision. It was based on necessity. Antonovitch was pursuing the accursed Rourke family, and Serovski was too junior an officer to be sent on a mission such as this.

This was a Soviet ship, and such technology as must be behind a vessel of such enormity could be invaluable in an alliance, deadly in an adversary situation. And since there were two Soviet governments he knew of on the earth—his own and that of the Underground City—it would be well for this new Soviet ship, and the power behind it, to ally

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He would go to meet it.

“Serovski—if anything happens unexpectedly, I will rely on your initiative. Send with me six of your best Elite Corps personnel.”

The wind was high and cold and Serovski answered over it, “Yes, comrade marshal.”

Karamatsov considered changing into full uniform, but he had never liked uniforms and, after all, was a Soviet marshal and could dress as he pleased.

He stepped down from the turret and stood beside the tank for a moment.

The skiff or whatever it was called, this motorized launch displaying the white flag of truce, had passed over the breakers and was nearly to shore. “Serovski—I need the men now!”

“They await, comrade marshal.” Karamatsov turned around. Serovski stood immediately behind him with six men in full Elite Corps battle gear. “They are my very best, comrade marshal.”

Karamatsov only nodded to Serovski, looking past the ambitious and usually competent young captain at the six anxious young faces. “Comrades. No doubt what lies before us is an historic meeting of the greatest importance. You must be particularly vigilant that all goes well. We believe these persons from the submarine to be Russian, like ourselves. But until we are certain that the fire of true Communism burns within them as strongly as it does within ourselves, we must remain at the highest level of alertness. With that understood, follow me.”

Karamatsov opened his coat to more easily get at his pistol, and started walking past his tanks. He glanced back once as the six Elite Corpsmen fell in behind him. He heard Serovski’s voice. “The Hero Marshal passes!” And now, from the open tank hatches, from the men beside the tanks as well, from the officers who commanded them, salutes were raised. And then it started, Serovski’s voice, then others joining it. “Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero

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started down the trail from the precipice overlooking the sea, men in dark blue uniforms with high boots and near-ankle-length greatcoats soaked with spray flying open in the wind disembarking the launch and walking onto the beach.

Karamatsov threw back his shoulders, running his fingers through his black hair, inhaling the salt air, the spray fresh on the wind.

“Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal!”

The men of the launch in their high-peaked uniform caps stopped a few meters in from the pounding surf, their evident leader a man tall and straight and dark-featured.

Vladmir Karamatsov strode toward him, the chant still on the wind.

“Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal!”

The men of the launch in their high-peaked uniform caps stopped a few meters in from the pounding surf, their evident leader a man tall and straight and dark-featured.

Vladmir Karamatsov strode toward him, the chant still on the wind, “Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal!”

Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov stopped at the base of the path. He waited.

The leader of the party from the submarine and one other man approached, the second man bearing the white flag of truce.

The leader stopped a meter away and saluted smartly. “Comrade Marshal Karamatsov. May I present myself. I am Colonel Boris Feyedorovitch of the Soviet Union— comrade marshal!” And he held the salute.

Karamatsov returned the salute with equal sharpness. “On behalf of the Armed Forces of the Soviet People, I welcome you, colonel,” Karamatsov lowered the salute and then the leader of the newcomers followed suit. Karamatsov stepped forward a pace, as did the man who said his name was Feyedorovitch and his rank was colonel.

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embrace, Feyedorovitch doing the same, both men holding the embrace for the briefest instant, Feyedorovitch planting a kiss on Karamatsov’s left cheek, Karamatsov doing the same to Feyedorovitch as the chant began again from above, “Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal! Hail to the Hero Marshal!”

And Feyedorovitch stepped back a pace, raising his right hand in salute, proclaiming, “Hail to the Hero Marshal!”

Vladmir Karamatsov very much regretted the loss of Colonel Ivan Krakovski at this moment. Krakovski, the poet and historian, the chronicler of these days of greatness. It would be sad indeed if this moment were not set down for the future, however brief in duration the future might prove to be.