Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm (2 page)

John Rourke began moving again, slowly, silently, drawing the Life Support System X from its sheath at his side, his gloved hand fisting it in a rapier hold as he moved through the snow …

Jason Darkwood’s palms sweated inside his heavy gloves. He’d done the thing every midshipman learned not to do: volunteer. He was the best man for the job because he was the least experienced in surface warfare, a novice compared to veterans like Doctor Rourke and Mr. Rubenstein.

Rubenstein was an interesting guy, Darkwood thought. Talk about truth to the old expression of not judging a book by its cover. Paul Rubenstein wasn’t short, but he wasn’t exactly tall, either. His hair was thinning badly. He didn’t seem overtly muscular. And suddenly, as he walked (hopefully obviously, since if he were running the risk of getting shot it should be for a good reason) he found himself thinking about Rubenstein’s very pretty wife, Annie. Doctor Rourke’s daughter, she had the Rourke way about her, commanding, yet she was marvelously feminine and very refreshing. Mr. Rubenstein was a lucky man.

Darkwood stopped beside a tall tree with snow on its bark. Snow fascinated him, the very look of it, its taste on the tongue.

He realized that this, the reality of life, was something everyone at Mid-Wake missed, most without ever realizing it. In five centuries of living beneath the sea in a domed complex, traveling within the city or, for persons like himself who were part of Mid-Wake’s defense forces, traveling by submarine, but always within a controlled environment, generations had been spent this way. But with Mid-Wake’s unavoidable involvement now in the surface war against the Russians of the Underground City in the Ural Mountains, it was the end of an era. .

In one respect, that was good. The stringent, voluntary population control (with the help of five centuries of war casualties) which had kept Mid-Wake numbers manageable for five centuries would someday, perhaps soon, be unnecessary. There was an entire world to populate, to know, to experience.

And, if he lived that long, he wanted very much to be part of

that. Unexplored seas. And, what shores did they kiss? Good thoughts.

He resumed walking, the M-16 he’d grabbed up from the hands of a dead Eden Base defender still unfamiliar to his hands.

Darkwood compromised, shifting the assault rifle into his left hand, drawing the Mid-Wake issue pistol. He knew what a 9mm Lancer Caseless would do to an enemy from firsthand experience, the M-16 only through observation.

The 2418 A2 had a solid feel to it, largely psychological he knew, but much of warfare, much of survival was psychological.

Somewhere in the woods on either side of the clearing which he skirted, Doctor Rourke and Mr. Rubenstein were closing on the enemy.

If he couldn’t tell exactly where they were, did that mean the enemy couldn’t either?

The enemy. For five centuries, the people of Mid-Wake had fought the forces of the Soviet underwater complex which shared, ironically, the same undersea volcanic vent as a source of geothermal energy.

There were some in Mid-Wake, Darkwood had heard, who blamed Doctor Rourke for involving Mid-Wake in the war on the land, with these new Soviet enemies. But these were the uninformed who let one too many drinks do the talking for them, or were mindless to begin with. Once the Soviet Navy had nuclear missile capabilities, as had been proven conclusively, a broadening of the five centuries long war was inevitable. There was no danger of direct nuclear attack on Mid-Wake, the serendipity of that shared volcanic vent geothermal power source the mitigating factor there. But Soviet Island Class submarines armed with nuclear missiles could have destroyed the Mid-Wake fleet, leaving Mid-Wake powerless to resist Soviet invasion by any other means than flooding.

The flooding of Mid-Wake was a popular topic among some of the very old. Once, when the Soviet Marine Spetznas had attacked Mid-Wake in force, better than seventy years ago, it was said that when all had seemed lost, when it seemed the people of Mid-Wake were close to extinction, the government had been on the verge of flooding the city, stopping the Soviets, killing everyone, collapsing the domes under the pressure of the sea around them.

It would have come to that because, with the Soviet collective system and selective genetic breeding it was possible for the Soviets to produce a disproportionate number of male offspring, the vast majority of the Soviet forces, both Naval and Marine Spetznas, male. Not only was the Soviet population greater, but its percentage of fighting men out of all proportion to actual population numbers.

Inevitable.

Darkwood reached the midway point in the clearing.

If someone was going to start shooting at him, it would be soon, now. His gloved fist tightened on the butt of the 2418 A2. “God,” he muttered under his breath. He wished he was back aboard his submarine …

John Rourke stood stock still. Movement at about eleven o’clock on the far side of the clearing. Paul might have seen it, but that was doubtful from Paul’s vantage point on the opposite side coming up from the six o’clock position counterclockwise.

He couldn’t wait for a gunshot, because Darkwood was risking his neck enough and one shot or a full-automatic burst could be the end of the man. And Darkwood was a good man, despite the sometimes flippant demeanor.

John Rourke dropped into a crouch, moving forward quickly now, the LS-X still in the rapier hold.

Movement again, perhaps fifty yards off, snow dislodging and falling to the ground.

John Rourke moved laterally, deeper into the trees, as he increased the distance between himself and whoever had moved ahead of him, rising to his full height, quickening his pace. He reached the apex of the triangle of his movement pattern, working his way between the trees and through the sporadic high drifts, snow crunching under his boots but the noise unavoidable without losing more valuable time.

He kept going, seeing movement again, ahead and to the left of him, from the same spot where he had first seen it. But from this angle, he could see its origin more clearly. A man, roughly his own height, in the black battle uniform of the KGB Elite Corps, an assault rifle in his hands, halfway to his shoulder as though he

were just ready to snap off a burst.

John Rourke promised himself something. He started to move, a long-strided run across the snow, the Crain knife in his right fist, the man with the assault rifle starting to turn around, John Rourke hurtling himself toward him, the knife beside Rourke’s right hip, then arcing forward into the Elite Corpsman’s abdomen, primary edge up. As Rourke’s left hand closed over the man’s mouth, Rourke’s body blocking the rifle from being raised, Rourke’s right hand tensed, his forearm pulsing with exertion as he tore the knife upward from navel to sternum, a sound almost like a sigh, muffled beneath Rourke’s gloved hand, the Elite Corpsman’s body going rigid, then suddenly limp.

John Rourke was up, to his feet, wiping die blade of his knife clean of blood against the snow-splotched bark of a tree.

He heard movement seventy-five or a hundred yards deeper into the woods, saw snow crashing down from a low hanging bough on the far side of the clearing, at approximately two o’clock.

Paul.

John Rourke broke left, into a long-strided run.

More movement, a rasped caution in Russian, the howl of the wind, like the moaning of a ghost from a horrific nightmare, a splotch of black uniform against a drift of white snow.

There was a woman’s scream.

Rourke was even with them now and he turned, ranning toward them from their right flank, shouting, “Paul! Darkwood! Over here!”

His knife was sheathed, his fists closing on the butts of the two Scoremasters.

Tbhn!” It was Paul’s voice. “The rest of you, close in from that side. You and you and you, follow me!”

And Darkwood’s voice, getting in on the act. “Take the left flank, you and you, and you two. Pollow me, me rest of you!”

There was movement, running, a burst of automatic weapons fire lighting the darkness. Rourke prayed it wasn’t the woman being put to death.

There was an aggregate of rocks, open to the far and near sides, affording protection from the direction of the clearing and the direction from which Lieutenant Lillie St. James’s platoon of Marines would be coming.

But no protection from him.

John Rourke saw one of them turn, an assault rifle starting to open up.

Rourke dodged right and back as the Scoremaster in his right hand raised to shoulder height, his right first finger making the squeeze.

Snow churned up before him as the Scoremaster rocked gently in his right fist.

He averted his eyes as the snow sprayed toward him. More assault rifle fire.

Rourke caught a glimpse of a body going down as Rourke’s left hand raised to shoulder height, a single shot to the Elite Corpsman nearest the female captive. The Elite Corpsman’s left hand flashed to his neck as his body spun back.

Assault rifle fire tore into the tree trunks beside Rourke. Rourke fired both pistols from shoulder height, silencing the rifleman. Rourke dove left, hitting the snow, rolling, the snow beside him plowed up under a fresh burst of assault rifle fire.

He heard Paul shout, “Stay down, John!”

The rattle of Paul Rubenstein’s submachine gun, neat three-round bursts, textbook perfect. As Rourke came up to his knees beside a y-shaped pine trunk, he saw one of the remaining three men going down, then a second man down.

The last man swung his rifle toward the woman. Rourke’s pistols went up, firing simultaneously, but simultaneously as well, there was gunfire from Rourke’s right and from Paul’s direction also, the Elite Corpsman’s body wheeling back and forth, twisting around, falling.

Rourke looked to his right. Darkwood, pistol in hand, stood there.

“It’s Doctor Rourke, Miss Zeiss. Are you all right?”

Rourke started moving forward, Darkwood beside him, Paul circling to the far side so that if anyone were still alive and dangerous they’d have him in a crossfire.

She stumbled out of the rocks, the gleam of blood on her right cheek, possibly hers or perhaps from the rupturing of a gunshot wound near her.

As she fell to her knees, John Rourke nodded to Darkwood, Darkwood dropping to his knees beside her, taking her into his arms.

As John Rourke’s eyes scanned the bodies, he heard the crunching of snow under Paul’s boots and he heard Jason Darkwood’s voice. Tve never seen anyone like you, Doctor.”

Rourke didn’t say anything, more important things on his mind.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna heard Annie’s voice. She opened her eyes, the brightness making her close them again. “How you feeling?”

Natalia turned her head away, a flood of memories now, confusing, no clear boundary between what had happened and what had not. Knights in armor, helicopter pursuits, Michael about to be killed, John’s knife in her hands and Vladmir’s head.

She felt silly as she said it, and her voice sounded oddly dry, disused, unfamiliar to her. “Where am I?”

As she turned her head back and opened her eyes, more slowly this time, Annie almost whispered, “YouVe been very sick, Natalia. But you’re better now. You’re in the hospital, at Mid-Wake. A lot of things happened, but everybody’s fine, my mom and dad, Paul, Michael, Otto. Everybody. And, now that you’re better, well, things will be just great. There’s an alliance and we’re going to turn things around. I just know it.”

Natalia ran her hands back through her hair. Her hair felt just washed, just arranged.

“You have such pretty hair,” Annie smiled. “I hope I fixed it right.”

“I remember something-you were-“

“It was the only way to make you better, to find out what was wrong. I figured, well, that you would have done anything to help me. So, ahh-“

Annie looked down at her hands which were folded in her lap. Natalia watched her for a moment. Annie wore a print skirt, subdued purple flowers against a background that was so gray it was almost black, a black blouse with long wide sleeves and open at the throat, her hair drawn back from her face. She remembered how John used to call Annie’s hair “honey blonde.” It was darker

now, but so very beautiful. “Annie. You are my best friend “

Annie moved to the edge of the bed, folding Natalia into her arms, touching her lips to Natalia’s forehead. Natalia rested her head against Annie’s shoulder.

John Rourke and his wife stood beside the table, Sarah Rourke’s face a little pale, Darkwood thought, compared to the rest of the surface people around. On reflection, it had to have been a terrible experience for her, killing that man a split second before the man would have murdered the Japanese naval lieutenant. Darkwood stripped off his gloves and opened his coat, Sarah Rourke saying to Maritza Zeiss, Tm so happy ifs nothing serious. When they radioed back that they’d found you and you were all right, everyone was so happy.”

“Your husband was so brave, Frau-“

John Rourke cut that short. 71 just thought I’d check in. Leaving you in good hands,” and he nodded toward Darkwood, shot Maritza Zeiss a smile and ushered his wife toward a still open panel on the far wall. They disappeared.

It was a little cold in the tent, despite the heater units working to capacity and the plastic-like material patched over at least most of the holes which were ripped in the tent walls by shrapnel and debris during the battle for Eden. She was stripped to rather male-looking underwear—something like an athletic shirt and panties more the size of shorts-and there was a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. But Jason Darkwood couldn’t help thinking that she was really beautiful. He realized he was staring at her, turned away, found a table to perch on the edge of and found himself staring at her again.

Maritza Zeiss cleaned up very nicely.

She’d been badly shaken by her ordeal, but physically unharmed, the German doctor they’d spoken with a moment earlier had told them, unharmed except for a few bruises and the beginnings of frostbite on the tips of the toes of her right foot.

She sat on the edge of an examining table, talking almost unceasingly as a nurse did something to the little toe. Maritza Zeiss’ voice