Survivalist - 15 - Overlord Read online

  Behind him, as he drove, Maria Leuden knelt in the vehicle’s bed, Otto Hammerschmidt’s head in her lap, Rolvaag and his dog with them there as well, Hammerschmidt sedated against the pain of his burns; some of the German spray which promoted healing had been used on his burns, but Hammerschmidt was feverish, the sedation necessary against what Michael judged must have been excruciating pain.

  They had recovered Hammerschmidt’s clothing and weapons, as well as those things of Marie Leuden, but neither

  wore their original clothes, Hammerschmidt’s body unable to support the contact against his skin, and Maria Leuden declaring that the clothes would have to be sterilized before she would even touch them. Michael had loaned her a shirt and a pair of pants, miles too big except in the leg length, which was nearly right when rolled up six inches or so. She was quite tall for a woman. She had wrapped herself in the ultra thin survival blankets provided for them by the Ger-. man quartermasters.

  As yet, Michael had mentioned nothing to Maria Leuden of the fact that the radio transmission he had sent to her and to Otto Hammerschmidt, in addition to being picked up by Bjorn Rolvaag, should have been picked up by the pilot and door gunner of the German heliocopter which had brought them into this area and which should still be less than seventy-five miles away. That the messages had not been intercepted, indicated to Michael that the Mongol warriors of the Second City, which Han had described in more graphic detail than his own city, might indeed have been more active in the area than Han suspected.

  But Michael had not been asked how they had gotten to the general area of the Greater Khingan Range in northern Manchuria and he had not volunteered the information. If the helicopter and its crew, or for that matter the helicopter alone, still existed, it might be useful to keep its presence a secret. He trusted Han but had never considered it deceitful to be prudent.

  He could see railroad tracks now, and steam operated locomotives coupled to massive flat cars; and, leading from some of the flat cars, ramps. Michael assumed the Chinese had a source of coal to run the steam locomotives.

  They reached the single lane highway and Michael turned down onto it toward the city, the road looping the valley several times before reaching the level of the city, but the drive easier and faster for Hammerschmidt than going crosscountry. He slowly felt out the acceleration, driving the

  vehicle faster than he had ever driven it, but at what he considered a safe speed. It was gradually warmer as the vehicle descended, Michael throwing back the hood of his parka and freeing one hand from the steering wheel to open his coat. “Why did your people pick this area, Han —for the construction of their city?”

  “The rail lines which once serviced Harbin were easily extended to service the construction site in those days and, it was felt, even if the more disastrous possibilities became reality following a nuclear war, the railroad beds would still exist and perhaps the rail lines themselves. As it happened, the beds indeed existed but were buried beneath generations of ice and snow and it required many years of work with explosives to make the new beds beyond our valley. We were able to construct rail lines leading to the sea and hope to construct ships. But this will not be in my lifetime. At least I presume not.”

  His voice sounded off slightly and Michael asked him, “Is something wrong?”

  “Do your people have sea power?”

  Michael saw no sense in a lie and evasion was a lie under some circumstances. It was not the same as just not mentioning the helicopter. “No —we don’t. We could, I suppose. But there hasn’t been time. Why do you ask?”

  “There have been incursions, coming from the direction of the sea. Attacks on a distant outpost we have established by the Yellow Sea. It was thought wise for us to have a military presence on the seacoast. We have there a small town as well. For the most part the wives and families of military officers and the men who work on the new fusion generator systems live there. And this is where, someday, we will build our ships.”

  “Where do you mine your coal?” Michael asked. And Han began to laugh. “For the locomotives you run, I mean?”

  “They are steam engines, but require no coal. The water is heated by fusion generators, American. We may have no

  synthetic fuel, but we are not entirely without resources.”

  Michael asked a question he had been dying to ask since he had field stripped the Chinese rifle. He slowed for a curve in the road and then began again to accelerate. “Why is it that you utilize arms from five centuries ago, and in such a poor condition?”

  “Isolated as we were, there was no need for the mass production of arms, although we had the capability. When we re-emerged, it was practical to arm our military forces with the weapons from before the Dragon Wind, but as we realized we had a fierce and implacable enemy in the Second City, it became necessary to revise these plans. And the production of arms was begun. We have a well-equipped army, but to equip our Mongol mercenaries with the newer weapons would betray them as being in our employ. So the old weapons are still issued.”

  Michael started into the final straightaway which would feed into the city itself, Han saying to him, “The first petal, there —turn into the access route.”

  “The first petal?”

  “Does it not remind you of a flower, our city?”

  Michael only nodded, slowing, taking the turn, then accelerating only a little. He expected security at any moment to come crashing abruptly down on them, but none had yet and none seemed forthcoming. “How do you guard this place?”

  “You will soon see.”

  Michael didn’t like the tone of the remark, and slowed the vehicle still more. The access road was leading into a tunnel which seemed to feed into the “petal,” as Han had called it.

  “You should stop this conveyance here, American. Go no further.”

  Michael realized in the next second that Han did not comprehend how brakes worked, the front end of the vehicle slamming into something that seemed impossibly nonresi-lient, sparks flying, electrical current flashing from the hood

  of the German machine, the instruments on the dashboard going wild, beginning to smoke. Michael shuddered as the vehicle lurched backward, taking his hands involuntarily from the wheel, the “conveyance,” as Han again had called it, dead.

  “What the hell-“

  “You did not stop rapidly enough, American,” Han groused.

  Michael Rourke looked at him. “Do you know the expression ‘Shove it up your ass’? What the — “

  Maria Leuden shouted forward, “What is happening?” Bjorn Rolvaag’s dog growled menacingly.

  Alarms were sounding now, armed men appearing from inside the tunnel which seemed to lead inside the petal, the assault rifles they carried decidedly different in profile from the five centuries old weapons he had seen earlier.

  Han stepped out of the vehicle and began speaking in a loud voice, one of the armed men, but carrying a pistol and apparently an officer, signaling the others to stop their advance. Michael’s hands were on the butts of his Berettas beneath his coat. He didn’t draw them.

  Han stopped speaking to the soldiers and turned to face Michael as Michael climbed out, the two staring at each other across the dented and wrinkled hood. “The current will be shut off momentarily,” Han smiled. “I told the officer in charge you are the ambassador from the United States of America and that the woman, the injured man and the green clad giant are your staff. We can clarify the details later.”

  Michael shrugged, then started toward the rear of the vehicle to start moving Otto Hammerschmidt.

  He wondered if Rolvaag’s dog, Hrothgar, had been elevated to ambassadorial rank as well?

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Everyone pulled guard duty from time to time and Akiro Kurinami, not liking it, didn’t resent it. He imagined it was simply his turn to be unlucky.

  The guard posts were divided equally among the Germans who supported their otherwise untenable position at Eden Base and the Eden personnel
, every other post German, every other post Eden. Because of the international composition of the Eden astronaut corps, few called themselves Americans.

  Kurinami, huddled in his parka, gripped the M-16 that was slung to his body merely by the pistol grip, his gloved trigger finger alongside the trigger guard. He expected no trouble. The German surveillance devices would have detected it. But guard tours were necessary — as John Rourke would have put it, “It pays to plan ahead.”

  Soon, he would see John Rourke again, and Paul and Annie, and Sarah, and of course Natalia Tiemerovna. What an exquisite creature, he thought.

  They would come for the wedding.

  He had drawn perhaps the most remote of the guardposts and with the heavy snow that had begun a few hours before, visibility was less than a hundred yards. But it was, in one respect, a good time for security. Every guard would be

  awake and moving, patrolling his post, since it was the only way to keep from freezing. The abrupt change from cold to below freezing with snow had been unexpected. But he supposed that with the radical change in the earth’s environment, the unexpected was to be expected. Had it been less nearer to dawn, he doubted he would have been able to see his hand in front of his face.

  His thoughts focused on Elaine Halversen, soon to be Elaine Kurinami. Thinking of her somehow kept him warmer. Someday, he knew, they would both look back on this as they told their children of the early days of the return to earth, of having to stand guard in the middle of what could soon turn from a heavy snowfall into hard blizzard conditions, and the children would stare at them, agape at such an existence —

  He thought he saw something moving as a gust of wind cut through him like a knife and temporarily cleared the air of snow.

  “Halt! Who is it?”

  There was no answer.

  Kurinami licked his lips beneath the toque which covered his face except for the eyes. His right first finger slipped into the trigger guard, his right thumb finding the safety tumbler and moving it into the full auto position. “Who is it?”

  It was too early for his relief to come, wasn’t it? He refigured the time, not daring to shift his eyes to his wrist to look at his chronometer. “Who is it?”

  Kurinami saw a shape —not definable enough to be certain what it was, and he wheeled toward it, bringing the muzzle of his rifle up, then feeling it as something hammered against his right shoulder and his right arm went numb and the rifle fell from his grasp and he started to fall forward into the snow. But he caught himself, realizing that something had struck him, rolling to the ground, blinking his eyes against the cold wetness of the snow, the sling of the rifle being twisted away from him, a foot suddenly visible

  inches in front of his face. He dodged it, losing the rifle, grabbing the foot with his left hand and twisting it hard, seeing someone in a hooded parka and ski toque and white snow smock tumble into the snow near him. Kurinami was up, moving, his right arm still all but paralyzed, another figure lurching at him from the snow, Kurinami wheeling, his left foot snapping out, a double Tae Kwon Do kick to the face and chest, the attacker falling back.

  Kurinami reached to his hip for the Government Model .45 there, but his right hand still wouldn’t respond. He now saw the wisdom of the Rourkes, all but Paul Rubenstein carrying two handguns at all times.

  The first man—was it the first man, the one he had tumbled into the snow? — was coming for him and Kurinami tried another kick, but felt something—a rifle butt? —sweeping him off balance and down into the snow and then they were on him.

  He didn’t know how many there were. His good hand flailed toward faces, punching, his feet kicking. He felt a sudden dullness and then a warmth that he knew somehow was unnatural and the whiteness of the snow which swirled around him was turning to blackness and he thought of Elaine.

  “Elaine …”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When his eyes opened — but they didn’t open and he knew he was blindfolded — Akiro Kurinami thought of Commander Dodd and the stolen guns.

  He didn’t move, lest he betray that he was awake. It was warm, so he knew that he was inside, somewhere. But where?

  They —whoever they were —could not have risked taking him to the Eden Base. What if they were discovered.

  And he realized where he had to be. Where the missing weapons and supplies and computer files had been taken. And he knew why he was here — for the duplicate files which showed the locations of the supply caches. He knew why …

  Maria Leuden resisted it, but then, as she dressed before the mirror, she tried to search out for Michael Rourke’s thoughts. She was obsessed with knowing if he loved her, she realized. Ever since he had taken her up into his arms and carried her as if she were just some tiny child —

  The clothes given her were beautiful to wear. But she

  didn’t care about them.

  She closed her eyes, thinking of Michael Rourke.

  She had not seen him since they had passed through the tunnel, some of the soldiers carrying the stretcher they had placed Otto Hammerschmidt upon, then an electrically powered vehicle of some sort which was like an ambulance coming for him and Otto Hammerschmidt disappearing inside it. She had been given over to a woman named Toy, and facilities for bathing, for washing her hair, fresh clothes, all had been made available to her. She assumed Toy was some sort of intelligence agent, much like Han.

  She could not use her mind like Annie Rourke could. And she had forced herself to stop reading Michael’s thoughts. She put on her glasses. Wearing nothing but panties and a bra, she sat on the edge of the rather ornately styled bed. Her glasses had been placed on the small table next to the bed, Maria still utterly surprised that they had survived through her ordeal. She looked at herself in the mirror. A tall, skinny girl in love with a man whose mind she could read. But only when she was with him, really. She feared that she would, as time went by, be able to read his thoughts even when they were separated by some distance, as she had been able to with her father, her friend Elsie who had died. And what she feared most was that, if Michael refused to care for her, that she would be able to feel his thoughts forever, even when he was with another woman.

  And that would drive her mad.

  She decided to get dressed. The Chinese girl, Toy, very pretty, had promised to wait for her in the corridor outside the room she had been given. Maria Leuden had wondered if that translated to standing guard over her?

  But she would dress and then Toy would give her a tour of this petal, because that would be all there would be time for before the dinner that would be tonight and she would need the time to change.

  She exhaled. She should have been tired. She wasn’t tired.

  She was exhausted in a way she had never been. She stood up and started to dress …

  The SM-4 had been completely disabled and they had left it at the energy field barrier leading into the tunnel, Michael having taken up his pack and the spare assault rifle, an M-16, then proceeding through the tunnel and into the city in the company of Han and some eighteen soldiers and an officer. The tunnel had been far less than remarkable except for the smoothness of the joints where it was sectioned.

  But once through the tunnel, he had been even more impressed than he had been at his first somewhat distant view of the First City. The tunnel had been steeply down sloping and Michael Rourke had assumed that he would enter the city at its lowest level, but instead they had emerged before a roadway, and beyond the roadway were towering buildings rising to a height he had judged as several hundred feet, the tunnel mouth at the level of their pinnacles. There was something like a train station near the tunnel mouth. He had remembered, when a boy, his mother taking them to Atlanta and parking the car in a large parking lot and then boarding a train at a station like this. She had called it a subway.

  But the train, which came to the station and stopped and Michael, Maria Leuden and Han had boarded, after Hammerschmidt had been placed aboard what looked to be an electrically powered
ambulance, was a monorail. And as it crossed from the tunnel mouth over much of the petal, as Han had called this wing of the First City, Michael had been amazed.

  He had considered it a symbol of friendship that he had not been asked to turn over his weapons, and perhaps also a symbol of Han’s eminence in the city. For that reason, he had elected, after showering, changing to fresh clothes from his pack, to leave the assault rifle and the 629 in his room,

  wearing only the double shoulder rig with the Berettas, but beneath his leather jacket so they would not be seen.

  Han had been waiting for him when he emerged from the suite of rooms he had been given, the rooms in a large building that seemed at once to house offices yet be some sort of official residence. Han had changed as well, his skin several shades lighter than it had appeared, his stubble shaven away and only the thin mustache remaining, his clothes consisting of a gray suit with a collarless jacket and conventional shoes rather than boots. He looked anything but the Mongol warrior that he had appeared to be when they had first met a day before.

  “You appear renewed, American.”

  Michael rubbed his face with his left hand. He had shaved and was clean and wore clean clothes. “I suppose I’m renewed. If you can be renewed when you are too tired to sleep.”

  Han laughed. “Tired or curious, American?” “Both.”

  “Then come and meet our chairman. You are awaited. The pistols under your coat will be acceptable as long as they are not drawn.”

  “Five points,” Michael Rourke told him …

  None of the new German J-7Vs had been available to speed their flight to Iceland, but one had been available on the coast of Norway and Rourke, Natalia and Rubenstein had transferred from the German helicopter to the versatile aircraft with its dynamically rearswept wings and rear mounted jet driven propellers which allowed it to change from horizontal to vertical flight mode almost at will, as fast as a conventional jet but with the manueverability of a helicopter gunship.