Survivalist - 15 - Overlord Page 14

  John Rourke had resisted the temptation to ask to be allowed in the cockpit and, when the invitation to do so had

  come, he had refused it as well, forcing himself to sleep, knowing that he would need it.

  As the J-7V changed flight modes for landing, he awakened, Paul asleep in the seat opposite him, Natalia beside him —Rourke—with her long legs stretched out and feet crossed on the seat next to Paul. She was not asleep.

  “We are just going into landing mode,” she told him. “While you were asleep, I went forward. They let me try the controls for a few minutes. These machines fly beautifully. I have to check out on one. It might be a useful skill.”

  Rourke looked at her. “Yes. I feel the same way.”

  “If Vladmir has finally changed directions, perhaps we can somehow more effectively anticipate him.”

  “I hope so. Gotta find out how Michael’s doing, too.”

  “Yes. I think our Fraulein doctor likes him quite a bit.”

  “Maria Leuden?”

  “Yes. It would be good for him. Michael is too young to be alone.”

  “Chronologically, he’s older than you are.”

  “I think he’ll always be little Michael to me, but he wasn’t little, really. Was he even big as a baby?”

  “Nine pounds and four ounces —and not an ounce of flab. Yeah — he was a big baby. Then he hit a growth spurt and it seemed never to stop.”

  “What are you and Sarah hoping to have —or don’t you care whether it’s a boy or a girl?”

  John Rourke looked away from her and out the window. “So long as it’s healthy, we’ll be happy,” and he looked back at Natalia. “I’m sorry I messed you up. I didn’t mean to do that to you.”

  “You don’t mean you and Sarah having the baby —that—” “No —I didn’t mean that. I meant, well —falling in love with you. You loving me. I left you holding the shit end of the stick and I’m sorry. If I could — but I really don’t know what.”

  “I always love vou and I realized — realized a long time aeo

  I could never have you. I won’t lie and say I’m all perfectly adjusted, John —but I’ll survive. Maybe you did that for me.”

  John Rourke touched his right hand to her left cheek and kissed her lightly on the lips. The aircraft touched down …

  Captain Hartman seemed weary, Rourke thought. “There have been many developments, Herr Doctor. The gunship which carried your son and Fraulein Doctor Leuden, under the command of Captain Hammerschmidt, has been out of radio contact for some twenty-four hours. We have no idea why. At the last report, your son had determined that the search might best progress on foot and they left with one of the SM-4s, the Icelandic policeman Bjorn Rolvaag accompanying them. The last communication from the SM-4 vehicle was prior to young Herr Rourke, Fraulein Doctor Leuden and Captain Hammerschmidt climbing a high escarpment toward what appeared to be a fire of other than natural origins.”

  “Damn,” John Rourke almost whispered. “Not a word since:

  “Not a word since, Herr Doctor.”

  Rourke felt suddenly warm there inside the command tent, but realized it was not the temperature. “What about the direction Karamatsov’s forces are moving in?”

  “That is rather disconcerting—it roughly approximates the direction from which your son’s last radio transmission originated.”

  “At his present rate of movement,” Paul Rubenstein asked, “how rapidly would Karamatsov be able to reach that general area?”

  Rourke felt Natalia’s right hand finding his left, squeezing it tightly.

  Hartman answered. “Approximately seventy-two hours,

  were they to stop for two rest periods of six hours each in that time.”

  “With no rest periods,” Natalia began, “they would reach that general area in two and one-half days. That is very litde time.”

  John Rourke chewed down on the tip of the unlit cigar between his teeth. “Time enough. We’ll take that J-7V if you don’t have any objections.”

  “I will dispatch Lieutenant Schmidt to assist you.”

  “No —we’ll need a pilot, copilot and a small security team to secure the immediate area where we touch down. Those special items I asked for—have they arrived?”

  “Yes —but they have not been field tested, Herr Doctor.”

  “We’ll field test them in the field. Get them loaded aboard,” and Rourke turned away from Hartman. “Paul —see to it that we’ve got all the ammo and spare magazines we can carry. Replenish anything that’s running low. Natalia,” and he turned and looked into her face. She stood beside him still —always, he wondered? “Marshal together extra clothing, rations, medical supplies. Let’s be airborne in a half hour—they were already fueling the J-7V when we left the field.” And Rourke turned to Captain Hartman. “That enough time for you?”

  “Yes, Herr Doctor.”

  “What are the chances of getting reinforcements from the Complex in Argentina to assist us against Karamatsov?”

  “Not very good, I am afraid. But I shall endeavor to get what reinforcements I can. It appears we will be fighting soon.”

  “We’ll see—I want to let him get where he’s going, and then stop him. That’s the riskiest way of doing it, but the only way. If he has another supply of that gas, or something worse—”

  “I will make certain, Herr Doctor, that an adequate supply of masks are available to you. It is my intent to keep moving our main body up behind Marshal Karamatsov’s forces

  while still maintaining a defensive posture in the event he turns his army and attacks. I have units monitoring the Soviet forces constantly so we should have adequate warning.”

  “Let’s make a pre-arranged transmission schedule,” Natalia said, taking out a cigarette, Rourke lighting it for her in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo, then lighting his cigar. “Every six hours once we’re on the ground. Then if you do not hear from us — ” She didn’t finish.

  Paul Rubenstein smiled, then, his voice cheerful, said, “We’re up shit’s creek?”

  John Rourke smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Akiro Kurinami writhed, trying to escape the electrical shocks as they came again, his body slamming hard against what could have been a wall or only a wall of rock. Then the electrical charges stopped coming and he heard the voice again. It was through a synthesizer, sounding like the voices of persons who had no voice, an artificial larynx, metallic, grating, and, blindfolded and bound and helpless as he was, terrifying.

  “Lieutenant Kurinami. Where are the duplicate files?” It was the same question they had begun asking him hours ago —or was it longer than that? He could no longer be certain. He could smell his body, during one of the sessions with the electrical prods that were used against his body, his muscles had involuntarily relaxed. His bladder had emptied and that wasn’t all.

  The files contained the locations of the supply caches where weapons, food, building equipment, and medical supplies had been buried five centuries before for use after their return. The original files had been wiped from the Eden Fleet onboard computers and Kurinami’s copies were the only one which existed, except for the copy whoever had cleared the files had taken. If he surrendered them, whoever possessed the files would control Eden Base unless the

  Germans stopped them. And if the Germans were unable to do so—

  “Kill me —but you won’t get the files,” Kurinami said, noticing that the resolve in his voice sounded less firm than it had when they had begun the torture. “If I die you will never get them.”

  The synthesized voice came again in his darkness and pain. “We will take Elaine Halversen — perhaps she will answer us.”

  “No!”

  “Then tell!” “No!”

  The voice stopped. There was no renewal of the pain and he thought he heard a sound, after a moment, like feet moving across a floor. Then there was nothing but silence. He shouted into it. “Ill kill you if you harm her. I will kill you!
I will kill you if you — “

  No one answered and Akiro Kurinami realized he was alone.

  And they were going after Elaine …

  Michael sat in a straight backed chair in the middle of a high ceilinged room at what he estimated to be the exact center of the building. Another straight backed upholstered chair, empty, was a few feet from his, facing him. Han stood beside him.

  “You straighten out this ambassador stuff?” Michael asked him.

  “I said that it was meant figuratively, rather than literally. Do not worry, American.”

  The room was utilitarian in its furnishing, the walls a subdued shade of red with black trim, looking to be made of something like marble. Michael reflected that perhaps it was marble. Han had said nothing which intimated anything about the person whose room this was, whose empty chair

  now faced Michael Rourke. In books, the person would have automatically been some wizened old man who spoke in riddles but exuded wisdom. Or perhaps a woman, albeit more mysterious seeming and more seductive looking than Lydveldid Island’s Madame Jokli.

  He had seen Bjorn Rolvaag and the dog, making a point of stopping to see them on the way here, Rolvaag sitting calmly reading one of his inevitable books, the Icelandics historically among the most literate people in all the world. He had nodded, said little, stroked the head of his dog Hrothgar between the ears, then leaned back against the wall and continued to read as Michael had left. Rolvaag had apparently preferred the hardness of the floor to the softness of a bed or even a chair.

  And he had stopped to see Hammerschmidt. Hammerschmidt, the doctors had said in their quaintly accented but perfectly understandable English, was making good progress. The healing agent in the German spray had been the perfect thing to administer. Michael was flattered at his own diagnostic abilities. But Hammerschmidt had still been sedated.

  The walk to this room where Michael now sat had been long, but pleasant, Han explaining that indeed this building was the seat of government of the First City, as well as the residence of the chairman. The additional apartments, like those occupied now by Michael and Maria Leuden and Rolvaag and his dog, were just three of more than two dozen kept on hand for government officials to use in times of emergency when their special abilities might be required by the chairman at any hour of the day or night.

  When they had left the building, briefly, to journey by monorail again to the hospital where Otto Hammerschmidt was being treated, Michael had again marveled at this city within the earth. At first glance, past the beauty of its architecture, it might well have seemed forbiddingly uniform, as if all its inhabitants were like ants in a tunnel.

  Michael remembered ants.

  But there was individualism, subtle, yet definite, everywhere he looked, no two gardens alike, no two buildings identical and, in the hospital, in the monorail station, on the monorail car itself, this a public unit and not the private unit which had originally brought them into the city, the faces of the people bespeaking happiness without anything vacuous, a dignity of personal identity.

  The Chinese, he felt based on his readings, had indeed come far.

  The doors at the far end of the room opened. They were black, looking to be of lacquered wood but logic dictating rather some sort of synthetic. He had seen few trees and he doubted such a precious Commodity would be wasted for ornamentation.

  Through the doors walked a man. He was tall, as tall as Michael or his father easily, and thin without, at the distance, appearing painfully so. His hair was steel gray rather than white, and full but cut short, seeming to crown a craggy face which looked at once Oriental yet western as he approached. His body was covered in a black, ankle length tunic that rustled slightly as he drew near. Michael wondered if it were made of silk, something for which the Chinese had always been famous in his day and before.

  The man, his eyes rock steady, hands folded in front of him, stopped some six feet behind the vacant chair. Michael stood.

  “I am Lin Tsao Tang, Mr. Rourke. How do you do?”

  “An honor to meet you, Mr. Chairman.”

  “The honor is mine. Please be seated. I have recently left a rather pressing meeting and find it more comfortable to stand after so much time seated. You and your friends were the subject of the meeting. But rest assured, the meeting was a pleasant one. You are indeed an American?”

  “Yes, sir,” Michael nodded, still standing.

  “An informal ambassador, I am told —meaning I take it

  that you and your friends were exploring this portion of Asia and since you have ‘discovered’ us, shall we say, you would represent your people to us. But let me assure you, we were not lost,” and the chairman smiled.

  “I hadn’t thought that you were, sir. But you presume correctly. We were exploring and it was then when we encountered Mr. Han and learned for the first time that your people had survived what we call the Great Conflagration and you call the Dragon Wind.”

  “Both rather picturesque terms, Mr. Rourke. You were just exploring?” And he emphasized the word ‘just’.

  “As you no doubt know, sir, we —meaning the few surviving Americans, the people of New Germany in what before the Dragon Wind was called Argentina and the people of Lydveldid Island, have formed an alliance against the Soviet Union forces under the command of Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov, a man of unspeakable evil, like myself, my father and mother, my sister, my sister’s husband and a family friend, a survivor from the period before the Night of The War.”

  Lin Tsao Tang reached out both his hands as he stepped forward, appearing to steady himself against the back of his chair. “I have misunderstood,” he said in his deep, rich baritone.

  “I fear you have not misunderstood, sir. Through a process known as cryogenic sleep, myself, my family and some others, both from among our enemies in the Soviet Union and from among the persons living now in the United States, survived. I was born in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and it is now the twenty-fifth in our reckoning.”

  “If you do not wish to sit down, I at least do,” and the chairman eased himself into the chair.

  Michael sat down opposite him, feeling it rude to remain standing.

  “And you fight a war with the Russians?”

  “There was an attempt at a coup in the Russian camp, an attack by the army of Marshal Karamatsov against his government leadership at their Underground City in the Ural Mountains, a less elaborate structure to be sure, I understand. The position of the actual Soviet leadership within the city is unknown, but a state of war exists between ourselves and the forces of Marshal Karamatsov. He took his vast army to the east and I and my companions travelled ahead of his advance to determine his possible destination. I believe we have found it, sir.”

  “Indeed,” the chairman said wearily.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The J-7V landed, John Rourke and two men from the four man security unit being the first to disembark the aircraft; the helicopter was some fifty yards away and no sign of anyone around it. Nor was there any sign of the SM-4, the jeep-like vehicle with which Michael, Maria Leuden, Hammerschmidt and Bjorn Rolvaag had set out.

  Rourke looked behind him once, Natalia and Paul Rubenstein disembarking, clad in their arctic gear, two more of the German security team with them.

  “Paul, have those two men stay with the plane!”

  “Right!”

  Rourke took the senior of the two Germans with him by the arm. “Fan out to both sides of the helicopter and keep fifty yards back from it and find some cover in case it’s wired to detonate or something. Move out!”

  “Yes, Herr Doctor Rourke!” And the first man nodded to his fellow soldier and they split to right and left as they broke into a run, their weapons at high port.

  Rourke slung the M-16 forward on its sling and worked the bolt, charging the chamber. He moved the selector to auto, his right first finger, gloved, just outside the guard. “Natalia—take my left. Paul, on the right!”

  An icy
wind swept across the plain as he walked, the plain longer by far than it was wide, the helicopter pilot having chosen his landing area well. It was moored against the high winds, but already its runners were partially drifted over with snow, the windshield partially covered as well, snow drifted beneath the craft and all but obscuring the chin bubble. It seemed clear the helicopter hadn’t been moved in

  at least twenty-four hours.

  “I should go in first—I’m better with explosives,” Natalia called to him.

  “We’ll both go in —Paul —keep an eye out on the outside.”

  “Be careful, guys,” the younger man urged. Rourke had every intention of doing so. As he glanced toward Natalia, she was slinging her rifle across her back, diagonally, muzzle down, and unlimbering the German explosives detector. Rourke had little faith in such contraptions, although he had seen it work and was impressed by the results. But the mind was a better machine by far, and he trusted Natalia’s knowledge of explosives and demolitions far better than any machine.

  They were within fifteen yards of the helicopter now, Rourke pushing down the hood of his parka, the cold stinging him even through the toque he wore beneath it. He pulled the toque off over his head and stuffed it into a side pocket. He wanted his hearing unimpaired, as well as his peripheral vision. The wind seemed to increase, howling loud near the derelict helicopter, the rotor blades locked down, but still being pressured by the incessant wind.

  Rourke opened the front of his snow smock and his parka, so he could have more rapid access to his handguns. He started ahead again, seeing Paul Rubenstein out of the far right edge of his peripheral vision running toward the chopper at an oblique angle, covering the hatchway with an M-16.

  Rourke stopped beneath the main rotor blades and peered inside. He saw no sign of life, but the glass itself was steamed and frozen over and to see in any clarity was impossible without opening the sliding door. Natalia was beside him. “Are you ready, John?”