Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion Read online

  “Precisely so, Herr Doctor,” Wolfgang Mann agreed, turning from the windows. “Precisely.”

  “Get who out?”

  John Rourke turned to the voice. Sarah. He smiled. The last time he had seen her in nylons and high heels had been … he remembered. Their wedding anniversary, a few months before The Night of The War. She wore a gray dress now, the skirt straight and to just below the knee, the neckline high and collar less, the sleeves reaching to her wrists. A string of pearls hung from her neck and her hair was up, revealing pearl earrings. He stood. “You look beautiful.”

  She blushed.

  She cleared her throat. She again asked, “Who do we have to get out?”

  But before the question could be answered, Rourke

  heard Natalia’s voice. “She is beautiful, John.”

  He turned to look at Natalia. Almost predictably, she wore black, the dress almost identical in design to the one Sarah wore, but with a waist-length jacket. A single gold chain was at her neck—the gold earrings were her own, he recognized, liny—the pierced kind and when her hair would be swept back by the wind when they rode their bikes, or she would toss her head, he would see them. He saw them now, because like Sarah, her almost black hair was up.

  “Your wife, Herr Doctor—and your friend as well—they are most beautiful. I was right,” Frau Mann continued, Rourke not looking at her, “in assuming they would be able to pose as officers’ wives or other women of the elite.”

  Rourke turned and looked at Frau Mann finally. But he said nothing.

  “Who is it?” Natalia began, “that we must rescue?”

  “Helene Sturm,” Wolfgang Mann answered. “She is one of the leaders of the organization which opposes the leader. She alone besides ourselves of those inside The Complex knows the entire plan. And she is pregnant—”

  “Her due date is very near,” Frau Mann added.

  John Rourke waited as Sarah and Natalia crossed the room, waited until they sat on the couch, then sat down, Sarah between Natalia and himself. “Do you know why, Frau Mann—why she was arrested?” John Rourke asked.

  “And where she has been taken?” Natalia added.

  Frau Mann wrung her hands, then sat, perched on the arm of the opposing couch, her husband sitting down beside her. “I fear that her son—her oldest son. She has three others. But I fear that her oldest son, Manfred—he is a member of the youth. I fear that he betrayed her. If that is so, then I fear she will be under interrogation even now. Not at the detention center. But she would be at the new government hall. It has recently been finished. On the

  surface.”

  “Confirm what you can—without arousing undue suspicion,” Rourke told her. “Once we’re certain where she is— then we go and get her. Deiter Bern will have to wait.”

  There was no choice. Even had she known nothing that could harm them, because of her condition there was no choice at all.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Annie Rourke had given up trying to undo the ropes about her wrists—they were synthetic, triple-stranded and so soft that she doubted that even had she been able to reach her hands with her teeth she could have tugged the knot free. And she could not reach her hands, because after she had been forced at gunpoint to the Soviet helicopter, Forrest Blackburn had—skillfully, she admitted to herself—crossed her jaw with his fist. Her jaw didn’t even hurt now, but when she awakened, the Soviet helicopter had already been airborne. Her wrists were bound as they were in front of her and the safety harness had been put on her, in such a manner that it locked her arms to her sides and kept her shoulders in an upright position against the seat back.

  “Soviet technology has come a long way,” Blackburn remarked—she could hear him through the headset he had placed on her after she had regained consciousness.

  “Paul will kill you for this,” she told him simply, speaking into the teardrop shaped microphone in front of and slightly below her lips. “If Michael or my father doesn’t get to you first.”

  “Yes, well—Annie? May I call you Annie? Well, your dear daddy is in Argentina. Your brother is flat on his back. And poor Mr. Rubenstein. If I didn’t kill him when I knocked him out, I don’t think he’ll be in much shape to

  come after us either. Captain Dodd seems to have his hands full, doesn’t he? And I doubt he’ll send off valued personnel and equipment to rescue a troublesome girl and track down the last of the Soviet agents.” And Blackburn laughed. “You know, I’ll tell you something, Annie. Actually—you’re better off. Stick with me and you’ll live longer.”

  She knew her father’d be angry at her for saying it—not to mention her mother. “Fuck you.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up. I intend for you to do just that, Annie. I haven’t had a—well, let’s just say that I haven’t for five centuries. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Five centuries—my goodness.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t say ‘My God,’ ” she hissed.

  “You may prove too much like your father and mother. And if you do, I’ll be very sorry for you, Annie.”

  “Where the hell are we going?” she began, trying to get him to another subject. “To Karamatsov?”

  “No, no, the last man I want to see—just now, anyway.” He cleared his throat.

  She looked above her at the rotors, then below through the chin bubble. The ground was rockier than it should have been, and ahead through the windscreen she could see a blinking whiteness—they were heading north. “I thought Karamatsov was your boss,” she pressed. Her wrists were hurting her and her fingers were falling asleep.

  “He was. But I never did fully trust him, you know. Five centuries ago—that still amazes me,” and she turned to watch him smiling as if to himself. He was doing something with the controls of the Soviet machine—she thought he might be preparing to land because through the chin bubble again she could see the ground coming up fast beneath them. “But five centuries ago,” he continued, “when Vladmir Karamatsov first began getting suspicious that there was something like the Eden Project—well. When he asked.me to get involved, I wanted some assur

  ances. Future welfare, you might say. One of the things I got—but not from him because I don’t know if he even knew about it—but I got the location of The Underground City.”

  “The what?” She cleared her throat. “Is this thing landing? “

  “The Underground City—it was a project my employers had going for some time before what your family calls The Night of The War. Already self-sufficient—no longer an experiment. And, yes, we are landing. One of the things Karamatsov provided—and I spot checked that he hadn’t lied—were personal supply caches for me. Aircraft fuel sealed in hermetic containers that were rot-proof. Individual weapons. And emergency food supplies. Surprisingly inexpensive. He had one hundred such little caches made for me throughout the continental United States since there would be no way to foretell where the Eden Project might land. Do you know how long it takes to memorize one hundred sets of compass coordinates?”

  Annie felt herself starting to smile—but at least Blackburn seemed like a competent pilot. They were clearly about to touch down, and the ride was smooth as silk. She had never touched silk until Natalia had given her one of the teddies that she wore. Annie had not wanted to take it—yet wanted it very much. She wondered if she would ever get the chance to wear it.

  She looked at Blackburn. He was laughing. “Now surely, Annie—you are thinking that with all that has happened, the magnetic coordinates will have changed. And you’re right. But I took a reading off the Eden One’s instruments and then wrote down the map coordinates from memory and worked a compass correction formula. We’re right on the money.”

  The stolen—twice-stolen, Soviet helicopter touched down. She barely felt it. He began flipping switches and pressing buttons, shutting down the machine. “You see,”

  he told her, not looking at her, “after I get the materials I need precisely located, I’ll fly the machine closer if necessary an
d resupply. Then off we go to The Underground City where I will be a hero of surrealistic proportions. And should anybody follow us and by chance intercept us before we get there, well—” he turned to look at her, pulling his headset off, then reached across and pulled off hers. She screamed—he had caught some of her hair in it. He reached to her hair and began to undo it from the headset as he continued speaking. “Should we encounter difficulties, well, you’re my hostage. If you’re important enough to go after, you’re important enough to be kept alive.”

  Her hair was free of the headset, and she shook her head to get her hair back from her face.

  Forrest Blackburn climbed down from the machine, taking the key for the thing with him, then walked around the front of the aircraft, opening the side door beside her.

  He drew another piece of rope from his pocket and reached down to her ankles. He began binding them tight together, then she could feel them being drawn back under the seat and being tied to one of the seat stanchions. “Where do you think I’m gonna go?” she asked him.

  “Nowhere.” He smiled affably.

  He wore a large lined and hooded jacket that looked like it was military once. He reached to her shoulders and wrenched the shawl free of her arms and then twisted it into a rope. He drew her head forward and bound the shawl over her mouth between her teeth. She felt as if she would gag.

  “Now—nice and safe, Annie.” He smiled. “And just so you start thinking along the right lines,” and he reached to her coat and unbuttoned it, pushing its skirts aside. Then he drew her skirt and her slip up, along her thighs. She started screaming—but only muted growls came out through the gag. He bunched her skirt and her slip up to her hips, the backs of her thighs suddenly cold against the

  vinyl of the seat. He reached under her clothes and found her underpants, then pulled them down, along her thighs, over her knees.

  Forrest Blackburn looked at her and laughed. “Get you cold enough—even you’ll want a little warmth, Annie. Be back in a while.” He slammed the door.

  Nearly naked from the waist down, humiliated, frightened—she began to cry. But there was another word. She felt its meaning behind her tears. Defiance.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Paul—answer me, damnit!” “John?”

  “No—Michael. What the hell happened?” He watched as Paul Rubenstein opened his eyes. “Michael.”

  “They—they brought you in here unconscious. Something about Annie?”

  Madison, her voice soft, low, began, “I told Michael he should not get out of bed.”

  “I’m all right,” Michael snapped, leaning back on his perch at the edge of the cot where Paul Rubenstein lay. He had lain on his back since his surgery and working his stomach muscles pained him. His back ached as well from where his father had dug out some of the Soviet bullets.

  Michael Rourke eased back further, standing then to rid himself of the pain, leaning against the center post of the tent, Madison beside him suddenly, her shawl falling from her shoulders as Michael looked at her. She reached to support him. “I’m all right, Madison,” Michael Rourke almost whispered.

  That his voice was like that of his father’s was something he had been told before and that his own observation confirmed. But his father was not here—and his sister’s fate perhaps rested on his and Paul’s shoulders. And he looked at Madison—with Madison too.

  Paul was sitting up, propped on his right elbow, his face very pale.

  “What’s, ah, what’s going on, Paul,” Michael began again. “Dr. Munchen brought you in—looked at me too. He looked at Madison—he told her he was good at looking in a woman’s eyes and telling if she were pregnant.”

  Madison laughed. “No one can do such a thing—but I do, I do have life here,” and she touched at her abdomen.

  Paul shook his head. And then Paul sat up straight, his face showing pain. His right hand came from his hip pocket, a gleaming stainless steel derringer in it. “Munchen ‘s a good guy—he knew I had this.”

  “What’s goin’ on, Paul? Where’s Annie?”

  “Munchen didn’t tell you?”

  “What—”

  “Annie, ahh, Forrest Blackburn. He’s the Russian agent. He kidnapped Annie—took a Soviet chopper and headed out. Ahh, Dodd—I think it was him. Said Blackburn couldn’t get much more than a hundred miles or so— not enough fuel. But he, ahh, won’t send anybody after her.”

  “We can go,” Michael Rourke declared. “I can lie just as flat in the back of Dad’s truck as I can here.”

  “And I can drive this truck,” Madison volunteered.

  Michael Rourke folded his arm about his woman’s shoulders and drew her head against his chest. “You probably could.”

  Paul was sitting up fully now. “All right—this is what we do. I use this,” and Paul Rubenstein gestured with the derringer, “and we get ourselves John’s truck. I left that spare High Power I picked up—at The Place,” and Paul smiled at Madison, then turned his face away. “Left that and some spare magazines and stuff in the truck. Just in case. We know where the strategic stores were located— Blackburn doesn’t. We can catch him after that fuckin’ machine of his runs outa gas.”

  “Madison 11 stay—I can drive,” Michael said grimly. He could barely stand.

  “Well, I don’t think so, Michael. And your dad wouldn’t leave Madison alone here without someone to protect her— and he wouldn’t take off all shot up with another guy in pretty much the same way and leave the only healthy person behind.”

  “Madison’s pregnant, Paul.”

  “Good for her—if this were six months from now I’d agree with you. But it isn’t—and I don’t.”

  Michael exhaled a long sigh, finally easing down to his cot, Madison raising his legs, swinging his feet up onto the cot. Michael leaned back, straight, flat in his back, staring at the tent roof. “All right—you’ve got the experience, I haven’t.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a Rourke.” Paul Rubenstein laughed, clutching at his abdomen.

  Michael turned away again, looking upward. “What do we do?”

  “All right,” Paul began.

  But Madison interrupted. It must be catching from Annie, Michael thought.

  “I can take the derringer pistol—that is correct?”

  “Yeah,” Michael almost whispered. “But, no, you can t.

  “Hear her out, huh?” Paul interjected.

  Michael turned to look at her as she gathered up her shawl from the floor of the tent and cocooned it about her shoulders and upper body, then hugged her arms to her chest. She began to pace and he watched her—her long blond hair would swing to the left, her skirts to the right, and then vice-versa, as she walked. “I can take Annie’s pistol and go to Father Rourke’s truck. If it is unguarded, I will drive the truck here. If it is guarded, I will do something so it is not guarded any longer.” Paul laughed. Madison stared at him a moment, then swept her hair back

  from her face, continuing to talk. “I will return here and Paul and I can help you Michael—into the truck. We can then go to Captain Dodd and ask for the return of our guns. If he does not, well, then we shall steal them.” And she nodded her head, as if deciding something, and then she smiled. “Is this good?”

  Paul Rubenstein’s face lit with a grin as Michael watched him. Paul laughed. “You know, Michael, your dad was right. We’ll make a Rourke out of her yet.” And Paul seemed to weigh the derringer in his hand. “All right, Madison—this is an American Derringer Corporation .45 ACP 0/U derringer. John—Father Rourke, like you call him—he showed me once how these big-bore derringers work. The trick is to make sure the firing pins are set so the bottom barrel goes off first. That’ll be your most accurate shot.”

  “Yes, Paul.”

  Chapter Thirty

  John Rourke carried a briefcase—many men he had seen throughout The Complex carried similar briefcases. But John Rourke doubted that the contents were similar at all. In the briefcase was his Metalifed and Mag-Na-Por
ted six-inch Colt Python .357, and with it Safariland speedloaders loaded with Federal 158-grain semi-jacketed soft points. With it as weU were the twin stainless Detonics Scoremaster .45s he had liberated from The Place—there had been no way to return them, no one to return them to. Spare magazines for these as well as spare magazines for the twin stainless Detonics Combat Masters in the double Alessi shoulder rig under his waist-length jacket were in the briefcase as well.

  The briefcase was heavy.

  As he walked the narrow, spotless sidewalks, he could see ahead of him Frau Mann and Natalia and his wife, Sarah, the three women dressed to kill and out, it would have seemed, for nothing but a casual stroll. How Frau Mann was armed, he did not know. But Natalia’s twin stainless L-Frame .357s were in the large leather-looking purse that hung so innocent-seeming from her left shoulder. The silenced PPK/S would be there as well. He knew where the Bali-Song was: under an improvised elastic garter inside her left thigh.

  Sarah—the Trapper Scorpion she had adopted between

  The Night of The War and the time he, John Rourke, had finally located his wife and two children. It was in her purse, and with it the battered, rust pitted 1911A1 she had carried since The Night of The War.

  Rourke stopped at a shop window. He spoke German better than he read it, but the books in the shop window all seemed to have been written by the leader or written about the leader. Rourke saw his reflection smiling back at him from the glass—such books might soon become collector’s items. And past his own reflection, curiously superimposed over a poster of the very Hitlerlike face of the leader, he could see the reflection of Wolfgang Mann, although he would not have recognized it had he not known. Mann wore a tight twenty-fifth century version of a business suit, the suit having seen vastly better days. A white wig and false mustache and a crushed cap, stooping shoulders and a cane accentuating the appearance of age. Mann’s face would be the most recognizable and therefore had to be the one that was altered.