Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Page 18

  “You’re tellin’ me?” Paul grinned. He was stuffing all the spare magazines he had into his pockets. “This is crazy, but we don’t have any choice.”

  “Just don’t get on any airplanes, guys.”

  “We’re gonna have to play it straight, Michael—otherwise it’ll lead that major back to you, and when your dad and Natalia do show up here, there won’t be anybody to get ‘em out. We’ll be cool.”

  Paul slipped a black-hafted Gerber Mkll fighting knife under his tunic as well, Hammerschmidt doing the same, having adopted the knife as his own after Michael had given him one. “Gonna be up to you and Maria now,” Paul said, starting for the rear of the truck bed. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, Michael, but I will. I know you want Karamatsov dead for causing the death of your wife and the baby. But that isn’t why we came here. Right?”

  Michael Rourke clapped his and his father’s best friend on the shoulder. “Right. You’ve been hanging around with my father too long. You’re beginning to think like him.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “That’s how I meant it.” Michael Rourke clasped Paul Rubenstein’s right hand for a moment, then released it. Then he shook Otto Hammerschmidt’s hand as well. “Ahh—”

  “I know.” Paul grinned. ” ‘Dark of the moon,’ right?” “You’ve got it.”

  Rubenstein started through the tarp, Michael calling to him and to Otto Hammerschmidt. “When you guys get back, don’t hang around here too long looking for us. We may have already pulled it off. If you don’t see us, rejoin Han and his men on the high ground.”

  Paul only nodded, Hammerschmidt shooting Michael and Maria a salute, then following Paul out of the truck. Maria stood beside Michael Rourke. “We might never see either of them again,” she whispered, a catch in her voice.

  “We’ll see them. You stay in the truck. I’m going back to check on the command tent again. They might be looking for female enlisted personnel out there too. So lay low.”

  “Lay low?”

  “Hide!” Michael smiled. He touched his lips to her forehead and started for the tarp covering the rear of the truck, but her arms came around him and she kissed him hard on the mouth and he held her tight against him for an instant longer. He had lost one woman that he had loved, always would love. He didn’t want to lose another. “Hide—do it!” And he left the truck, checking the positioning of the two Beretta pistols under his tunic. He had the uncomfortable feeling he might need them soon.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The Chinese with the bleeding gums and blistered forearms had led the way before, but now the woman named Martha had joined him, Rourke and Aldridge keeping to the rear of the mass of humanity for the first several minutes after they had entered the service tunnel, to guard against attack. But after they were well inside the tunnel, Rourke delegated some of the other escapees who had picked up AKM-96s to guard the rear, then with Aldridge worked his way forward.

  The deeper they trudged into the tunnel connecting the maintenance level to the Institute for Marine Studies, the hotter and more humid it became. Pipes were everywhere along the ceiling and walls and even along the floor, pipes carrying live steam in and electrical energy out, some of the pipe joints dribbling scalding-hot water, the floor awash in water several inches deep.

  They kept going. Rourke took the gym bag back from the young black woman who had volunteered to carry it for him. Her name was Lisa. She was a corporal, like Aldridge a United States Marine. “Who are you after? I mean, must be some friend.” And then she laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Rourke asked her.

  “I was just thinkin’. You did all this for us and you don’t even know us. I could see you riskin’ your life for a friend.”

  “She’d do the same for me, Lisa.” “A ‘she,’ huh?”

  Rourke smiled. “That’s not whv.”

  “You tell me something, Doctor Rourke?” “If I can,” Rourke said, stepping over a knot of pipes in the growing jumble of pipes, the water deepening too. “How come all the good guys are always spoken for?” Rourke didn’t know what to say to her… .

  The red lights, the rising vapors, the wet-earth smell of the place and the intense heat were like the vision of hell John Rourke had conjured in his mind when he had first read Dante. Each time the service tunnel took a bend, he kept expecting to see Virgil standing just beyond and inviting Rourke and the escapees to take the complete tour. Rourke had already decided he would decline the opportunity.

  And also beyond each bend, Rourke expected to see Kerenin’s troops waiting. It would not have taken a genius to guess the route Rourke and the others followed, Rourke realized. It was the only logical alternative. But as John Rourke had often realized, before the Night of the War and since, simply because something was logically obvious there was no reason to suppose it would be perceived as such.

  They kept moving, Rourke again checking the luminous black face of his Rolex, smudging steam away from the crystal with his thumb just to read it, neither the darkness nor the red light sufficiently intense to read it easily. And so, when he read the time, he had to hold his wrist up to where it nearly touched one of the ceiling-mounted emergency lights. And time was running out for Natalia, he realized. If Kerenin harmed her, he thought … And Lisa, still walking beside him, between him and Sam Aldridge, interrupted his thoughts. “You’re gonna break off from us and try and penetrate the officers’ complex?”

  “Yeah.” Rourke only nodded. The water made slapping sounds as he walked through it, the liberated Soviet boots leaking like sieves now.

  “You’re gonna need a backup, doctor. You did me a onod turn. T’ll dn on» for vmi Thov hurl mo nn tr, tUa

  officers’ quarters once. Hosed me down. Gave me one of those tacky-lookin’ blue pantsuits the women wear around here and let me air-dry while they transferred me. Some of the officers—sometimes they like something exotic, you know. Guess they figured black was exotic. But I saw the place real good. I can help.”

  “I can find my way,” Rourke told her good-naturedly. “But thanks for volunteering.”

  “You just don’t want any help.”

  “That’s not it,” Rourke told her.

  “Good—then I can go with you. Me and my new buddy.” And she slapped her open left palm against the forward portion of her AKM-96’s bullpup stock and the assault rifle rattled… .

  The tunnel opened ahead, the clouds of steam less intense and already a certain coolness in the air, Rourke shivering once as they walked on. Soon, he told himself. And inside his head, he almost whispered to Natalia, “Soon.” John Rourke quickened his pace… .

  Paul Rubenstein remembered Michael’s warning not to get aboard any airplanes. As he looked at Otto Hammerschmidt, he thought the German commando captain must be thinking the same thing. But there were aircraft waiting in the distance across the hardpack of the snowfield over which he, Hammerschmidt, and about 250 armed Russian soldiers marched. To board the planes? That seemed obvious.

  Trucks had taken them from the main camp to one of the smaller camps, Paul judging the travel distance as about two miles from the main camp. They had passed through the camp, tents erected there, but ordinary tents, not the fancy, hermetically sealed, climate-controlled kind used by the German forces and the similar ones used by the Russian forces. And there was a large crater around which the trucks transporting them had traveled, the

  crater scopped out with mounds of snow-splotched dirt near the rim and heavy construction equipment parked beside the mounds.

  And there were actual buildings, in various stages of construction, but all the shells at least looking nearly completed. And then there had been the trucks bearing the gas which Karamatsov had unearthed in Egypt and used against his own people to overthrow the government of the Soviet Underground City, the gas which acted only on males, causing them to become enraged animals obsessed only with killing.

  Paul had turned his eyes away from the hole in the tarp
through which he had viewed this and tried to think what it reminded him of.

  As he marched now beside Otto Hammerschmidt in ragged formation toward the airplanes, he still tried to remember but could not… .

  Annie Rourke Rubenstein slid her holsters forward a little and dug her hands into the slit pockets of her ankle-length, heavy woolen skirt. She was becoming impatient with waiting for the Chairman’s promised escort.

  The Chinese guards inside the tunnel, which lay beyond the monorail platform on which she stood with a lovely, English-speaking Chinese girl, had more than once stared at her. The strange race, she supposed, or even the heavy clothes. Particularly the guns. The Detonics Scoremaster .45 her father had given her was at her right hip, the Beretta 92F 9mm at her left. The rest of her gear—her backpack, her heavy coat, her heavy shawl, her M-16— was piled on the platform near her.

  “Ma-Lin?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Rubenstein?”

  “How long have we been here?”

  “Five minutes, I believe.” And the Chinese girl consulted her delicate-looking watch by rolling back the storm cuff of her jacket. “Indeed. It is five minutes almost exactly since we disembarked from the monorail.”

  Annie nodded. Ma-Lin wore heavy pants and a heavy sweater and a light, storm-sleeved jacket over the sweater, a knapsack and a long, heavy-looking, fur-ruffed coat on the platform near Annie’s own gear. “You didn’t have to come with me. I’m a married woman. I don’t need a chaperone.”

  Ma-Lin smiled. “I was ordered to accompany you by the Chairman himself. And I was greatly honored to be chosen, Mrs. Rubenstein.”

  “Do you work in Intelligence?”

  Ma-Lin only smiled.

  Annie felt the corners of her mouth turn down. An escort that wasn’t coming. A chaperone who was a spy. “Great,” she murmured.

  “What is great, if I may be so bold, Mrs. Rubenstein?”

  “What?”

  “What is great?”

  “Nothing’s great.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’m getting angry—and not at you. My husband and my brother are out there somewhere and they’re looking for my father and one of my ‘family,’ who are also out there.” A monorail car was coming in to the station. “And I’m just supposed to stand here and be calm and ladylike. That’s a pile of bullshit. And I’m just about—”

  She wheeled toward the arriving car, the sound—not one of the mechanical ones—startling her, somehow filling her with hope. It was the sound of a dog barking.

  Hrothgar, bounding toward her, almost knocking her over as the animal stood on its hind legs, trying to lick her face.

  And then she saw him, his green tunic, the high boots, the staff that was almost as tall as he was. The Icelandic policeman Bjorn Rolvaag. He stood, filling the doorway of the monorail for an instant, then stepped from the car to the platform, the car shaking behind him, his massive weight gone from it. His voice was calm, even, and he smiled at her.

  “Annie.”

  Behind Rolvaag were a half-dozen Chinese troops in what looked like full cold-weather field gear.

  Rolvaag whistled faintly, quickly, and Hrothgar bounded away from her, toward him. And she ran into Rolvaag’s arms and let him hug her tight.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Lisa, the U.S. Marine corporal—John Rourke had never caught her last name—crouched behind one of the specimen cases, a solitary red light illuminating the museum hall. The doors leading into the entryway were still open, the way Rourke had left them after making his escape from the shark pens.

  Rourke touched the woman on her bare left arm, then started forward in a low crouch, the AKM-96 tight in both fists. They had entered through a back door leading from a narrow stairwell into a small office, perhaps the office of the curator, a partially completed exhibit drawing on the desk along with trays of paperwork. When they had entered the gallery, Rourke had noted with satisfaction that the watertight door he had secured between the shark pen area and the display hall was still secured.

  They had left Aldridge and the remaining escapees to continue on toward the submarine pens and escape, Captain Aldridge vowing that once he and his band had reached the dome beneath which the Soviet fleet was housed, they would create the noisiest and most attention-getting diversion possible.

  Martha had estimated the travel time, unless they encountered serious resistance, as under fifteen minutes.

  Rourke stood beside the doors now, the entry hall just beyond. He had counted seconds, not trusting that there would be sufficient light by which to view the face of his watch.

  “Now,” he whispered, stepping through the doors slowly, the Soviet rifle in a hard-assault position.

  He started to turn toward Lisa, to call her out, but the

  black Marine was beside him A bank of three red emergency lights bathed the entry hall in blood-tinged gray shadow, the entrance to the walkway and street beyond nearly as dark.

  And suddenly, Rourke realized what he had done. In disabling the primary lighting system, he had turned off the artificial sunlight, however it was made to work, which illuminated the domes. Outside, beyond the doors, it was “night.”

  Hugging the wall as he moved, he started for the doors, Lisa beside him. As yet, there was no sound of the diversionary action promised by Aldridge. “Don’t worry,” Lisa hissed beside him, the top of her curly-haired head not quite even with his shoulder. “Captain Aldridge‘11 deliver, doctor. Pretty soon, you’re gonna have one hell of a disturbance.”

  “We’re gonna need it,” Rourke told her.

  He had formulated a plan, if it could be called that. But he needed panic for it to work.

  They were beside the doors leading to the walkway now and as he reached to touch the doors, he heard the sound of an explosion… .

  Natalia had been allowed to leave the bed, Kerenin sending in two female Marine Spetznas, both women powerfully built and armed with Sty-20 pistols. She had been given nothing to wear, and so she had wrapped the blanket from the bed around her, then used the bathroom. After all the time waiting, it was difficult to do what she had to do, the presence of the two armed women making it worse. One of the women smiled at her. It was not a smile of friendship, but more like a smile of lust. Natalia told the woman, “You would have to kill me first, sergeant. And then Major Kerenin would be very angry with you.” Natalia had closed her eyes then, pretending no one was there, at last relieving herself.

  The women flanked her now on either side as they started back from the bathroom along the small hall

  toward the bedroom. If these were a senior major’s accommodations, she would not have been eager to see enlisted barracks.

  The moment the two women had first entered the bedroom, the smiling one watched while the other woman cut the bonds which had trapped Natalia in the bed—for how long?—Natalia had determined this might be her best possible chance for escape. The unsmiling woman wasn’t that much taller than she, although considerably heavier. But the uniform would serve.

  Her blanket tight around her now, she stopped beside the bedroom door, the smiling woman reaching past her to open the door. An alarm sounded, from somewhere beyond the confines of the apartment. The smiling woman hesitated, looking toward the apartment door further along the hallway. Natalia did not hesitate.

  The blanket would have to fall.

  Natalia’s right hand caught the smiling woman’s right wrist, Natalia’s right knee smashing up into the elbow joint, the heel of Natalia’s left hand hammering up and out against the base of the second woman’s nose, killing her instantly. The smiling woman screamed, falling away, a Sty-20 pistol in the woman’s left fist, a curse on her lips.

  Natalia wheeled half right. Still unsteady on her feet, her right hand went to the doorknob for support as the sole of her left foot snapped out, catching the smiling woman’s gunhand and knocking the pistol clear of her grasp, the Sty-20 skidding across the bare floor. Natalia’s left foot slapped out again, the hee
l of her foot contacting the smiling woman’s throat, crushing the larynx. The smiling woman gasped, choked, Natalia getting her balance as the door knob against which her right hand rested fell away and she herself started to fall, inward, into the bedroom.

  Her right shoulder hit the bedroom floor.

  To her feet—almost. The muzzle of an assault rifle, inches from her face. “Major—you are very good!” Kerenin’s voice. Natalia started to go for the muzzle of the assault rifle, but there was a popping sound and some

  thing struck her right breast and she screamed.

  She got to her knees. She could see Kerenin’s booted feet, hear him whisper. “We have a variety of special-purpose rounds for the Sty-20, major. The one I just used is a special psycho-de-inhibitor that is combined with a mild muscle relaxant. The sensation is supposedly quite pleasant, really.”

  Natalia threw herself across the floor toward him. And then she started to laugh as she spread out her arms like wings and cooed, “I am flying!”

  Kerenin was talking to her, but she didn’t understand about what. But she knew that his hands were on her breasts… .

  Paul Rubenstein’s feet were cold, just standing there in the snow within fifty yards of the cargo helicopters. Their rotors had shut down. The windows were steamed and he could not see inside.

  The abrupt major who had stopped Michael, Otto (beside him in the ranks now), and himself had two other officers with him, the junior officers shouting commands Paul Rubenstein could not understand. The forward ranks broke off left and the ranks just in front of him and behind him started right, Paul joining the men around them, Hammerschmidt still beside him. He ran, not knowing where, but as part of a herd, after a second or so detecting some order in the chaos. The leading ranks had broken up by squads to ring the cargo helicopters to the north side of the field, and the element Paul and Otto Hammerschmidt were part of doing the same with the helicopters on the south end of the field.