Survivalist - 15 - Overlord Read online

  Rourke had wanted to stay with Sarah, but could not, and because of her pregnancy, she could not accompany him. He had first returned to the Retreat in the mountains of

  northeastern Georgia, taking Michael with him, Paul and Annie staying behind in Hekla with Sarah, Maria Leuden staying with them.

  There had been no desire to visit the site of Eden Base — there was bad feeling still there which had not healed. But soon he would have to return, for the forthcoming wedding of Kurinami and Halversen, friends he valued.

  At the Retreat —he could only spare two days and a night —he had resupplied, both the Retreat and himself, bringing to it cases of the German manufactured ammunition for his handguns and long guns, the ammunition manufactured to be the duplicate of the Federal ammunition he had trusted and used and with which he had originally stocked the Retreat. Thousands of rounds now—the Germans made for him as much as he wished — he secreted with Michael’s help. New food supplies, new tires for his vehicles which the Germans had manufactured to the tolerances he had specified, new belts, new gaskets, everything that in five centuries could have become damaged or potentially unusable he now replaced, the Germans willing to meet his every need with their manufacturing expertise. As their leader Deiter Bern had said, a small reward to be given to a man who had almost single-handedly brought New Germany democracy. And, most sought after of all the fresh supplies, fresh meat, bombarded with radiation to kill bacteria and then frozen for storage.

  Michael had asked, “Why are you doing this? Re-stocking the Retreat?”

  And, John Rourke had told his son, “It pays to plan ahead.”

  Michael had asked nothing more.

  Rourke had taken some necessities from the Retreat as well —more of the cigars Annie had faithfully made for him. They somehow tasted better than the non-carcinogenic types the Germans produced, several thousand of which were now stored in the Retreat in his freezers. A new lensatic compass,

  his broken during the fighting at the Soviet Underground City, an occurrence he had only realized long after it had taken place.

  And a new knife.

  They had flown back from the Retreat to Iceland, then with Paul and Natalia as well, Rourke and his son had returned to the icy wastelands of Europe, Rourke first briefing Sarah and Annie as to the new supplies he had laid in at the Retreat.

  And then Michael, Maria Leuden, and a team of German commandos, had gone on ahead.

  Rourke’s head ached from staring through the binoculars, as he had almost without stop for more than an hour, with no sleep in the last thirty hours, with the fatigue of combat so recently endured.

  Rourke looked at Natalia beside him as he set the binoculars down on the snow-covered rocks in which they crouched. “You watch that recon patrol for a while.”

  “Why don’t you take something for your headache, John?”

  Rourke only nodded. He carried painkillers with his medical kit, but the kit, his musette bag with its spare magazines and other necessities and his assault rifle were at the base of the rocks with the Germans who waited there out of sight of the Karamatsov army or the slow moving reconnaissance patrol which was attempting to rejoin it.

  Instead, Rourke unsheathed the knife he had taken from storage at the Retreat from the heavy, black leather scabbard on the belt of his Levis. He had saved this knife for Michael, but with the knife given Michael by old Jon at the Hekla Community, Michael would have no need of it. He began to unscrew the knife’s buttcap.

  He felt Natalia’s eyes for an instant and he looked over to her, but she had already looked away, peering through the German field glasses she had adopted. But she spoke. “It’s curious.”

  “What’s curious?”

  “That knife the old gentleman at Hekla gave Michael —a copy of the knife that you had saved for Michael, only smaller. But a copy of the same maker’s work. I mean, it is a strange coincidence.”

  “Quality endures,” Rourke nodded, slipping the transparent plastic tube from inside the knife’s hollow handle, uncorking one end, the end nearest the painkillers, the water purification tablets and the antibiotic tablets.

  Inside the knife’s hollow handle, he had placed other items of possible necessity: a spare extractor that would fit either of the twin stainless Detonics pistols he carried, or for that matter, fit the Scoremasters now frequently carried in his belt; hooks and sinkers (an old survival” habit) in the event somewhere on earth fish still remained, the nylon cord which wrapped the machined steel tube that formed the handle the necessary line; a sealed plastic capsule of lubricant; waterproof and windproof matches; an emergency suture.

  A pouch on the outside of the sheath body accommodated a small sharpening stick and a still smaller magnesium ingot, a few shavings of the magnesium sufficient to ignite a fire even in conditions of extreme dampness.

  The painkillers were essentially the modern equivalent of extra strength acetaminophen tablets.

  Medicine had made great strides through the research of the scientists of New Germany in the five centuries since the Great Conflagration. But headaches, along with the common cold, athletes foot and warts still eluded comprehensive cure.

  The technology for delivery of medication to the system had also advanced. The painkiller tablets were as small in size as the water purification tablets.

  He needed no water to swallow the pills.

  “Satisfied?” Rourke asked Natalia, smiling.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “How much longer?”

  John Rourke glanced at the black-faced Rolex Submariner on his left wrist. It was twelve past the hour. “Three

  minutes.”

  Natalia nodded, her eyes still seemingly glued to the binoculars.

  It was a psychological victory which they hoped for, and a tactical victory in that however much Vladmir Karamatsov’s march could be slowed was that much more time in which to anticipate his final objective and somehow take steps to counter it. Time for Michael to perhaps locate Karamatsov’s objective.

  Rourke eyed the Rolex again. A minute and a few seconds remained. He turned his body around, crouching now to peer over the rocks, but not using the binoculars. It was too early in the medication’s cycle for the headache to even begin to subside.

  With the naked eye, the snake of Karamatsov’s column appeared more wormlike, and the twenty-four men of the second reconnaissance patrol seemed little more than stick figures as they struggled upward to reach the ridgeline. He was almost glad the time had nearly arrived. The exertions of the stick figures, in vain, would soon be ended.

  Rourke looked still again to his watch—the sweep second hand was moving inexorably toward the twelve.

  Faintly, perceptible to him perhaps only because he listened for the sound, came the whining roar of German fighter aicraft, the entire squadron of six which had been sent from Argentina to aid their efforts against the Russians. Rourke had not yet flown one. And six were all the Germans could spare, attempting to defend their own homeland in what had been Argentina, Eden Base in Georgia in what had been the United States and the people of Iceland, all from possible attack from Karamatsov’s as yet unaccounted for forces in the Western Hemisphere.

  Rourke craned his neck toward the sound, not bothering with binoculars, seeing the gradually growing dark shapes coming in low over the horizon, like streaks of black smoke, growing disproportionately large as they passed overhead,

  Rourke’s eyes following them. “Duck!” Rourke commanded, pulling Natalia down, his right arm coiling around her shoulders, drawing her head against his chest. But he kept his own face just by the lip of the rocks, so he could see.

  The six fighter aircraft fired their machineguns, strafing the twenty-four man patrol, the stick figures scattering like leaves before a strong wind, the bodies tumbling along the defile, battering against the rocks below, all but one of the six aircraft flying on, the sixth fighter breaking off, half-barrel rolling, banking steeply, flying back. Rourke held Natalia tighter. The fight
er swept low, a contrail from one of the missile pods beneath the portside wing, and suddenly the defile seemed almost to vaporize, the fighter streaking over it as the black and orange fireball belched upward, the fighter vanishing in the direction of the five other fighters, toward Karamatsov’s column.

  John Rourke swept the binoculars up, peering through them, Natalia fully erect beside him now, Rourke standing as well, explosions starting in the distance. It would be hit and run, a single pass along the length of the column, then a return pass and then gone. But it would slow the inexorably advancing snake as it made its way —toward what, Rourke wondered?

  Chapter Two

  Michael Rourke stepped down from the German jeep-like vehicle almost before it had stopped, the gravel still crunching beneath its wheels as it settled, crunching beneath his combat boots as he stepped away, his left hand coming to rest on the butt of the four-inch Model 629 Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum. He moved his hand away. It was becoming a habit and somehow he had always found himself resisting the formation of habit.

  The granite spires and upswept walls of the Greater Khingan Range rose before him, an offset spinal column separating Inner Mongolia from Manchuria, separating one near subarctic expanse of nothingness from another. They had rolled the jeep-like vehicle from its carry position inside the largest of the three helicopters that morning and decided to examine the terrain from the ground as opposed to the method, the search pattern, which had been used since they had first set out.

  Hammerschmidt’s musical baritone habitually ill-concealed amusement, as it ill-concealed it now. “A wild duck chase, hmm?”

  “Goose,” Michael automatically corrected. “But you’re

  probably right, Otto.”

  “Then where are the Communists going?” It was Maria Leuden who spoke now, her voice musical as well, deeper than a woman’s voice often was, a throaty alto. Michael turned and looked at her. Her gray-green eyes were barely visible above the scarf which swathed the lower portion of her lovely face against the cold, the hood of the parka all but obscuring the dark brown hair except for the few stray wisps which fell across her forehead and caught in an errant gust of wind now as she continued to speak. “Karamatsov cannot be taking his army just nowhere. That would be irrational.”

  “Most likely, yes,” Michael agreed. “If he is moving without a definite geographic goal, we’ll all have been operating under a misapprehension, a potentially dangerous one.”

  They were near what, five centuries ago, had been the city of Harbin, northeastern China’s most important industrial base. But he doubted any of it would remain now, no gutted ruins.

  But Harbin had drawn him. From.his readings in the endless nights of the long years during which his father had returned to the Sleep, he had learned that Harbin had been a “Russian” city in the China of old, the Russians and the industry drawn there by Harbin’s uniqueness as a railhead. He had wondered, when Karamatsov’s line of march had seemed to indicate the direction of China, if somehow Harbin or its environs still possessed something Russian, or Russian lusted.

  Karamatsov — the name still filled Michael Rourke with hatred. It was on Karamatsov’s orders, whether directly given or merely established as policy that the suicide raid on the Hekla Community in Iceland had taken place. And as a result of the raid, Michael’s wife, Madison, and their unborn child had died.

  His father had spoken little of the desire for vengeance which Michael attempted not at all to conceal. His father,

  almost more than he, wished vengeance as well. Karamatsov was Natalia’s husband and tormentor. Karamatsov was a relic of the five centuries ago war which had nearly destroyed all of humanity and which was still being fought. Karamatsov was incarnate evil.

  To Michael, Karamatsov was all of these things, but they mattered not at all. Karamatsov was the man responsible for the death of Madison and their baby. For this reason alone — none of the others really mattering—Karamatsov would die. Michael did not desire conflict with his father over the ultimate fate of Vladmir Karamatsov, the Hero Marshal of the reborn Soviet Union, but it would not be his father, John Thomas Rourke, who would kill Vladmir Karamatsov. It would be him. And the desire so consumed him that he was prepared to fight his father for the right.

  Maria Leuden’s voice interrupted his ruminating. “He must have a purpose.”

  Michael looked at her again. She was obvious about her feelings for him. Love, perhaps, Michael thought. But the memory of Madison Rourke mitigated against that now, perhaps always. There was always sex without love, and he did not dismiss the idea out of morality. There was, though, in sex, the risk of love. And he would not be so destroyed within himself again until he had eradicated the cause of this destruction — forever.

  “Otto,” Michael told the captain of commandos from New Germany in Argentina, “signal the gunships that we’re going up into those mountains.” It would have helped, Michael Rourke mused, if he had known what he was looking for.

  He looked into the eyes of Fraulein Doctor Maria Leuden, archeologist. What he saw in her eyes—love for him —was not what he was looking for at all. Not now …

  Bjorn Rolvaag stroked Hrothgar behind the ears and the massive animal seemed almost to purr, although purring was

  not something a dog could really do.

  He sat in the back of the vehicle, watching, slightly nervous as he always was in one of these modern contrivances, but less so in this one which bumped and josded over the rocky ground than in those which flew like great ugly birds in the sky. There were birds in Hekla, in aviaries. He understood that they had once flown freely in the skies of the entire earth. A pleasant thing to see, he thought.

  He watched the young man who successfully ignored him, the young man an identical duplicate of his father, the great John Rourke, who seemed at once to ignore everything yet notice everything. The boy and the man —both men, though Rolvaag understood not at all truly how father and son could be well less than a decade apart in ages —were as alike as snowflakes falling from the gray winter sky when viewed at great distance. But he wondered, if like snowflakes when viewed very closely, would differences emerge.

  Bjorn Rolvaag watched Maria Leuden as well. The German was very beautiful, though he considered the trousers she wore, trousers like a man might wear only tighter fitting, to be immodest. And it was evident, when she looked at Michael Rourke, that she loved him. Bjorn Rolvaag somehow felt pity for her because of that. She spoke to him — Rolvaag— in dulcet tones, the words something of which he could understand precious lhtle. But she seemed kind, and her voice was like the sound of melting ice welling up as cool water and breaking free in the spring. She would stroke his dog, Hrothgar, beneath the chin, behind the ears, the careless attention of her fingers something the animal seemed to adore. There was great love in her.

  And for this, he felt all the more the sorry for her. Bjorn Rolvaag closed his eyes, sleeping something that would be required when soon this contraption would no longer be able to go on and they would walk as men were meant to do …

  Maria Leuden huddled inside the coat, but the cold came from within her. She glanced beside her as her gloveless left hand stroked the fur of the mighty animal, wolf-like but so much like a child, eager for affection. Hrothgar showed no sign of sleeping, though his master was apparendy of a different mind. The green clad man of Iceland’s lids masked his eyes and his breathing was regular, even. Despite the jerky movements of the vehicle over the roadless rockstrewn terrain, he seemingly slept. She wished she could.

  Her eyes drifted forward, settling for a moment on Captain Otto Hammerschmidt, his massive shoulders, his gloved hands smothering the steering wheel. But her gaze shifted. Michael Rourke. His head was obscured by the hood of his parka. His shoulders were equally as massive as those of Hammerschmidt, both men together seeming to be dwarfed by the massiveness of Bjorn Rolvaag who, along with his dog, occupied the rear seat. But unlike Rolvaag, Michael showed no signs of being asleep. And unlike
Hammerschmidt, there was a tenseness which seemed to radiate from him even when he sat unmoving, an energy waiting to change from its kinetic state at the slightest provocation.

  She had not said to him, “Michael — please make love to me.” But she had let him know in other ways that she wished that he would, would beg that he would if she thought that her entreaties would make him do so. And she felt terribly brazen for this, and at once terribly embarrassed. She had never been what some of the older novels in English which she had read—underground books —called “loose.” There had been plenty of men who had tried to make her their own. She had not wanted them. She wondered if it were somehow poetic justice or divine retribution that the man she desired with all of her being was intentionally cold to her.

  But his coldness did not alter her desire.

  She closed her eyes. She could see Michael Rourke. Tall. Straight. Dark brown hair, full. The eyes — penetrating.

  Dark. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt and he moved with the grace of an animal rather than a mere man. His hands—when he touched her for whatever the reason she felt inside herself something she had never felt before.

  If she kept her eyes closed, the image of Michael might remain. And perhaps it would carry her into sleep.

  Chapter Three

  There was an advantage to the dresses worn by the women of Iceland, Annie Rourke noted. Though her mother’s pregnancy was showing, the high waisted dresses Sarah Rourke wore effectively camouflaged her condition. Annie longed for the same condition, but had agreed with Paul that they would not have their first child until the thing with Karamatsov was over.

  She felt cheated, having to stay behind while Natalia and even the German girl Maria Leuden went into the field. In part it was to keep her mother company. In part that was the reason that she stayed. But in part it was to keep a Rourke presence in Iceland among the peaceful people who were its inhabitants and the New Germany allies who were its guardians.