Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins Read online

  But Paul was already moving, hurtling his body weight from the rear against the guard’s left knee.

  The guard stumbled, toppled forward, and Gunther Spitz buttstroked the man across the side of the head.

  Four men were down inside the trolley, only the officer who led the party still in motion. John Rourke took steps to correct that problem, dodging the muzzle of the officer’s rifle, slapping it aside. Rourke thrust forward with his knife through the protective suit and just below the respirator unit, into the throat.

  Rourke pulled back on the knife, Rourke’s right foot snapping upward, its instep catching the officer in the testicles. As the man’s body doubled forward, Rourke stabbed the knife downward just below the nape of the neck, finishing him quickly.

  John Rourke stepped back, moved over the just-dead man and unlimbered his own HK-91 from another of the bodies, this one draped half over the back of a chair. It was suffocatingly warm inside the environment suit after the exertion, but Rourke had no way of knowing whether he could risk removing the protective mask, even for a few seconds, just to cool his skin. Not knowing, he dismissed the idea.

  Rourke was already down the steps, racking the bolt of the HK just in case the chamber had been cleared. The already chambered round flew outward, onto the track bed.

  But there was no need to fire. Between Paul and Spitz and Mintz all was quiet on the platform.

  Rourke held a finger to his lips, signalling silence. Their radio transmissions might be monitored by the enemy.

  Rourke jumped down from the trolley and onto the platform then from the platform to the track bed. He retrieved the rifle cartridge—he’d always believed in the old aphorism about wasting not and wanting not— then clambered back up to the platform.

  John Rourke pointed toward the trolley, resisting the impulse to shout, “All aboard!” But it would have been inappropriate, at any event.

  As they started up, Rourke removed the magazine from the HK. He reinserted the loose round he’d retrieved. There were two magazines bound together with a clip, giving him twenty rounds, then another twenty, very fast.

  As he reset the HK’s safety and started about the business of separating the audioanimatronic motorman from the trolley’s controls, Rourke judged that he could well be needing all the firepower he could lay his hands on here. And that might well not be enough.

  And the man who looked like, sounded like and claimed to be Generaloberst Wolfgang Mann climbed aboard.

  Forty-Seven

  Thorn Rolvaag needed sleep, but he needed answers still more. And analysis of the data at hand via computer modelling was the only hope.

  The computer room aboard the USS Cherokee, the United States Navy’s only floating laboratory, was immense, big enough to house the old mainframe computers of the mid-Twentieth Century. He’d seen a vid-tape of a still wonderfully funny film from that period, which had starred Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. In the film, there was such a computer (or more likely, a mocked-up representation). Other films of the period, as well as still photographs, had shown these huge machines which dominated entire walls, running on enormous reels of magnetic tape.

  This room within the bowels of the submarine USS Cherokee was enormous not because of the computers but because of the number of very small laptop-sized machines like that on the desk before him. The room could service up to one hundred researchers each working at a separate task, each drawing (simultane

  ously if need be) from the same memory banks, working independently or on line.

  But Thorn Rolvaag was the only person in the room, his machine the only one turned on, his needs the only ones the memory banks served.

  A man given over to panic would have looked at the enormity of the trench beneath the Pacific and declared in desperation that here, at last, was the beginning of the end of the world. If the trench kept spreading that was exactly what might result, of course. But, Thorn Rolvaag was not given over to flights of doomsaying. He saw a problem and took steps to correct it. Such would be thescase with this trench.

  If it continued—it was expanding at an ever-growing rate—it would grow exponentially in length and, in a relatively short period of time, reach the end of the Pacific Plate and impact against the North American Plate, around the new coast of North America where, Before the Night of the War, the San Andreas fault had been. The resistance given by the North American Plate would either stop the fissure completely or, as Rolvaag assumed to be more likely, cause it to split and spread.

  That was the scenario for terrestrial destruction, that the entire Ring of Fire would go. In that event, any number of deadly possibilities loomed, some scenarios clearly indicating that there would be the cessation of all life on the planet.

  But, if the fissure could be blocked and closed before reaching the North American Plate, in a slow, controlled manner, then the fissure might be stopped.

  Disaster might be averted.

  The key to closing the fissure would be the successful employment of nuclear explosives. And that required no computer scenario. To convince the powers-that-be that nuclear devices could be utilized in a manner which matched their original intent—the peaceful use of atomic energy to create harbors, level terrain, help mankind—would be beyond Herculean. And it was frightening to realize that the United States, unless it used virtually every single nuclear missile at its command (including those seized from the Soviets more than a century ago, which would have to be upgraded for practical utility), would not have enough nuclear material to do the job.

  Small nuclear charges would have to be placed all along the hundreds of miles which the fissure already covered, and every day that went by would add to that number of required charges. If the United States used its entire inventory of nuclear weapons, Eden and her Nazi allies would attack, and the United States and the other members of the Trans-Global Alliance would be powerless to stalemate Eden and the Nazis, subsequently powerless to repel the inevitable invasion. Because Eden’s stockpile of nuclear material would be intact.

  Mankind was faced, Thorn Rolvaag realized, with its greatest challenge.

  Weeks would go by before the attempt to halt the growth of the fissure could be made, even if full cooperation were assured immediately.

  And, there would be a point of no return. If too great a quantity of nuclear explosives were utilized when the fissure reached the North American Plate, the same disastrous result would be precipitated as if the fissure reached the Plate.

  Thorn Rolvaag thought of his wife and children when he closed his eyes. Even with his eyes closed he could still see the computer monitor’s screen. The scenario the computer was running was what he had mentally labelled Megadeath. It was the scenario which called for the chain eruption of the volcanoes surrounding the Ring of Fire and the total destruction of the planet Earth.

  Forty-Eight

  The main body of sensing equipment was gone, with the enlisted man who had worn it, taken away along with the other enlisted personnel.

  But there was a small, hand-held sensing unit that Doctor Mentz had. John Rourke was forced by circumstances to rely on that. While Rourke piloted the trolley car along its single rail through a rust-colored metal tube toward he knew not what, Mentz took readings. “The atmosphere, aside from having rather high traces of ferrous substances, seems perfectly normal. There is no presence of gas.”

  Rourke nodded, made his decision. Spaced every ten yards apart, there were glowing yellow lights, illuminating the tunnel, the lights inset directly overhead. These lights, coupled with the yellow headlight of the trolley itself, combined to make huge, ghostly looking shadows all around them, even inside the car (which was also illuminated in yellow lights). Rourke pulled off his mask.

  Rourke’s face felt suddenly cold, and the rush to his

  senses made his head swim. He controlled his breathing carefully as he instructed, “Unsuit as much as you need to for whatever additional weapons and gear you think you’ll need then resuit,
wearing those materials on the outside. The chance for contamination will have to be run.” And that was the real danger. The more Rourke considered what had been encountered atop the summit, especially in light of the shoulder brassards worn by the soldiers here, the greater was his certitude that the lethal hallucinogenic gas was utilized as a means of execution, not as a weapon. The suits the men had worn, although there had been no time for detailed examination of one of the dead, seemed to be entirely superfluous, at least from any practical considerations.

  A society isolated from all the rest of humankind for well over six centuries would have developed its own immunology and perhaps its own diseases, to which other humans would not be immune. That was obvious—the more restricted the gene pool, the better the chances. Several genetically related diseases, for example, had been outbred at Mid-Wake. Among blacks, for example, sickle cell anemia had ceased to exist.

  Paul was beside Rourke already stripping down enough of the protective suit which he wore to access the Browning High Powers, his knife and other gear.

  While Rourke still controlled the trolley he called back to Spitz. “Spitz, those sealed orders. Will you open them now and read them to us?”

  Spitz said, “And if I am ordered to keep the contents from you, Herr Doctor?”

  “You’ll have to make that decision yourself. I need to know what’s inside. I will know. We didn’t come here for some crazy genetic scheme based on cloning Adolf Hitler. That may be a fringe benefit as your Dr. Zimmer sees it, but not the real reason. That should be obvious by now. We came here because of this place, not Adolf Hitler’s remains. If those remains are here, they’re only a secondary objective to Zimmer. When this fellow claiming to be Wolfgang Mann announced those coordinates to the pilot of the V-stol, our mission here was done. Zimmer sent us as decoys, to find the way into this place so Zimmer’s personnel can follow us and penetrate the facility themselves. You have to understand that by now.”

  “You are, it would appear, correct, Herr Doctor. But surely Herr Doctor Zimmer’s plan need not be readily discernible to us. We only serve—”

  Paul, out of his mask by now, said, “Give it a rest, huh? What’s the matter with you? Your Herr Doctor Zimmer sent us all out to get killed, and you don’t care? I admire loyalty, but there’s loyalty and then there’s stupidity.”

  “I will open the orders.” Gunther Spitz declared, not sounding as though he had warmed to the idea at all. But perhaps despite being a Nazi, the man had some semblance of common sense. John Rourke glanced back over his right shoulder in the same instant that Spitz took from beneath his tunic a device about the size of a pocket calculator: It opened almost like a book. As it did so, there was the faintest hum.

  Rourke was already turning his eyes back toward the tunnel but from the corner of his eye he saw Paul starting to move. And then Dr. Mentz shouted, “Hauptsturmfuhrer!”

  Rourke instinctively dodged and dropped shouting

  to Paul, “Look out!”

  There was the pulse of a high-yield energy weapon. Rourke released the controls of the car, wheeled. The deadman’s switch was already starting to slow the car. Paul crouched midway between Rourke and the rear of the car near to the steps.

  “John!” Paul threw one of the two Browning High Powers he carried and John Rourke caught it—it was the second gun—not the battered old one Paul had carried since just after the Night of the War. Rourke racked its slide knowing that Paul would never have thrown the gun had it been chamber loaded.

  Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz was flat on the floor of the car. Dr. Mentz lay over him, the center of Mentz’s back burning from the close-range shot. And Mentz was obviously dead, the smell of burning flesh only slightly more nauseating than the exposed spinal column. There was a small energy pistol in the right hand of the man claiming to be Wolfgang Mann. Paul was shouting, “Hold it, Mann!”

  The imposter stabbed the pistol toward Paul. John Rourke fired over Paul’s shoulder hitting the man who claimed to be Wolfgang Mann twice in the chest, then twice more in the thorax, Rourke’s ears ringing with the flat cracks of the 9mm Parabellums in the confined space.

  “You killed Wolfgang Mann?” Paul was shouting.

  “No, I didn’t,” Rourke rasped, getting to his feet. “Paul. Stop the car. Brake control on the left just like an automobile.”

  “Right—but then who the hell is—”

  Spitz was getting to his feet, recoiling from the smell of burning flesh, Dr. Mentz’s body still smoldered as

  Spitz crawled from beneath it.

  “What is this!” Spitz shouted.

  “This is a clone of Wolfgang Mann,” Rourke said as he moved past Spitz, stepped over the corpse of Dr. Mentz and looked down at the man he had just shot to death. “A clone, with some sort of implant in his head that allowed him to be programmed for certain responses. When you opened your orders—some sort of computer?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you opened the case or powered up—I imagine it powers up when opened. But that was a signal for the clone of Generalobest Mann here to kill you and anyone else from the party that he could. Remember when he recited coordinates just as we were taken prisoner? That wasn’t a flash of inspiration for the heroic aircrew that would go for help. That was to alert Dr. Zimmer’s invasion force, which is standing by somewhere near here.

  “And,” Rourke added, “we’ll be caught in the middle and you know too much, Spitz, so if we make it out of here alive, ZimmerTi want you dead anyway. Zimmer’s ability to clone human beings is a power he’ll jealously guard and it’s only a power as long as it’s a secret.”

  “This is madness.”

  John Rourke ignored Spitz’s comment, his concentration focused on the clone of Wolfgang Mann. Skin elasticity was a little too good for a person of Mann’s biological age, even considering the salubrious effects of the Sleep. Already Rourke was dragging the dead body toward the trolley door.

  “Why are we stopping?” Paul called back.

  John Rourke was acting on a hunch. And he said as

  much. “If I were Zimmer and I were diabolical enough—not to mention sufficiently talented—to clone a human being, then utilize computerlike microcircuitry in order to program certain responses, I’d equip my weapon with a fail-safe device which could itself be turned into a weapon when needed.”

  “I do not understand you!” Spitz almost shouted. “This is madness!”

  “Perhaps. Help me roll him out. Much as I’d like to examine him, I don’t think there’ll be time. Paul!”

  “Yes, John?”

  “Be ready to step on it when I tell you to. We may need to distance ourselves as much as possible from this body. And keep down low. If I’m right, no telling how powerful an explosive might be inside some body cavity or another.”

  “Yeah—right—”

  Paul worked the door control.

  Spitz, shaken, ashen-looking, grabbed the other end of the body, Rourke’s hands already under the armpits. They carried the dead man down and into the railbed. “Here. Place him over the rail. If he is a bomb, may as well get some good out of him. Come on. Hurry!” And together Rourke and the Nazi officer ran to the trolley and up the steps. “Go for it Paul.”

  The trolley started into motion, John Rourke swinging down in the stepwell, his eyes cast back toward the body they were leaving behind, but his face and body shielded. Almost two minutes had passed since bringing down the clone of Wolfgang Mann. The delay might be another sort of fail-safe device. Either that, Rourke realized, or he had read too much science fiction in years gone by and would have the proverbial egg all over his face.

  The explosion came, Rourke swinging back fully inside, body parts flying everywhere amid a burst of bright yellow light, the tunnel walls—metal—reverberating with it, the rail beneath the trolley vibrating, the noise all but deafening.

  As the noise subsided, Spitz gasped, “God in Heaven!”

  “More likely the work of a devil from hel
l,” John Rourke shouted back. The clone was, technically, an innocent man. Deitrich Zimmer had something else to pay for now.

  And John Rourke felt himself choking back tears which he did not wish to show, because he realized now that the woman he had seen, had thought was his wife Sarah, was—in all likelihood—not his wife at all but another of these, a clone of his wife’s flesh made to entrap him and eventually kill him.

  His own voice sounding odd to him, John Rourke managed to say, “We’d better get back into our masks and full protective clothing. If the enemy didn’t know we were loose, they’ll know it now. Our radios were off, but chances are the tunnels here are somehow monitored. They’d know of the explosion. They might use gas.”

  “What are we to do, Herr Doctor?”

  Rourke looked at the Hauptsturmfuhrer. “Let me see those sealed orders for starters. Then, we try to intercept the rest of your men. They were walked off, maybe to a trolley line paralleling this. I don’t know. Then we get the hell out of here for the time being. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves trapped in the middle of a war when both sides want us dead.”

  Paul started to laugh, the laughter tinged with obvious bitterness.

  John Rourke, fully inside the trolley now, the door closing behind him, just looked at his friend, not understanding for a moment.

  Paul said, “Some things change, but some things always stay the same, don’t they?”

  Forty-Nine

  At the first trolley station they neared, there were armed men standing on the platform. But the men were not soldiers.

  Rourke ordered, “Every ounce of speed this thing’s got, Paul, Spitz, stay by the rear end of the car!”

  The armed men wore dark blue slacks, light blue shirts, dark blue ties and blue hats with silver cap insignia and gleaming black visors. The gunbelts these men wore were the type John Rourke had last seen on Chicago Police Officers. Garrison straps with Jordan-style holsters. Each man had a revolver in his hand. And a badge on his chest.

  Behind the men were police barricades, painted blue. Behind those were huddled a few spectators. But beyond them lay a city.