Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Read online

  “John,” Paul called out. “Otto and I are right behind you.” Very slowly, so it wouldn’t appear to be the opening move in a gunfight, Paul extracted the battered Browning High Power he had carried almost since the Night of the War. He kept it tight in his right fist, beside his right thigh, as he started walking. Otto Hammerschmidt shifted his assault rifle forward.

  “Colonel—tell your men to allow the ladies inside through the gates and to leave the gates open.”

  “You will never escape here alive.”

  Michael stopped walking, turned, stared at Colonel Antonovitch. “I won’t?” And he started walking now

  straight for the KGB Corps colonel. Paul stopped, the High Power still at his right thigh, his eyes going to the gun Antonovitch held. Perhaps Antonovitch was one of the Elite Corps personnel who survived the Sleep with Karamatsov, or perhaps the Russian only had a fondness for more substantial-looking weapons than were made today. The gun in his right hand was some kind of Smith & Wesson double-action revolver, dully gleaming, stainless steel.

  Michael stopped a yard from Antonovitch. “You have six shots. Maybe you’ll get me with them before I kill you. But I seriously doubt it. Now—order your men to drive whatever rolling stock they have to just outside the gates of the main compound and then assist the internees to board the trucks. Order your men to get whatever blankets or warm clothing they have and provide these to the people as they board the trucks. Annie and the other two women will be driving Karamatsov’s gas outta here, right between those trucks with the internees and you. Anything goes wrong, Annie and the other women will make the gas tankers blow, and every man within a couple of square miles will be a homicidal maniac as soon as he gets a whiff of it. If you and I aren’t dead already, we will be. But most importantly to you, Karamatsov’s whole army might be destroyed. Now the question you’ve gotta ask yourself is this: would the Hero Marshal be less unhappy losing a bunch of unarmed people he was going to kill anyway and a couple of truckloads of his precious gas, or losing his whole army?” Michael hesitated a moment. Antonovitch said nothing. “Well? What’s it gonna be?” Michael asked, his voice low.

  Antonovitch began barking commands in Russian over his left shoulder, Paul Rubenstein tensed. He didn’t understand and neither did Michael, but posing as John Rourke, Michael was supposed to understand. When Antonovitch finished, a junior officer and two noncoms breaking off from the ring of men surrounding them, Michael said, “Why don’t you join me in helping the ladies aboard the trucks.” Annie had already reached the

  center of the compound, Maria and the Chinese girl with her. Paul fell in beside his wife, Annie smiling up at him. They kept walking, Michael and Antonovitch just ahead of them.

  The ring of armed men opened and they passed through. Annie said under her breath, “He’s pretty good.” “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking to help my husband and my brother. And looks like I got here just in time. We found Maria and the truck when we were coming down for a closer recon, and she told us about you and Otto playing Russians and about Michael going off to check this place out. We realized there wasn’t any electronic security around the perimeter here, and we crept in just close enough to see and hear and not so close we’d get caught in the light. You guys are lucky.”

  Paul Rubenstein wanted to kiss his wife very badly, but there would be time later—maybe.

  They kept walking.

  Michael and Antonovitch were beside the furthest forward of the three trucks, Michael speaking again. “Now—if your people follow us, that’ll be a bad move. The Chinese and German forces are in position to cut you to pieces. And if it gets too heavy, the ladies will break off in three separate directions with the trucks and blow them. Not a one of you will live. Do you understand?”

  Antonovitch could say something directly to Michael in Russian, and Michael would not be able to respond and the whole thing might be blown, Paul knew.

  “You have won the day—or should I say ‘the night’? But your time will come, Doctor Rourke.”

  Michael stepped onto the running board at the side of the truck cab. “You keep believing that.” Then he called over his shoulder. “Paul—Annie! This truck. I’ll ride with Maria. Otto—you and the Chinese woman—let’s move!” As Paul and Annie started for the first truck, Michael called out, “Paul—Otto—we’ll leave these trucks and take some of the other Soviet rolling stock as soon as we get through the gates.” Michael turned toward the fence.

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  I “Han—get enough people onto those trucks the Russians will be loading. Have Captain Hammerschmidt’s men keep the colonel and his people in their sights until we’re well away. You and the rest of the people by the fence, climb on board those other trucks with us.” “Yes, Doctor Rourke!”

  Paul glanced toward the fence, Han disappearing from the light, calling out orders that could only be partially heard. He wondered if the Chinese had any of their spiritous liquor with them. If they made it out alive, he wanted a drink… .

  Vladmir Karamatsov had been watching the newly promoted Captain Serovski for some time. When Ivan Krakovski had been murdered by John Rourke and his band of killers, Karamatsov had promoted Serovski and given the young man provisional charge of Special Operations for the KGB Elite Corps.

  Karamatsov studied the maps on his desk, then threw down his pen in disgust and exhaustion, the yellow light of his lamp giving him a headache.

  They had been so close. Krakovski and the Elite Corps had seized control of … He took up the journal in which Ivan Krakovski had written, the journal left in Krakovski’s helicopter and brought back by one of the survivors.

  “I have taken personal charge of navigation for the fleet of six helicopter gunships, trusting no one with the coordinates given me by the Hero Marshal.

  “For a short while, the fleet of gunships has passed under the teeth of the blizzard, but now, the snow swirls around us maddeningly, crusting over the bubble. I am taking the controls of the gunship for a time to relieve the strain. The windshield wipers race crazily, but cannot compete with the rate of snowfall and wind-driven snow as it lashes against the machine, the five other machines barely visible even by their running lights.

  “The Hero Marshal has told me that the cache of some

  thirty Chinese weapons is near the city once called Lushun, in what had once been a mine, the interior of the mine shaft reinforced with concrete and steel and capped like something the Hero Marshal calls a ‘well.’

  “It is cold, and colder still from the feeling of fear which, I admit, consumes me. The machine is buffetted by winds I estimate at gale force, and the controls must be manipulated with the greatest of precision, not just to keep on course, but to keep from being thrown into an uncontrolled spin with the machine destroyed.

  “I have ordered all pilots by radio to transfer controls to their copilots for periods of at least thirty minutes while they rest from their ordeal.

  “I will find the coordinates, but if the storm intensifies, I doubt we shall be able to take off. And the Hero Marshal and the destiny of the Soviet people depend on me… .

  Krakovski had fought to the end aboard the train on which he had loaded the Chinese nuclear weapons. This Karamatsov knew. And Krakovski and the train and all aboard it had been hurtled into the sea, the weapons lost forever. The sea there was very deep, Karamatsov thought.

  There was a knock on the pole of his tent and Karamatsov closed Krakovski’s journal. “Who is it?”

  “It is Captain Serovski, comrade marshal.”

  Karamatsov leaned back in his chair. “Come in, Serovski.”

  Serovski entered through the hermetic seal, snapped to attention, and saluted. Karamatsov nodded, saying, “Why do you disturb me?”

  “Forgive me, comrade marshal, but—but there is something very strange happening.”

  “A problem with the prisoners?”

  “No, comrade marshal. None of which I am aware. But the base radar is picking
up something coming in almost beneath the level of the waves below us.

  “What?”

  “It must be some sort of aircraft, yet it is too massive unless some sort of squadron—”

  Karamatsov was up, moving, grabbing the shoulder holster for the old Model 59 Smith <& Wesson in his right hand, his parka in the other, running past Serovski, the younger man at his heels now as Karamatsov exited the tent.

  He glanced to the east, toward the sea, the sun beginning to rise there. And as he looked, he blinked. A dark shape was blacking out the sun… .

  Annie Rourke kept the Soviet truck’s accelerator as close to the floor as she dared now, to the east a gray line which she knew would be dawn, no lights of pursuing vehicles present in the sideview mirrors at all. Had this Russian colonel, Antonovitch, given up?

  She kept driving ….

  Tanks were moving into position along the coastline, the dark shape clearly visible now. But impossible. It was the sail of a submarine. But no submarines existed and none so large as this. It towered as high into the air as a small office building. And the whitecaps that were crashing off its bow as it drew nearer bespoke a length that was impossible.

  Vladmir Karamatsov stood beside the turret of the most centrally located of his tanks. A voice startled him, breaking his concentration.

  “Comrade marshal!”

  He looked down. It was Serovski. “You are to be with the Elite Corps, captain—why are you here!”

  “Comrade Marshal—word from Comrade Colonel Antonovitch at the test site.”

  “Test site—the camp?”

  “Yes, comrade marshal.”

  “I cannot be bothered with such as that now! Later— rejoin your men.”

  “But, comrade marshal—”

  “Later—rejoin your men! Do not illustrate to me that I

  have been mistaken in advancing you to greater responsibility. Go!”

  Karamatsov returned his gaze to the sea.

  The black shape which fully broke the water line now was something no power on earth could possess.

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  Chapter Forty

  Michael Rourke had jumped from the truck when he had ordered it to slow. Armed with his Beretta pistols, the knife old Jan the swordmaker had crafted for him, and one of the Soviet assault rifles, he had run off into the night.

  It was the one chance.

  If John Rourke’s whereabouts were unknown to the Russians, then John Rourke might be lost forever. And their only chance at victory over the Russians would be to kill Vladmir Karamatsov.

  The snow was largely beaten down here by the truck traffic, and where it was not and had drifted high, the going was slow. He had stopped to urinate once, then continued on, consuming a high-energy snack that he had stashed in a pocket of the Soviet uniform he still wore. When he slowed to navigate difficult terrain, the cold consumed him. But he kept moving.

  On Karamatsov’s orders, a Soviet suicide squad had penetrated Mt. Hekla in Iceland, and as a result his wife, Madison, pretty Madison, and their unborn child had been murdered.

  It was Karamatsov who, before the Night of the War, had worked tirelessly to bring about Armageddon so he could rise from its ashes as master of the world.

  It was Vladmir Karamatsov who now controlled the most powerful armies on the nearly barren earth, and who was clearly willing to risk the total obliteration of mankind

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  It was Karamatsov’s men who had attempted, under the leadership of one of his KGB Elite Corps officers, to seize thirty nuclear warheads from the Chinese arsenal which had remained unused during the Night of the War, his intent clear: nuclear blackmail or nuclear death.

  With his father, John Rourke, and with Paul and Natalia and the help of Chinese forces, they had stopped Karamatsov’s KGB Elite Corps, sent the Chinese train carrying the missiles to the bottom of the sea, and narrowly escaped with their lives.

  Karamatsov. The gas which Annie, the Chinese girl, and Maria Leuden drove through the night had been Karamatsov’s secret weapon for destruction, a gas which drove men mad and made them turn on each other and kill like vicious animals.

  It was time Vladmir Karamatsov died.

  When the Russian colonel, Antonovitch, had mistaken Michael for his father, his heart had died. If the fate of John Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna were unknown to the Russians, then they were gone.

  Michael Rourke kept running.

  How would he tell his mother, Sarah Rourke, even now pregnant with John Rourke’s child? And how would he tell his sister, Annie?

  But she would know—Annie would know.

  Michael Rourke kept running, the ground rising as it neared the sea, the sky amber tinged and yellow.

  He kept running.

  At the height of the rise, he stopped. Karamatsov’s encampment was below. And beyond it, in the sea …

  “Oh my God,” Michael Rourke sighed, then dropped to his knees in exhaustion and despair.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Sebastian moved quietly down the companionway, Lieutenant Mott, the Communications Officer, having the con. It was either Louise Walenski, the Warfare Officer, or Andrew Mott. Seniority was of no concern. Louise Walenski was a competent officer, and so was Mott. Louise Walenski’s sex had not colored his judgment either. But Warfare Officers, by their very nature, tended to rely on force, and Sebastian distrusted force except as a last resort. The only others aboard the Reagan of equal rank to Sebastian were Lieutenant Commander Saul Hartnett, who was off duty and, like Jason Darkwood, sleeping, and Lieutenant Commander Margaret Barrow, and Medical Officers were not to be considered for command duty on a vessel of war.

  Sebastian stopped at the compartment door and knocked.

  He waited. As he had anticipated, there was no answer.

  He let himself in, the total darkness of the compartment cresting over him as he closed the door behind him. But he knew Jason Darkwood’s quarters well. He closed his eyes, counted to ten to let his eyes become accustomed to the change in light, then opened his eyes and moved slowly yet easily enough across the compartment to the desk, turning on the lamp there. It was what had been called a “Banker’s Lamp” and was of brass, or more likely some look-alike substitute, and had a green translucent shade. A fondness for antiques was commonplace among the citizenrv of Mid-Wake, although the onlv true an

  tiques were relics of the first generation of scientists who had inhabited the colony, or those items which from time to time had been recovered from what were called “treasure vessels”—sunken ships that were not radioactively dangerous, with hulls that had survived undersea pressure sufficiently so that they could be explored with some degree of safety.

  Sebastian had always found the love of antiquities rather maudlin, considering the circumstances of Mid-Wake’s genesis and continued existence.

  There was adequate light now from the desk lamp and he proceeded to the personal area of the compartment, a small non-essential bulkhead separating it from the official Captain’s Quarters, the door open. He stopped before it and rapped the knuckles of his right fist gently against the jam.

  “Commander Darkwood. I’m afraid it is time for you to awaken.”

  There was a grunting noise, presumably Jason Darkwood’s recognition of the fact that he was being awakened.

  “Sebastian?”

  “It is I, Jason. You requested to be awakened in three hours. I am complying with your request.”

  “Thanks—thank you. There’s some coffee that’ll warm up beside my desk. Interested?”

  “Thank you. I presume you are?”

  “Yes—if you don’t mind.”

  A light went on and Sebastian turned away from the doorway and back to the desk. There was a microwave coffee pot plugged in on the small credenza behind the Captain’s desk, and Sebastian worked the controls after first making sure that there was indeed enough coffee for one. There was adequate coffee for four, and Sebastian assumed t
hat would mean for one cup for him and the rest for Jason.

  There were two cups, clean.

  He sat down opposite the desk and waited, hearing the

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  on the desk and since it was not regulation equipment, he assumed it was used for entertainment value. He picked it up, holding the earphone beside his right ear as he activated the controls. He noted the diode counter so he could return the tape to its proper position.

  It was a film from five centuries ago. An enormous library in the rather primitive videotape formats of the day had been transported to Mid-Wake for the entertainment of the first inhabitants. The tapes had been copied and enhanced down to the present day, the only way people of Mid-Wake could even come close to knowing what it had been like on the earth of their forebears.

  This was a film featuring the famous actor John Wayne, the namesake of the only other ship in the Mid-Wake fleet which matched the rather astounding capabilities of the Reagan. It was, unfortunately, in dry dock after narrowly surviving an encounter with three Island Class Soviet submarines. The Wayne had the capabilities of the Reagan, but not the same Captain.

  In this film, John Wayne was an Irish-American who had returned to his native land and was attempting simultaneously to adjust to the radically different environment while wooing a very young and charming Maureen O’Hara. Sebastian had seen the film several times.

  “How do you like the movie, Sebastian?”

  Sebastian looked up, pushing the stop button, then beginning the rewind. He had set the controls so the tape would return to the position it had been in originally. “I find the film to contain one of John Wayne’s more sensitive portrayals, Jason, as you know. It has always been one of my favorite films.”

  Jason Darkwood was naked from the waist up, the hair on his chest starting to gray a little, unlike the curly—still wet—hair of his head, which was not graying at all. Jason consulted his wristwatch. “Time flies when you haven’t slept for thirty-six hours.”