Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Read online

  “I find the deepest sleep the most restful, Jason.”

  “I would have enjoyed experiencing it more fully. Every-

  “Your penetration team is well-rested and even now preparing for the attack.”

  Jason only nodded. The coffee had long since been ready and Jason went to it. “Want a cup?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  As Jason Darkwood poured—it smelled satisfactory—he asked, “What do you think about Sam Aldridge?” “He is a fine officer.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it, Sebastian. Should I pull him from this?”

  “Doctor Barrow has pronounced him fit for restricted duty, and yet he seems adequately suited to normal duty by his very bearing and demeanor. But with a Marine, that is difficult to gauge. He is the best man for the job.”

  “I know that or I wouldn’t have overidden Margaret’s decision and decided to take him along in the first place.”

  “I would think you are seeking to expiate what you and you alone perceived as guilt and/or responsibility in the affair which resulted in his unfortunate capture.”

  “If I had gone with—”

  Sebastian interrupted. Since he almost never interrupted anyone, he assumed it would be forgiven. “I should beg to differ, Jason. Had you accompanied Captain Aldridge on the mission which resulted in his capture and incarceration, it would merely have resulted in your capture and incarceration. The mission to sabotage the Soviet nuclear-missile effort was ill-conceived at best. Admiral Rahn is a brilliant strategist, but equally well-known as a terrible tactician. It is his lack of ability in tactics which resulted in Captain Aldridge’s fate, not the fact that you did not accompanying him.”

  It was pleasant speaking with Jason at times like these—he was a man of supreme discretion and nothing said in confidence was ever betrayed.

  “You think I shouldn’t go now then?”

  Sebastian looked at his superior officer. He accepted a cup of coffee from him. “I am afraid that your analysis of the situation is undeniably correct. You and you alone have discovered a secret means of entry to the Russian

  i

  I

  j domes. And Captain Aldridge, of all the personnel aboard i the Reagan, has an intimate knowledge of the domes once inside. It appears that you are each other’s indispensable man and there is no alternative but that you both go. I would prefer it otherwise, as would all of those who count you as a friend.”

  Jason Darkwood crossed from the far side of the desk, set his coffee cup down, and extended his right hand. “Sebastian. Thank you.” “Thank you, Jason.”

  The Captain of the United States Attack Submarine Ronald Wilson Reagan raised his coffee cup. Sebastian raised his. They clinked the cups together. “Here’s to coming back to drink more of this god-awful coffee.”

  “And here,” Sebastian intoned, “is to the pleasant company with which to consume it.”

  “Amen.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  John Rourke opened his eyes.

  “They had told me you were about to awaken, sir.”

  Rourke turned his head toward the voice. There was light and shadow, light through nearly closed Venetian blinds, the origin of the voice in shadow. His throat was dry as he spoke. “I hadn’t quite pictured the afterlife exactly this way.”

  There was a rich, genuine-sounding laugh. “I am Jacob Fellows, sir, the President of Mid-Wake.”

  John Rourke closed his eyes, opened them again. He could see the image that belonged to the voice more clearly now. His lifelong light sensitivity had, as a biological trade-off, always enabled him to see better than the average person under low light conditions. The speaker— this Fellows—was tall and broad-shouldered, though sitting. And evidently he was possessed of a thick head of hair from the silhouette of his head. “President?”

  “Yes, sir. Would you please identify yourself for me?”

  John Rourke licked his dry-feeling lips. “What happened to Sam Aldridge?”

  “He’s aboard the United States Attack Submarine Ronald Wilson Reagan, his mission to attempt the rescue of the woman you were trying to—”

  “Natalia,” Rourke whispered. It flooded back to him. He had made it as far as Kerenin’s apartment, there had been the shootout in the narrow hallway and he had been suckered by the trick with the mirrors, and even thought he had killed Kerenin … “I’m a doctor—my self-diagno

  sis was that I was dying from my wounds.”

  “Perhaps in your own era you would have, sir. May I please have your name?”

  “John Rourke. Why are you so interested?” Rourke was beginning to feel something in his abdomen—not pain in the true sense, but more of a heightened awareness.

  “Did you ever meet a Commander Gundersen?”

  John Rourke closed his eyes. “He was a submarine commander. I got shanghaied after some crazy guy pretending to be on a special mission for U.S. II gutshot Natalia. The only way to save her life was to use the medical facilities aboard his vessel.”

  “He remembered you as well, and also this woman Natalia. Are you the same John Rourke who was born in the twentieth century?”

  “Who else do you …” He was too tired to argue and he closed his eyes… .

  Jason Darkwood stood in the Scout Sub Bay before the airlock door. Surrounding him were Sam Aldridge and Tom Stanhope and their Marines. Sebastian stood beside him, and Darkwood noticed Maggie Barrow on the observation platform. Like his men, he was already into his black double-layered diving suit, the inner layer to maintain constant atmospheric pressure for his body, the outer layer designed to compensate for the pressure of the sea around it.

  “Several years ago, by accident really, I discovered a means of entering the Soviet domes. The details don’t really matter at this juncture. Suffice it to say I was inexperienced enough to get myself caught between their attack sharks and some of their Marine Spetznas divers on Iron Dolphins.” There was a portable computer-linked light board behind him, and he took the laser pencil and began to move it over the tactical diagram of the Russian city, his movements on the smaller board enhanced and enlarged on the larger board, the Marines repositioning thpmsplvps in ordpr to morp armiratelv observe.

  “Now, each of us learned the available data on the Soviet domes back when we were in training. There are three large domes—to my right here, the main dome, which was the original dome when the Soviets first entered this environment before World War III and they were still being supplied by the Soviet base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. The actual working city itself is located there, and beneath the main level are three other levels, consisting of maintenance, security, and research, this latter a bio-medical facility utilizing prisoners as lab animals.

  “Immediately to my left here is the central dome,” and he moved the light pencil over it. “This is a suburban area, mainly for workers in the main dome, military personnel, and the like. There are schools here, some light industry, etc. And to the front of this dome as we face this representation is the Marine Studies area, equipment storage, and the like. Now—between this dome and the next is a smaller dome which contains the shark pens and the control room for the sharks. A passageway here leads into the largest of the two small domes, where the lagoon is located through which their Island Class submarines and their Scout subs enter and exit. The dry-dock facility is here, etc. Behind it and still under this dome are the Scout sub pens. The machinery needed for maintaining the air pressure which keeps the lagoon at a steady level is here. The actual factories wherein the Soviet fleet ships are built and maintained are here. This is probably the most militarily heavy area and also the least secure, since the very presence of their submarines makes them think that no one would attack here. Behind this dome is the larger dome, where the far suburbs are located. Businesses, schools for the upper class—political functionaries at the upper levels, scientists, high-ranking military officers, high-ranking entertainers, and the like.”

  Jason Darkwoo
d moved the light pencil back to the approximate center of the dome complex. “Leading out more like a large tunnel than an actual dome here is the military-command complex. Living quarters here and here, a small detention area used for special interroea

  tions, the military-office complex. This area is highly secure as well. But I’ll draw your attention back to the submarine pens. It is here that several years ago I found a means of entering the Soviet domes. I informed Mid-Wake authorities of the presence of this chink in the Soviet armor, so to speak, and they elected to save it for a rainy day.”

  Darkwood put down the light pencil. “The ‘rainy day’ is here, gentlemen.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  “I am Doctor Remquist. I have been asked by President Fellows to speak with you concerning the results of the operations I performed. As one physician to another, I am pleased to report that the operations were an unqualified success, however difficult.”

  “I know I should have been dead,” John Rourke told the man. Rourke was sitting up in a chair, and the Venetian blinds were open and he could see Remquist quite clearly. Penetrating eyes, a firm jaw, and a smile of satisfaction. “You must be quite a surgeon and medicine here must have made some enormous strides.”

  “I have a reputation for insufferable immodesty, but I’ll admit you are correct on both counts. I am quite a surgeon, and I suppose by comparison to the medicine you studied five centuries ago our capabilities here might seem like magic or witchcraft. Five centuries of constant warfare have made medicine a critical profession, and we can save people now and restore them to a fully useful life who only fifty years ago would have been doomed to death. I always enjoyed medical history. I know that cancer was a dreaded disease in your day. Today, we are able to inoculate against the common forms and cure those that get past us. The stability of our population at Mid-Wake represented at once a unique challenge and a unique opportunity. We were able to accelerate the research processes to what you might well consider an astonishing degree. But as to your operations.

  “The Soviet uniform you wore actually saved your life,” Remquist said easily. “The Soviets have only recently

  ho.friin manilfaoturinuf their uniforms out of a hnllet-noaist..

  ant material. It was unable, of course, to stop rifle projectiles at such close range, but it slowed them down to the point where they did not spin as they entered your abdominal cavity, and to the point where they did not penetrate sufficiently to exit. That, my dear colleague, saved your life, admittedly as much as my skill. Whoever originally bandaged you and stopped the majority of the bleeding saved your life at that stage of the game. Lieutenant Commander Margaret Barrow, the Medical Officer of the Reagan, the submarine that brought you here, is a finely competent physician in her own right. Her emergency care, her laser suturing, her perception of the seriousness of your wounds, and hence her restraint also saved your life. Had anyone besides myself operated, had you lived you would have been paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of your life. Try one and one-tenth centimeter from the fifth vertebra for delicate, hmm? We used laser techniques you would be totally unfamiliar with to close your wounds and at once sterilize them, promoting very rapid healing from the inside out—just as it should be, of course. In your day, I venture to say several weeks of hospitalization would have been in order. But not today. By tomorrow morning, the colostomy bag will be unnecessary and you should be able to walk with aid and some care. The IV—”

  “It would have been nice if modern medical technology had bypassed that.”

  Remquist laughed. “Yes. So far, no. But—by tomorrow the IV will no longer be needed. The IV is feeding you a synthetic substance which works with the body to promote rapid healing. I venture to say that in a few days, your wounds will be all but healed and you will feel more physically fit than you have for some time. Had you noticed lately any sort of overall slowing down, tiredness?”

  John Rourke looked at the man. “Yes.”

  “What had you self-diagnosed?”

  “You weren’t just making idle professional chitchat, were you? With that talk about cancer?”

  Rp.mmiist jrestured exnansivelv. “Yon are the luckiest

  man I ever met, Doctor Rourke. You had a type of cancer I have only read about, one that dated from the days immediately following World War III. You have what appears to be an abnormally strong constitution, and I know you have not lived for five centuries, so you must have utilized some form of cryogenic sleep.” “I did.”

  “That put the disease in remission. Thyroid cancer. But it came back, as it often will. You would have been dead inside of six months if I had not discovered it.”

  “You mean …”

  Remquist stood up, slapping his hands against his thighs as he did so. “You are cured. You should find rather rapidly a return to your full vigor. I wouldn’t advise going around near high-level sources of radiation again. In that manner you could always give it to yourself again. But, barring that, you are cured. This woman the crew of the Reagan has set out to rescue. I would advise that she and any others who might have survived with you be checked for the same condition. It was one of the most insidious forms of that disease. But now it is easily cured.”

  John Rourke extended his right hand. “Thank you, doctor.”

  “My true pleasure, doctor. And now—you rest, hmm?” Remquist shook Rourke’s hand and left the room.

  John Thomas Rourke leaned his head back in the chair. In the past several weeks, he had realized something was very seriously wrong. And he had tried very hard to ignore it. It was why he had restocked the Retreat, among other reasons. But he had found himself feeling progressively weaker, exertions that he would have taken in stride now telling on him heavily. Occasionally, even a loss of strength resulting in a temporary loss of balance and a fall. The weakness would come on him in a wave and then pass. But the waves had come increasingly more frequently.

  Oftentimes, he had heard the expression “given a new lease on life,” and now it appeared that he had been given exactly that, death almost the price of the lease.

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  Annie, Paul, and especially Sarah would need to be checked. Especially Sarah with the baby.

  There was much to do. Karamatsov needed to be stopped. Forever. And the earth needed to be rebuilt. It was now only a battlefield.

  He felt a little tired and accepted the inevitability of that. He was, after all, restored. And he would need his full energies for what lay ahead… .

  Jason Darkwood and Sam Aldridge entered the water together, the Scout sub’s underhull airlock hatch whooshing a surge of air and water around them, Darkwood keeping his wings folded still to prevent them fouling in the strength of the current, propelling himself ahead instead by the force of his flippers and gloves. The readouts on his helmet told him the Hemo Sponge was working properly, which was outstanding since it was the only way he could breathe.

  He rolled over in the water, backing away now from the Scout sub air lock, Aldridge still beside him, the rest of the commando team exiting the air lock. Their own equivalent of the Soviet Iron Dolphins would not be used because the slightest mechanical noise might betray their presence to the sensing equipment of the Russian domes.

  Darkwood rolled over again as the Marines fell into formation in a wedge behind him and Aldridge. He flexed his wings and moved out, the vision-intensification unit in his helmet showing the Pillars of Woe dead ahead… .

  A motorized launch was released from the monster-sized submarine and was moving toward shore under a white flag of truce.

  Through the German binoculars he had taken from the truck—Maria Leuden had brought them with her—Michael Rourke could see clearly now in the morning light. The submarine had surfaced several hours ago and the number of tanks and men Karamatsov had assembled

  overlooking the water had grown steadily. Michael had no idea if there had been radio contact. But he
was assuming that at least some action had been taken concerning the escape from the death camp, because approximately a half hour after Michael had reached the rise overlooking the Soviet camp and the water beyond, six truckloads of soldiers and two tanks and one armored personnel carrier had been dispatched in the direction of the compound from which he, Paul, Annie, and the others had extricated the internees and from which Annie, Maria, and the Chinese woman named Ma-Lin had driven the trucks of the deadly gas.

  Vladmir Karamatsov still waited at the shoreline with dozens of his huge tanks arrayed there around him, as if the tanks would have had a chance against the submarine. Such a vessel would have been capable of enormous firepower. If he had judged correctly the bore diameter of the deck gun most clearly visible, it was at least thirty-six inches.

  The boat—appearing to be of the same material as the submarine itself—skimmed over the water’s surface, into the breakers beneath the overlook where Karamatsov’s army waited.

  As the launch had been released, a flag had been raised from the submarine’s sail. The flag bore the Hammer and Sickle… .

  Vladmir Karamatsov made a decision. It was based on necessity. Antonovitch was pursuing the accursed Rourke family, and Serovski was too junior an officer to be sent on a mission such as this.

  This was a Soviet ship, and such technology as must be behind a vessel of such enormity could be invaluable in an alliance, deadly in an adversary situation. And since there were two Soviet governments he knew of on the earth—his own and that of the Underground City—it would be well for this new Soviet ship, and the power behind it, to ally

  …;*u u:__ *1_ iU._ u:„ J––– :-

  He would go to meet it.

  “Serovski—if anything happens unexpectedly, I will rely on your initiative. Send with me six of your best Elite Corps personnel.”

  The wind was high and cold and Serovski answered over it, “Yes, comrade marshal.”