Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal Read online

  The explorers Lewis and Clark had survived for a time on dog meat and, though Rourke had never tasted it, he’d worked with men all over the world who had, at one time or another, thrived on it. If nothing else, the hearts.

  He stood up, inspecting his shoulder holster as best he could in the fading light, finding it none the worse for wear, shrugging into it, checking that both .45s were secure. His coat was another matter. Much of the left sleeve was in shreds. He had needle and thread and could adequately repair it.

  The 629 would need a barrel-swabbing again. He wiped it clean with snow, dried it on the outside of his coat and holstered it.

  His little A.G. Russell knife. It lay only a yard from his feet, still partially attached to a stump of pine sapling shaft.

  He picked it up, began to clean it with snow.

  It would not be good for Natalia to know what they were eating, but— He sheathed the Sting. John Rourke spotted the Crain LS-X on the ground and picked it up, mechanically wiping the blade with handfuls of snow. There was a school of thought which held that long-bladed, seriously proportioned knives were less than practical, merely for show. He smiled, finding himself wondering how many of those adherents to that philosophy had found themselves confronted by six hungry wild animals when the use of a gun was all but out of

  the question. He shrugged.

  On the negative side, what he contemplated made for a more than mildly disgusting proposition, but on the plus side his exertions had worked up a healthy appetite. He began inspecting the provender providence had brought them.

  Chapter Twelve

  She twirled once in front of the mirror, the silk skirts of the almost midnight-blue dress she wore ballooning outward from her ankles, the glass slippers on her feet catching the firelight and sparkling to rival the diamonds at her throat, her ears, her wrists, all but the diamond on the third finger of her left hand which was at once enormous yet tasteful, beautiful.

  She heard his footsteps along the tiled wooden floor behind her and felt her heart skip a beat, saw his image in the mirror and felt her cheeks flush.

  Natalia turned toward him so abruptly that the fabric of her dress rustled.

  “Hello.”

  His voice was as one imagined the voice of God might sound, but too human, in a single word saying more to her than any man had ever begun to express in ten thousand.

  His left hand reached out to her, beneath the french cuff of his.shirt the simple elegance of his stainless steel Rolex wristwatch catching the firelight as well. His fingers stroked gently at the bareness of her neck, found a loosened lock by the nape, entwined gently in it and she bent her face to his wrist, her lips softly caressing the strength that was his hands.

  He took a step back from her, shrugging his massive shoulders so slightly that she would not have noticed had not her eyes been in thrall to his every movement. Her hands touched the black butterfly bow which emerged from the white

  collar of his shirt, the black pearl studs of his shirtfront rising and falling gently as he breathed.

  He took her into his arms, the texture of his tuxedo wonderfully rough feeling against her bare chest and arms and shoulders, her breasts pressing against the fabric of her bodice, tight against him.

  “I love you,” he told her.

  But she knew that.

  John Rourke bent his face over hers and his lips parted. She closed her eyes.

  The floor beneath them seemed to rise up.

  There was gunfire and the sounds of explosive devices were everywhere.

  Her eyes were open, but still she couldn’t see him. “John! John! John … John …” The fire which had cast its warm glow over the ballroom where she had waited for him—how long?—now consumed the ballroom and she was surrounded by it and she bunched her dress tight around her as she dropped to her knees, huddling there as the fires rose in yellow walls around her. “John!” Her ring—it was not a diamond, yet it was, but it was no logner blue or white, but blood-red like a ruby and she screamed for him until the heat invaded her lungs, her arms folding over her breasts, the heat searing her flesh. “John … John … John…” Why didn’t he come for her …

  John Rourke touched his left hand to her neck, raising her head just a little as he told her, “This is really good-tasting. I amazed myself. Kind of a stew. Neither of us has really eaten in almost twenty-four hours and we both need some nourishment.” He had par-boiled the flesh just to be on the safe side. “This will taste good. A little hot but that’ll warm you up inside. You’ll be feeling better in no time. And at any minute now, I expect Annie and Paul to come rolling up. Annie’ll get you feeling your old self, Natalia. When she was a little girl and

  I was very tired or depressed, I’d help tuck her in at night and get her to give me a kiss and then a hug and have her pat me on the shoulder or the back. She started it, one time when she knew things weren’t going right, somehow. And it made me feel better, so we started kidding about it and I’d say, ‘Now give me a pat so I feel good,’ and she’d give me a pat. And the funny thing was that it always made me feel better. So, when Annie gets here, you tell her you want her to give you a big hug and then a pat. And don’t forget the part about the pat, because that’s important. But you’ve got to eat so you’ll feel strong again.”

  Slowly, with greater difficulty than he’d ever had feeding the children when they were little, he fed her, with the bark spoon he’d made catching at the bits of food as they dribbled from her mouth. She had dirtied herself while he’d been gone and he’d bathed her as necessary, covered her. After she was fed, he would have to wash out her things, dry them by the fire.

  Was she going down?

  Throughout the day, with his reminding her, she had cared for her own bodily functions. He told himself that it was just that she had been sleeping too soundly and in her exhausted and confused state—

  “Natalia!” His throat ached with her name.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Russian helicopters were ringing the Second Chinese City. Fuel to burn, Michael Rourke surmised, just like the Second City. Fires dotted the mountainside into which it had been built, heavy fighting by all the defensive positions.

  Their movement throughout the late afternoon and into the early evening, until the snow became too heavy to travel without lights, had taken them along the base of a high ridge and, because there was no choice, closer to the beleaguered Second City.

  With Annie and Maria Leuden flanking him despite his protests, Michael Rourke had climbed the ridge to assay the condition of the battle.

  Maria, close beside him, spoke softly as she said, “In ancient times, it was not unknown for persons whose options had been entirely exhausted to risk destruction of self in order to defeat an enemy.”

  “You mean their nuclear weapons,” Annie interjected. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Maria nodded.

  Michael Rourke looked from Maria to his sister. “You think they’d detonate a nuclear weapon to—”

  “Maybe they’d detonate them all. I mean, it would only take one if it were set off properly, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Annie,” Michael told her, shaking his head

  despairingly. “Yeah—maybe. Probably. Shit—”

  He started back down from the ridge, his German binoculars still in his hands, and his hands were shaking but not with the cold …

  Han Lu Chen spoke. “They would do it.”

  The Russian officer, Prokopiev, warmed his hands over the heater/cooker. Annie stirred warm water into a packet of food, the five of them huddled inside the German field shelter. It was dome-shaped, radar-reflective, hermetically sealed against the elements and fitted with a portable climate-control system which ran on pellets of solidified synth fuel, the combination not making them bake with the heat, but keeping the chill low enough that with sweaters on, they could move about comfortably in the confined area with their parkas off. The windchill factor outside the tent was approximately thirty-
four degrees below zero Fahrenheit, if the emergency kits from the German Supers were to be believed. And, if anything, Michael Rourke thought they might be registering on the conservative side.

  Prokopiev finally spoke. “I cannot believe they would do this. I have spoken with the Comrade Colonel. He wants the nuclear weapons only so that he may threaten to use them and thus end the warfare, not to end the earth.”

  “Maybe,” Annie said matter-of-factly. “It’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t use them if he had to.”

  “But—”

  She handed the food packet to Prokopiev and looked at him as he took it from her. “Grow up, Vassily, for God’s sake! Maybe he isn’t your damned hero marshal, but he’s no saint either! Antonovitch didn’t survive as one of Karamatsov’s chief staff officers by being a goodie-goodie, for Christ’s sake!”

  “She’s right, Vassily.” Michael nodded, Maria handing him a food packet she’d made for him. He was quite capable of

  adding hot water to dried food and had been doing it for five centuries, really, the German food in taste not unlike the Mountain House products his father had so favored, identical in preparation. But Maria and Annie, or perhaps Maria because of Annie, liked to busy themselves with the domestic chores of camp, or perhaps only felt they were supposed to. He thought for a moment about Madison, his wife of so little time. She had been at her happiest when caring for him. He closed his eyes, could still see her blond hair and how it caught the light-Han Lu Chen was talking and Michael Rourke opened his eyes. “These are desperate, war-mongering people, their religion built on violence, their culture stifled, primitive, and perhaps their understanding of the true nature of the weapons which they possess so limited they cannot imagine the destruction of which these weapons are capable. Perhaps they have already begun some irreversible process.” “Madmen,” Prokopiev said, barely audible. “Yes,” Maria interjected. “Like the madmen who pushed the first button and began the war that nearly destroyed all life on this planet five centuries ago?”

  Prokopiev put his utensil in the food packet and looked at all of them in turn. “The suggestion is that we somehow seek to foil any plans for detonation the Chinese may have?”

  “Chinese of the Second City,” Han hissed. “My people long ago mastered nuclear power in all respects and would never consider such a barbarous act.”

  “There’s Paul to consider. Once he’s found Dad and Natalia,” Michael said slowly, “they may need medical help, God knows. And inside that city is no place for a woman. Prokopiev and I have been there. So has Han. If the two of you—” And he looked at Annie and Maria. “If you guys could—”

  “You mean if we helpless women were suddenly to become so capable? Bullshit!”

  “Listen, Annie, huh? If you and Maria go to the rendezvous with Paul and Otto, then get outa here, maybe—” He really didn’t know what “maybe” might be. But he was certain he would not allow his sister and/or the woman he was in love with to enter the Second City. He wasn’t enthusiastic about allowing himself to do it either. His head still ached from the last time.

  “There is confusion everywhere,” Prokopiev said. “If you would allow me to contact my own forces, I could run the raid myself and none of you need risk your lives. It would—”

  “Vassily,” Michael began, “if your people had the nuclear weapons they possess in the Second City, I wouldn’t exactly rest easy. And it’s not a matter of possession. It’s a matter of second guessing just how desperate they are in there, or how stupid, and just what they’ll do with their backs to the wall. What was your intelligence assessment of their technological capabilities? Do you think they have the technical expertise to make something go off?”

  “We had no way of knowing,” Prokopiev said, lowering his head, his face red-tinged by the glow of the heater, his eyes closed.

  “And you attacked the Second City?” Annie said incredulously.

  “All military operations, Mrs. Rubenstein,” Prokopiev announced, raising his head, looking at her, “incorporate a certain amount of calculated risk.”

  “Incalculable risk!” Annie told him. “You guys are nuts!”

  Maria, kneeling beside Michael now, said softly, “Considerable variations of computer models were made concerning the technological abilities of potential survivors of what the Americans refer to as ‘the Great Conflagration’—”

  “The Dragon Wind,” Han Lu Chen nodded.

  “Yes,” Maria went on. “One of the models I found particularly intriguing, however unlikely, seems to fit in here, and because of that more than anything anyone has said, I am

  frightened. The computer model dealt with the concept of the medium of destruction in effect metamorphosing, becoming an object of worship since it had, in effect, spared those who survived to worship it. The logic is primitive but valid. And if such a society were to exist—which seems to be the case of the Second City—the model was extended to incorporate the possibility—statistically closer to probability—that some of the mechanics at least of operating such weapons of destruction might indeed become incorporated among the trappings of such a religion, as part of holy ritual, as it were. In theory, at least,” Maria Leuden continued, sounding very much the Fraulein Doctor, her gray-green eyes sparkling behind the lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses, “such ritual could be graduated, much as was conventional religion, such as was Christianity or Muhammadanism. The Christians, for example, had certain high holy days, such as Christmas and Easter. The Moslems had their feast of Ramadan. There are countless examples. The Jews, certainly, with their various celebrations commemorating events from their history. If the worshippers of the Second City perceive themselves facing some ultimate crisis, as logic would dictate even the most ardent among them must, then those most ardent among them would seek consolation in their religion, perhaps some special ceremony. Such a special ceremony,” Maria concluded, her normally soft alto lowering, “could well include the ritual necessary to arm or detonate a warhead. Sort of calling on the ultimate power of their god, who of course spared them once and, if their propitiations are heeded, would spare them again while at the same time vanquishing their enemies.” Her hands suddenly clasped Michael’s left bicep, very tightly. No one spoke.

  Michael Rourke just stared at the palms of his hands, listening to everyone breathing, to the soft hiss of the heater/cooker, the muted howl of the wind outside, to the slapping sounds as a gust of wind struck at the shelter

  broadside. “We go inside if we can get there. There isn’t any choice.” And, inside himself, he knew he’d be a fool if he didn’t take Maria Leuden with him. What was in her mind might be their only chance for success. Survival beyond that was something his own logic dictated he shouldn’t waste the effort to consider.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Paul Rubenstein and Otto Hammerschmidt prepared to cross the river, Hammerschmidt saying, “Idle speculation, I know, my friend, but if only I had the facility to call up our combat engineers. We would have a bridge across which a tank could be taken and it would be erected in under ten minutes.”

  “The Russians had machines like that five centuries ago.”

  “I studied them. German is better.” Hammerschmidt smiled wolfishly. Paul Rubenstein just shook his head. There was no bridge-laying equipment, just the rappeling gear from the emergency equipment aboard the Specials. And he smiled at the thought of the person at whose insistence each item of emergency equipment had been included. John Rourke, his friend, his father-in-law, in the most real sense of the word his mentor, had, once again, planned ahead.

  With the ropes there was a grappling hook which fired from a disposable launcher, the launcher disposable because it was not repackable in the field, the rope under mechanical compression. The ropes were flat, made of something which reminded Rubenstein of the Kevlar material John had once shown him in a bullet-resistant vest. The launchers were designed to fire upward, so he assumed they would fire outward as well. But, before Otto Hammerschmidt had ment
ioned it, Paul had realized it was a matter of trajectory, holding high enough that the spring-loaded grappling hooks would deploy over the object to which they hoped for

  attachment rather than level with or below it.

  They had traveled down along the river’s course for more than an hour, scouting a potential crossing, at last settling on a gap perhaps twenty-five yards across. But it was the depth that bothered him. The gorge through which the river cut so violently was at least seventy-five feet below them, and white-water rapids made the water glow eerily despite the otherwise poor visibility of the snowstorm.

  Since it was impossible to get the Specials across, they had argued over it, then eventualy flipped a German coin for it. Paul Rubenstein had won. He would cross, explore the opposite bank on foot, Hammerschmidt waiting with the Specials.

  “Are you ready, Paul?”

  Rubenstein brushed snowflakes from his eyelashes and nodded. Before he had taken the Sleep he’d worn glasses, and in snow or rain they naturally became wet and were difficult to see through. But without them the snow or rain assaulted the eyes directly. He reflected that one couldn’t win.

  “I’m ready,” he lied, because he was at once impatient to be gone but reluctant to crawl across the rope spanning the gorge when it would be attached on the opposite side only by an almost randomly positioned grappling hook.

  Hammerschmidt put the launcher to his right shoulder. “A pity it doesn’t have sights,” the German commando captain remarked.

  “A real pity, yes,” Rubenstein agreed, wiping more snow from his eyes.

  “Then here it is.” And as if punctuating his words, the launcher fired with a pneumatic hiss so flat-sounding that it reminded Paul Rubenstein of someone passing gas.

  His eyes tracked the roughly conical shape as it shot over the gorge, the flat rope uncoiling in its wake like a snake run over by a truck on some country road five centuries ago. He realized absently that he was wondering if somewhere on earth snakes survived. But before he decided anything concerning that, the