Survivalist - 14 - The Terror Page 6

  “Put that thing—whatever it was—in the most secure place I could.”

  “Not just secure—but findable. Consider this. Coastline could change. Mountains could be blasted

  away, new ones could rise in their stead. The poles could have changed so drastically that compass coordinates would be useless. You wouldn’t want a place that could conceivably be covered, obscured—by snow or water or vegetation. All he’s using the Great Pyramid for, Fraulein Doctor, is a landmark. What he wants is buried out there in the desert. What his men are doing is digging away to the base so the measurements would be precise. He has coordinates and he could likely follow them to the exact spot. But like my father, he’s planning ahead—just in case. Notice,” and he jerked his thumb over the dune and toward the Pyramid; “they’re only digging away at two corners. He’ll shoot an azimuth that’s predeter-mined precisely off each corner. Where the two lines intersect is where the object—whatever it is—is buried. Surveyors instruments. All the right equipment. He’ll find it. Very soon. No matter how much sand has accumulated over it throughout the centuries, he’ll go to the exact spot, know exactly where it is and order the digging begun.” “We should—”

  “Should we now,” Michael smiled. “Let him find it? Probably. But we should be in a position to immediately prevent its use. And that’s dubious. So we have to find it first ourselves and be waiting for him when he arrives. He has the digging equipment— we don’t. Use the binoculars and look under those tarps to the west—”

  She crawled past him, to the ridge, taking her own binoculars.

  “Careful so they don’t see you, Fraulein.”

  “Earth moving equipment.”

  “Yes,” Michael nodded.

  “But—”

  “Whatever it is, it can’t be buried too terribly far

  off into the desert or they would have air dropped the equipment nearer to the site—it’s not really needed here.”

  “Then it should be something they’ll find very rapidly once—”

  “Yes, once they reach the base of the Pyramid,” Michael Rourke completed for her. “So—any suggestions?”

  She slid down across the sand toward him.

  She smiled strangely. “Why do you ask me?”

  “All right, let me ask you something else. Can you read everybody all the time, part of the time, just some people, how does it work?”

  Maria Leuden looked away—and he thought that her face seemed to flush with color—but in the starlight and the half moon it was difficult to tell. It could only have been shadow. “I—ahh—only some people.”

  “Anything special about that I should know?”

  “No, not that you should know.”

  “Well—all right—have either of us had any good thoughts about what to do here?”

  “You have—you want to penetrate the camp down there, see il you can locate the coordinates and get the approximate location so we can be waiting for Karamatsov when he arrives. You have told yourself you won’t kill him yet—not until he leads us to the weapon. And you are angry with yourself for doing that.”

  “Then you can read my thoughts all the time.” And he looked at her.

  “Michael—I mean—”

  “Tell me what I thought.”

  “I don’t want to—to tell you.”

  “All right,” and he looked away.

  Maria Leuden began to talk to him. “When I was

  in my studies, some of the ones with me who were in the Youth, bridging into the SS—there was this boy.” Michael looked at her.

  “You are going to make me tell you, aren’t you?” “No. Never mind.”

  “But I really want to tell you—and I don’t know why. They—ahh—this boy and some of his friends. He name was Fritz. And Fritz tried to—and, ahh—I scratched his face badly. He surprised me in my room and I was shaving my legs—I used the razor. Across his face. He ran away.”

  Michael simply looked at her, saying nothing.

  “You are wondering what happened then—how does that—”

  “Yes, I was. But you don’t have to—”

  “I know that too.” She took off her glasses and pushed the shawl back from her hair. “With some of his friends—he came for me. I didn’t report him to the authorities—his father was very important in the SS. Ahh—they came for me. It was the weekend. I wasn’t expected anywhere until Monday. They beat me—only to stop me screaming I think. They put tape over my mouth then. Fritz was studying medicine and he injected me. Afterward, I found out they injected me seven times. This drug was an hallucinogen. So my mind was someplace else. If there is a God—well, I thank God for that. Even his father’s influence couldn’t save him. Fritz and the others were arrested, tried. Fritz was killed during your father’s assault on the Complex. He was one of the SS men torturing Frau Stern. The drugs addicted me. It took months for me to recover, the residual effect of the drug having somehow altered the chemical balance of my brain—at least that is what the doctors said. But while I was recovering, it started. I could tell the thoughts of the young man I was engaged to marry. I

  could read the thoughts of my father, a professor at the university. I could read the thoughts of my girl friend, Elsie. Elsie became a chemical engineer. There was an accident—a spill. Her body was destroyed by acid. I could feel her death. My father died of his third heart attack—I could feel his pain when he died. I was in a coma for almost a week after it. And the young man I was intended to. After I recovered from the attack and the effect of the drugs. He—ahh—he couldn’t live with the thought of a woman who had been—used. He took his own life. There was no pain. He—he—”

  Michael folded his arms about her and she leaned her head against his chest.

  “That’s—that is why—I was afraid when I found I could read your thoughts.”

  Michael looked down at her. “Read my thoughts now. Tell me my thoughts.” ‘

  She looked up at him, the corners of her eyes wet with tears, tears flooding over the rims, streaming down her cheeks. “That I should not be afraid. That you won’t die. That you are a Rourke. And so I should believe you.”

  “Yes,” Michael Rourke whispered …

  He had crossed along the ridge, Hammerschmidt accompanying him, the sergeant in command of the other five enlisted personnel, Maria Leuden with them.

  Hammerschmidt had stripped away the Arab mufti, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up past his elbows, bareheaded, one of the German pistols in his right fist, one of the German assault rifles tight slung to his back.

  Michael had left his leather jacket behind and his

  rifle, only the two Beretta pistols in their shoulder holsters under his arms, the four-inch model 629 .44 Magnum in the flap holster at his right hip.

  But in his right fist was the Life Support System II knife given him by the old swordmaker, Michael’s fingers bunched tight to it.

  His palms sweated a bit.

  The moon was nearly down. In less than an hour it would be dawn.

  They had reached the end of the ridge of sand, the Great Pyramid looming high above them now, what ravages there had been of time unnoticeable to Michael as he compared the reality of the Pyramid to his mental images of it.

  Michael dropped into a crouch, the nearest of the Soviet guards a few meters away, his back turned to them.

  Hammerschmidt gestured to himself, then to the guard. Michael shook his head. He gestured to the guard, then gestured with his knife.

  Hammerschmidt nodded.

  Michael was up, moving, slowly, his eyes flickering from side to side lest he be detected, his mind focusing on the image of the Pyramid to avoid giving the guard the sixth sense warning his father, John Rourke, had often spoken of.

  He kept moving, gradually increasing his pace, the knife held like a rapier in his right fist.

  Less distance now than the span of his arm, Michael leaped forward, his left hand going over the guard’s mouth and chin, snapping the head back, h
is right arm arcing around the guard’s body, thrusting the knife in deep and downward—the blade was long enough to pass through the body and exit. But he drove it downward through the throat and into the chest, the body weight of the Soviet trooper sagging

  against him now, Michael giving the blade a twist as he withdrew it, letting the body sink into the sand.

  He glanced back—Hammerschmidt was already running up to join him.

  With Hammerschmidt’s help, Michael dragged the body up and into the depression beyond the edge of the ridgeline.

  The nearest wall of the Pyramid—the girl had gotten him thinking in meters and he normally thought in yards. A hundred yards, men digging at the corner at the far edge of the wall.

  Michael licked his lips. He gestured with his head toward Hammerschmidt, then toward the wall of the Pyramid.

  Hammerschmidt nodded as Michael stabbed the Life Support System II into the sand to clean it of blood.

  Michael broke into a run, at a right angle to the position where the Russian had stood, for the near wall of the Pyramid. He ran flat out, cover unavailable, finding running easier here than at Hekla, the air more dense here.

  He threw himself against the wall, flat, Hammerschmidt beside him a second later.

  The German commando leader hissed, “Herr Rourke—we should cross behind the Pyramid I think.”

  Michael nodded only, taking off again at a dead run along the length of the wall, the running slow here, the sand softer. He slowed still more as he reached the corner of the Pyramid, edging toward it now, the knife sheathed, the 629 in his right fist from the leather.

  He could feel Hammerschmidt behind him as he edged ever so slightly around the corner of the massive structure. No one was visible.

  Michael looked back—they had not been noticed— yet. Nor had the absence of the guard—yet. He rounded the corner and ran along the next wall of the Pyramid now, the revolver holstered again, his hands weaponless. It was darker here, away from the glare of the yellow worklights, but the dark a grayblue—very soon now the sun would rise.

  As he ran, he heard voices, then slowed himself. He had taught himself Russian from tapes, practiced it with Natalia, worked with Russian instructional tapes at Hekla in off moments. He could understand it well enough—someone was talking with a superior officer. And one of the voices—somehow inside himself, he felt it was Karamatsov.

  More slowly now he kept moving, but his hands moved automatically, ripping the two Beretta 92 SB-Fs from the leather beneath his armpits.

  He could hear the telltale sound of Hammerschmidt unholstering his pistol.

  Michael’s thumbs edged up the ambidexterous safeties as he moved ahead, the Russian voices loud enough to clearly make out conversation now—“Comrade Marshal, it should be a matter of less than an hour.”

  “Tell the men to dig more rapidly. I wish to be out of here, have what we came for.”

  “But Comrade Marshal Karamatsov—I do not—”

  “Major Krakovski, have you considered that we might lose our historic struggle?”

  “Comrade Marshal!”

  Michael stopped, a few yards back from the corner where the walls met, in his mind’s eye seeing Karamatsov and the one called Major Krakovski, just beyond the juncture of the walls.

  He waited.

  Karamatsov, his voice strange sounding, spoke

  again. “We had anticipated the Eden Project alone surviving from the world before. But no. The Germans in what was Argentina, now allies of the Eden Project fleet, allies of the Icelandic communities, the allies of Rourke. Mankind was more adaptable than any of us could have imagined. In a battle of concentrated military might, warfare between ourselves and the Germans and their allies might continue for decades unless we were to utilize the few thermonuclear devices still remaining to us. And if we fail to crush them with these devices, what would remain? Even if we were triumphant, hum? Could the atmosphere sustain the shock of a second nuclear war?”

  “I had prepared for this possibility. An ultimate weapon,” and he laughed. “I shall retire to my tent. When the diggers have reached the foundation level, prepare the transits for the sightings. I shall personally confirm their accuracy. Then we shall recover our prize.”

  “Comrade Marshal—”

  “Major, it will be all right,” the voice of Karamatsov almost whispered.

  Michael edged forward again, his fists tightening on the butts of his pistols. He could step around the corner, kill Karamatsov now.

  This weapon—what was it? If Karamatsov were dead, would Karamatsov’s underlings be able to find it, use it?

  If he—Michael Rourke—opened fire now, he would kill Karamatsov, but himself be killed. Hammerschmidt as well, Maria Leuden and the others. And what little intelligence had been gleaned concerning Karamatsov’s quest here in the desert would be lost.

  He raised both pistols, working the safeties down into the “safe” position.

  Michael Rourke closed his eyes.

  He felt Hammerschmidt s hand on his shoulder.

  Without opening his eyes, Michael nodded.

  There would be another time.

  He turned, opening his eyes, breaking into a jog trot along the wall in the direction from which he had come. They would take the body with them and bury it in the sand where Karamatsov’s force would never find the hapless guard. Let Karamatsov assume what he liked as to the sentry’s fate.

  Already, he was forming a plan, a method—observe the engineers when they took the sightings with their transits, calculate the angle of the telescopes and shoot back azimuths to locate the intersection point. It would be approximate only—but it would get them there.

  He reached the next corner—it was clear around the corner—no alert.

  Michael Rourke kept running.

  Chapter Eight

  Jea clutched the thing which made fire—he remembered how one of his kind had taken a rock and smashed in the head of the one in black who came from the helicopter and taken it.

  The gun.

  Jea ran.

  Maur or Char would take life for this and Jea was not really certain if the gun would make fire for him as it made fire for the one in black who was dead.

  When the snow had come, the cold had come out of the air as well, and smoke formed on his breath as he ran. Along with the gun, he carried with him the book with the pictures from which he had learned to tell words, the book inside its casket that felt cold to the touch like parts of the gun felt. Would that he could sling a web, like the one in the book, and move from tree to tree.

  He wondered—the one in the book. Were there really tall places like that in the years ago? Were all the people who lived inside the tall things with the spots that held the strange water in the walls?

  Jea looked back behind him.

  It was not Maur, but Maur’s son, Char—and Char was running. Jea could hear the sounds of Char’s rage now, the screams. In Char’s hand was the club. It was

  not made from one of the trees with needles—were they cedars? It was made from another tree which had no needles and it was strong enough to break bodies when it fell.

  And Char waved the club over his head and screamed.

  Jea, his feet numbing with the cold, ran, holding the gun …

  John Rourke let Natalia sag against him, his eyes studying the tracks in the gray orange glow from the horizon. As the pre-dawn hours had worn on, there were fewer and fewer tracks of the foot soldiers, more of them with each opportunity, he surmised, clambering aboard the armored personnel carrier out of weariness, sacrificing the warming exercise of movement for respite from exhaustion.

  Ahead, the tracks veered off, out of the chain of valleys through which they moved and along a gently rising defile.

  He estimated that if the Russians had continued to travel, they would be by now at least four hours ahead. But his goal was not to catch them, but to follow them.

  He looked at Natalia. His decision was made. Once they cam
e up out of the valley and onto the ridgeline, he would find a suitable place, erect one of the climatically controlled tents and give her time to rest.

  There was no choice, her well-being more important to him than satisfying his curiosity.

  “Come on, Natalia—just a little while further.”

  “I’m fine, John—really I am.”

  “Sure,” and he smiled, helping her along, flanking the tracks on the right as he had done ever since taking up after the Russians.

  Why had the Russians folded camp and left in the middle of the night? Few things in any army ever made obvious good sense, he knew—but why? They walked on, the sun winking above and below the peaks along the horizon as they moved and shifted their perspective, but the light less gray now, more a pale, washed out yellow.

  And as the sun rose, the wind which had been all but non-existent, heightened, a breeze gentle enough but cold, gusting occasionally and penetrating the body like a knife when it did. His own body was beyond weariness, on an adrenaline high, he realized, a high from which he might crash soon into exhaustion.

  As his eyes scanned the tracks on the ground, he saw something else. A footprint unlike all the others, as though moccasined and yet not.

  “What is that, John?”

  “I don’t know—can you stand?”

  “Yes.”

  John Rourke took his arm from around her waist and dropped to one knee in the snow. The sun was up over the peak directly opposite them now and he could see the ground a little more clearly. Whatever the footgear, it was clearly the footprint of a man, a man running.