Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion Page 7

  His helicopters would stand no chance against the Nazi fortifications, regardless of the disposition of the Nazi troops who were now thousands of miles away from protecting their stronghold.

  Fighter bombers were the only thing—fighter bombers

  and a ground assault to penetrate the main entrance. If it were timed perfectly, it could work, he thought.

  He watched the pretty young woman and the child for a moment longer—they reminded him of things he could not afford to consider until the conquest of earth under the leadership of the Hero Colonel was completed.

  But he wanted to reach out to her very much—and touch her gently.

  Chapter Twelve

  There was a French term for it that she had forgotten. She massaged gently at the sides of her distended abdomen, watching Frau Mann as much as she listened to her. “Helene? You are all right? I cannot help but notice—”

  “I am fine, Frau Mann. I have had many babies and this one is just telling me that he will be coming soon—but not too soon.” Helene Sturm smiled, moving her hands from her abdomen to the table that separated them. It was a favorite place for the women of the officer corps, located on the top floor of the field officer’s quarters and overlooking almost the entire complex. The streets below bustled with pedestrian traffic, the few private vehicles and the mass transport machines. The Educational Center could be seen in the far distance beyond the government buildings.

  She thought of Manfred and his loyalty to the youth. “You are not listening to me, Helene.” Frau Mann smiled.

  “I am sorry, Frau Mann—I was thinking of my oldest son.”

  “Do you think that he spies on you?”

  Helene Sturm realized that the teacup she had been lifting from its saucer was making a rattling noise in her right hand.

  She looked about the huge room. Other women like

  herself populated the tables dotted about it—she recognized most of them. As her eyes scanned the room, Maria, the fiance of her brother Sigfried, noticed her and waved. Helene smiled and waved back. Sigfried was with her man, her husband Helmut. They were in North America, fighting—under the leadership of Frau Mann’s husband. And she was afraid for them both, and for Col. Wolfgang Mann as well. Because if he failed, the conspiracy against the leader would doubtlessly be found out in its entirety and there would be many arrests. She touched again at her abdomen, shifting her position on the smallish, wooden-framed armless chair—the seat of the chair was not padded enough. “Helene?”

  Frau Mann’s voice brought her back to the present. “No, I do not know—I think that Manfred watches and listens very carefully. He is very political, I think. But he does not spy on me for anyone—not yet.”

  “If he were to learn,” Frau Mann began, then stopped. The waitress came with their sandwiches, asked if they wanted more tea, then left. Frau Mann began again. “If Manfred were to learn—we would all be executed.”

  “He would not inform on his own mother—I cannot believe that,” Helene Sturm insisted. She had no appetite for the sandwich, thinly sliced sausage with lightly scrambled egg. The smell of it was making her nauseated. But she needed to eat regularly for the baby. She picked up one of the quartered pieces and nibbled at it.

  Frau Mann was talking again, stubbing out her cigarette as she spoke. “My husband did not attempt a radio contact last night—I was informed. This means that either something has gone wrong or that he feels the time is too close and he cannot risk a radio message being discovered.”

  “I think it is that—that he doesn’t want to risk discovery. I just know he is all right.”

  “I spoke with a member of Field Marshal Richter’s staff this morning—official communications are still coming in. They have encountered a strong Soviet force in the southeastern segment of what was the United States. Their first skirmish was successful for our forces.”

  “That will only make the leader more powerful—he can use the Soviets as a threat to increase his demands for a total war footing.”

  “But there was a message for me from Wolfgang—that he had found a rose. I think this is a code that he has found a means for aiding Deiter Bern.”

  Helene Sturm looked anxiously around the room—to mention Deiter Bern was to risk arrest for treason. “I pray that you are right, Frau Mann.”

  “And if,” Frau Mann said slowly, “my husband and his legion should be unable to reach The Complex in time— then we shall do it ourselves. We are agreed in that still?”

  “Yes—still,” Helene Sturm answered. And she touched at the life in her abdomen. “Still.”

  “If—if he—if he is executed, all is lost,” Frau Mann whispered. Helene Sturm watched Frau Mann. She looked at her sandwich, the same as Helene had ordered, then neatly folded her napkin beside the blue willow pattern plate. “I will be right back.” Frau Mann pushed her chair out and stood, smoothing her skirt along her thighs with her hands, the fingers splayed. She slung her bag over her right shoulder and started toward the rear of the restaurant—the powder room, Helene Sturm knew.

  She watched Wolfgang Mann’s wife. The clothing, the hair, the walk—the casual smiles and more casual nods to the women she passed. Her husband was the ranking field officer under the general staff and would, after the first phase of the campaign, be promoted to general officer’s rank. But if he attempted to save the life of Deiter Bern and smash the power of the leader and were to fail—he

  would be publicly executed.

  Helene Sturm took her own napkin from her lap and set it down beside her own plate. She could eat nothing now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aerial observation had confirmed considerable activity at the site in the west Texas desert where Helmut Sturm had tracked the Soviet force, as per the orders of his commander, Standartenfuehrer Wolfgang Mann.

  “Herr Hauptsturmfuehrerl”

  Sturm turned to the voice of the young soldier. “Yes, Corporal—what is it?”

  “A message from Untersturmfuehrer Bloch, Herr Hauptsturmfuehrerl”

  Sturm took the folded message form, returned the man’s salute, “Heil,” and unfolded the message. “Helmut—my men are in position. We await the signal. Sigfried.” He folded the message and dropped it in the left outside pocket of his battle dress uniform tunic. “Very good, Corporal— return to your unit.”

  Again the corporal saluted and Helmut Sturm returned it, the younger man doing a very sharp about face and breaking into a dog trot, his assault rifle at high port, his steps carrying him leadenly across the drifting sand.

  Sturm turned away, licking his dry lips against the sun and the wind.

  He scanned the area distant from him where the helicopters awaited, looking for his obersturmfuehrer. He saw the man, shouting, “Fritz—give the signal—we attack!”

  “Yes Herr Haupsturmfuehrerl” And his obersturm

  fuehrer saluted, Sturm this time returning the salute with added sharpness.

  He began to walk, ignoring the background sounds of the helicopters’ rotor blades picking up speed, tugging his gloves into position, breaking into a run now for his machine’s open fuselage door. And as he ran, he patted at the full flap holster on the belt at his waist—his pistol.

  He had estimated the Soviet force on the ground—planes were coming in with alarming regularity as though a full-scale invasion were in process—at being in rough parity with his own. And he would have the element of surprise.

  He ducked his head, slowing his pace, then vaulted aboard. He clapped his sergeant at the shoulder, shouting, “Herman—to victory, eh?” He didn’t wait for a response, moving forward and sliding into his seat beside the main control panel and his pilot. He settled his radio headset into position, jerking his left thumb upward.

  His pilot nodded.

  The machine started to rise.

  In the distance he could see the mirror signals from the highest of the dunes, signaling those elements on the ground under the leadership of Sigfried and Sturm’s two
other line platoon leaders to begin their attack. He had ordered radio silence lest a message be intercepted by his quarry, the Russians.

  And radio silence would be his excuse with Standartenfuehrer Mann—that he had not obtained proper authorization for the attack.

  As he stared groundward through the machine’s chin bubble, he considered Standartenfuehrer Wolfgang Mann. Born to one of the best families, among the original elite who had founded The Complex more than five centuries ago. His party membership assured—he had never sought party advancement. His wife one of the most beautiful women Sturm had ever had the good fortune to see in his entire life. And she from a family equally as good as that of

  the Standartenfuehrer. But it was rumored always that theirs had been a love match, not one of the doomed arranged marriages within the elite, marriages that were publicly strong and privately weak. The Standartenfuehrer had been a superb athlete in his youth. He had revamped the air cavalry force to his own ideas and methods while still a junior officer, sometimes in direct opposition to the general staff. And soon, he would be appointed to the general staff as the youngest field marshal in the history of the military organization of The Complex—the first true field commander in five centuries. He was called in some quarters “the modern Rommel”—and it was this which worried Helmut Sturm. The business with Deiter Bern, whose name even whispered was punishable by death. Wolfgang Mann had been one of Bern’s supporters against the leader’s drive to re-Nazify The Complex, but Mann had been too highly placed to touch because of family and influence, his career too meteoric to crush.

  Not a pilot by training, he could fly as well or better than his best pilots. He was at once a strategist and a tactician, beloved by his men.

  Helmet Sturm at once saw his Standartenfuehrer as an idol and a danger.

  “Herr Hauptsturmfuehrerl”

  He turned from his reverie to the face of his pilot. “Yes?”

  “We are in position, Herr Hauptsturmfuehrerl”

  “I know that,” Sturm answered evenly.

  It was time to break radio silence. He flicked the switch on the console to which his headset was wired. “Eagle Strike!”

  On the ground to the north, he could see the puff of smoke from the first of the mortars.

  Vladmir Karamatsov sat bolt upright in his cot. The

  sound of the explosion rang in his ears.

  He swung his feet over the side and stuffed his feet into his boots. Another explosion, this one closer. Mortar fire.

  He was up, grabbing his black flight jacket in his left hand, his shoulder holster with the five-centuries-old Smith & Wesson Model 59 automatic in his right.

  He was at the door of his quarters, shrugging the shoulder holster onto his frame, twisting his feet to push them all the way into his boots.

  He was through the door—one of his officers was running toward him. The sunlight bright, Karamatsov squinted against it for a moment—and he thought of John Rourke, the sunglasses.

  “We are under attack, Comrade Colonel Karamatsov!”

  “Get our gunships airborne!” He ran past the man, dismissing any further conversation, dodging right, throwing himself to the sand as another mortar struck, a wave of sand crashing down across his back. He beat the sand from his body as he forced himself to his feet, running, shaking his jacket free of the sand and shouldering into it.

  His personal gunship was waiting for him, its rotor blades already turning.

  But he heard different sounds—vehicles. He looked to his right—gunfire, flames. And things which looked like miniaturized tanks were crossing over the high dune at the far edge of the encampment’s perimeter. They were roughly the size of the efficient Volkswagen Beetles of five centuries earlier, but rode high off the ground, heavily armored, from the look of them, balloon tires instead of treads. The first wave of the machines bounced over the dune and was coming toward him.

  Karamatsov ran—emblazoned in his mind was the image of the swastika which had adorned each of the mini-tanks.

  He was cut off from his machine now, a second wave of the mini-tanks coming from the opposite end of the camp.

  Gunfire—machine guns, but not his own.

  He looked skyward as he dove for cover behind a rank of packing crates, chunks of wood splintering off as machine gunfire raked across them. Helicopters—some were his own—but others, the majority of the others—they were not.

  He cursed in English, “The devil with you!” He pushed himself to his feet, running again. He had to reach his machine so he could take charge of the response—otherwise defeat would be certain. He reached under his jacket, breaking the Model 59 from the leather, working off the thumb safety. He shifted the pistol to his left hand, patting at the outside pocket of his flight jacket—the little Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chiefs. He opened the pocket flap and drew the snubby barreled revolver. A pistol in each hand now, he ran.

  He looked behind him. The mini-tanks were consolidating on the central section of the encampment—his men were resisting but had no armored vehicles and even the new assault rifles would not penetrate armor.

  A small squad of the Nazi troopers were racing on foot and cutting him off from his machine. Karamatsov threw himself to the ground near the dead body of one of his men, stuffing the revolver into his hip pocket, picking up the assault rifle.

  Gunfire hammered toward him; Karamatsov rolling, fired the assault rifle toward the small squad of Nazis. He could hear—see now—gunfire from the open fuselage door of his helicopter. Two of the Nazis were down. He fired again—the third went down, the fourth dropping to a crouch beside a fallen comrade, firing. The sand near Karamatsov’s head seemed to explode over him and he rolled left, firing wildly.

  The roar of heavy machine gunfire—he looked up. One of his own helicopters. The Nazi who had been firing at him was down, draped clumsily across the body of one of his comrades, the back of his khakis laced with the red of

  his blood.

  Karamatsov threw down the assault rifle, running now, across the ground and into the storm of sand made by his beating rotor blades. He threw himself through the opening, shouting to his pilot, “Take it up—now!”

  He crawled forward, out of the opening in the fuselage, the machine rocking and swaying under him, around him. It was then that he glanced at the digital chronometer on his left wrist. As he hauled himself to his feet, fighting the sway of the machine as he moved forward, Vladmir Karamatsov laughed.

  If the jet fighters of Krakovski’s lead elements were on schedule …

  As if to echo his thoughts, he heard the sonic boom, then another and another and another and another.

  He was fully forward now, sinking into the seat opposite his pilot.

  “Pull back—so I can see this!”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel!” The machine banked hard to port, Karamatsov watching the horizon line for a moment through the chin bubble, then as the machine leveled off, watching through the windshield. Black streaks through the sky, tan Nazi mini-tanks erupting as contrails dissipated in the black and orange fire-balls of air-to-ground missiles. The sand rippled under the impact of submachine gun bullets, the Nazi infantry forces falling back toward the perimeter of the camp.

  His own helicopters were closing in battle with the Nazi machines, but some of the fighter bombers were breaking off, engaging more of the Nazi helicopters. He had seen an anti-aircraft bombardment once—shells exploding in midair. And it was the same effect now—but rather than shells exploding, the Nazi gunships were exploding, vaporizing before his eyes.

  The windshield through which he stared was smudged black with oil that had gushed toward his machine when another from his force had caught fire from a peripheral missile strike and a secondary explosion had then vaporized the craft.

  He kept his hands locked in his lap—to prevent anyone seeing them shaking.

  War—it was no longer something talked about at night, or studied from books, or an exercise—it was reality.

&
nbsp; And Helmut Sturm, his forces triply decimated at the least, knew inside himself that had Standartenfuehrer Wolfgang Mann been in command, somehow the roles of victor and vanquished would have been exchanged.

  And the worst of it—he had witnessed as machine gunfire from one of the shadow black fighter aircraft which had appeared seemingly out of nowhere had stitched across the position held by his wife’s brother. And her brother’s men.

  Helmut Sturm wondered how he would tell his wife Helene that her brother Sigfried was dead and that he could not even retake the boy’s mangled body from the field.

  He closed his eyes—it was unmanly to cry, he had been taught.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Annie Rourke squeezed the towel tighter, the water dribbling from it into the basin, then refolded it and laid it across Paul Rubenstein’s high forehead, smoothing back his thinning hair, murmuring to him, “You were so brave—I love you.”

  He opened his eyes then, and she leaned over him more closely, kissing his lips lightly.

  “What, ahh, aww, shit—I’m—I’m sorry—I—”

  “After Daddy and Momma and Natalia got away with Lieutenant Kurinami and Doctor Halverson—”

  “I remember.” Paul Rubenstein smiled up at her thinly. “Dodd—he—”

  “No, it wasn’t Dodd. He was at the other side of the crowd. It was that man Blackburn, the one who spoke German and was supposed to go with Daddy to Argentina. He hit you with that wrench and he tried to take your submachine gun.”

  “What—where, ahh—wow, my head hurts.”

  “I shot him in the left thigh—just a little,” Annie admitted.