Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend Read online

  Behind him, toward the tunnel where Michael and Paul were pinned down, he heard the muted roar of a grenade, then another.

  The energy weapon in Rourke’s hands died, the last burst missing its target completely and impacting the synth-concrete driveway.

  John Rourke shrugged out of the packstraps, putting his arms into the straps for the second weapon, shouldering the pack, then hauling himself to his feet. A spasm of pain shot through him from his leg, settling in his stomach for an instant. He shook his head to clear it, then started away from the synth-concrete wall where he’d taken cover. There was not enough light to check the energy level on his new weapon, but there should be a dozen or more full-charge shots left in it he guessed, he hoped.

  Rourke started toward the tunnel.

  The first impact came, a conventional explosive missile or bomb, he realized, striking near the main gates. The floor beneath him vibrated with it and the tunnel wall near him cracked, the tunnel ceiling above cracking as well, and synth-concrete dust showering down on him.

  Rourke ordered himself to ignore the pain, breaking into a run.

  Another impact, the sound of this explosion rattling through the tunnel itself, but from behind him. German missiles, hitting the side of the mountain itself, knocking out the air defense batteries that now, apparently, were without radar guidance.

  There was another explosion, the tunnel shaking violently, Rourke nearly stumbling, his left leg nearly buckling with pain.

  “Bleeding again. Damn,” Rourke almost whispered, still running.

  Ahead of him, he saw Michael firing a conventional Soviet assault rifle, but no sign of Natalia and Paul. Michael’s right arm was limp at his side, the assault rifle at his hip.

  Rourke quickened his pace as much as he dared, nearing the tunnel entrance now. Another explosion came, the tunnel starting to break up, massive chunks of synth-concrete Ming from the tunnel ceiling.

  Rourke grabbed at his thigh, pressing his hand and the pistol in it against the wound to staunch the flow of blood.

  He was almost to the tunnel entrance now, Michael firing again. In the distance, well out from the tunnel, Rourke caught a glimpse of Natalia and Paul, running out ropes of German plastique.

  There was another missile strike, the floor of the tunnel splitting. Michael turning around and looking back down the tunnel, then shouting to him-not loudly enough to be heard-and gesturing to

  him to hurry.

  John Rourke threw himself into the run, lighraeadedness and nausea sweeping over him from blood loss.

  As the roar of the explosion died, he could hear Michael shouting, “… waiting for you! Gonna blow!”

  Rourke wasn’t thinking straight, he realized.

  He lurched along the last portion of the tunnel, sagging against the tunnel wall and his son calling. “Dad-“

  Til be all right, Michael. They’re mining the area between here and the entrance-right?”

  “Come on!” And Michael Rourke drew his father’s left arm across his shoulder with his own left hand.

  “Your arm.”

  “Bullet broke the radius, I think. Hurts like hell. Come on, Dad. You shoot, HI carry. “

  John Rourke looked at his son, his friend, and smiled. “Got a deal, Michael.”

  John Rourke leaned his weight on Michael, the two of them starting through the tunnel entrance now, gunfire from Paul and Natalia providing covering fire.

  Two Elite corpsmen started from behind an overturned truck and Rourke stabbed one of the twin stainless Detonics .45s toward them, firing a double tap into one of the men, dropping him; the second man going down with a burst of 9mm from Paul’s submachine gun.

  The gates at the main entrance were partially destroyed, partially pristine, a portion of the synth-concrete entrance collapsed over them. But there was still a clear path in and out.

  Another missile strike, incredibly louder here, and as it died, the sound of J7-Vs roaring past, strafing the ground outside.

  Natalia’s voice. “Fm detonating Michael’s and Paul’s plastique on five! Get out!”

  There was enough of the German plastique to bring the entire entrance area down, Rourke realized. He looked back, Natalia looking toward him.

  “Don’t die,” John Rourke whispered.

  He limped on, the weight that would have been on his left leg across his son’s shoulders.

  Outside, in the numbing cold and wind, the sky rained death,

  missiles and bombs pulverizing everything on the ground.

  And, from behind him, John Rourke heard the roar of the explosion starting, plastique enough to-He shivered, telling himself it was blood loss, cold and shock.

  German helicopter gunships were closing toward the city, the J7-Vs backing off now. German paratroopers bailed out overhead, the canopies of their chutes opening white against the blue gray of the sky. Vehicles all around them were aflame. From the south, the west and the east, Allied ground forces-armor and infantry-closed on the Underground City. J7-V’s engaged the comparatively few Soviet aircraft which had launched in aerial dogfights, missiles exploding everywhere in the clouds.

  As blackness swept over him, John Rourke said to his son, “So, mis is Armageddon.”

  Part One

  Separate Ways

  One

  He placed the diaphragm of his stethoscope against her abdomen, then helped her to position the ear tips of the binaurals. “Can you hear now?”

  “Ota, my God!”

  The hesitant look that had been in her eyes a few seconds earlier was gone, replaced by a smile which radiated from her eyes, lighting her entire face.

  He helped her to remove the stethoscope, telling her as he gestured with his right first finger toward her hugely swollen abdomen, “That, my dear woman, is the healthy heartbeat of a healthy baby. And I should know! Not only am I a doctor, but I have two grown children of my own and my wife and I have our third child on the way. Now, will you get some rest?”

  She licked her pale lips, her eyes casting down, her skin slightly clammy looking under the glare of the light over her bed. He took a damp cloth and gendy rubbed it over her forehead, over her cheeks. Tm acting like the baby, aren’t I?”

  John Rourke shrugged his shoulders. “When it comes to pregnant women of my experience, you’re no more concerned than average. And since no man has ever had a baby, I can’t comment further. The baby is healthy. You’re healthy, too. If you rest and do what you’re supposed to, youll be walking out of here with your baby in your arms in a few more days.”

  “You wife is lucky, Doctor.”

  John Rourke found that last remark amusing. “Why is she lucky?” “Well, I mean, you-” Color was coming back into her cheeks so rapidly it seemed like a blush. “I mean-“

  He dried her face with a small towel, then said, “You get some sleep so I can get some sleep, okay?”

  “Okay. You’re a nice man. Thank you. I-“

  It was horribly unprofessional, of course, but he’d never really worried much over having an image. As he stood up, John Rourke leaned over the bed and kissed the girl lightly on the forehead. “Now, don’t open your eyes.”

  And he walked away from her bed, down the corridor formed at the center of the long, wide room by the beds on both sides and toward the double swinging doors at the far end. He needed his rest tonight, but Lieutenant Martha Larrimore was so nervous, so pathologically terrified that her baby would be stillborn, he had camped out in his office just to be near her.

  A nurse could have done the stethoscope routine, of course, could have held her hand for a while, could nave reassured her, but inside himself he’d known it wouldn’t be the same for Martha Larrimore or for him. Her baby would be over two months premature when it came. He could have C-sectioned her and been done with it, but this was a harsh new world and she would have more babies because she was healthy and wanted children and a C-section now would mitigate strongly against normal deliveries in the future. And, the longer t
he baby could remain within her, the stronger the child would be when it was born.

  He hadn’t told her, but tomorrow morning he would begin to induce her withpitosin and, if he guessed correctly, she’d be a mother by noon.

  He hoped.

  He did not want to miss the wedding, or the party afterward.

  John Rourke let himself into his small office, took the stethoscope from his neck and sat down in the chair behind his desk, then poured a cup of the fresh coffee which Doctor Munchen had brought with him from New Germany that afternoon. The coffee, from a Mid-Wake microwave coffemaker, was hot and good.

  He took a cigarette from the package he kept in his desk for the occasional time when he really wanted a smoke but was too busy or too tired to go outside and light a cigar.

  The clinic was built like the spokes of a wheel, four spokes to be exact, his office and the other offices and labs at the center or hub, patient accommodations, ward and private for those few difficult

  cases, filling the spokes.

  New Germany had built the clinic for him, and he would be eternally grateful to Colonel Mann, Deiter Bern (President of New Germany) and the German engineers who had built it. As he lit the non-carcinogenic cigarette in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo, he considered the fact that he should be grateful to Commander Dodd, as well. Dodd, asshole that he was, could have said no to the clinic, but didn’t.

  In a way, that had bothered Rourke since the beginning. There was all but concrete proof that Dodd conspired with the neo-Nazis for the overthrow of both the Government of New Germany and Eden Base. So, why had he allowed the clinic to be built?

  When the war came to its end, the politics began and John Rourke opted out.

  Throughout his life prior to the Night of the War, he had been perpetually amazed and bemused that anyone would enter politics of his own accord, because the seeking of public office in America had long ago ceased to be a duty, reluctantly entered into by those whom honor and responsibility called to serve. There were, then, some few who still viewed their quest for public office as a means of performing public service, but they were a fast-fading breed.

  Instead, politics had become the means by which the small-minded sought to gain power over their fellow man.

  All but gone was the concept of representing the voters; replacing^ it was the tantalizing prospect of ruling prince-like, the lives of others.

  Tantalizing to some, disgusting always to him.

  He rubbed at his left thigh, remembering how a shot had brought him around from unconsciousness and, despite the fact he couldn’t walk too well, with Michael’s and Paul’s help he’d gotten Wmself aboard one of the German mini-tanks and re-entered the battle for the Underground City.

  The explosives he and Natalia had used against the air defense center had done more of a job than he knew then. Nicolai Antonovitch, the commander of Soviet forces, had been the one who cut the power. After holding out for what seemed, as best evidence indicated, several hours, Antonovitch was overcome and killed, but only after neutralizing the city’s electrical supply, during a critical period and assassinating the Underground City’s leader.

  When the electrical power was restored, had the explosives Rourke and Natalia used not done their work, air defense radar would have come back on line. It never came back, however.

  The explosives Natalia and Paul planted near the main entrance and which Natalia subsequendy detonated, served to trap the majority of Soviet ground forces, not already in the field, inside the Underground City egress, through various smaller points limited.

  All tolled, discounting the considerable loss of life, the commando raid the four of them-Paul and Michael and Natalia and himself - had conducted, was more successful than could have been imagined.

  John Rourke stubbed out the cigarette, turning his lighter over in his hands as he looked toward the cot along the far wall of his office.

  He set down his lighter, reached under his white lab jacket and pulled out the little Hip-Gripped Smith & Wesson Centennial and put the revolver on the floor beside the cot. Old habits died hard, and he’d rather carry a gun and never need it, than need a gun and realize it was some critical distance away, in a drawer someplace.

  He sat on the end of the cot and leaned over to untie his boots. The Mid-Wake issue boots were comfortable and he had a sufficient number of pairs-they were black, similar in appearance to G.I combat boots - that he could wear a fresh pair every day for a week without repeating.

  He lay back on the cot and reached up with his right hand to turn down the light switch, then reached down for a last touch at the little gun.

  He closed his eyes, opened them, and stared at the grayness of the ceiling.

  The batde for the Underground City endured for nine days. That was three months ago, now, and still there was no accurate casualty figure.

  On the ninth day, Rourke’s leg so well restored that he had just returned from a commando raid against a Soviet artillery battery, and the decision had just been made to bring up captured Soviet Island Class submarines as close in as possible along the Med, the Arabian or the Berents Sea with conventional warheads targeted against the City.

  But the announcement came from the Soviet high command that the city would surrender.

  John Rourke, in his reluctant capacity of Brigadier General as appointed by the President of Mid-Wake (and also the United States, technically), was asked to receive the surrender documents.

  With Wolfgang Mann, field commander for the Allied Forces and commander of the Army of New Germany, John Rourke and a party of fifteen officers, met with twelve Soviet officials, both KGB Elite Corps, Army and civilian, a mile out from the main entrance of the Underground City.

  And he would always remember the words of the ranking Elite Corps officer. “Your people did not win, Doctor. Nor did your ideology. You won. Will you call yourself king or president or premier? But, as the Englishman, Shakespeare said, I believe,… a rose by any other name.”

  John Rourke had wanted very much to hit the man, a major, one of the survivors from before The Night of The War, one of the original men from Vladmir Karamatsov’s KGB Elite Corps.

  But he did not.

  Instead, following the ceremony he left, returning at first to New Germany, to his wife, Sarah, and his daughter, Annie, Paul’s wife.

  Doctor Deiter Bern conferred upon him the Knight’s Cross of New Germany, the country’s highest order.

  And Doctor Munchen, over a drink following this second accursed ceremony, asked him, “Herr Doctor, I have been asked by Deiter Bern-but I would myself have asked it-to offer you a professorship at the University. You can teach whatever you like, work with our finest doctors, live the life you deserve after all you have endured on mankind’s behalf.”

  “I didn’t do anything on mankind’s behalf, Doctor. I did it for me. The United States needs rebuilding. There’s work there I want to do. If I can get the materials and supplies-“

  “A hospital?”

  “Yes,” Rourke told him.

  “And what of Commander Dodd, the fellow who wants to be a god or a king?”

  “He’s teclinically the leader of a nation, Eden. He’s subject to that nation’s laws, and Eden doesn’t have any. I intend to correct that.” “You? I would have thought-” “That law isn’t something Fm fond of?” “Well” Munchen smiled, taking a cigarette from his case, appar

  ently remembering to offer one-Rourke refused it-then lighting “I mean that-“

  “I know what you mean. I mean the Constitution of the United States. We don’t need any other laws beyond that, Doctor. Theres bound to be an election, because Dodd won’t have any choice. And Akiro Kurinami will stand against him-“

  “But you-may I call you John?”

  “Yes; me, what?”

  “You could-“

  John Rourke smiled, lit one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars he preferred, telling the German military physician, “No one would ever vote for me, and if a
nyone would, I wouldn’t want it. I’m no politician. Anyone who supposes he’s capable of ranning somebody else’s life is a fool or a would-be despot. I’ll live my life the way I can and tell no man how to live his; I don’t expect the same treatment, but I’ll damned well get it.”

  “Then why not stay here, John?”

  “I have to do what I feel is the right thing; you wouldn’t do any less, would you? You were never a Nazi, always on the side of the people who supported Deiter Bern and freedom, weren’t you?”

  Munchen looked down at the tip of his cigarette, molded it free of ashes, the tip glowing as he raised it to his Dps and inhaled. “Dodd, if he is working with the neo-Nazis, as you call them, will kill you. You know?”

  “I suspect hell try,” John Rourke smiled, inhaling on his cigar, holding the smoke in his lungs, then exhaling it through his nostrils.

  “And what will you do after you have Kurinami elected and your hospital is running prfectly well and Michael is married and Annie and Paul have a child - and the baby your wife carries is born? Then what will John Rourke do? Grow old and fat?”

  “Hardly fat, hopefully old,” Rourke laughed.

  “After five centuries of one life, how -“

  “I’ve never been a violent man, but violence has so often been required of me.” And he smiled again. “Imagine what’s out there,” John Rourke said, gesturing toward the world beyond the cocktail lounge in which they shared a ridiculously small round table. “The pyramids are still standing, in Egypt, and I bet in Mexico. Mysteries that your science could solve, that mine could never solve. Great underground repositories of books and records and sound re

  cordings that would have survived in the capitals of the world, Time capsules. Maybe other people, people who somehow managed to survive.”

  And Rourke laughed at himself.

  “Why are you laughing, John?”

  He shook his head, saying, “I guess I’ve always craved adventure. Silly of me, I know, but I suppose there’s a little boy inside every man who wants to find what’s lost and explore things undreamed of.”