Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain

by Ahern, Jerry

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The half-track truck’s fuel tank registered well below half remaining and Vassily Prokopiev stopped the vehicle and climbed out into the snow, instantly chilled.

  He walked through the drifted snow, toward the vehicle’s rear, pulling open the tarp just enough that he could reach inside the bed from the rear bumper, climbing up, taking out one of the canisters of synthetic fuel.

  He drove without a full knowledge of his destination, only that he drove to the west. Soon, he would encounter German lines. What he would say to the Germans to prevent his being shot and killed he had no idea of, but the canister in which the plans for the particle beam technology were contained had to be given to Doctor Rourke.

  There was no doubt of that.

  As he filled the receptacle with pellets, he heard the sound again, only aware now of having heard it a first time at all. It was a low moaning sound.

  Carefully, he kept his hands at their task, filling the synth fuel chamber to capacity, closing the cap, then capping the container as well.

  He looked around him as he started back toward the rear of the half-track. “Idiot,” he cursed at himself. The assault rifle, the rest of his gear, all of it was inside the cab of the half-track where it was nice and warm, the engine still running there. All he carried on his body was the Czechoslovakian CZ-75 9mm pistol, the antique given him by Comrade Marshal Antonovitch, like a father might give to a son.

  He had never fired the gun. But he drew it now, freeing it from the holster as he bent into the truck bed to replace the still partially full canister of synth fuel. Yet he kept the pistol under his coat.

  He dropped to the snowy ground, tugging the tarp closed, securing it awkwardly but satisfactorily with one hand.

  Choice. Run for the cab of the half-track truck, drive off and escape whatever made the moaning noise. There. He heard it again.

  Or go and look.

  It sounded a human cry and, except for wildlife released around the now destroyed Second Chinese City, there should be no animals roaming free on the continent.

  Human.

  Perhaps a soldier, separated from his unit.

  He could not leave a fellow soldier, regardless of his army, to die here in the cold.

  “I am armed!” Prokopiev called into the swirling snows. “If you require aid, I will give it. Do not be afraid, but if you attempt to harm me you will surely die!”

  He spoke in Russian. To have tried English, with which he wasn’t all that terribly comfortable, would have made no sense. A soldier out here would have to be Russian or German and he knew no German.

  There was no response.

  Vassily Prokopiev was freezing cold, but more of the cold was from the inside of him.

  He walked toward the sound, into the swirling cloud of snow and airborne ice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  There was seismic sensing equipment of an elaborate, almost antique-looking kind, wood trimmed, and brass fitted, and the brass highly polished. Madame Jokli stood before it. Michael Rourke held his bandaged left upper arm. Feeling was beginning to return and, with the feeling, pain.

  There was movement on the needle of the seismograph, black scrawl in its wake across the unfurling roll of white graph paper. “There is going to be an eruption, Michael, an eruption of Mt. Hekla.”

  Outside, Soviet troops were massing, visible through the windows. Michael fumbled with his stiff fingers as he reloaded the spent magazine for his Berettas, the other pistol, from which he’d expended only a single round, already replenished. And then Madame Jokli began again to speak, but this time in her native Icelandic, Bjorn Rolvaag and three other Icelandic policemen in the room with them. Out of thirty-five members of the constabulary, eight had been killed outright, two more dying of their wounds in the moments immediately following penetration of the building. Five others were wounded, none so seriously they couldn’t walk with a little assistance.

  Twenty policemen armed with swords, two women (Madame Jokli, President of Lydveldid Island, and her maid, an older woman), a dog that physically more closely resembled a timber wolf, a twenty-first policeman armed with a sword and a staff and a twenty-second man—Michael himself—armed with three handguns, an assault rifle and a knife could not withstand the assault which was coming inevitably against them.

  “When, Madame President, should the eruption take place?” Maria Leuden might still be in the tunnels, escape pipes for the volcanic lava that had last flowed centuries ago.

  “That is hard to say. Seismography is not a specialty for me, Michael. But I have observed this equipment each day for many years and I would guess, at least, that the eruption—see how the pattern increases in magnitude—that this eruption should take place soon.”

  “Geologically soon, or soon in the temporal sense?”

  She smiled. She was very pretty and, in her youth, was likely breathtaking. “In the temporal sense. How much you are like your excellent father, Michael. The people here, both ours and theirs, must be warned to evacuate.”

  “Onto the ice sheet?”

  “Many will die, perhaps most. But all will die here. The explosives they used against us. To the far side of our community, there is a bomb crater some thirty feet wide, nearly half as deep. That is the largest, but there are several such craters. They have disturbed the earth, and the earth is about to retaliate, I think.”

  “Madame Jokli, this-” They were trapped. The KGB Elite Corps personnel outside would not believe her story about impending volcanic doom. There were helicopters. He could fly one, if he could steal one, but no one else here could. Then he should play God, if somehow he were given the opportunity, merely take off with Madame Jokli, her maid, Bjorn Rolvaag, of course Hrothgar, perhaps one or two others, leaving everyone else to die.

  He could not do that.

  But if Maria had already left the tunnels, had gone to rejoin the bulk of the German commando force, small though it was, which Wolfgang Mann had left with them, there was a chance.

  “Madame Jokli. Do you have the components here by which we might construct a powerful radio transmitter? It wouldn’t be necessary to receive, just make a signal powerful enough to reach over the height of the cone and to what remains of the German base.”

  “It might be done. You are thinking?”

  “There are very few German aircraft remaining that can be flown, I understand. But combining those with the Soviet gunships, it might be possible to save your people when the eruption comes. But everything else would have to be left behind, I’m afraid.”

  Madame Jokli smiled indulgently at him. “Michael. The people are Lydveldid Island, not the furniture, not the silverware, not even the library. If you can do this thing, you will have done something truly great. We can attempt to build such a radio. But there is little time remaining.”

  And Madame Jokli looked at the seismographic readout, then out through the windows toward the massing Soviet troops.

  She was right. There was very little time. But his father had taught him never to give up.

  If they were successful, he would be leaving something behind as well. She lay in a grave just outside the cone, their unborn child in her womb.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The refitting of the Island Class submarine Arkhangelsk, informally but officially recommissioned the USS Roy Rogers, was going well. Sometimes inaccurate, always hard to read, Soviet instrumentation was being removed, replaced with state-of-the-art instrumentation of the type found aboard the finest vessels of the Mid-Wake fleet.

  Jason Darkwood sat in the command chair, T.J. Sebastian standing beside him. “It’s only temporary, Sebastian. The Roy Rogers,” and Darkwood let himself smile, “needs a good skipper. You’re the best man for the job.”

  “I prefer the Reagan, Jason. This floating behemoth is an abomination by comparison.”

  “Yes, but she’s the biggest and best troop carrier we’ve got and as soon as the last of the Soviet missiles are remov
ed from her tubes, she can carry out what we don’t sabotage, my friend. It’s a job that needs doing.”

  Technicians, male and female, moved everywhere. “Begging the captain’s pardon, but we need this chair,” a chief petty officer interrupted.

  Darkwood grinned, slipped out of the chair. The chief immediately set about directing two ordinary seamen to begin unbolting it from the deck.

  “Our electronics can’t be fitted into their chairs,” Sebastian explained. “So, it appears, I will get a brand new chair.”

  “See! Things are looking brighter already. Let’s adjourn to your cabin before they decide to move me out of here.”

  Sebastian only nodded resignedly.

  They crossed the bridge and into a wide companionway, wide enough for two lanes of bowling. There was room to waste aboard Island Classers and, in a way, Jason Darkwood liked that.

  Sebastian deferred as they reached the door of his cabin, but Darkwood ushered him ahead.

  It was nearly as large as some Mid-Wake apartments, considerably larger than cadet quarters at the academy, and those were shared by two. “You’re going to be living the soft life, Sebastian.”

  “Hardly,” Sebastian noted drily. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” Sebastian moved to the sideboard along the bulkhead, activating the microwave coffee pot’s controls. “This could be an important command for you, Sebastian.”

  “I was happy as your executive officer aboard the Reagan.”

  “Well, look at this way,” Darkwood smiled, perching on the edge of Sebastian’s desk—it was nearly as large as Darkwood’s bunk aboard the Reagan. “They could have made you a brigadier general like they did to Doctor Rourke. He looked so thrilled, it was a wonder he could contain himself.”

  “I believe that Doctor Rourke prefers acting as his own man. Curiously, that is a freedom I feel I enjoyed aboard the Reagan. And I shall miss it.”

  “I think that was a compliment, Sebastian. Thank you,” Darkwood nodded.

  Sebastian handed him a mug Of coffee, taking a cup for himself. “The Roy Rogers will be refitted within twenty-four hours. Do you have any further word, Jason, as to our first mission?”

  “No. Doctor Rourke—I should say General Rourke, I suppose—has that briefing scheduled for tonight. Assuming—he’s able to contact the German commander, there may be some intelligence data on which we can begin to base a mission. I don’t foresee any action for some time. Too many people to be assembled, for one thing. Part of our job. You’ll pick them up, while the Reagan will run guard duty.” Sebastian’s dark face somehow looked darker. Darkwood said to him over the rim of his coffee cup, “Look at it this way, old friend,” and he sipped at the coffee. It was very hot, still. “At least we’ll still be serving together. And this assignment. If you want out of it, once things are rolling along, I’m sure Admiral Rahn will transfer you back to the Reagan.”

  “Rest assured, I look forward to that. I assume Saul Hartnett will be taking over my function.”

  “I’m temporarily letting Rodriguiz wear two hats. He’s a good young officer and this will give him a chance to prove it. He’ll be running both the computer and engineering stations and Saul’U be right there to help him out of any jams he gets into. But, yes, I’ll miss you as my exec.” He sipped at his coffee, either his mouth and throat more used to the temperature or the coffee cooling quickly.

  “A multi-national commando force. It reminds me of some of the books we read in the Academy, the World War Two Allied commandos.”

  Darkwood laughed. “Yes, but this time the Allies include Germans and probably that Japanese officer, Kurinami, that Doctor Rourke speaks so highly of. How times change, hmm?”

  Sebastian sipped at his coffee, then said, “Yes, but the circumstances don’t.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Elaine Halversen’s nearly black eyes were tear-rimmed. “Thank you, thank you both, for saving him,” she managed, then turned away and walked off after the gurney on which Akiro Kurinami lay.

  “She loves him a great deal,” Wolfgang Mann barely whispered.

  “I think she thought her life was over. I don’t mean professionally, but the other way. And then he came along.”

  “I was raised to believe that anyone who was not German was racially inferior. After a time, of course, I realized the absurdity of such a doctrine. It may be that realization which prompted me to look elsewhere ideologically. I have come full circle; I now envy a black woman.”

  Sarah Rourke just looked at Wolfgang Mann.

  “The person she loves is still alive. Admittedly, all of our existences are tenuous, even under the best of circumstances. But at least—” He didn’t finish it, instead bending over the inert form of a wounded enlisted man. “You and your fellows fought bravely. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten. But there is another battle which you must fight, young man. To recover.”

  “Yes, Herr Colonel.”

  “We need brave men, so recover quickly.”

  The man was carried off, and Wolfgang Mann continued his hospital inspection, Sarah Rourke beside him. She was very sorry for him, and just thinking that was terribly inadequate. She had nearly lost her own family so often. Perhaps Annie was dead. She didn’t know how she would take such news. She looked at Wolfgang Mann again. Not as well as he.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  This time it was very different.

  Except that she was no longer Annie, she was Natalia instead. But yet she was still able to think as Annie, too. There were two minds inside Natalia’s head. That was it.

  Gray blue clouds were stratified across an endless horizon where the land met the sea, at the center, just before her, the orange ball of sun. She could not tell if it were rising or setting.

  She was dressed in heavy green silk brocade, a maroon velvet cloak bound at her throat by a buckle of delicately filigreed silver, the hood of her cloak thrown back over her shoulders, her hair so long it had to touch her waist or beyond, free, unbound, caught on the wind.

  She stroked the forehead of the black horse beside which she stood, standing on her toes in soft leather maroon boots just to reach the animal.

  The horse was a Shire, trapped in leather and suede and silver, hanging from the pommel of its saddle a scabbard and in it a sword. She cooed to the animal. Six feet at the shoulder, a white star blaze on its forehead, its coat gleamed and caught some of the radiance of the sun, as though the animal were touched with fire.

  His feathers were black as well, like skirts flowing over his massive hooves, the star shape the only thing about him that wasn’t black.

  Her hands reached to the sword, touched at its hilt. On her fingers were rings set with rubies and opals and diamonds.

  She hitched up her skirts and mounted, slipping her right leg over the woman’s cantle, arranging her dress, her left foot moving subtly in the stirrup as she whisked the reins across his neck.

  The Shire weighed more than a ton and to ride him was, despite his size or because of it, like riding on air, no movement really felt at all, like the sensation of flying must have been, only more effortless.

  The wind was cooler and she raised her hood, her hair around her like a veil.

  The sea was to her right as she rode, the ground lowering, sea and land nearly one now as the Shire crossed through the surf. Spray borne on the wind refreshed her face, made her skin feel so alive she wanted to scream with pleasure. Rocks jutted into the sea, black rocks barring the Shire’s way.

  She reined back.

  From beyond the black rocks came a horse and rider. The rider, cloaked in black, was armored in black chain mail and leather, tall boots reaching well along his thighs. He bore no lance, but as he wheeled his mount —a Belgian, gray, smaller than her own mount’s seventeen hands—in his right hand there appeared a sword. The steel was blued black, but the blade’s edges caught the sun—the sun did not move at all, merely rested on the horizon — and washed the steel with the color of blood.


  Beneath the cowl of his hood he wore a visored helmet of black, the visor lowered so that she could not see his face.

  “Sir knight, who are you?”

  As he answered, the voice made her shrink back in the saddle.

  And she screamed. It was Vladimir’s voice. There was a hollowness to it. “You shall die as punishment for betraying me.”

  It was fight or run, and her Shire could best the Belgian

  at almost anything, but speed? She wasn’t sure.

  She threw back her cloak, undoing the buckle of the sword belt, belting it around her waist, the belt winding about her twice and still the sword hanging low by her left hip.

  As her hands touched to the sword’s hilt, she noticed that, like the buckle for her cloak, its hilt was silver, filigreed. The blade was much more slender than the blade the black knight wielded.

  “I will meet you, evil knight!”

  There was laughter from the spectral figure beside the rocks. And his Belgian—gray—moved slowly forward, waves crashing beside it, the knight’s black spurs gleaming wet in the spray.

  “I am at great disadvantage, evil knight. Might we both dismount? Riding in a woman’s way as I do, I could not withstand your charge.”

  “Dismount if you like. I do not.”

  She did not. Dismounted while he remained astride she would have no chance at all.

  “You know no courtesy, sir.”

  “Nor do I give quarter, harlot.” And he spurred his mount forward now.

  She held the sword above her, spinning its hilt through her fingers so rapidly that the steel whistled through the air. She dug in her left heel, urging the Shire, “Ahead. And do not fail me.”

  Across the surf, the waves crashing beside them, the Shire’s hoofbeats like spring thunder.

  Twenty yards.

  Fifteen.

  The black knight’s sword raised high, the hood over his helmet falling back, the helmet grotesquely shaped, like a broad cheekboned skull of black metal.