Earth Fire

by Jerry Ahern

  Beyond the interior fence for a distance of twenty yards was a mine field, the exact nature of the mines something GRU had been unable to fathom. A smaller fence—perhaps eight feet high—formed the third and innermost boundary.

  Running through the boundaries was one road, two lanes wide at best, which passed through the gates and toward the base of the mountain. Forming an outside perimeter some five yards or so before reaching the first twelve foot electri­fied fence were concrete barriers, these made of a special formula concrete of the type used to circle the White House following the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Leba­non, forming a shield against vehicles, explosives-laden or otherwise.

  Rourke scanned along the roadway, toward the base of the mountain. Flanking the main entrance were a brace of 155mm M198 Howitzer guns—he imagined in the event something somehow penetrated the three fences, the con­crete barrier and the mine field, not to mention the teams of armed sentries and their guard dogs. The doors themselves were fabricated of a special titanium alloy, given special heat treatment, constructed of various layers, the spacing between the layers of interlaced chain link and wire mesh. These were only the exterior bombproof doors. A short dis­tance inside, a similar single door, twice the thickness, weighing literally tons, was positioned, this a massive vault door rigged to a combination lock system and automati­cally closing when the facility went to final alert status and unable to be opened until the alert status was cancelled in a specified manner. When this door was closed, automati­cally the climate control system for the complex would take over and the complex was hermetically sealed.

  To Rourke’s left—to the south—lay the airfield which served the mountain. A central section of the main runway functioned like the elevators aboard an aircraft carrier, able to raise or lower planes to or from the runway surface.

  It would have been obvious to suppose, he realized, that here lay the chink in the armor. But a similar system of fences, guards and blast barriers formed a perimeter sur­rounding the field — although GRU doubted the area be­tween the second and third (smaller) fence would be mined, this in the event of a landing or take-off difficulty. Teams of sentries utilizing guard dogs roamed the field in seemingly random patterns. As an aircraft would make an approach, the sentries would disperse, then claxons would sound again and the sentries would resume their random seeming pat­terns of movement across the field.

  Once the elevator would lower an aircraft to the below ground hangar complex, there was a system of doors dupli­cating exactly the main door system. In addition, the run­way elevator had sliding panels which could be brought into place to bombproof this opening as well.

  Rourke swept his binoculars along the profile of the mountain. Spaced what appeared to be approximately a quarter mile apart were radar scanning devices, the dishes moving, searching, like hungry mouths wanting food.

  At the height of the mountain, in what appeared almost a dish-shaped valley, but the dish of concrete, looking for all the world like a massive radio telescope, were the particle beam weapons. These were ringed by conventional radar controlled anti-aircraft guns and banks of surface to air missiles. The particle beam devices rose perhaps five hun­dred feet skyward on huge crane-like gantries. There were two of these and the mountings at their bases seemed mo­bile which would give each unit more than one hundred eighty degrees of movement and nearly a full one hundred eighty degrees of movement from the horizontal.

  A low flying aircraft could get under their range of move­ment — but the surface to air missiles and anti-aircraft guns would take care of that possibility.

  “I have been watching you,” Natalia whispered from be­side him. “Watching the set of your jaw, watching your mouth—it is impregnable, the Womb, isn’t it?”

  Rourke put down the Bushnell binoculars. He let out a long breath which became a sigh. They lay side by side in a hollow of rock which would keep them from overhead visi­bility. He said to her, “It’s as impregnable as anything can be made. We can’t sneak in, we can’t shoot our way in, we can’t blast our way in with explosives, we can’t fly in, we can’t rappel down into it. We can’t even wait until nightfall—the infrared system the GRU said they have, the starlight sys­tems. And anyway, the main doors are closed and the Womb is hermetically sealed in the event of the next dawn bringing the ionization effect. We can’t even crash a plane into the particle beam weapons. A plane big enough to carry sufficient explosives wouldn’t fly low enough to avoid the system, and even if the system were down and they didn’t have time to bring it up to emit the pulse, the anti­aircraft guns and the surface to air missiles would knock us out. Maybe a thousand planes, all of the pilots kamikazes, each aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon—maybe that’d do some good.”

  “What if the particle beam weapons already had targets they were locked to—”

  “The SAMs, the anti-aircraft guns again. And anyway, it takes only a few seconds to switch targets once the system is activated and charged—at least that’s what your uncle’s data tells us. And besides, even if we knocked out the parti­cle beam weapons so Rozhdestvenskiy couldn’t use them against the Eden Project when it returns, he’d have time to rebuild them, possibly once it was safe to move about on the surface again. If we don’t destroy their cryogenics ability, a thousand highly trained men from the KGB Elite Corps would be more than a match for one hundred and thirty-eight men and women who are scientists, doctors, teachers, pilots, farmers—like that.”

  “Perhaps the Eden Project shuttles will land out of range of the particle beam system,” Natalia offered.

  “Just postpone the inevitable—and anyway, if you were the commander of the Eden Project and returned to an earth where everything had changed, been obliterated, what would you do?”

  “Use my onboard systems to scan for power supplies, power sources—in the hopes of finding something left of civilization.”

  “That’s why they built the Womb here,” Rourke told her, “and not somewhere else. They’ll home right in on the Womb, like kids running home from school looking for a snack. And there’s no way to warn them. And if we could warn them, what would they do? Where would they go? Somehow, we have to get inside. And we have to do the job today. There might not be a tomorrow. And we have to get in before nightfall. And if we have any hope of ever getting out with any of the cryogenic chambers and the serum, we have to be able to get out before nightfall, too, when the Womb is hermetically sealed—otherwise, we’re trapped in­side unless we can get to the control center and beat the in­formation out of the master computer which is locked into the defense system.”

  “It is impossible,” Natalia whispered, her eyes wide, star­ing—at what he didn’t know.

  Rourke felt a smile cross his lips. “But that’s to our ad­vantage. Making it impossible for us will force us to try something thoroughly desperate, something only people who were doomed and had no alternatives would try. And that’s the sort of thing no system of security can be made to anticipate.”

  “Then we have a chance?”

  “If there’s one thing I believe in—besides you, besides Sarah and the children, besides Paul’s friendship — I believe that as long as you never give up, you’ve always got a chance. So yeah—we have a chance.” And Rourke shifted the binoculars back to his eyes, watching the entrance to the Womb. Just what exactly their chance might be—of that he wasn’t certain.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  There was a certain let-down. He had accomplished all. He sat quietly in his office, smoking a cigarette, studying his Colt Single Action Army revolver which lay on the desk beside him. He would never need to use it again. There were no more enemies to fight.

  He—Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy—ruled the world.

  It was the dream of Caesar, of Alexander, of Napoleon, of Hitler, perhaps of Stalin.

  But he had achieved it.

  Twenty years after the awakening, his population could easily have tripled. It was believed that the cryogenic proc�
�ess served to restore the body while it slept. If that were the case, perhaps, he thought, perhaps —

  His father had lived to the age of seventy-three. His mother still survived, well into her eighties. His grandpar­ents had been long lived as well.

  Perhaps, through the cryogenic process, his life span might surpass theirs. Disease on the new earth would be vir­tually unknown, the same process which would destroy all sentient life destroying much of the world’s disease produc­ing organisms.

  A world without infectious disease.

  He smiled.

  The Eden Project. “A Garden of Eden.”

  And he would be its master.

  A barren garden at first, but the plants, the embryonic animals which were even now being cryogenically frozen under the aegis of Professor Zlovski.

  Rozhdestvenskiy touched his fingertips to the desk top—soon he would touch his fingertips to the earth and give it life again.

  Because of his abilities and his ruthlessness—one was no good without the other, he had always known.

  He stood up from his desk, walking across the office, to stare at himself in the mirror.

  Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy saw the face of God and it was his own face.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  They had followed the course of the roadway leading down from Cheyenne Mountain. It was patrolled by four wheel drive vehicles with one driver and two guards, each vehicle fitted with an RPK 7.62mm light machinegun, each of the LMGs fitted with a seventy-five round drum maga­zine.

  Rourke, Natalia, Reed and Vladov watched the road from a quarter mile distant. “I agree with you, Rourke, with all these people who speak Russian like natives—”

  “We are natives, Colonel,” Vladov interjected.

  Rourke laughed.

  “Anyway,” Reed observed, “we might be able to bluff our way through if we can take over one of the smaller convoys. But how the hell we’re gonna do that with those patrols on the road I don’t know.”

  “In the Chicago espionage school,” Natalia began, taking a cigarette, Rourke lighting it for her with his Zippo, “we were taught that what is familiar is the least suspected. We can utilize this to our advantage. We have, after all, twelve men in Soviet uniform who are in fact Soviet soldiers.”

  Rourke reached out and touched her hand. Then he lit his own cigar, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, exhaling as he said, “I think what Natalia’s getting at is that those guys in the road patrols can’t be too high up the echelon. What if Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski just marched their men down onto the roadway and flagged down one of the patrol vehicles—then take out the guys running it.”

  “And then,” Natalia smiled, “the captain could replace the three soldiers with three of his own men. It would merely be a matter of changing uniform blouses. The vehi­cle proceeds down the highway toward a convoy of suffi­ciently small size which we had pre-selected. The vehicle stops the convoy. If another of the patrols comes by, it can be waved on. The suspicions of the convoy would not be aroused—there are so many of the road patrols that they must by now be a familiar sight to them.”

  “Maybe the Jeep could be given a flat tire or something and stopping the convoy would seem more natural.”

  “Exactly,” Natalia told Reed. “And once the convoy is stopped, the rest of us sweep down to attack.”

  “We eliminate the personnel of the convoy,” Vladov said, as if thinking out loud. “Assuming they are KGB, we take their uniforms—”

  “Knives would be better than guns if we can get away with it,” Rourke noted.

  “Knife holes are more easily covered up,” Natalia nod­ded. “And if the knifework is done properly, there can be little bleeding to stain the uniform.”

  “We get the convoy orders, drive up there and we fake it,” Reed nodded.

  “Maybe a little more precise than that,” Rourke began. “Between Natalia, Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski, we should be able to get all the information from the convoy leadership that we need—and their orders—we can work on that after we make the switch and start back up the road. We won’t have more than ten minutes or so until an­other convoy comes along. Vladov and Daszrozinski can do most of the talking—and we’ll have to find the smallest waisted of the convoy personnel so we can get Natalia inside looking at least moderately convincing.”

  “I must dress as a man—I don’t like that,” she smiled.

  “I like you better as a woman, too—but,” and he laughed. Then he looked to Reed, “Why don’t you send some of your guys down the road where it bends there to find a likely convoy—space men a half mile apart to use as relay runners to get the information back to us. We can’t risk radio here. Don’t know what frequency the convoys use, or what fre­quency the patrols use.” He looked at Natalia. “You go with Reed’s men—run the thing—” and he looked at Reed, “Un­less you have some objections.”

  “I wanna get the job done — however we do it — I can ob­ject later, if there is a later.”

  “Agreed,” Natalia nodded.

  Rourke told her, “You pick the convoy—you’ll have the best idea of how many uniforms we should be able to net out of how many vehicles. Start the runners, then get back around here. I’ll be up in the rocks, riding herd on Vladov and Daszrozinski’s men in case they bump into problems. One of your men,” and he turned to Captain Vladov. “I saw him with a 7.62 SVD with a PSO-1 telescopic sight—have him leave that with me so I can long distance any trouble you might have if I need to. I left my SSG at the Retreat.”

  “Yes, of course, Doctor.”

  Rourke looked at Vladov, Reed, and Natalia in turn. “We all set then?”

  Reed said to Vladov, “Good luck—I mean with nailing that patrol vehicle, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  Natalia smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Reed had stayed behind in the rocks with Rourke. Ac­companying Natalia, leading the American force, was the veteran, white-haired Sergeant Dressier. They moved along a ridge line at a brisk, stiff-legged, wide-strided Commando walk, Natalia mildly amazed that Dressier seemed to show no fatigue. There was still some distance to go and she” opened conversation with Dressier. “Tell me, Sergeant, what did you do as a civilian, between the period of the Viet Nam conflict and your being recalled to active duty.”

  Dressier, sounding barely out of breath, laughed good-naturedly. “Not much to tell, Major, really. Farmer. Worked my farm, helped my wife meddle in the children’s lives, watched my grandchildren come into the world—that’s what I did. Had a part-time job with the city we lived near, worked on vehicle maintenance. But all I ever been mostly is a soldier or a farmer. How about you, Major, did you do anything before you joined the KGB?”

  “Interesting?” she laughed. “I studied at the Polytechnic. I suppose I am qualified as an engineer of sorts, in electron­ics. I studied ballet — I studied that a great deal.”

  “I never did see a ballet, ma’am, not a real one, anyways. One of my daughters took ballet some when she was little. Watched her dance in some of them recital things they’d have every year or so. I bet you was pretty as a ballerina, Major.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” she smiled. “I enjoyed it—a great deal. And when I became involved in the martial arts, it was vastly easier for me because of my ballet training.”

  “Ma’am,” Dressier began walking beside her now, “you think we got a prayer of gettin’ in there and doin’ what we gotta do?”

  She looked at him a moment, then nodded her head, brushing her hair back from her face with the back of her gloved left hand. “A prayer, Sergeant—I should think we have that at least.”

  She had loaned Vladov her silencer fitted stainless Walther PPK/S. Rourke waited with the 7.62mm SVD sniper weapon to back him up.

  A prayer—it was likely all they had, she thought. And the thought of that amused her and at once frightened her.

  Prayer was not something t
aught in the Chicago espio­nage school inside the Soviet Union.

  But as she walked beside Sergeant Dressier, she tried to formulate one.

  Chapter Thirty

  Captain Vladov walked briskly along the trail leading down from the rocks, Lieutenant Daszrozinski beside him, the ten other men of the Special Forces unit walking two abreast. He had intentionally taken no security precau­tions — friendly forces in friendly territory needed no such precautions and to bring off the ruse, openness, inno­cence—these were necessary, more crucial than guile.

  He raised his right hand, signalling a halt. “Order the men, Lieutenant, to charge their weapons but to leave the safety tumblers in the normal carrying mode. We do not wish a sharp-eyed soldier to see something amiss. And not a shot is to be fired without my order.”

  “Very good, Comrade Captain,” Daszronzinski re­sponded, then turned to the men. “You have heard your commander, charge your weapons, leave the safety tum­blers in the standard carrying mode. No shot is to be dis­charged—none—unless on the specific order of Comrade Captain Vladov.” There was the rattle of bolts being cycled, the shuffling of feet, a murmur of conversation from one man to another.

  “Silence now,” Vladov ordered.

  He withdrew the Walther pistol loaned to him by Major Tiemerovna from beneath his tunic.

  He edged the slide slightly rearward, re-checking that a round was chambered. He gave the longish, chunky silencer a firm twist, but the silencer was already locked firmly in place.

  The safety on, he tried withdrawing the weapon from be­neath his tunic several times until he could do it smoothly.

  His first target would be the machinegunner at the back of the vehicle. If his men had not dispatched the driver and the second man by the time he had killed the machinegunner, he would turn the pistol on these other two.

  None of his men had spoken of it, but he knew his men well enough to read what they thought—to kill their fellow soldiers was something no training, however rigorous, could have prepared them for.