by Ahern, Jerry
Annie laughed a little. “Okay.”
“Fine. You’re aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the finest attack submarine in the Mid-Wake fleet. You’ve been asleep for about ten hours. Frankly, I thought you’d sleep longer than that. The man who was in charge of the team which pulled you out of the water is the Captain of this ship. He’s Captain Jason Darkwood, just promoted while you were asleep, as a matter of fact, from Commander. Major Tiemerovna’s condition is unchanged. Physically, I can say she is resting comfortably. Mentally, that’s another question. Captain—ahh—Hammerschmidt right?”
“Right.”
“His injuries weren’t so severe as you might have feared. He won’t be swimming any marathons for a little while, but he should be up and around soon enough. He’s built tough, it appears. How do you like that for technical medical jargon, huh? Your father’s a doctor. I was the one who first worked on him when they brought him in, Sam Aldridge is the black Marine Corps Captain. You met him.”
“I remember. I remember Daddy telling me if it hadn’t been for you he wouldn’t have lived.”
Margaret Barrow shrugged her shoulders and smiled. “Patients always say that kind of thing about doctors who administer emergency treatment. All I did was keep him breathing until the real pros at Mid-Wake could take over. Your dad had the best. But he’s a good guy. How’s he doing?”
“I hope he’s alive. He and my husband—they were trying—aww—” She felt a little lightheaded.
“Hey, Mrs. Rubenstein,” Doctor Barrow said, putting a hand gently against Annie’s chest. “You’re gonna wear yourself out and that’s no good for anybody. Why don’t you sleep a little more.”
“Annie.”
“What? Ohh—all right. I’m Maggie,” and Margaret Barrow smiled and stuck out her right hand. Annie took her hand. It wasn’t any kind of silly feminine handshake, but strong, like shaking hands with a man.
“Maggie. We’ve got to get in touch with my father and my husband. And the German authorities and—”
“Look, I just fix people. Communications isn’t my department. But if you rest for a little while longer, I’ll make sure Captain Darkwood gets down here to sick bay and then you can tell him. Everything’s his department. Okay, Annie?”
Despite herself, Annie Rourke Rubenstein smiled, pushed her hair away from her face and neck, and leaned her head back on the pillow. She closed her eyes, but just to humor Maggie Barrow …
“I’ve plotted your course along the Izu Trench, Jason. We should be roughly off the coast of Iwo Jima within three hours traveling as we are.”
Darkwood sipped at his coffee, tellling his First Officer, “Terrain following was the only way with the people we’re carrying, Sebastian. If the Russians on the surface have any means of communicating with our underwater variety, everybody and his brother’d be looking for us by now. And if we stick to the volcanically active areas so we can mask our sonar
profile, well—”
“Every little bit helps,” Sam Aldridge supplied.
“Right,” Darkwood nodded.
“I’m gonna help myself to some more of your coffee,” the Marine Captain announced, looking at Darkwood, then at Sebastian. “You want any more coffee, Mr. Sebastian?”
“No thank you, Captain Aldridge.”
Aldridge shrugged his shoulders, saying, “I know what I want.”
Darkwood checked the dual display, analog/ digital Steinmetz on his left wrist. “You’re still on duty, Sam. Come to think of it, we all are.”
“If I may, Jason—why are we making our way toward Iwo Jima?” Sebastian asked.
“I hate to second Mr. Sebastian in anything, but that’s a damn good question, Jason,” Aldridge said. The coffee mug was steaming, and Aldridge set it down.
“I wish I could give you guys a damn good answer. But all I can say is that it’s for a good reason. And, it’ll take some of the heat off our backs a bit. Maybe. I’d tell you both if I could, but I’m under orders not to discuss Iwo Jima. So, I won’t discuss it. Suffice it to say, if something were to happen to me, Sebastian, you’d find things concerning Iwo Jima in my safe. And, then—” And Darkwood grinned at his friend Sam Aldridge, “you could pester him, Sam.”
“Hell of a lot I’d get outta him,” Aldridge laughed, gesturing toward Sebastian. y
Sebastian stood up, setting down his coffee cup, rubbing his hands together as if they were somehow cold. “I intend to pass by sick bay, to check on the health of our passengers. Is there any message you might like me to convey to Doctor Barrow?”
“Tell her I’ll be there—” And he looked at his watch
again. “In an hour. Thanks.”
“I gotta boogie, too, Jase,” and Aldridge took one sip of his coffee, scowled, then followed Sebastian out.
Seeing T.J. Sebastian and Samuel Bennett Aldridge together was a relative rarity, unless the matter were duty related, one of the reasons Darkwood had his end-of-watch coffee sessions when circumstances allowed. One of the other reasons was that both men were his best friends and had been as long as he could remember.
The Sebastian-Aldridge “feud” (if it could be called that) was based on one of the incontrovertible facts of life in Mid-Wake: that the black community over the centuries of life beneath the sea had maintained much of its original racial integrity, hence had a restricted gene pool. The same could be said of many of the ethnic groups within Mid-Wake society, geneology a common passion and a necessity to avoid inadvertently close relatives from marrying. Someone had started it, that Sebastian and Aldridge were cousins. Sebastian was quiet, reserved, had an academic record which could have qualified him to teach at the Naval Academy. Aldridge was a wild and crazy Marine, although no less academically gifted.
And so had begun the feud or whatever it was, both men deeply respecting each other and each other’s abilities, both men committed to the survival of Mid-Wake, but both men—and, in fairness, particularly Sebastian—resenting the insinuation that they were relatives to a degree which bordered occasionally on petulance and childishness.
The situation was abysmally stupid, Darkwood knew, but life frequently was.
Jason Darkwood set down his coffee cup, in the mood for something stronger as Aldridge had suggested. He crossed his cabin—which didn’t take a great
deal of walking, since aboard a submarine space was always limited—and studied the map of the known world. It was a hologram, when viewed at one angle showing the world as it had been five centuries ago, before what Doctor Rourke called “the Night of the War,” when viewed from the other angle showing the Earth as it appeared today to the best of the knowledge of Mid-Wake cartographers.
One of the fifty United States was all but gone, California its name, much of California fallen into the sea that night when the concussion from the bombings and missile strikes collectively shocked the geologic faultline and the tectonic plates separated. It was called the San Andreas fault; he remembered that from a history test he’d almost failed in grammar school. Part of Florida, where there had once been a peninsula, fell into the sea (no one knew the reason and it dawned on him that perhaps Doctor Rourke’s daughter, now a passenger aboard the Reagan, might know). That took place sometime between the bombings and when the atmosphere ionized and most surface life had been destroyed.
Many islands had vanished below the surface, while some new ones had surfaced, perhaps really old ones which had sunk once before in the geologic epoch since the Earth began.
His eyes settled on an island which had neither risen nor sunk beneath the sea—Iwo Jima.
Iwo Jima was, of course, steeped in the history of World War Two, but whatever might have remained to remind the people of future years of this war had long since been washed away in the unprecedented tsunamis which had swept virtually every island and coastal area in the Pacific Basin when California fell into the sea.
Aboard the Reagan, Darkwood was the only person
who knew the current status of
Iwo Jima as a top secret training facility for a group of men whose very existence was only rumor: The Special Warfare Group.
The Special Warfare Group, or “Gs” as they called themselves, consisted of volunteers from both the Navy and the Marine Corps, their training program accelerated since Mid-Wake’s first encounter with the Rourke family, the reason for their inception that much more dramatized. For some time, under the leadership of Jacob Fellows, President of Mid-Wake, Admiral Rahn, Chief of Naval Operations, and General Gonzalez, Commandant of the Marine Corps, had quietly been siphoning away some of the very best men in both branches of service. Darkwood had originally learned of the program when General Gonzalez had tried to hire off Sam Aldridge, Aldridge originally tapped for one of the Gs’ leadership positions, then lost to the Soviets during a commando raid on their submarine pens to gather intelligence on the unification of Soviet nuclear technology and their Island Class submarine fleet. Aldridge had been presumed dead. After helped to escape by John Rourke and the subsequent conclusion of Rourke’s battle with the Soviet surface commander, Vladimir Karamatsov, Sam Aldridge was offered the job again, refusing, feeling he could do more as part of the corps rather than training for a war that was not yet to be fought.
And that was the crux of the issue from which the Gs had sprung: that a land war with Soviet forces might someday be inevitable and to prepare for that day a small group of highly trained special warfare personnel had to be ready to respond to the first wave, then form the nucleus around which a larger United States land force might be formed.
The Gs trained principally and were domiciled on Iwo Jima.
Without orders, he was proceeding there now. It would have been possible to work a radio relay through the system of communications buoys—perhaps—but such a radio message might well have been intercepted. From what little Annie Rubenstein had said when she was brought aboard, the land-based Soviet empire was embarked upon an offensive of unprecedented magnitude. If this were in some way connected to the Soviet forces beneath the waves which Darkwood and five centuries’ worth of Americans from Mid-Wake had fought, the information was too valuable to risk sending to Mid-Wake by conventional means.
Yet, linking Iwo Jima to Mid-Wake was a laser optic cable, its security unquestionable, because to tamper with the cable’s armoring would automatically sever the communications link.
He was violating security to preserve security.
The shape of Iwo Jima, as well as its size, had altered several times over the five centuries since the Night of the War. A large lagoon, deep enough for a careful submarine skipper to enter and exit, lay on the east side of the island.
The Gs’ base was somewhere inland.
Finding it was the most expeditious means of notifying Mid-Wake of the Soviet surface offensive and querying Naval Operations concerning the possibilities of somehow contacting Doctor Rourke concerning Rourke’s daughter’s survival.
He tapped his finger against the holomap, then looked at his watch.
If he didn’t want to be late for Margaret Barrow, he’d have to set a new speed record for paperwork.
Chapter Five
The Chairman’s office was one of the few places where they could be alone, the invasion of the First City and the subsequent withdrawal of the Soviet Forces having turned everything upside down. But one thing never seemed to change, Sarah Rourke realized; that was her husband’s sense of his ultimate rectitude. “John—”
“I love you and I don’t want to lose you and the baby. What could be simpler than that?” He leaned against the Chairman’s desk, lighting one of his cigars.
Sarah Rourke found herself trying to remember the first time she’d seen him smoke one of the noxious-smelling things. As far as cigars went, she supposed, his were better-smelling than most. But how men could— “John. She’s my daughter, too. And anyway, there’s no place on Earth that’s safe. We both know that. I mean, you should be happy; after all these years, I finally understand why you are the way you are. If something’s right you do it and damn the consequences, personal or otherwise. And now that I understand that, agree with you philosophically, you try to turn it off.”
“I’m glad you realize what you realize. I’m glad you feel as you do. But then you have to understand why I
feel as I do now. I don’t see any rational reason why you should insert yourself and our unborn child into a situation so fraught with peril. I feel I know what’s right, and as you implied, I should damn the consequences.”
“So,” she said to her husband, suddenly feeling tired, sitting on the arm of a black lacquer chair, “what you consider right is more right than what I consider right? That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re going to have to abide by my decision because I feel it’s right for all of us, not just you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Period.”
She wondered if there were a blackly magical period of time for which she and her husband could be together, then at a precise, preordained moment go to each other’s throats? But he never did that. He was always so calm, never fought. She fought. “Why did you make me pregnant?”
Sarah watched his brown eyes. There was no flicker of hesitation when he answered. “I wanted to make love to you. Sort of like you said a moment ago—damn the consequences. I’m glad you’re pregnant.”
She said it and felt guilty the moment she began to speak. “Now that I’m pregnant, fine—I can’t do this, can’t do that because of the welfare of the baby. Nuts. The baby’s fine; I’m fine. You go off and play and—” She shut up.
“Hardly, Sarah,” John Rourke told her, standing up, his attention seemingly riveted to the glowing orange tip of his cigar. “I haven’t played in so long—” He let the sentence hang.
She crossed the room, despite the smell from his cigar put her arms around his neck. “I love you. I want to be with you.”
His arms folded around her and she felt his breath against her cheek, her neck, her hair. “That was all I
ever wanted. Don’t you realize that after all this time?”
Sarah Rourke realized she hadn’t and she kissed him hard on the mouth and he kissed her back and held her so tightly she thought she’d faint…
If gods had ever walked the Earth, John Rourke was their last true descendant, she realized. Michael was so much like him, and perhaps some woman had or someday would think the same of him and be just as right. Not gods as some profanity of divinity, but men who were above all others, perhaps touched in some special way with abilities and destinies to fulfill which were beyond normal mortals. She remembered Michael as helpless and fragile, so perhaps she could not quite see him as she saw her husband. But John, she was sure, had never been quite helpless, nor ever fragile. Had his mother yelled at him, complaining he hadn’t cleaned his room or taken out the garbage? Had he ever neglected a responsibility, shirked a task?
It was hard to imagine him anything less than he was now.
He evidently concluded a quick discussion with the Chairman, then clasped the man’s hand and walked on. She watched him. He was all in black, a combination of the Mid-Wake battle dress utilities and things from New Germany, black pants bloused over the tops of shiny black combat boots, a black knitted shirt open at the throat, a jacket of the same material as the pants, waist-length, fully open, a wide black leather belt, then a matching belt and gleaming black leather full flap holster slung at his right hip, his .44 Magnum revolver cased inside it.
He stopped, exchanged a few quick words with Colonel Mann, shook hands, walked toward her.
The helicopter’s rotor blades sliced the air with a
steady, almost sensuous phutting sound.
He took her in his arms and she closed her eyes and pretended the moment would never end …
A second German helicopter gunship joined them, flying their “wing” until they crossed the open water to the far western side, a small German/Chinese base established there near where Vladmir Karamatsov had once set his field hea
dquarters. There the gunship would be fitted with already waiting auxiliary fuel pods, additional armament, the floats which would allow it to land on the water’s surface.
A German pilot was at the controls, Rourke taking the brief time this would afford him to rest. He would be the only pilot, but promised himself that he would teach Paul how to control the craft well enough that the younger man could keep it airborne.
John Rourke closed his eyes. Sleep would come, too soon end.
He could still see Sarah, beautiful-looking, ridiculous-looking in her BDUs and combat boots, see her looking after the gunship long after it was airborne. Eventually, he could no longer see her, knew she could see the gunship as only a dark speck on the horizon.
And he remembered the conversation he’d had with Michael when they’d horsebacked it to the ridge, come up behind the Mongols who had been waiting in ambush for Paul and Maria and Prokopiev and Han Lu Chen.
Michael had wanted frank answers concerning Natalia.
John Rourke had given his son no frank answers at all.
Rourke forced his eyes to stay closed. And in his mind he saw her eyes, the surreal blueness of them.
Would her eyes ever see the world as it really was again? Or was she destined to be a prisoner within her mind forever? Rourke opened his eyes.
Conscious dreaming was something that ceased to exist after The Sleep. But there was always a chance that conscious dreaming might return.
And John Rourke knew the face that would be in his nightmare if he risked sleep. The gunship was surrounded by cloud cover now and John Rourke looked out of the helicopter, watching the wispy grayness. He thought of the line from Hamlet. He wondered if perhaps Shakespeare had once caused a woman great sorrow, too.
