by Ahern, Jerry
“I love you, Fraulein Doctor Leuden,” and he held her very tightly. Someone would come, tell him it was time to move out. He would wait until then, holding her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Paul Rubenstein realized that he was tiring less than normally he would have. In the tropics, the air was normally more dense, more oxygen rich, and, despite the generally thinned atmosphere, the correlation held true. Physical activity was easier.
He reached a rise above the ridge, below him seeing the trailing edge of a column of men, the column disappearing behind a wall of trees.
Another column was clearly visible, the column of smoke. He would reach it before these men, whoever they were, reached it. He uncased the German binoculars, was still unable to see what lay at the base of the column of smoke, what its origin might be, because it originated above bis current position.
Paul Rubenstein cased the binoculars and ran on. What a peaceful scene, he thought—a jungle filling up with snow, snow which might be radioactive. John had used the gunship’s sensors to make atmospheric samplings and they had shown negative results, but there was always a chance that the snow in some new cloud might contain radioactive dust particles. And why was it snowing where normally—what was normal? he didn’t really remember—where normally
the weather was eternal summer.
“Skiing on the beach at Waikiki,” Paul Rubenstein said to himself aloud, quickening his pace …
The sensors monitoring the network of automatic electronic systems, which both kept track of the mechanical condition of the gunship and protected it from tampering with everything from electrical charges through the gunship’s skin to an explosive device equivalent in impact to several sticks of dynamite, also served as a perimeter alarm.
The German gunship’s perimeter alarm system was activated now.
John Rourke put down the gunship’s shop manual; it made for difficult reading in technical German, but with the aid of a solid dictionary and the video display supplement which overlayed one system into another and put the systems into motion where appropriate, it was intelligible.
He stood up, hitting the control panel switch to begin warming the synth-oil in the crankcase, then peered through the Plexiglas where the snow covering allowed. The interior surface of the glasslike substance was designed to resist fogging. It seemed to do that well. He supposed someone not born in the twentieth century would simply have activated the video displays fed from the cameras mounted beneath the main rotor, rather than just try to look out something as ordinary as a window. But old habits died hard.
He saw nothing.
This didn’t console him.
One of the Scoremasters in his right fist, he sat at the consoles and began activating the gunship’s systems for take-off. Before the Night of the War, a constant source of amusement for him had been movies in which
the hero or bad guy ran up to an aircraft sitting unattended on some lonely runway, jumped behind the controls, switched on the engines and took off, just as someone might have done with an automobile.
He checked the video monitoring system. There was movement farther downstream, shifting patches of black amid the green of the leaves and the white of the snow. “Hmm.”
He began checking systems, his eyes alternating from the control panels to the video monitors. Paul carried with him one of the German individual field radios. About the size of the Motorola units twentieth century police officers carried, it attached to the belt, wires traveling up along the torso. The wires ended in a small vibration-sensitive unit which could transmit or receive human speech, giving the unnerving feeling that someone was alternately behind your back or reading your mind.
Paul probably wasn’t wearing it. Rourke activated the radio. “This is John—come in, Paul. Do you read me? Over.”
There was nothing but static.
Paul was supposed to contact the gunship once he reached the source of the smoke. They had agreed on nothing else. Rourke’s eyes moved once again to the monitors. His right hand moved to his breast pocket, extracted a cigar, the tip previously excised. He rolled the cigar into the left side of his mouth, clampingdown on it with his teeth. “Paul—this is John. Do you read me? Over.”
They had agreed to maintain radio silence since, if Paul found hostile personnel, the sound of an incoming transmission, however slight, might be detected, might betray him. John Rourke was beginning to think that had been a bad idea. The black patches amid the bright green leaves and stark whiteness of the snow were
black uniforms, men with assault rifles. The uniforms John Rourke instantly recognized: Soviet Marine Spetznas from the Soviet underwater complex.
“Shit,” Rourke almost whispered. On the plus side, if they were on the island to begin with, they had to have a purpose which somehow likely involved Mid-Wake personnel. And to contact Mid-Wake personnel in order to secure help or information in the search for Annie and Natalia and Otto Hammerschmidt was the objective of the mission.
The gunship was ready to fly, able to be taken airborne in under sixty seconds. If he started the rotors so he could get airborne instantly, he could at the least alert the Marine Spetznas personnel observing the gunship, perhaps scare them off. With any luck, they had never seen a helicopter in the flesh before and wouldn’t instantly identify its source or be one hundred percent certain what to do to a helicopter to immobilize it. It would be difficult for their small caliber rifles to immobilize the gunship at any event, unless a stray shot hit just the right place on just the right portion of the helicopter. Of course, there were always RPGs to consider, and Rourke had no idea, either, what the range of an Island Class submarine’s deck guns might be.
The men in the black uniforms were moving, in a classic skirmish line, coming up from downstream only. If any more were hidden upstream or on either side of the shoals, Rourke could not see them.
Six men.
John Rourke found the battered Zippo in a side pants pocket, lit it, lit the cigar, inhaled.
Chances were very good these men had never seen a gunship in action, had no idea of its capabilities. Intrinsic to victory was knowledge of the enemy, weaknesses and strengths. Intrinsic to the communi
cations system of the gunship was a public address capability. There was an obvious weakness he could exploit.
Mechanically he checked all systems, armed the helicopter’s mini-guns.
The six men were moving just as they had been, approximately a hundred yards downstream from the gunship. One of them might notice the video cameras mounted beneath the main rotor following them. He doubted that.
Ninety yards.
Seventy-iive yards.
He cut power to the helicopter’s skin, killing all passive defense systems except video monitoring.
Mentally, John Thomas Rourke ticked off the seconds. If the pace of the Marine Spetznas personnel advancing against the machine remained constant, they were ninety seconds from the gunship’s starboard fuselage door. What they had in mind to do when they reached it was another question.
“Eighty.”
His eyes alternated between the sweep second hand of the black-faced Rolex Submariner on his left wrist and the instruments and the monitors.
“Seventy.”
If anything, the six men were slowing their pace. Were they reluctant to approach out of a lack of knowledge of the machine’s capabilities? He thought so.
“Sixty—” John Rourke powered up main and tail rotor controls, snow swirling around him in a gigantic cloud, momentarily obscuring the picture provided by the video cameras beneath the main rotor, the rotor blades humming as they built revolution, Rourke eyes on the pressure gauges, tachometers.
He was counting down seconds. “Fifty.”
As Rourke’s video returned, he could see the six Marine Spetznas personnel were scattering, one of them, evidently an officer or senior non-com, trying to rally the men.
“Thirty seconds.” He tried the radio again. “Paul. This is John
. Do you read me? If you cannot respond verbally, open and close transmission. Over.”
Nothing.
“Fifteen seconds.” Almost enough power.
He checked the arming status on his weapons pods in case one of the enemy personnel had an RPG strapped on his back. Weapons pod, port starboard, fore and aft were armed.
Five seconds remained.
Power was adequate if he ate up seconds by spinning the machine on its axis, which would look forbidding to the Soviet personnel at any event—he hoped.
He let the gunship slip to port as it rose into the air, the helicopter turning a full 360 degrees, snow blowing beneath it cyclonically, the Soviet personnel hammered back by the force of wind-driven snow, gravel from the shoals, a spray of icy water as Rourke climbed, banked slightly, skipping rotor blade downdraft across the shoals.
Automatic weapons fire came at him, small arms only, none of it striking the skin.
Rourke rotated the gunship a full 360 degrees again, as he came on line with the Soviet personnel opening fire with starboard forward firing mini-guns, the bullets lacing across the shoals, across the snow, a long tongue of orange flame visible to him as his eyes shifted momentarily to the video displays.
The men began running downstream, slipping among the snow and ice-slicked rocks, John Rourke bringing the gunship’s nose around, passing over them
low, a wash of water from the stream driven outward in a wake on both sides of the gunship, beating the Marine Spetznas personnel down.
For all their twenty-fifth century submarine technology, they seemed as frightened as Stone Age men by the flying machine which spit death, which ripped the water from the earth and hurtled it against them as if it were a wall.
He tried the radio again. “Paul. This is John. If you cannot respond because of an equipment failure, I just hope you can hear me. I’m airborne now, confronting six armed Marine Spetznas personnel on the ground at our landing site. I should shortly have them subdued and will obtain whatever information possible. I will then proceed along your probable route. Look for me. I’ll be looking for you. After this, there’s no sense trying to hide. These six likely have radio capability and are equally likely to have reported presence of the gunship. Rourke Out.”
Rourke brought the German gunship out of the pass, banking to port, coming around, then cutting across the six Marine Spetznas’ line of flight, blocking their retreat, more sporadic gunfire coming toward the gunship. Rourke felt the corners of his mouth raise in a smile as his teeth clamped on the lit cigar. The skin of the gunship could be charged again, as it had been before he’d switched off the defense systems package preparatory to going airborne.
He put power to the skin, then brought the gunship around, diving straight for them, following the stream bed, dropping altitude, increasing revolutions, streaking over them at maximum supportable speed for the altitude and surrounding terrain, the wall of water which rose on either side of the gunship reacting against the electrically charged hull, lightninglike bolts of electricity surrounding the gunship in a whirlwind,
the Marine Spetznas personnel scattering, throwing themselves toward the bands of the shallow stream.
Rourke cut power to the skin, then hovered the craft over the Marine Spetznas personnel. They cowered beneath the gunship, the downdraft visibly tearing at their uniforms.
In his best, most menacing Russian, John Rourke told them, “Your weapons are useless; you are powerless to resist.” He assumed somehow that they had never viewed the same classic B-movie science fiction thrillers he had.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Sam—have a few of your men lay back and cover us.”
“You heard the Captain—you, you—Lannigan. You’re in charge. Take ‘em up into those rocks and cover us. Shoot anything in a Soviet uniform.”
“Yes, sir!” And Lannigan gestured to both men, got them moving.
Jason Darkwood stood at the foot of a chimney of rock. It was colder here in the higher elevations. There was evidence of much recent volcanic activity, at least geologically recent. Marine geology was part of the standard curriculum since Mid-Wake depended for its minerals on mining the sea, and for its energy on geo-thermal faults. Surface geology seemed little different to him. He had climbed rock chimneys in underwater caves in full diving gear back in his academy days and since, for real purposes. He supposed, if anything, it might be easier doing it in more conventional attire on land.
Evidently, the Marine Spetznas personnel who were now their prisoners had not come quite this way. More than he had ever realized before, Mid-Wake personnel desperately needed training in surface warfare, simply
reading the terrain a vital skill. When one essentially flew over the terrain by swimming, it wasn’t as necessary to be conscious of it.
Darkwood Jooked at the Marine Spetznas prisoners. The Soviets had a decided advantage. Under similar circumstances, if the prisoners were not valuable to the Soviets they would have been drugged nearly out of their minds and bound, then left to freeze to death in the snow if it came to that, he supposed. Either that or killed outright.
But the citizens of Mid-Wake labored under a different moral imperative. And, despite the inconvenience at the moment, he would not have abandoned that. It was this moral imperative which lay as the foundation of his beliefs and those of his comrades and all citizens of Mid-Wake. He supposed it was this moral imperative which made Americans the “good guys,” Darkwood looked at his old friend Captain Sam Aldridge, U.S.M.C. “So-—just how many guys do we leave to guard our six unhappy Russian friends?”
Aldridge detailed four men, leaving them with instructions to shoot anyone who moved without permission, then reiterating those instructions in Russian for the benefit of the prisoners.
Darkwood nominated himself to go first, up the rock chimney. He unslung his pack and cinched the sling of his AKM-96 up tightly, then squeezed through, Aldridge handing the pack in after him. The rock seemed to radiate cold. Darkwood told himself that was psychological. He looked up. The chimney rose for perhaps seventy-five feet. All his climbing experience was in the water, except for climbing trees and things as a boy in the Mid-Wake nature preserves. In water, there was buoyancy and buoyancy compensation, the force of gravity partially neutralized by buoyancy. He told himself that, if he fell, he’d really get the feel for gravity here.
Although the conditions were different, the technique would be the same, he realized. He snapped the end of his rope into his pack, then attached the other end to his belt, leaving the coil beside the pack, so he could haul the pack up after him. He braced himself inside the chimney, his right leg up, his left hand pressured, his left leg and right hand up. Right leg, left hand; left leg, right hand; he repeated the process over and over again, not looking down at all until the chimney began narrowing. The narrowing was an advantage. He could use more body surface against the chimney walls, making himself at least feel more secure and actually speeding his progress. He was tiring more quickly than he would have underwater, he realized. He stopped, approximately halfway up the chimney, catching his breath before going on …
Paul Rubenstein found a gently sloping, easy path toward the promontory at the height of the ridgeline, from which the column of gray smoke originated.
There was a breadloaf-shaped rock sitting on a shelf of rock extending toward a plateau which appeared recently made from a volcanic flow. As a boy, he’d liked geology well enough to become reasonably conversant in the field—in more than one school science fair he’d used rock collections, this made all the easier because his Air Force officer father would be transferred to a different base and the new school hadn’t seen the rock collection the previous year. But his mother always made him do something new with it. His father. His mother. Like uncounted millions of others, they had died during the Great Conflagration, when the sky caught fire and nearly all surface life ceased.
What would they think of him now? They had been proud of him— He shook his head, for
ced his thoughts
away from his memories. They would have loved Annie, her being a Gentile notwithstanding.
As he approached the peculiarly shaped rock, it was apparent there were two ways to get to the other side, over or around. Over it looked needlessly time-consuming and, because of the snow, dangerous.
He walked around it, the M-16 in his right fist, the Schmiesser submachine gun in his left. He laughed at himself, feeling like Stallone or Schwarzenegger or Norris in some pre-Night of the War adventure film. That he didn’t look like any of them no longer really bothered him. He’d learned that rippling muscles weren’t a requirement for derring-do; but, granted, they would have helped at times. He kept moving.
There was a peculiar odor to the smoke, something he had smelled before; but he couldn’t remember when. The wind shifted and the odor was gone. Paul Rubenstein walked on, the column of smoke completely gone from sight now, the breadloaf-shaped rock between him and its source. A signal fire? It certainly had attracted a considerable amount of attention. Perhaps all of this was nothing more than a group of stranded Russian seamen lighting a signal fire because they were marooned. Paul Rubenstein tried imagining the Defoe classic with a Communist flavor. Comrade Friday? At least Comrade Crusoe would be good alliteration. There had been a variation on Robinson Crusoe done as a film he’d seen as a little boy, the film set on Mars in some distant future. The landscape here looked more appropriate to that, stark, forbidding.
Paul Rubenstein reached the extreme end of the breadloaf-shaped rock.
He dropped to his knees, murmuring, “God of Abraham!” Tears filled his eyes …
*
Six assault rifles, an assortment of individual weapons, two RPGs. Rourke climbed, using the public address and warning the Marine Spetznas personnel below the German gunship, “Get back from your weapons or you, too, will be destroyed.”
The six men, including their non-com, ran. Rourke had cornered them, gotten them to disarm, never landed, never interrogated them. It seemed pointless to waste a missile destroying their weapons. Instead, he let the chopper turn 180 degrees on its axis, flew off and climbed, banked to port and dived, activating port and starboard forward mini-guns, the twin bursts ripping across the pile of Soviet armament, the RPGs exploding as Rourke banked to starboard and climbed.
