by Ahern, Jerry
John Rourke dropped to his knees—beside the radio. He picked up the microphone, setting the pistol from his left hand into the snow, cocked and locked. “This is Proletariat One,” Rourke said, trying to as closely as possible approximate the deadman’s voice. “Over.”
There was the crackle of static. Then a voice. “One moment.” More static. The same voice. “Proceed.”
Rourke almost depressed his push-to-talk button.
Then, “This is Commander Stakhanov. What is it? Over.”
“This is Proletariat One. Upon orders of my commander, I am to advise you all goes well and the column proceeds toward the beach. Proletariat One Out.”
“Stakhanov Out.”
John Thomas Rourke threw down the microphone. He picked up his gun.
Maybe this Stakhanov had bought it, maybe not. Soon they would find out.
Methodically, Rourke began to strip the man of his coat and uniform and cap and pistol belt and boots, even the little Sty-20 pistol.
When he was all through, Rourke left the dead man in his underwear there in the snow and took the radio.
Chapter Thirty-Five
They moved through the tunnel for more than an hour before the tunnel suddenly began to pitch downward, steeply. Michael Rourke stopped Bjorn Rolvaag, trying to make himself understood. “If this tunnel—” and he made gestures which he hoped would help, thought probably wouldn’t. “If it drops like this—where will it end?”
Rolvaag smiled, patted his dog on the head when it stood on its hind legs beside him. Michael petted Hrothgar, too.
“Michael? Where is this tunnel going?” Maria Leuden asked.
“God knows—and maybe Bjorn and Hrothgar, too.”
They continued on, some of the German commandos and ordinary soldiers reiterating Maria Leuden’s question, but no one mentioning that they should turn back.
They stopped, at Rolvaag’s insistence, ate, Maria resting her head against Michael’s shoulder. When the rest period seemed ready to end, Maria and the men, respectively, found isolated corners of the tunnel to answer their physical needs, then prepared to go on.
But Rolvaag signaled with his hands that they should not.
Michael just looked at him in the light of their flashlights, Rolvaag’s eyes shining. Perhaps the head injury had done more serious damage than anyone suspected.
“Hrothgar!” And he pointed at the dog and the dog sat, its huge tongue hanging out as if it, too, were somehow mad. Then Rolvaag looked at Michael. “Michael!”
Michael Rourke wondered if somehow he were supposed to sit, too. But Rolvaag gestured him ahead, Michael calling back to Maria, “Wait here.”
“Please, Michael?”
“Then stay beside me.”
Maria Leuden fell in beside him, Rolvaag several paces ahead.
They walked on that way for what Michael estimated as a hundred yards, then suddenly the tunnel narrowed. Rolvaag turned toward them and raised the first finger of his right hand to his lips in the universal gesture for silence. Michael nodded.
Rolvaag moved into the narrow portion of the tunnel, Michael after him. No longer was it possible to keep Maria beside him. She moved behind him instead.
The tunnel seemed to be becoming progressively narrower and the ceiling lower, Michael bending his head slightly before it was really necessary, just the feeling of the tunnel somehow making it smaller, lower.
Again, Rolvaag stopped. “Light,” Rolvaag said, shutting off his flashlight.
Michael Rourke weighed the flashlight in his hand. “Michael—do not.”
“We’ve got to play this out,” Michael told her, his voice a low whisper. “Just hold on to my belt and don’t let go.”
“All right.”
He leaned toward her, kissed Maria’s forehead. Then he shut off the light.
He could no longer see Rolvaag, felt Rolvaag tug at his sleeve, moved slowly behind him, the pressure of Maria’s hand at his belt. His coat was open and he was still warm here. The tunnel made him feel as if he were smothering and he was not normally claustrophobic.
They seemed to go around a curve in the tunnel and everything was wider because there was no longer the pressure of the tunnel walls near his shoulders, brushing against his elbows. Michael Rourke squinted suddenly. As he fully opened his eyes, there was light, the purple lights of the grow lamps of the Hekla community streetlights. Coming toward him through a crack that looked no more than a few inches apart.
Rolvaag tugged at him to continue. Maria’s hands touched at his neck, then her hand returned to his belt. He started walking again, almost able to see Rolvaag, almost able to see where he was going.
The crack of light seemed to grow slightly wider and he realized this was only because he was getting closer. The tunnel curved again, and as Michael came around the curve, he squinted again against the light. The crack was an opening wide enough for a man to pass through sideways.
Rolvaag quickened his pace and so did Michael, Maria behind him, then abreast of him, taking his left hand. In his right hand, Michael held one of his Beretta pistols.
Rolvaag dropped to one knee beside the crack, Michael flanking him, Maria beside him.
Through the crack, in the purple light, Michael Rourke could see the great park with its greenways and garden paths.
And Soviet helicopter gunships and armed guards.
Through this tunnel, through this crack in the volcanic cone, Michael Rourke realized he could bring a small army. He had no army. He had his commando unit and the volunteers. But outside, in the storm, there were more than two hundred and forty German soldiers and technicians. He could get at least half that many and not leave what remained of the German base totally defenseless.
“Hekla,” Bjorn Rolvaag smiled.
He wanted to tell Rolvaag his thoughts, wanted to tell him that no, they would not penetrate through the niche of rock now, not when they could bring a hundred more fighting men.
Rolvaag looked at him, said, “Madame Jokli—my sister—friends. Wait me.”
Michael looked at him.
Rolvaag took a cylindrical piece of metal from his mouth, touched it to his lips, blew into it.
“What is that, Bjorn?” Michael Rourke asked him.
“It’s a whistle, Michael,” Maria whispered.
There was a soft padding sound. It grew louder.
Hrothgar bounded out of the darkness. And Bjorn Rolvaag was up, passing through the niche of rock. Michael Rourke reached after him. But the only way to stop Rolvaag would have been shooting or stabbing him.
Michael Rourke looked at Maria. “Get the others. Bring them here. Wait for me.” “Michael—no!”
He kissed her hard on the mouth as he shrugged out of his jacket, grabbed up his M-16 and pushed through the niche, her hands reaching after him.
He thought he heard her call his name.
Beneath him, along a trail dotted on both sides with beautiful flowers and perennial shrubs, he could just make out Bjorn Rolvaag, swinging his mighty staff, his
dog bouncing at his heels. Michael Rourke followed him.
Michael could hear his father’s voice inside him, warning him not to do something like this. But, at the same time, he could see his father, John Rourke, doing exactly the same thing, because there wasn’t really any choice and he couldn’t let Rolvaag who never even carried a gun do the thing on his own and die.
Michael Rourke quickened his pace so he could catch up. There were things to do…
Vassily Prokopiev reached the end of the sewer tunnel, took off his pack, sat there on the tunnel floor for several minutes, and rested while he collected his thoughts.
Above him lay the sewage treatment facility, where the exiting sewer water was treated and funneled into special piping systems for industrial cooling purposes. At any moment a sewer worker might come down into the tunnel system. Prokopiev would not have to kill such a person because the man or woman would be unarmed. Simply render him temporarily unconsci
ous.
Above him, in the treatment plant, there were no armed guards, either. But a short distance outside the plant gate lay the westernmost exit from the Underground City. It was the smallest entrance/exit, used only for industrial purposes. The trucks which were now able to move freely in and out in the decades since the return to the surface carried out certain industrial wastes to the new chemical factory complex where, it was rumored, new types of gas were being perfected, tested. Beyond the gates, of course, there were military personnel everywhere. But he could blend in there. And there were places where gunships were frequently landed. He could steal one of these.
He physically recoiled at the idea of stealing. But there was no hope of reaching the German lines without one.
He exhaled, stood up, pulled on his pack. He checked his weapons, a plan of sorts hatching in the back of his mind. If it worked, he might avoid the shedding of innocent blood. If it did not, he might die. It was not as if he were not already committed to what he must do. He was.
But the doing of it would be the most difficult task he had ever performed in his life. It was necessary to constantly reassure himself that this was right.
As he began to climb the ladder, one of the wounds he had sustained at the Second Chinese City suddenly pained him and he swung back from the ladder on his good arm. After a few seconds, the pain began to subside.
He continued the climb upward.
And he thought again about the pistol which the Comrade Marshal had given him, the sort of pistol a senior officer passed on to a son or nephew who would carry on for him.
What went on in the mind of Comrade Marshal Nicolai Antonovitch? Why had he—Vassily Prokopiev—been chosen? And what had the Comrade Marshal meant? He remembered the Comrade Marshal’s words. “Tell Doctor Rourke this changes nothing. I would kill him if I had the chance. And I will expect the same courtesy from him.”
Prokopiev kept climbing.
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Chapter Thirty-Six
The water was as warm as the Pacific was supposed to feel, he supposed, or, almost at least; but the air temperature was in such sharp contrast that it made John Rourke shiver as he put head above water, oriented himself on the Soviet Island Class submarine as he sucked air, then tucked beneath the surface again.
Jason Darkwood had offered diving equipment, but as eager as Rourke was to try the wings and pressure suit and hemo sponge breathing apparatus, now was not the time.
And there would have been so few diving suits compared to so many men who would have to do without them.
Like the rest, he took his chances without one, surfacing as needed, gulping air, diving beneath the surface again, hoping not to be seen and shot by someone aboard the deck of the Island Classer.
He swam ahead, his knives his only weapons except for two of the Sty-20 pistols. As long as he lived, he would never get used to shooting people with a sleeping agent and having to wait for them to pass out. If a situation so deteriorated that one man had to shoot another, it was bad enough that the one who got shot
should fall down quickly and the thing should end.
He kept swimming, Paul Rubenstein beside and a little behind him.
Rourke broke the surface again, gulping air, almost gulping water as a small wave lapped over him, tucked down again, Paul doingthe same a second or so earlier.
The hull of the Island Classer loomed ahead like something out of a nightmare. When he had first seen one, when he and Natalia had been kidnapped and brought below the surface, he had thought it was that, something from a nightmare. But the nightmare was only beginning.
Rourke kept swimming.
He looked at the Rolex, having set the locking bezel in synchronization with Darkwood’s watch, all other watches among the diving team and the surface team synchronized against Darkwood’s watch, Darkwood’s prerogative as ranking man. And John Rourke’s Rolex read precisely two minutes before eight. He broke the surface again, the sky still gray when it should have been a rich blue here, early evenings in the Pacific beautiful experiences he remembered well. No longer. He tucked beneath the surface, Paul Rubenstein already down again, the younger man swimming beside him, pointing to his watch. Rourke nodded.
One minute. Darkwood and two dozen of the released prisoners, some of the men armed only with sharp sticks, surrounded Rourke and Rubenstein. At. precisely eight in the evening, the remaining fifty or so freed prisoners, some of them wearing the uniforms of their former captors, and the Marine contingent from the Reagan, under the command of Sam Aldridge, now disguised as a prisoner, would begin to board the Island Class Soviet submarine Arkhangelsk, which meant that the hull defense and warning systems would be shut off.
If the submarine were to be taken, there would have to be minimal shooting. A submarine damaged beyond repair would be as useless to them as no submarine at all.
Jason Darkwood tapped John Rourke on the shoulder. It was precisely eight as Rourke glanced at the luminous face of his watch. Almost as one man, they broke surface beside the hull of the Island Classer, Rourke and the men surrounding him sucking in air. Paul Rubenstein seemed to be stifling a cough. In Paul’s right hand was his Gerber Mkl fighting knife.
Rourke’s right fist held the Crain Life Support System X survival knife.
His eyes tracked Jason Darkwood as Darkwood moved along the hull, Rourke and Rubenstein beside him, following. Darkwood stopped, some sort of cleat in the hull. Darkwood looked to his men right and left, gave a thumbs-up sign, then began to climb, John Rourke swinging onto the cleats right behind him, Paul Rubenstein after him.
The cleats were not a ladder, but served well enough as purchases for hands and feet. There was a rail along the missile deck. Darkwood clung to it, roping along hand over hand, his feet only frictioning against the hull. Rourke followed him, his knife in his borrowed webbed belt.
John Rourke raised his head, peered across the missile deck. Some of Aldridge’s people were already boarding the Island Classer. It was imperative to wait until some of them at least were below decks, lest the hatches were shut and the submarine dived.
Rourke kept moving, nearer to the sail, looking to his left. Half of the two dozen men of the boarding part> were clinging to the rail, some of the others still on the cleats, fewer than a half dozen still in the water, men with knives bitten hard in their teeth, sharp
pointed sticks thrust through their belts, barefoot, shirtless men, like Rourke was himself, their bodies dripping wet, the wind like icy tentacles curling around them.
John Rourke kept moving. He stopped. It appeared that some of the Aldridge party were below decks. But there was some sort of altercation on the missile deck near the boat ladder on the starboard side, and Sam Aldridge seemed to be in the middle of it. The Marine Captain just stood there, still acting like a cowed prisoner, Lance Corporal Lannigan, now in a Marine Spetznas Lieutenant’s uniform, standing between Aldridge and a naval officer of considerable rank, perhaps Commander Stakhanov from the radio message.
Rourke looked to his right. His eyes and Darkwood’s eyes met. Rourke looked across the missile deck. Aldridge took a step away, Stakhanov drawing a pistol. It wasn’t a Sty-20, looked like a real gun.
Jason Darkwood shouted, “Board her!”
John Rourke pushed himself up, over the rail, his wet trousers sticking to his legs, his hair dripping water across his face, the wind and falling snow freezing him as on bare feet he raced across the missile deck. Lannigan stabbed one of the Mid-Wake issue pistols toward the naval officer and fired, again and again, the man’s body tumbling back, sprawling across the deck.
John Rourke’s left hand reached out, grabbed one of the Arkhangelsk’s company from behind, spun him around. John Rourke’s right hand thrust forward, the LS-X knife punching into flesh.
There were shouts. There was a pistol shot, then another and another. A burst of assault rifle fire and a scream, the body of a Soviet seaman tumbling from the sail, smashing down on to the missile
deck. Rourke shoved the dead man off his knife, ajunior Soviet naval
officer turning to face him, a Sty-20 in his right hand. Rourke’s right hand moved faster, the LS-X slashing open the carotid artery, continuing across the throat, Rourke averting his eyes as the blood sprayed.
Paul Rubenstein was locked in combat with a man nearly twice his size, the man swinging a fire axe, Paul ducking under its arc, lunging with the Gerber knife, into the axe-wielding man’s abdomen, out, then in again, falling to his knees as the man tumbled forward over him. Then Paul was on him, raking the knife across the man’s throat as he snapped the head back by the ear, blood spurting across the deckplates.
John Rourke started for the sail, gunfire from the rail at its height, Rourke drawing one of the two Sty-20s from his belt, firing it again and again and again toward the man with the assault rifle, the useless pistol outclassed by the range. Rourke bashed it across the skull of a Soviet seaman, sheathing his knife, jumping for the ladder to the top of the sail. As Rourke climbed, the rifleman above him leaned over the railing, taking aim. He heard Paul’s voice behind him. “John! Swing right!”
John Rourke swung right. There was the crack of a pistol shot from the deck below, then again and again. Rourke looked back, Paul Rubenstein, shirtless and dripping wet, the Soviet Commander’s pistol in his right hand. Rourke swung back to the ladder, took the rungs as quickly as he could, vaulted over the rail, and was on the sail.
A yard from his feet, the main hatch was closing. To his left, a Soviet seaman rushed him with a monkey wrench. John Rourke sidestepped right, the Crain LS-X in his hand. As the monkey wrench swung, Rourke dodged, then rammed the Crain knife forward into the seaman’s throat. Rourke brought his left fist to the knife, swinging the already dead man round, hurtling
the body off the knife and interposing flesh between the hatch and the deck.
