War Mountain

by Jerry Ahern

  In a sabre-grip, clenched tight in John Rourke’s right fist was the Crain LS-X knife, its twelve-inch blade freshly touched up.

  Rourke had lent Paul the Smith & Wesson 6906 because of the suppressor fitted to it. Paul could hold his own against anyone, of that John Rourke was certain. But taking out four men with a knife under conditions of silence was a challenge for anyone and Paul was not as experienced with clandestine use of the edged weapon. Regrettably, John Rourke was.

  The first man he had ever killed with a knife had been in Latin America centuries ago, and years Before the Night of the War. His father had, of course, taught him a great many things with edged weapons technique, and so had his training in Central Intelligence. And there was his friend, Ron Mahovsky, the guru of Metalife Industries who action-tuned his double-action revolvers and whose Metalife SS Chromium M finish was something Rourke had always sworn by. Ron was possibly the finest knife man John Rourke had ever met, and Rourke learned a great deal from him.

  Eventually, all of what he learned blended into a fighting style which was uniquely Rourke’s own, martial-arts based, utilizing many of the elements of the kendo sword-discipline.

  The first man was nearly to the notch of rock. Once this man passed into the notch, Paul would strike for the end of the patrol, where two men moved abreast. The suppressor-fitted 6906 9mm, if conditions were right, could account for these two and, with a great deal of luck, the other two. The important thing was speed enough that an answering shot would not be fired by the Alpine Corps personnel, because either the sound from a burst of caseless gunfire or an energy burst might carry far enough in these mountains that the personnel at the very fringes of the growing force of Nazi personnel preparing to storm the city would hear. Then, helicopters would go airborne, as well as V-Stols and, even if Rourke and Rubenstein could elude them, any attempts by a Trans-Global Alliance V-Stol to make an extraction would be frustrated to the point of the impossible.

  The 6906 Paul had was fitted with a slide lock, but that was only for extreme conditions when even the mechanical noise of the slide operating would draw attention. The suppressor, made up for Rourke by the technicians at New Germany, was beyond anything available in the twentieth century. Noise reduction was all but complete, rivaling the “phut-phut” sounds of movie silencers.

  Rourke’s eyes were on the two rearmost men, his attention focused for the precise moment one of them started to go down.

  And it happened. One of the men’s bodies went rigid, then fell forward into the snow.

  Rourke shifted his gaze to the men filtering through the notch below him and readied himself to jump. He couldn’t be critical of their patrolling techniques, because there was no realistic way for them to have put a man on the high ground. But, in this day of flying video probes, one of these could have been employed and totally frustrated him. Thankfully, none was.

  Rourke shifted his knife to a dagger-hold and launched himself from the rock overhang, down onto the back of the nearer of the two men, Rourke’s feet and legs slamming into the second man. Rourke’s right forearm pistoned downward, driving the Crain LS-X knife deep into the right side of the Alpine Corpsman’s neck, then ripping it free as they impacted the now, Rourke rolling away. He was beside the second of the two men, the man down to his knees in the snow. Rourke’s fingers spun the knife into a sabre hold and he drove it forward into the second man’s thorax.

  The second pair of men would have been the logical choice to jump under other circumstances, but that would have placed Rourke between enemy personnel and Paul’s friendly fire. Instead, Rourke had two men mere yards from him, both of them using sensing equipment, neither of them with a hand on a gun. Rourke wrenched his knife free, diving toward the nearer of the two men with the sensing equipment, driving the knife edge upward into the man’s abdomen several inches below the sternum, letting the force of his charge drag the knife through flesh up to the bone.

  Rourke rolled away.

  The other man was dropping his sensor, going for his energy rifle. But John Rourke had planned ahead. The little A. G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome which Rourke always carried inside the waistband of his pants was clipped to his gunbelt. Rourke freed the knife from its sheath, his left fist balling around it as he lunged forward from a half crouch.

  The knife bit into the man just behind the jawbone at an upthrusting angle, gouging through into the mouth. Rourke was to his feet, smashing his right knee upward into the already dying man’s crotch, Rourke’s right fist hammering down against the exposed neck while his left hand freed the knife. Rourke spun round, toward the remainder of the eight-man patrol, his right hand filling with the butt of one of the two Detonics Score Masters that were in his belt. The guns were packed with snow, but not up the muzzle, and would fire reliably.

  But, there was no need. Paul was just getting to his feet. The throat of one of the four men surrounding him was ripped open, Paul’s knife in the chest of another. The two rearmost of the four were down dead, presumably from gunshot wounds. The suppressor-fitted 9mm was in Paul’s left hand.

  Paul nodded.

  Rourke exhaled.

  There would be a climb back to the ridge which formed one wall of the notch, but again John Rourke had planned ahead, snaking down a piece of monofilament line from the hollow handle of the Life Support System X knife, all-but-invisible in the snow. Rourke tugged at the line now and the full-sized climbing rope to which it was attached dropped down. The rope was secured around an outcropping of living rock above.

  Rourke looked at his thinly gloved hands, his snow smock. They were covered with blood. His goggles were, of course, splattered with it. In the days prior to the Night of the War, a good friend of his who had specialized in training men for various commando units, had begun to teach various methods for sentry elimination which would minimize blood spray and its inherent risks. Even though modern medicine had made such worries all but academic, John Rourke was still careful to avoid direct contact. Old habits died hard.

  Rourke washed the Sting IA Black Chrome clean with snow, then wrenched the larger Crain knife from the Alpine corpsman’s body and did the same. “Keep tabs on things, Paul,” Rourke said unnecessarily, the younger man nodding back. Then Rourke started up the rope. He would retrieve the weapons and gear secured above, then salvage the monofilament line for future use.

  Chapter Six

  Alan Crockett was out of breath a little, so Emma Shaw waited until he volunteered information. All he managed was, “Let’s get going, Commander. Have lots of company up above.”

  He swung into the saddle as easily as a man half his age, then extended his left hand for her to grasp. She did so, locking hands and wrists, and came up into the saddle behind him.

  With his knees, he urged his mount ahead along the rocky, snow-splotched riverbank. The river gouged through the canyon as far as she could see ahead of them, and almost absently she wondered what had caused it. Perhaps some plate tectonics in the aftermath of the Night of the War, perhaps something else. Periodically, over the course of the early morning, Professor Crockett had checked a radiation meter, but the levels were normal.

  They rode on in silence for some time, the only noise beside the thundering of equipment from the canyon rim above and the clopping of Wilbur’s hooves on the rocky trail the occasional snort as the animal exhaled a great cloud of steamy breath.

  After several minutes, Crockett cocked his hat back on his head and lit a cigarette, then began to speak. “I would estimate that a full ten percent of the Nazi total force-strength is assembled above us. And there are some Eden forces, too, but only in token strength. The reasoning is pretty obvious, it would seem. The mountain city really exists.”

  “Mountain city?”

  “Yes. During the early post-War period—I’m talking about World War II—there was a presidential war-retreat here in these mountains. It was abandoned for that purpose when it was deemed too vulnerable to a direct missile strike, as Soviet technol
ogy upgraded. For some time now, however, I’ve been picking up incidental intelligence data from land pirates and travelers concerning a survival community which inhabits the old war retreat.”

  “That’s—”

  “That’s what?” Crockett asked her, looking over his shoulder. For the first time, she noticed that he had very pretty eyes, although she couldn’t quite peg their color. “What?”

  “I was going to say, that’s hard to believe, but I guess in a really hardened site they could remain unnoticed by aerial surveillance.”

  “Well, evidently, the Nazis have noticed them. Unless there’s some colossal military exercise going on for training purposes, what’s up there on the canyon rim looks like some sort of invasion force. If war with Eden and the Nazis is as close as you were telling me, I doubt they’d deploy such strength for maneuvers at this time. Therefore, logic suggests they have found the rumored community.”

  “Do you know anything about it, Professor?”

  “Well, Commander, what I’ve heard isn’t very reassuring—the principal reason I’ve never gone looking for the place. The land pirates—sometimes I’d travel with one of their bands for a while, but that’s another story—they’d tell stories about finding human remains at times.”

  “Oh! Charming. Whose, did they know?” Emma Shaw asked Crockett.

  “Just ordinary people, and no evidence to suggest they were residents of the community. If such a community has survived, it would have to have done so through advanced technology. A primitive society would have perished after more than six centuries, unless it resorted to cannibalism, and there’s never been evidence to suggest that.”

  “So we may find ourselves caught between two opposing forces. But, on the plus side, they probably aren’t cannibals.”

  “That, I am afraid, is a distinct possibility.” He began field-stripping his cigarette, despite the fact that it was filterless . . .

  His field commanders were assembled inside the largest of the hermetically sealed tents. He stood before them at the small podium, his outstretched palms signaling them to be seated while he spoke. “Today is the stuff of history. We shall penetrate this mountain redoubt and liberate the Aryan peoples within from their self-proclaimed democracy, but most importantly to the future of National Socialism and of the world is that we shall recover the sacred remains of the Führer of all Führers, Adolf Hitler.

  “It is possible, but only remotely so,” Deitrich Zimmer went on over the muted sighs and exclamations, “that they shall have been imperfectly preserved. But! But, if there remains a single cell which can be extracted, the Führer will live again!”

  With a spontaneity which brought a chill to Zimmer, running its course along the full length of his spine, the assembled field commanders rose as one, and shouted, “Heil Hitler!”

  Indeed, Zimmer reflected, but he would not be the same Hitler; the new Führer would only have Hitler’s spark of genius, for mastery of the moment and for inspiring supreme devotion. In other ways, the new Führer would be the true superman of which Adolf Hitler and the SS had only dreamed . . .

  All through the night, and continuing past dawn, aircraft had overflown them, Natalia observing through electronic field-glasses. It was as if this were some great air-show for weapons of war, every conceivable type of aircraft in the Nazi inventory flying almost due east.

  And still, the encampment surrounding their own plane remained unchanged. Some fifty Alpine Corps troops stood watch, their vehicles arranged in a circle about the aircraft where only she, Annie, the cryogenically sleeping Michael and the skitterish air crew remained, waited.

  Annie came to kneel beside her in the open cargo bay. “The guys from the crew’ll take the watch if you want, or I can.”

  “This isn’t a watch, Annie, it’s a hobby,” Natalia smiled. “And I cannot say that I find it boring. There is something enormous going on. I can feel it inside me. Have you had any reactions?”

  Annie was gifted—or cursed, depending on one’s perspective—with an empathic sixth sense, to experience danger or suffering of those she loved. “I could sense some turmoil, but I don’t really know. I haven’t really felt anything odd or anything.”

  “Good. Have you checked Michael?”

  “All the instruments are reading like they should. So far, so good,” Annie volunteered.

  But Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Major, Committee for State Security, Retired, returned her gaze to the aircraft above. The traffic was thinning, perhaps these were the last elements of the mysterious armada. And she wasn’t so certain about the “so far, so good” thing . . .

  Paul Rubenstein looked up from the radio, fixing the earpiece more securely as he spoke. “They’re on the way, John!”

  John Rourke asked, “From what direction? East, I hope.”

  “East. ETA is seventeen minutes to the coordinates we gave them.”

  John Rourke rolled back the cuff of his parka and the battered, brown, leather bomber-jacket beneath it, checking the black-faced Rolex Submariner on his left wrist. “We’d better get moving then.” Rourke started gathering up his gear, the backpack, his HK-91, the climbing rope. Paul was doing the same. In seventeen minutes, they would need to get over the rise and down through the defile, the snow there God only knew how deep. But the skis they’d taken from the dead Alpine Corpsmen would help with that. Rourke had already adjusted the bindings, but didn’t don his skis, now.

  Herringboning up the mountain face would be at once exhausting and slow.

  The skis, however, would get them down in quick time.

  Chapter Seven

  Dr. Zimmer, before he left the facility, had explained to her, “There are many sides of the human personality, many facets, as it were. In restructuring Sarah Rourke in order to make you her near duplicate, it was unavoidable that some of these nuances of personality taken from the original would be altered in you. So, you must be careful, hm? Why, you might ask? Well, for a very simple reason.

  “Personality is displayed through action and reaction,” Dr. Zimmer went on. “Action can be calculated, but reaction cannot. This is why you must be careful, so that some reaction you display will not alert John Rourke that you are not Sarah, the real Sarah, do you see?”

  “Yes, I think. I don’t know, for sure.”

  Dr. Zimmer smiled, telling her, “When I sent out the clone of Wolfgang Mann, he was intentionally flawed. And I had two purposes in mind. First, I wished to have him plant the seed of suspicion in John Rourke’s mind, but I also had a very real need for him to broadcast the entrance coordinates I required through the microtrans-ceiver implanted in his mouth. After both of these tasks were accomplished, his usefulness was outlived. He was expendable.

  “But you do not want to die, do you?”

  “Of course not,” she told him.

  “Good. Then, if you do your job well you will live. Unlike the clone of Wolfgang Mann, you were not designed to be expendable. There is no reason that you should be. You are my finest creation, perfect in every way. Yet, you must still be cautious.”

  “I will be. But—”

  “Yes?” Dr. Zimmer asked, smiling.

  “Well, just what is the plan, I mean—”

  He stood, began to pace back and forth behind his desk. “You are aware of the fact that I could have killed the Rourke family at the same time that cell samples were taken. You are also aware that I have most likely cloned all of you, or them, depending on your outlook. So, why did I not kill them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I saw a need for the Rourke family, and also firmly believe that life, although expendable, should not be wasted. Do you understand the difference young woman?”

  “Yes—well—”

  He stopped pacing, looked at her as he leaned over the desk. His hands were clenched into fists and he rested his weight on their knuckles. His fingers, she remembered, were terribly long and graceful, like those one would expect of a pianist or concert violinist. “When I
can use John Rourke and all the rest for my own purposes, I would be foolish merely to indulge some violent whim and be done with them, when the same result, after some patient waiting, will be achieved at any event. Rourke will serve my purposes. Then, after he has done so, I will no longer need the real thing. If you are careful and wise, you will be the most revered woman in the world. Let me ask you a question, hm?”

  “Yes?”

  He smiled again. “What is the end of power? Let us suppose that one has all the money one would ever require, that one can possess virtually anyone chosen from the opposite sex, that one exercises life and death over one’s subjects. Then, why the quest for greater power?”

  “I don’t know. Is it a riddle?”

  “To Sarah Rourke it would be a riddle, but to you it must not be,” Dr. Zimmer said, starting to laugh. “Remember? You want to live on after your immediate usefulness is at an end. So, you should learn this lesson well. The ultimate end of power is ultimate power. Nothing matches it. I want to rule the world, but there will always be two sides. To have only one side, there would have to be a true Armageddon, and then I would be master of ashes.

  “The true power,” he told her, his voice lowered almost conspiratorially, “is to control both sides, to manipulate world events. That is the ultimate power toward which I labor, which I will possess.”

  As she lay on her back now in the bunk—her head ached a little—Almost-Sarah wondered what he had truly meant. Two sides, but one ultimate power?

  Even though she could not comprehend his meaning, she was frightened.

  Wolfgang Mann slept on the opposite side of the cell. After a century, he had not touched more than her hand, her arm, her shoulder. The real Sarah evidently engendered a kind of respect that was almost equally frightening to consider.

  Almost-Sarah closed her eyes, recalling the real Sarah’s memories of John Rourke. At last, sleep came.