by Jerry Ahern
The vehicle behind it, the bastardized German minitank, swerved, but not in time, striking the first vehicle broadside.
Rourke didn’t wait for the rest, mowing the safety off fire, slinging the HK crossbody in a patrolling carry, then throwing down his skis as he pulled on his gloves. He stomped his feet into the bindings, grabbed up his poles and dug in, launching himself back into the trail Paul had already cut through the snow along the slope.
Ahead, Paul was midway between the base of the slope and the aircraft which was parked on the ice field. A half dozen commandos were in a defensive formation around the aircraft, and in the distance, coming toward the aircraft from the deep canyon Rourke had observed earlier, there were two people riding double on horseback.
Rourke reached the base of the slope, then dug his poles into the ice in earnest.
This was cross-country skiing now, the skis themselves better suited for it, but the going slower.
Rourke looked back.
Two of the land pirate vehicles were making their way down from the ridge-line, onto the slope. If their weight didn’t prove too great, they’d make good time—perhaps too good. Rourke worked his poles as hard as he could, tucking his body down to minimize wind resistance.
Paul was nearly at the aircraft now. The commandos—six of them—divided, three of them coming across the ice toward Paul, dropping prone to its surface, bipods folding out from the fore ends of their weapons. The other three fanned out and waited for the horse-mounted personnel.
As Rourke started to look away, the horse foundered on the ice and fell, the two riders jumping clear. The horse’s body skittered along the icy surface, its off foreleg bending, twisting.
Rourke quickened his pace, summoning all the speed he could now. He looked behind him. The two land pirates’ vehicles were coming fast, leaving the slope and starting across the ice.
Gunfire came from the commandos facing Rourke, their positions such that they could shoot toward the vehicles without Rourke himself being in their lines of fire. Rourke kept moving. . .
She shook her head, pulled off her helmet, her hair falling over her eyes.
“Wilbur!” It was Crockett shouting. Emma Shaw looked from Crockett and toward the animal. It was down, its left front leg twisted. And it was obvious that the animal’s leg was broken, badly. Professor Alan Crockett was up, running, his cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, his dark clothes snow-splotched, his face a mask of violence and anguish, his western-style six-gun in his right fist, its long barrel angled slightly upward. And he shouted to her, “Remember the saddlebags, Commander! Remember the saddlebags!”
“I’ll remember, but—” Emma Shaw drew her .45 from beneath the parachute-fabric poncho, racking the slide. These men from the aircraft were friendly forces, and common sense told her to run toward them. But she didn’t, scrambling to her knees and running instead after Alan Crockett. But as she looked toward the aircraft, she could have sworn that the figure nearest to it, a man on skis, of average-looking height, was somehow familiar.
Dismissing the notion, she followed Crockett, shouting after him, “Alan, don’t! We can get the horse aboard. We can—”
But he was on his knees beside the animal, cradling its head, and before she could reach him, Crockett abruptly stood, putting the revolver’s barrel on line with the animal’s head. There was a single shot, louder-seeming than the gunfire that was coming from the far side of the aircraft. Wilbur’s body twitched once and was still.
As she reached Crockett, he was already cutting his saddlebags free from the rest of his gear, a small pocket knife in his left hand. “Get the bags and get out of here! I enjoyed your company, Emma Shaw!”
She moved her hand to touch him, barely felt at his sleeve and Alan Crockett was gone, running, toward the two land-pirate vehicles, only his six-gun in his hand. Emma Shaw picked up the saddlebags.
And she realized suddenly that every man—or woman—had his own definition of what it was which was important enough to die for, what principle could not be violated. “Alan!” But she only called after him once. He was a man alone, whether by fate or design, and the one companion whom he valued—only a dumb animal, some would say, one of God’s or nature’s humblest creatures, really, for all the myth surrounding them—was dead by enemy action, albeit accidental. All the loneliness, all the solitude, and the one thing outside himself on which he could rely, in which he could trust, was gone.
Some would say that Alan Crockett lost his mind; others would understand, as she did. Emma Shaw picked up the saddlebags, then ran toward the aircraft . . .
John Rourke could feel the pulsing of the lead vehicle’s engine in the air around him. Bullets and energy bursts impacted the ice near him. He kept going.
There was a woman running toward the aircraft now, and a man in dark clothes and a western hat running toward the land pirate vehicles. With only a long-barreled handgun—the only visible weapon—he shrugged past one of the commandos who tried to hold him back, ran on, toward the land-pirate vehicles.
Paul was at the aircraft, firing toward the land pirates. The female figure was nearly to the fuselage door.
Gunfire tore into the ice in front of Rourke, and as he tried to turn away, an energy burst struck the side less than a yard from him, and the surface beneath Rourke’s skis rose, collapsed and Rourke was momentarily airborne, slamming down onto the ice, his bindings breaking loose, his body twisting, rolling, skidding.
John Rourke shook his head, clawed at his rifle on the ice beside him. The nearer of the two land-pirate vehicles was tracked like the one he had disabled, its frame was that of an old truck, enclosed in the bed, firing ports there crudely armored. The vehicle was closing, bearing down on him.
But as Rourke shook his head to clear it, tried shouldering his weapon, he saw the black-clad man jumping onto the running board of the vehicle’s cab, stabbing his long-barrelled revolver through a vision slit. Almost instantly, the land-pirate vehicle began to swerve. The vehicle just behind it tried turning clear. John Rourke had the HK-91 to his shoulder, firing at the joint between two sections of armor plate on its cab, firing out the entire magazine, then buttoning it out into the snow, drawing another magazine from his musette bag, ramming it up the well. He cycled the first round into the chamber, resumed firing.
The first vehicle overturned, the man who had attacked it with little more than his bare hands jumping clear.
The first vehicle’s cab separated from the bed, rolling over again and again in the snow. Rourke brought his attention back to the second vehicle. Gunfire from the commandos near the aircraft was opening up on it now. Rourke kept firing. The second vehicle swerved, skidded, nearly overturned. Bullets rang off the heavier of the armor plates, peppered the others.
There was a blast from a squad energy cannon, then another and another, the energy bolts spreading out of the armored engine compartment.
The vehicle stopped.
Rourke pulled another single magazine from his musette bag, was to his feet, running.
At the far edge of his peripheral vision, he could see the black-clad man with the cowboy hat. Men were piling out of the first land-pirate vehicle. And the man in black just stood there, taking them down one at a time until his gun was empty. Rourke ran toward the fray, shouting, “Get out of there, man!”
The land pirates swarmed over the man in black, the man’s pistol barrel flashing in the sun, swiping across skulls until finally he was swamped by his enemies. Rourke at last had a clear field of fire around the overturned truck, and bringing the HK-91 to his shoulder opened up. At the range, there was no need for real marksmanship, just shooting.
The commandos from the aircraft were suddenly there, Rourke ordering, “Let’s help that man! Come on!” Rourke safed the HK-91, letting the rifle fall to his side on its sling. From beneath the snow smock he drew ScoreMasters, one in each hand, running forward.
The range was point-blank, and he opened fire, killing three of the lan
d pirates before he reached the man in black.
The commandos swept past the first vehicle, toward the second one, that was stalled out yards away in the snow. Rourke dropped to his knees beside the man.
There were knife wounds—more than Rourke could immediately count—all along the man’s torso, and blood dripped from the corner of the man’s mouth. In his right hand, the man still grasped his long-barreled handgun. Rourke recognized it, a Colt Single Action Army, almost certainly a Lancer copy.
As Rourke belted his own pistols and reached out to examine him, the fallen man in black opened his eyes and what was almost a smile crossed the fellow’s lips. “Dr. Rourke, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but we’ve never—”
And the man in black began to laugh, the blood flow from his mouth increasing. As Rourke started to say, “Be still so—” the man in black said through clenched white teeth, “When she told me you were alive, I really didn’t believe her, thought perhaps it was the shock from bailing out over enemy territory, or maybe she was just crazy. I think sir, that she loves you.”
“Who—what—”
The man in black closed his eyes, then opened them quickly again. “It has, sir, been an honor.”
“And you, sir, are either the bravest or most foolish man I’ve ever met.”
“There’s a fine line—” And the face of the man in black suddenly went rigid and his head cocked back into the snow.
Rourke felt for a pulse and there was none.
As he thumbed closed the man’s eyes, Rourke finished the man’s words, “. . . a fine line between the two.”
From behind him, John Rourke heard a woman’s voice, a voice he knew very well and at once wanted to hear again but was afraid to hear. “John. That was Alan Crockett. You probably never heard of him. He was an archaeologist, a survivalist like you, he was—”
Rourke turned around as he stood. Her hair needed combing, there was dirt on her left cheek, and tears were flowing from her eyes.
Emma said, “Hold me. Please?”
“Yes.” John Rourke walked the few paces toward her very slowly, folding her into his arms, her head resting against his chest. They needed to be off the ground quickly, out of here and away. But there was something John Rourke needed to do. “Will you be all right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hold my rifle, then.”
Emma Shaw took it from him and Rourke turned back toward the dead man; Emma had called him Alan Crockett. Rourke walked back toward the man, dropped into a crouch. He opened the dead man’s hand, hefted the handgun, shoved it into his belt. Then he took Crockett’s right hand and arm, hauling the arm across his own shoulders, slinging the dead man up into a fireman’s carry as he rose. In the distance, Paul and the commandos from the plane were settling with the remaining land pirates.
“We’ve got to hurry!” John Rourke shouted, starting toward the aircraft, the dead man in black over his shoulder, Emma Shaw falling in beside him. It felt good to have her there.
Chapter Eleven
She had told him about this man named Alan Crockett, how Crockett, a college professor, explorer, archaeologist, weapons expert and survivalist, had helped in faking his own death so that he could work for these past three years deep inside enemy territory as a field intelligence agent. And she also told him about the man and the horse.
John Rourke closed his eyes as he thought about it again.
Emma was asleep in the seat beside him.
A human life had to have a focus, something internal or external, which kept it moving, gave it purpose. Often, the external force was internalized, became symbolic of all the things in life that were good or bad or important. John Rourke worked once with a man named Sterrett, on an assignment in Latin America against a guerilla band paid for by the drug cartel.
Sterrett’s equipment was state-of-the-art, except for a spare knife that Sterrett carried lashed to his web gear. It was stag-handled, but the crude brass guard, however serviceable, was an abomination.
At a rest stop once, Rourke’s curiosity got the better of him and he asked Sterrett, “What’s the story of that knife?”
“This? My dad’s.”
“He carry it during the War or something?”
“No. He gave it to me. You know how when you’re a kid, Rourke, you get stuff, don’t even give it a second thought. Well, I got this knife from him. Wasn’t the world’s best, but I really thought it was something. Then this one day, a couple of weeks after my dad died, I realized it was the only thing really—I mean something tangible—that I still had that he’d given me. I’ve been carrying it ever since. And you know what?”
“No.”
“It’s really not such a bad knife after all. Holds an edge okay and—anyway, it’s got a purpose.”
The knife. Alan Crockett’s horse.
John Rourke was certain that Sterrett would have willingly risked death to retrieve the knife, or to somehow avenge its loss or destruction.
John Rourke opened his eyes, staring down at the different but identical-seeming snow field below them. The V-Stol would be landing in Lydveldid Island in less than ten minutes. Then, off again, back to North America, but as part of an attack squadron.
A few Nazi and Eden Defense Force aircraft had closed to within a mile of their aircraft, but only after they were airborne, then fallen away after a brief, halfhearted seeming pursuit.
And John Rourke could not help wondering why, yet at the same time think that he might know. He looked at Emma Shaw’s face while she slept, how peaceful she seemed, exhausted as she had been, and how beautiful, although she was the kind of woman who would never consider herself anything more than pretty enough.
They would be on the ground at Hekla Airbase, named after the once partially destroyed, since rebuilt Hekla community within the mountain volcano of the same name, in only minutes. As he gently checked Emma’s seat belt, he considered the current situation. He was pitted against the most intelligent adversary he had ever encountered, and it was not silliness on his part to view the conflict as personal. Zimmer’s every move seemed to have made it so.
Rourke looked at the face of his wristwatch. In the days Before the Night of the War, a Rolex was very much a status symbol. He wore one simply because it was an extraordinarily good timepiece. But many persons, wishing the supposed status that the watch conferred by its name, bought fakes. Some were outright counterfeits, others made to closely resemble the real thing.
What had they been dealing with—he and Paul—in their encounter with the fake Wolfgang Mann? A counterfeit, or something closely resembling the real thing. A true counterfeit—and perhaps Zimmer had that ability—would have maintained its identity and signaled the just-discovered entranceway’s coordinates surreptitiously, rather than shouting them to the night sky. But something designed to only closely resemble the real thing, yet be just enough different that the deception would be discovered immediately or even eventually—why had Zimmer done this, except for the one obvious reason, to alert him—John Rourke—to the fact that he—Zimmer—had perfected the process of cloning a human being?
If this was Zimmer’s intent, then for what motive, and toward what end? Merely to have his work admired? Rourke dismissed that; Zimmer’s ego was great but Zimmer’s intellect greater. Indeed, Zimmer would be a dedicated believer in the dictum that the end always justified the means. The means were the creation of human beings from the cells of unwilling donors, then using such beings however Zimmer saw fit. The Wolfgang Mann clone had an explosive charge inside his body, was intentionally doomed.
Zimmer might well have used a clone as the source for his new eye.
If Zimmer had cloned Wolf, then Zimmer could have cloned all of them and, indeed, as Rourke had already surmised, the woman he’d thought was Sarah was not Sarah—perhaps. There could be duplicates of them all, himself included. But again, to what end?
Why, if Zimmer had the ability to penetrate the cryogenic repository in New Germ
any in order to obtain cells for cloning, why hadn’t Zimmer just killed them?
The answer seemed inescapable: Zimmer had some means by which he could record the electromagnetic impulses within the human brain, and he needed the brain to be active in order to do this. So, Zimmer wanted his clones to be programmed with the “minds” of the unwilling donors. That in mind, then still to what end?
In Eden, Rourke had discovered statues of himself, seen his face on the coinage. There was even a motion picture glorifying him. All this under the aegis of a man who was his enemy? To what end?
Dictators built personality cults around themselves, not their enemies. Yet, Zimmer had built such a cult around his enemy. Why?
For some reason which John Rourke could not as yet discern, Deitrich Zimmer needed him alive and free and fighting, hence the halfhearted pursuit by enemy aircraft while their own aircraft escaped.
Rourke’s inability to discern Zimmer’s intent bothered him less than the very real possibility that Sarah and the real Wolfgang Mann were part of the plan, and might well be sacrificed by Zimmer in order to bring the plan to fruition.
“Damn,” Rourke rasped as he lit a cigarette.
Chapter Twelve
The coffee was hot, but coffee could be drunk hot or cold and, often, it tasted little different. Drinking coffee these days was like a byte of racial memory, because only extremely costly coffees contained caffeine, and caffeine was the major purpose behind coffee’s popularity in the first place. Yet, people still drank coffee and claimed that it helped keep them awake; Tim Shaw did.
This morning, Tim Shaw drank coffee just because he liked the taste. Although he’d had little sleep, he couldn’t have been more alert. Word had just reached him by telephone that his daughter, Emma, missing in action after her Navy fighter plane went down, was alive and well and safe with John Rourke.
