by Jerry Ahern
Shaw was alone in his office at Honolulu P.D. headquarters. The door opened, his son Ed standing just on the other side of the doorway. “Mind if I join you, Dad?”
“Come ahead, Eddie,” Shaw told his son. Ed still wore black battle-dress utlities and combat boots, not yet having the chance to change after the battle with the saboteurs right in the heart of downtown. The BDUs were still stained with the contents of the fire extinguishers from when they had flooded the inside of the armored truck.
Tim Shaw had showered and changed, unable to stand himself, even cleaned his guns. But that was the advantage of giving the orders instead of taking them. Someday, Eddie (who gave a lot of the orders now, because Eddie was the SWAT Team’s tactical commander) would give the orders. “Pretty good news about Emma, huh? The girl’s tough.”
“Yeah, but tough doesn’t mean invincible, Eddie. Tough people get croaked every day.”
“You know what I mean, anyway—so, you think the Nazis are gonna try for you? I mean, you set yourself up with that TV crew after the fight, just in case the bad guys didn’t know who you were. Only thing you didn’t do was have ’em flash your home address on the screen.”
“Hey, I tried,” Shaw said, grinning at his son. “I figured we could start us a little business on the side, Eddie, you know, sell nostalgia stuff and shit like that. But we’ve gotta get us a phone number with operators standing by and the whole routine. Maybe we can get our own TV show, call it “Honolulu SWAT” or somethin’, huh?”
“You laugh, Dad, but if these guys come for you in force, to get their revenge for all the damage you’ve done, you could wind up with the old tail in a sling.”
Ed Shaw reached into the top right-hand drawer of his desk and took out his .45, laying it on the desk. “Not so long as I’ve got my friend here. To be honest with ya, Eddie, I hope the fuckers try it. And we can be ready for them. See, I can sleep, take it easy, catch up on the tube, shit like that, while they come to get me. They’re gonna be workin’ hard. And you’re gonna be workin’ hard, too. I figure, right about now, our little Nazi buddies are shittin’ bricks and spittin’ nails ’cause we nailed so many of ’em right after they first got here, then got those lowlife schmucks they were gonna use to do the missile heist. They can’t be too happy, anyway. So, I agree, they’re gonna come after me, teach me a lesson, that kinda stuff. What they don’t know, I hope, is that I want them to do it, and you and the guys from the SWAT Team are gonna be ready and waiting.”
“This could take a long time, Dad,” Ed said, grabbing the chair opposite Tim Shaw’s, turning it around and straddling it.
“Yeah, but it won’t. Wanna know why, Eddie?”
“No, but you’ll tell me anyway.”
Tim Shaw lit a cigarette, leaned back in his chair and rocked his feet up on the corner of the desk. “If we dish up an opportunity our little Nazi saboteur buddies can’t resist, and it’s comin’ up pretty soon, what are they gonna do? I’ll tell ya, Eddie.” And Tim Shaw swung his feet down from the desk and leaned across toward his son. “Before they hit this super-attractive target, they’re gonna hit me. And since we wasted the no-talent bums the Nazis sent on the missile job, they’re gonna figure they’ve gotta come after me themselves. Six of them left maybe, right? So, maybe they’ll bring some of their damned fifth-columnist saboteur hoodlum whackos with ’em. More the merrier. We just get to put the bag on more of ’em. And that’s your department. Just like when you had that supermarket job when you were a kid, Eddie. You’re a bagger. I’m the sale coupon that brings ’em into the store.”
“This could get you killed, Dad. Emma’d be so pissed with you, it’d be the first time the living ever haunted the dead.”
Tim Shaw laughed. “That’s cute, Eddie. And, God knows, you might be right. You think of a better shot at nailin’ these guys, I’ll be happy to try it.” And Shaw took the cigarette out of the corner of his mouth and looked his son hard in the eyes. “But you better hurry, cause I’m goin’ home tonight and I might cut out early.”
Eddie didn’t say anything.
Chapter Thirteen
Natalia stood up so suddenly that Annie was startled. “What is it?”
“Answer a question, Annie. Do you think men are smarter than women, just because they are men, I mean?”
Annie Rourke Rubenstein just stared at her for a moment. “That’s a hell of a question to ask! I mean, we’re in a plane in the middle of an ice field and we’re surrounded by enemy forces and—”
“That is exactly why I asked you the question in the first place, Annie. So, give me an answer.” Natalia lit a cigarette.
Natalia had finally relented and let the air crew keep the watch, Natalia returning with her to the sealed portion of the fuselage where they could at least get out of their arctic gear for a little while. “I don’t think so, no. I mean, each person’s an individual and sex doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence. I mean, studies have confirmed that men are usually better with math, especially the kind that involves spatial skills, and women are usually better with languages. But if that were always true, there wouldn’t be any female mathematicians or any male writers, I guess. What are you driving at, Natalia?”
Natalia leaned back in her seat. “I think there’s something very seriously gone wrong. Is that correct English?”
“Why do you keep asking me about your English? You’ve been speaking English perfectly ever since—”
“But then it was a second language and I always had to think about it. Who am I going to speak Russian to these days, except maybe some sailors or some land pirates, unless I go back to the Urals. So, it’s more important to me. Notice? I’m using more contractions.”
“Contractions weren’t common in American speech until after the westward expansion period in the mid-nineteenth century.”
“That’s useful to know,” Natalia said, smiling. “So, you’d agree with me? Men aren’t necessarily smarter, and women can at the worst be just as smart.”
Annie stood up, dug her hands into the pockets of the heavy woolen skirt she wore and started pacing the aisle. “Well, sure. But, what’s your point?”
“If things aren’t going right, then maybe the plan we have been following needs to be altered.”
Annie turned around and just stared at her. “And?”
“I think we need to start the process of getting Michael out of cryogenic sleep.”
“But—”
“Let me finish, all right?”
“Fine, so finish,” Annie said, sitting down again. “But, if we take Michael out of cryogenic sleep we’ll be screwing things up for rescuing Mom, maybe.”
“Even when I stilt—well, that’s not the right way to put it. But, before Michael and I got together, when I was still lying to myself that your father and I could—”
Natalia let the thought hang unfinished. “I know what you’re saying, but I never would have—you always had all our best interests at heart, my mother’s included. You’re saying men don’t have a monopoly on honor; everything about you has always proven that men don’t have the monopoly there, and you know that.”
“And I still have Sarah’s best interest at heart, but we won’t save your mother by getting Michael and ourselves killed. I think the situation has changed.” And she laughed, adding, “Call it ‘woman’s intuition.’ Or whatever you want.”
Annie shook her head, “But what’ll happen when Daddy gets back with—”
“Adolf Hitler’s remains? Can you see John Rourke unleashing that on the world? Assuming, I mean, that Zimmer could do anything with them.”
“If the situation had changed,” Annie started, leaning forward, perching on the edge of her seat, “wouldn’t Daddy have signaled us?”
“A radio transmission or anything else could be intercepted. You were raised to be independent by your father, and my uncle raised me the same way. Maybe John’s assuming we’ll do something. Your father’s like that. All I know is that whether John R
ourke assumes we’ll do something or not, I think we should. If we had to make a stand this way, Michael would be helpless. If we had to flee and the aircraft were disabled, we’d have no means of bringing him, so we wouldn’t flee and we would all be killed. We both know that. Michael’s your brother and my lover.
“We should wake him up,” Natalia said after a long pause. “I just know that we should, all right?”
“We’ll wake him up, but he’s going to be pissed.”
Natalia smiled. “Get your gear. Of course he’ll be angry; he’s just like his father, isn’t he?” And Natalia smashed out her cigarette, stood and grabbed up her gunbelt.
They dressed in the rear of the sealed portion of the cabin, swathing themselves in their arctic gear. . .
Natalia actuated the control for the cyanide gas. If she made a mistake, Michael would be dead in seconds and nothing could be done to change that. Annie had volunteered to do it, but Natalia used the same logic she had with John, six hundred and twenty-five years ago, that if something went wrong, it was better this way. Before Annie could argue, Natalia touched the controls.
There would be a few seconds before they would know for certain that the cyanide gas release was successfully disengaged, but the awakening controls were already at work. Natalia looked at Michael’s face through the swirling gas, then could stand it no longer and looked away. Annie was staring at her from within the scarves and hood which covered everything except her eyes. Natalia had to talk, or scream. “One time Vladmir and I were on a job, in Iran. You know, sometimes the Soviet Union was popular with the Iranian theocracy, sometimes it was not. This was one of the latter times. We had to reach one of our agents who had been getting information on the Israeli effort to support the Americans prior to President Carter’s failed attempt with that helicopter attack.”
“I remember Daddy telling us about it.”
“Well,” Natalia went on, “the only way for Vladmir to get in unmolested—you see, he didn’t do well with languages—was to take me along, because it would be all but unthinkable for someone to molest a party with a woman in it. Anyway, I had to wear this chadarlike thing. I mean, the true chadars are head to toe—”
“That’s a veil.”
“Yes,” Natalia told her. “But this thing just covered me except for the eyes, sort of like we are now, covered except for the eyes. It was hot, and I hated it, but there was one big advantage.”
“What?” Annie asked her, seeming genuinely interested.
“I could carry a submachine gun under my clothes and nobody was the wiser.” She looked back at the cryogenic chamber, at Michael’s face. There was movement there, the eyelids fluttering just slightly. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen—one of the two most beautiful. The readouts on the control panel were looking just as they should. “He’s coming around.”
“He’s going to really be mad. He just did this so we could get Momma out.”
Natalia said to Annie, “We will not free your mother by means such as this. And I know that somehow. If Zimmer will not perform the operation to get that bullet out, I have ways of making him, ways that were taught to me.”
The best method with the cryogenic chambers was to let the sleeper awaken himself, and Natalia moved away from the chamber, leaning back against one of the fuselage ribs while she waited.
It could take only a few minutes or as long as close to an hour for Michael Rourke to come out of the Sleep. Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, after all these years, was an expert on judging such things.
And, Michael would be irate.
She was fast becoming an expert on Michael Rourke, too.
Chapter Fourteen
It was the largest of several briefing rooms located at the allied airbase at Hekla. And it was filled with pilots and ground personnel. Sitting in the front row, in fresh gear, her face washed and her hair combed but (Rourke suspected) time to do little else, was Emma Shaw. She would lead one of the fighter groups which would back up the ground attack.
John Rourke stood at the podium, an enormous video display screen behind him. The data obtained from the late Alan Crockett’s discs was en route both electronically and physically (by transatmospheric insertion flight) to Hawaii, some of it already acted upon.
On the podium was a control panel. With it, Rourke could instantly summon any of the digitized video images within the computer. He wasn’t fully familiar with the system’s operation, but after a short briefing knew it well enough to use it for his purposes. The principle behind the system was one with which he did have some familiarity, from the days Before the Night of the War. Digitizing video for the purposes of offline editing was just coming into its own, then, with equipment such as the EMC-2 editing computer. Rourke participated in the making of several training videos and, always a bit of a technology buff, took considerable interest in the editing process.
The idea was the same. He would be editing the bank of images within the computer so that he could utilize the proper images to illustrate the battle plan.
With the fingers of his right hand, his left hand resting on the podium, Rourke started punching in the time-code numbers for the digitized frames he had preselected. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve used up precious time already, time we may not have. But, that was necessary in order to assemble the required forces. This will be your only briefing, why it is being done en masse, as it were.
“We have a dual mission,” Rourke went on. “The first portion of that mission involves doing as much damage as possible to the Nazi and Eden forces assembled in upstate New York in preparation for an assault against the Aryan Supremicist regime which controls the one-time presidential war retreat. From the video images provided by the late Professor Alan Crockett,” Rourke said, changing video images as he spoke to a close-up of the assembling enemy forces, “we have a reasonably detailed idea of force strength. If we can do severe damage to this force, we’ll be neutralizing a substantial portion of the Nazi forces in North America.
“We need to accomplish that,” Rourke told them. “Even now, cargo lifters are en route to a drop zone where what armor we could muster on such short notice will be employed, these units originating in Lydveldid Island, France and New Germany. The bulk of the damage we hope to do, however, will be accomplished from the air. Squadrons from those areas already mentioned as well as carrier-based aircraft stationed in the North Atlantic will all participate. We’ll have the Nazi forces severely outgunned in the air, but they’ll have the superior numbers on the ground.
“Meanwhile, as this attack is going on, a second phase of the operation will be getting underway. This second phase concerns a ground attack against Nazi headquarters in Northwestern Canada. The bulk of the enemy forces which will be engaged in upstate New York, originated at this Nazi base and, because of that, with these forces otherwise engaged, we have a rare opportunity to take over the base, if possible, or destroy it if necessary.
“The ground attack on the Nazi headquarters complex,” Rourke continued, aerial surveillance photos of the base and its environs now on screen, “will consist of two elements. The first will be comprised of a group of volunteer commandos, Navy SEALs and German Long Range Mountain Patrol personnel. This unit will infiltrate the Nazi headquarters complex for a specific personnel-related mission.
“The second element of the ground attack will be launched on a signal from within the Nazi Headquarters complex or at a specified time, whichever comes first. At that time, air support—exactly two squadrons, because that’s all we can spare—will come in and knock out anything outside the complex itself, or at least we hope. Commander Shaw will lead one of the two squadrons and will be overall commander for the two fighter squadrons.
“Each of you has a standard mission pack, detailing map coordinates, unit strengths, logistics, mission statements and all other necessary data. I must emphasize, however,” Rourke said very slowly, “that the commando operation against the Nazi headquarters is only partia
lly related to the primary objective. All of the personnel involved in this phase of the operation are volunteers. The survival of the commando force is not a primary objective. Questions?”
He would have gone in alone after his family, just he and Paul both would have, but Paul saw to it that word got out and in less than a quarter of an hour, John Rourke had a list of volunteers five times the size he could practically employ. He was genuinely touched.
Chapter Fifteen
Emma Shaw jumped out of the half-tracked transport truck and waved the driver on. She could catch another one on her way to the other end of the airfield. Her helmet under her arm, her just-washed and still slightly damp hair making her freeze in the subarctic blasts, she ran toward the cargo lifter which was still boarding. For a moment, she didn’t see John Rourke, but there was a knot of men in black BDUs near the rear cargo doors and she ran toward them. As the knot of men broke, she saw John, who had been at their center. “John!”
John Rourke looked around, waved, said something to one of the men still beside him, then walked toward her. Dressed as he was, he looked even taller than he normally did, all in black, black jump boots, black BDU pants, a black sweater beneath a black parka, the parka open despite the cold. He was bare-headed, and the wind touseled his hair almost wickedly.
Emma Shaw stopped, stood there, just watching him. She was head over heels in love for the first time in her life, and she was certain for the only time. And he was a married man, readying himself for a rescue mission, to save his wife.
He stopped just a few feet away from her. “I just—” Emma Shaw began.
“I couldn’t see you after the briefing, everybody coming up and asking stuff, uh.”
“Look, I, uh, I just wanted to tell you—”
“What?” John asked her.
“I, uh-I want you to know that we’re all pulling for you to get your wife and family out of there and that it all—” And Emma Shaw started to cry and cursed herself for it, started turning her face away so he wouldn’t see, but she was certain he’d seen her already. And, in the next instant, she felt his arms around her. “I’m sorry!” Emma blurted out, letting him hold her, resting her head against his chest. “This is so fucking dumb of me!”
