War Mountain

by Jerry Ahern

  “Gotcha,” Paul nodded, then started edging back from the ridge.

  John Rourke returned to studying the encampment. If he could pull this off quickly, there was indeed the chance that Nazi headquarters would not be alerted and there would be some element of surprise remaining when he began the infiltration. That might prove crucial to saving Sarah’s life. But, he could not abandon his son and daughter and Natalia in order to ensure that.

  The cold was getting to him and he shifted position slightly, monitoring the schedule as the guards patrolled, searching for signs of electronic countermeasures, gauging distances. This would be quick and dirty or it wouldn’t work at all and a lot of good people might die, his family included.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The ready room was quiet as a funeral, except for two pilots in the far corner laughing over something in a magazine and the sound associated with the vidscreen dominating the far wall. The mission was as understood as it ever would be. As soon as the appropriate signal came in from John Rourke, her two wings would scramble and be airborne over the target in under thirteen minutes, using a modified atmospheric insertion technique.

  Emma Shaw lit a cigarette, her eyes glued to the vidscreen. It was either by accident, or because of someone’s perverted sense of humor. The movie was the story of John Rourke’s heroic struggle to save his family during the final days prior to the Great Conflagration.

  The actor who played John—she’d always thought he was handsome, albeit a bit “pretty” before—was nothing compared to the real thing.

  It was the end of the movie, when the special-effects blue-screen skies caught fire and John Rourke stood heroically barechested, a pistol in each hand, fighting off the last of the helicopters under the command of Rozhdestvenskiy, the KGB commander who was John’s nemesis after the supposed death of Vladmir Karamatsov. The actor who played Rozhdestvenskiy did such a good job of portraying an evil bastard that, afterward, he was unable to take any other sort of role. He eventually took his own life, instead.

  It was kind of sad watching him die, here. The actor who played John flexed his pectorals, almost sneered at the last efforts of his enemy, the stars and stripes blowing in the breeze behind him as he defiantly stood his ground.

  It was really like that, she knew. John, when she’d pressed him once, had admitted that “events were similar, but there wasn’t anything heroic about it, really.”

  The helicopter was coming in for the kill, Rozhdestvenskiy hanging out the side, firing an old-fashioned AKS-74 assault rifle. Missiles were firing off the weapons pods. Bullets richocheted off the rocks around John, explosions impacting near him, the fabric of heaven renting around him as ball lightning rolled through the sky and the air crackled with electricity. Great special effects, but the real thing must have been terrifying. A quick cutaway shot of Soviet troops dying on the ground, their bodies aflame, electrical currents arcing from them.

  John’s twin stainless Detonics pistols were in his hands. The actor shouted, “Come an’ get me, you son of a bitch!” But Emma Shaw could not picture John ever talking like that under the circumstances. He was just as capable of being foul-mouthed as the next person, herself included, but only when there was a purpose. Rozhdestvenskiy couldn’t even have heard him.

  Close-up of Rozhdestvenskiy firing his rifle, empty brass flying toward the camera.

  A jump cut to John, bullets pinging off the rocks near him.

  Calmly, coolly, John waited. The flag flew. The lightning rent the sky. And then, John fired. His bullets tore unerringly into Rozhdestvenskiy’s chest. When she’d mentioned this part of the movie to John—he was obviously embarrassed that she’d seen it—he said, “A lucky shot under the circumstances. I have no idea where or what the bullets struck, although it’s true that I was aiming for Rozhdestvenskiy.” On screen, the pilot was struck by a fusilade of bullets as Rozhdestvenskiy’s assault rifle went wild.

  The helicopter started to spin, augering down toward the ground, the fireball, as it exploded, nearly enveloping John.

  As John made a mad dash for the access tunnel into the Retreat, he looked back over his shoulder, perfect jaw line hard set, eyes gleaming with pride. The stars and stripes still flew.

  She’d asked John why he’d risked everything to raise the flag above the Retreat in an act of defiance against men who would be dead in minutes anyway. “It had very little to do with the men out there, or the flag as a national symbol. A man named Reed, a captain in Army Intelligence, died trying to raise a flag over the Soviet facility which was called ‘the Womb,’ where the KGB Elite Corps planned to survive for five centuries and lie in wait for the Eden Project. Captain Reed didn’t quite make it, dying in the attempt. So, I figured—Reed was a good man, and a lot of good men and women died because of what happened. I did it for him, for them, maybe for me. It was foolishly reckless, Emma.”

  “Would you do it again?” Emma Shaw had asked.

  Then John smiled, lighting a cigar with that old beat-up lighter of his. “Yeah, I probably would. It was an irresponsible thing for me to—”

  “It was beautiful,” she’d told him, wanting to kiss him and hold him and be taken by him so badly that her breasts hurt just thinking about it even now.

  It was the next to last scene in the film, John Rourke standing in near total darkness, as if guarding the cryogenic chambers in which his wife, his son and daughter, his friend Paul (whose Jewish heritage was neglected in the Eden film because of the government’s policy of anti-Semitism) and Natalia slept.

  John Rourke laid down his pistols. Tight shot on those, then a quick cut to his face.

  The last scene began with the American flag, which had started as a reflection in John’s eyes (which was impossible, because the flag was on top of the mountain and he was inside the mountain), blowing in the wind, the sky burning around it but never touching it, the camera drawing back and gradually encompassing more and more of the terrain as the destruction closed over the planet, the mountain itself consumed in flames.

  Fade to black, then the end titles began, then the music rising. She’d taken an evening-school adult-education course once in understanding the movies. It was fun, but not very practical.

  Sarah Rourke was played by a woman named Elizabeth Horton Dane; in real life, Sarah Rourke was played by a woman who was more dead than alive and whom John was willing himself to die for, even though she probably hated his guts, or certainly would when she found out about the fate of their third child, Martin. John was the last of the real heroes, he and Paul Rubenstein, really.

  Emma Shaw lit another cigarette from the burned butt of the first one. If she hadn’t had a mission just ahead of her, a really stiff drink would have been a wonderful thing just now.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The nonalcoholic beer tasted all right, but this time Shaw felt stupid drinking it. He’d had three of them the previous night and been tempted to switch to coffee. Instead, he convinced himself that one real beer wouldn’t hurt.

  As he got up to go toward the kitchen and retrieve one, he picked up the .45 and stuffed it into his trouser band.

  It was good knowing that Eddie and the guys were out there, keeping an eye on the house. But there was little comfort in the plan that he had essentially dictated to Eddie in his office that afternoon just before leaving for home. “This is the only way it’ll work, Son. I know it gives ya the willies, and it doesn’t go down too hot with me, either, but there’s no choice, all right?”

  “Fine, we respond when the first shot goes off and what if somehow they were able to slip right past us and they’re using suppressed weapons and you don’t get off a shot at all? Ever think about that, Dad? Emma’ll have your ass for breakfast when she finds out, if you’re still alive for her to get to.”

  “Who’s gonna tell her, Eddie? She’s like her mother, worries too much. Women are all like that. You should know. The second I even think one of those Nazi fuckers’s got his ass in the house, I pop o
ff a shot and you guys close in. Couldn’t be simpler, right? Relax already.”

  There was always the possibility that Eddie was right, Tim Shaw realized. The Nazis might slip past, might use suppressed weapons and he might get dead very quickly, too quickly to trigger a round and call in the cavalry.

  It was the chance he was taking because he didn’t have a choice.

  Yet, things were starting to look rather discouraging. It was almost time to hit the sack and still no bad guys. He’d strip and get into the sheets just like he was supposed to, but he wasn’t cool enough to close his eyes and sleep. If they came, he wanted to be wide awake.

  Tim Shaw opened the refrigerator and peered inside. There was some chocolate pudding, but that might screw up his stomach, when he was nervous (and he counted himself as being honest with himself to admit that he was), he had a little lactose intolerance. All he needed was to be farting when he should be shooting.

  As he took his beer, Shaw had an awful realization: he would be at his most vulnerable when he was in the shower tomorrow morning.

  Detail-stripping a J-Frame Smith & Wesson wasn’t a picnic, but the Government Model Colt was a snap after all these years. Tim Shaw shrugged his shoulders. He’d take it into the shower with him. And he laughed. Years ago, he’d known this guy who’d cleaned his .45 by running it through his wife’s dishwasher, field-stripped to major components, then lubed up afterward. It was a cute trick, but Shaw had never seen a lot of practicality in it. In an old gun magazine on microfiche, he’d even seen an ad Colt had used showing a .45 auto in the dishwasher. “Hell, who cleans ’em?” Shaw laughed to himself aloud. The virtue of a big-bore handgun, among other things, was that it really didn’t have to be cleaned that often to keep running.

  On impulse, before closing the refrigerator door, Shaw tapped down his pockets. The spare magazines for the Colt, a Lancer reproduction, were there and so were two speedloaders for the little Smith, also really a Lancer. He used the old seven-round magazines for the Colt, liking those better, giving him eight in the gun plus fourteen more. And he had a grand total of fifteen rounds for the .38. Eight and fourteen made twenty-two, plus fifteen gave him thirty-seven rounds. If that wasn’t enought to get him by until Eddie and the Honolulu SWAT Team got on the scene—“I’m fucked anyway,” Shaw said aloud.

  He kicked the refrigerator door closed and twisted off the cap on the beer bottle. The beer, his favorite, was something he had John Rourke to thank for. At the Retreat, Doctor Rourke had kept a case of Michelob. Better than a hundred years ago, Rourke gave a bottle of it to a lab technician at New Germany to reproduce for him. The lab technician not only produced a supply for Rourke’s Retreat, but gave a case to New Germany’s primary alcoholic beverages distributor. As the story went, the man—his name was Balthazar Schmidt—fell in love with the taste and decided to manufacture it, even duplicating the labeling. Today, Balthazar Schmidt Breweries produced an entire line of pre-War liquors and beers, all faithful formula duplicates of the originals.

  There was a story going around that the executives at Balthazar Schmidt were trying to work out an endorsement deal for Dr. Rourke. Shaw didn’t think Rourke would take it. On the other hand, he would have.

  As Tim Shaw opened the bottle and took a sip, he looked into the front of the microwave oven, in which he could see his own reflection, and said, “This is Dr. John Rourke, hero of the War Between the Superpowers, telling you that—” Behind his own reflection, Tim Shaw saw the bedroom door down the apartment’s hallway. The door was half closed. Tim Shaw’s bedroom door was never touched, unless it was one of those increasingly rare occasions when his daughter, Emma, came over to spend the night. Otherwise, it remained open, just as it had been when he’d gone in the room earlier and put his wallet, his keys and his money clip on the dresser.

  Shaw made himself laugh, took a long pull on the beer and slowly, very slowly, turned away from the microwave so that whoever was inside the bedroom or down the hallway wouldn’t notice him staring at the reflection. “Yeah,” he said aloud, as if the earlier beers had really had alcohol in them, “If I were John Rourke, I’d be sittin’ pretty on all those endorsements. Lancers? Hey, ‘I think the Lancer reproductions are just as good as the real thing. I use them; why don’t you?’ Keep me in guns—and money—” And Tim Shaw threw the beer bottle into the sink and wheeled toward the hallway.

  The smart thing to do would have been to fire a shot, but if he had accidentally bumped the bedroom door and caused it to swing partially shut, he’d blow the whole thing. This way, brandishing a weapon in the direction of the assumed bad guys, if they were there they’d do something.

  They were there.

  There wasn’t even a sound as loud as a balloon bursting, just a phut-phut sound and microwave oven’s front panel shattered and Tim Shaw fired the .45 down the hallway and threw himself left, toward the front room.

  The vidtape he’d just put in had passed the length of its pause and the regular programming cut in, an announcer selling life-insurance benefits to veterans. Tim Shaw dove over the couch as bullets tore into the doorframe between the kitchen and the front room.

  Shaw’s head struck the end of the coffee table and he muttered, “Damn it to—” Gunfire impacted the couch and Tim Shaw went flat, stabbing the .45 up over the arm of the couch and pivoting the muzzle right and left as he fired four more shots.

  Three rounds were left. Time to change magazines. Tim Shaw grabbed for the fresh one in his left pocket, made a tactical change and hunkered down between the couch and the coffee table. “Hey guys, you fucked up. I wanted you to come visit me, motherfuckers! You kill innocent civilians and you murder children and their teachers. Come and get me fast before the good guys get here and bust your ass! Come on!”

  There was more gunfire now, all of it suppressed.

  Tim Shaw was mentally ticking off the seconds. In about another minute, his son and the Honolulu P.D. SWAT Team would be kicking in the doorway at the front and the back and nail the Nazis between them. “Yeah, you shits! Come and get me!” Tim Shaw glanced up over the couch and, sure enough, six men with submachine guns were coming to get him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Time dilates when life hangs in the balance. Tim Shaw didn’t learn that truism during his first gunfight, but instead had it forever hammered into his understanding of the world when he was just a child.

  His father, Emma and Eddie’s grandfather, had always been big on water sports, a natural thing for someone living in Hawaii, even with the colder post-War climate. They’d been out on an all-day fishing trip and Tim Shaw had been pestering his father, Ed, from the very start to give up on the fishing and take out the water skis. It was the last time he ever water-skied until after he was married and his wife, Emma and Eddie’s mother, got him to try it again.

  After the Great Conflagration, the only place where life survived in any true diversity was in the oceans. And sharks were ultimate survivors. His father had gotten the boat going along pretty well when the craft hit a swell and rolled over it. Tim Shaw never rolled over it. He lost the rope, the skis, the whole thing—and his cool. His legs and arms thrashing around in the water, he shouted to his dad.

  Then he felt something slam against him, knocking him below the surface, knocking the wind out of him, too. As he opened his eyes, he saw the snout, the dorsal fin, cutting through the water away from him in a long arc.

  Sometimes, when he’d take Emma and Eddie swimming when they were kids, he could still see that dorsal fin, like a keel on a boat turned upsidedown, cutting through the water, turning toward him. It was all in slow motion, the whole thing.

  His father was suddenly there.

  Tim Shaw remembered that his fists were balled up and he was going to fight the shark even though he knew the thing would kill him, eat him alive. But his father was leaning over the boat, a .45 automatic in his hands, shouting, “Swim to me, Timmy! Swim!” And Tim Shaw swam. It was only years later that he realized what
his father was doing, using him as bait for the shark. The shark came up through the water and straight at him. His father’s .45 boomed, boomed, then boomed again. Then there was silence. So suddenly that he almost threw up, the water was filled with blood. A life preserver was flung into the water and the next thing Tim Shaw knew, he was safe in the boat, his father’s arm clamped around his shoulders.

  What Tim Shaw realized years later was that if his father hadn’t made him swim, the shark could have struck from any angle that it chose and he would likely have been killed. But, swimming as he did, he drew the shark after him so that his father could kill it.

  It was the same situation now. If he stayed put, since a sofa wasn’t an ideal defensive position, he’d be killed.

  Another thing he’d learned about time dilation during periods of extreme danger was that people didn’t experience it in the same way. The six men with submachine guns who’d come after him weren’t experiencing it at all, he realized. They didn’t think they were in danger, for if they had thought so they wouldn’t be here.

  Tim Shaw was already moving, one gun in each hand, a slug from the .45 nailing one of the six men in the chest just as the coffee table exploded under the impact of a long burst of automatic weapons fire. The little .38 Special in Shaw’s left hand stabbed outward, toward the man who’d fired the burst, and Shaw’s trigger finger was already snapping back, a bullet hole appearing in the submachine-gunner’s forehead.

  Bullets tore into the wall. Shaw had run for the apartment’s exterior wall. His neighbors in the adjoining apartment were quietly evacuated, but the kid had tropical fish in a tank and there was no sense ruining the kid’s day. And, one direction was just about as good as the next.

  Bullets tore out a chunk at the corner of two intersecting walls as Tim Shaw ducked into the guest bathroom. He stabbed the .45 around the corner just beneath the damaged corner anyway and fired two rounds.