by Ahern, Jerry
Michael Rourke took the knife in his right fist and, awkwardly working the machine’s controls with his left, hammered the butt of the Crain knife against the auto navigation console, smashing into it. Michael Rourke wheeled the nine-inch blade knife in his fingers and stabbed into the wiring, the knife flying from his grip, the helicopter’s control consoles starting to smoke.
The missile shot past him as he wrenched the helicopter out of the dive and slipped to port.
The missile exploded now, the machine rocking, trembling around him.
But the controls still worked, although all electronics were dead. The important thing Michael Rourke thought, smiling was that he was not…
The temperature inside the hermetically sealed tent was, he knew on a rational level, comfortable; yet, in contrast to the outside temperature, it seemed stiflingly warm. He clamped his cigar between his teeth, just keeping it there rather than lighting it.
He was entering a moment, as it were, for which he had been waiting five hundred years. The Night of The War had come, despite the fact that those persons who considered themselves wise and informed had proclaimed that peace was at hand and that World War Three would never occur. And, after The Night of The War,
there had been no time to do anything but react. First, the search for his wife and children, with his unexpected but welcome ally, Paul Rubenstein, who was now not only his best friend but his son-in-law. Shortly after begirining his search for his family, he had met Natalia, and his world changed again. He remembered her from the espionage game they had both played out in Latin America, but on opposite sides. And, Natalia too had become bis friend and ally and something more. He was in love with her, and she with him. But that fact had no bearing on his search for his family.
He found them, barely made it into the Retreat with them alive before the ionization of the atmosphere took full effect and the sky literally caught fire. Deliberately while his wife, Sarah, his friend Paul and Natalia too, rested through the centuries in cryogenic sleep, John Rourke awakened, awakened his children, taught them, then returned to the Sleep. He at once performed a disservice to his wife, for which he could never make amends, and do the right thing. She lost her childhood, but now Michael, their son, and Annie, their daughter who was now Paul’s wife, were adults, fully capable of shouldering their share of the burden of survival and of helping to propagate the species.
But, the Eden Project, mankind’s supposed last hope, returned, and over the course of the days and weeks and months following the Awakening from cryogenic sleep in the safety of The Retreat, John Rourke’s ‘family’ was no longer alone on the earth, the Eden returnees, others as well who had, by various means, survived the holocaust. Including two colonies of the enemy, survival communities of KGB-led hardline Soviet Communists still intent on world domination, even at the risk of global destruction.
John Thomas Rourke looked around the table as his son, Michael, approached the table, then sat down. Although everyone told John Rourke that he and his son looked sufficiently alike to be twins, Rourke only considered that well-meant flattery. Yet, because of the tricks with human aging he had played through use of the cryogenic chambers, although their birthdays were decades apart, there Avas now less than a decade’s gap between their actual ages. He looked directly at Michael Rourke. “How’s your knife?”
“Didn’t get hurt, Dad.”
Wolfgang Mann, already seated, said, “Doctor, the meeting is yours.”
John Rourke nodded to his son, exhaled, then sat down, saying, “Gentlemen, this will be our last briefing before those few of us who are going inside move out. I don’t know the overall attack plan of Colonel Mann, nor do I desire to know it. Should any of us who will be entering the Underground City be taken alive, such knowledge could endanger too many others. So, this will be a little one-sided.
Timed to coincide with the Mid-Wake attack on the Soviet Underwater Complex,” John Rourke went on, “it has been the intent since events began shaping up for what is about to occur that, in order to minimize casualties, commando raids would be launched simultaneously on the Underground City and the Soviet Underwater Complex just before the main attacks take place. My team and I will be leaving - ” John Rourke rolled back the cuff of the black knit shirt that he wore to read the face of the Rolex on his left wrist- “in approximately fifteen minutes. It is our intention to penetrate the Underground City, utilizing the energy weapons created especially for that purpose as based on the Soviet technology. Once inside, we will fight our way toward the central control complex, where, according to our most recent intelligence data, we should be able to locate and neutralize both the main entrance controls and the primary radar system which coordinates surface to air missile responses.”
He hoped …
Jason Darkwood broke surface under the dome of the lagoon, cocooning his wings around him. High clouds hung beneath the dome, clouds of water vapor and God only knew what else, clouds that were always there, giving the air above the appearance of being a sky. But on the other side of the dome was the sea, the entire Soviet Complex on a ridge beside an undersea volcanic vent providing its geothermal power source.
Far away beneath the sea, sharing the same volcanic vent for the same purpose, lay Mid-Wake, the American undersea colony established five centuries before, only a moment in history before The Night of The War.
Jason Darkwood, Captain, United States Navy, Commanding United States Attack Submarine Ronald Reagan, had gambled, and with the twenty-three U.S. Marines of his commando team, he’d
won. The computer banks of the most recently captured Soviet Island Class submarines contained the latest safe route into the lagoon which was the harbor and central decking area for the Soviet Underwater Complex. The gamble was that the Soviets who controlled the complex would not have had the time to change the route beneath the dome and into the lagoon in time.
There was always the possibility that the Soviets had, of course, left the route unchanged as part of a trap, but the purpose such a trap might achieve was unfathomable to him, and the risks were great. He could have brought two hundred men in with him, or more than that.
A slip up had been on the part of the Soviet Marine Spetznas who coordinated security for the Complex. That he’d made it into the lagoon and stuck his helmet up above the surface without getting his head inside of that helmet blown off was concrete evidence of that.
Now, Darkwood was tired of holding his breath-the hemo-sponge through which he breathed under the water was useless in atmosphere-and he was as certain as circumstances allowed that he and his men were undetected. So, he ducked under again, allowing his wings to unfold, then twisting his body into a downward roll, toward the shoaled area just beneath the main dock.
His twenty-three commandoes waited for him, in a classic wedge-shaped defensive posture, their liberated Soviet shark guns poised and ready.
With hand and arm signals, Darkwood communicated that all above seemed well and his intention, as planned, to assault the dock-now.
The Marine lieutenant-Stanhope from the Reagan-and two Marine sergeants broke off toward the other dock ladders, taking five men apiece, five men falling in behind Darkwood himself.
The old, rusty AKM-96 that had been there the one previous time he had entered the Soviet Underwater Complex was still there, if anything rustier. Darkwood wondered if the Marine Spetznas trooper who had lost it had finished paying for it yet. And, he smiled. With the wages the Marine Spetznas were paid in the lower enlisted ranks, he seriously doubted it.
One way or the other, today, he hoped to bring that man debt relief…
Soviet uniforms would have availed them no element of surprise, and certainly no entry to the Soviet Underground City in the Ural Mountains, because the Soviets would be using daily issue passes and regularly changed code phrases. Of that, John Thomas Rourke was sure. With the Allied Army camped virtually on their doorstep, they would have been fools to do otherwise.
But, on the pl
us side, Soviet uniforms would get them to the main entrance unmolested.
The system they used was exacdy the same which had worked successfully for them at Gur’Yev. Paul drove the ATV staff car, Michael sat beside him, Natalia sat on the driver’s side in the rear passenger seat, John Rourke beside her, all of them in appropriate Soviet uniform attire. The exception this time was they were more heavily armed, and secreted under the rear seat and behind it were explosives and the four German-made energy weapons.
Paul turned the staff car onto the icy road heading toward the outer boundary gate for the Underground City, Soviet vehicles all around them, Soviet air power-fighters and gunships-in the sky above them.
As they settled onto the road, the outer boundary gates just barely in sight and several minutes away on the ice-slicked roadway, Paul held up a tape recorder, the small, hand held kind businessmen five centuries ago had sometimes used for dictation.
As he pushed the play button, then looked back at John Rourke and smiled, the music started. The sound quality left much to be desired, but the message the music made was clear.
They were driving through the New Mexico desert five centuries ago in a red ‘57 Chevy, unwittingly on their way to their first real fight side-by-side at a wrecked jetliner against Brigand bikers. It was the same music playing now through the little tape machine as had played through the Chevy’s tape deck then.
The Beach Boys.
John Rourke smiled at his best friend. “Trigger control.” It was the only thing John Rourke could tell this man who was more a brother to him than if they had come from the same womb.
And Paul Rubenstein just nodded that he understood …
Jason Darkwood dropped to his knees behind crates of explosives stacked there on the dock. By now, he was nearly gasping for breath, his helmet still on. As he freed himself of the helmet, he sank forward on the palms of his gloved hands.
There was a sentry on the dock who hadn’t been there when he’d broken surface for a quick look only moments before, and it was imperative now to remove that sentry before the rest of his team could break surface. If anyone from the other three teams broke surface and were spotted - Darkwood remembered the old expression from archival videotapes of pre-War movies: There goes the ballgame.”
He shrugged out of his wings as quickly as he could, out of his flippers as well, no time to shed the rest of his swiniming gear.
He reached to his side for the Randall Smithsonian Bowie. It wasn’t really that, of course, but an identical duplicate of the Randall which his ancestor had brought to Mid-Wake five centuries before. But something existed now which had not existed then. It was a type of field blue that was also an anti-corrosive sealant. It coated the high carbon steel blade of bis knife, killing the shine and protecting it against seawater.
Darkwood fisted the knife as he peered around the corner of the little fort of packing crates within which he hid.
The sentry would not be coming back toward his position for at least two minutes, and in those two minutes the teams would already have begun coming onto the dock and the ballgame would be gone.
Darkwood looked quickly up and down the dock, seeing no other signs of guard personnel except those on the Island Classers themselves which were at dockside. But their decks were so high above the docks that, if luck were with him, he might not be seen at all.
Darkwood gambled again, moving out from the walled structure of ammo crates and along the dockside itself, moving as quickly and as silently as he could, the Randall tight in his right fist in a rapier hold, ready to chop or thrust. He gambled for the same reason he usually gambled-there was no choice.
Steel and flesh. The first time he was taught the techniques, the idea of using a knife on a man was an abstraction. Unlike most of his fellow Mid-Wake submarine commanders, however, he had never been able to sit idly and relatively safely by, aboard bis vessel, while the Marines assigned to him went into man-to-man battle. There
fore, the abstraction had become reality for him quite some time ago. And the reality revolted him, more so because he was good at it.
Darkwood kept moving, the reality approaching again as he approached the man he was about to kill. His eyes shifted from the imaginary spot he had picked just beyond his target (one never, he was taught, watched the intended victim), to the knife.
If they succeeded here today and in the hours to come, and if similar success were in the cards for Doctor Rourke and the land forces, then the war would be over. If they failed, he would almost certainly die.
There would be much killing. But, why this killing …
Jason Darkwood rolled the handle of the Randall in his fist, bringing the knife edge upward, just as effective for a thrust into the kidney or a cut to the spine. But even more effective for something else.
He remembered watching some of the old mysteries, where the heroes-men like Bogart or Cagney-would get struck on the head and awaken experiencing no ill effects. That was absurd, at least usually. So, what he planned for the Soviet sentry was not all that humane-days or weeks in a hospital, perhaps side effects, perhaps not-but it would cheat death.
Jason Darkwood was about three yards from the man when he quickened his pace. The man turned around.
Jason Darkwood struck with the heavy spine of the Randall’s blade, going for the base of the neck behind the right ear, missing because the man turned, striking the right shoulder instead, a curse from the Marine Spetznas sentry’s lips then …
No choice, no cheating of death.
Jason Darkwood’s left hand grabbed the man’s face as his right hand raked the knife’s primary edge across the throat of the Spetznas just as the man was about to cry out.
There was no cry.
Death got what it wanted.
“Shit.”
Jason Darkwood rolled the dead man over to the dock’s edge, jerking his body over and into the water, controlling the fall as best he could to minimize the noise. Gloved hands reached up out of the water, taking the body, to weight it down, weight it down with junk
from beneath the dock.
And Jason Darkwood had the strangest thought as he clung there just below the dock level, in the shadow of one of the Soviet Island Class submarines-perhaps this was the Marine Spetznas who had lost the rusting away AKM-96 in the water just below.
Perhaps the man and his weapon, both of them spent, would be united again …
Paul Rubenstein cut off the tape player, hit the eject button, pushing the player under the skirt of his open greatcoat, dropping the tape into an interior breast pocket of his Soviet Elite Corps uniform jacket as he began to slow the ATV staff car.
For another day, if there was one, perhaps another adventure.
Here he was, Paul Rubenstein thought, the junior editor from a New York magazine turned freedom fighter all because he got on one airplane instead of another and survived the Night of The War while everyone else in New York City, including the girl he’d been dating, thinking seriously about, just died in one blinding microsecond.
He was married, to the daughter of his best friend who, chronologically, was just his junior, despite the fact they’d been born a quarter century apart.
And she was magnificent, his wife, John’s daughter, Annie.
And now he might lose all that he had in her, all his future, their future together.
He had never considered turning away from his course when once he’d started it.
That would have been cowardly and stupid. He’d never considered himself that terribly brave at all, but he’d never considered himself stupid, either.
As he braked and the ATV skidded just slightly near the guard post on the Underground City’s outer gate, his right hand moved under the skirt of his greatcoat again, but not for the tape recorder. He was more heavily armed than he had ever been since he first took up a gun to fight beside John Rourke that day five centuries ago, when they’d returned to trie crashed jetliner, only to find that some segments of humanity
were not sufficiently glutted on death, wanted more.
The German MP-40 submachine gun, which he still called a Schmiesser just because it had become a running joke between John and himself, was slung under the coat. The battered old Browning High Power he’d taken from a pile of Brigand weapons after the battle at the jetliner was still with him, as was its newer, less blue worn twin, which he’d acquired later.
Aside from the Gerber MkH fighting knife which he habitually carried, now inside a slit of his greatcoat, he carried two other handguns, these courtesy of John’s stockpile at The Retreat, where he and the rest of the family had weathered five centuries in cryogenic sleep together.
What would become of the ‘family’ now, should this war end today?
Natalia?
Natalia loved John, but she would never intentionally come between John and his wife, Sarah.
Paul Rubenstein closed his fist over one of the two handguns from the Retreat. One was a Beretta 92F, originally from the Eden stores, the cache of weapons, material and survival necessities located with strategic reserves in various locations throughout what was once the United States. That was stuffed in his belt beneath his uniform beside the newer of his two Brownings, just a spare for the job at hand. But the other gun, the one he held in his right fist now, was one that he had decided he would keep, use.
Even if the war ended today, Paul Rubenstein realized he’d become too much of the veteran campaigner to expect that weapons could be melted down into plowshares.
The gun was a Smith & Wesson Model 681, the short-lived fixed sight production version of the four-inch stainless steel L-Frame .357 Magnum. It was another of the seeming myriad guns which John’s old pal, Ron Mahovsky had made up before The Night of The War.
Metalifed-an electrostatic chrome binding process-over the stainless steel, round butted to accept Goncalo Alves combat stocks, action tuned to buttery smoothness, it was perfect for the job at hand.
The Elite Corps guards approached the staff ATV. There were two of them.
Paul Rubenstein rolled down the staff ATV’s passenger window
