Survivalist - 14 - The Terror

by Ahern, Jerry

  “Gonna get me cryin’ too in a minute,” Paul Rubenstein grinned, stabbing both hands into his pockets. Since Madison’s death, he had not see Paul unarmed—the battered Browning High Power was in the tanker style chest holster—just in case the Russians successfully infiltrated again, Michael knew.

  Michael stepped toward Paul, and the two men embraced like the brothers they were, Michael suddenly understood.

  “God bless you,” Paul whispered.

  Michael nodded, both men stepping back, Michael seeing the awkwardness in Paul’s eyes that he too had felt at the display of emotion. It was the curse of friendship between men, that somehow there was always appearance to preserve—he suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged his father.

  Michael and Paul simultaneously extended their right hands, clasping them. “Be seein’ ya,” Paul almost whispered.

  “Be seein’ ya,” Michael echoed softly, releasing Paul’s hand. He didn’t look back as he clambered aboard the German helicopter, but as it went airborne, he did, seeing the three of them, his family, letting the tears come into his eyes because he could no longer hold them back …

  Snow and ice needles swirled tornado-like, it seemed to him as he jumped from the machine, skidding a little on his combat boot heels. Getting his balance, he hunched his shoulders under his leather jacket, his neck against the upturned collar, his bare hands thrust into the slash pockets of the jacket. He had had the coat made for him here at Hekla. And Hekla loomed intermittently in the distance as for an instant the swirling snows would part, curtain-like.

  Michael Rourke stopped walking, standing, then dropped to his knees in the snow—the marker was nearly covered in white. Soon, the accumulating, never melting snow and ice would obscure it completely. He stared at the snow beside the marker and he whispered her name. “Madison.”

  Chapter Four

  John Rourke, Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna and Captain Hartman flanking him, crouched low in the shelter of the high, snow-splotched rocks, the rock, like the air around them, cold. Pines towered behind their position, the pine boughs sagging, heavy laden with snow, the snow brilliantly white against the dark, gleaming green of the trees.

  The sky was gray, overcast heavily and darkly threatening. Rourke, Natalia and Hartman sought shelter in the rocks almost as much from the stiff, chill wind which blew down through the mountain valley from the north as from the eyes of the Soviet soldiers who had marched into the valley, entering from the same direction.

  The others of the German force were nearly a mile away, along the course of what had been a river bed which now rocky, gravel strewn, cut a jagged scar along the valley floor to the south.

  Spotting the Soviet patrol had at once been comforting and unnerving—comforting in that it confirmed to John Rourke that the Soviet Underground City was indeed most likely north of them, the direction in which Rourke and the others had been searching for the last several weeks. But it was unnerving now—there were more than three dozen of the

  Soviet soldiers and at approximate platoon strength it seemed more than a patrol.

  The likelihood of detection of the presence of himself and the others in the area was remote. They had moved cautiously, covered their tracks as best they could. But the likelihood still existed.

  It was the size of the patrol that was critical because he did not know the usual Soviet patrol strength.

  “What do we do, John?” Natalia asked, her voice low, but not a whisper, her blue eyes barely visible above the scarf which swathed her face against the cold.

  Rourke rubbed his hands together for warmth, then stuffed them into his gloves. He looked at Hartman, then back at Natalia. He was pleased that Hartman and the soldiers of New Germany were standing up so well to the cold—their home in Argentina never approached the rigors of this climate in the heart of Russia’s Ural Mountains.

  John Rourke had made a decision—not one that he liked, but a decision nonetheless that seemed best under the circumstances. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he began, glancing behind him and up, over the rocks, toward the sluggishly moving Soviet column. The Russians looked cold—so was he. Rourke looked to the German officer with whom he and Natalia had shared the last several weeks searching. “Captain—if you agree, I’d recommend that you get back to the main body of your men and take them due west about ten miles or so and get them up into the mountains. Find a good defensible location you won’t mind living with for a while, but one that will allow radio recep-tion—

  “We will have to get well back under an overhang or find a cave—their aerial surveillance techniques should be sophisticated enough to detect our watch

  fire.”

  “Agreed,” Natalia murmured, her voice trembling with cold, sounding muffled from beneath the scarf covering her mouth. Rourke jerked his thumb behind him toward the valley below the rocks and the Russian soldiers. “Natalia and I—we’ll follow our friends. Eventually, they’re going to turn around and go home or send out a courier or get resupplied in the field— something or another that’ll lead us to the Underground City. Once we’ve tracked them back there or otherwise pinpointed the location, we’ll contact you by radio. Keep listening for us until we’re able to monitor enough of their communications to pick up their busiest times and their unused frequencies— then we’ll make a brief contact at precisely six A.M. common time,” and Rourke checked the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist, Hartman doing the same with his watch—Hartman set his watch ahead two minutes, then rolled down his storm sleeve.

  “Could not we get a triangulation on them—and locate the Underground City in that manner, Hen-Doctor?”

  Rourke shook his head, Natalia’s muffled alto coming again. “They probably have their transmission tower or towers located a good distance from the Underground City, and then complete the communications link by cable, perhaps by laser—who knows?”

  Hartman nodded thoughtfully. “When we notify you, I’ll give you a number,” Rourke continued. “Let’s say I give you a number like fourteen—add a certain number to it and you’ll get the time to listen for our detailed transmission. And I’m going to rely on your listening because if you transmit an acknowledgment it’ll make the transmission too long maybe— maybe long enough for them to pick it up.”

  “Probably their aerial reconnaissance will pick up

  our communications anyway,” Natalia added soberly.

  Rourke only nodded. “Take the number fourteen and add it to whatever number I give you. If I say fourteen, then you’d listen for us in the morning at four hundred hours with the beginning of the day clock as a base. If I say thirteen thirty, then you’d listen at zero three thirty hours—like that.”

  “A good plan, Herr Doctor, but I fear a dangerous one,” Hartman nodded, his shoulders hunched against the cold.

  “Best I can think of,” Rourke smiled.

  “I have an extra seven days of rations—let me share them with you,” Hartman began. “You may need them.”

  “Agreed,” Rourke told him.

  “Keep one day’s rations for yourself,” Natalia-said to him. “Give us three and three—you might get pinned down and have to wait. In this cold, going too long without food—” She let the sentence trail off unfinished, looking down into the valley. “They are crossing, John.”

  Hartman was sloughing out of his pack, Rourke helping him. Rourke divided the rations equally into two piles, Natalia taking a pile and Rourke turning his back to her, feeling her hands as she opened one of the pouches of the Loco Pack and began securing the food inside. He helped Hartman back into the pack, the German officer securing the waist strap. “We need a deadline in the event something goes awry, Herr Doctor.”

  “Good point,” Rourke nodded thoughtfully. “Fine—let’s use the rations we have as the determiner. Natalia and I each have ten days worth. If you don’t hear from us within that time, pull the plug on the operation.”

  “Pull the plug?” Hartman repeated, his pale eye


  brows cocking quizzically.

  “Abort,” Natalia said softly.

  “Then use your own judgment on whether or not to come after us or go for extraction depending on your situation.”

  Hartman nodded slowly. “Yes, Herr Doctor, Fraulein Major—good luck—to you both,” and Hartman tugged off his outer glove and the liner, Rourke doing the same, clasping the German’s hand. He offered his hand to Natalia—still gloved, she took it.

  “Wait until we’re clear, then move out,” Rourke told Hartman, both men re-gloving.

  Rourke picked up the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG— when he had returned to the Retreat before setting out for Communist Europe, he had determined that the long range 7.62mm NATO chambered counter-sniper rifle might prove an asset. He checked the lens caps on the 3x9 variable scope. They were secure.

  “Ready, John,” Natalia murmured, her M-16 in both tiny fists.

  Rourke reslung his M-16 cross body under his left arm, carrying the Steyr in his right fist.

  He looked once more at Hartman, the German giving a thumbs up signal.

  Natalia was already moving, Rourke following her, keeping low behind the rocks, the crunch of new, hard snow beneath his boots, the Russians already disappearing over the horizon.

  His breath steamed, the wind lashing at his face and he pulled the ski toque back into position to protect his skin.

  Hartman was right, of course—following the Russians was more than dangerous.

  John Rourke clamped the still unlit, thin, dark tobacco cigar in his teeth and kept moving.

  Chapter Five

  They had landed on the west coast of Great Britain and changed to a radical fixed-wing aircraft. Then again they landed, this time for refueling, in what had been, before the Night of The War, Portugal, near Lisbon, which like all other cities on the surface had ceased to exist during the Great Conflagration. They had crossed the southern tip of Spain into what had been Algeria, then refueled once again to avoid touchdown necessity in the overflight across the Libyan desert and on to Egypt, across the western desert.

  As Michael Rourke stared downward through a fuselage window, he heard the now familiar German accented, perfect English of Maria Leuden. “Generations passed here without rainfall—odd to consider, I suppose, but here, beneath us, the land was immune to the Great Conflagration. It was already parched far beyond the effects of mere flames.”

  “The dead are the only ones immune to death,” Michael murmured.

  “Is that a quotation? From what?” she asked.

  “It could be, and if it is I don’t know from what,” Michael answered her, for the first time turning to look at her. Her hair was gathered back at the nape of her neck in a scarf that looked to be silk—but he had learned that things often weren’t what they appeared.

  The scarf was tied into a softly drooping bow.

  “I must ask you this,” she smiled, her gray-green eyes bright, the glasses she wore catching reflected sunlight off the desert floor beneath the ship. “You seem marvelously well educated, but if I understand correctly, you weren’t even ten years old on the Night of The War. You have read a great deal, I assume, but still—” She cut herself off, saying nothing, as though waiting, the sentence not needing to be finished, what she had said already enough to convey proper meaning-

  “My sister Annie and I,” he began, looking from her for an instant, to the drifts of dune beneath them, the gray yellow of the sand, then turning back to look at her, “Annie’s the intellect of the family, I’m afraid. She began reading the encyclopedia as soon as she could read well enough to find the words she didn’t understand in the dictionary. I’ve read it too, but really only skimmed. We didn’t have that much else to do, really. Practice the skills needed for staying alive, maintain the Retreat.”

  “This Retreat—Herr Doctor Munchen spoke of it as well. Has he seen it?”

  “He accompanied my father to the Retreat when Dad made the trip back there before leaving for the Urals with Captain Hartman.”

  “What is this place like?”

  Michael shrugged, smiled, looked away from her again, his gaze drifting like the sand beneath their racing shadow.

  He began to tell her of his world for nearly two decades, his tomb for five centuries and found himself telling her of the days and nights before he had first seen it, of the desperate flight of his mother, his sister and himself, their search for his father, the eventual reunion, of the horrors he had seen on that last

  morning. “Natalia was preparing the injections of the cryogenic fluid. I was helping Paul, Annie was helping Momma—” He shook his head, his throat tight with the memory. “My dad was listening to ham radio broadcasts—” “Ham?”

  “An amateur short wave radio operator.”

  “Ohh,” she nodded, Michael watching her eyes.

  “Cities were going off—it was—ahh—shit—ahh— anyway. He had closed circuit television that was run off cable and you could watch the sky, the lightning. I guess later, Dad watched as the Soviet troops attacked the mountain, watched them as they died.”

  “A story I heard about your father—Herr Doctor Munchen recounted having heard it when in conversation with your mother and sister and your sister’s husband—”

  “Paul Rubenstein—and I bet I know the story,” Michael smiled. “Annie—I don’t know if most women have the ability, but she does—she kept at it until Dad finally told us what happened at the end.” He exhaled a long breath. “There had been this American Army officer—Reed. Dad and Natalia—”

  “That is Major Tiemerovna? The Russian woman?”

  “Yeah,” Michael nodded. “Her uncle was the Soviet commander for North America but despite that a good man. When he realized what the KGB had planned, what the fate of the rest of the earth would be, he arranged things so my Dad and Natalia and a group of Soviet Special Forces personnel whose loyalty he trusted could link up with a group of volunteers from U.S. II—”

  “That is the interim government that was formed under the man named Samuel Chambers between the Night of The War and the Great Conflagration—

  correct?”

  “Yes—yes, that’s correct. All of them—the American volunteers, the Russians, Natalia, my dad—they attacked the KGB cryogenic project called the Womb. The Russians had their particle beam weapons systems installed there. During the raid, well—the raid was successful, the cryogenic materials stolen, the Soviet base destroyed, the particle beam system disabled, but this American officer named Reed—my dad saw Reed climbing one of the particle beam masts, trying to raise an American flag. Reed died before he could do it. I guess my dad figured it was something that needed doing. He used one of the escape tunnels and a hatchway and got up on top of the mountain where the Retreat is. The KGB commander—a guy pretty much like Karamatsov in a lot of ways, I guess—his name was Rozhdestvenskiy. He was in the last Soviet helicopter. My dad had just raised the American flag. They had a duel, right there on the mountain-top, my dad with those little Detonics .45s of his and Rozhdestvenskiy with a submachinegun or something coming at him in the helicopter. My dad was almost out of ammo, and Rozhdestvenskiy’s chopper had fired out its missiles and was closing. Dad got him with his last round and killed Rozhdestvenskiy and the chopper blew up just as the flames closed over the top of the mountain. Dad just made it inside. He treated his wound, took care of the last details of securing the Retreat, then climbed into his cryogenic chamber. But before he gave himself the shot of the cryogenic serum we used, he reset his chamber’s timer to awaken him earlier than the rest of us. Anyway,” Michael exhaled— “Yeah—he’s a brave man, my father.”

  “Someday, historians will write of him.”

  “Probably. He’s always been larger than life.”

  “Resentment?”

  Michael Rourke looked away from the sand and back toward Maria Leuden. “No—I don’t think so. Just stating the obvious.”

  “He must be a difficult figure to live up to.”

&
nbsp; She was pushing, Michael thought.

  “No—Dad taught Annie and I something—well, a lot of things. Everything, really. Almost. But he taught us to live up to ourselves. Be ourselves. Annie. Me. And that’s a pretty good way.”

  “I like you,” she told him.

  “Thank you.”

  “I think I like you a lot,” and she took off her glasses, closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the rest.

  Michael watched her a moment longer, then returned his eyes to the desert …

  Lieutenant Milton Schmidt sat in the passenger seat of the SM-4, his eyes shaded by the peak of his cap, but the glare of the bleached desert still bright, heat shimmering from it upward on waves of distorted light. His driver stood with the other drivers, talking, smoking, laughter drifting toward him occasionally.

  Schmidt contemplated what it would be like to meet a Rourke. He had been at the Complex when this American doctor had aided in securing liberation from the Leader. He had caught a glimpse of the man who was this Rourke’s father. The Herr Doctor had been tall and straight and fit and in the brief glimpse Schmidt had gotten of him, there had been a look to the man’s eyes. Despite the name, Schmidt was secretly sure that Herr Doctor John Rourke must somehow be German. And he wondered now at the son of this man. The bizarre similarity in the ages of

  the Rourke family—both generations—had been explained to him before leaving the Complex, explained to him personally by the Herr Colonel Mann. Somehow, the American doctor and his family had survived the Great Conflagration in cryogenic sleep and Hen-Doctor Rourke had used the cryogenic sleep to age his children to adulthood, to share in both the dangers and the adventure of the new world into which they awakened.

  Schmidt wondered too about Captain Hammerschmidt. He knew the man to see, to salute, but had never worked with the commando leader before. But he knew the man’s record—one of Colonel Mann’s most valued officers, one of the officers involved in the attack on the SS headquarters at the Complex. Hammerschmidt, to Milton Schmidt, epitomized the German officer corps. “