by Ahern, Jerry
Hammerschmidt edged toward Michael. “So far, so good, I believe the expression is.”
“Yes—so far so good.”
“Perhaps then you shall have your revenge today. Or Karamatsov’s secret.”
“Or both,” Michael grinned. “But you’re probably right—one or the other, and the secret is probably the more important.”
“You are a good man to work beside, Herr Rourke.”
“Michael.”
“Otto,” Hammerschmidt nodded. “Otto,” Michael repeated.
Hammerschmidt and Michael Rourke turned as one—the sound of falling bits of rock had stopped.
Michael shielded his eyes from the sun which was bright above them beyond the shadows of the columns—the enlisted man was in place, Hammerschmidt holding the listening piece of his radio to his ear. “The digging is nearly complete, my corporal thinks—he is an intelligent man and has keen powers of observation. He is likely correct.”
“Any idea—”
“Wait—he tells me that there is a large cylinder, of the type used for the underground storage of gasoline. It seems to be of stainless steel or titanium—it is completely untarnished and appears unscratched from the abrasiveness of the sand—it is almost mirror bright. They are moving in a helicopter with a crane—there to the west.”
Michael took his own binoculars and raised them, pushing the button for automatic focusing—a shape like a huge skeletal insect was coming off the horizon.
The second enlisted man broke Michael’s concentration. “Herr Captain—”
Michael looked to the man as did Hammerschmidt. The young private held a radio set headset to his ear, the radio itself strapped to his back. “Herr Captain— I have been monitoring the Soviet transmissions as you requested. Marshal Karamatsov himself is directing the recovery operation. He is cautioning the crew of the helicopter that utmost care must be taken. He is ordering all his personnel to fall back except those in the final recovery detail. I heard a reference, Herr Captain, to protective clothing.”
“Gas?” Hammerschmidt mused aloud, it seemed.
“Maybe—maybe worse,” Michael nodded, seeing Karamatsov and his people fall back at a rapid jog toward their vehicles, men in protective clothing—the purpose not certain—rushing toward the cannister.
“We have no protective clothing. I advise we with
draw to a safer distance. We should perhaps rethink attempting to steal Marshal Karamatsov’s prize—you would agree?”
“If we don’t know what we’re handling—wait—” And Michael shifted the binoculars quickly, focusing on a dark shape beneath the helicopter, farther away on the horizon. It was a truck, a cloud of dust behind it, almost surrounding it, but a truck of immense proportions. “Take a look at that,” Michael whispered.
“Himmel—that is huge. For the cannister?”
“Get your man up top to take a look.” And Michael heard Hammerschmidt speaking in German into the transceiver. ” Well ?”
“He estimates the size as one hundred meters in length—it appears to have eight axles and triple tires on each side of each axle.”
“A truck specially built to haul that thing he dug up—whatever it is.”
“Wait—there is more, Michael.” Michael Rourke watched Hammerschmidt’s blue eyes as they focused into pinpoints of light. “He cannot be certain, but the suspension seems to be massive.”
“Do they have an aircraft that could haul that tank—and the truck?”
“It would seem possible. Lieutenant Schmidt told me that their airfield is substantially larger than he would have thought necessary.”
“What is it and where are they taking it—shit!” Michael snarled.
“There is a way to find out, I think. My man up above—he says there are men hanging to the sides of the truck, on catwalks—two men on each side. They wear protective clothing—it includes some type of headgear that covers the face.”
Michael Rourke licked his lips.
‘“We might wind up following it back to Russia.” “The Underground City—then all the better, hum, Michael?”
Michael Rourke focused on the truck—he could see the men now too. The two on the truck’s right side looked the right size for himself and Hammerschmidt.
“Why not,” Michael almost whispered. In the final analysis with Madison and the baby gone, he had little to lose.
Chapter Twelve
Jea knew the ground here like an animal would know a trail through the woods, Rourke observed, the boy moving effortlessly along the rocky escarpment, climbing goat-like—but Jea would not know what a goat was, or an animal. The only animals he would know of were people. There was more animalistic behavior in some of the people the boy knew anyway than in anything wild, Rourke thought.
Rourke had discussed with Natalia the likelihood that the names Jea had provided—Jea’s own, the bullying barrel-chested Char—that they were corruptions of actual names passed down through the years since Jea and the people like him were forced to survive upon the surface. That it was a survival experiment which had gone wrong was obvious, and John Rourke looked forward to examining Jea and others of his people. It was evident that they had returned to the surface when background radiation was still hot enough to affect them. The leathery-looking skin, the odd color of Jea’s eyes—human but not usual. Char, too, had those same eyes.
As they moved, Rourke’s own eyes assessed the young man—a slightly abnormal flare to the ears, again something shared with the bear-like Char. The cheekbones were large beyond normal and the nostrils widely flared.
Yet all the human qualities seemed to be there—
kinship, aggression, fear, the desire to know perhaps most importantly there.
Jea raised both hands, as though surrendering to some unseen enemy, but Rourke judged it a gesture signalling a halt.
Natalia approached closer to the young man and began to converse with him. Rourke passed them both, dropping into a crouch, cautiously going along the tongue of rock which extended ahead of them, his eyes scanning side to side for evidence that indeed they had reached the mysterious Soviet staging area.
He stopped short, drawing back.
He heard Natalia’s barely whispered words behind him. “Jea tells me we have arrived.”
“He’s a master of understatement—look—and keep Jea back.”
A few murmurs from Natalia, then Rourke dropped to a prone position, starting ahead through the snow along the tongue of rock, Natalia doing the same beside him.
It was a perfect vantage point. Soviet tanks of the type seen in the battle in Argentina, ranked six abreast and stretching nearly as far as the eye could see. Helicopter gunships. APCs like the one they had followed—and troops everywhere encamped in tents like those he and Natalia had seen earlier when the Soviet patrol they had followed had encamped for the night. Quonset huts made up the more permanent dwellings of the encampment.
It was an army more massive than Rourke had seen since that time so long ago that he had viewed Soviet tanks crossing the Khyber Pass, the thing that had begun it all, changed his life, the lives of the people he loved, the lives of all humanity irreparably.
John Rourke doubted the Germans could field such a force while still retaining even nominal security at
their Complex in Argentina.
The lines of supply would be difficult, almost impossible, unless some lightning strike could take the Russians out.
“John—over there—I saw something!”
John Rourke glanced to Natalia, then across the gulf which separated the tongue of rock from the rock wall opposite them. He judged the distance as a thousand yards or better. But he saw movement under the gray sun. “Down—tell Jea!”
Natalia said something that wasn’t quite French, the snow and rock beside them spraying up. A sniper!
Rourke pushed Natalia flat into the snow, shrugging the SSG off his shoulder, shifting it forward, popping away the scope covers, checking the scope setting—th
ree power—as he cheeked to the green synthetic stock. There was no sound—but he felt the snow spray cold against his cheek. “A silencer?”
“Gotta be a closed breech weapon—a single shot— that’s why it’s taking him so long to reload. Get Jea down and out of here—back the way we came—I’ll be with you.” Rourke gradually started increasing magnification, trying to acquire the sniper. “Go on.”
“No—he’ll—”
“He’ll have a radio—but he won’t have had time to use it yet maybe. There’ll be Soviet troops up here fast one way or the other. But they won’t pinpoint us a hundred percent until I open up. Get outa here—” “But a thousand meters or better, John—” “Shouldn’t be too bad a shot with this—I got him-—run for it,” and Rourke blocked Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna from his consciousness now, moving the scope only slightly so at full magnification he wouldn’t lose the Soviet sniper. There wasn’t a clear shot yet. The man would have to profile himself just a
little bit more on the wall of rock to get into a perfect shooting position.
He saw movement, what could only be a right shoulder and a dark shape taped or painted with irregular white patterns being brought to the shoulder.
The head—John Rourke saw the head.
His right hand worked the bolt of the SSG effortlessly, settling the bolt closed, one of the .308 Boat-tails chambered. His right first finger snapped off the rearmost of the double triggers, setting the first for a pull that was barely a nudge.
The sniper’s head.
The gun was firing—John Rourke couldn’t move lest he would lose the shot.
His right first finger brushed against the forward trigger, the Steyr’s crack like a thunderbolt in the cold, rarefied air, the otherwise total stillness. The snow pelted against the exposed skin of his left cheek—he realized he had removed the toque without thinking.
The rifle butt punched against his shoulder.
The sniper’s body seemed frozen for an instant, Rourke settling the scope again, the man’s eyes lost in distance, but something about the set of the bone structure beneath the white toque which covered the man’s face—and then redness where the white had been a fraction of a second earlier, the body lurching forward, rolling, slipping, billowing clouds of snow giving way around it—and it was gone, sailing downward in the air.
Rourke rolled onto his back—he breathed.
To his feet, despite the snowshoes, running—already he could hear the sounds of engines starting in the valley below.
Chapter Thirteen
It wasn’t a job for a knife, Hammerschmidt had said and Michael Rourke had agreed.
The wire commando saw would make a perfect gar rote, but would cut through fabric and flesh and achieve the same negative result as a knife.
Michael Rourke had early on developed a fondness for history—and he showed Otto Hammerschmidt how to utilize the material of the keffiyehs they both wore as a scarf with a thugee knot.
The monstrously large truck had stopped, the cargo helicopter’s crane lifting the massive and gleaming cylinder from the trench in the sand. All eyes in the area of the excavation site seemed to be turned skyward. Michael broke from the cover of the nearer of the sand mounds built by the earth moving equipment, the mound nearer the partially destroyed temple where they had hidden.
He ran, a long strided, low, loping run, stripped of his gear save for the double shoulder rig and the spare magazines for the Berettas and his fighting knife, the improvised thugee scarf wound in both his tight-clenched fists, the two men on the truck’s catwalk nearest him seemingly enrapt with the precarious swinging of the massive cylinder at the end of the helicopter’s crane nearly directly overhead now.
It was eight feet to the catwalk from the desert floor.
Michael glanced left—Hammerschmidt was about a half stride behind him.
Michael jumped, his hands going out, hurtling his weight across the catwalk, nearly knocking the decontamination suited man into the cylindrically shaped basin in the truck bed—the truck was designed specifically for the cylinder, Michael realized. Michael looped the scarf about the man’s throat as the man started to turn. But Michael turned first, a full one hundred eighty degrees—his father had taught him the technique. The knot should have crushed the man’s Adam’s Apple—and as Michael flipped the man backward over his left shoulder and down from the catwalk to the sand, he heard a loud snapping sound, almost as loud as a light caliber pistol shot like a .22—the neck breaking at least, perhaps the back.
But the noise of the cargo chopper overhead would have masked the sound, Michael told himself. There was a blur of silver—the second man in decontamination gear. Michael jumped to the sand, onto the back of the first man, hammering his right fist against the neck that logic already told him was broken, but making sure. The body didn’t move.
Left.Right. Michael’s eyes scanned the area around them, but there was no alarm. Overhead, if the helicopter’s cable snapped, the truck would be crushed and so would he and Hammerschmidt. Already, Michael’s hands were finding the fasteners for the decontamination suit, opening it—the man’s eyes beneath the masked headgear were open wide in a mixture of death and astonishment.
Michael Rourke had the headgear free, the decontamination suit a coverall fitted with a backpack with double cylinders—Michael presumed some sort of
oxygen mixture. Whatever was in the cannister—he couldn’t conjecture beyond the fact that it was dangerous.
He had the suit nearly stripped away now, praying silently that it would fit, not only well enough to appear normal, but be large enough to conceal the few weapons he had brought.
He had the man out of the suit now—loose fitting, thin black coveralls were beneath it. He left these—no time anyway. He started into the decontamination suit. There was no need to remove his own boots—the dead man’s boots were similar and the decontamination suit’s trouser legs were closed at the bottom to cover footgear. The four pack of Beretta magazines, like the Sparks Six-Pack his father carried for his Detonics pistols. It would have bulged too much, Michael had realized. He had stripped the magazines from it, leaving the four pack with his pistol belt and the rest of the gear. Two twenty-round magazines he had added from his backpack. He pulled into the upper portion of the suit, the breathing unit one piece with the suit, apparently serving a cooling function as well, despite the suit’s reflective surface.
It covered the double shoulder rig—adequately, not perfectly. But good enough, he hoped. He left the headgear off for a moment longer. He had stuffed his knife, sheath and all into the waistband of his Levis and he drew it out now, using the bootlace-like tie down on the belt loop to secure it around his left calf beneath the suit. He square knotted it in place, then knotted over again just to be safe—he remembered his father’s words—“Plan ahead.” He sealed the suit legs along the inseams of the thighs, then sealed the front of the suit at the top, forcing the headgear down over his face.
He glanced to Hammerschmidt—the German cap
tain was nearly suited up.
Michael left his hands out of the suit’s attached gloves—with his bare hands now, he started plowing sand, digging as shallow a grave as necessary to cover the body from casual view.
Overhead, the cylinder was lowering into position— he would be expected on the catwalk. Soon all eyes would be on the truck—at any moment the missing men would be discovered. He rolled the body into the sand, automatically thumbing closed the eyelids. A human being was still a human being. He shoved and pushed sand over the body.
“Good enough,” Michael Rourke hissed, jumping to his feet, running to the catwalk, no time to climh the ladder-like steps at the side. He jumped—he nearly lost his balance, nearly falling into the space made to nest the cylinder.
But he didn’t fall.
Slipping his hands into his suit’s gloves, he saw Hammerschmidt, behind him.
The cylinder was lowering, the men on the opposite side of the catwal
k taking long handled, hooked objects like massive boat hooks—he had seen these in films—and reaching upward and outward to the cylinder.
Michael took up one of the hooks from the rack beside the catwalk and did the same—they were guiding the cylinder into its berth.
Behind him, he heard a voice he had heard once before—it spoke in Russian and he nodded slightly as if in response.
The voice was that of Vladmir Karamatsov, close enough to kill.
“Not yet,” Michael almost verbalized. He had his hook to the cylinder—so did Hammerschmidt.
Michael stole a glance behind him—Karamatsov, in
decontamination gear, was moving away.
The cylinder was nearly in place. There was more shouting in Russian, but a different voice now. Michael watched for Hammerschmidt to react from the corner of his left eye, his peripheral vision cut by the suit’s face mask. Hammerschmidt spoke Russian.
There was a resounding clunking sound and the cable slackened—the cylinder was down and a cheer went up in the distance from the black suited men and nearby from those few like him in decontamination gear.
Michael turned to Hammerschmidt as though elated—he whispered, “We’re in deep shit.” Hammerschmidt didn’t answer.
Chapter Fourteen
John Rourke lost his balance, regained it and jumped, keeping the Steyr, the scope covers back in place, high, protecting it against impact as he hit the snow, rolled, skidded and stopped. The M-16 across his back impacted his spine. “Shit,” he snarled.
Ahead, he could see the snowshoe tracks of Natalia, the bark shoe prints of Jea.
To his feet—he started running again, more of the mechanical noises behind him now—soon helicopters would be airborne. Soon.
He looked behind him—nothing.
He ran, the loping, awkward run that snowshoes imposed, like a bizarre shuffle.
