by Ahern, Jerry
There was a tunnel extending for perhaps five hundred yards, like a chimney on its side, thrusting from the base of a huge mountain.
He let the rifle fall to his side on its sling, taking up the Bushnell armored 8x30s, taking them from the black zippered case, removing the lens caps, setting the subjective lenses before his eyes, working the center focus knob.
Greenhouses. No sign of electrical power terminals—likely underground. An airfield more expansive
than any he had ever seen. But he reminded himself this was an airfield to serve a nation. Hangars dotted the edges of the airfield and he was unable to tell what numbers of planes there might be—he saw a few helicopters, a few long range bomber-type aircraft, smaller fighter planes. Hardly the force of a nation.
His suspicions were confirmed.
Natalia, beside him now, echoed them. “Vladmir— he is staging troops—”
“For a coup.”
He felt her body press close against him and he held her tightly …
They had worked their way down along the face of the wall of rock to find a better vantage point from which to observe the main and so far apparently solitary entrance to the Underground City. They lay on the rocks now, with the declining visibility almost too poor for accurate observation. But there was a need to know. By morning he would have to contact Captain Hartman, to alert the Germans to the situation and if he were to discover some means by which the situation could be capitalized upon, he had to know all he could learn.
There had been some comings and goings through the tunnel, Rourke still unable to see the actual entryway. Trucks, smaller vehicles reminiscent of jeeps, a vehicle that seemed to be some sort of snow cat. Rourke imagined a parking area for the larger vehicles, within the tunnel perhaps or just beyond. The tunnel’s width was the width of an eight lane highway, its height the height of a four story building. It seemed constructed of concrete—perhaps something more modern. The mountain would be immune to weapons strikes except direct hit nuclear and the tunnel seemed nearly as invulnerable.
He began to strip out of his backpack as night
eventually fell, telling Natalia, “I have to go down there.”
“I know that—I can go with you.”
“No. You know as much as I do. If for some reason I don’t come back, get on the radio to Hartman and give him all of it, work out a best guess scenario for him, give him something to act upon besides military infeasibility. And if I don’t come back—well—see if you can get the Germans to do something to help Jea and his people. And—”
“Yes, John Rourke.”
“I love you—I’m sorry it couldn’t have been different for us.” “I know.”
Rourke closed his eyes and drew her toward him, kneeling there with her, face to face, her head coming to rest against his chest. Natalia, her voice sounding muffled with the scarf worn over her mouth and nose against the cold, because of her head being so close to him, spoke. “I was on an assignment once in India. I brought back a beautiful sari for myself and a smattering of the philosophy of transmigration of souls. When we do die, if they were right at all, maybe sometime we can be together again after death, in a new life.”
“Shh,” Rourke murmured, just holding her …
He had taken to the air over the fleeing truck and could follow it easily now despite the darkness which had swept over the ground below him—the headlights, bouncing and weaving across the rugged terrain, the headlights of the stolen truck and the pursuit vehicles which chased it.
He had seen the face of the man behind the wheel—it was Michael Rourke. The eyes, the profile,
the hairline, the thrust of the jaw.
The other man with Michael Rourke was unrecognizable to him—he imagined one of the Germans with whom the Rourkes had allied.
Several things worried him and he spoke aloud of them to Krakovski who shared the helicopter with him, piloted it. Into the teardrop microphone before his lips, he said, “If Michael Rourke is here—and that was Michael Rourke unless John Rourke has lost the touch of gray in his hair, has abandoned his sunglasses, those cigars of his—but if Michael Rourke is here, then his father cannot be far away. I know John Rourke—he would not insert his son into a dangerous situation without great cause without being nearby to assist him.”
“But Comrade Marshal,” Ivan Krakovski began, the voice soft in Karamatsov’s ear, despite the rush of the air around them, the muted whirring of the rotor blades. “He is driving toward the Underground City.”
“Yes—he transports the cylinder there for us.”
“But Comrade Marshal—what is in the cylinder?”
Vladmir Karamatsov looked at Krakovski. “Picture the Underground City with more than half its complement of defensive personnel driven mad, Ivan, and likely slaughtering the other half for us. That is what is contained in the cylinder. Order that the great tires of the truck be shot out—we must risk it because Michael Rourke drives the truck there too soon for us and he must be stopped. I wish him taken alive—the other, the German, can be killed or not. It does not matter. And stay well away from the vehicle in the event that the cannister is struck.”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal,” and Karamatsov listened as Krakovski switched frequencies and gave the order. It would be very interesting to possess Michael Rourke as a prisoner …
Bjorn Rolvaag’s dog lay asleep. Bjorn Rolvaag did not.
Captain Hartman had returned less than two hours ago and seemed exhausted, as though he should have fallen into a deep sleep, slept and slept away the night. But instead he had ordered that they move out and they had, moving by the strange vehicles John Rourke had called snow cats.
It was a lonely time for Rolvaag—he spoke no English, no German. And after the forced march into the rocky, mountainous area Hartman had chosen for their encampment, even his dog was too tired to listen to him.
So Rolvaag sat quietly, holding his great staff, contemplating this turn in his life.
He trusted the German named Hartman and assumed they had moved for a valid reason, and that John Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna would return eventually he trusted as well—or nearly so.
But this was what he had become embroiled in—it was a strange war.
His nation of Iceland had known nearly five centuries of peace. He did not blame the Rourkes for bringing the war to Iceland—it would have come whether they had come or not. It was not a war of Iceland, but a war of the entire world, a war that was older than the five centuries of peace his people had enjoyed.
He had always considered himself a guardian of what was correct—not so much a guardian of the law. So it was not strange being here, defending what was correct against what was vile.
He had struck up friendships with some of the Germans, even though no common tongue was shared
among them. A smile, a handclasp—it was all that it took, and then the will to back up the smile and the handclasp with kindness and respect. When the time came to meet the Russians in battle, he would utilize his staff, his sword and his hands. Other weapons were alien to him and he left these other weapons to those to whom such things were not alien. He would fight as he had always learned to fight.
But he had never had to fight in all his life until the Russians had invaded his home.
Some day, when the Russians were defeated, there would again be a dearth of need to fight and he could return to roaming the snows beyond Hekla, to the warmth of a campfire with the dog that slept beside him.
He folded himself and his staff into the blankets and rolled onto his side beside the sleeping animal and his right hand touched the animal’s neck and only barely consciously began to stroke the fur there.
Rolvaag closed his eyes, inviting sleep to come …
John Rourke ran hard, stripped of his excess gear, wearing the night black smock over his parka rather than the snow smock he had worn earlier—but the garment was one and the same, reversible—he mentally saluted German ingenuity as he dropped to a shadowy depression some hundred y
ards from the nearest edge of the Soviet airfield.
He had encountered electronic countermeasures, but easily defeated them. Neither the Underground City, it appeared, nor the airfield complex, had been constructed with security in mind. Security from what? would have been the operative philosophy.
It paid to plan ahead. Anticipation was a philosophy Vladmir Karamatsov pursued but did not pursue
that well, Rourke had realized early in his encounters with the man.
That he had failed to verify his own work, to give Karamatsov the head shot which would have finished him, was something John Rourke constantly considered—he, John Rourke, had failed to plan ahead and the results had been disastrous, cost lives, nearly the life of his son, his daughter, his wife, Natalia, whom he loved as deeply as any of them, of Paul, of himself.
To his feet, running again, brushing the white snow from the shadow colored black of his clothing, the assault rifle in both fists at high port, the yawning cavity of the entrance tunnel still hundreds of yards off. He dropped behind one of the snow cats that had been left out, if not for the night, conveniently long enough that he could use it.
His eyes scanned to right and left in the night. There was little moon, the sky heavy with clouds. The effect of prolonged sleeplessness was telling on him, but only a bit.
He started to his feet, out of the crouch, but froze— there were lights in the distance, specks only of light— but they were coming toward him.
Rourke threw himself to the ground, working the M-16’s safety tumbler to auto.
Chapter Nineteen
They were coming with motorcycles again, getting perilously close and Michael cranked down the window. “Shoot ‘em, Otto!”
Hammerschmidt fired, but the motorcycles in the right side mirror—they had been called West Coast mirrors sometimes, he remembered absently from his readings—simply dropped back, a momentary flash of sparks as flammerschmidt’s bullet apparently harmlessly contacted metal and richocheted.
In the left side mirror, he could see a second rider, in the man’s hand a pistol perhaps—in the darkness and the intermittent flashing of headlights from the pursuit vehicles, it was hard to tell.
Michael Rourke’s mind raced—the tires. “They’re trying for the tires. Probably have armor piercing loads in their pistols. Watch out!”
“There’s something up ahead—Michael, it looks like an airfield, I think.”
Michael had seen it a moment earlier. But there was no time to worry over it. The Beretta was in his right fist tight, the transmission in fifth, the highest gear, the gasoline pedal to the floor, the gasoline tank nearly drained, helicopter gunships overhead in pursuit. “Shit,” he hissed.
The motorcycle on his side was coming again. He
twisted a little behind the wheel, stabbing the Beretta out the window, firing once, then again, then again and again. The motorcyclist hugged to his machine.
A pistol—Michael could see it, twisting closer to the window, firing a double tap from the Beretta—at least one of the shots was a hit, the cyclist twisting in his saddle, the bike impacting one of the trailer’s massive wheels, then bouncing, airborne, a scream in the air behind him.
To his right, Otto Hammerschmidt was firing again, “Damn—I missed him.” Another shot, louder than a 9mm or the German equivalent. The truck cab lurched. “Hit a tire—” Another shot from Hammerschmidt, then another of the louder shots and Michael’s steering started to go, the truck cab swerving wildly, Hammerschmidt firing again. “Got him— but too late!”
“Got him or the bike?” Ihe man.
“The motorcycle survive?”
“I think so—what?”
“When I say, jump for it, get the machine—I’ll cover you.” Michael’s right foot pumped the brake, the heel only, his toe working the gas pedal as he double-clutched, downshifting, his fists locked tight on the steering wheel, the Beretta nearly empty back under his thigh.
Speed was dropping—maybe too fast he thought, the trailer started to jacknife on him. Michael did the only thing he could, cutting the wheel hard right, then snapping it left all the way; the cab started to spin, the trailer fishtailing behind them, starting to go over. “Jump, Otto! I’m right behind ya!”
Hammerschmidt’s door flew open, Hammerschmidt looking back once as Michael glanced toward him, then jumping into the night. The trailer was
starting to go over, the cab starting to rock left. Michael grabbed his pistol, held the wheel as long as he could, edging right, then loosed the wheel as the cab started to roll now as Michael threw himself from it, impacting the snow hard, rolling out of it, his right shoulder aching, the Beretta still in his right fist. His left hand found the second pistol as he came out of the roll, to his knees, ripping the second Beretta from the leather, working the safety off, firing both pistols toward the nearest of the Soviet vehicles, one of the jeeplike pursuit cars. He heard the shattering of glass—but then he heard nothing else from it, a screeching of metal, tearing, twisting, rending sounds filling the night as he looked behind him. The massive trailer was flipping over, the cab breaking away from it, launched skyward, the cab’s gas tanks suddenly exploding as Michael threw himself face down into the snow, his hands, still clutching his pistols, shielding his head and neck.
As he looked up, above the crackle of flames, he heard the pulse of a motor, and Hammersehmidt’s voice, “Michael!”
To his feet, running, the pistol in his right fist empty, the one in his left fist spitting toward the fleeing Soviet vehicles.
He jumped into the long saddle behind Hammerschmidt, “Roll it!”
The bike lurched ahead—in the distance, Michael could see some sort of impossibly long, impossibly large tunnel—and there was gunfire coming from it, toward them. Michael looked back—the driver of one of the jeeplike vehicles vaulted from his seat, his machine spinning out, crashing into a chunk of burning debris from the cab, rolling over, itself on fire now.
Hammerschmidt aimed the motorcycle toward a rock wall that formed the base of a mountain perhaps
a half mile distant.
It had been bravado before, removing the decontamination suits—once the integrity of the suits had been broken, the suits were useless anyway. But now—if the cannister had leaked or cracked. He wondered what possible death awaited them.
Chapter Twenty
John Rourke ran—in the momentary glow of flames when the cab of the enormous truck had exploded, there had been light—and the face he had seen of the man jumping aboard a motorcycle behind another man, a man with pistols blazing from each hand, had been identical to his own face. It was his son’s face.
John Rourke had run into the open to make the shots that had taken out the driver of the jeeplike vehicle which had been about to close with Michael and the other man with him, and now suddenly he was in the middle of a small war. Vehicles streamed from the entrance to the Underground City, helicopters airborne in the night sky, firing toward the vehicles, other vehicles approaching the trailer of the huge vehicle, the trailer overturned, a cylinder larger than the kind used for underground storage of gasoline before the Night of The War half in, half out of the trailer, men in gleaming silver decontamination suits milling around it.
Rourke dodged a vehicle coming from the Underground City, a man beside the driver firing an errant shot toward him. Rourke, instead of returning fire, took a running leap, crashing down into the rear of the vehicle. The man with the pistol opened fire.
Rourke swatted the pistol away as it discharged, the top of the head of the man behind the wheel exploding away from them, the vehicle careening crazily now. Rourke’s left fist closed over the Soviet pistol, his right fist crossing his opponent’s jawline, snapping the head back hard, Rourke losing the pistol now, his left fist catching the tip of the jaw and rocking it left and back. There was an audible crack as the neck broke. Rourke lunged for the wheel, his left fist closing over it.
He started to push the headshot man from the drive
r’s seat and to the ground—but he didn’t. There was a flash of memory now—Michael had been coatless and so had the other man with Michael aboard the motorcycle.
Instead, Rourke shoved the body right, the jeeplike vehicle under control now, Rourke sliding over the back of the seat, into position behind the wheel, his feet finding the pedals, his right foot hammering down the accelerator. The vehicle had veered away from the gradually escalating war there before the tunnel mouth of the Underground City, Russians fighting Russians, Rourke realized. And whatever was in the cannister was valuable enough that Karamatsov was holding to the battle. In the distance now, illuminated for an instant by the light of a flare, he could see the outline of a workhorse helicopter, a crane dangling down from beneath it.
It had to be Karamatsov—and some ultimate bid for ultimate power.
John Rourke started toward the wall of rock—he had seen Michael and the other man aboard the motorcycle going that way, and Natalia and the young primitive named Jea would likely still be there as well.
His prospects had increased really—it was sometimes good to look on the bright side. With Russians
fighting Russians, security would be heightened at the Underground City, but at least they would be too busy to bother looking for him and for the others. Michael was a good fighter. The man with Michael was likely a German commando of some type. Perhaps there were more of the Germans, all the more to supplement Hartman’s force. And there were two vehicles now— gasoline could be stolen if necessary. He reminded himself—gasoline was an anachronism. Synth-fuel.
The mountain wall was getting nearer and he cut the headlights on the vehicle he drove—he could see well enough, the inverse of his light sensitivity, in cases like this a blessing.
On a realistic note, he thought, perhaps things weren’t looking up that dramatically, but it would be good to see his son Michael again, very soon …
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna raised her hands to her mouth as though to stifle a cry—but she made no cry. John Rourke had begun to weep, and then Michael started to cry, and father and son embraced each other and she loved them both and she closed her eyes, visions of Madison, pretty Madison—dead now and gone. And the baby. Tears flooded her eyes and through the blur of her own vision, she could see Jea, staring oddly at all of them, and the German commando Captain—Hammerschmidt?—with his back slowly turning to them, his hands going up to cover his face.
