Survivalist - 14 - The Terror

by Ahern, Jerry

  She could no longer help herself—she ran to both men—John and Michael—and put her arms up, her hands touching at their heads, her head leaning against their bodies, against their interwoven arms.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Otto Hammerschmidt had watched the Russian woman—he had heard of her, heard of her a great deal. She was as beautiful as he had been told—even more so. After withdrawing higher into the rocks when she had called out to them, following her and the strange looking young wildman, then the famous John Rourke had arrived, the Herr Doctor in a stolen Russian vehicle, his spirits seeming high. And Michael had said simply, “A Soviet suicide patrol attacked Hekla—I tried to stop them. Madison shielded me with her body and she died, Dad—Madison and the baby—they’re gone,” and Hammerschmidt had watched an outpouring of affection and love like none he had ever seen before.

  He drove the motorcycle now, wearing his stolen Soviet arctic gear with the bloodstains the Herr Doctor had apologized for, the Herr Doctor’s voice tight with grief, strange sounding.

  John Rourke and Michael Rourke sat in the back of the Soviet vehicle, the Russian woman and the wildboy in the front seat. The Russian woman never

  looked from her driving. Both Rourke men looked straight ahead.

  What could anyone say, Hammerschmidt thought. He remembered the death of his father when he had been but a young man. He could think of it now and without knowing it begin to cry …

  John Rourke spoke. “Whatever the Russians have in that cannister is evidently a weapon that is either chemical or biological. Michael—you and Captain Hammerschmidt appear healthy except for being a little tired. But it could be some biological weapon the effects of which might not appear for some time. It could be so contagious all of us have it. But I doubt that. I think, from the way the two of you described it, that Karamatsov was just being cautious, and the suits would only have been necessary were the tank to have sprung a leak. We have no reason to suppose it didn’t, but there’s no reason to suppose it did either.” Rourke looked at his watch. “In a very little while, Captain Hartman will be listening for our radio transmission. He was originally supposed to add fourteen to whatever number I gave him and use that system to determine our next time of broadcast. But that was based on our having monitored Soviet communications and determined the best time for broadcast. We haven’t done that yet—and there’s no time now. We have a code—your Westphalia Two, Captain,” and Rourke looked at Hammerschmidt. “But the Soviets will be able to break that given enough time. So—we’ll arrange a meeting point, as fast as possible, and conduct the rest of our planning in person. If the Russians are battling among themselves, we can use that to our advantage. Put together whatever force we can and attack Karamatsov while

  he’s fighting the forces of the Underground City. I’d venture to say whatever sort of weapon that tank contains is for use against the Underground City, not against us. We’re going to have to wait until he uses it in order to determine its nature and how to prevent his using it on us. I haven’t figured that out yet.

  “The important thing,” Rourke said slowly, his voice almost a whisper, the glow of the lamp around which they all sat illuminating the rock overhang beneath which they had taken shelter, the faces of all to whom he spoke, except Natalia, in shadow, “is that we get together whatever response team we can and do something while Karamatsov will be at his weakest. Karamatsov has to be destroyed.”

  Michael’s voice came from the darkness. “I’m doing it.”

  Natalia whispered, “It should be me.”

  “I should have made sure that first time—Madison—” and he felt his throat tighten as he looked toward the shadow of his son.

  “It’s not your fault, Dad.”

  “The important thing,” Rourke whispered, “is that Karamatsov dies. If there’s already dissension among the Russian leadership and Karamatsov is out of the picture, the disorganization should be greater. And that’ll work to our advantage. If you want him that badly, then I hope you get him, Michael.”

  “But the neutralization of Karamatsov takes precedence over which of us accomplishes it,” Michael’s voice came back from the darkness. “That’s what you’re saying—right?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Whoever can kill him must kill him.”

  “What is your intent, Herr Doctor.”

  Rourke looked toward Hammerschmidt. “In our time. Captain, when films were a popular medium of

  entertainment, at some crucial moment someone or another would always say, ‘I have a plan’. Well—I have a plan. Our two best candidates for observing what goes on out there are you, Captain, and Natalia. Natalia knows the Russian way of thinking, way of planning, better than any of us. And Vladmir Karamatsov was her husband—” “Is, John.”

  “No—he stepped out of the human community a long time ago. No—but with the two of you, we have the best advantage. I was never a military man—”

  “You are too modest, Herr Doctor.”

  “Not modest—practical. Between the two of you, we have the best chance of finding out what they’re doing. Michael and I will arrange to meet with Captain Hartman and then contact your unit, Captain Hammerschmidt. We’ll attempt to get whatever personnel we can in here quick. We can utilize Jea’s people as scouts for us—they know this terrain better than anyone including the Russians and should have a vested interest in helping if it can be developed. Their people have been taken prisoner for experimentation or just slaughtered, it seems from what he tells us. We’ll all rendezvous at a preselected site and time, take what intelligence data we have and formulate an attack plan.”

  “I could get inside, John—perhaps—”

  “No,” Rourke told her. “No one goes inside until we better understand the nature of Karamatsov’s new weapon.” And Rourke shot his cuff again, turned the upper portion of his wrist toward the lantern and read the time. The horizon beyond the rock overhang was gray already. It would be a stormy day, but what light there would be seemed almost intent upon coming quickly, infiltrating beneath the layers of cloud. “Natalia and Hammerschmidt, put your heads together

  on the Westphalia Two code—he knows it better than either of us. Work a rendezvous site and time with Hartman as soon as terrain and situation will allow. Give him very few details—less for the Russians to intercept and decode eventually. Michael and I can refuel the four-wheel-drive vehicle with the cans it was carrying and throw another gallon or so of fuel into the motorcycle. Whatever it’ll take.” “Yes, John.”

  Rourke stood up—somewhere along the line, he would have to schedule some sleep. He started off into the shadows …

  Annie Rourke opened her eyes—Paul sat staring almost blankly. She looked up at him, her head on his lap. “How long did I sleep?”

  “About nine hours. I just woke up a few minutes ago,” and she felt his legs shift beneath her head. She started to rise, but he touched his hand to her face and whispered to her, “Just a little stiff—I’m fine. You didn’t look restless the few times I woke up.”

  “I slept fine—whatever danger—I didn’t see any more.”

  “That’s good, Annie—that’s very good.” “You need a shave.”

  “You’re probably right,” he smiled, bending over her, Annie raising her face, Paul touching his lips to her forehead. She hugged the blanket more tightly about her. Despite the climate control, she felt cold somehow in the tent.

  They were alone in the tent that was headquarters “building” for the small German outpost here. She wondered what time it was. “What time is it?”

  “A little after six common time—which is just about right for here according to the sun as best I can

  figure.”

  “Thank you for putting up with me—dragging you out here, I. mean.”

  “I love you—now, young woman—sit up—because if you don’t, I might not make it to the bathroom on time—gotta go—”

  Annie didn’t budge an inch. “How badly do you ha
ve to go?”

  Paul, with faked roughness, shoved her head up and stood, “Badly!”

  Annie sat up, watching him as he started toward their small quarters at the far side of the tent. There was a perfectly serviceable, even comfortable looking air lofted mattress in there. But she had wanted to be awake lest there would be word from her father and Natalia and then she had consented to putting her head on Paul’s lap and closing her eyes and the next thing she had known it had been morning.

  She realized she was smiling—thinking about Paul. She rolled the words on her tongue. “Husband. Wife.” She liked both sounds …

  It was not the way he had planned it—thanks once again to someone named Rourke.

  The bulk of his force fought a holding action, containing the occupants of the Underground City and sealing off the airfield from their use. This was bad, because many of his soldiers had wives and families inside the Underground City and the longer the battle protracted, the more their fears for loved ones would grow and the less reliable they would become.

  It was anticipating such as this—but for different reasons—which had prompted him to call in Krakovski originally from the field to assist in the Egyp

  tian operation.

  With Krakovski’s arrival, there had been the perfect excuse to form around Krakovski an elite corps of men and some women whom he could trust to remain loyal regardless of what should occur.

  And this elite corps—not his old KGB Elite Corps, but similar in composition—was not at the front lines, but he had kept it with him instead.

  Once the helicopter crane had removed the cannister from the entrance to the Underground City, Karamatsov had personally supervised its inspection. In full decontamination gear he had checked each seam, the locking cap over the main valve. There had been no damage. It was the sort of situation that persons who believed in that sort of thing would call miraculous. Vladmir Karamatsov doubted that God would aid his endeavor, however.

  He stood, watching the yellow gray line of horizon, the deeper gray of clouds. It would snow today— heavily.

  He looked away from the horizon, to Krakovski and the hundred members of his new elite corps. He began to speak. “Today, you shall participate in the grand design of the future, Comrades.” It was cold, the wind stiff, but he was sure they could hear him. From the small table that had been set outside his tent by his aide, he raised a small gleaming metallic cylinder, a perfect miniature of the huge cylinder.

  “This tiny cylinder, Comrades, is our key to this glorious future. It, and others like it, will be filled from the tank we extricated from the sands of Egypt, the tank which we fought so successfully to save last night. A gas, Comrades—colorless, odorless, and tasteless, a gas which shall be introduced to the ventilation system of the Underground City, a gas unlike any ever used before in warfare. Had it not

  been for our enemies alerting the Underground City, the task which awaits you would have been easier. The gas cannisters could easily have been smuggled into the Underground City and radio activated as was my original plan. But that cannot be, now, Comrades. Some of you may remember that prior to our taking to the field to intercept the Eden Project upon its return, the last of the greenhouses was completed. Besides the water pipes and the electrical conduit running from inside the Underground City to each greenhouse, there is a third pipe, my comrades. This pipe feeds directly into the ventilation system of the Underground City. In teams of fire and maneuver, you will penetrate to the greenhouse sites with the appropriate number of cannisters. Even now as I speak the cannisters are being filled for you. You will mate the cannister intake valve to the terminus of the third pipe. You will be shown plans of the greenhouses to know how to find the proper terminus. You will not yet open the valves of the cannisters to release the gas into the pipes. At the base of each cannister,” and he tapped the base, “you will see a second valve. To this valve you will attach a small length of hose which will be provided you. The other end will be attached to the blower units inside the greenhouses and the blower units will then be reversed. The blower will begin pumping air through the cannister into the pipeline. At this time, Comrades, you will open the cannister valves and the Underground City will be flooded with gas, the defenders rendered not only useless, but allies to our task of conquest.”

  Krakovski stepped forward from his position at the head of the hundred, shouting, “Three cheers for the Comrade Marshal—Hip—Hip!”

  And as the cheers rang, Vladmir Karamatsov turned to stare at the horizon—the symbolism of the

  dawn of a new day. It would doubtless be included in young Krakovski’s writings of this new beginning for the planet. But Krakovski was not the only one among them who could write. Vladmir Karamatsov promised himself that some day, he too would write— Krakovski’s epitaph. No man—or woman—could be trusted with power.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had elected to ride behind Captain Otto Hammerschmidt, her arms loosely about his waist as he took the motorcycle to the far side of the entrance into the Underground City, the side most directly opposite the airfield.

  They had dismounted and camouflaged the motorcycle, then cautiously advanced to the farthest edge of the rocks, before and beneath them a battlefield.

  Defensive shields of what appeared to be some lightweight but dense metal armor had been erected on both sides of the entrance tunnels, spreading backward in arcs, forming a horn linking into the sides of the mountain itself. Artillery of the conventional kind and also of some type with which she was not at all familiar but Hammerschmidt guessed could perhaps be energy weapons were emplaced behind the barricades, men and (she supposed) women at the barricades, machinegun and motor emplacements at strategic locations there as well.

  Blocking the tunnel entrance were three of the most massive tanks she had ever seen, larger by far than the United States or Soviet tanks of the era immediately precursing the Night of The War.

  But bigger did not always mean better, she told herself.

  Periodically, the tanks would fire—conventional shells it seemed, utilizing high explosives, but the artillery did not fire. A reserve, she thought, or perhaps limited duration capabilities.

  The greenhouses John had first noted, some of them partially demolished, lay at a tangent to the entrance to the city and the new fortifications. On the opposite tangent was the airfield. Two of the hangar buildings smoldered, apparently burned to the ground. Either there was not the time or the will to extinguish the fires during the night or early morning.

  At the far side of the airfield were some three dozen helicopter gunships and behind these, fighter aircraft, but fewer than a dozen as best she could count. Shields similar to those utilized at the tunnel entrance to the Underground City were erected as a barrier bisecting the field at almost the exact center of its length, behind these shields artillery identical to that she had already noted used by the defenders of the Underground City, but the pieces fewer in number.

  Men, however, were in greater abundance here, and machinegun emplacements were less spread and the result seemed an impenetrable killing zone against any kind of assault on foot.

  Tanks—some few massive like those at the main entrance, but the bulk of more conventional size— were set facing the main entrance and main defenses, but some two thousand yards back along the length of the valley floor.

  A third attack line was angled upward with its extremity less than a thousand yards from the entrance to the Underground City, the greenhouses approximately equidistant between attackers and defenders.

  With binoculars, she abandoned the valley and began exploring the mountain itself. Gun emplace

  ments atop the mountain in irregular arcs of a circle, but anti-aircraft defense it seemed quite plain, the mounts apparently not designed to allow even those guns which were on the valley side to be fired into the valley. Radar systems dotted the mountain top.

  They had seen in the distance, that morning after broa
dcasting the message to Captain Hartman and separating from John, Michael and Jea, what could have been a communications tower. If it were, she had no doubt it and any others like it would be in the hands of her husband by now.

  “Fraulein Major?”

  “Yes?”

  “I could not help but notice, Fraulein Major— you—you and the Herr Doctor Rourke. There is ahh—”

  “No—there can’t be.” She turned her binoculars back to the valley floor, trying to catalogue numbers of troops and equipment in her mind.

  “Forgive me, Fraulein Major—it was none of my affair.”

  Natalia didn’t answer him.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Rourke cut the engine as the jeeplike Soviet machine rolled down the incline into a smallish depression, not really large enough to be a valley. The coordinates were right for the meeting with Hartman.

  Rourke locked the emergency brake and jumped to the ground, grabbing up his assault rifle, Michael going out the other side with the SSG in his fists, Jea still aboard the vehicle.

  John Rourke gestured to Jea to accompany them, saying to Michael, “If the Russians did monitor our transmission, we’re more mobile on foot considering the terrain. Let’s get up into those rocks.”

  There was a nervous look to Jea’s peculiar eyes and Rourke charged it off to bewilderment and lack of information, though Rourke had gotten Natalia to brief Jea before they had separated.

  The young man climbed down awkwardly from the Soviet vehicle and fell in with them as Rourke and his son started upward. “I’m sorry,” Rourke began.