by Ahern, Jerry
Natalia had disappeared again, and Paul heard her calling to them across the ice field. “I found something else.” Paul broke into a run, toward her, John and Sarah flanking him, the sky a little brighter now but not much —he gathered it was as bright as it would get. Natalia had Blackburn’s coverall’s open, her gloved hands exploring his crotch. “He had recently ejaculated, but these stains in his underpants would indicate—well—that he didn’t do it in someone.” Paul swallowed hard. “He had scratch marks —as if something gouged at his testicles —a woman’s nails, I’d say. He was making love to Annie, forcing himself on her, perhaps raping her or perhaps Annie had the good sense to make it appear she wanted him, or at least wouldn’t resist. He was stabbed by Annie’s left hand, assuming a missionary position on his part, so her right hand would have done —this,” and she nodded toward Blackburn’s open clothing. “Evidently, the act took place in the tent — since Blackburn is still wearing a coat and the knife is still in his back, but the coat is open. Annie had to have survived, to drag the body out —she probably used this blanket.”
Rourke spoke — Paul Rubenstein felt he was listening to a conversation at 221 B Baker Street, the way Natalia was reconstructing the act, the look on John’s face. “He was right-handed, if I recall correctly.”
“Yeah —he was,” Paul supplied.
“All right —so for Annie to get to the bayonet, which would have been carried on his left side most probably,
he had removed the pistol belt or whatever he carried it on.”
“The standard survival cache included emergency rations, emergency medical supplies, emergency fuel, an assault rifle of the native country, spare magazines and ammo, the sidearm of the native country, and the corresponding web gear necessary for transporting the sidearm comfortably. Also, the bayonet to accompany the rifle. Since there were two rifles, and considering the purposes of the survival cache, I would imagine this one was substantially more elaborate. Likely well find considerable fuel supplies aboard the helicopter.”
“I’ll have another look,” Sarah volunteered.
“Sarah,” Natalia called after her, “see what’s in the pilot survival kit — inventory it and I should be able to give you an idea what Annie might have taken from it, then we can inventory what remains in the tent and at least determine what gear Annie has on her.”
“All right,” Sarah called back, running toward the helicopter.
Rourke, visibly shivering with the cold, said, “We’ll need to break out the cold-weather gear. I can take the German machine airborne. Natalia—you and Paul fool with the Russian helicopter—see if you can get her airborne. I don’t think there should be any problems.” And John Rourke turned to Paul. “You take the radio set from the German helicopter — you and Sarah reerect the tent as a shelter, and keep monitoring the radio for Natalia’s machine and mine — well get on the same frequency. In the event we miss Annie from the air and she returns to the tent, you and Sarah’ll be here.”
“She couldn’t have survived out there, could she?”
“She’s never had to do it, but I taught her the principles of building an igloo-like structure for protection—if she had a knife, she could have done it. She
:~ r
was dressed reasonably warmly — if she erected a windbreak wall first, then built the rest of the structure — shit, I don’t know,” and John Rourke clasped Paul’s shoulder.
Chapter Seven
A hunch was a curious thing, but Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had long ago determined that hunches — or, for members of her sex, what was called women’s intuition — could sometimes prove out. Her hunch this time was really more what she considered an educated guess — that if Annie had left the tent and the helicopter and gone into the night across the ice field, she would have done so in panic or in fear. Being a Rourke, it was hard to imagine Annie so totally seized with panic as to do something irrational. But fear could grip anyone and send them running toward an unknown and potentially deadly fate in an attempt to escape the known and definitely deadly thing that was immediate. Natalia had no reason to support a hypothesis that Annie had done so, had run into the subarctic night to escape some terror. The hunch, or women’s intuition, was simply judgmental as to where Annie would have gone.
The Soviet helicopter that she now flew alone over the ice field had landed at roughly just north of sixty-three degrees north latitude and almost dead on twenty degrees west longitude, just beneath what had been the Arctic Circle; had there been the polar shift that the compass variations strongly suggested, she could now be inside the Arctic Circle —the ice here suggested as
much. There were mountains to the east of the position where the tent had been staked, and if she —Natalia — had been fleeing for her life, these mountains were where she would have gone. They would not have been visible in darkness, but had Annie survived the night, they would have been visible from anywhere on the ice field —a goal to aim for if the tent were somehow considered too dangerous. Blankets that should have been in the helicopter, according to the dictates of logic, were not in the helicopter. The survival knife that should have been in the helicopter was missing as well.
As she flew over the ice field now, she scanned the whiteness against the gray of the overcast sky for some sign of Annie or some sign of a survival shelter, but Natalia’s goal was the mountains. As she flew a zigzagging search pattern, she could hear radio chatter between John and Sarah, John flying due north beyond what seemed to have at one time been a river course. John would reach his most northerly point, then head southwest, Natalia to turn roughly southwest as well, following the mountains toward the sea, both of them linking at the tent where Sarah and Paul monitored the radio and waited for the possible return of Annie.
John had expressed concern to her—Natalia —that the rescue signal, which John Rourke had shut off by smashing the device, would perhaps summon Soviet gunships from Europe. The once disabled radio which Natalia now monitored, had been jury-rigged into working order by scavenging parts from the intra-ship communications systems of both helicopters.
Beneath Natalia now was a physical feature she recognized, though her knowledge of Iceland was quite limited. It was Mt. Hekla, a massive volcano. Iceland was one of the most volcanically active regions on the
face of the earth, geysers having passed below her regularly, their rivulets of steam rising into the frigid air, since the chopper had first gone airborne.
She cut in on the radio transmission. “John —this is Natalia. I’m not seeing anything. I’m heading up into the mountains as far as Annie might possibly have gotten —but the storm and the high winds … The snow doesn’t seem touched below me. She may not have crossed here. Over.”
“Same here, Natalia —no sign —no sign at all. We’ve gotta keep looking. Rourke out.”
Natalia wanted to blink her eyes — but she was afraid that somehow in doing so she might miss the precious object of her search. Instead, she stared beneath her, through the chin bubble, hoping.
Chapter Eight
She had seen a bear in the zoo when she was a little girl. But she couldn’t remember which zoo —the one in Atlanta or the one in Columbia, South Carolina? She opened her eyes. There was someone talking—to her? —but the language sounded oddly old and like no language she had ever heard, but in some ways like English.
It was the bear from —last night? The bear turned toward her and it was a man, not a bear at all. “What?”
The single word triggered, or seemed to trigger, an outpouring of words, but the words were no more intelligible than they had been before she had opened her eyes.
There was a dog—a real, living dog, the kind she remembered, only bigger, furrier, more like the wolves she had seen somewhere in reality and in some of her father’s videotapes.
The man stood up —he was beside a fire, the fire sweet-smelling, but no wood present, just little bricklike things, four of them, the flame leaping from the point where the
four bricklike objects touched at the center. They formed a small X-shape, or cross.
The dog stood up, but didn’t move toward her, only
staring at her as though wondering what she was.
Annie looked around her —a cave of some sort, ice encrusting the walls, moisture condensing over the ice that lined the roof of the cave, some of the moisture dripping down like drizzling, icy rain, little stalactites of ice and water forming over her head.
The man walked closer to her. He was huge, the biggest human being she had ever seen, his reddish hair long and covering his ears, blending into his longish red beard, the red of the beard less bright than the red of the hair, the beard coming up high to his cheekbones, his eyes —blue, piercing—staring at her over the beard. He was dressed in leather and some type of cloth; the boots he wore, nearly to his knees, seemingly of leather; baggy, cloth trousers, green in color, stuffed into the tops of the boots. A leather shift from his shoulders to his knees, the hem of it reaching almost to his boottops, like a dress might. The leather shift was sleeveless, a round neck split at the front, open almost to his abdomen; beneath the leather shift, visible over his chest —massive, barrel-like — a green shirt of some heavy material, the shirt laced at the front like cowboy shirts she had seen in movies. The sleeves of the shirt were billowing, coming to the wrists with long, three-button cuffs.
His hands — he stuffed them into slash pockets in the sides of the black leather shift —were massive.
He smiled at her.
The dog barked —and she thought she was going to die but instead she only screamed.
The giant only laughed, shaking his head, returning to the fire.
Annie lay there, realizing that over the blankets that were still wrapped around her was a heavy, quilted thing—a sleeping bag, but opened flat. There was another one beneath her.
She watched the man —he was using a ladle to put some sort of liquid taken from the pot over the miraculously burning bricks into a cup. He put the ladle back in the pot, then gestured toward her with a cup.
Annie made herself smile. “Who are you?”
The man shrugged his shoulders, his face somehow looking apologetic. He said nothing, but still extended the cup of steaming liquid to her.
She was cold —she had to go to the bathroom, but that would wait —it would have to.
She sat up, the blankets falling from her shoulders, instantly colder. She rearranged them about her, the man standing, coming closer to her with the cup. She reached up to him, taking it, saying, “Thank you.”
The man nodded as if understanding—not the words, but the intent of them. She held the mug in both hands, keeping her shoulders hunched up, rigid, to keep from losing the blankets. Annie blew across the surface of the cup to cool it, smelling it —like cinnamon, she thought. She sipped at it —she guessed there might be alcohol in it, but it tasted good and warmed her insides, the sweet smell not present in the taste, the taste indefinable but .good. “What is this?”
She raised her eyebrows, raised her voice, tried to make it sound, look like a question.
The man nodded, smiling, saying something she couldn’t have repeated to save her life, but it still tasted good.
The dog eyed her, not growling—she didn’t really remember how to act around dogs.
She nodded, pointing to herself, freeing one of her gloved hands from the warmth of the cup. “Annie Rourke.” She pointed to him. He nodded. “Annie Rourke,” she said, pointing to herself again.
The man stabbed his massive right thumb at his
chest, saying slowly, “Bjorn Rolvaag.”
She pointed to herself, saying, “Annie,” and then to him, saying “Bjorn.”
He said, “Annie,” pointing to her, then to himself, “Bjorn,” and then pointed to the dog, saying “Hrothgar.”
She pointed to the dog. “Hrothgar?”
“Ja,” the man nodded. “Hrothgar.”
“Like Beowulf — Hrothgar in Beowulf” she nodded, the man’s face showing he didn’t understand.
“Where am I?” *
He answered, “Lydveldid Island.”
She gestured around her. “Where?”
And he pointed outside the cave, saying only one word. “Hekla.”
“Hekla,” she repeated. She sipped at the drink, watching the dog watch her, the leather-clad, red-haired and bearded green giant drinking from the ladle, water still dripping from the roof of the cave.
Chapter Nine
The helicopter search had availed them naught. Rourke had dismantled the tent, fabricating improvised snowshoes using the tent poles cut with a hacksaw from the German helicopter’s toolkit, having bent the pole sections with great difficulty by hand, Paul helping him. Kurinami’s helicopter was still several hours away, Sarah briefing Kurinami while Paul and John Rourke bent more of the tent pole sections. Natalia had already begun lacing the guy lines for the tent into a webbing to support the feet, Sarah, as she spoke, taking the slings from the two spare M-16s found in the tent and cutting them. The buckles that secured the slings and segments of the slings themselves would serve as foot bindings for the snowshoes.
Kurinami, Michael, Madison, and Elaine Halversen would swing north, looking for any signs of Annie—recent communication between Kurinami and Colonel Mann’s fighter aircraft had yielded no word of unidentified Soviet helicopters or other aircraft crossing over the European continent from the direction of Greenland, and their support craft for refueling were themselves running out of fuel and would return to North America where Mann was ferrying in more fuel and more equipment almost hourly. A relay patched through between the fighters and Dr. Munchen, the de
facto field commander for the Germans at Eden Base, indicated that Karamatsov’s forces were segmented, the bulk of his force returning to the area of West Texas, more forces flying by way of North Africa to the West Texas staging area, the forces avoiding crossing over Georgia where Eden Base was located. Commander Dodd, overall commander of Eden Base, was aiding Munchen in digging in for battle. The space shuttles could not be moved any great distance and the information in their computer banks was too valuable to sacrifice by abandonment. Mann was planning on deploying a small force into Iceland within thirty-six hours at the outside to assist in the search for Annie.
Sarah conveyed all the information, rejoining Paul, Natalia, and John Rourke. She busied her hands, using a heavy needle of the type used to sew leather or canvas and a heavy thimble to attach the binding sections to the first completed pair of snowshoes, but her mind wasn’t thinking of the task in her hands at all, but rather of her daughter. And of the man Annie wanted to marry. She looked across her work at Paul Rubenstein, working side by side with her husband, John Rourke. John had packed cold-weather gear in both pickup trucks when they had left the Retreat — all of them wore it now. He had secured cold-weather gear for Akiro Kurinami and Dr. Elaine Halversen from the Germans, the German gear lighter, more modern-seeming, but Sarah comfortably warm in the winter clothing her husband had provided. Once again, John Rourke had planned ahead. It was sometimes disgusting, sometimes comforting, that he did so, disgusting in that he was always right, comforting in that his forethought had saved their lives uncounted times.
With the hoods of their black parkas in place, the added bulk of the parkas, the snow pants, their mouths and noses swathed by the knit headgear worn beneath
the hoods, John and Paul looked almost alike —except for John’s greater height and the sunglasses he had always worn ever since Sarah had first met him —how many years ago! She had been doing volunteer nursing, and John had been interning for the medical career he never undertook. When they had met again, years later, little had changed in him. His face was leaner than it had been, his musculature better defined, and when he removed the glasses that masked his brown eyes, a look of sorrow she had seen only the vaguest hint of when they had earlier known one another.
Years in the CIA as a counterterrorist, a “case officer�
�� as the euphemism went, and taking lives rather than saving them. As the years progressed after their marriage, he had become increasingly interested in survivalism, planning for some ultimate nightmare, yet all the while hoping, she finally had realized, that it never occurred, that his plans were for naught. There had been something that last time in Central America, when the reports had come in that he was missing and presumed dead and no one had told her anything else, and she had kept the children close to her and told herself that John Thomas Rourke was unkillable. And he had returned, his body covered with cuts and superficial wounds, bruises, a gunshot wound in his left leg, a knife wound. When he left the CIA, saying only that he had been set up and betrayed, she had thought his obsession with weapons, survivalism, all of it, would abate, that he would begin the practice of medicine — more than one doctor had told her that first time she had known John that he had gifted hands, hands and a mind quick enough to use them that most surgeons would have envied. But he had not.
Rather than medicine, he had chosen to write and teach —about weapons training, wilderness survival,
spent every spare dollar and every spare hour building the Retreat. And more so than during the years he had spent in the CIA, she had felt them drawing apart.
But he had proven right. Whoever had first fired a missile or dispatched a bomber past the fail-safe point —if it would ever be known; she did not know it now —had started the global thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. John had been away —he usually had been. She had taken her young children from the farm, their house destroyed after the gunfight and the gas explosion, determined to find John, while John had crashed a jet airliner in New Mexico, and began his cross-country trek with Paul Rubenstein, searching for her. It was during that time that John had met Natalia — but that he had known her before, Sarah was sure. And that time too was the time when John had fallen in love with Natalia, and Natalia with him, and for once, John Rourke had not “planned ahead.”
