by Jerry Ahern
Reed — seemed somehow wrong.
But it was too late to change any of that, Reed thought, walking up the aisle toward the front of the church. “Ten-hut!” Dressier snapped.
Reed shook his head, “As you were—take your seats, gentlemen.” Ten other men sat in the first pews on each side of the aisle. Reed stepped up the three low steps leading to the pulpit, just short of entering it. Reed stood beside it in-stead, feeling odd wearing a pistol on his hip. “All of you were told before volunteering that this was likely a suicide mission. Rourke couldn’t get too specific on the radio—but I’ve talked with him often enough. Apparently the Russians have some move afoot to destroy what was called the Eden Project. Our earth—well, we told you that, too. In six days at the most, perhaps at dawn tomorrow, the sky will catch fire, the atmosphere will all but completely burn away and the earth itself will burn. We’ll all die then anyway. But ap-parently the Russians have some system for surviving it somewhere. My guess is the old Norad headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain but we won’t know that until we ren-dezvous with Rourke and his force. It’s our job to knock out the Russian base, so they can’t survive the holocaust. Otherwise, when the 138 people of the Eden Project return to earth, the KGB’ll be waiting for them, to shoot down the space shuttles before they land. And the Russians will have won it all, Communism will have the ultimate triumph. We owe it to the future, if there is one, and to every man and woman alive today or whoever lived, whoever sacrificed life or security or pleasure to defend the ideal of freedom—we owe it to all of them not to let Communism win, not to let the KGB be the masters of earth. And dying fighting for that is a hell of a lot better—” and he felt sorry for the word, remembering suddenly he stood in a church—”a lot better than being incinerated when the end comes. Are there any questions?”
A young face at the far end of the right hand pew— “What is it, Corporal?”
The man stood. “Sir, I mean, I know what you say is right, but what can twelve of us do—well—”
“Against the might of the Soviet Union? Well, not just twelve, Rourke has some volunteers —
he didn’t specify. Maybe a Resistance group or something. Say maybe there’ll be a couple dozen of us. And what can we do? Everything. Anything. Die if that’s the only way. But we’ll do what we can, soldier—that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? I don’t mean just here, in this church, at this briefing. I mean here on earth for. To do what we can. And now we have a chance unique in all of history. Sometimes people have accused me of being a little too far to the right, a little too anti-Commu-nist. Maybe I was. Maybe I am. But we have a chance to rid the world of an evil, an evil that contemplates shooting the only survivors of the civilized world, of the democracies —
shooting the only survivors out of the sky. I don’t know how, again, Dr. Rourke couldn’t be too specific. Maybe particle beam weapons like supposedly they used to zap some of our missiles on The Night of The War. But what-ever it is, whatever it takes, I don’t want a single man with me who isn’t ready to give it his best shot. Maybe we’ve got the chance here to eradicate all the pent-up evil in the world all at once, to give mankind a fresh start five hundred years from now. And maybe we don’t—but as Americans, well— we gotta try it.” Reed cleared his throat. He looked at the Timex on his wrist. “We should be moving out. Any man who wants not to go, well, stay in the church here a while and pray for those of us who do. I won’t think any the less of you.”
“I think we all wanna go, sir,” Sergeant Dressier said, standing. “But could you maybe lead us in a moment’s prayer, sir?”
“I’d rather you would, Sergeant. I’m not too experienced at praying.”
“Colonel, sir, I think the men’d rather that you did, sir.”
Reed nodded, closing his eyes, bowing his head. “Heav-enly Father—help us to see your will and to do it. And bless us all for trying. Amen.”
He looked up. “Like I said, Sergeant—I’m an amateur at it.”
“It sounded pretty good to me, Colonel.”
Reed nodded, starting down the aisle of the church, hear-ing, feeling the men of his detachment fall in behind him. And then a voice—the young corporal who had questioned him. He began singing, “Onward Christian soldiers —”
The sergeant’s voice joined him, “Marching as to war—”
Reed didn’t know the words perfectly, and he felt almost silly—and his voice had always been bad. Before his wife had died during the bombing on The Night of The War, she had always joked with him that he couldn’t carry a tune with both hands and a bucket. But he joined his men any-way.
“...leads against the foe; Forward into battle, see his banners go.”
Outside, the Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk Chopper was already waiting and Reed picked up his rifle.
Chapter Eighteen
They walked in darkness, Emily leading the way, Natalia behind her, Vladov and the Soviet SF-ers after them, Rourke, Tom Maus and Marty Stanonik bringing up the rear. The airfield Varakov had arranged for the GRU pick-up was still perhaps a quarter mile away, Emily, who knew the countryside best, had told them. They had gone by truck from Waukegan and into the farmland of northern Illinois. They had been walking, Rourke judged, for nearly a mile.
Marty spoke. “It’s kinda hard to believe—I bought a house before The Night of The War—I
—”
Maus touched at the younger man’s shoulder.
Then Maus said, “I’ve been thinking. Pretty hard about this. I haven’t mentioned it to Emily or any of the others yet, but I’m planning on starting an all-out offensive against the Russians in metropolitan Chicago.”
“Go down fighting,” Rourke commented.
“Something like that, but more than that. Ever since the Russians moved in, they’ve been using Soldiers’ Field Sta-dium as an internment camp. Some other internment camps there. They treat them well enough—that’s where their medical headquarters is at Soldiers’ Field. But it’s the idea, the people there aren’t free. Americans shouldn’t die that way if they have to die. Penned up, under guard. Maybe it is that—go down fighting. They should have that chance, the Americans the Communists are holding.”
“I’ll ask a favor,” Rourke murmured in the darkness, pushing aside a low hanging branch, holding it for Marty and Tom Maus and then continuing on. “Don’t make a direct assault on Soviet Headquarters at the museum. Let Varakov die his own way.”
“Agreed,” Maus answered. “That’s the funny thing—the way Major Tiemerovna spoke about her uncle, before and in the truck just now, and what he’s done now to fight the KGB—General Varakov sounds like a good man.”
“He is.”
Marty said it, “Kind of stupid, isn’t it—I mean, if you assume we’re good men, too. Why were we fighting each other all these years?”
Rourke had no answer for him.
Chapter Nineteen
Sarah Rourke, barefoot, wearing a pair of the blue jeans her husband had stocked for her and one of her husband’s shirts, listened to the sounds of her children over the muted sound of the waterfall to the rear of the Great Room. The children were playing poker with Paul Rubenstein and laughing because they were beating him at it, consistently.
He owed Michael thirteen trillion dollars, Michael had run to tell her.
Michael was a boy again. At least for now.
And Annie—there was a sparkle in her eyes and she gig-gled when Paul would tell her a joke. She had even blushed when Paul had told her she was a pretty little girl.
Sarah sipped at her drink, a book open on her lap—she hadn’t begun to read it past the first line.
She had listened to music earlier—her husband’s library housed records and cassettes ranging from The Beatles to Rachmaninoff, from original recordings of Enrico Caruso to Charles Aznavour.
The children had watched a movie on the videocassette recorder—she had been surprised that their interest had sus-tained in the original version of Lost Horizon starrin
g Ronald Coleman. Perhaps it was the novelty of even seeing a television—the last program they had seen was the red haired Atlanta newsman warning of the impending Soviet attack.
They had played.
They had eaten the dinner she had prepared, not using the microwave, but slowly, lovingly prepared on the con-ventional electric stove. She had baked bread. She had made an apple pie using some of the dehydrated apples she had found in one of the freezers.
She felt human again.
Behind a series of vault doors in a cave inside a mountain in the middle of World War III, perhaps Soviet soldiers or brigands prowling nearby.
But she felt human again.
It was a feeling she did not want to lose.
But she could not concentrate. She worried that John Rourke still lived somewhere out there. That he would be able to come back to her.
And despite the fact the beautiful Russian woman was her rival, she worried—and she found herself smiling at the thought — for Natalia Tiemerovna.
“I’m crazy,” she murmured, listening to her children laugh.
Chapter Twenty
The GRU aircraft—a Beechcraft Super King Air—had made its pass over the field, Vladov radioing to the aircraft, getting the proper recognition signal. There had been a schedule of appointed rendezvous times, five in all and this was the fourth.
The Polish American woman, Emily, who was a self-pro-claimed hater of the Russians, had laughed as she had bro-ken out the flares. She had said, “If I’d ever figured I’d be lighting a field so a bunch of Commies usin’ a stolen Ameri-can airplane could land safely I’d have had myself commit-ted to the funny farm.” But with Lieutenant Daszrozinski and several of his men helping her, she had done just that.
In the brush at the far edge of the field now, Rourke, Na-talia, Vladov, Maus and Marty Stanonik waited, their as-sault rifles ready, the rest of Vladov’s men sprinkled around the field with Daszrozinski and Emily at the far end.
“That GRU man is a good pilot,” Rourke commented, watching as the Beechcraft touched down, bouncing across the field, slowing, slowing still more, then turning into a take-off position. “Makes me feel like a drug dealer waiting for a marijuana drop,” he laughed, pushing himself to his feet, staying in a low crouch, running, the CAR-15 across his back, the M-16 in his hands, Natalia, Maus, Stanonik and Vladov in a wedge around him.
It was two hundred yards as he reckoned it—a healthy run with a heavy pack, several handguns and knives and two assault rifles. But he didn’t slow or stop until he reached the aircraft, hearing Vladov on the small radio giving the code phrase, “Red, white and blue—red, white and blue—”
The irony didn’t escape him.
The door in the fuselage opened, a tall, thin man appear-ing in the shadow and moonlight.
He looked down. “You are the American doctor?”
“I’m Rourke.”
The man extended his right hand, hesitantly. Rourke shifted his assault rifle, holding it by the front handguard in his left hand, taking the GRU man’s hand. “We had an ex-pression here in America—I don’t know if you ever heard it. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Anyway—I’m glad you made it.”
The GRU man nodded.
Rourke felt Natalia’s presence beside him. “I know you — you are Captain Gorki.”
“Yes, Comrade Major—I met you once in Moscow—you remember faces well. I am Major Gorki now.”
“It is good to see you, Comrade.”
Rourke shrugged his shoulders.
Maus and Marty Stanonik, M-16s in their hands, were coming from the nose of the plane, dipping under the star-board wing. “You’d better get airborne and get the hell out of here,” Maus announced.
“I was planning on it,” Rourke nodded.
At the edge of his peripheral vision he saw Vladov and Daszrozinski, Daszrozinski leading the Soviet SF-ers to-ward the fuselage. Rourke stepped away to give them room.
The GRU pilot had hopped down, standing beside Maus now. “There are two of us — myself and a Sergeant Druszik. We will accompany you, Comrade Major Tiemerovna, and be ready to fly you out should that be possible.”
Rourke watched as Natalia nodded. “We’ve got a slight change in plans,” Rourke said, then. “I couldn’t inform U.S. II of the exact rendezvous point we’d been given—the possibility of the KGB listening in. But I’ll give you a new rendezvous spot—easy enough to get to.”
“I have charts aboard the aircraft, Dr. Rourke. If you’ll follow me, while the gear is being secured.”
Rourke nodded. He turned to Tom Maus. “Tom, good luck to you. I hope you can do what you plan.”
Maus laughed, saying, “All I can do is try—don’t have much to lose, do I?”
Rourke shrugged. He extended his hand to Marty Stanonik. “Pleasure to meet you, Marty. I wish you the same—good luck.”
The young man nodded. “Yeah, knowin’ Tommy here, we’ll need it,” and Maus laughed.
Emily was there as well. “Ma’am, without your help we wouldn’t have made it this far. Thank you.”
She said nothing, only nodded.
Natalia stepped forward, leaned toward Maus, kissing him on the cheek, then did the same to Marty. “Thank you both,” she said softly. She turned to Emily. “And thank you, thank you very much, Mrs. Bronkiewicz.”
The woman who hated the Russians, her voice barely au-dible, told Natalia, “God bless all of you,” then turned and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-one
The Four Corners were not a precise location place wise, but geographically quite precise. There was a marker nearby Rourke knew —he hadn’t bothered to read it, having read it years before.
He sat in the shelter of high rocks, overlooking the only logical landing site for an aircraft of sufficient size to land a dozen men and a crew. Natalia slept in his left arm, her head against his shoulder. Only Vladov, and two men, besides Rourke, were awake. Rourke had slept aboard the aircraft, as had Vladov and most of the men. Natalia had not been able to sleep and it had taken her some time after landing and coming into the rocks, their own aircraft camouflaged, until she had drifted off.
“The Comrade Major, she loves her uncle a great deal, I think,” Vladov whispered.
Rourke nodded slowly, so some sudden movement would not awaken her.
“And she loves you, too, I think, also a great deal. It is written in her eyes. Women—even if a woman is a major in the KGB—they write their emotions across their eyes. For you, that is what is written there.”
“I know,” Rourke answered, trying nottural microbes, which had been all but ignored by commercial enterprises. The unexpected advent of recombinant-DNA techniques from Rourke.
“What are they like?”
Rourke knew where the Soviet captain was looking—to his two sentries on the far side of the grassy plain which the rocks overlooked. “They’re like you, like me, very much like us both, I’d imagine. So far as I know, only one of the men is a man I know personally.”
“The Colonel Reed of whom you speak?”
“Yes, Colonel Reed.”
“What is he like? I have heard of him before. The chief intelligence officer for United States II.”
Rourke felt himself smile. “He is that. Strange guy—fluc-tuate from an occasionally bizarre sense of humor to a guy who wouldn’t laugh if his life depended on it. He’s a career man so to speak. Any Intelligence on active duty for a long time, then in the Reserves, then called up to active duty when all of this started—before the War.”
“He hates Russians then.” It was a statement Vladov made, not a question, shifting his position, moving the 5.45mm AKS-74 onto his lap from the ground beside him.
“Yeah, he hates Russians with a real passion.”
“It is something very strange,” Vladov said. “But before The Night of The War, I hated Americans very much. And I realized after our troops came in as part of the first invasion force I had never met an American. Not ever. I wondered how it c
ould be that I could hate someone whom I had never come to know. I still wonder this.”
“You’ll turn into a pacifist if you’re not careful,” Rourke laughed softly.
“Yes, a pacifist. It would be most amusing for me to turn into a pacifist. I fought in Afghanistan. I served in a secu-rity contingent in Poland. It should be most amusing were I to become a pacifist, as you say.”
Rourke chewed down on the end of his cigar—it was clamped between his teeth in the right corner of his mouth. There was no need to be particularly watchful, Vladov’s men would do that. He closed his eyes. He said to Vladov, “I was pretty much the same way. I met Natalia, saved her life, and she saved mine—mine and my friend Paul Ruben-stein’s life—”
“This Rubenstein—it is Jewish, correct?”
“Yeah,” Rourke nodded, electing not to mention that Natalia was also half Jewish as her uncle had revealed in his letter.
“In Russia, we do not like Jews—”
“You ever think maybe all of that was just as smart as not liking Americans?”
The Soviet Special Forces captain didn’t answer for a mo-ment, then from the sudden darkness when a cloud blocked the moon, Rourke heard his voice. “You do not hate the Russians?”
“I don’t hate her, do I? And I can’t see any reason to hate you. Do you hate me?”
“No, of course not, there is—”
“Reason?”
“Yes—no reason.”
“Too bad,” Rourke smiled. “Too bad we couldn’t have all sat down like this before it all got blown up and destroyed, before this whole holocaust scenario came about—”
“Too bad, yes. This Eden Project—perhaps for them it will be different. If we can do what we have set out here to do.”
“Perhaps,” Rourke agreed. “But in a way, maybe it won’t be.”
“What do you mean?” Vladov asked, the flare of a match cupped in his hands making a rising and falling sound as the phosphorous burned, Rourke smelling the smoke of the cig-arette mingled with the phosphorous.
