Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (41 page)

“I mean that, but not quite. I mean if neither opinion is, as you perceive it, clearly a correct choice, then who in a relationship between a man and a woman should bear the ultimate burden of decision? Say, for example, I had

result after entering the camp or before entering it or whenever. Even though I was the one who insisted on going, he would still blame himself for not forcing me to stay behind. Or, on the other hand, say I stay behind and he finds that if I’d come, things would have been easier. He’s going to have to bear the burden of his decision either way, isn’t he?”

“But you will too,” Maria said earnestly.

“Women don’t have to prove themselves in the same way men do, don’t have to perceive everything as a challenge to themselves in the same way men do. What if I went and because I did, everything worked out perfectly. We’d all be happy with the results, but yet Paul would know that he’d made the wrong decision and that if I hadn’t gone against his wishes everything might well have worked out badly. He’d lose—as a man—either way, wouldn’t he?”

“I think you are a psychologist, Annie.”

“When Paul and I decided to marry, I decided one thing. I would always be me, but I would incorporate into that concept of self what I felt would make me a good wife. I lived with my father and my brother for five years in the Retreat—after Daddy woke up from the Sleep and awakened Michael and me, so he could teach us how to raise ourselves when he returned to the Sleep, until it was time to awaken Momma and Paul and Natalia. I learned a great deal about men in those five years. Michael went from being a little boy to being essentially the man he is today. And suddenly one day it wasn’t Daddy and his little boy, it was John and Michael, two men, competing with each other good-naturedly most of the time. Each time Michael would prove that he was as good as Daddy at something, Daddy would prove he was still a little better. And for a while,” Annie said softly, “I thought it was mean of my father, and then I realized that all he was doing was making Michael just get better and better at everything because Michael still had something to try for, someone to beat.”

Annie changed position, her right arm getting stiff from

again. “I heard my dad telling Michael this once. You arm-wrestle with your father until you realize that the next time you do it you might win. And then you don’t do it anymore. Because once you’ve beaten him, you’ll be sorry you did. I guess I looked at it the same way when Paul and I disagreed. If I’d beaten him, I wouldn’t have won and neither would he. We would have both lost.”

There was movement far off in the distance. A truck or tank. Annie Rubenstein couldn’t tell which. She took up the German binoculars and looked through them, pressing the button to automatically adjust the focus.

Maria, beside her, said, “If he sends his men against us, and the gas is used, they will all die. Karamatsov could not be so insane.”

Annie still studied the object through the binoculars. It was a truck. And behind it coming over the horizon was an armored personnel carrier. And then another.

She said to Maria Leuden, “What if Karamatsov doesn’t send his men—but sends women instead?”

The trick of entering the Soviet domes, as he had discovered by accident when he had been first officer of the United States Attack Submarine John Wayne years ago, was to capitalize on the one niche of expediency in the Soviet defense posture. Once he had discovered it and escaped with his life, then given over the data to Mid-Wake scientific intelligence, he had been informed as to why it existed.

The sharks which were utilized as a living defense system against enemy divers and controlled by electronic signals to their brains were also monitored by means of electronic signals. The sonar net which blanketed the lagoon beneath the surface of which the Soviet submarines, both Island Class and Scout, would dive when leaving, and from which they would surface when returning, could not be desensitized to the electronic emissions coming from the sharks, the emissions powered by the electro-chemical energy produced by the creatures’ brains and unable to be turned off. The emissions emanated from the sharks at a frequency which would duplicate the sonar shadow of an approaching enemy vessel and consequently activate the Soviet alarms and defensive systems.

For that reason—as Jason Darkwood had learned the hard way—there was a “tunnel” inside the sonar net through which the sharks were moved by their programmers, leading in and out of the lagoon.

Jason Darkwood, Sam Aldridge, and the others of the commando team sent to rescue this five-centuries-old Russian woman from her Russian captors hovered near the

No radio transmission could be trusted here and they huddled together now in a circle, their helmets touching, wings cocooning about them, the helmets able to sympathetically pick up the vibration of human speech and allowing them to confer, although the hollow sound of human speech heard this way was maddeningly strange, like voices heard while the ears were adjusting to the sound of an explosion and had automatically compensated by reducing volume level.

Jason Darkwood spoke. “The sharks travel through this area to leave the lagoon and to enter it again. The width of the ‘tunnel’—which is really just an open space within the Soviet defense grid—is about six feet wide as best we can estimate it. So—if you and a shark bump into one another, use his body position as your reference point and give yourself eighteen inches or less on either side of him as still being sonar-clear. If one of them attacks you, there is no advice I can give. Get out of its way if at all possible. Now this is just a hunch, but I would venture to say that the tight control on them while they travel back and forth through the tunnel is unpleasant for them—maybe gives them a headache.” He laughed. “But at any event, they probably want out of there quickly and would be little inclined to giving a fight. When I originally discovered this ‘tunnel’ I asked the same question you’re probably asking yourselves now: how do the Soviet technicians keep the sharks within the parameters of the tunnel? And the answer is simple. When the sharks stray from the tunnel and into the sensor net the sharks are given a painful sensation. When they reenter the ‘tunnel’, the pain is turned off and pleasure centers of their brains are stimulated. Any sharks we do encounter will probably be so well-trained by now, the last thing in the world they want is to stray into the sensor net and get the pain turned on. It’ll be up to us to stay cool if we bump into them. Any questions?”

Sam Aldridge spoke. “The Captain tells me we’re following this tunnel right up to two hundred yards from the

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intelligence data can tell. We follow Commander Darkwood—no matter what. Any questions?” There were none.

Without the vision-intensification capabilities of their helmets, seeing at this depth would have required the aid of artificial lighting, which could have betrayed them.

Darkwood tapped Sam Aldridge on the shoulder and spread his wings, starting into the invisible tunnel. His wingspan gave him a safe clearance of only a foot one either side and he kept dead center to the tunnel, the incoming sonar readout on his chest pack giving negative readings. If his wings or his flippers touched into the sensor net, the readout would go off the scale.

As Darkwood moved ahead, he hoped that didn’t happen ….

Alexeii Serovski stood beside the comrade marshal there at the height of the path leading down to the hydrofoil launch which would take him and the same six Elite Corps personnel he had detailed to accompany the Hero Marshal to the submarine. The Hero Marshal spoke. “Serovski, I am entrusting you with a delicate mission. I will confide to you freely that I am quite interested in a potential alliance with these new comrades. Yet, as a wise commander must, I have my trepidations. You must keep in mind that the ultimate goal of your mission is to bring back my wife, Major Tiemerovna. Ideally, alive. But, should something occur which would preclude this, then I wish her dead despite the fact that her death would forever deprive me of the pleasure I would derive from delivering her to death myself. Is that understood?”

“Yes, comrade marshal.”

The Hero Marshal smiled. “Good. Now—I have given the Colonel Feyedorovitch coordinates for what I have called neutral ground. I do not believe he quite understands the capabilities of our helicopter gunships, and that is excellent, all to the better. We will rendezvous …” And

he habitually wore on his left wrist. “We will rendezvous at a small island of some historical significance near the twenty-fifth parallel, Chinmen Tao. Although the level of the sea has risen, a portion of it remains above the water, but the depth surrounding it would likely be such as to preclude their submarines getting very close. Are you a student of history?”

Serovski thought for a second. “Comrade marshal— only insofar as such study may advance the cause of Communism.” Serovski wasn’t certain how the comrade marshal had taken that, but the comrade marshal continued to speak.

“In the American Presidential campaign of 1960, two small islands became focal points. One of them was named Matsu Tao, which quite literally means ‘ugly.’ The other is Chinmen Tao—it was then called Quemoy. If the final undoing of the forces of so-called democracy is to be negotiated, this seems like a fitting place. Be there in twenty-four hours. I have become, recently, very distressed with Colonel Antonovitch—his succumbing to the gambit of the Rourke family, his loss of my prisoners and my gas. I would like to be confident that a qualified replacement awaits, captain. Do I make myself clear?”

Serovski drew his shoulders back. “Yes, comrade marshal. I will neither fail you nor the Soviet people!”

The Hero Marshal smiled. “Just see to it that you don’t fail me and you will do well, Serovski. Very well.” The Hero Marshal turned and walked back up the path.

Serovski looked down toward the sea.

He would not fail the Hero Marshal or the Soviet people—or himself. He called to the six men who stood some distance away. “Follow me!” And he started along the path ….

Rectifying the colostomy had been neither as onerous nor as complicated as his own medical experience had caused him to predict. Utilizing a methodology which seemed to combine local anesthesia and accununcture. he

had been awake and felt no pain, yet had been aware of movement and able to follow with his own eyes, as he had requested, what was, to a physician of his training five centuries in the past, wizardry. A small incision, a specialized surgical instrument he had never seen before, and the use of something that looked more like a twentieth-century band-aid.

Remquist had told him, “This is synthetic tissue. Unlike the real thing, it cannot be rejected. There would have been no need for the bag at all if this hadn’t been emergency surgery. I appologize for that inconvenience, Doctor Rourke. But the snythetic tissue must be typed to your own and then cultured in a rapid-growth medium. You’ll have to see the lab where it’s done. I find it rather mundane, of course, but I’m certain you’ll find it fascinating. It is self-adhering and will grow together with your own tissue, and they will become as one. Six weeks from now, if I were to open you up again, I wouldn’t be able to tell where the artificial had been and the real was without consulting my surgical diagrams and X-ray scans. I’d keep off rough food for a few days—sometimes these operations can cause a bit of, shall we say, over-enthusiastic response in the GI track. And, of course, you should rest for a few more days. Other than that …” And Remquist, the unabashed doer of wonders and miracles, had only smiled.

John Rourke sat in the chair from which Ellen, the pretty black nurse, had helped him to stand. The IV was still in his left arm. His Rolex was on the table near his chair beside a glass of fruit juice. He sipped at the fruit juice and looked at his watch. He pushed the call button for the nurse, and after a few moments Ellen came in again. “You work every shift?”

“Sometimes you get a special patient—you know how that is. What can I do for you? Wanna run the mile today?”

“Tell President Fellows that he seemed eager for information. I’m eager for it too and I’d like to see him.”

And she laughed.

John Rourke didn’t laugh. “Get the hospital administrator to do it.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“No—I’m not.”

Ellen dug her hands into her uniform pockets, flaring out the skirt a little as she seemed to balance her decision and her body on the balls of her feet. Then she very quietly said, “You’re the doctor,” and walked from the room ….

Michael Rourke, stripped to his underpants, pushed his head above the surface. It was choppy, the wind that touched his skin like a finger of ice. The Soviet submarine was dead ahead and amidships there was a ladder—he imagined for use with the launch, because the ladder fed into an open berth of approximately the same size as the hydryfoil launch. He saw movement on the foredeck and gulped air, then tucked down.

With his knife, Michael had cut holes into the duffel bag so it would not hold water, then used the uniform belt from his stolen uniform (the rest of which he had buried in the sand near where he had entered the water) to make a drag for the perforated bag. Because of its weight, the bag compensated naturally for its own buoyancy and hung almost dead in the water beneath him, secured cross-body as he swam now, nearing the dark shape of the Soviet submarine’s hull, his knife in his right fist clenched tight.

He had found himself thinking of Maria Leuden and of Annie and of his mother and of Paul—that he would never see any of them again. But what recriminations he had felt for the selfish decision to satisfy his own desire for vengeance against the man responsible for the death of his wife and child had vanished once he had seen the submarine and realized that here might be the one clue to his father’s and Natalia’s whereabouts. His father had risked life and limb often enough for him.

Tt was time for renavment. althouch full renavment was

something he could never accomplish and, strangely, would never want to. His father was unique and no one could match him. Once he had realized that and accepted that, Michael knew, he had felt better about both his father and himself.