Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (45 page)

Annie walked away, taking out her “white flag” again and slinging her M-16 forward and trying to figure a way in which she could secure the slip to the flash-hider without ruining it. She finally bunched up the edge of the garment at the waist and pushed enough of it through the sling between the swivel and the buckle that she could tie a loose knot to keep it from pulling out.

There was PA capability on the truck Maria and Michael had used, and Annie climbed into the truck cab and turned the key to power the radio, then hit the PA switch. She spoke into the microphone. “This is Annie Rourke Rubenstein, the daughter of John Rourke. My father has decided that I should represent the Rourke family and other forces gathered here woman to woman in a personal

meeting with you under the white flag of truce. My flag will be tied near the muzzle of my rifle. I’m coming down and will meet you halfway between our respective positions.”

She cut the PA switch and the power, and started down out of the truck. If she could keep alive the idea that her father was present, it might buy still more time. She doubted that there were many among Karamatsov’s forces who wished to tangle with her daddy personally.

She saw Maria, standing next to Rolvaag, smiled at them, and heard Maria’s shouted stage whisper, “Good luck, Annie.”

She called back, “Cover me, guys.” And she started down the footpath into the valley.

The wind was blowing colder all the time and, although her slip hadn’t been warm, changing the layering of her clothing had not helped. She kept walking, the M-16’s butt against her right hip the way some women would carry a baby, the slip, her white flag, blowing in the breeze near its muzzle.

And she could see this Captain Svetlana Grubaszikova moving up the hillside now, a more traditional white flag in hand. The woman wore black battle-dress utilities and a heavy parka over them and was not visibly armed, although Annie felt the woman most certainly would be armed, visibly or not.

Annie picked her way down some loose rocks and kept walking.

The Russian woman walked with a stride as broad as a man’s. Annie increased the length of her stride.

At a point roughly equidistant between the hillside defenders and the valley forces, Annie Rubenstein stopped. She kept the M-16 in her right fist, balanced against her right hip, her underwear blowing in the breeze, her thumb beside the selector to lever it into full-auto mode.

The Russian captain was still coming.

Annie smiled.

The Russian woman stnnned ahont two vards HAIOW h»r.

“Your English is very good,” Annie told her. “Thank you, Miss Rourke.”

“Mrs. Rubenstein. I married my father’s best friend.” “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. It was a small ceremony, but I had a lovely dress.”

“I am sorry that I was unable to attend.”

“Well, the guest list was rather small, really. What can I do for you?”

The Russian woman smiled. Her teeth were very white but very uneven. She could have been pretty if her dark brown hair wasn’t cut as short as a man’s and the wire-rimmed glasses she wore had highlighted rather than distorted the color of her blue eyes. “I have come to ask for the obvious.”

“Our consideration for your people when you surrender? Well, of course we’ll abide by all the accepted rules of war. Funny, though, I thought gas had been outlawed.”

The Russian captain actually laughed. Not a good sign, Annie thought. “I came to ask for your surrender. I will guarantee nothing except that you will not be immediately executed.”

“That’s nice of you—gosh. You listen, lady—we have the gas and if the gas gets out, maybe you and your friends down there will be immune but the rest of Karamatsov’s army won’t be.”

“The forces of the Soviet people under the leadership of

the Hero Marshal are well out of effective range of the »»

gas.

“Bullshit, captain.”

“You are behaving like an irresponsible child, you bitch.”

“Better than being a dyke.”

“I am not familiar with this word.”

“You and your girls down there—have good times every night, do you?”

“I will personally enjoying showing you.

Annie grinned. “I bet you would, too—but I’m happy being a woman and don’t have to play games being

something else. And as for your surrender terms, why don’t you shove ‘em up your ass if it isn’t too crowded there?” “You will die.”

“That’s the best alternative you’ve offered. But you remember, lady captain, what happens if that gas does leak and a nice big cloud of it drifts over your dumb-ass Hero Marshal’s army and they come after you and kill you and your finger friends, huh? Talk over?”

“Talk is over.”

“Cheer up—maybe your period will start,” and Annie Rourke turned on her heel and walked back up the hill. She was aware of two things. First, she could easily be shot in the back. Second, if her father or mother-—or husband—had heard the way she had talked, despite her age they would have washed out her mouth with soap.

There were always risks in war.

Paul Rubenstein, his clothes still wet, his weapons retrieved from the rocks where he had stashed them in the vain hope of boarding the Soviet submarine, scrambled over the rocks and along the high ground near the sea, the submarine long since’ vanished beneath the waves. All hope had vanished as well, hope of rescuing Michael or John or Natalia.

It was up to him, now. Up to him, and with Annie’s help he would continue the fight and someday … Paul Rubenstein stared down toward Karamatsov’s encampment. “Someday—and real soon,” he whispered.

He looked around.

Two Soviet soldiers were climbing up onto the rise, both of them holding hands. Paul swung the Schmeisser forward and the two men released hands and went for their assault rifles. Paul Rubenstein’s left hand swept back the German MP-40’s bolt and his right first finger touched the trigger. Two perfect three-round bursts, cutting down both men.

He knew he should run, but he stood there for a moment and thought about John Rourke teaching him how to use the Schmeisser, telling him to recite the words “trigger control” each time he fired it.

And then he ran because the sound of gunfire would have traveled down to the camp and in minutes the two dead men would be found and then everyone would be chasing after him.

And as he ran, he thought of the line from the Robert

Frost poem, about ‘promises to keep’… .

Michael Rourke’s head felt as if it would explode and he opened his eyes to try to find out why, and very suddenly he knew why. He was still naked except for his shorts, and his wrists were tied in front of him with some sort of plastic cord. He pulled at the cord and only succeeded in making his wrists hurt.

“Screwed up good this time,” he said aloud as he sat up. He was on a bare floor, and there was some sort of blue light in the open doorway of what otherwise seemed like a cell.

He remembered the fight on the deck and he realized what the odd pistols were—dart guns of some type which had put him to sleep. As he tried to stand, he felt a sudden wave of nausea and the headache was no longer a headache but a pain unlike anything he had ever known, and he fell back… .

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had been given her own clothes to wear, female guards observing her carefully as she had changed from the Soviet uniform and been ushered to a shower stall. There had been soap and shampoo awaiting her, and she realized that there was no way of utilizing either the shower head or a faucet handle as a weapon and there was nothing from which to hang herself with any efficiency, so she had cleaned her body and cleaned her hair. A brush and comb had been given to her, and she had used them to get her almost black hair into some semblance of order. Then she had removed the robe that had been given her to use and dressed in her own clothes.

Inside herself, as she zipped the black jumpsuit up the front, she knew why. Her husband or his emissary would soon be arriving. She sat on the end of a plastic bench and pulled on her boots, and as she did the fingers of her left hand felt the interior of the left boot’s outside seam. The

single-edged, German plastic razor blade was still in place. The question now was to get at it and have sufficient time to utilize it to open an artery. A vein would be too slow. …

John Rourke had not really felt up to walking, but had decided that he must. The ordnance expert had felt confident that he could duplicate the 185-grain Federal .45 ACP hollow-point load in limited quantity. Conventional priming compound could be formulated quickly enough, and the cases would have to be hand-cut to proper length, and there had been many other problems he had foreseen and some he declared he could not foresee, but he had assured John Rourke that acceptable ammunition would be fabricated by morning. He had not seen the urgency, but when Rourke had insisted, the President of Mid-Wake had insisted as well. The ordnance expert had also pledged that he would provide the nylon cord Rourke needed to rewrap the handle of the Crain knife.

Rourke stood on the balcony of the hospital room and stared out across the yellow sphere at the end of the yellow tentacle. There was nothing on the far side of the hospital but the wall of the sphere, which was really more a dome than a sphere. He had been able to see the sea very faintly. But from here, he could see the hospital grounds, schools, some living space. A young man and a woman walked hand in hand several floors beneath him. It was the end of the day, although the light was unchanged. It was always daylight there in this under-siege world of the future. He methodically rewrapped the handle of his knife.

He thought back to the last exchange with Jacob Fellows. “Just what do you think you could accomplish that my people cannot, Doctor Rourke?”

“No slight intended to your people, and you can’t know how sincerely I wish them success in their endeavor. But as you told me a moment ago yourself, if they haven’t returned by morning, chances are slim that the mission

has gone as planned. Putting it another way, your Russian enemies are going to use Natalia Tiemerovna as a bargaining chip with my Russian enemies. And if an alliance between Karamatsov and your enemies comes to pass, we may not have a world left. For everyone’s interests, Natalia has to be gotten out before that alliance can be effected, before she can be handed over to her husband, Karamatsov. You don’t know what he would do to her. I do. If your mission doesn’t work, 111 go after her. I’m feeling stronger by the hour. By tomorrow, I’ll be in decent enough shape to move around reasonably well. By the next day when we’d reach the Russian domes, I’ll be fit enough to fight.”

“You cannot leave here without a vessel, Doctor Rourke,” Fellows had said after a moment. “I’m sorry, but you know that.”

“And if you don’t help me, you should order your people to kill me now, because I’m going with your blessing or without it. There’s no choice for me.”

Fellows had left the room, not responding.

John Rourke still worked at rewinding the handle of his knife. Both the Life Support System X and the A.G. Russell Sting IA had been given excellent attention, oiled, their edges untouched, just as he had preferred. Sharpening gear had been provided for him, but he would touch up the edges of the knives after he finished rewinding the handle of the Crain knife.

His guns had not been returned, the ordnance man saying that they had been stripped, cleaned, and reassembled and would be needed in order to test the ammunition for functional reliability. The only other .45s at Mid-Wake were the few in the hands of private arms collectors and a few more in the Museum of American Culture, none of these latter having been fired for centuries.

If the ordnance man blew up his Detonics .45s, admittedly a difficult task, he would throttle the man, good intentions notwithstanding. It was possible the Germans could hand-make duplicates of the guns for him, but not without the orinHnals in work from, and somehow it

wouldn’t be the same.

After the betrayal in Latin America so long ago that had resulted in his quitting the Company and turning to the private pursuits of teaching and writing about survivalism and weapons training, he had begun carrying the little guns. He had never found anything he liked better. The Beretta 92F military pistols, such as his son habitually carried, the various other guns he respected in the world, like the Browning High Power Paul Rubenstein carried— these had been fine guns, like the Sigs, the Warmers, the Colts, but he had never found semi-automatic pistols more to his liking than these little .45s. The Python was an excellent revolver, despite the fact that its hand-fitted action gave it a delicacy that some eschewed for rugged use in the field. But he had learned to completely gunsmith the revolver and could see to any problems it might have. Natalia’s Metalife Custom L-Frame Smith & Wessons—world-class revolvers to be sure. And then there was the excellent hand-crafted Trapper Scorpion .45 Sarah carried. But his little Detonics .45s … As soon as he got them back and some ammo to use in them, he would be gone from this place, one way or the other… .

Jason Darkwood, Sam Aldridge, and the others had reached the access tunnel leading beneath the military command complex. “If I’d known this tunnel was here, it would have helped Rourke get to her,” Aldridge whispered.

They crouched in a nest of pipes and valves at the juncture of two intersecting tunnels, the height a scant three feet, and roughly the same width. To the left, the tunnel went on beneath the People’s Institute for Marine Studies, and to the right, beneath the passage which connected the main domes to the smaller dome which was the headquarters of the government and the military high command. “Rourke never would have made it if you had the time of day right. Once we enter this tunnel,” Darkwood advised, “the only way out is directly beneath

the office complex and we’ll wind up right in the detention area. They keep to a diurnal circadian rhythm just like we do, which means we’ll be hitting them at about two o’clock in the morning according to their body clocks and the guard shift should be lighter and the guys on guard should be a little less alert. Rourke would have hit them when the shifts were heavier. And there are a dozen of us and there was only one of him. No matter how good he is, he would have bought the farm.”