Survivalist - 18 - The Struggle (12 page)

“What the heck’s goin’ on? Why the smoke?” Paul Rubenstein ruminated.

John Rourke couldn’t resist it. “Well, where there’s smoke, as they say. No. Good question, Paul. If it were only that Island Class Soviet submarine, I’d say they were stopping for some more or less mundane purpose. But the smoke in the middle of the island makes it look like something else. I’ll take the controls—we’re going in. I’m banking on their sensing equipment all being sea-oriented. If that is the case, the higher altitude we come in at, the less chance we’ll be spotted. Then we

drop altitude over the center of the island.”

“You’ve got the stick,” Paul told him, Rourke taking control. “I’ll get our gear ready.”

John Rourke only nodded. Time could not be wasted, but if the Island Classer were in combat, their only possible opponents would be from Mid-Wake. And that meant a chance to contact Mid-Wake, more rapidly, more surely. If not— And his eyes squinted toward the hulking black shape of the submarine.

Rourke started the German gunship climbing. He could run with silenced rotors once they were over the island in the event the Island Classer had put a party ashore. If the Island Classer hadn’t, what was the origin of the smoke? He glanced aft. Paul Rubenstein was checking the M-16s.

The actual insertion of the needle was done by Lance Corporal Lannigan, Aldridge ordering him to. Jason Darkwood was relieved that no one had expected him to do it. Few things made him feel squeamish, but watching a hypodermic injection was unfortunately one of them. Since the Marine Spetznas Sergeant was the ranking man, he was the logical place to start. As with many truth drugs, it was necessary to supplement the dosage of the drug as the interrogation progressed, all of this rather subjective. Lannigan was the logical man for the detail since he was studying pharmacology and planned to pursue a career in pharmacy after his stint in the Corps. The drug used for special operations such as this where an enemy was interrogated in the field was identical to the most popular of the Soviet truth serums, Mid-Wake official reasoning here quite sound, Darkwood had always thought. It was possible that any truth serum Mid-Wake medical scientists might independently devise could be compromised. Then it would be a simple matter for Soviet

personnel habitually given access to sensitive information to be conditioned against the effects of such a drug. But the Russians would never condition their own people against their own truth drug. Such just didn’t happen in a police state. And, so far, the Soviets hadn’t gotten wise to the fact that the Americans at Mid-Wake were using that drug’s identical duplicate.

Lannigan removed the needle from the intravenous receptacle he had installed. But Jason Darkwood turned around too soon, seeing it, and his stomach started to go. Darkwood looked skyward to take his eyes away from the scene. And he caught a glimpse of a dark shape against the gray clouds just passing out of sight over the trees. “Either the Russians have secretly been growing gigantic birds, or this is the last refuge of the prehistoric pterodactyl or one of those helicopter things just passed over our heads.”

“Right,” Sam Aldridge laughed. “We would have heard it. Remember those ones before? We heard those. Naw— And anyway, only the surface-based Russians—aww shit.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Darkwood nodded to his friend.

“The Spetznas Sergeant should be ready to talk in—” The young Marine consulted his watch. “Just about another ten or fifteen seconds, sir,” Lannigan said.

Darkwood looked back. Maybe the Marine Spetznas Sergeant would have some exceedingly interesting things to say…

There was a ridge leading from the island highlands and, near to the height of the ridge, the gray smoke still rose. The search for a suitable landing area had taken considerably longer than Rourke had wanted, but the wind was increasing, making precise maneuvering more difficult and visibility was dropping, the storm

intensifying. At last an opening in the snow-splotched tree canopy presented itself and Rourke brought the gunship in, less than a mile from the mysterious smoke, landing in a shoaled area through which a wide, shallow stream ran. Not the best landing site, but adequate. Snow stuck to the ground in many areas and the broad bright-green-leafed tropical foliage weighed heavily downward under its weight, the high winds above the forest canopy fell as occasional strong gusts on the ground.

“You stick with the machine,” John Rourke told Paul Rubenstein, Rourke beginning to slip into his coat beside the opened fuselage door.

“Wait a minute,” the younger man said. “Fine. You taught me how to keep the helicopter on course in level flight. I don’t know how to get one of these off the ground with any degree of reliability, let alone land it. Remember the last time I took a helicopter up?”;

Paul had done a ridiculously brave thing, taking a gunship airborne to provide cover against Soviet helicopters as they attacked the returning Eden Project shuttles. And, as a result, Paul nearly died. John Rourke felt a smile cross his lips, despite almost losing his best friend. Sometimes Rourke thought his muscles still ached from getting Paul out of the burning helicopter. “You suggest, then?”

“Either we both go and set the remote defenses to keep tabs on the chopper or just I go by myself.”

Rourke considered Paul’s words for a moment. Then, almost thinking out loud, said, “Yes, but if we set the remote defenses, and someone actually does arrive to tamper with the chopper, the wrong kind of tampering could cause the machine to explode and we could be stranded here with no way to continue the search for Annie and Natalia and Otto. Logic dictates you go alone.” Rourke shrugged out of his parka, helping Paul Rubenstein to start gearing up.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna moved restlessly in her drug-induced sleep. Annie Rourke Rubenstein watched her. There was nothing else to do, all the medical supplies that might be needed if there were enemy action about the Mid-Wake submarine checked, ready, the Reagan “steaming” toward Mid-Wake. She considered that. “Steaming” was probably still correct, because presumably the nuclear power was used to generate steam, the steam then turning the screws which propelled the vessel along beneath the waves-She felt better in the borrowed skirt and shirt, Doctor Margaret Barrow close enough to her in body configuration that the fit was good. But skirts were so short here, the uniform skirt ending just below the knee.

She studied her legs beneath the hem of her skirt. She guessed they were pretty. Paul had told her they were. And, as she had moved through the submarine earlier, when Commander Sebastian, the First Officer, had taken her for a cup of coffee, explained what was going on, she had noticed some of the men of the ship’s company looking at her.

Her hair was considerably longer than that of any of the women aboard the Reagan, the women of the bridge crew “in regs” as Margaret Barrow put it. But even Margaret Barrow’s hair, longer than that of the other women, was comparatively short. She wondered if that were the style all over Mid-Wake or just in the military. She had gone to Mid-Wake very briefly, aboard a submarine just like this. After her father had returned there, he announced that he had been diagnosed as having radiation-induced thyroid cancer (her heart had gone to her mouth), but that the medical arts at Mid-Wake had progressed to the point where such cancers were wholly curable and easily so. With her mother, her father, and Paul accompanying, she had traveled to Mid-Wake, staring through the video projection as though it were a window to the sea because it looked just like that. Paul, and Michael and Natalia, too, of course, had all been checked earlier, given a clean bill of health. Her own examination— barely noticeable as an examination at all—had shown her in perfect health, as were her mother and the baby. As a result of the examination, it was learned coincidentally that the child her mother carried would be a boy.

Her father still referred to the child sexlessly— neither he nor her mother had ever believed in finding out before delivery, an option available more or less even when she—Annie—and her brother Michael were still to be born.

Her eyes had returned to Natalia and still watched her. She was very beautiful, even ill as she was. Annie had brushed out Natalia’s hair, arranged it as Natalia usually did herself. The lids of Natalia’s eyes fluttered and there was a momentary glimpse of her dark, pansy-blue eyes. The pupils were dilated. -

“What’s the matter?”

Annie looked up, momentarily startled. It was Doctor Barrow. “Nothing, Maggie. I just didn’t hear you come in.”

“Worried about your friend?” Maggie Barrow smiled, digging her hands into the side pockets of her lab coat, leaning back, then sitting on the edge of a hospital gurney, crossing her legs, her skirt shooting up half the length of her thighs. “I wish I could say there was something more we could do to help Major Tiemerovna, but I can’t think of anything that can be done here.”

“She’s had such a sad life.”

Maggie Barrow nodded, sympathetically. “I understood from a brief conversation with your father once that you’re a sensitive.”

At Mid-Wake, after the physical examination, they had asked her to indulge in what amounted to game playing with a computer monitor, a half dozen people she was barely introduced to trotted past her. “I’m not a mind reader. No. It’s just that with people I know, I care about—and for some reason very strongly with Natalia—I can sometimes see what they see, feel what they feel, sense danger. Or sometimes I’ll dream, and in the dream I’ll see what’s happening. I think as it’s happening. There’s never been any desire to check it out anymore, even if there’d been the time.”

“You see things happening in dreams?”

“Uh-huh. But only if it’s something that involves very strong emotions. I can’t read cards— Well, I can, but only with people I know.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie Barrow asked.

Annie stood up, smoothed her skirt along her thighs. “I mean, I can’t sit down with somebody I don’t know and have them turn cards over and not show them to me but just read what they are through them seeing the cards. But, I could do that with somebody I’m close to.

Like sometimes it’s terrible, you know?” “Why?”

Annie smiled. “Paul—my husband. I have to force myself not to read his thoughts, sometimes. I mean, sometimes 111 just be sitting there and he’s near me and I’m not really thinking about anything and then suddenly I know what he’s thinking and I force myself not to because it’s like looking in somebody’s bedroom or something.”

“And you can do this with Major Tiemerovna?”

“It’s like we can communicate without talking. It’s different with her. There was this man—he was a traitor. He was part of the Eden Project but he was a traitor. And he kidnapped me. And I escaped from him—I, ahh—I killed him. But I learned how I should do it from going into Natalia’s mind with my mind. It scared the crap out of me,” Annie Rubenstein laughed. “But he scared me more. So, I did it. I went in—I really—ahh—”

“How do you mean ‘went in*?”

“Just what I said. I talked to Natalia about it afterward. And, for some reason she didn’t understand at the time, she just started thinking about this time she had been captured by these revolutionaries or something and they were going to kill her but first one of them was going to rape her. Well, I learned from her experience. He was—ahh’—and when he tried, this man Blackburn,” and Annie shuddered thinking of it. “I stabbed him. Just like Natalia did.”

Margaret Barrow’s hands clutched at the hem of her skirt as she uncrossed her legs, pulling it down nearer to her knees, her shoulders hunching. “That’s scary.”

“Yeah. I know.” There was something in Maggie’s eyes, beyond being scared, Annie Rubenstein thought. But it was only that, a thought.

“Are you afraid? I mean, afraid of what you can do?”

“Sometimes. I’m just afraid I’ll get better at it. And that scares me to death,” Annie told her honestly.

“What’s Major Tiemerovna thinking now?”

Annie licked her lips, swallowed. “Ahh—” She turned around, feet and legs together, feeling suddenly very cold. And she looked at Natalia. “I don’t know if I should—ahh—”

“Trust me,” Maggie Barrow prodded. “I’ve got an idea. But try this, okay?”

Annie licked her lips again and nodded. She closed her eyes. She thought about Natalia, picturing Natalia in her mind, picturing what Natalia could be thinking about. Inside herself, Annie saw her father’s face. It kept appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing, in one place, then another place, out of darkness and out of fire. He was wearing his sunglasses, the dark-lenses aviator-style glasses he wore so frequently because he was very light-sensitive. She saw his face more clearly now, and reflected in the glasses—“No—no!”

Annie Rubenstein fell to her knees, the floor cold feeling through her stockings, her arms hugged tight to her chest. And she felt Maggie Barrow’s hands on her shoulders, felt her kneeling beside her. “Annie?”

“I saw—saw inside—inside Natalia’s dreams.”

“Was it—I mean—”

“In my father’s glasses. I saw—” Everything was moving around her and she felt cold and hot all at the same time and when she opened her eyes everything looked green for an instant and then—

Paul Rubenstein dropped to a crouch along the side of the naturally formed trail on the ridgeline. A few hundred yards back, he had discovered footprints and other markings in the snow and on the brush, that a group of men in military gear had passed this way. They seemed not very good at concealing their passage, nor the best woodsmen, either. He backtracked them for a hundred yards or so toward the higher ground above the ridgeline. At times, it seemed evident that when two paths of travel presented themselves, both on surface analysis seeming equal but one the clear choice of the experienced outdoorsman, more often than not the poorer choice was chosen. Paul Rubenstein recognized the look, remembering how comparatively short a time ago—despite the fact that an objective five centuries had passed—he had been grossly inexperienced. He had learned quickly because he had the best teacher and because it was either learn or die. These men whose trail he now paralleled would learn quickly, too—or die.