Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain (8 page)

The yellow station was coming up. Natalia …

Wind sheer, he thought they called it, but whatever it was the wind was suddenly there and the German helicopter gunship was no longer under his control, banking hard to starboard, nose down, a sickening roar out of the rotor blades overhead, the gunship

vibrating, shaking, trembling—like his hands. Paul Rubenstein tried to remember what John had told him. He didn’t know if he remembered or was guessing, and there wasn’t time to think.

He gave the gunship full power, pulling back on the throttle, trying to bring up the nose… .

The klaxon stopped.

John Rourke’s hands froze over the wires. In the curiously accented Russian of the Soviet domed city under the ocean, a pre-recorded voice—female—an^ nounced, “Launch imminent. Launch imminent. Evacuate immediate launch area. Seal the bunker. Launch imminent.”

“Shit,” John Rourke snarled.

The destruct system was almost wired into the launch system. Almost.

A length of blue wire traveled now from the destruct controls into the launch controls.

To activate the destruct sequence, he had to fool the timer.

To his feet, his legs and back cramping from having been crouched and bent so long, his fingertips still tingling from the electric shock.

His eyes found the timer readout; time until launch was ninety-three seconds.

No time to unscrew the housing around the timer, Rourke drew the Crain LS-X knife from the sheath at his hip and used the butt cap like a hammer, pounding out the housing, shattering the timer readout as he did, counting the seconds in his head now.

With the pliers, he peeled back more of the housing around the timer.

He dropped to his knees, climbing back behind the access opening to reach the blue wire. He. lifted it, careful not to jerk it and disconnect it where he had bridged it.

“Eighty-seven seconds,” John Rourke said under his breath.

The female voice was still reciting the warning. He fished the blue wire upward, toward the timer housing.

An arc of electricity. John Rourke fell back.

His head slammed against the flange for the panel. He saw stars, shook his head to clear it.

To his knees, regrasping the blue wire. He started fishing it upward again… .

In the distance, there was a shaft of yellow light and Paul Rubenstein could see smoke emanating from the tail sections of missiles.

Where was John Rourke?

As slowly as he could, he started to maneuver the gunship downward, lest he lose control in the next gust of wind… .

Annie ran across the grassy area fronting the hospital, men and women in military uniforms and hospital uniforms carrying patients on stretchers. The tie which closed her robe came undone, but there was no time to retie it. She ran.

A woman in white nurse’s uniform and cap was directing human traffic from the head of the steps. Annie shouted toward her as she ran. “Where is Major Tiemerovna?” The woman turned, looked astonished to see her. And Annie recognized her, the charge nurse from Natalia’s floor. “Where’s Natalia Tiemerovna? Have you gotten her out yet?”

The nurse ran down the steps, meeting Annie at

their center. “Thank God you’ve come. The German officer. He’s trying to get her out of the room. She came out of the coma when the alarm was sounded. I don’t know how. She had all those sedatives—” “What’s happening?”

“She grabbed an orderly. He was about to give her an injection. Somehow, she got hold of his trouser belt and she has it around his neck. She’s telling everybody to stand back or she’ll kill him. She’s laughing and crying at the same time. The German is — ” Already, Annie was running past her, up the steps. “The German officer is trying to reason with her! But she won’t listen. We have to finish the evacuation and we—” Annie couldn’t hear the nurse any longer over the sounds of the evacuation, over the blaring of the recorded message, over the heaviness of her own breathing… .

John Rourke connected the blue wire into the timer, then advanced the timer by ten seconds.

Twenty-six remained to launch of the missiles.

Sixteen seconds until the destruct mechanism detonated.

He hoped.

He left the M-16, the arctic gloves, more of both aboard the aircraft. If he didn’t reach the aircraft, he’d never need anything again. He ran, reaching the doorway.

Rourke stopped. He looked back.

On the counter beside the control panel was his knife.

“Dammit,” Rourke rasped. He ran back, grabbing up the knife, no time to sheath it, running for the bunker doorway now, into the cold, slipping, catching himself, counting in his head as the seconds ticked away. “… nine … eight …”

Overhead, almost as soft as an imagining under the howling of the wind, he heard it. He looked up, waving the knife in his hand as he ran.

Paul. The helicopter.

“… six… five …”

The helicopter was coming in, sweeping over the fenceline, slipping toward him. He had the knife sheathed.

“… four … three …”

John Rourke hunched his shoulders, ducking his head, throwing himself onto the port side float, shouting to Paul, hammering his fists against the fuselage. “Take her up! Take her up now!”

The helicopter lurched, lifted.

“… one-“

It came like the crackling of thunder, the vapors rising from the engines which would propel the missiles skyward forming a cloud around them, swirling cyclon-ically in the helicopter’s downdraft, a buzzer sounding, ringing, all around the aircraft, pulsing, and then the buzzer lost in the rumble and crackle, the ground on all four sides of the missile complex seeming to buckle, fire belching skyward, John Rourke turning his face away, the helicopter lurching, flames visible reflected off the chin bubble.

The winds tore at him, numbing him, the heat up-draft stifling him. Rourke held his breath and looked down.

Rippling outward from the missile complex in four directions the explosions came, the center of the small island seeming to collapse.

One of the missiles seemed to rise from its launching pad, then another.

John Rourke watched them, powerless.

The center of the compound seemed to drop, into the flames of the explosions, the missiles toppling one by one, the flames ricking upward toward the gunship, Rourke’s numbed hands clawed into the helicopters floats.

Annie tied her robe as she walked into the room.

Otto Hammerschmidt, looking as if he were about to keel over from pain or exhaustion, sat on a plastic chair near the foot of the bed.

Natalia stood, on top of the bed, back to the wall, half kneeling in front of her, a black man of about Annie’s own age, terror in his eyes, hands outstretched before him, a webbed belt twisted around his head like a noose, its end held in Natalia’s upraised left hand, her right hand at his chin, ready to snap the neck.

Natalia’s hospital gown was half off her body, her left shoulder completely bare, the hem of the gown nearly up to her crotch.

There was a look in her bright blue eyes Annie had never seen there before. Panic.

“Natalia,” Annie almost whispered.

Otto Hammerschmidt looked up, turned around. “Frau Rubenstein!”

“Otto. It’ll be all right. How are you?”

“I am—I will be all right.” But he sounded as if he were about to pass out.

Annie focused on Natalia’s face. “Natalia. It’s me. Annie. And Otto’s here, too. That man. He wasn’t trying to

hurt you. He was trying to help you.”

“Don’t move!” And Natalia’s right hand flicked the orderly’s chin upward, the man’s eyes bulging under the strain, and the webbed belt went tighter.

Annie licked her lips. “Wait a minute, Natalia. You know me, don’t you? I mean, we’re friends. Good friends.”

Natalia said nothing.

Her hair needed combing. She wore no make-up. But she was still so very beautiful.

Annie kept talking as she took a step forward, only then realizing that somewhere along the way she’d lost the slipper from her right foot, the floor cold against her bare skin. The female voice of the recorded message droned on about evacuation. “If you kill this man, it would be a waste, Natalia.” She took another step. “He’s on our side. We’re here at Mid-Wake, together. You’ve been very sick. When you spoke to me,” and she took another step, “those were almost the first words you’ve said in a long time. Daddy’ll be so happy to—”

And Natalia’s eyes went wider than they were and her fingers tensed.

Annie dove toward her, hitting Natalia, body slamming her into the wall, Annie’s hands closing over Natalia’s right forearm to keep Natalia from breaking the orderly’s neck.

They fell, all three of them, rolling over the side of the bed, Annie realizing for a split second that her clothes were up to her hips. There was no time to care. Natalia’s right hand flashed upward and Annie dodged her head right, the heel of Natalia’s hand skating over Annie’s left cheek.

Otto Hammerschmidt was suddenly in between them. Otto’s left fist arced upward, the knuckles tipping against the base of Natalia’s jaw and driving her head up and back.

Natalia’s eyes closed as her head slumped.

“Gott in Himmel!” Otto whispered, falling to his knees.

There was coughing. Annie crawled over Natalia, her fingers working to open the belt, the orderly choking to death. “Calm down-it’ll be all right.”

The two Shore Patrol officers raced into the room, their pistols in their hands, “Freeze!”

Annie looked up at them as she freed the orderly’s neck from his belt. There was a lot of coughing. The female Navy cops were still holding their pistols.

Annie rocked back on her haunches and leaned against the side of the bed. “Be serious, girls, huh?”

And she realized for the first time that somewhere between when she dove for Natalia and now, the impersonal female voice had stopped broadcasting the warning. Now it was a man’s voice, just as impersonal. “The ALL CLEAR is given. Secure from emergency status. The crisis is past. The ALL CLEAR is given. Secure from …”

They were warm inside. He was cold. But he knew their secret. Eight of his men had died that he could know this secret, but their names would be sung among the names of heroes of the Reich.

Damien Rausch huddled within the thermal emergency blanket from his kit. He had to stay where he was. Soviet aircraft made periodic patrols, the German forces under the command of the traitorous Wolfgang Mann prowled the area near the Retreat of this John Rourke. There would be more of them in the night sky, more of them going to Eden.

He was alone here. But if Kurinami died, at least his mission would be complete. But whether the meddlesome Japanese died or not, the secret of how to enter the Retreat was his. Granted, no combination for the massive vault doors which formed the Retreat’s inner defense, but enough explosives would take care of the doors.

The important thing was that he knew where, how to penetrate the natural granite doors which formed the outer entrance. Simply by balancing rocks. He had read of ancient tombs which were accessed in such a fashion. And despite the sub-freezing temperatures, Rausch smiled.

This Retreat of Herr Doctor John Thomas Rourke would be a tomb.

With this knowledge, he controlled Christopher Dodd, commander of the Eden Project, more surely than with any number of men and guns. Dodd wanted power. If Kurinami had been an obstacle to that, then Rourke was much more. But with the ability to kill Rourke while he was at his most vulnerable, kill Rourke and his entire loathsome family, Dodd would be a puppet to manipulate.

Damien Rausch, numbing with the cold, would survive to restore the Reich.

John Rourke would die for having deposed the leader, having allied himself with the cowardly weakling Dieter Bern against the glorious historic destiny of Nazism.

And then there would be a world like mankind had never before known.

The thought of it warmed him.

Sarah Rourke zipped into the German field parka, the garment radiating cold just touching it. But she told herself that was imagination.

Two of Colonel Mann’s commandos carried Akiro Kurinami between them, Kurinami sedated, asleep, but his head tossing on the stretcher. What was he still afraid of? The gunshot wound, exhaustion and exposure, the broken rib. It might have penetrated his left lung, but there was no way to tell here. For a moment she smiled. John didn’t have an X-ray machine. He had everything else at the Retreat.

Perhaps Kurinami was reliving the ordeal he must have suffered just in reaching the Retreat, or of the attack on his life. Eight men, but all of them dead now. Why had he said the German word for no? Over and over again until the medication took effect and he slept.

The secret of the Retreat was in good hands. Kurinami and Halverson, now Colonel Mann and a few of his trusted commandos knew its location. She would as soon doubt Wolfgang Mann’s intentions as her own.

“Sarah?”

She looked away from Kurinami. Wolfgang Mann, already clad for the frigid outside, stood at the height of the three steps overlooking the Great Room from beside the main entrance.

“Just a minute, Wolf.” She walked the three steps up from the Great Room and entered the storage area. It was here where the controls for water heating and other of the Retreat’s niceties were placed.

She killed the master switch for the water heaters, other switches, the Retreat on minimal power as it always was when it was to be uninhabited for any length of time. Overhead lighting, the red lights in the antechamber beyond the interior entrance, selected wall outlets which ran liquid crystal diode clocks and the like, but everything else off.

She noticed with some interest that the stores of supplies at the Retreat had grown considerably, that thanks to the Germans and their desire to accommodate John’s every desire. Everything from ammunition made to duplicate the Federal cartridges he always preferred to his favorite shampoo to boots and shirts, toilet paper, motor oil (synthetic), cigars, all the things the Retreat could eventually run out of were here in greater quantity than ever before.