Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend (3 page)

John Rourke smiled at his best friend. “Trigger control.” It was the only thing John Rourke could tell this man who was more a brother to him than if they had come from the same womb.

And Paul Rubenstein just nodded that he understood …

Jason Darkwood dropped to his knees behind crates of explosives stacked there on the dock. By now, he was nearly gasping for breath, his helmet still on. As he freed himself of the helmet, he sank forward on the palms of his gloved hands.

There was a sentry on the dock who hadn’t been there when he’d broken surface for a quick look only moments before, and it was imperative now to remove that sentry before the rest of his team could break surface. If anyone from the other three teams broke surface and were spotted - Darkwood remembered the old expression from archival videotapes of pre-War movies: There goes the ballgame.”

He shrugged out of his wings as quickly as he could, out of his flippers as well, no time to shed the rest of his swiniming gear.

He reached to his side for the Randall Smithsonian Bowie. It wasn’t really that, of course, but an identical duplicate of the Randall which his ancestor had brought to Mid-Wake five centuries before. But something existed now which had not existed then. It was a type of field blue that was also an anti-corrosive sealant. It coated the high carbon steel blade of bis knife, killing the shine and protecting it against seawater.

Darkwood fisted the knife as he peered around the corner of the little fort of packing crates within which he hid.

The sentry would not be coming back toward his position for at least two minutes, and in those two minutes the teams would already have begun coming onto the dock and the ballgame would be gone.

Darkwood looked quickly up and down the dock, seeing no other signs of guard personnel except those on the Island Classers themselves which were at dockside. But their decks were so high above the docks that, if luck were with him, he might not be seen at all.

Darkwood gambled again, moving out from the walled structure of ammo crates and along the dockside itself, moving as quickly and as silently as he could, the Randall tight in his right fist in a rapier hold, ready to chop or thrust. He gambled for the same reason he usually gambled-there was no choice.

Steel and flesh. The first time he was taught the techniques, the idea of using a knife on a man was an abstraction. Unlike most of his fellow Mid-Wake submarine commanders, however, he had never been able to sit idly and relatively safely by, aboard bis vessel, while the Marines assigned to him went into man-to-man battle. There

fore, the abstraction had become reality for him quite some time ago. And the reality revolted him, more so because he was good at it.

Darkwood kept moving, the reality approaching again as he approached the man he was about to kill. His eyes shifted from the imaginary spot he had picked just beyond his target (one never, he was taught, watched the intended victim), to the knife.

If they succeeded here today and in the hours to come, and if similar success were in the cards for Doctor Rourke and the land forces, then the war would be over. If they failed, he would almost certainly die.

There would be much killing. But, why this killing …

Jason Darkwood rolled the handle of the Randall in his fist, bringing the knife edge upward, just as effective for a thrust into the kidney or a cut to the spine. But even more effective for something else.

He remembered watching some of the old mysteries, where the heroes-men like Bogart or Cagney-would get struck on the head and awaken experiencing no ill effects. That was absurd, at least usually. So, what he planned for the Soviet sentry was not all that humane-days or weeks in a hospital, perhaps side effects, perhaps not-but it would cheat death.

Jason Darkwood was about three yards from the man when he quickened his pace. The man turned around.

Jason Darkwood struck with the heavy spine of the Randall’s blade, going for the base of the neck behind the right ear, missing because the man turned, striking the right shoulder instead, a curse from the Marine Spetznas sentry’s lips then …

No choice, no cheating of death.

Jason Darkwood’s left hand grabbed the man’s face as his right hand raked the knife’s primary edge across the throat of the Spetznas just as the man was about to cry out.

There was no cry.

Death got what it wanted.

“Shit.”

Jason Darkwood rolled the dead man over to the dock’s edge, jerking his body over and into the water, controlling the fall as best he could to minimize the noise. Gloved hands reached up out of the water, taking the body, to weight it down, weight it down with junk

from beneath the dock.

And Jason Darkwood had the strangest thought as he clung there just below the dock level, in the shadow of one of the Soviet Island Class submarines-perhaps this was the Marine Spetznas who had lost the rusting away AKM-96 in the water just below.

Perhaps the man and his weapon, both of them spent, would be united again …

Paul Rubenstein cut off the tape player, hit the eject button, pushing the player under the skirt of his open greatcoat, dropping the tape into an interior breast pocket of his Soviet Elite Corps uniform jacket as he began to slow the ATV staff car.

For another day, if there was one, perhaps another adventure.

Here he was, Paul Rubenstein thought, the junior editor from a New York magazine turned freedom fighter all because he got on one airplane instead of another and survived the Night of The War while everyone else in New York City, including the girl he’d been dating, thinking seriously about, just died in one blinding microsecond.

He was married, to the daughter of his best friend who, chronologically, was just his junior, despite the fact they’d been born a quarter century apart.

And she was magnificent, his wife, John’s daughter, Annie.

And now he might lose all that he had in her, all his future, their future together.

He had never considered turning away from his course when once he’d started it.

That would have been cowardly and stupid. He’d never considered himself that terribly brave at all, but he’d never considered himself stupid, either.

As he braked and the ATV skidded just slightly near the guard post on the Underground City’s outer gate, his right hand moved under the skirt of his greatcoat again, but not for the tape recorder. He was more heavily armed than he had ever been since he first took up a gun to fight beside John Rourke that day five centuries ago, when they’d returned to trie crashed jetliner, only to find that some segments of humanity were not sufficiently glutted on death, wanted more.

The German MP-40 submachine gun, which he still called a Schmiesser just because it had become a running joke between John and himself, was slung under the coat. The battered old Browning High Power he’d taken from a pile of Brigand weapons after the battle at the jetliner was still with him, as was its newer, less blue worn twin, which he’d acquired later.

Aside from the Gerber MkH fighting knife which he habitually carried, now inside a slit of his greatcoat, he carried two other handguns, these courtesy of John’s stockpile at The Retreat, where he and the rest of the family had weathered five centuries in cryogenic sleep together.

What would become of the ‘family’ now, should this war end today?

Natalia?

Natalia loved John, but she would never intentionally come between John and his wife, Sarah.

Paul Rubenstein closed his fist over one of the two handguns from the Retreat. One was a Beretta 92F, originally from the Eden stores, the cache of weapons, material and survival necessities located with strategic reserves in various locations throughout what was once the United States. That was stuffed in his belt beneath his uniform beside the newer of his two Brownings, just a spare for the job at hand. But the other gun, the one he held in his right fist now, was one that he had decided he would keep, use.

Even if the war ended today, Paul Rubenstein realized he’d become too much of the veteran campaigner to expect that weapons could be melted down into plowshares.

The gun was a Smith & Wesson Model 681, the short-lived fixed sight production version of the four-inch stainless steel L-Frame .357 Magnum. It was another of the seeming myriad guns which John’s old pal, Ron Mahovsky had made up before The Night of The War.

Metalifed-an electrostatic chrome binding process-over the stainless steel, round butted to accept Goncalo Alves combat stocks, action tuned to buttery smoothness, it was perfect for the job at hand.

The Elite Corps guards approached the staff ATV. There were two of them.

Paul Rubenstein rolled down the staff ATV’s passenger window

and pointed the gun at them, firing point blank into the head of the nearest man, then two shots to the chest of the one farthest away.

He threw the revolver down onto the seat beside Mm and stomped the gas pedal, heading off road to punch through the electrified fence and evade the deflection barriers. “Here we go! Don’t touch anything metal!”

The ATV seemed to hesitate for a split second, then was through.

Jason Darkwood was stripped of his environment suit, making a last equipment check on the black penetration suit he wore beneath it. Around him, Marine Raiders were in various stages of shedding their Sea Wings and environment suits, two of Stanhope’s men detailed to Darkwood keeping watch, PV-26 shark guns and 2418 A2 pistols with thirty-round magazines at the ready.

Darkwood swapped magazines for his pistol, pouching the fifteen-shot stick and putting a thirty up the well, the chamber already loaded, of course. His knife was already sheathed to his right leg.

Darkwood approached the two Marines on guard, nodded for them to get out of their gear while he took the watch. Another Marine, Lance Corporal Mondragon, joined Darkwood there at the edge of the packing crate fort.

Darkwood rolled back the left cuff of his penetration suit and studied the dual analog/digital display of his Steinmetz. They would commence their attack in just under two minutes. If all went well, in under seven minutes, the first U.S. submarine ever to move into the lagoon would start through the entry tunnel, clear it in under a minute more and surface in the Soviet Underwater Complex.

If all went well…

Paul wheeled the staff car along the the slope into the hairpin. Natalia could feel the ATVs rearend skidding, slipping, clutched at John’s arm as she started skidding herself, along the rear seat.

“Hang on,” John whispered quietly beside her.

They were into the curve now, and as she clutched more tightly to John Rourke, she could see out the car’s rear window. Two trucks, a half track and another staff car pursued them. Soon, there would be a helicopter, then another and another.

“Is it time?”

They were out of the hairpin. John Rourke nodded.

Then, there was only one thing to do.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Major, Committee for State Security of The Soviet, Retired, pulled the pin.

Then, with both hands, she took the ridiculous Soviet uniform hat from her head, throwing it down to the floor. Next came the short blonde wig. But, already, she was dropping to her knees beside John as he began pulling the seat out. She pushed the poorly fitting skirt up along her thighs for more freedom of movement, her hands moving to the seat cushion, helping John to pull it outward and up.

The first thing she saw was one of the energy weapons. With these, they stood a chance, even against helicopters. And, as she looked up and through the rear window, she saw the first of the Soviet gunships on its way, coming after them …

As they crossed along the rear of the dock, Jason Darkwood could see a crane in operation over the missile deck of one of the Soviet Island Class submarines, the one at the farthest end of the dock. A warhead was being lowered into one of the Island Classer’s missile tubes. The shape and size of the warhead was considerably different from any Darkwood had ever seen before on captured Soviet vessels.

And he realized, a chill running up his spine, that it had to be nuclear.

The damned fools were ready to start it all again, and this time destroy the entire planet in the process.

Darkwood and his team of Marine Raiders reached the end of the dock. Each sabotage team had its own mission, and the mission of Darkwood’s own team was arguably the most difficult and at once the most vital.

The central control complex for the lagoon itself. Once neutralized, the defense systems prohibiting unauthorized entry by submarines into the lagoon itself would be down.

Jason Darkwood longed to see the Reagan’s sail rising out of the lagoon, see her reinforced full complement of United States Marines and German Long Range Mountain Patrol and Commando personnel swarming across herdecks, each man with his motorized

scooter unit which would get him to the docks, to the decks of the Island Classers.

And the invasion of the Soviet Underwater Complex would have begun.

Darkwood huddled against a wall of crates, these larger than the ammunition crates he’d seen before. And, as if he’d needed the reminder, stenciled on the crates in black and yellow paint was the universal symbol for radioactivity.

Nuclear warheads.

“Captain, you see-“

“I see it, Mondragon,” Darkwood nodded, trying to control the mixture of fear and loathing so his voice would not betray his emotions. “They won’t get the chance to use them. Trust me on that, son. Move it, now!” And Darkwood hustled his five Marines along toward the gates which guarded the dock area of the lagoon, and the high rise structure just inside the fence.

It was the control center…

Michael Rourke reached up to the roof panel, unlocking it on the passenger side, Natalia doing the same on the driver’s side. “Ready, Michael?”

“Let her go!”

Natalia almost broke a nail letting loose of the panel, the staff car’s slipstream sucking it away from them, the panel bouncing over the trunk lid and into the ice-slicked road surface behind them. The ‘moon roof was a custom modification to the staff car, not a standard feature. But, under the circumstances, it would be very useful.