Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion (17 page)

Rourke was the last of the five into the elevator, the doors hissing shut.

Frau Mann stood before the locking panel, turning her key into one of the locked floor markers. And the elevator began to move.

The elevator stopped almost too abruptly, the doors opening, Frau Mann stepping through first. In Rourke’s right fist was one of the twin stainless Detonics .45s concealed beneath his uniform tunic. In his left hand was a canvas tool bag, the rest of his weapons concealed inside. “Bitte!”

Rourke nodded, stepping through into the corridor after

her, Natalia, Sarah and Mann following as he glanced back. Frau Mann gestured to him along the corridor. “Geradeaus.”

Rourke nodded, starting along the corridor, his hand still on his gun. He passed a door marked “Ausgang,” then took the bend in the corridor.

He looked back—Frau Mann was running after him, her high heels held in her left hand, her purse in her right. “This way, Herr Doctor.”

“You speak English,” Rourke murmured, glancing back along the corridor, Natalia and Sarah running just ahead of Mann.

They stopped at a door, Frau Mann glancing over her shoulder as she turned a key in a lock—some things never changed, Rourke observed silently. She swung open the door. “Schnell!”

Rourke stepped back, letting Sarah and Natalia through first, then following after them, the Detonics .45 out in his fist now as his eyes scanned the dwelling—a large apartment, a vaulted ceiling above a sunken living room, drapes drawn at the far end of the living room over what he assumed were windows looking out over The Complex.

Rourke heard the door close and turned to face Wolfgang Mann. Mann swept his wife into his arms and began to laugh.

Natalia, then Sarah, then John Rourke had showered. His body clean, his hair washed, Rourke sat back in one of the two identical sofas, across the table from Frau Mann and her husband. Wolfgang Mann sat, a towel across his neck, his bathrobe belted around him, hair wet from taking the last shower. Rourke wore clothes Frau Mann had provided for him—again the fit was perfect. A dark blue cotton-knit turtleneck shirt, dark blue beltless slacks and

black fabric rubber-soled shoes. Beside him was a thin black waist-length jacket similar in design to the Members Only jackets which had been so much in fashion before The Night of The War.

“You look at ease, Herr Doctor.”

Rourke smiled at the woman. “There is a saying—I suppose there is some equivalent in German—that looks are oft times deceiving.” He studied her pretty face, as he had been for several minutes while she moved about the apartment paying attention to details that he had not followed. “On the other hand, you don’t seem at ease at all.” Across Rourke’s shoulders was the harness of the double Alessi shoulder rig, the twin stainless Detonics .45s in place under each arm. He trusted the Manns by now— but had never considered himself foolish.

“You are right, Herr Doctor.” She smiled. “This entire affair—it frightens me. While you were dressing and Wolf was showering—some distressing news came to me from another woman in the organization.”

“What, my darling?” Mann asked her, taking the towel from about his neck, standing, rubbing at his wet hair in an attempt to dry it.

“Helene Sturm—she has been arrested.”

“Mein Gott, but she—”

“Who is Helene Sturm?” Rourke interrupted.

Frau Mann ran her splayed hands along the tops of her thighs, stopping as her fingertips reached the hem of her dress. “She is—very important. Besides myself, she is the only one in The Complex who knows the overall plan.”

“Aww, that’s great,” Rourke noted. “Drugs are available, I suppose—and other means?”

“She is pregnant with child. They would not force her to reveal—”

“Wolf,” and Frau Mann stood, her arms going around his neck, then her forehead touching at his chin. “They

will use any means—regardless of the life she carries. Twins, perhaps. Perhaps you should break radio silence— and notify her husband in the field.”

“He is a Nazi—I fear that he loves the party more than his wife.” Mann almost whispered, kissing his wife’s hair, then turning away from her and walking to the windows— the drapes had been drawn open partially while Rourke had showered. And through the windows which formed almost the entire wall, Rourke could watch The Complex.

It was a city, but built entirely inside a mountain. The engineering required to cut a shaft of such huge proportions into the earth, to blast so precisely as to hollow out much of the inside of the mountain without bringing it down—it was staggering to consider. But German engineering had always been among the best in the world. He estimated the height of some of the buildings to be in excess of twenty stories and the surface area covered perhaps three square miles, as best he could judge. “We have to get her out,” Rourke remarked.

“Precisely so, Herr Doctor,” Wolfgang Mann agreed, turning from the windows. “Precisely.”

“Get who out?”

John Rourke turned to the voice. Sarah. He smiled. The last time he had seen her in nylons and high heels had been … he remembered. Their wedding anniversary, a few months before The Night of The War. She wore a gray dress now, the skirt straight and to just below the knee, the neckline high and collar less, the sleeves reaching to her wrists. A string of pearls hung from her neck and her hair was up, revealing pearl earrings. He stood. “You look beautiful.”

She blushed.

She cleared her throat. She again asked, “Who do we have to get out?”

But before the question could be answered, Rourke

heard Natalia’s voice. “She is beautiful, John.”

He turned to look at Natalia. Almost predictably, she wore black, the dress almost identical in design to the one Sarah wore, but with a waist-length jacket. A single gold chain was at her neck—the gold earrings were her own, he recognized, liny—the pierced kind and when her hair would be swept back by the wind when they rode their bikes, or she would toss her head, he would see them. He saw them now, because like Sarah, her almost black hair was up.

“Your wife, Herr Doctor—and your friend as well—they are most beautiful. I was right,” Frau Mann continued, Rourke not looking at her, “in assuming they would be able to pose as officers’ wives or other women of the elite.”

Rourke turned and looked at Frau Mann finally. But he said nothing.

“Who is it?” Natalia began, “that we must rescue?”

“Helene Sturm,” Wolfgang Mann answered. “She is one of the leaders of the organization which opposes the leader. She alone besides ourselves of those inside The Complex knows the entire plan. And she is pregnant—”

“Her due date is very near,” Frau Mann added.

John Rourke waited as Sarah and Natalia crossed the room, waited until they sat on the couch, then sat down, Sarah between Natalia and himself. “Do you know why, Frau Mann—why she was arrested?” John Rourke asked.

“And where she has been taken?” Natalia added.

Frau Mann wrung her hands, then sat, perched on the arm of the opposing couch, her husband sitting down beside her. “I fear that her son—her oldest son. She has three others. But I fear that her oldest son, Manfred—he is a member of the youth. I fear that he betrayed her. If that is so, then I fear she will be under interrogation even now. Not at the detention center. But she would be at the new government hall. It has recently been finished. On the

surface.”

“Confirm what you can—without arousing undue suspicion,” Rourke told her. “Once we’re certain where she is— then we go and get her. Deiter Bern will have to wait.”

There was no choice. Even had she known nothing that could harm them, because of her condition there was no choice at all.

Annie Rourke had given up trying to undo the ropes about her wrists—they were synthetic, triple-stranded and so soft that she doubted that even had she been able to reach her hands with her teeth she could have tugged the knot free. And she could not reach her hands, because after she had been forced at gunpoint to the Soviet helicopter, Forrest Blackburn had—skillfully, she admitted to herself—crossed her jaw with his fist. Her jaw didn’t even hurt now, but when she awakened, the Soviet helicopter had already been airborne. Her wrists were bound as they were in front of her and the safety harness had been put on her, in such a manner that it locked her arms to her sides and kept her shoulders in an upright position against the seat back.

“Soviet technology has come a long way,” Blackburn remarked—she could hear him through the headset he had placed on her after she had regained consciousness.

“Paul will kill you for this,” she told him simply, speaking into the teardrop shaped microphone in front of and slightly below her lips. “If Michael or my father doesn’t get to you first.”

“Yes, well—Annie? May I call you Annie? Well, your dear daddy is in Argentina. Your brother is flat on his back. And poor Mr. Rubenstein. If I didn’t kill him when I knocked him out, I don’t think he’ll be in much shape to

come after us either. Captain Dodd seems to have his hands full, doesn’t he? And I doubt he’ll send off valued personnel and equipment to rescue a troublesome girl and track down the last of the Soviet agents.” And Blackburn laughed. “You know, I’ll tell you something, Annie. Actually—you’re better off. Stick with me and you’ll live longer.”

She knew her father’d be angry at her for saying it—not to mention her mother. “Fuck you.”

“I’m glad you brought that up. I intend for you to do just that, Annie. I haven’t had a—well, let’s just say that I haven’t for five centuries. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Five centuries—my goodness.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘My God,’ ” she hissed.

“You may prove too much like your father and mother. And if you do, I’ll be very sorry for you, Annie.”

“Where the hell are we going?” she began, trying to get him to another subject. “To Karamatsov?”

“No, no, the last man I want to see—just now, anyway.” He cleared his throat.

She looked above her at the rotors, then below through the chin bubble. The ground was rockier than it should have been, and ahead through the windscreen she could see a blinking whiteness—they were heading north. “I thought Karamatsov was your boss,” she pressed. Her wrists were hurting her and her fingers were falling asleep.

“He was. But I never did fully trust him, you know. Five centuries ago—that still amazes me,” and she turned to watch him smiling as if to himself. He was doing something with the controls of the Soviet machine—she thought he might be preparing to land because through the chin bubble again she could see the ground coming up fast beneath them. “But five centuries ago,” he continued, “when Vladmir Karamatsov first began getting suspicious that there was something like the Eden Project—well. When he asked.me to get involved, I wanted some assur

ances. Future welfare, you might say. One of the things I got—but not from him because I don’t know if he even knew about it—but I got the location of The Underground City.”

“The what?” She cleared her throat. “Is this thing landing? “

“The Underground City—it was a project my employers had going for some time before what your family calls The Night of The War. Already self-sufficient—no longer an experiment. And, yes, we are landing. One of the things Karamatsov provided—and I spot checked that he hadn’t lied—were personal supply caches for me. Aircraft fuel sealed in hermetic containers that were rot-proof. Individual weapons. And emergency food supplies. Surprisingly inexpensive. He had one hundred such little caches made for me throughout the continental United States since there would be no way to foretell where the Eden Project might land. Do you know how long it takes to memorize one hundred sets of compass coordinates?”

Annie felt herself starting to smile—but at least Blackburn seemed like a competent pilot. They were clearly about to touch down, and the ride was smooth as silk. She had never touched silk until Natalia had given her one of the teddies that she wore. Annie had not wanted to take it—yet wanted it very much. She wondered if she would ever get the chance to wear it.

She looked at Blackburn. He was laughing. “Now surely, Annie—you are thinking that with all that has happened, the magnetic coordinates will have changed. And you’re right. But I took a reading off the Eden One’s instruments and then wrote down the map coordinates from memory and worked a compass correction formula. We’re right on the money.”

The stolen—twice-stolen, Soviet helicopter touched down. She barely felt it. He began flipping switches and pressing buttons, shutting down the machine. “You see,”

he told her, not looking at her, “after I get the materials I need precisely located, I’ll fly the machine closer if necessary and resupply. Then off we go to The Underground City where I will be a hero of surrealistic proportions. And should anybody follow us and by chance intercept us before we get there, well—” he turned to look at her, pulling his headset off, then reached across and pulled off hers. She screamed—he had caught some of her hair in it. He reached to her hair and began to undo it from the headset as he continued speaking. “Should we encounter difficulties, well, you’re my hostage. If you’re important enough to go after, you’re important enough to be kept alive.”

Her hair was free of the headset, and she shook her head to get her hair back from her face.

Forrest Blackburn climbed down from the machine, taking the key for the thing with him, then walked around the front of the aircraft, opening the side door beside her.

He drew another piece of rope from his pocket and reached down to her ankles. He began binding them tight together, then she could feel them being drawn back under the seat and being tied to one of the seat stanchions. “Where do you think I’m gonna go?” she asked him.

“Nowhere.” He smiled affably.

He wore a large lined and hooded jacket that looked like it was military once. He reached to her shoulders and wrenched the shawl free of her arms and then twisted it into a rope. He drew her head forward and bound the shawl over her mouth between her teeth. She felt as if she would gag.

“Now—nice and safe, Annie.” He smiled. “And just so you start thinking along the right lines,” and he reached to her coat and unbuttoned it, pushing its skirts aside. Then he drew her skirt and her slip up, along her thighs. She started screaming—but only muted growls came out through the gag. He bunched her skirt and her slip up to her hips, the backs of her thighs suddenly cold against the