Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (53 page)

“Quite a few things,” John told him. “Do you have an extra uniform in my size?”

Darkwood smiled. “I think that could be arranged, doctor.”

John looked down at her. “Now—what about Annie and everybody?”

“Mom’s in Iceland—she’s safe,” Michael told him, standing at the apex of the triangle formed by Jason Darkwood and his father, Natalia still in the crook of John’s arm. “Annie, Paul, Maria, and myself, with the help of Han and Otto Hammerschmidt and a really small force of Chinese, all eventually wound up looking for the two of you in the same place. Karamatsov’s base camp. We didn’t find what we were looking for, of course, but

we found out that Karamatsov had picked up several hundred Chinese and was taking them to a sort of death camp and was planning to use his gas on them. Maybe as some kind of a test or something. I’m not sure. So, anyway, we stole it, bluffed our way out with the Chinese prisoners, and I went back one more time to see if there were any sign of the two of you. And that’s when I saw this submarine surfacing, and I was watching from up in the rocks overlooking the sea and I kept watching. An officer from this submarine brought Karamatsov a gift— Natalia’s guns and her knife. And I figured that these people had you both. I swam out to the submarine and things were going great.” He smiled. “Then not so great and I got myself nailed.”

“But he also had himself free by the time we took over the ship,” Natalia said quickly.

John said nothing for a moment. Then, “Michael— with the gas and the people you freed from the camp— what is your assessment of what would have been the next logical move for Paul and Annie and the others to make?”

“Maria and I talked about it briefly before I switched to one of the trucks we were using to haul out the internees. I didn’t think Karamatsov would let us get very far with the gas, but I also thought that the gas would have been his primary concern.”

“Could Han or Otto summon help?”

“We had radios, but since we pulled the thing off in the dark, we had a good chance of eluding them temporarily, and if we used the radios, we would have called them in to our position—the Russians. I don’t know what they did after that.”

John was silent again.

“What are you thinking, doctor?”

John Rourke looked at him—they were the same height, Natalia noticed. Exactly. “Probably, the situation with the rest of my family and the stolen gas has been

resolved—but if it hasn’t, they could be in deep trouble. Could I make a two-fold request?”

“Certainly—and since I’m out of range of Mid-Wake,” he said, smiling, “I can’t radio them and ask for permission. So I’ll have to use my own discretion. Request away.”

“Can the Wayne, with my son aboard her, make best speed possible to the coast near Karamatsov’s base camp, let off my son and some Marines? Michael can lead them in toward where Annie and the others might still be. Then the Wayne proceeds along the coast and—the Wayne has the capabilities—it can begin a bombardment of Karamatsov’s base camp.”

Darkwood grinned mischievously. “Doctor Rourke. Aside from the fact that the skipper of the Wayne and myself would be taking it upon ourselves to declare war on a foreign power, I see no fault in the idea at all. And, since I am out of radio contact with Mid-Wake, I can’t ask their advice. So, if Walter Pilgrim isn’t any brighter than I think he is …” And he started to laugh.

John Rourke smiled. “The Captain of the Wayne struck me as being quite an intelligent man.”

“Yes, but he’s as fond of getting into tight places as I am. So—if Walter Pilgrim goes along with it, I believe we can land some Marines and then create quite a diversionary bombardment of Marshal Karamatsov’s camp. And the Reagan can hang back while we take this Island Classer—which has a full complement of nuclear missiles, by the way, so we do have to be a little careful not to lose her—while we take this Island Classer right up to Marshal Karamatsov’s doorstep.”

“He’ll recognize you, John—you can’t …”

John looked at Natalia. “I can stay to the rear of the group. He won’t recognize me until it’s too late. You’re the one who’ll have to be careful.”

“I need my guns and my knife back anyway.” She smiled.

“I got mine—found ‘em in an arms locker below,” Michael announced, patting the two Beretta pistols stuffed into his belt.

“Then we have a plan, gentlemen—and madam,” Darkwood said.

“We have a plan,” John Rourke agreed.

The plan frightened Natalia, but there was no other way.

Paul Rubenstein’s truck had slipped a tread on the half-track and he abandoned it. There was no possibility of one man repairing it in less than several hours. There had been no survivors in the first camp, but he felt certain that most had escaped rather than been killed because he had only found four bodies. He had followed the trail of the Soviet vehicles through snow that was sparse here, the ground soft enough that a blind man could have followed the tread imprints with his cane.

And now he was upon them, at the furthest rear of their lines, mortars firing every few seconds, explosions erupting at the top of the hill beneath which the Soviet positions were located. There seemed to be no answering fire from the hilltop and this worried him, but he rationalized that Annie or Hammerschmidt or Han would have known that conservation of ammunition was more important at this stage, because the mortar fire had only begun within the last forty-five minutes.

And then he saw movement in the rocks below him and to the north. He saw a shock of blonde hair. “Hammerschmidt,” Paul whispered. Hammerschmidt would have done the logical thing for a man with his training, of course. Assembled a small unit and left the camp at the top of the hill, perhaps under cover of darkness, and circled behind the Soviet position.

Paul started working his way obliquely toward where he had momentarily seen the German commando captain, his Schmeisser ready… .

Annie Rubenstein had burrowed as deeply into the rocks as she could, and she had pulled her heavy shawl over her head to afford her as much protection against the constant rain of rocks and dirt as possible. The noise of the explosions as the mortar rounds impacted was unnerving her, she knew, and each time one of the mortar rounds fell near her, she could feel her skin go cold and her stomach churn. But waiting here was the only chance if somehow Hammerschmidt’s mission failed, if somehow Han had not already gotten help to speed toward them. And she had learned the lesson well from her father. “It pays to plan ahead.”

And by staying here hidden in the rocks overlooking the hillside, she was doing just that.

Captain Svetlana Grubaszikova would have to take her forces up the hillside eventually. And when Captain Grubaszikova did, Captain Grubaszikova would be a dead woman. Annie Rourke Rubenstein clutched her M-16 tight against her, protecting the rifle as much as she protected herself, and waited as the rain of debris poured down around her and her ears rang with the cacophony made by the explosions.

The girl Michael Rourke ran beside through the surf was so ridiculously pretty, it was hard to imagine she was a Marine lieutenant. He had grown up seeing Marines in videotape movies at the Retreat. And if they weren’t John Wayne, they all tried to look like him. But Lieutenant Lillie St. James, Security Officer of the Wayne, didn’t look a bit like the man the vessel was named after.

She was gorgeous. Blonde. Blue-eyed. Rosy-cheeked. “Hubba-hubba, Marines!” Lillie St. James rasped as they broke from the surf and made for the rocks, Michael still right beside her.

They took up defensive positions at the height of the beachhead, Michael sliding into a niche of rock beside her.

Her assault rifle in her right fist as though it didn’t weigh a thing, she looked at him, and a little smile crossed her pretty lips. “Where to now, Mr. Rourke? I have orders that tell me to take orders from you until we reach the objective. So—where to?”

Michael pulled the compass from his borrowed USMC battle-dress utilities—a better choice of uniform than the Soviet equivalent he had been wearing when he had launched over to the Wayne just before it had gotten underway. She was already spreading out the rough map he had drawn for her, and copied for Commander Pil

grim, the Captain of the Wayne. “As I told you before, lieutenant, I can lead us to the first camp and after that—if, as I suspect, they have abandoned it—we’ve gotta find them.”

“Unless, of course, the Russkies are already hitting them. In that event, we shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding them at all, should we? Lead the way, Mr. Rourke.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned. “May I?” “What?”

“Follow me?” he said softly.

Lieutenant Lillie St. James laughed and then shouted to her people, “Let’s move out, Marines!”

Michael started from the rocks in a dead run, Lieutenant St. James right beside him. He looked back toward the beach, the rubber boats that had brought them already halfway back to the Wayne… .

John Rourke stood on the bridge of the Soviet Island Classer, Natalia beside him. He looked at her. Beneath her black jumpsuit she had secreted his Sting IA black chrome, and across her shoulders she wore a shoulder holster for one of the U.S. service pistols. The 2418 A2s looked interesting enough, but he wasn’t about to exchange his Detonics .45s for a set of them.

“Mr. Sebastian—our position from Chinmen Tao Island, please.”

“Position as follows, Captain. Twenty-three nautical miles north by northeast. Estimated time of arrival to our calculated offshore position, approximately fifteen minutes. The Reagan is three minutes behind us, Captain.”

“Very good, Mr. Sebastian.” Darkwood rotated his chair to face Rourke and Natalia. Although Darkwood had imported some of his own people from the Reagan, there was still an abundance of vacant seats on the bridge. “I think your later idea is the best course of action—that way, if Karamatsov sees you, so what?”

“Exactly.” John Rourke nodded. “If he sees me as a supposed prisoner, it may arouse his interest but shouldn’t terribly arouse his suspicions.” Rourke wished for a cigar. “Who’s minding the Reagan—with your First Officer here and the others?”

“My Engineering Officer, Lieutenant Commander Hartnett, has the Con, and we’re filling in the best we can otherwise.”

Several officers and some enlisted personnel had come over from the Reagan—the tall, black Lieutenant Commander T.J. Sebastian; the Medical Officer, Lieutenant Commander Margaret Barrow (a rather pretty woman, Rourke thought); the sonar operator, Lieutenant Junior Grade Julie Kelly; and a Chinese Machinist First Class named Wilbur Hong. These and the security contingent under the command of Sam Aldridge, assisted by a young man named Tom Stanhope, were filling in at whatever jobs needed to be done aboard the huge craft. In the brig were several Russian prisoners taken when the Island Classer had originally been commandeered. Darkwood had said that they would be debriefed by hypnotherapy and then incarcerated on Mid-Wake until a prisoner exchange needed to be worked out with the Russians, or until the Mid-Wake taxpayers got tired of feeding them and returned them anyway.

Aldridge and Stanhope appeared on the bridge now, a Russian officer between them, his hands bound. The uniform was familiar to John Rourke, the black uniform of the KGB Elite Corps.

Sam Aldridge was dressed in some of his scuba gear— it looked fascinating and Rourke was determined to try it if he could—and Tom Stanhope was outfitted as a Soviet Naval officer.

Darkwood smiled at the Russian. “Ahh, Captain Serovski—so happy you could join us. I had such fun the last time you joined us on the bridge.” Darkwood massaged his rib cage where an hour ago Doctor Barrow, the Reagan’s Medical Officer, had sterilized and bandaged it.

“You will all die.”

“Ahh—then Captain Aldridge and Lieutenant Stanhope have been filling you in, I see.”

John Rourke studied Serovski for a moment, and Serovski turned his eyes toward him. “You!”

John Rourke smiled. “Captain—you know my fondness for your organization. And you doubtlessly know how I would have felt had you succeeded in turning over Major Tiemerovna to Marshal Karamatsov so he could torture her and execute her. I’d suggest you consider something. The one thing that is keeping you alive is the fact that we need your assistance with our operation. We could get along without you, but with you present it will make things a little more believable. Major Tiemerovna and I will both be posing as prisoners. We will both be heavily armed. Commander Darkwood, Lieutenant Stanhope, and some others from Captain Aldridge’s Marines will be posing as officers and men of this vessel, assisting you in delivering us to Karamatsov. Captain Aldridge and the rest of his Marines will come up behind Karamatsov’s position after exiting this vessel and swimming in. By the time we surface, they’ll be in position. I’m not so naive as to assume that this will all go like clockwork and Karamatsov’s fate is already sealed, but I’d say we have a good chance. You do exactly as you’re told and you’ll get out of this alive—we can send you back to Karamatsov’s army or drop you anyplace else. That’s immaterial. You cooperate and you have my word on your freedom and good health. Don’t cooperate, and I’ll personally break your damned neck. Is that clear?”

Serovski nodded. “Yes.”

“Then here’s how we do it. You will be completely uniformed and have your pistol at your side with a magazine in place. The magazine will be empty, as will the magazines on your belt. We’ve already taken care of that. You will do as you normally would—take us right up to your Hero Marshal. When Natalia or I shove you aside, hit the dirt and take cover and just worry about

staying alive. We’ll do the rest. Play it straight and you’ll have the same chances of getting out of this alive that we have.”

“The Hero Marshal will have many men there—and helicopters. You will not have a chance.”

Darkwood said, “But we’ll have the Reagan offshore, and our deck guns can hit with pinpoint accuracy. The helicopters won’t be a factor—although I confess I’d rather take a ride in one than blow one up. I’ve only seen pictures of them. Doctor Rourke’s word will be binding on us all. If you do your part, no matter how this turns out, you’ll be free. We want Karamatsov, not you. No offense.”