Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain (13 page)

Sebastian only nodded resignedly.

They crossed the bridge and into a wide companionway, wide enough for two lanes of bowling. There was room to waste aboard Island Classers and, in a way, Jason Darkwood liked that.

Sebastian deferred as they reached the door of his cabin, but Darkwood ushered him ahead.

It was nearly as large as some Mid-Wake apartments, considerably larger than cadet quarters at the academy, and those were shared by two. “You’re going to be living the soft life, Sebastian.”

“Hardly,” Sebastian noted drily. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please.” Sebastian moved to the sideboard along the bulkhead, activating the microwave coffee pot’s controls. “This could be an important command for you, Sebastian.”

“I was happy as your executive officer aboard the Reagan.”

“Well, look at this way,” Darkwood smiled, perching on the edge of Sebastian’s desk—it was nearly as large as Darkwood’s bunk aboard the Reagan. “They could have made you a brigadier general like they did to Doctor Rourke. He looked so thrilled, it was a wonder he could contain himself.”

“I believe that Doctor Rourke prefers acting as his own man. Curiously, that is a freedom I feel I enjoyed aboard the Reagan. And I shall miss it.”

“I think that was a compliment, Sebastian. Thank you,” Darkwood nodded.

Sebastian handed him a mug Of coffee, taking a cup for himself. “The Roy Rogers will be refitted within twenty-four hours. Do you have any further word, Jason, as to our first mission?”

“No. Doctor Rourke—I should say General Rourke, I suppose—has that briefing scheduled for tonight. Assuming—he’s able to contact the German commander, there may be some intelligence data on which we can begin to base a mission. I don’t foresee any action for some time. Too many people to be assembled, for one thing. Part of our job. You’ll pick them up, while the Reagan will run guard duty.” Sebastian’s dark face somehow looked darker. Darkwood said to him over the rim of his coffee cup, “Look at it this way, old friend,” and he sipped at the coffee. It was very hot, still. “At least we’ll still be serving together. And this assignment. If you want out of it, once things are rolling along, I’m sure Admiral Rahn will transfer you back to the Reagan.”

“Rest assured, I look forward to that. I assume Saul Hartnett will be taking over my function.”

“I’m temporarily letting Rodriguiz wear two hats. He’s a good young officer and this will give him a chance to prove it. He’ll be running both the computer and engineering stations and Saul’U be right there to help him out of any jams he gets into. But, yes, I’ll miss you as my exec.” He sipped at his coffee, either his mouth and throat more used to the temperature or the coffee cooling quickly.

“A multi-national commando force. It reminds me of some of the books we read in the Academy, the World War Two Allied commandos.”

Darkwood laughed. “Yes, but this time the Allies include Germans and probably that Japanese officer, Kurinami, that Doctor Rourke speaks so highly of. How times change, hmm?”

Sebastian sipped at his coffee, then said, “Yes, but the circumstances don’t.”

Elaine Halversen’s nearly black eyes were tear-rimmed. “Thank you, thank you both, for saving him,” she managed, then turned away and walked off after the gurney on which Akiro Kurinami lay.

“She loves him a great deal,” Wolfgang Mann barely whispered.

“I think she thought her life was over. I don’t mean professionally, but the other way. And then he came along.”

“I was raised to believe that anyone who was not German was racially inferior. After a time, of course, I realized the absurdity of such a doctrine. It may be that realization which prompted me to look elsewhere ideologically. I have come full circle; I now envy a black woman.”

Sarah Rourke just looked at Wolfgang Mann.

“The person she loves is still alive. Admittedly, all of our existences are tenuous, even under the best of circumstances. But at least—” He didn’t finish it, instead bending over the inert form of a wounded enlisted man. “You and your fellows fought bravely. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten. But there is another battle which you must fight, young man. To recover.”

“Yes, Herr Colonel.”

“We need brave men, so recover quickly.”

The man was carried off, and Wolfgang Mann continued his hospital inspection, Sarah Rourke beside him. She was very sorry for him, and just thinking that was terribly inadequate. She had nearly lost her own family so often. Perhaps Annie was dead. She didn’t know how she would take such news. She looked at Wolfgang Mann again. Not as well as he.

This time it was very different.

Except that she was no longer Annie, she was Natalia instead. But yet she was still able to think as Annie, too. There were two minds inside Natalia’s head. That was it.

Gray blue clouds were stratified across an endless horizon where the land met the sea, at the center, just before her, the orange ball of sun. She could not tell if it were rising or setting.

She was dressed in heavy green silk brocade, a maroon velvet cloak bound at her throat by a buckle of delicately filigreed silver, the hood of her cloak thrown back over her shoulders, her hair so long it had to touch her waist or beyond, free, unbound, caught on the wind.

She stroked the forehead of the black horse beside which she stood, standing on her toes in soft leather maroon boots just to reach the animal.

The horse was a Shire, trapped in leather and suede and silver, hanging from the pommel of its saddle a scabbard and in it a sword. She cooed to the animal. Six feet at the shoulder, a white star blaze on its forehead, its coat gleamed and caught some of the radiance of the sun, as though the animal were touched with fire.

His feathers were black as well, like skirts flowing over his massive hooves, the star shape the only thing about him that wasn’t black.

Her hands reached to the sword, touched at its hilt. On her fingers were rings set with rubies and opals and diamonds.

She hitched up her skirts and mounted, slipping her right leg over the woman’s cantle, arranging her dress, her left foot moving subtly in the stirrup as she whisked the reins across his neck.

The Shire weighed more than a ton and to ride him was, despite his size or because of it, like riding on air, no movement really felt at all, like the sensation of flying must have been, only more effortless.

The wind was cooler and she raised her hood, her hair around her like a veil.

The sea was to her right as she rode, the ground lowering, sea and land nearly one now as the Shire crossed through the surf. Spray borne on the wind refreshed her face, made her skin feel so alive she wanted to scream with pleasure. Rocks jutted into the sea, black rocks barring the Shire’s way.

She reined back.

From beyond the black rocks came a horse and rider. The rider, cloaked in black, was armored in black chain mail and leather, tall boots reaching well along his thighs. He bore no lance, but as he wheeled his mount —a Belgian, gray, smaller than her own mount’s seventeen hands—in his right hand there appeared a sword. The steel was blued black, but the blade’s edges caught the sun—the sun did not move at all, merely rested on the horizon — and washed the steel with the color of blood.

Beneath the cowl of his hood he wore a visored helmet of black, the visor lowered so that she could not see his face.

“Sir knight, who are you?”

As he answered, the voice made her shrink back in the saddle.

And she screamed. It was Vladimir’s voice. There was a hollowness to it. “You shall die as punishment for betraying me.”

It was fight or run, and her Shire could best the Belgian

at almost anything, but speed? She wasn’t sure.

She threw back her cloak, undoing the buckle of the sword belt, belting it around her waist, the belt winding about her twice and still the sword hanging low by her left hip.

As her hands touched to the sword’s hilt, she noticed that, like the buckle for her cloak, its hilt was silver, filigreed. The blade was much more slender than the blade the black knight wielded.

“I will meet you, evil knight!”

There was laughter from the spectral figure beside the rocks. And his Belgian—gray—moved slowly forward, waves crashing beside it, the knight’s black spurs gleaming wet in the spray.

“I am at great disadvantage, evil knight. Might we both dismount? Riding in a woman’s way as I do, I could not withstand your charge.”

“Dismount if you like. I do not.”

She did not. Dismounted while he remained astride she would have no chance at all.

“You know no courtesy, sir.”

“Nor do I give quarter, harlot.” And he spurred his mount forward now.

She held the sword above her, spinning its hilt through her fingers so rapidly that the steel whistled through the air. She dug in her left heel, urging the Shire, “Ahead. And do not fail me.”

Across the surf, the waves crashing beside them, the Shire’s hoofbeats like spring thunder.

Twenty yards.

Fifteen.

The black knight’s sword raised high, the hood over his helmet falling back, the helmet grotesquely shaped, like a broad cheekboned skull of black metal.

Ten yards.

She wheeled the Shire, letting the mighty animal rear upward as the black knight’s gray Belgian vaulted past her, her sword arcing through the blue air and the black helmet falling under her steel, into the surf.

The Belgian slowed and stopped.

The animal and its rider turned toward her.

The rider bore no head. The right hand held the sword. The left hand reached back and raised the hood over the headless torso’s neck.

“And now Natalia, your head.”

She screamed.

The Shire seemed unable to move and her arms were so leaden she could not raise the sword to even attempt defense. He shouted the word from within his cavernous armor, “Harlot!”

The glint of red on the edge of his blade as he swung it so mightily over his head. His sword arced toward her and Annie realized “Wake me up. Wake me up. Wake me up! I’m dying!”

“Annie. At the count of three — “

“Skip that shit—get her awake.”

“I’ll snap my fingers on three. You’ll awaken. One … two … three …”

Annie Rubenstein opened her eyes, hands clutching to her throat.

Her breath came in great gasps. She looked at Natalia on the couch beside her, Natalia’s chest rising and falling, eyelids blinking rapidly. “Get her out of that dream, please—please, Doctor Rothstein,” Maggie Barrow was saying.

Annie stared.

Rothstein had a hypodermic syringe in his hands. “Mrs. Rubenstein. Are you all right?” “Yes-“

He injected Natalia, Maggie Barrow holding her down, Annie falling to her knees from her chair. “What happened?”

“I can’t save her. But I know who can. Something that happened should never have happened. Something that should have happened never did.”

“What?” Maggie Barrow asked.

Annie looked at her. “She’s fighting a battle she never should have fought in the first place. Three times, now. It’s

the same fantasy or dream or whatever it is And each time—But this time we almost died.”

“But this is only in her delusions, Mrs. Rubenstein,” Doctor Rothstein began, patiently.

“But she lives in her dreams. So that’s her reality. She has to survive the dream or we’ll never get her back, don’t you see?” Annie Rubenstein couldn’t explain it, but she knew, now, with a surety that was unshakable. “Find my father.”

The radio transmitter was all but assembled in the room at the very top of the presidential palace which they had selected as their strong room, their last redoubt, the wounded brought there.

Michael Rourke was banking on three facts: Nothing in the standing orders of the Elite Corps unit commander here at Hekla covered exactly what had transpired, a sword charge by Icelandic policeman who virtually spit in the face of death, when they weren’t busy singing their national anthem, and KGB personnel habitually avoided the consequences of independent action at all costs; no one among the Elite Corps personnel occupying Hekla would be exactly eager to be in the first ranks of the attack on the presidential palace, because doubtlessly they would be under orders to spare Madame Jokli as a bargaining chip with the other Icelandic community leaders and the rest of the allies, and therefore would not be able to use their firearms indiscriminately; thirdly, if Madame Jokli had not been killed yet, the second premise was all the stronger. They wanted her alive.

There was always gas, but the Soviets seemed not to handle chemical agents well, the only such agent they had used the gas which Karamatsov himself had used against the Underground City during his failed coup attempt. That would be inappropriate here, since the majority of

KGB personnel were male, and all of the defenders of the Icelandic presidential palace were male and the gas activated something within males exposed to it which turned them into homicidal maniacs, attacking each other and, particularly, women. Madame Jokli again. To use the gas would surely mean her death.

There were always sound and light grenades, but powerfully built men wielding swords, men who were not afraid to die, could still be horribly lethal even if temporarily blinded and deafened. And, again, Madame Jokli might be at risk as a hapless victim to an inadvertent sword cut.

Impasse though it was, the impasse would not last long.

“How’s the transmitter?” Michael Rourke asked, leaning over the table where Madame Jokli, the only true scientist/engineer among them, worked busily with a small soldering iron.

“Nearly ready. But I hope we have the frequency correct.”

“Me, too,” Michael smiled, balling his left fist open and closed to get enough feeling into it that he could use a gun properly.

The room was a rear bedroom at the center of the house, only two windows on one wall, the other walls windowless. Tables and doors taken off their hinges were used to shutter and reinforce it and Madame Jokli worked by hazy lamplight. Electricity in the presidential palace had been cut off some time ago.