Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain (17 page)

He smiled at her. Within the hour, they would both leave the platform with an appropriate escort. After this area had been tried, the platform would be towed across the water by cargo helicopters to the next nearest grid location and the procedure tried again.

Perhaps it would succeed that time, or perhaps the next.

But when it did, as it eventually would, a nuclear war might prove inevitable.

And so, then, would mankind’s extinction.

Antonovitch would enjoy Svetlana’s company, because it might well be the last chance for happiness, however shallow, unreal that happiness was.

He lacked one intrinsic, essential quality of the Hero Marshal, Vladmir Karamatsov. He was not a madman. Which was why he had sent Vassily Prokopiev on his mission, why he had had Vassily Prokopiev shoot him with the little .25 caliber Beretta, and then “escape.”

He studied Svetlana’s face.

She looked more beautiful by the minute.

He felt the little girl’s hand touch at his cheek, surprisingly soft. He opened his eyes, almost total darkness. He found the switch for the dome light and actuated it. The little girl looked up at him strangely, her dark hair matted on her face and ^forehead, the sweater he’d put her into so large for her that it fell half off her right shoulder.

Prokopiev touched his fingertips to her hair, to her cheek. “We are not dead yet, little one.”

The windshield was solidly covered with snow. And it was starting to get cold inside the cab of the half-track, the engine dead. He cut the key switch, to save the batteries.

When he reached for the assault rifle from behind the seat, the little girl sucked in her breath, dark eyes as wide as saucers. He smiled, touched his hand to hers and whispered, though he knew she did not understand “I will not hurt you. No one will hurt you, little one.”

There was an entrenching tool beneath the seat, clamped there. He released it, folding it out, assembling it, sure he would need it. And then he tried the door. It opened, not exactly freely, but well enough that he could, with some effort, push against it and make the opening wide enough to slip out.

The little girl began to cry.

And he realized that she thought he was leaving her.

He turned toward her, to tell her that he was not, and she screamed. There was something in her eyes that he had never seen there.

He turned around, quickly, the club—it was made of bone—smashing down, grazing off his left shoulder as he punched the assault rifle forward into the chest of a man, the man small by comparison to him, but his arms — almost unbelievably in this extreme cold—bare, showing rippling muscles.

The man—he was one from the wild tribes, to be sure—fell back as Prokopiev racked the bolt on the assault rifle, preparatory to firing.

The little girl screamed again and Prokopiev turned around. The door on the other side of the cab was open, another like this first man’s hands reaching for her. She shrieked. Prokopiev fired over her, killing the man with a three round burst that peeled away the top of the man’s skull.

Prokopiev started to turn back, to finish the first man, and he felt the pairi like a wash of cold, then sudden heat, the darkness closing around him, snow touching his lips.

Annie Rubenstein opened her eyes, immediately seeing Paul. He was asleep, sitting in a chair, and she had the sudden realization she was in a hospital bed. She’d been dreaming, but not with the usual clarity. There were helicopters in the dream and a mountain that looked familiar but wasn’t the mountain where the Retreat was. No faces at all. It had all been a jumble, like watching a videotape played at fast forward, only fragments recognizable before they were gone. She remembered a sedative being administered. It had ruined the dream. She closed her eyes, prayed that nothing was wrong. But there was nothing concrete in the dream, and she wasn’t even certain it was her dream, perhaps only impressions left from using her own mind as a stage for Natalia’s fantasy. The more she thought about it, the more vague the dream became.

She didn’t want to wake Paul. He looked so peaceful; and she was certain he needed the sleep after all he had been through with her father. Her mouth was very dry.

She often envied the others who had taken the Sleep with her. They never dreamed so that after awakening they were conscious of having dreamed.

It was something during the Sleep-Doctor Munchen had guessed that it had to do with the fact that she had not yet pubesced when she slept in the cryogenic chamber, but had admitted it was only supposition, a search for a «

reasonable explanation when none seemed possible. He told her that the area of psychic research was still in its infancy.

But in her dreams, she could see things. And she had gradually come to sense things while she was awake.

Inside her, she didn’t have to be told that Natalia would recover, was on the road to regaining her sanity, control of her own life. Annie Rubenstein watched Paul. If she’d tried, even a little, she could have entered her husband’s thoughts, perhaps awakened him that way. But she didn’t want to do that. The broadening scope of her abilities frightened her. The thing with Doctor Rothstein in his office that first time, when she’d actually read his mind, terrified her even to think about. Sometimes, it was necessary to make a conscious effort to avoid reading Paul’s thoughts, even though some of the times when she slipped, didn’t think about it and actually read his thoughts by accident, they would be filled with delicious thoughts about her.

When they made love, she could feel his thoughts as surely as she could feel his body and they pleased her.

The dreaming was nothing she could control, and only occurred when someone she cared about was in terrible danger. If, someday, the danger would subside, the dreams would go. If, someday, there were peace.

But the other thing, reading people’s thoughts like some phony magician from a videotape movie. She would never do that again, she promised herself, knowing that was probably a lie. But the more often she did it, the more easily she could do it.

Her father’s IQ was extraordinarily high. Her mother’s was, as well. Both she and Michael, tested as children, had been in the upper percentiles nationally. She’d found that out going through things at the Retreat, by accident.

Maybe that had something to do with it.

The explanation the German military surgeon—and her friend—Doctor Munchen had offered made no sense.

She closed her eyes.

Let Paul sleep.

Michael Rourke watched as the last of the gunships disappeared over the horizon. A squadron of J7-V vertical takeoff and landing fighter bombers was due in within the hour, to take off the last of the refugees to other communities in Icelandic volcanoes where there was no danger of eruption. Colonel Mann’s people were bringing in more sophisticated seismic apparatus to aid these communities in pre-planning against possible eruptions.

But Hekla, the capital of Lydveldid Island, was gone, forever.

The mountain still erupted, lava rolling in great yellow tipped red streams down the sides of the new cone which was forming, gas and ash spewing skyward in column-like plumes, the clouds they formed obscuring the sky.

He hugged his borrowed German parka closer around him, staring toward one particular lava flow. It crossed over the ground that was the Hekla cemetery, where his wife and his child would now be entombed forever beneath it.

Bjorn Rolvaag stood beside him, the dog, Hrothgar, between them. Michael’s left arm hurt from the deep, grazing wound he’d sustained.

Rolvaag, after a long time standing there in his customary silence, clapped Michael on the shoulder. He said one word: “Friend.”

Christopher Dodd’s eyes flickered in the light of the battery-operated lamp. “There’s no reason that Mrs. Rourke should be out here with us, Colonel.”

“If she wishes to accompany us, Commander, she is free to,” Wolfgang Mann said matter-of-factly, dismissing Dodd.

“Well, certainly, but I meant, Colonel, it’s so cold out here and the Communists might strike at any moment and after all, well, God, she’s pregnant.”

Sarah Rourke didn’t look at him. Looking at something she despised was a useless occupation.

They inspected the breastworks as they were being erected to form a fortified perimeter around Eden Base, the breastworks composed of bombproof synthetic materials, interlocking into a grid which would become a prefabricated stockade wall fourteen-feet high, with firing positions along a walkway seven feet above the ground where men could stand and shoot down against an enemy assault. Below the level of the walkway were fortified machinegun positions and additional firing loops through which assault rifles could be aimed at advancing forces.

She felt like a bit character in some dramatization of a James Fenimore Cooper novel; all that was missing the woods-wise scout—her husband, John Rourke—and red coats for the German Army. Dodd and the Eden personnel were clearly the embattled colonists here. The KGB Elite Corps would play the parts of the attacking Indians. But in this case, the Indians were as well armed as the defenders, considerably outnumbering the defenders as well. And the Indians had helicopter gunships which didn’t need to breach the wall, could merely fly over it, and grenade launchers and mortars took the place of flaming arrows.

“Those additional reinforcements. You say they’re not all German, Colonel?”

She looked at Dodd as Wolfgang answered him. The cold ate through her, but she would no sooner let Dodd see her give up and seek shelter than she would slit her wrists. “It is the first expedition for a new Allied force proposed only hours ago by Doctor Rourke himself. It will be composed of some German elements to be sure, but Chinese troops and personnel from the American underwater complex at Mid-Wake will be represented as well. Doctor Rourke will lead the force.” Wolfgang Mann looked at his wristwatch. “It should be departing within the next four hours.” He had to raise his voice, a helicopter coming in from the center of the compound, one of the huge German cargo choppers. “So. We must hope that the Soviet attack does not commence until after the arrival of these additional reinforcements. If it does, we must hold Eden Base using your own personnel, the reinforcements which are arriving from New Germany, all of us fighting together.”

The helicopter, fitted with a sky crane, was lowering an anti-aircraft gun into position and she felt Wolfgang’s hand at her arm, gently restraining her.

John would be coming.

Here.

In one way, it filled her heart with happiness, but in another way it filled her mind with trepidation. He would come and he would go. It was always like that for them.

There was a knock at the door of the office he’d been given to use. “Come in,” he said without more than casually looking up as the door opened. In full uniform, cap under his arm, was Jason Darkwood. “Good to see you, Captain Darkwood.”

“General Rourke.”

“Yeah, right,” John Rourke laughed. “I want to go along, Doctor.”

John Rourke looked down at the maps spread over the illuminated table. “You get high marks for directness, I’ll say that. But, there’s no time for a submarine to reach the coast of Georgia.”

“I don’t mean by submarine. I want to go along as a member of the assault team. I understand that you’re the man to ask about it.”

“Look, Captain,” Rourke began again, lighting one of the thin, dark cigars. “You’re too valuable commanding the Reagan to risk as a member of the assault team.”

“The same argument holds true for you, right? Maybe I should have come to attention and saluted, General?”

John Rourke laughed again, Darkwood putting down his hat, leaning over the table as Rourke sat down. “If President Fellows wants to call me a brigadier general, that’s his business. Why do you want to go along? I mean, you’re good at surface warfare. We both know that. But this is a two-pronged airborne assault. Has nothing to do with submarines; there’s no time to plan it properly and the assault force has never fought together before.”

“I know all that, Doctor,” Darkwood smiled, giving a full shot of teeth. “For one thing, it sounds like a good fight. But that’s not the real reason. If a lot of my function in the days to come will be working hand-in-glove with the assault teams, I have to know how they operate.”

“Flimsy,” Rourke smiled. He liked Darkwood.

“Flimsy, I grant you. I’m on the beach until we start hitting those island bases the Germans are spotting for us. Meanwhile, a battle so important we scrap everything and insert ourselves into it because we have no other choice has come up. I think I should be there.”

“So, you don’t really have a reason,” John Rourke grinned, studying the tip of his cigar. “Right?”

“More or less, that’s the spirit of the thing, I suppose.”

“What’s Admiral Rahn say?”

Darkwood looked down at his hands. “Well, he considers that I’m on detached duty from the regular Navy to your Special Operations Groups at any event, so I decided I should talk to you first.”

“So, if I say it’s okay, you can go to Admiral Rahn, right?”

“That’s pretty much the way I’d planned it.”

John Rourke stood up. “I owe you a few favors. Seems like an odd way to repay them, but it’s all right by me, Jason.”

“Thank you, John—or is that General John?”

Rourke clapped Darkwood on the shoulder and they both laughed. It had always struck John Rourke as a terribly odd characteristic of his sex that, in times of impending danger, the slightest thing would be cause for raucous laughter, as if the laughter would somehow

ward off the evil. There were obvious therapeutic effects for the psyche, to be sure, but it was almost more than that.

Darkwood left. John Rourke returned to his maps. A force of men who had never fought together, most of whom could not speak any language but their own, the majority of whom had never seen an aircraft outside of a five centuries old film on video let alone flown in one, thrust into temperatures well below freezing against a highly trained force, the Elite Corps of the Soviet Union.