Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm (4 page)

Maggie had baked lasagna-she was a terrific cook-and there was a bottle of wine and a videotape of some romantic movie from before the war. But they’d only made it about a half-hour into the movie before they’d spontaneously decided to make a romantic tape of their own, but no cameras running.

Making love with Maggie was like nothing he’d ever experienced. She responded to him as if she were a part of him, their hands knowing what to do to each other as if-And then what Darkwood needed to do was done and he felt drained for a moment and there was no sensation of the pain for at least fifteen seconds, but when the pain returned it was more violent than before.

He leaned back in the hospital bed, his face feeling hot, but he took care of the thing.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t been very tempted with Maritza Zeiss and, maybe, had she lived-He didn’t know. Now, he never would.

He rang the nurse call button aid, after a moment, the tent of curtain around his bed parted and a German medtech, a young man of about twenty, entered the cubicle. He spoke excellent if somewhat stilted English. “You are finished, Herr Captain Darkwood?”

Jason Darkwood didn’t quite know what to say, but nodded, the prophylactic closed at the open end with a rubber band and inside a small beaker of tepid water. It floated around like a communications buoy. “Here.”

The Herr Doctor Rourke would wish to speak with you, Herr Captain.”

*Teah, sure,” Darkwood nodded. He shouldn’t have nodded. The pain. The German medtech disappeared and, after a moment, there was a knock on one of the support posts for the curtain. “Come in.”

It was John Rourke. “Doctor Rourke-“

“Don’t stand up, Jason. How are you feeling?”

John Rourke stood beside the bed, his parka absent, his double shoulder holster with his little stainless steel guns visible, worn over a black long sleeved military sweater. “In no special order of importance? Well, stupid, embarrassed, like I’m up shifs creek-was that a real place?-and in a lot of pain.”

John Rourke smiled. “I couldn’t have you given anything really strong. Because of what you had to do. It’s quite important that we have a sample right away. What happened?”

Jason Darkwood shifted position and his head ached all the more, so he fidgeted back. “Okay,” and he cleared his throat, a spasm of pain consuming him. “I took her back to her tent, like we agreed. Sure, I thought she was attractive, and maybe I would have tried something with her, but not that way. What’s she saying, anyway? I mean, I figured out why you wanted the test.”

John Rourke pulled the solitary folding chair around and straddled it as he sat down. “No one’s told you, then. She’s dead.”

Jason Darkwood felt his eyes open wide and the headache worsened instantly. “She’s-Now wait a minute.”

“What do you remember?”

Darkwood closed his eyes against the pain, and he thought maybe it would help him to remember. He remembered waking up in the hospital bed. He was told he’d been hurt and that it was urgent that he give a sample of ejaculant. He remembered things very fuzzily before that. “I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t?”

“I don’t remember, I mean. I took her to her tent arfd we went inside. Bang. What happened to my head?”

“What do you mean, “bang”?” Doctor Rourke pressed.

Darkwood shook his head, the pain consuming him. “I, ahh-We went inside and I don’t remember anything after that.”

“What did you mean earlier when you assumed you suspected the reason we needed an ejaculant sample?”

Darkwood licked his hps. His mouth was very dry. “I assumed something happened and she said I did something to her. I mean, what would you think if you woke up and your head felt ten times too big and somebody wanted you to jerk off into-“

“Were you thinking about her sexually? I mean, at the moment you entered the tent?”

“I don’t know. No. I was thinking I was cold. What the hell’s going on? What do you mean she’s dead? I’m a little slow today, but-“

“Someone murdered Maritza Zeiss and then went to a great deal of trouble to make it appear you’d raped her. The way-“

“I what?” Darkwood sat upright and his head felt as if it would explode and he blinked his eyes against the pain.

Doctor Rourke began again. The scene, as it appeared, was that you had fought with her, raped her. Her mouth was bleeding. One of her nipples was partially torn off-“

“Oh, God, Doctor-“

Then, as it was supposed to appear, you slit her throat with a Mid-Wake issue fighting knife-” “I don’t even carry one of those.”

Rourke smiled. “I know that you carry a duplicate of a Randall Smithsonian Bowie. Paul knows that, too, as of course, do your men,
etc.
The killer, or whoever put him up to it, didn’t. Just as you raked the knife across her throat, with her last ounce of strength she made a valiant effort to kill you, hitting you at the base of the skull with the butt of her flashlight. Evidently, you were opposed to be dead, too. Either the killer was in a hurry or he was either too stupid or too incompetent to tell that you were alive. Your pulse was weak and your breathing was shallow. I tend to dunk he was in a hurry, which would correspond with another ob-Krvation, one I made before we came on the scene. There was ejaculant on your-“

“Aww, shit,” Darkwood hissed, the pain so intense now he almost didn’t care.

“I^had the Germans test it. It matches what was found in her vaginal area. The only way to prove your innocence is to compare that to the specimen you just provided us. Unless the killer’s your identical twin brother, it won’t match. I know you didn’t do it; you know you didn’t do it. Maritza Zeiss was popular to begin with, a lovely and talented girl and someone the Eden personnel were counting on a great deal, once the weather moderated enough to try crops. That’s why you’re in the German field hospital, not the one staffed by Eden personnel. There was an attempt at mob justice here once before, under surprisingly similar circumstances, when Natalia was suspected of aiding the Soviets. I didn’t want to see history repeat itself.”

“What about Sam Aldridge and Lillie St. James and the rest of the Mid-Wake personnel?”

“You mean, do they know about this?” Rourke mquired “Yes. I put them on alert, just in case. Whoever our killer was, he eliminated Doctor Zeiss and tried to eliminate you and, at once, discredit the Mid-Wake officer corps.”

“ThisH have to be-” Darkwood started, his tongue feeling thick, the pain extremely intense.

“Reported? I’m your CO., remember? Brigadier General Rourke? Once the lab tests are back, there won’t be any charges brought, nothing will go on your record. Your president and your admiral want me to cooperate; well, they can cooperate with me, then. There’s a more serious concern than you.”

“Oh, I’m glad to hear that.”

“I thought you would be, Jason. No, there’s a murderer loose and he’s working in complicity with Commander Dodd.”

“What?” He moved and he shouldn’t have.

That’s another reason I wanted you here. I didn’t want a mysterious embolism popping up or something. Now, rest.”

“Doctor-ah-“

John Rourke reached under his sweater, glanced toward the curtains, then turned the palm of his hand toward Darkwood. In it was Darkwood’s own 2418 A2. He’d scratched his initials into the right grip plate years ago. “I cant put it under the pillow. Disrupt hospital routine, and anyway, guns are damned uncomfortable to sleep on. Roll over a little, if you can.”

Darkwood rolled over right, felt the mattress being lifted

slighdy, then lowered. “Where’d-“

“Between the mattress and the cot frame. If you need it, youll have to get out of bed for it. Sorry. But, on the plus side, it’s chamber loaded and ready to go. Remind me to see if I can find you a .45. You’d like it better. Trust me.”

And John Rourke smiled, then walked out between the curtains. Jason Darkwood lay back. The curtains opened once more. It was Doctor Rourke again. Trust this medtech. He’s one of Colonel Mann’s unit. He’s got an injection for you. Pain killer. Make you sleep. By the time you wake up, everything should be worked out. Rest well.”

The curtains closed, Doctor Rourke vanishing, the medtech approaching the bed. It was the same man who’d taken the sample from him. In his odd but perfectly pronounced English, he said, “It would be better, Herr Captain Darkwood, to administer this injection in your buttocks.”

“Just what I needed,” Darkwood groaned, rolling over.

There were only three still standing modules in what had been the German headquarters complex at their facility outside Eden Base. John had asked that the samples be flown there because Doctor Munchen, the German physician both she and John counted a friend, still had laboratory facilities there, however rudimentary.

Sarah Rourke’s eyes narrowed.

John looked through the powerful electronically enhanced microscope. She had just looked through it at the two specimens and seen nothing different between them and that worried her. Jason Darkwood had seemed like such a very nice young man.

John was saying something in medicalese to her, but sometimes he forgot that she had been a nurse and he was a doctor, that she had given up on keeping up with her field after she married him, that he kept up on everything.

He looked at her and, she supposed, realized she wasn’t following. “We’ve got a match.”

“Oh, no.”

“Relax,” her husband smiled. “These are the separate samples I took from Jason Darkwood’s genitalia and from Maritza Zeiss.” “Now what?”

Doctor Munchen smiled cheerfully. “Now, Frau Rourke, you can see for yourself that the sample taken from Jason Darkwood does not, in fact, match either of these.”

He gestured for her to cross the room again.

She did so, stepping up to the microscope, fingers on the adjustment knobs. “I don’t see a difference.”

Touch the button at your left, Frau Rourke,” Doctor Munchen advised her. She touched the button. And, suddenly, she saw. As Sarah looked, Munchen continued speaking. The slides were diffused with purple light. “Semen identification techniques have changed little over the centuries, I think. Your husband kindly lent me several books dealing with forensic science. The main difference is the instrumentation with which we are able to examine. A combination of acid phosphatase and ultraviolet light gives us the answers. As you should be able to see, there are subtle differences in the spermatazoa. Fortunate for us, it was so cold that the samples taken from the body of the woman and from the American Captain Jason Darkwood were still viable.”

There were subtle differences in shapes, subde but clearly different.

Sarah looked up from me microscope. Then this is conclusive proof,” she said.

John said, “In two ways. Whoever*s semen this matches is the killer, almost unquestionably, unless there were two men, one who did the murder and one who raped her afterward.”

Sarah looked at him. “Afterward?”

John nodded.

Munchen said, The torn nipple. There was no bleeding, which meant, of course, that circulation had stopped, conclusive evidence, of course, that Fraulein Doctor Zeiss was already dead. We have not only a murderer to deal with, but a necrophile as well.”

A necrophile was someone who had intercourse with the dead.

She shivered.

John’s next words made her want to throw up. “Records taken from the leader’s private files at New Germany indicate mat Freidrich Rausch was into necrophilia. Don’t ask for the details. And he’s the man whose brother you shot to death, Sarah. Hell be after you.”

Someone who raped dead women wanted to kill her. Sarah Rourke shivered again and John folded her into his arms…

Christopher Dodd was freezing. He kept walking for two reasons: He had to see Rausch’s brother and, if he stopped walking, he might freeze to death.

The sling of the M-16 over his shoulder rattled. It was the only sound amid the silence of the still increasing snowfall except for his own rather labored breathing.

He’d brought the rifle in case some of the KGB people who had escaped the battle might have taken refuge here in the partially constructed permanent base. Certainly, it had been checked, but what if the Russians doubled back?

He reached the foundation and partially erected walls of the community center, snow drifted high as a man’s waist in some areas, construction equipment, much of it undamaged despite the attack, all but covered in snow.

“You may stop there, Commander.”

Dodd stopped in mid-stride. Damien Rausch had been insane, of course, but mere was a certain civility about him, a certain pleasantness when he spoke. Freidrich Rausch had none of these qualities, only the insanity, the ruthlessness, but none of the veneer of humanity.

“May I turn around?”

“You are armed, Commander.”

“Yes. I thought there might be Russians about.”

“There were three. Trust me. You are safe now.”

Dodd slowly started to turn, and, as he did, his eyes saw something red partially covered by a snowdrift in one of the corners made by two unfinished walls.

It was a body, or at least part of one …

She lay in their cot and watched him as he cleaned his guns. Sarah Rourke had seen her husband cleaning his little .45s more times than she could remember, but there was something especially meticulous about the way he did it tonight.

She watched him until he was finished. He closed the lubricant-it had a nice enough smell-and walked over to the cot. He placed both pistols on the chair that was beside bis side. “111 have to wash my hands.”

Sarah Rourke wondered if that meant he wanted to make love to her. She wanted him to, but her thoughts were still filled with images of Damien Rausch and the body of Maritza Zeiss and she didn’t know if she could get those thoughts out of her mind and her heart…

*

Jason Darkwood, in a bathrobe and combat boots, a sweater around his shoulders, sat in the chair beside bis bed, his face pale-looking, small lines around his eyes from pain, the eyes slightly glassy-looking with medication. Rourke knew what Darkwood was taking, knew that it would not otherwise dull Darkwood’s perceptions.