Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm (7 page)

None of these was the right choice here.

John Rourke drew the suppressed 6906, offing the safety as he moved out of the light of guard post four.

The subsonic bullet would be less penetrative than any other round available to him and silence might prove an advantage. His fingers checked the slide lock. It was lowered and he left it that way. Not that much silence would be needed, and fast follow up shots could be important.

He kept going, keeping his pace slow, even, as he walked into the darkness. And he realized he was afraid. There was always some personal fear in batde; men who denied experiencing it were either liars or lunatics. But it was not this sort of fear, now, which gripped him deep in the pit of his stomach, made his hands slightly slick. If something should go wrong and he should miss this chance, then Rausch would be alive to attempt to kill Sarah, kill Darkwood, aid Commander Dodd in his efforts to turn Eden Base . into his personal fiefdom.

None of that could be allowed to happen.

John Rourke stopped walking, nearing guard post five, near enough that he should have seen their light. There was none to see.

He moved closer to the corridor wall, the whistling moans of the wind from the storm surrounding the German base hospital more intense, or his awareness of the sounds more acute. He couldn’t be sure which.

His back to the wall, John Rourke edged forward, keeping his pistol closeat his side, his eyes slighuy averted lest Rausch should attempt to momentarily blind him with high intensity light.

From the darkness ahead of him, he heard a voice. “Herr Doc-J tor. Do not move!” f

Rourke froze, his right fist locked on the butt of the suppressor-I

fitted 6906. . |

The voice again. “I am Freidrich Rausch, Herr Doctor. I haVe f come to kill your meddlesome friend, Captain Darkwood. Consider the Hen Captain’s death merely a prelude, an overture to the death of your wife. I will find her, kill her.”

“Try killing me, mother fucker,” Rourke hissed, dropping to a crouch so deep he was nearly on his knees. Unless Rausch wore vision intensification glasses, there was no way Rausch could clearly see him, Rourke realized.

“I will kill you, indeed, but only after a most unpleasant murdering of your wife. Sarah is her name, is it not? Death is so much less profoundly felt without mourning; would you not agree?” John Rourke feared for his wife, and he’d experienced fear before, hoped to live to experience it again. But he had never been paralyzed by it. While Freidrich Rausch talked, John Rourke moved.

He edged back along the corridor, toward the nearest open doorway, literally diving across the corridor from one side to the other and through the doorway, coming up out of a roll onto his knees. His back hurt him slightly because of the unnatural way he had moved to avoid the rifle slung there scratching across or banging into the floor and making a betraying noise.

He was up, to his feet, telling himself the muscle pains would work themselves out and, as he moved, they were.

Because of the modular construction of the base hospital, each block of rooms was designed to connect in a variety of ways to similar or dissimilar blocks for maximum utility; hence, there were interconnecting doors and demountable walls.

John Rourke moved quickly to the first door, tried it, opened it, his right fist tight on the butt of the suppressor-fitted 6906.

The door opened onto one of the wards, a half dozen actual German casualties here. As Rourke passed by the nearest bed, he nearly slipped.

Rourke took the battered Zippo windlighter from his BDU pocket and cupped his hands around it as he rolled the striking wheel under his thumb. He had nearly slipped in a pool of blood. The man in the bed had a throat that was slit almost literally from ear to ear.

Rourke slowly, soundlessly closed the cowling of the Zippo, extinguishing the blue yellow flame, his eyes still seeing it as an after image as he checked the next occupied bed. Here, too, the man was murdered.

The others would be the same, Rourke realized.

“Herr Doctor? How does it feel to be so totally helpless to prevent the death of your wife?”

Rausch’s voice talking from the corridor or near to it.

Rourke kept moving, across the floor of the ward toward the demountable wall, ramming the 6906 into his belt for an instant as his hands found the locking mechanism, worked it-there were squeaking sounds-and unlocked the wall from its frame. Rourke drew the sliding accordion panel back just enough that he could pass through.

But he cautiously looked beyond the demountable wall first, because Freidrich Rausch had stopped talking.

Jason Darkwood sat up on the edge of his bed, wondering if he should lie down again. Would he make a more inviting target, lying back in his bed? More helpless? More easy prey for this man who killed people in the name of a doctrine at the mention of which sane men were disgusted, filled with revulsion?

But he could not lie back.

He sat there, instead, his left hand beside bis pillow, beneath his pillow both the Lancer 2418 A2 semi-automatic pistol and his knife. On a practical level, he took great comfort from the gun, a weapon with which he could shoot bullseyes all day long at twenty-five yards, a weapon he had carried in combat ever since his first days out of the Academy. Officers could purchase the issue pistol, if they wished, and he had very soon purchased his. His second paycheck, he suddenly remembered. The first one he owed most of to two friends who’d lent him money. By the third paycheck, he was mercifully at sea and there was no need to spend money for billeting or food.

There’d been times when money was tight in those early days, until he’d learned to manage it; but the gun had always stayed with him.

Yet, somehow, he took greater comfort from his knife. It was an identical duplicate, down to the metallurgy, of the Randall Smithsonian Bowie his ancestor had brought to Mid-Wake.

It had heritage.

And, it was personal.

It would be useless at twenty-five yards. But Freidrich Rausch would not come from twenty-five yards. Rausch would be close when and if Rausch came. Darkwood’s palms perspired. He waited.

When Sam Aldridge had said, “01 be back later, Jason; gonna check around some more,” Darkwood had been desirous of telling him, “Hey, Sam-don’t leave me alone here, huh? I’m spooked.” But, instead, he’d told his friend, Tm fine. Let me know how things are going, okay?”

And Sam Aldridge had gone.

Now Jason Darkwood waited alone in the darkness.

John Rourke was beside the corridor wall, behind him a patient lounge. His hearing, always excellent despite his exposure over the years to so much gurifire without the benefit of hearing protection, enabled him now to almost pinpoint the origin of Rausch’s voice. This worried him. Why was Rausch being so careless?

A thought crossed John Rourke’s rnind, and the thought chilled him.

Cautiously, the pistol in his right fist, John Rourke reached out to touch his fingertips to the door handle. But, instead, he drew his hand back. Again, he thrust the pistol into his belt and took the Zippo from his pocket. The flashlight would have been easier to use but easier to spot from the other side of the doorway as well. Rourke shielded the lighter with his body to muffle any noise of striking flame, then dropped to a crouch beside the doorway, moving the lighter close to the handle. Leading out of the handle’s base were two thin pieces of wire. Turning the door handle would bridge the wires. Rourke’s lighter and his eyes followed the wires down to the base of the door, then along the base molding and along the wall. The wires ended at the wall outlet.

If he had opened the door without thinking, he would have electrocuted himself.

John Rourke felt a smile cross his face. Rausch had re-taught him a valuable lesson: And that was never to underestimate an enemy.

John Rourke unsheathed the LS-X knife and went to work on the wires.

Jason Darkwood lay back in the bed, telling himself he had not heard a noise, that nothing was going to happen. There were two United States Marines on duty at the end of the hall and all of the connecting doors were blocked and locked.

He could hear the wind, his room on an outside wall of the central courtyard for the hospital. Doctor Munchen had explained to him, “We have always felt that psychological well-being is a great contributor to physical well-being. Often, a chance to experience the sunlight, the fresh air, a pleasant breeze, can be quite surprisingly therapeutic. With the modular construction of our field hospitals, it is very simple to merely leave out a center module, or even several, thus creating a central courtyard in which recuperating patients can experience a natural environment. Statistics indicate as high as a five percent reduction in overall hospitalization in hospitals using this technique, among a certain class of patients, of course. I feel its validity can best be tested against the opposite extreme. Here, in American Georgia as of late, the climate is so extreme that patients, no matter how otherwise hardy, cannot be exposed to the cold and the snow. Periods of hospitalization, based on preliminary raw data, with comparative wounds to comparative personnel, are of greater duration. But perhaps the snow wfll stop.”

This was Darkwood’s first truly prolonged experience on the surface, and the weather astounded him in its severity. That men constantly lived and worked and fought with such conditions of extreme cold, high winds and falling snows was a testimony to their character and their endurance.

Darkwood felt himself smile. He imagined a surface dweller would have marvelled equally at the adaptability shown by Mid-Wake personnel to a life-How could he classify the life of Mid-Wake? Enclosure? One was almost always enclosed, beneath the great domes of Mid-Wake itself, within the hull of one of Mid-Wakes vessels. Only a very few were ever able to escape enclosure, albeit for a brief period of time. Even swimming as part of a mission rarely took someone to the surface; and, while swirnming, one wore helmet and suit and was encased from head to toe, even the hands.

Suddenly, Jason Darkwood wanted to be in the cold, feel the wind, the snow.

He stood up-a httle too quickly-and held onto his nightstand.

Here he was a prisoner, really, enclosed within the walls of this room, within the larger confines of the building itself. There was a door leading to the outside. But logic dictated he not pass through it.

Prisoners of ice and snow and wind and prisoners of the sea were very much alike.

There was a sound, like something scratching against the outer door leading to the courtyard. It wasn’t like any of the sounds he had heard before, the howling of the wind, the creaking of the very building joints themselves at times.

Darkwood took up his pistol, stared at it.

Was it Rausch come to get him?

His right fist tightened on the butt of the Lancer 2418 A2. He wished he had some sort of missile at his command instead of just a pistol.

Jason Darkwood edged back from the door to the outside, crossing the room toward the door leading to the corridor. Was it merely the feet that it was “outside” beyond that door which somehow, on an almost primordial level, terrified him?

He had his hand reaching out for the door handle leading to the corridor, to an inside place, enclosed.

Darkwood stopped moving his hand.

If he touched that door handle, he would be giving in to the fear which had begun to grip him here, stalked by Rausch, trapped in an unfamiliar environment, one of unbridled hostility, his head and neck aching, medication for the pain coursing through his system.

Darkwood thrust his left hand into the pocket of his robe so he couldn’t reach for the door handle. He knew enough about the human body to know that things like fear and confidence were controlled by chemical triggers. Some chemical trigger-it had to

be the medication-was tying him in knots of indecision. But he could start other chemical triggers working. Brave men conquered their fear because they had no choice, not because they wanted to. He had no choice.

Jason Darkwood started walking-slowly because he couldn’t walk rapidly-toward the door to the outside. If Freidrich Rausch were waiting for him, then the thing would get over with quickly, one way or the other.

Darkwood gripped the pistol tighter.

It was a tape player, not modern like those of new Germany, but state-of-the-art for the era of John Rourke’s earlier life in the Twentieth Century. It was from one of the Eden Project supply caches.

“You must know, Herr Doctor, that you cannot win. Ours is an historic struggle. I have calculated your actual chronological age to arrive at the date of your birth. What a pity! I feel terrible sorrow for you that you were born only after the great hero of humanity was sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity as a sacrifice to the demagogues of the self-styled democracies. To have lived in those days when Der Fuhrer walked the earth like mortal man and to have breathed air that might have touched him-”

John Rourke pushed the button for stop and the tape machine clicked off.

Freidrich Rausch had been smarter than John Rourke’s reappraisal of the man’s capabilities had even suggested. Somewhere along the corridor, there would be a photo-electric eye or pressure sensitive strip. John Rourke’s having passed through or on whatever it was had activated the tape recorder’s play mechanism. Rausch had intentionally come here, to the most remote of the interior perimeter outposts. And killed.

Near Rourke’s feet, as he shone the light, were two bodies, throats slashed ear to ear, one body that of an American Marine from Mid-Wake, the other that of a commando of New Germany.

John Thomas Rourke took the cassette from the recorder. Something-some random sound in the background - anything might prove of some use.

And he ran.

Because Freidrich Rausch would be at the heart of the hospital complex, ready to kill Jason Darkwood, if Darkwood weren’t dead already…

Jason Darkwood’s head ached with the movement. Doctor Munchen had told him to expect some pain, even some disorientation under mental or physical stress. The blow to his head had been severe. He was feeling vaguely nauseated.