Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (3 page)

“At least, Annie and I will be together, in death, in life, in whatever the future holds. Despite all my regrets, lost friends and family, and places I held dear destroyed in the bombings

the Night of the War or in the Great Conflagration, when the atmosphere caught fire and nearly destroyed all life, some things I will never regret are the love which arose between Annie and me, my friendship with Michael Rourke, with Natalia, with Sarah, all the others—and, most especially, John Thomas Rourke.

“I know him well enough to understand and forgive his solitary weakness, yet never so well that I do not marvel at his strengths. His weakness is his perfection. He is more than other men, and he pays the price for that. He is my friend. There could be no greater honor than that.”

Paul Rubenstein looked up from his journal and stared at the Atsack’s bulkhead wall. After a time, he shifted his gaze, focusing on the sleeping form of John Rourke. High forehead, but naturally so, a full shock of dark brown hair just touched with gray, both a face and physique that were at the least imposing.

“Perfect,” Rubenstein smiled.

Annie said, “You should be the last one down, because you’re the best shot.” The wind blew with incredible force here atop the mountain, her father’s mountain. “That way, you can cover me with Daddy’s rifle.”

Natalia looked at her, saying nothing for a moment, then nodding. “All right, but—”

Annie smiled beneath the scarves that swathed her face, beneath the snorkel hood of the German arctic parka. “—But be careful?”

“Something like that, Annie.”

Annie Rourke Rubenstein tied onto the rope, weaving it to the figure eight descender on the Swiss-Seat-style rappelling harness she wore. She checked the harness where it met the D-rings, tugging at it in every conceivable direction. After her father, John Rourke, had awakened from The Sleep, he’d spent five years with Annie and her older brother, by two years, Michael, educating them in survival. Rappelling was one of the things she had never liked but had been forced to learn… and learn well.

As she started toward the edge of the small, flat expanse at the summit, Annie remembered those days. “Why do I have to learn something like rappelling, Daddy? I’m a girl!”

“Up until comparatively recendy in human history, being a girl meant you weren’t taught to read and write … weren’t allowed to vote in an election … in some areas weren’t even allowed to own property. Being born a girl meant that you were property. But, let me ask you something.”

“What?”

Her father had smiled, a little bit embarrassed-looking. “Aside from peeing standing up without getting his legs wet, what can a boy do that you can’t?”

“Daddy!”

“Men have greater upper body strength, but women have a greater threshold of pain; and, even though they’re more sensitive to temperature variances, women can withstand greater temperature extremes. Women tend to be more verbal, while men tend to be more analytical. Yet that didn’t seem to hamper great female scientists such as Marie Curie or great female philosophers such as Ayn Rand, did it?”

“No.”

“So, just because you’re a girl now and someday youll be a grown woman doesn’t mean you can’t learn anything … do anything … accomplish anything a boy can do who’ll someday grow to be a man, right?”

She’d thought about that for a moment, then looked at him and nodded.

“So, get your little butt over to that rope and shout down to your brother to belay it before you start down.”

And she’d done just that, getting her litde butt over to the rope, locking on, shouting down to her brother and, after a lot of embarrassing failures, getting pretty good at it—as good as her brother, as a matter of fact.

In those days, she’d still been learning that if her father was going to take the time to teach her something, it was because he knew she could excel at it if she tried.

John Rourke was not now and had never been, to her memory, a man who wasted time on useless endeavors.

“Keep me covered, Natalia,” Annie called out, then jumped, controlling her descent, halting it, both feet going against the rock wall, kicking out, then descending again. If the Nazis under this Freidrich Rausch were watching this near side of the mountain rather than the main entrance to The Retreat, she might very likely be dead before she reached the base.

Again she kicked off, gliding downward. Slung to her back was an M16. Belted around her waist were her two usual handguns, the Detonics Scoremaster .45 and the Beretta 92F, but there was also a third handgun this time, a fixed sight Taurus 9mm 92 AF, cosmetically almost identical to the Beretta but with three major differences: The safety system was of the type where the pistol could be carried cocked and locked or hammer down; it was satin chromed; and anchored beneath the forward portion of the frame was a Laser Aim LAI. Zeroed to the weapon upon which it was mounted, it might prove valuable in the darkness.

And that was why she’d taken it from the arms lockers.

The Taurus was loose in one of the several musette bags slung across her torso, shoulder to hip.

Again, Annie kicked out, continuing to descend.

Snow swirled around her, the winds near the base of the mountain even stronger. She was cold, oh so cold, but told herself that the sooner this was over the sooner she’d be able to take a hot shower, wash her hair, slip into a gown and robe.

Despite all the training, rappelling still mildly terrified her, and Annie realized that was one of the reasons she was cold now.

She kicked off again, descending more slowly now, the base of the mountain near.

She sank chest deep into a drift, then sagged back, hauling on the rope and pulling her way along the base of the mountain, through the drift, at last breaking free of it and sinking to her knees.

There was no sign of the enemy.

She freed herself of the rope, gave it three rapid tugs, waited a second, then tugged three times again.

Under different circumstances, she would have belayed the lines to ease Natalia’s descent, but under different circumstances, Annie wouldn’t have been rappelling down the side of the mountain in the first place. Covering Natalia’s descent was more important.

For that purpose, Annie extracted the laser-sighted Taurus semi-automatic from the musette bag in which she’d carried it. Its fifteen-round magazines were not interchangeable with those of the Beretta, although her father had once told her they could be altered for that purpose. But the four spare magazines she carried were not so altered.

Annie tugged down her snorkel hood a litde, pushed down the scarf covering her mouth, and bit off the outer glove on her

right hand. With only the silk glove liner beneath, she had nearly full tactile abilities. She linked the two plugs that connected the battery-operated laser tube to the control switch. Had she done so earlier, she would needlessly have depleted the reserve. And, at best, she had about thirty-two minutes of actual use before recharging would be necessary. Thirty-two minutes could be enough time for hundreds of shots, because the laser only bled power when the switch was actually activated. But, as her father had taught her, there was no sense in not planning ahead.

The coupling completed, Annie press-checked the Taurus, edging the slide back just enough to visually confirm a chambered round, never trusting memory or indicators or anything else other than her own senses.

The Taurus was chambered loaded, giving her sixteen rounds ready.

She tested the laser with a brief flash into the snowdrift near her, its red dot almost comfortingly warm to her. Then she eased her second finger against the pressure-sensitive switch.

And Annie moved ahead, along the base of the mountain, searching for a position of concealment and cover from which she could simultaneously protect Natalia and herself.

She found a niche of rock and moved into it, letting the snow bury her to the waist. With her snow-smock covering the arctic parka, she should be all but invisible, she hoped, and the rocks would provide cover from enemy fire from three sides.

She crouched there, a loose grip on the laser-sighted Taurus 9mm, her eyes straining for a glimpse of Natalia descending along the rock face… .

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, both a Steyr-Mannlicher SSG and an M16 slung to her back, both on cross body slings, descended rapidly along the mountainside, her goggled eyes scanning below her, trying to penetrate the cyclonically swirling snow.

There were no sounds of gunfire, nothing to indicate that Annie had been detected in her descent moments earlier. And

Annie was remarkably good.

In the days Before the Night of the War, as well as afterward, when she’d worked actively in the KGB, there were always the jokes about the so-called talented amateurs of popular fiction. But Annie, although it was hard to ever consider her an amateur, was truly that. Natalia would have staked her life on Annie’s courage and skills as willingly as on one of the talents of the most highly trained professional in the KGB, the Mossad, the British SIS, the American CIA, or any other organization.

She had her father’s intuitiveness for doing just the right thing at just the right time, along with a woman’s lateral approach to head-on confrontation. Annie Rourke Rubenstein was the ideal agent or officer, even though she’d never actually been one. Emotional, open, feminine, none of these qualities interfering whatsoever with Annie’s abilities to tackle the job at hand and emerge victorious, in fact, these attributes only served to enhance her abilities.

Natalia kicked away, controlling her descent, her right hand ready to leave the rope and grab for one of the twin L-Frame Smith & Wesson revolvers holstered at her right hip.

The guns. She thought about them for the first time in a long time. They had been a gift from revolversmith Ron Mahovsky, to the man who succeeded to the presidency of the United States. President Chambers had awarded them to her after the collaborative effort between United States and Soviet personnel to evacuate peninsular Florida.

He’d told her that, as an American president, he could not award a medal —even had he access to one —to an enemy agent. So he’d given her the revolvers instead.

The barrels were flattened along the sides, and the right ones were engraved “American Eagles.”

She’d used them for steady carry in the field ever after that, in the holsters that accompanied them, on a belt John had found for her that would more properly fit her woman’s waist.

She kicked off, nearing the ground she was sure.

And there was still no sign of fighting below… .
*

From her vantage point, when she craned her neck just so, Annie could see the rock in front of The Retreat entrance, which had to be moved in order to open the outer door. And, beside it now, oblivious to the possibility —fact —that surveillance cameras could be monitoring their every move, were two men.

But, in the distance, when there was a moment’s lull in the icy north wind, she heard the soft whisper of silenced rotor blades … a German gunship.

Annie did not delude herself.

Help was not forthcoming.

If the Nazis had stolen one gunship and its pilot to serve their nefarious ends, they could just as easily have stolen two or three. Coming through the night would be Nazi reinforcements.

The two men beside the rock seemed to be doing something other than lurking about. She saw a cylindrically shaped metallic object that could have been an explosive charge, likely was. Annie bit her lower lip beneath the scarf that protected her mouth from the snow and the cold. The gunship might have missile capabilities… in all likelihood would have such capabilities. Certainly, the missiles coupled with an explosive charge could penetrate through the outer door. The interior vault door was another matter, of heavy-gauge steel. But an explosive charge —a second one —might damage it enough that entry could be gained.

“Damn,” Annie hissed under her breath.

Rausch, most certainly one of the men on the ground, could have given compass coordinates to his men aboard the chopper, but most likely was bringing them in by transponder or merely by ordinary modern radio.

If she could kill Rausch and the man with him, whoever he might be, Annie might be able to confuse the helicopter into landing either farther away or off the road entirely, crashing. But, in either event, she must keep The Retreat entrance a secret from the Nazis. Otherwise, whatever she did to Rausch and the man with him would only be a temporary respite.

So, there were only seconds.

She glanced once toward the face of the mountain. Natalia was visible as a shadow within a swirl of snow, still some thirty to forty-five seconds from touching down. There was no time to wait.

Annie Rourke Rubenstein left the cover and concealment of the rocks, starting forward, all but swimming through the deeply drifted snow, keeping the muzzle of the laser-sighted Taurus up above it.

She had no worry about the Ml6, its muzzle cap in place. And, again, she remembered the words of her father during those five years he had so intensely educated and trained them. “What do you call this thing on the muzzle of my CAR-15 again?”

“A muzzle cap?”

“Now, look at this.” They’d been standing in the main supply room, and he’d taken down a rather large box, opened it, and turned it at an angle so that when she stood on her tiptoes she could look inside. The box was full to the brim with more of the muzzle caps that fitted tight over the flash hider and, she already knew, blocked entry of dirt, water, or other foreign material through the muzzle end of the barrel. “What do you see?”

“A whole bunch of them.”

“Right. So, whenever you need to protect the bore of your weapon, use one of these. But, wheneveryou might need a shot very fast, don’t worry about shooting through it, because I’ve got enough to last us for a very long time. Okay, Annie?”

“Okay,” Annie had told him.

The M16’s chamber was loaded. All she needed to do, if the pistol proved insufficient for the task, was to swing the assault rifle forward, flick the tumbler from safe to auto, and pull the trigger.