Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (26 page)

“You killed Wolfgang Mann?” Paul was shouting.

“No, I didn’t,” Rourke rasped, getting to his feet. “Paul. Stop the car. Brake control on the left just like an automobile.”

“Right—but then who the hell is—”

Spitz was getting to his feet, recoiling from the smell of burning flesh, Dr. Mentz’s body still smoldered as

Spitz crawled from beneath it.

“What is this!” Spitz shouted.

“This is a clone of Wolfgang Mann,” Rourke said as he moved past Spitz, stepped over the corpse of Dr. Mentz and looked down at the man he had just shot to death. “A clone, with some sort of implant in his head that allowed him to be programmed for certain responses. When you opened your orders—some sort of computer?”

“Yes?”

“When you opened the case or powered up—I imagine it powers up when opened. But that was a signal for the clone of Generalobest Mann here to kill you and anyone else from the party that he could. Remember when he recited coordinates just as we were taken prisoner? That wasn’t a flash of inspiration for the heroic aircrew that would go for help. That was to alert Dr. Zimmer’s invasion force, which is standing by somewhere near here.

“And,” Rourke added, “we’ll be caught in the middle and you know too much, Spitz, so if we make it out of here alive, ZimmerTi want you dead anyway. Zimmer’s ability to clone human beings is a power he’ll jealously guard and it’s only a power as long as it’s a secret.”

“This is madness.”

John Rourke ignored Spitz’s comment, his concentration focused on the clone of Wolfgang Mann. Skin elasticity was a little too good for a person of Mann’s biological age, even considering the salubrious effects of the Sleep. Already Rourke was dragging the dead body toward the trolley door.

“Why are we stopping?” Paul called back.

John Rourke was acting on a hunch. And he said as

much. “If I were Zimmer and I were diabolical enough—not to mention sufficiently talented—to clone a human being, then utilize computerlike microcircuitry in order to program certain responses, I’d equip my weapon with a fail-safe device which could itself be turned into a weapon when needed.”

“I do not understand you!” Spitz almost shouted. “This is madness!”

“Perhaps. Help me roll him out. Much as I’d like to examine him, I don’t think there’ll be time. Paul!”

“Yes, John?”

“Be ready to step on it when I tell you to. We may need to distance ourselves as much as possible from this body. And keep down low. If I’m right, no telling how powerful an explosive might be inside some body cavity or another.”

“Yeah—right—”

Paul worked the door control.

Spitz, shaken, ashen-looking, grabbed the other end of the body, Rourke’s hands already under the armpits. They carried the dead man down and into the railbed. “Here. Place him over the rail. If he is a bomb, may as well get some good out of him. Come on. Hurry!” And together Rourke and the Nazi officer ran to the trolley and up the steps. “Go for it Paul.”

The trolley started into motion, John Rourke swinging down in the stepwell, his eyes cast back toward the body they were leaving behind, but his face and body shielded. Almost two minutes had passed since bringing down the clone of Wolfgang Mann. The delay might be another sort of fail-safe device. Either that, Rourke realized, or he had read too much science fiction in years gone by and would have the proverbial egg all over his face.

The explosion came, Rourke swinging back fully inside, body parts flying everywhere amid a burst of bright yellow light, the tunnel walls—metal—reverberating with it, the rail beneath the trolley vibrating, the noise all but deafening.

As the noise subsided, Spitz gasped, “God in Heaven!”

“More likely the work of a devil from hell,” John Rourke shouted back. The clone was, technically, an innocent man. Deitrich Zimmer had something else to pay for now.

And John Rourke felt himself choking back tears which he did not wish to show, because he realized now that the woman he had seen, had thought was his wife Sarah, was—in all likelihood—not his wife at all but another of these, a clone of his wife’s flesh made to entrap him and eventually kill him.

His own voice sounding odd to him, John Rourke managed to say, “We’d better get back into our masks and full protective clothing. If the enemy didn’t know we were loose, they’ll know it now. Our radios were off, but chances are the tunnels here are somehow monitored. They’d know of the explosion. They might use gas.”

“What are we to do, Herr Doctor?”

Rourke looked at the Hauptsturmfuhrer. “Let me see those sealed orders for starters. Then, we try to intercept the rest of your men. They were walked off, maybe to a trolley line paralleling this. I don’t know. Then we get the hell out of here for the time being. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves trapped in the middle of a war when both sides want us dead.”

Paul started to laugh, the laughter tinged with obvious bitterness.

John Rourke, fully inside the trolley now, the door closing behind him, just looked at his friend, not understanding for a moment.

Paul said, “Some things change, but some things always stay the same, don’t they?”

Forty-Nine

At the first trolley station they neared, there were armed men standing on the platform. But the men were not soldiers.

Rourke ordered, “Every ounce of speed this thing’s got, Paul, Spitz, stay by the rear end of the car!”

The armed men wore dark blue slacks, light blue shirts, dark blue ties and blue hats with silver cap insignia and gleaming black visors. The gunbelts these men wore were the type John Rourke had last seen on Chicago Police Officers. Garrison straps with Jordan-style holsters. Each man had a revolver in his hand. And a badge on his chest.

Behind the men were police barricades, painted blue. Behind those were huddled a few spectators. But beyond them lay a city.

There was a voice shouting over a blue and white plastic bullhorn. “This is the police. You are ordered to throw down your weapons! Stop the trolley at once!”

All of this—including the words said over the bullhorn, which came and went in a Doppler effect—

was a blur as the trolley sped past. Gunfire came toward the car. Rourke shouted, “Fire over their heads!” And Rourke dropped the trolley window. “But!”

“Just do it, Spitz!”

Rourke triggered off a string of shots from the HK-91, firing into the roof of the trolley station, the roof more decorative than functional. Spitz fired an energy pistol.

A string of small fires started as the energy bolts impacted the station, and Rourke suspected that what looked like wood was, most likely, some form of plastic.

Then the trolley was past the station and there was no more gunfire.

Two windows had been shot through. There was a bullet hole in the seat beside Rourke.

“What was all that? It looked—”

“Normal?’ Rourke asked. Paul’s radio transmission still echoing in his ear. “Pull off your headgear, but keep it handy.”

They would need to talk.

“Should I slow us down?”

“Yes. Good idea.” John Rourke had changed magazines in the HK, was reloading the partially spent one from the clipped-together brace he had removed. Safing the rifle, he set it aside, leaned between his thigh and the seat. With the little Executive Edge pen-shaped folding knife from his pocket, Rourke dug the bullet from the seat. When he had the bullet, even before he put the knife away, he found himself just staring at it.

“What is it?’ Spitz asked, joining them at the front of the trolley car.

“This, Spitz, is rather like having a dinner party and finding out that one of your guests happens to be a Neanderthal. This is a 158-grain Round Nosed Lead .38 Special.”

“I do not know a great deal about firearms,” Spitz admitted freely.

“Briefly the .38 Special round which got everyone discontent with the .38 Special by the late mid-Twentieth Century is this round. Underpowered, prone to ricochet, terrible manstopper, it was the standard police service round in the United States for decades.”

“John?”

Without looking at his friend, Rourke’s eyes still on the recovered bullet, he said, “What is it?”

“My eyes were pretty much on the track here, but did I see what I thought I saw?”

John Rourke smiled, “Middle America sometime in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century? Looked like that to me.”

“What?” Spitz asked.

John Rourke’s mind raced. There was no way in which the three of them could fight off an entire civilization. When the attack by Zimmer’s forces began, there might be the chance to escape in the confusion. “Here’s what we’re going to do. When Zimmer sent us in here, he said something about Paul and me being able to blend in with the society here. I dismissed the remark—sort of a typical thing for a racist to think, that people with similar backgrounds will all behave similarly. But I realize now that Zimmer had inside word on this place. Which is good for us, because that means there must be a way out that one or

two or three men could take. We just have to find it.” And Rourke outlined his plan.

The SS personnel Zimmer had sent to accompany John Rourke and Paul Rubenstein had not worn uniforms, but instead cold-weather casual clothes. The trolley was parked near what appeared to be an access into the trolley tunnel. John Rourke stripped away his protective clothing, stuffing it into the teardrop-shaped rucksack which had been on his back. The rifle would be another matter. But it wasn’t an immediate problem.

Beneath the protective gear, Rourke wore snow-clothes over boots. Aside from the fact that he was sweating in them, because it was too hot with them, they were sartorially inappropriate as well. He stripped these away. Beneath the snow gear Rourke wore a long-sleeved black knit shirt and black slacks bloused over combat boots.

John Rourke had planned ahead.

Paul Rubenstein had done the same. Paul was already stripped down to a grey long-sleeved knit shirt and black slacks.

Rourke took his battered old brown leather bomber jacket from the teardrop-shaped rucksack, pulling it on over the double Alessi shoulder holster that he wore. Paul was setting his second Browning High Power into a black ballistic nylon double Tri-Speed shoulder rig. Rourke had one of these at the Retreat. This one was a duplicate of the Twentieth Century original acquired from—who else?—Lancer.

Rourke had the snow gear and environment suit packed into the rucksack.

For the moment, his gunbelt went around his waist, but that would have to be stashed away too if this thing he planned were to work.

“I do not like this,” Spitz proclaimed.

“Don’t worry; you should love these people,” Paul observed.

Spitz made a mocking laugh. “Yes, but you will not, heh?”

“None of us will, if you open your mouth with a German accent,” Rourke noted. “Let us do the talking if we make it that far.” Spitz was stuffing a pistol beneath the ski sweater that he wore. The pistol was another Lancer, presumably a duplicate of the Walther P-88 9mm Parabellum. “Get that when the Lancer warehouse in New Germany was broken into?” Rourke had heard it mentioned by Emma Shaw’s father.

Spitz smiled enigmatically, saying nothing.

Paul pulled on a leather jacket. “Ready.”

“You and Spitz take care of the trolley.”

“This is a disgrace,” Spitz remarked.

“Nazi or no, Dr. Mentz struck me as a good soldier. I think if he were able to comment, he’d agree.” Paul said.

Spitz just shook his head, but started for the trolley.

Rourke caught up his gear, slinging the rucksack over his left shoulder, the rifle in his right hand. And, he started into the accessway.

Fewer than three yards into it, he required light. From his bomber jacket, Rourke took a small size mini-Maglite loaded with German batteries (they had a projected life of two thousand hours of use, and an anticipated shelf life in excess of seventy-five years,

hence would last longer than John Rourke thought that he would, especially given the current circumstances). With the little flashlight shielded by his left hand, Rourke moved cautiously along.

While he investigated this little tunnel Paul and Spitz would be completing the rigging of the trolley. Dr. Mentz’s body would be left in it. The audioanimatronic motorman might be remotely disabled. Instead Mentz’s body would be lashed to the controls, his weight keeping the deadman’s switch—a quite literal description in this case—from activating and stopping the train. Enough explosives were set that the trolley and anything near it would be all but vaporized. The charges were preset for three minutes.

From beyond the mouth of the accessway, Rourke could hear the trolley starting out.

Ahead, in this barely shoulder-width tunnel, Rourke saw nothing within the beam from his flashlight except more tunnel. He moved on, reminding himself that it had to lead somewhere.

Fifty

John Rourke had guessed right, on both accounts. The accessway, indeed, led out of the trolley tunnel. And as he had suspected, the trolley tunnel (after they had covered the distance between the hidden entryway and the mountain itself) had been leading them not in a straight line, but progressively downward. The trolley system, it appeared, went from ground level to some point far below, too far for Rourke to clearly discern as he looked over the edge into the manmade abyss. And perhaps, he was better off not knowing at the moment.

Above, however, the central core—it was buttressed expertly at every level—seemed to narrow. It was more than optical illusion. Perhaps it narrowed to a tunnel leading upward? But to what? What John Rourke supposed was a death chamber from which the lethal hallucinogenic gas was expunged into the atmosphere?

Racism and murder. It was a stupid simile, Rourke realized, but they went together as naturally as ham and eggs—except they were poison.

There was a chasm to cross, only eighteen or twenty

feet wide here but wide enough that it could not be jumped by anyone but an Olympian with a good deal of luck. On the opposite side was a metal-runged ladder leading upward and downward periodically terminating when it reached one of the core levels. And some fifty or so feet above and a nearly equal distance below, there was a covered synth-concrete-looking span, perhaps a pedestrian walkway from one of the trolley stations.