Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (27 page)

But the nearest of these walkways was at least a hundred yards away laterally. How was this tunnel, at the mouth of which he crouched, accessed?

Two things happened simultaneously and John Rourke did a third. He heard Paul and Spitz coming up behind him arguing. He saw a man armed with some sort of submachinegun-sized weapon flying toward him harnessed within some sort of personal minicopter and John Rourke dove back into the tunnel in order to silence Paul Rubenstein and Gunther Spitz and avoid being seen.

As Rourke threw himself back, from just below the lip of the tunnel mouth, a platform began moving outward.

“Quiet! Stay down!” Rourke rasped to his friend and their unlikely ally.

This was how the accessways into the trolley system were reached, by these personal helicopter devices.

As Rourke crouched beside his suddenly silenced companions and the armed man in the flying rig hovered over the just-extended platform, Rourke glanced at the Rolex on his left wrist. The three minutes would just about be up.

The armed man touched down with a little jump, the blades from the unit into which he was harnessed thrumming suddenly more slowly. The explosion shook the very fabric of the accessway. The enemy soldier or whatever he was wheeled toward them with his weapon.

John Rourke drew the A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome and dove toward the man. If he fired, the man and his flying rig would tumble off the platform extending from the tunnel mouth and the flying rig would be lost.

John Rourke kept his body low, avoiding the rotor blades. Rourke’s left shoulder impacted with the gun and the man at waist level, the weapon discharged, sounding for all the world like a suppressor fitted HK submachinegun, flat, barely audible. Rourke’s little knife gouged deep into the man’s upper abdomen and angled upward into the sternum to Rourke’s right and the man’s left.

There was a groan from inside the gas mask the man wore and the body fell limp beneath Rourke.

Rourke pushed himself away from the body. It lay half extended over the platform, the rotor blades from the bizarre personal flying rig clear of any contact with the platform, the rig apparently wholly undamaged.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Paul hissed.

John Rourke wasn’t quite certain, but it seemed like the combination of an unfathomably ugly future and an eerily familiar past…

When both John Rourke and Gunther Spitz found

themselves imsisting on using the flying rig, Rourke realized the sound of reason when he heard it and let Paul have his way. Paul was harnessed into the flying rig, standing halfway out along the length of the platform. Around his waist was the climbing rope which had been lashed to Rourke’s rucksack.

Should the flying rig prove inoperable to someone not trained on it, Paul would cut the power and ball himself inward in order to avoid the blades. The rope— unless he fell so rapidly that the rotor blades would still be moving with sufficient force to sever it—would save him from a fall to his death.

“You sure you want to do this?”

Paul looked at him and smiled. “No; I’m sure I don’t want to do it but I’m closest in build to the guy we took this off, so it seems logical.”

John Rourke ducked below the rotor blades and clasped his friend’s right hand in both of his. “Good luck.”

“I’ll try to make it to the lower crossover if something goes wrong. Otherwise—”

“Otherwise,” Rourke said, nodding, “get across to the other side and tie off the rope.” Above them by about twenty feet and on the other side of the chasm formed between the central structure and the outer shell where they stood now was what appeared to be an opening into one of the levels of the central core.

As Rourke stepped back and Paul Rubenstein powered up, Gunther Spitz said the most curious thing. “Good luck, Jew.”

And Paul Rubenstein answered saying, “Right.”

The rotor blades slicing through the air at what looked like full power, Paul half-stepped, half-lifted off the platform.

And there was a sickening feeling in the pit of John Rourke’s stomach when, for an instant, his friend nearly vanished from sight. But then Paul—jerkily not smoothly like the dead man from whose body the flying rig was taken—rose, started across the chasm.

Fifty-One

Emma Shaw awoke feeling a human hand over her mouth. Her pistol was in her right hand—the .45—and she nearly had the hammer back when she heard Alan Crocket’s overtly sexy-sounding whiskey voice rasping to her. “Keep still; I have to silence my mount. We have company up above; don’t move.”

And the pressure over her mouth eased. She rolled onto her abdomen, smelling smoke. What had remained of the campfire was evidently just struck, snow that was still not fully melted to water heaped over it.

And, above her, she heard sounds too, now.

Machine sounds.

Aircraft, perhaps, but if so at considerable altitude. Motorized vehicles definitely, and close.

To her knees, her tiny right fist was balled tighter on the butt of her pistol.

She was still fuzzy from sleep and the exhaustion which had come before—that was why she hadn’t awakened when the noise began. And three questions dominated her consciousness. What kind of man called

his horse Wilbur? Why did she now think of this man as actually being Alan Crockett, who was supposed to have been lost at sea after all? And what army was making the noise at the height of the gorge above them?

She wriggled out of her sleeping bag. Perhaps her senses cleared a bit because another question reared its very ugly head. Had whoever it was up there seenthem? Emma Shaw shivered, lying to herself that it was just the sudden exposure to the night air making her so cold …

Gloved hand over hand, John Thomas Rourke worked his way upward along the tied-off rope.

Beneath him, if he slipped, he calculated there was at least a thousand feet before his anticipated trajectory would bring him in contact with one of the crossovers. And kill him.

John Rourke kept moving.

Paul, the submachinegun in a ready position but his eyes on the rope, crouched on a narrow ledge beside a low camel-colored synth-concrete wall.

Rourke looked below and behind him, Gunther Spitz waiting to cross after him, guarding their backs. For the moment it was in Spitz’s best interests to cooperate, be a loyal (however ephemeral) ally. The moment would come when Spitz could not be counted on, and Rourke counted on that.

Paul reached out toward Rourke now and Rourke clambered toward his friend’s hand, grasping it at last, fingers barely touching, then hands locking over wrists. Rourke pushed himself off as Paul braced himself. In the next instant John Rourke was crouched beside him. “A lesser man would say he was getting too old for this shit,” Paul observed.

“Or possibly just a brighter man,” Rourke answered smiling.

As Rourke signalled toward the accessway, Gunther Spitz swung onto the rope. Rourke loosened the sling on his HK, bringing the rifle to a close crossbody hold. Rourke’s thumb poised beside the selector, ready to move it from safe to fire.

Spitz seemed admirably fit, moving quickly, agilely. Paul said, “I’ll give him that—he’s in good shape.”

Rourke smiled again. “Not to mention in his mid-twenties.”

“Excuses, excuses. My mother used to say that excuses weren’t worth the powder to blow them up.”

“Everybody’s mother used to say that,” Rourke noted.

“Did your mother make chicken soup with little matzoth balls?”

Rourke choked back a laugh. “The soup, yes, but you’ve got me on the matzoth balls.”

Spitz was at the midpoint over the chasm now. Paul was watching him, so Rourke slowly, cautiously peered over the low wall. As he had approached, the angle had been wrong to see anything. Now, however, he had a reasonably unobstructed view. The wall was some four feet high. There was a sidewalk, wide enough to be a driveway just beyond it. It bordered the wall and, on the far side, a park. The park was green, inviting, tree-dotted. There was a bench, a drinking fountain. Beyond the park lay another sidewalk, this one of more conventional width.

And beyond that lay a street. On the street moved

horse-drawn wagons and carriages, the clatter of the animals’ hooves sounded almost melodic. Some pedestrian traffic crossed from one side of the street to the other. Rourke followed with his eyes.

On the far side of the street began a system of streets, it seemed, extending—it appeared—inward, toward the hub.

Lining the street directly opposite John Rourke’s position was a woman’s clothing shop, on one side of it a store bearing a sign which read “Mountain Market.” To Rourke’s right of the market lay an animal hospital. Beside that was what appeared to be a public library. Beside the library was a stairwell, treads leading up and down.

There was a street sign, Rourke trying to make it out without pulling his binoculars. At last he thought he had it. It read “Sector A, Level Five.”

Rourke’s eyes drifted back toward the windows of the women’s apparel store. He had never been much of an observer of women’s fashion, but the clothing he was able to see seemed somehow reminiscent of the sort of thing the Beaver’s mother or Donna Reed would have worn, dresses with what seemed to be buttons down the front to the waist and full skirts which looked packed with petticoats beneath. And the mannequins all wore little hats.

“Take a look,” Rourke suggested to his friend.

But Paul was busy helping Gunther Spitz off the rope, Spitz murmured grudging thanks. Attached to Spitz’s belt was a second cord. It was knotted across the chasm to the tail of the hitch they had used for tying off the rope on which they crossed. Rourke took this cord and gave it a brisk sharp tug. The knot, just as Rourke had hoped, pulled free and the rope started to the wall. Paul and Spitz caught at it, pulling it up from the near end as quickly as they could. “And now?” Spitz asked.

“I think we’ll go visit middle America.” John Rourke said.

Fifty-Two

Considering the hour, it seemed not at all remarkable that the stores were closed and there were few people on the street. If the people of this mountain community kept to any sort of truly circadian rhythm, it was three or four in the morning here.

And, as they left the park, the matter of time was resolved.

A clock on the window of the veterinarian’s read a little past two-fifty, unless it was off resolving the question handily.

“I do not like leaving our weapons behind,” Gunther Spitz said through clenched teeth.

Rourke, walking between Spitz and Paul Rubenstein, said, “I’m not partial to the idea, either. But we’d attract instant attention if we didn’t.” Rourke was gambling, a pastime in which he preferred not to indulge. His bet was on the size of the population here and how close it might be to what it appeared. If the mountain held in excess of a few thousand people, strange faces might not instantly be noticed. And—so

far, so good it seemed—if male attire encompassed the “casual look” their clothing might even pass.

There were no women in evidence on the street, and only a few men, these in workingmen’s clothes, waist-length jackets and slacks, some few of the men even carrying lunch pails. Some of the men were bareheaded, some others wearing fedora-style hats or caps.

In the few carriages that had passed along the street while Rourke, Rubenstein and Spitz had hidden their weapons in a dense row of hedges, Rourke had seen the occasional “well-dressed man” type, dark suit and hat, but that was it. The wagons mainly seemed to be carrying sacks or crates of produce, perhaps en route to stocking a market.

Every face was white.

Rourke had anticipated that.

They stopped in front of the women’s apparel store. Indeed, the fashions worn by the mannequins and visible through the windows in the shop within confirmed Rourke’s earlier observation. Paul put it best, saying, “I wonder if David and Ricky’s mom shopped here?”

“Possibly.”

“What is this—”

“This,” Rourke responded, “is indicative, perhaps, of a society which sees itself returning to ‘traditional’ values; then again, it may be nothing more than the vagaries of fashion.” Rourke looked off to his left. “Let’s check that mailbox at the corner, then see what’s down the block.” Without waiting for acquiesence, Rourke starting moving.

A man wearing grey workpants and a windbreaker -looked at them oddly, but nodded a greeting. Rourke nodded back. He stopped at the mailbox. It was painted green, as mailboxes had been when he was a boy. On it was stenciled, “United States Mail” and beneath that was a white card with pick-up hours printed on it.

Rourke looked down the street to his right. More stores, and beyond that houses.

Rourke started walking. Paul said, “This reminds me of Albuquerque just after the Night of The War.”

“In more ways than one,” Rourke agreed.

Spitz said nothing.

“Shopping are we?” Paul asked.

John Rourke only smiled.

The street was well lit, but by street lights and shop windows alone. Was there some sort of artificial daylight during “daytime” hours?

As they passed a bookstore, Rourke spotted three uniformed men on bicycles coming their way, but down the center of the street. “Cops—get into the doorway!” And Rourke, Rubenstein and Spitz flanking him, moved quickly into the doorway of the bookstore. Rourke’s right hand was under his bomber jacket, to one of the two ScoreMasters he carried in his waistband. With the exception of the Model 629, the Crain LSX knife and the HK-91 rifle, John Rourke had all of his weapons.

The policemen pedaled by without even looking their way, either otherwise engrossed or grossly inefficient. Paul started away, but John Rourke pulled him back, saying, “Look in the window.” There were a variety of novels, some of them appearing to be romances, some mysteries, all by unrecognizable authors. But there was also a collection of nonfiction.

One of these books was The Annotated Mein Kampf, complete with a new introduction by United States Senator Charles Breen. The dust jacket featured a quote which read, “For those truly interested in Hitler the man as well as the brilliant philosopher and charismatic leader, this is the best yet.” The quote was attributed to Dalton Cole, President of the United States.