by Ahern, Jerry
The fault for that was almost entirely his own, Wolfgang Mann realized. He had never thought of friendship with a woman, hence never attempted it, nor thought of friendship breeding feelings he dared not even speak.
Women were different from men. He smiled at the brilliance of his insight. But they were, or so he had always thought. They had things which interested them which no man was interested in and they, in turn, could not be bothered with the things of men. But he had oriented his thinking always toward the external, never to personal qualities, thoughts, observations, shared emotions beyond passion.
Sarah Rourke was extraordinary.
He smiled as he thought that she should have been German.
He could never tell her his thoughts. Aside from how embarrassed such thoughts would make her feel, she would likely cease to be his friend.
And, somehow, he would have a new sort of emptiness with which to deal, with which to live.
And he worried now. Four women, no matter the strength of the Herr Doctof s mountain Retreat, no matter the skills of Fraulein Major Tiemerovna, four women would be no match for Freidrich Rausch.
Wolfgang Mann looked back at his charts. He snapped his pencil between his fingers, without really tfiinking of it.
He could send troops to guard the Retreat, despite the fact that
Doctor Rourke-and everyone, really-had felt it best not to draw attention to the specific location by placing personnel in the immediate area.
Wolfgang Mann told himself all the things that he could to reassure himself. They had primary and backup radio capability. Regardless of the weather, a good pilot could take-off and land a J7-V close enough to the Retreat, and with a few volunteers give this maniac Rausch what he deserved.
And the Retreat was a veritable arsenal of conventional weapons, was sealed within granite and steel, its entrance disguised so well that it would be impossible to discern, especially now, snow certainly drifted over any telltale markings by the entrance, over the rock counter-balances themselves.
She-they were safe.
There was a blast of bitterly cold wind and a wash of icy spicules of snow blew across the interior of the cabin. “Herr Colonel! The fuel line! All is in order!”
Chapter Twenty-four
The radio message was encoded and it took almost a minute for the radio operator aboard the J7-V to decrypt. “Request landing at following coordinates. Emergency.”
The pilot of the J7-V looked up at John Rourke. “What should I do, Hen General?”
John Rourke had totally dismissed his appointment to the rank of brigadier general by the president of Mid-Wake, and, fortunately, so had most of the persons with whom he regulary associated. The young German pilot was another story. “Does the message appear genuine, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant looked at the radio operator. The radio operator said, “With your permission, Herr General. The message appears authentic. The decryption key is proper.”
Rourke looked over the lower control panel set in the cockpit dash and toward the cloud layer beneath them. Nothing was visible to the naked eye but clouds, an endless and enormous gray sea of them. “What do your sensors show?” Rourke asked the copilot and navigator.
There appear to be heavy concentrations of helicopter gunships-German, Herr General-both in the air and on the ground. There are no other vehicles in evidence.”
“Anything else?”
There are signs of human habitation, Herr General.”
Michael spoke from behind him. “Dad, these coordinates match the coordinates for one of the villages the Wild Tribes people were relocated to, to protect them.”
“I don’t like this,” Paul murmured, looking at the map beside Michael as Rourke looked back.
Take us down, Lieutenant. Give it a flyby at a decent altitude that’ll allow more detailed observation. If everything appears satisfactory,
bring us in. That fellow who wants to see me can keep for a little while.” “Yes, Herr General!”
As Rourke walked aft, he heard Paul saying under his breath, “Herr General.” ^
John Rourke looked at his friend and smiled. Rourke took his seat, seeing to the security of his weapons first because of the anticipated landing, the twin stainless Detonics Combat Masters still on his body in the double Alessi shoulder rig…
Paul Rubenstein sniffed into his arctic parka, shivering, the cold having nothing to do with it. As he stared out the rapidly steaming-over window, he could hardly believe his eyes. Modular buildings of the same construction employed by the Germans in their field hospitals and other field accommodations of a permanent or semipermanent nature, sliced in half, as though ripped apart, but blackened at the center.
The battered old Browning High Power mat had been nearly as constant a companion to him as John Rourke since the Night of the War-it was holstered now in the rig John had dug out for him from supplies kept at the Retreat. This was the first time he’d had the chance to use it. “This was made by DeSantis. They called it the ‘Slant Shoulder Holster.’ Thumb break instead of a trigger guard break, like my rig. I hadn’t remembered I had it, but I was involved in a job with the FBI’s Special Operations Group a couple of years before the Night of the War. They swore by the High Power, some of the guns having more than forty thousand rounds through them with just a change of barrel and a few minor parts. I needed the holster because I was told to use the same gun the FBI unit used, all the same equipment so Fd be indistinguishable from them.” And then John Rourke had smiled, “But I had a .45 under my clothes.” John Rourke and the .45 ACP were an inseparable combination, Paul Rubenstein realized. Yet John had never been so closed-minded as to say die .45 was the only gun to carry. John carried and used .357s and .44 Magnums and on at least one occasion Paul could remember had said, “More important than the caliber is the accuracy and skill with which ifs employed, and that translates to the man behind the gun. For all practical purposes, a .45 ACP and a decendy constructed 9mm hollow point have about the same effect on a target barring extenuating circumstances. That was a debate which raged for years after the Army adopted a 9mm pistol. A lot of the same people who were complaining were the same people who still used Hardball in their .45s, too. The stone age must have been a wonderful era because so many people were nostalgic for it.”
The fuselage door opened and Paul Rubenstein, pulling up his hood and hiding his hands in his pockets, followed John Rourke out into the gray cold. No snow fell.
What weapon was this, which had wreaked such horrible destruction here? Not artillery; not explosives.
There was no sound, except for the beating of the rotor blades of German gunsbips overhead and the cooling of the J7-Vs jet engines. The snow fell so evenly it was like a curtain, silent and cold.
The wind was totally still.
Bodies lay everywhere, many only charred lumps hardly recognizable as once human beings who fought to stay alive, loved, nurtured, some few of the bodies covered with blankets or inside black body bags, hundreds more of them exposed to the cold, but beyond caring.
“God bless them,” Paul Rubenstein murmured, closing his eyes for an instant, turning his head away.
He heard Michael saying, Tve never seen any pattern of destruction like this. What-“
Paul opened his eyes and turned to look as John Rourke spoke. “Ifs an energy weapon. It has to be. Like nothing we have.”
The Soviets’ Particle Beam weapons,” Paul almost whispered.
John looked at him.
“What if they’d found a way to miniaturize and developed some sort of power source for them,” Paul offered. The technology seems impossible, but what if it isn’t? What if the Soviets used this village as some sort of testing site to determine operational characteristics in the field?”
“I don’t think we could counter an energy weapon with anything we have,” Michael added, turning his head, looking away. “All those people-my God.”
And John Rourke made the sign of the cross.
<
br /> Paul Rubenstein had a different faith, but the same emotion. “Amen.”
Chapter Twenty-five
It was late, but none of them at least admitted to feeling at all like sleeping and, after all, Sarah had called it a “pajama party” anyway.
Natalia was nearly dressed for it, down to her bra and a pair of Chinese silk tap pants. As she hung up die pale rose colored skirt she’d worn earlier, her eyes caught a glimpse of something else hanging in the back of the closet. Most of her things had been sent ahead of her and, tired after the long trip from Mid-Wake, she had wanted desperately to rest. Annie had asked if she-Natalia-would like her things unpacked and Natalia had agreed.
At the back of the closet hung one of the black jumpsuits Natalia wore almost like a combat uniform. She had several of them, of course, one or two stored here at the Retreat-at least two, come to think of k-and two more in the remaining two pieces of luggage not yet unpacked.
Did this one, the one hanging in the closet, belong to a different Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, she wondered, or did it still belong to her?
She finished hanging up her skirt and walked over to the smaller of the three suitcases, the open one. It was beside the bed and she dropped to her knees, moving aside her black bag, the one which doubled as large purse and small rucksack. Beneath the bag, exposed now, washer gunbelt, the two full-flap holsters bound together with it.
She unbound them, setting holsters and belt on the bed, still kneeling at the bed’s edge. The black leather gleamed dully, recently saddle-soaped and oiled, the holsters and die matching revolvers they held nearly lost when the helicopter had crashed and Annie had kept both she and Otto Hammerschmidt alive in the water until Jason Darkwood’s submarine had come for them.
Annie had cared for her guns and her holsters and her knife and the care showed, everything good as new despite the dousing.
Natalia took up the holsters and belt and, one at a time, opened the
bolsters’ flaps, then withdrew the revolvers carried within.
They were Smith and Wesson Model 686s, four-inch barreled adjustable sighted L-Frame .357 Magnums, customized by a man John had known-Ron Mahovsky-and bearing on the right barrel flats (the barrels ground flat on both sides, lightening them slighdy) American eagles, wings spread in challenge, eyes keen and alert. The guns had been given to her by the first and only president of U.S. II, the transitional government of the United Slates after the death of the president on the Night of the War and before the Great Conflagration, when the ionized atmosphere had caught fire and almost all life on earth was destroyed. His name had been Chambers.
He had told her he wanted to give her a medal, for her role in aiding in the evacuation of peninsula Florida before and during the great earthquake which had caused the peninsula to separate from the panhandle and fall into die sea. But he had told her also that he had no medal to give and, considering she was an officer with the forces of the foreign «vader with which the United States was at war, he could not have given her one if he had.
So, instead, he had given her these pistols and the holsters for them, once a gift to him.
The belt that accompanied them had been horribly large for her woman’s waist, but John had found a belt for her and^ “John,” Natalia whispered.
The revolvers in both her hands, she studied them for a moment. The sings she had done with them, lives taken and lives saved.
Natalia replaced the Smith and Wfessons in their holsters and set die goes and gunbelt back in the small suitcase. The revolvers were empty, but mere was ammunition in die small suitcase as well.
She left diem empty, stood, reached up her hands behind her back and removed her bra…
Annie had made a light snack for them while Natalia dressed, passing Natalia enroute from the kitchen to die bedroom she and Natalia dared. As usual, Natalia looked exquisite. But, of course, Natalia always did. Natalia’s robe, knotted easily at her slender waist, was of pink A, ever so slighdy longer than ankle length so that, as Natalia walked, i looked perfecdy natural for her to raise the hem shghtiy, pinching the ■brie between the tips of her long fingers. There was a hint of white anen visible just above where the robe crossed over at the front.
“Would you like me to make you some tea or coffee or something, Annie?”
“Coffee’d be wonderful. I just have to change, ni be out in a minute.” Annie entered the bedroom. She could see Natalia’s small suitcase, open on the floor beside the bed, die revolvers and gunbelt visible.
Before she changed, there was a more urgent need. She went to the bathroom…
Annie Rourke Rubenstein pulled her nightgown-it was ankle length with a ruffle at the hem, sleeveless and pale blue with a white ribbon which traversed the neckline and tied in a bow at the front-over her head. She put on her robe-it was of blue and pink wool plaid, very sensible looking and warm-then took up her brush and began to work it through her hair. She couldn’t picture women envying her hair, as her mother had said. She’d always liked her hair, but thought it was pretty ordinary.
This whole “pajama party,” as her mother, Sarah Rourke, kept referring to it, scared her. It was emotionally destructive to Maria Leuden. It was dangerous for Natalia, Annie thought, considering Natalia was still recovering from what could loosely be described as a nervous breakdown.
There were pills Natalia could take which would help her to relax. Doctor Rothstein, at Mid-Wake, had insisted Natalia have diem available, these in addition to die subcutaneously planted timed release capsule inserted near Natalia’s neck. Eventually, die capsule would be totally dissolved. It contained a drug Doctor Rothstein, the psychiatrist who had worked to help Natalia at Mid-Wake, had described as a natural tranquilizer produced by the body, rather like the opposite of adrenaline; “ifl release when Natalia’s body requires it, just helping her to relax.”
But even so—
Annie finished with her hair, finding a white ribbon which matched the ribbon at the r^kline of her gown, tying the nlibon into her hair at the nape of the neck. A little touch up with the hair brush again.
She noticed her eyes in the mirror. There was something akin to a wariness in them.
She closed her eyes, just standing there holding the hair brush …
Sarah Rourke tied her robe over her bulging abdomen. She looked at herself in the mirror as she began to brush her hair. She hadn’t tried to make this a “bitch session,” as Natalia had called it, but a help session. Maria Leuden was hopelessly in love with Michael-and hopeless seemed to be the operative word. Both she-Sarah-and Natalia were in love with the same man, Michael’s and Annie’s father, John.
But something else nagged at Sarah Rourke, and she would not even commit words to the thoughts, even in her mind. The thoughts frightened her …
The sixteen men, led by Hugo Goerdler, arrived at precisely eight-fifteen, Freidrich Rausch waiting in silence, camouflaged by the snow itself, the American M-16 rifle chambering the primitive cased ammunition cheeked close as they came.
He had to be certain that Goerdler and his men were, in fact, who they were supposed to be. There was much turmoil in New Germany and it was always possible that somehow the party had been penetrated and traced to the new headquarters in what had been Mexico, then a substitution made.
But as they approached and he momentarily exchanged the rifle for a pair of vision intensification binoculars, he was certain the sixteen were the right men.
Hugo Goerdler, Rausch’s political superior in the SS and one of the few men Rausch felt was more deadly than he when needed-not in the sense of combat, but in the sense of creativity-moved at the head of me ragged column of snow-smocked figures, uniformed as commandoes of New Germany. This struck a note of humor in Freidrich Rausch, that they were disguised as men under the command of the despicable Wolfgang Mann, yet a note of irony as well. It was Hugo Goerdler who personally oversaw the assassination of Wolfgang Mann’s wife in die streets of New Germany.
Rausch put down his s
now splotched vision intensification binoculars and re-cheeked the rifle. “Hugo, my friend! I could have had you!”
Goerdler and his men looked up toward Rausch’s position with die simultaneity of a well-rehearsed chorus line.
Goerdler shouted back, “Does that make us even now for die time I stole your pants, Freidrich?”
Freidrich Rausch laughed aloud, the laughter warming him as he signalled his lifelong friend forward …
*
“I was sorry, Freidrich, gravely sorry when I learned-” “I shall avenge Damien. Then I can be sorry,” Rausch said, looking into his hands for a moment, then taking a small sip from his flask. There were a series of tunnels within the construction, to be obliterated when Eden Base was completed. But for now, they housed the fifteen men who had accompanied Hugo Goerdler. This particular tunnel, Rausch’s home of late, was all to themselves. “You have a plan, I take it, for killing this Rourke woman?” “A very simple plan, really. But they are always the best, are they not, the simple ones?” He lit a cigarette, then blew smoke toward the map on the wall of the tunnel. “The Retreat of this Doctor Rourke. His wife, his daughter, the Russian woman who is said to be his mistress, even the mistress of his son-they are all there. And they have two radios, one as primary and one in the event the first fails. I have been assembling a low power transmitter from the Eden Project stores, one only powerful enough for the signal to travel a few miles within such high mountains, not powerful enough for the signal to be intercepted at Eden Base or by Mann-damn him-or any of his so-called commandoes. I have also constructed a second device, with which I can jam outgoing signals within an area of several miles, thus preventing the women from contacting Mann for aid. I will lure them out, since Damien was unable to leave specific details for me concerning the method of entry to this Retreat or I have been unable to discern such details. But I shall lure them out, then murder them. Then I will enter die Hen-Doctor’s Retreat and incinerate it. Rourke will be so obsessed with finding the killer of these four women-especially considering die manner in which they shall die - that he will not rest and, more importandy, he will be neutralized, so preoccupied he will not be able to adequately aid Mann and his forces, or foil our plans concerning New Germany and Eden.”