by Ahern, Jerry
As Natalia shifted from one video source to the next on the main screen, she picked up movement, then changed video sources for the secondary and tertiary screens and began manipulating direction controls on the three cameras that were trained on the same spot. “Come here, Annie,” Natalia called out.
As background noise, below her level of concentration, she could hear Sarah, an experienced nurse, telling Maria what she needed. Natalia considered the young pilot’s chances for survival nearly zero, but they had to try to save him nonetheless.
In a moment, Annie was behind her, looking over her shoulder. Natalia glanced at her, then turned away. “Those two men. They were watching us, of course, and from their vantage point, they could certainly see The Retreat entrance. I doubt they could tell there’s the inner door, but even so, we’re compromised.”
“I’m ready when you are.”
Chapter Three
Natalia nodded, saying, “He’ll use explosives, if that’s Freidrich Rausch. And I’m sure it is. Explosives and a backup team, but this time his good people, not the ones he sent against us before. Get one of your father’s sniper rifles for me … ammunition for it. Take some grenades.”
“And rope,” Annie almost whispered.
“Yes, plenty of rope.”
Annie and Natalia left the Great Room, entering the principal storage room (although there were other storage areas within and below The Retreat). Here even greater quantities of ammunition than before were stored, because John Rourke had recendy restocked with fresh supplies fabricated for him by the Germans. John had always, ever since Natalia had first met him, displayed a marked preference for one brand of ammunition and only one, that from Federal Cartridge Company. Now, he had so successfully induced the engineers of New Germany to duplicate the Federal loads for his firearms-185-grainJHP for .45 ACP, 180-grainJHP for .44 Magnum, 115-grain JHP for those few chores he deemed best served by a 9mm, etc. — that the Germans had even reproduced the familiar red and white boxes to the last detail.
In addition to the ammunition, of course, there was a wealth of material.
There were crates of everything, from feminine hygiene necessities, to synthetic motor oil, to dehydrated freeze-dried foods, holsters, gas masks and bags, gas mask filters, state-of-the-art German cold weather gear, German chemical-biological-radiological protective suits, cleaning supplies for everything from kitchen countertops to firearms, spare parts, hoses, and belts for every piece of motorized equipment in The Retreat, from the hydroelectric generators that powered it to the videotape machines. Replacements for items that could not be readily repaired were held in storage, ready to be brought on line.
Natalia wondered what John was getting ready for. She looked toward Annie.
The two of them crossed the room, set down their arctic parkas, and put their combined weight and strength against
the high-rise metal tool cabinet, moving it aside but barely able to do so.
Behind the tool cabinet was a steel door, three feet square, a combination lock on it. Natalia deferred to Annie, who put her hand to the dial and turned it right, then left, then right. She put her left hand to the handle, twisted, and the door swung open.
Natalia shouldered into her coat, picked up the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, and leaned it against the wall. Then she fetched a large metal tool box, placed it under the door, stepped up on it, and pulled herself into the crawl space of the exit tunnel, a mini flashlight clamped in her teeth. She smiled, realizing that she’d just applied lipstick and would leave it on the tube of the flashlight. Annie passed her up to the SSG and musette bag of ammunition, then called softly from behind her, “I’m with you.”
She crawled toward the first rung, the rungs anchored into the living granite three feet apart from one another. The diffused light through the door behind her suddenly died as Annie slammed it shut. Natalia turned her head, aiming the flashlight in her teeth toward her friend’s right hand as Annie moved the interior combination dial, locking the door.
Natalia looked ahead and upward, the tunnel angling steeply toward the summit of the mountain. Annie behind her, she began to climb. The solitary beam of light from the flashlight she held clamped between her teeth swayed left to right as she alternated hands and feet on the evenly spaced rungs. At last, weary of the weight of the rifle and her other weapons, warm in the heavy German arctic gear, she reached the second door.
Not combination locked, it was otherwise identical to the door in The Retreat wall that was covered by the high-rise tool cabinet. There was a steel bar, heavy-looking, lying across it. Both the door and the frame around it were fitted with heavy synth-rubber gaskets, newly replaced when John had gone through The Retreat substituting anything that could possibly be wearing out or deteriorating. She balanced herself on the rungs, pushing, pushing harder, finally dislodging the bar.
The door was harder to dislodge, the seal between the rubber gaskets like a powerful suction. But, at last, she was able to wrench it open.
Beyond, in the beam of her flashlight, was more of the upthrusting tunnel, the rungs three feet apart. She pushed her way through the doorway and began to climb, looking back once. In the wavering light, she could see Annie, struggling through the opening in her heavy clothes, with her burdens.
As Natalia continued the climb, she could hear Annie behind her now, closing the door.
At last, Natalia stopped at the third door. Like the intermediate door, it was only sealed with a bar and surrounded by heavy synth-rubber gaskets. But surrounding the doorway were wires, all connected to a plastic and metal unit roughly the size of a package of cigarettes.
John had placed the new alarm on the outermost door. Routinely, rather than bothering Sarah and Elaine below, Natalia disabled the high-tech unit, then used her muscle power against the bar.
It moved. She shifted it aside.
Annie was close beside her now. As Natalia wrenched open the door, she was greeted by a faceful of icy cold snow. And Annie laughed.
Chapter Four
Michael drove the Atsack, while his father slept from a mild sedative cocktail he had administered to him, the elder Rourke’s hands bandaged and treated with some of the new ointment from the doctors at Mid-Wake, even a more powerful healing agent (although less conveniendy administered and non-antiseptic) than the German spray that had become part of their standard equipment.
And Paul Rubenstein entered in his journal, “We have just done what under normal circumstances, viewed objectively, I would have considered impossible — again. For a time, I thought that this time we would surely not make it, that never again would I be with my wife, John’s daughter, Annie.
“Times like these, when there is quiet and no imminent danger, are the times I miss her the most, times when I can think.
“So, now we have an all-but-operational sample of the Soviet particle beam energy weapon. Coupled with the plans brought to us by the KGB Elite Corps officer Vassily Prokopiev, we should have the means by which to duplicate this awesome weapon.
“And, I have mixed feelings concerning that. Is introduction of a new weapon of wholesale slaughter to mankind’s ultimate advantage? Objectively, of course not. But, subjectively, we have no choice. The Russians of the Underground City, once they have united with their counterparts beneath the sea, the historic enemies of Mid-Wake these past five centuries, will have nuclear capabilities and platforms from which to launch the enormous Soviet submarines known as Island Classers. To prevent ourselves from being overrun and being forced to utilize the still-experimental nuclear weapons the Germans are fabricating to counter the Russian threat, we must achieve parity on the battlefield and turn that parity to superiority.
“Why did Nicolai Antonovitch, the commander of the combined armies of the Underground City and the forces which served under Karamatsov, dispatch Prokopiev to us in the first place? Obviously, he trusted the young officer. Indeed, Prokopiev proved himself an honorable man (and probably sealed his fate at the same time) whe
n he assisted us at the batde for the Second Chinese City, helping us to neutralize the nuclear warhead missile the Chinese of the Second City were about to launch as part of some religious ritual which still terrifies me just to think of it.
“But, why?
“Antonovitch must realize that the planet cannot endure a second thermonuclear confrontation. His superiors in the hierarchy of the Underground City do not realize that.
“He values the fate of human kind above ambition. Bless him.
“I feel that very soon this seemingly endless battle will conclude, one way or the other. Annie and I have decided wisely to wait before having children. I sometimes worry very much for the child John gave Sarah that she still carries to term. Will the child die before birth, in a final war?
“Or will the child be born to a world of peace and freedom?
“I hope that it will, and that soon after it the first child of Annie and myself will join it in that new world. But the threat of what lies before us is so great that sometimes that peaceful time is beyond my imagining.
“How, if that world comes, will I support my wife? I was a young editor at a trade magazine Before the Night of The War, the very night I met John Rourke. I have lived many lifetimes of danger since then. Could I return to electronics or writing, or any ‘normal’ occupation in this new world? Or would I die, instead, of boredom?
“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.
Chapter Five
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 lit
de, 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