Survivalist - 18 - The Struggle

by Ahern, Jerry

  She studied her legs beneath the hem of her skirt. She guessed they were pretty. Paul had told her they were. And, as she had moved through the submarine earlier, when Commander Sebastian, the First Officer, had taken her for a cup of coffee, explained what was going on, she had noticed some of the men of the ship’s company looking at her.

  Her hair was considerably longer than that of any of the women aboard the Reagan, the women of the bridge crew “in regs” as Margaret Barrow put it. But even Margaret Barrow’s hair, longer than that of the other women, was comparatively short. She wondered if that were the style all over Mid-Wake or just in the military. She had gone to Mid-Wake very briefly, aboard a submarine just like this. After her father had returned there, he announced that he had been diagnosed as having radiation-induced thyroid cancer (her heart had gone to her mouth), but that the medical arts at Mid-Wake had progressed to the point where such cancers were wholly curable and easily so. With her mother, her father, and Paul accompanying, she had traveled to Mid-Wake, staring through the video projection as though it were a window to the sea because it looked just like that. Paul, and Michael and Natalia, too, of course, had all been checked earlier, given a clean bill of health. Her own examination— barely noticeable as an examination at all—had shown her in perfect health, as were her mother and the baby. As a result of the examination, it was learned coincidentally that the child her mother carried would be a boy.

  Her father still referred to the child sexlessly— neither he nor her mother had ever believed in finding out before delivery, an option available more or less even when she—Annie—and her brother Michael were still to be born.

  Her eyes had returned to Natalia and still watched her. She was very beautiful, even ill as she was. Annie had brushed out Natalia’s hair, arranged it as Natalia usually did herself. The lids of Natalia’s eyes fluttered and there was a momentary glimpse of her dark, pansy-blue eyes. The pupils were dilated. -

  “What’s the matter?”

  Annie looked up, momentarily startled. It was Doctor Barrow. “Nothing, Maggie. I just didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Worried about your friend?” Maggie Barrow smiled, digging her hands into the side pockets of her lab coat, leaning back, then sitting on the edge of a hospital gurney, crossing her legs, her skirt shooting up half the length of her thighs. “I wish I could say there was something more we could do to help Major Tiemerovna, but I can’t think of anything that can be done here.”

  “She’s had such a sad life.”

  Maggie Barrow nodded, sympathetically. “I understood from a brief conversation with your father once that you’re a sensitive.”

  At Mid-Wake, after the physical examination, they had asked her to indulge in what amounted to game playing with a computer monitor, a half dozen people she was barely introduced to trotted past her. “I’m not a mind reader. No. It’s just that with people I know, I care about—and for some reason very strongly with Natalia—I can sometimes see what they see, feel what they feel, sense danger. Or sometimes I’ll dream, and in the dream I’ll see what’s happening. I think as it’s happening. There’s never been any desire to check it out anymore, even if there’d been the time.”

  “You see things happening in dreams?”

  “Uh-huh. But only if it’s something that involves very strong emotions. I can’t read cards— Well, I can, but only with people I know.”

  “What do you mean?” Maggie Barrow asked.

  Annie stood up, smoothed her skirt along her thighs. “I mean, I can’t sit down with somebody I don’t know and have them turn cards over and not show them to me but just read what they are through them seeing the cards. But, I could do that with somebody I’m close to.

  Like sometimes it’s terrible, you know?” “Why?”

  Annie smiled. “Paul—my husband. I have to force myself not to read his thoughts, sometimes. I mean, sometimes 111 just be sitting there and he’s near me and I’m not really thinking about anything and then suddenly I know what he’s thinking and I force myself not to because it’s like looking in somebody’s bedroom or something.”

  “And you can do this with Major Tiemerovna?”

  “It’s like we can communicate without talking. It’s different with her. There was this man—he was a traitor. He was part of the Eden Project but he was a traitor. And he kidnapped me. And I escaped from him—I, ahh—I killed him. But I learned how I should do it from going into Natalia’s mind with my mind. It scared the crap out of me,” Annie Rubenstein laughed. “But he scared me more. So, I did it. I went in—I really—ahh—”

  “How do you mean ‘went in*?”

  “Just what I said. I talked to Natalia about it afterward. And, for some reason she didn’t understand at the time, she just started thinking about this time she had been captured by these revolutionaries or something and they were going to kill her but first one of them was going to rape her. Well, I learned from her experience. He was—ahh’—and when he tried, this man Blackburn,” and Annie shuddered thinking of it. “I stabbed him. Just like Natalia did.”

  Margaret Barrow’s hands clutched at the hem of her skirt as she uncrossed her legs, pulling it down nearer to her knees, her shoulders hunching. “That’s scary.”

  “Yeah. I know.” There was something in Maggie’s eyes, beyond being scared, Annie Rubenstein thought. But it was only that, a thought.

  “Are you afraid? I mean, afraid of what you can do?”

  “Sometimes. I’m just afraid I’ll get better at it. And that scares me to death,” Annie told her honestly.

  “What’s Major Tiemerovna thinking now?”

  Annie licked her lips, swallowed. “Ahh—” She turned around, feet and legs together, feeling suddenly very cold. And she looked at Natalia. “I don’t know if I should—ahh—”

  “Trust me,” Maggie Barrow prodded. “I’ve got an idea. But try this, okay?”

  Annie licked her lips again and nodded. She closed her eyes. She thought about Natalia, picturing Natalia in her mind, picturing what Natalia could be thinking about. Inside herself, Annie saw her father’s face. It kept appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing, in one place, then another place, out of darkness and out of fire. He was wearing his sunglasses, the dark-lenses aviator-style glasses he wore so frequently because he was very light-sensitive. She saw his face more clearly now, and reflected in the glasses—“No—no!”

  Annie Rubenstein fell to her knees, the floor cold feeling through her stockings, her arms hugged tight to her chest. And she felt Maggie Barrow’s hands on her shoulders, felt her kneeling beside her. “Annie?”

  “I saw—saw inside—inside Natalia’s dreams.”

  “Was it—I mean—”

  “In my father’s glasses. I saw—” Everything was moving around her and she felt cold and hot all at the same time and when she opened her eyes everything looked green for an instant and then—

  Chapter Twenty

  Paul Rubenstein dropped to a crouch along the side of the naturally formed trail on the ridgeline. A few hundred yards back, he had discovered footprints and other markings in the snow and on the brush, that a group of men in military gear had passed this way. They seemed not very good at concealing their passage, nor the best woodsmen, either. He backtracked them for a hundred yards or so toward the higher ground above the ridgeline. At times, it seemed evident that when two paths of travel presented themselves, both on surface analysis seeming equal but one the clear choice of the experienced outdoorsman, more often than not the poorer choice was chosen. Paul Rubenstein recognized the look, remembering how comparatively short a time ago—despite the fact that an objective five centuries had passed—he had been grossly inexperienced. He had learned quickly because he had the best teacher and because it was either learn or die. These men whose trail he now paralleled would learn quickly, too—or die.

  Signs of a scuffle in the snow. With the point of the Gerber MK II he habitually carried he cleared away freshly fallen
snow very gently, finding some traces of

  blood. Beside the trail, someone had either sat or fallen. In other places, too many footprints, only partially drifted over, obscured body prints.

  A fight involving a dozen men or more. After that, the footprints that he had followed intersected here, either joining or following the participants. These footprints in some cases overlayed the earlier prints. Two different patterns in the boots, only two, clearly indicating two military groups. He could kick himself for not memorizing the sole patterns of the Mid-Wake combat boots.

  He looked to right and left, up and down the trail and in the rocks above. Clearly, one type of the footprints had come from the region where the gray smoke—still rising near the horizon—originated. And now those footprints along with many others, the second tread pattern in substantially greater numbers than the first, moved toward the smoke again.

  Paul Rubenstein slung his M-16 behind him, loosening the sling of the Schmeisser submachine gun. At close quarters, it was the better choice. And it would be close quarters crossing through the forest—it was impossible to think of it as jungle with the snow. But crossing through rather than taking the ridgeline trail might get him to the source of the smoke ahead of the force taking the trail.

  He left the trail, careful to blend his own footprints in as best as possible with the melange of footprints already there, doubling back, leaving the trail at the first opportunity where his doing so wouldn’t be immediately and obviously noticeable. If John Rourke decided to follow him, that was a different story. Where the terrain allowed, he kept to a jog trot, time slipping away …

  *

  John Rourke, an M-16 chamber loaded on either side of him, sat cross-legged on the cabin floor of the German gunship. He was stripping and cleaning his pistols, one at a time. Both of the Detonics mini-guns were already finished and he started the first of the two full-sized Detonics Scoremasters. He removed the magazine, worked the slide to verify visually and tactilely that there was an empty chamber, then drew the slide rearward until the slidestop and disassembly both lined up, then pushed out the slide stop. He took the slide forward on its rails, removing it from the frame, then set to separating recoil springs and guide rod from the barrel, then removing the barrel from the slide. With his German-duplicated Break-Free CLP, he began swabbing out the bore. A detailed stripping was not necessary.

  The Island Class Soviet submarine. Why was it here, he wondered? The smoke was the key. Perhaps the Soviets had merely surfaced as they might routinely do and some sharp-eyed person on the sail had noticed the smoke coming from the center of the island. Perhaps only a lightning strike. But John Rourke doubted that.

  He suspected a scenario that might fit: either Mid-Wake or their Soviet antagonists had established some sort of base on Iwo Jima and the two forces were in conflict, perhaps accidental. If some full-scale operation were in progress, why was the Soviet submarine surfaced? And, to the best he could determine with equipment aboard the gunship, why was there only one? There was no sign of the smaller submarines of Mid-Wake at all in evidence.

  He wiped off the parts, then began reassembly. In the days of normalcy (what little of that there had been), one of his favorite things to do in an off moment (what little of those there had been) was to read the latest gun magazine.

  One of his favorite writers, Jan Libourel, had always struck him as an erudite man. Perhaps, Rourke reflected, that was because his own opinions often coincided with Libourel’s. As Rourke reloaded the Scoremaster, then began to safe and disassemble the second one of the two full sized .45s, he realized oddly that he missed the days of normalcy very much. Petersen’s Handguns, which Libourel edited, could never be delivered to his door by the postman—he had no door except the rock slab which masked the entrance to the Retreat. And, there were no more postmen.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was necessary to seek the higher ground, and not much ground was higher here except those places where a mountain goat might well have moved comfortably, but no other creature. Damien Rausch, two of his men flanking him, clambered along a narrow ledge, moving slowly upward, Kurinami lost from sight here. Rausch’s field glasses—fortunately still cased— slammed against the rock wall. He kept climbing.

  At last, the ledge narrowed, leveled slightly, a sick feeling in the pit of Rausch’s stomach beginning to dissipate slightly. The snow made the footing treacherous and if he had fallen from the ledge— He would have to make his way down, but he dismissed thoughts of the descent until the descent would be upon him.

  There was a tongue-shaped outcropping. It would overlook where Kurinami had stopped, where somehow the entrance to Rourke’s mountain survival retreat had to be.

  Rausch moved out along the outcropping, at first in a crouch then to his knees and elbows, crawling the last few yards through the cold wetness of the snow. A vicious wind howled, ghostly sounding through niches in the rock below and above and all around him.

  Rausch uncased his binoculars, began to adjust the focus as he settled them on the Japanese Naval Aviator.

  The Japanese was rolling away some large boulder. Beside Rausch, one of his men whispered, “Should we—”

  “No—wait.” Rausch lowered his field glasses for an instant, blew the snow from the objective lenses, raised them. Now Kurinami had moved left, was bracing his body against a flat stone, pushing against it. The man looked incredibly tired, bone-weary. Rausch bet with himself and won. Kurinami collapsed to his knees beside the rock. But still, the Japanese threw his weight against it, standing as the rock began slightly to budge.

  And as the rock moved, the ground beneath the Japanese’s feet began to sink. Rausch blinked. A segment of the mountain wall behind Akiro Kurinami began to move inward. The Herr Doctor’s lair.

  Kurinami stumbled toward the opening, disappeared through it. Rausch used his radio. “Close in! Close in now! Quickly!”

  A red light filtered through the snow, washing the ground before the opening in the mountain wall.

  Rausch’s stomach knotted again as he pushed himself to his feet, ran in a low crouch and then came to his full height, leaving the outcropping, the men who had accompanied him barely keeping up with him.

  Rausch reached the rock ledge, took each step with care and with all the haste caution would allow, reached the narrower portion of the edge. The footing was impossibly slick and the snow-slicked rock wall provided little handhold for him. He moved downward along the ledge nevertheless skidding, slipping, catching his balance, freezing in place for an instant of fear, then forcing his legs to move again.

  He reached the base of the ledge, jumped, came

  down in a crouch in deep snow, spit snow from his lips, ran around the side of the rock wall.

  There it was, the opening, red light still flooding the snow-packed ground, the depression still in the ground where a portion of it had lowered when the Japanese pushed the squarish rock.

  “We have him, Herr Rausch! We have the Japanese officer, Herr Rausch!” The shout came from inside where the red light originated.

  Rausch slipped once, caught himself, ran, reached the opening, stepped through.

  An enormous set of double doors. They were made of steel or some other type of metal, looking to be electroplated as well. They were massive. Some type of sensors; he was uncertain of their purpose. They were mounted into the living rock. There was a video camera. Its housing appeared antique.

  There were combination dials on the doors. He had seen photographs of such devices. They were not electronic, had to be worked precisely to open unless the doors which they sealed shut were blown down.

  The Japanese lay in a heap before the doors, unconscious or dead. The doors were closed.

  Rausch’s fists balled closed, then open, then closed again. His stomach still churned from the descent. He was slightly affected by heights, always had been, usually conquered the fear more easily. He walked toward the man he’d left in charge, stared into his gray eyes for
a long moment, then backhanded him across the mouth with his open hand, driving the man to his knees. “Idiot!”

  And Rausch turned to stare at the doors.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Michael Rourke stood in the open entrance for the airlock of the hermetically sealed tent, Maria Leuden shivering beside him. A J7-V was going airborne.

  Impulsively, Michael Rourke waved after it, wondering if he would see his mother ever again, ever know the child she carried in her womb who would be his sibling.

  “Michael?”

  “You’re cold. I’ll take you inside.” “I love you, Michael.”

  Michael Rourke turned toward her, his arms enfolding her. She raised her head, her lips slightly parted. He bent his face over hers, looking into her eyes for a moment. They were beautiful eyes. “I love you, Michael.”

  His mouth touched gently at hers, then harder, his arms crushing her against him, his lips touching her throat, her hair, her coat opening. He opened his. She pressed her body against him and he closed his coat around them.

  He held her, his eyes moving toward the night sky, the J7-V’s running lights all but lost in the swirling snow surrounding the tent, filling the night.

  In moments, with Rolvaag and a small team of German commandos and a unit of volunteers who survived the Soviet assault on Hekla Base, he would go into the night. Rolvaag, as best they could understand him, told of something that might have been tunnels, lava flows which led beneath the cone.

  Michael Rourke kissed Maria Leuden hard on the mouth.

  Her hps touched at his cheek. He could barely hear her as she whispered, “I love you, Michael Rourke.”