War Mountain

by Jerry Ahern

  “No.” That was all he said. She felt his fingertips raising her chin and she tried blinking back her tears as their eyes met. “I love you.” Then he let go of her and walked away.

  Emma Shaw stood there, the wind so cold now that her body was shaking uncontrollably. He boarded the aircraft, never looking back. But he’d said that he loved her. Her knees were weak. She muttered the word, “Asshole!” She was talking about herself. . .

  John Rourke saw her through the window, then looked away, locking his chair into position and looking to his weapons. Once the aircraft began to taxi, he would secure them. The chair was vastly more comfortable than the old bench-style seating from the air drops in the days Before the Night of the War. The chairs allowed position adjustment and had fold-down desk plates, much like the old Thompson chairs of his high-school days. The little desks accommodated last-minute note taking, tasks like that. John Rourke began field-stripping one of the ScoreMasters, pulling the magazine and emptying the chamber first. One of the pleasures of the Detonics system was that there was no removable barrel bushing with which to contend, and the basic Colt/Browning design field-stripped much more simply. One merely aligned the slide of the empty pistol with the disassembly notch and worked out the slide stop. He closed his eyes.

  Emma Shaw.

  A man shouldn’t say what he had said and then just walk away. It wasn’t right. “Paul?”

  Paul was forward in the fuselage, going over details with the jump master, and looked back when John Rourke called his name. “John?”

  “Keep an eye on this, huh? Be back in a second.” And Rourke picked up the two subassemblies of the ScoreMaster, folded back the desk just enough to slide out from behind it, put down the pistol’s parts and started aft.

  The cargo doors there were still open and Rourke ducked past a pallet with snowmobiles packed aboard it, walked onto the ramp and down to the runway. Emma had probably gone already. It was exceedingly cold, a fact of which he was doubly aware because he had left his coat in the aircraft. But, as Rourke walked around the tail section coming up along the left side of the craft, he saw her, standing where he’d left her.

  “Emma?”

  She looked up, didn’t move.

  John Rourke stood his ground about three yards from her, the engines starting to rev, deicing beginning. “I just couldn’t go away without—”

  “What did it mean when you said you loved me? What am I supposed to do, now, John? I’d like to know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “Yes, I meant it.” It was necessary almost to shout because of the increasing mechanical noise.

  “So, what am I supposed to do?”

  “I told you that I don’t know.”

  “Should I wait for you, to see what happens, and then if nothing happens, just pretend you never said it?”

  “I shouldn’t have said it,” Rourke told her.

  Her shoulders dropped and her gloved hands balled into tiny fists, her helmet falling to the runway surface, rolling, stopping a few feet from her. “But, damn it, if you shouldn’t have said it and you knew you shouldn’t have said it then you said it because you really feel it, right?”

  “Yes, I really feel it.”

  “I love you!” Emma Shaw bent over to pick up her helmet, brushed the snow away from it, then looked at him. “I love you! Know why I said it? Because I feel it too, damn it!” Sticking the helmet under her arm as a football player would have carried a ball, she broke into a run, away from the aircraft.

  Rourke stood there for several seconds, watching her, then just closed his eyes.

  There was nothing else to say, nothing he could tell her, although there were things he wanted to tell her. That he respected her, that he cared for her, that he loved her—but there was nothing that he could do about it because of the way that he was made.

  And, somehow he thought Emma Shaw knew all that already.

  John Rourke looked after her for a second longer, then turned and walked back into the aircraft.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Michael Rourke, too weak still to dress, sat wrapped in a blanket, the thin, very loose-fitting jumpsuit that was standard cryogenic Sleep attire, beneath it. His metabolism wasn’t quite what it should be, yet, and he was cold. The important thing now, of course, was to consume plenty of fluids, get his kidneys and urinary tract flushed out, then get some nourishment into his body. He was so weak that he was almost too weak to listen, but he made himself do that, as Natalia, who sat opposite him, spoke. “And that’s why we—and it was really my decision—thought it was the best thing to get you out of the Sleep. Do you agree?”

  Michael exhaled, closed his eyes, opened them again. The weakness was something that could not be avoided, especially because he had forced himself out of the chamber a little too soon. He was paying for that now.

  But, he said, “I think I follow your reasoning. I mean, if we have to, I can always go back. So, yeah, I guess you guys did the right thing. I don’t know anything for sure, now. Get me some more water, huh?”

  And Michael Rourke leaned his head back. His father and Paul were off tracking down Hitler’s remains because Zimmer had made that a condition of the deal for getting his mother the operation she so desperately needed in order to be truly alive again. And a virtual Nazi aerial armada had left the area, flying east, in the same direction his father and Paul had gone.

  He considered what this had to be doing to Paul, and what a magnificent person his brother-in-law, Paul Rubenstein, really was.

  Natalia returned with a glass of water, helping Michael to hold it, tilting the cup for him. Annie had left them to be alone for a little while, which was sweet of her, but under the circumstances, he didn’t think he would have had the energy to kiss Natalia on the cheek. “You’re gonna have to get me up and moving pretty soon; just let me rest a little while longer. If you’re right, I’m going to need to be ready to move. The thing is, we can’t even try to get the plane airborne, because if we initiate anything it might trigger a response from Deitrich Zimmer and he might kill Mom.”

  “I know. You just rest a bit, and we’ll get you up and around. I should make love to you like this, when you’re too weak to move. And, you wouldn’t have to.”

  Michael felt himself smiling. “If you’re trying to raise my blood pressure, it’s working.”

  “Good. But we need it in the arms and the legs most of all,” she told him, smiling brightly, then leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. “I did not want you to be helpless if Zimmer’s forces tried something, and I just have this feeling that—”

  “You’ve been hanging around with Annie too long, with her feelings about things. Trouble is, she’s always right,” Michael added . . .

  Both ScoreMasters were field-stripped, cleaned and reloaded, as were John Rourke’s other guns. The Crain Life-Support System X knife’s primary edge was touched up, although it really hadn’t required it, as were both edges of the A. G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome.

  And John Rourke was left with nothing to do for twenty minutes or so but think, about Sarah, abut the mission to save her and Wolfgang, and about her and Wolfgang, and about the rest of his family, his son and daughter and Natalia. Rourke shook his head. He had loved Natalia, in many ways still did, but it was not like the feelings he had—totally irrational—for Emma Shaw. She was extraordinary, and—like many men, Rourke imagined—he was at once mystified yet fiercely attracted by the openness of her love for him.

  But it wasn’t right, and he had spent his entire life trying to do what was right. He had almost betrayed that life, in a moment of weakness when he’d thought that Sarah was dead. If he had, he would never have forgiven himself. Fidelity was something John Rourke had always viewed as being implicit to marriage, even if the marriage were not “working out” as people sometimes so euphemistically put it. His and Sarah’s marriage had never been known for “working out,” nor had they ever made any
secret of that.

  That he even had told Emma that he loved her was disgraceful, Rourke thought, and wrong for her. He was being the sort of man he had always considered beneath contempt, leading on a woman, taking advantage of her.

  He forced thoughts of Emma Shaw from his mind, focusing on Sarah, how lovely she was, how good it would be to have her with him again.

  But, it had rarely been good between them.

  And, it was the same for his parents. John Rourke lit a cigarette, a cigar too offensive in the confined quarters of the aircraft. The men of the commando unit—American SEALs, German Long Range Mountain Patrol personnel—were all deep within themselves, some listening to music with earphones, a few of them playing cards, others sitting with their eyes closed. Rourke closed his eyes again.

  His father and mother had never fought, nor was anything even suggested that they would not stay together, but it was very hard to have imagined them friends in the true sense of the word, which they probably had been once, before war, hot and cold, kept his father away. They were married for quite a few years before the War with Hitler and Tojo, Rourke’s father working for what would later become known as the National Security Agency. Rourke had accessed his father’s personnel file once—something he wasn’t supposed to do, of course—through a friend in NSA.

  John Rourke’s father and mother rarely did things together, and it seemed obvious that they no longer had very much in common. When his father was home, there was an extra plate on the table, but rarely was there conversation between a man and woman who were often separated for protracted periods of time.

  In those days, as he learned much later from that very same personnel file, his father worked through the transition from World War II OSS and Cold War Central Intelligence Agency. For a brief period, there was no real transitional agency, and his father worked as a security consultant for one of the international oil companies.

  And, always, unfailingly, when his father was home they—he and his father—spent a great deal of time together, shooting, prowling the woods, building things, talking.

  It was as if whatever had existed between his parents had ceased to exist anymore.

  There were pictures of his parents locked arm in arm, smiles on their faces, the perfect happy couple.

  There were pictures like that of John Rourke and his wife, too.

  The jump master’s voice made him open his eyes. “Excuse me, sir, but we’ve picked up a tail wind. We’ll be over the drop zone in about twelve minutes.”

  “How are weather conditions?”

  “Perfect night for a drop, sir; heavy, high cloud cover, a little snow, nice and soft,” the man laughed. “I’ll be getting the men formed up.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Rourke told him, nodding.

  John Rourke sat up in his seat, running a last-minute mental checklist. It was good to have something to do.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In these high-tech days, airborne troops utilized a new jump method incorporating state-of-the-art control systems. The talented man or woman who was thoroughly conversant with the necessary techniques was able to navigate to the center of a bull’s eye target with uncanny accuracy under a wide range of weather conditions. These were high-altitude, high-opening jumps, or HAHOs. The opposite of the current method was the old HALO jump, high altitude and low opening. Since it was no longer employed in warfare because it could be inordinately dangerous, John Rourke elected to employ it now.

  The wind rush tore at his clothing, whistled through the tiny gaps between flesh and helmet. It was bitterly cold and his flesh numbed with it, albeit that not a centimeter of skin was bare. John Rourke had been jump-qualified since his early teens, skydiving for fun then; but, the exhilaration of the jump never left him.

  By utilizing the same high-tech instrument packs as were employed in the standard method, however, the potential for precision landings was just as great.

  His arms extended, legs forming a V-notch, Rourke floated through the night sky, his eyes alternating between the men surrounding him, Paul among them, the darkness below, and the instruments on his chest pack. Not only were there dual digital altimeters and wind-speed gauges, but there was a constant readout from the global positioning satellites. The global positioning system had been implemented Before the Night of the War, but those older satellites had long since fallen from their orbits and burned in reentry. There were few of the new global positioning satellites in place, the system growing again; but, one of the geosynchronous units was positioned over the eastern coast of Greenland and in a perfect location for their operation to take advantage of.

  The readout from the global positioning satellite provided a constant update in degrees, minutes and seconds of both longitude and latitude, so by slightly altering the vector of one’s body (assuming a reasonable amount of skill in doing so), it was possible to keep to a relatively precise flight path. One of the greatest advantages of the system was that it was totally passive, no signal necessary from the person using it, as had been the case with the original.

  Rourke was little worried about himself or the bulk of the commando force, beyond ordinary concern at least. But, he was worried about Paul Rubenstein, Paul unused to jumping, but game enough to try. Rourke’s eyes scanned the night sky around him now for some sign of Paul and found it. His friend was easily picked out, the least graceful because of his inexperience, the most rigid in body language of the commando team. Nonetheless, Paul was with them and well within the descent path. The two most experienced jumpers in the unit had volunteered to fly with him, flanking him on the way down lest Paul should get in trouble. Rourke doubly admired his friend’s courage. And, Paul would be indispensable once he was on the ground—of all the men Rourke knew now or had ever known, the one Rourke most counted on.

  His eyes back on his chest pack once more, Rourke mentally ran a weapons check. Everything was secured. The double Alessi shoulder rig with his twin stainless Detonics CombatMaster .45s was stowed in his gear. His two ScoreMasters, the larger .45s which he normally carried holsterless in his belt, were this time carried in matching full-flap military holsters, fabricated of waterproof black ballistic nylon and lined with waterproof black doeskin suede, these suspended from a military pistol belt, one gun on each hip. The only other firearms on Rourke’s body were the HK-91, slung tight against him in a drop case, and the little hip-gripped .38 Special Centennial, this latter secured within the right outside pocket of his coat, instantly to hand if needed.

  The knives which John Rourke carried as a matter of course—the A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome, the Crain Life-Support System X and the little Executive Edge Grande pen-shaped pocket folder—were supplemented by a knife given him by the leader of the contingent from New Germany, Captain Klein, his name by some biological accident well-descriptive of his stature. What the fellow lacked in height, however, was offset by build; Klein was one of the most muscular men Rourke had ever encountered. Captain Klein warned, “Herr Doctor, you have jumped often enough to know, I am sure, when there is a certain type of knife which can prove itself when others cannot.”

  Rourke smiled in return, saying, “I was planning on finding someone from whom I might borrow a switchblade, yes. I’ve never liked the things, although I admit their utility under circumstances such as these.”

  “I am a student of edged weaponry, Herr Doctor, and I have come to the realization that in the past such knives were often cheaply fabricated and unreliable. Allow me to present you with this one, however. I would consider it a personal favor and a great honor were you to accept it, not as a loan but as a gift. I acquired several of these a number of years ago and always have at least two spares with me.”

  Rourke thanked Ernst Klein, accepting the knife. The handle slabs were of synth-stag, so identical to the real thing that it was difficult to realize they were man-made. And the action of the knife, the blade geometry and finishing, all bespoke a quality which Rourke had rarely seen in switchblade
knives.

  The switchblade was in the pocket opposite the one carrying the little revolver, ready for instant one-hand opening and use with the parachute rigging should circumstances demand this.

  The jump goggles Rourke wore were capable of being switched back and forth instantly (at the flick of a toggle) between standard and vision intensification. The controls were wired along the outside of Rourke’s left sleeve to a master alongside Rourke’s left palm, this so that one would not be forced to alter a flight vector in order to change the mode of the goggles. Rourke flipped to vision intensification. Below him, the countryside became only somewhat more visible, but sufficiently so that it was possible to make out some few of the more significant terrain features.

  The perspective between aerial photo and the real thing was always difficult to grasp in the first instants. Usually, it required some visual cue to serve as the identifier which suddenly made the mosaic of dissociated images take on order and meaning. Such was the case now. There was an iced-over lake, its westernmost shore forming what looked like the partial profile of a man with a large, bulbous, hooked nose. Rourke’s attention focused on this until the other details, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, started reforming in his mind, falling into place.

  To the northwest of the oddly shaped noselike shoreline lay a progressively widening notch which had once been a river course, perhaps in the past as recent as Before the Night of the War or in a past more distant still. The commando team would move along the south wall of the notch until it widened some five miles further out, deepening as well, forming a gorge of considerable depth and breadth. At the point where the broadening and deepening began, however, the commando team would follow the terrain upward, toward what would be the height of the gorge.