by Ahern, Jerry
He caught up his rifle, checked that the chamber was empty, ran the action several times, finally snapping it off. then placed a loaded magazine up the well.
His father had told him on several occasions that the measure of a man was his desire to do what was right and good, and the sacrifice he would endure in order to fulfill such a desire.
Michael Rourke took his wallet from his trousers, opened it and looked at the small photo of his father and mother that he carried there. He wondered what their thoughts were when the photo was taken five centuries ago, a few months before The Night of The War.
He’d seen happier smiles on his mother’s face, and his father’s face too.
But there was happiness there, and love, despite complications. As a child, he’d known his mother and father did not quite get along, but he’d never doubted then nor had he since, that they loved each other and loved his sister and him.
It was that image-of love-that Michael Rourke tried to keep in his mind’s eye as he left his quarters, not the image of two people who were nearly dead going into cryogenic freeze in a city, thousands of miles away and far beneath the sea …
Natalia Tiemerovna packed as she always did for something like this, with a modest amount of everything she might require, all of it fitting into her backpack/shoulder bag.
Clothing could be just as important to a female agent as a gun or knife might be to her male counterpart. For that reason, there was a slip, a skirt, a blouse, a pair of casual shoes.
And a spare black jumpsuit, identical to the one she wore
now.
She buckled on her gunbelt, the belt something John had looked long and hard to find for her, the holsters, along with the two stainless steel Smith & Wesson L-Frame .357 Magnums they carried, the gift of the last President of the United States, Sam Chambers.
Mid-Wake had a President, and he was President of The United States, but it was a different United States over which he presided, a different world.
Each of the revolvers carried engraved on the right barrel flat, an American Eagle.
Natalia had often looked at these images. The American philosopher and inventor, Benjamin Franklin had wished that his young country’s national symbol would be something besides an heroic appearing vulture. But the American Eagle had come to mean more svmbolity than in reality, the essence of a proud if sometimes hard to fathom nation of people, who could be described in exactly the same way, as proud always and hard to fathom often.
Peace.
What an odd concept.
She should never have given it any credence as long as humanity infested this place called Earth.
She caught up her coat and bag and rifle and the long, thin black fabric case and started from her quarters, forcing herself not to consider the fact that thousands of miles away, the only meaning which had ever been in her life was dead or dying and would be lost to her forever …
Wolfgang Mann stood by bis aircraft, smoking a cigarette, the wind cold but stirring to the blood. Soon, they would be boarding the aircraft, and with others like it, flying toward a rendezvous in what had been Chile. The rendezvous was a staging area, and from the staging area, an assault would be launched against the mountain redoubt where Albert Heimaccher and Deitrich Zimmer could be found. With them, as best
they could guess, would be the Rourke child. What remained for him then, for Wolfgang Mann? Duty?
He had done his duty, was prepared to do his duty again.
But, then, after his duty was done?
His wife had been murdered, assassinated by the vile Nazis whom even now he was on his way to fight against again. He had no living children, something which saddened him and always had.
Mann exhaled, smoke and breath mixing in a gray cloud on the frigid air …
The cursor on his terminal’s screen blinked.
Deitrich Zimmer watched it. His thoughts were not on the printout, nor were they on the data on his screen.
Rather, he was concerned with implications.
Albert Heimaccher’s genealogical background checked. Albert Heimaccher was, indeed, the descendant of a Reichskm-der whose biological father was Adolph Hider.
Hitler had not direcdy fertilized the woman, of course. But data in the official fdes compiled over centuries of historical research at New Germany confirmed that der Fuhrer, in a moment of great generosity, allowed his sperm sample to be taken. The sperm sample was used, in fact, to fertilize several women. Albert Heimaccher was descended from one of the ‘unions’ which resulted.
The woman who mothered the child from whom Albert Heimaccher was descended bore the name Maria Clarisse Volkman of Stuttgart. In files of the Reichskinder project, there was a Maria Clarisse Volkman of Stuttgart, named as one of six women impregnated with Adolph Hitter’s sperm.
If the essence of Adolph Hider could somehow be distilled from Heimaccher, all other characteristics excluded, then the extraordinary thing could be done and der Fuhrer could be. essentially, duplicated. Certainly, noone could capture all those subde nuances of greatness, but the essential elements of the
man would be there. That was what was important.
With the right heredity and the proper environment, history could be re-made. Zimmer made his decision.
He would do it, and the world would be forever changed, because he did.
Thirteen
He felt stupid in the sterile surgical garb, but he had to be here.
He wore no rubber gloves because he did not have to touch anything, nor did Maggie, who had said she would be his wife.
Jason Darkwood held her hand.
The head of the medical team administered the injections, first to Sarah Rourke, then to John Rourke.
Doctor Munchen, a good-hearted man, stood between the two coffin-like chambers.
Sarah Rourke’s face looked incredibly peaceful.
John Rourke’s face look disturbed, almost angry.
Lights flickered on within the chambers and in the consoles surrounding them as the lids were brought downward.
In the instant that they closed, clouds of gas, light blue in color, began to fill the chambers’ interiors.
Jason Darkwood held Maggie Barrow’s hand tighter.
The light within each chamber shone through the gas, making the interior of the chamber seem to glow.
Living people who might never live again were inside, and watching the clouds of gas Darkwood thought, for just an instant, that perhaps the brightness was their souls. But were they freed or imprisoned by what the Rourke Family called The Sleep’?
The question was for a philosopher or a priest and Jason Darkwood was neither, nothing but a man. Knowing Doctor John Thomas Rourke had made him appreciate all that being a
man implied, more than he had ever understood it before.
The chambers were fully closed, the gas all but totally obscuring the faces of John and Sarah Rourke.
Maggie’s hand trembled in his. He looked at her and her eyes were filled with tears. Through her surgical mask, she said, The first time I saw him, he was like this, more dead than alive.”
Darkwood held her hand more tightly, saying, “John Rourke survived then. Maybe they’ll both survive this, too. At least we can pray”
And Maggie leaned her head against his shoulder and Captain Jason Darkwood was glad he would make her his wife.
Fourteen
More than fifty German helicopter gunships, black paused, main rotor blades moving gendy in the wind from the sea. were ranked along the beach of white sand and snow. Froth-edged breakers crashed against the land, rolling over the black rocks farther out, the wind rising, urging them to greater heights.
Men moved along the beach, German Commandoes and Long Range Mountain Patrol cadre, most of them with conventional weapons, some armed with the newest generanoc plasma energy rifles, the backpacks which were the power source more streamlined now, like scuba tanks.
Natalia Tiemerovna, hands dug into the pockets of her opes b
lack coat, stood just inches from the water, letting the wind tear at her face and her hair, breathing in the life. Michaei had just spoken with Doctor Munchen.
John and Sarah were in The Sleep, perhaps forever.
The wind also dried her tears almost as soon as they came Although she no longer believed as Vladmir had always taugk her that any sign of weakness was unforgivable, it was net good to advertise her tears. With Annie, she would be the only other woman on this mission.
She sniffed, blinked, stared. Vladmir and John. From the arms of a devil to the arms of an angel. Why was it. she almost laughed, that her affair with the devil was consummated, while her affair with the angel never was?
She would willingly have accepted death if only John wocil once had made love to her, penetrated her body with his.
If this was it forever and he never awakened, he should not lie preserved in cryogenic sleep. His body, with all his weapons adorning it, should be placed on a pyre of wood, and a fire set someplace high above the rest of the world, where its glow would be seen by men everywhere, to be remembered, burning into their eyes and hearts, as an image of what was attainable by man.
She had no doubt that if, indeed, although clinically alive he were really dead, that if there were a God and He had a Heaven, John Rourke would be there now, Sarah beside him.
When she thought of Sarah, Natalia felt a cheapness inside her. If John had been willing, no matter that she respected Sarah, loved Sarah as a friend; she would have lain beneath John’s body as long and as often as he desired, cheating Sarah.
She was not her own woman while John Rourke walked the earth. But could she now, did she even want to live?
The idea of suicide crossed her mind more than once in the brief time since everything had happened.
Obviously. John would have rejected the very concept. Life was too precious to discard; but, she had no life. She had convinced herself that filling her days-the children of the Wild Tribes, the school, all of that-was filling her life. But she knew better then, knew better now. Living a lie while she could be to herself that some day, some miracle might happen, was one rhrag. this another.
John Rourke was out of her life forever.
If she wanted to continue with life, it would be her own doing and noone else’s.
As she watched, the sail of an Island Class Submarine broke the surface of the water well out from shore. It would be the Rogers, the vessel commanded by Jason Darkwood’s second in command, the black man named Sebastian. Two smaller sails broke the surface on either side of the first. These would be the Reagan and the Vfayne, she knew.
The Rogers was equipped with Soviet missiles converted to conventional warheads and, when the Nazi mountain redoubt
was penetrated and the results of the raid were knows, good or bad, the Rogers would fire its missiles until the redoobt was obliterated from the face of the earth, German helicopters confirming that.
If someone were watching the shore from the sail of any at the three submarines, with powerful enough digital imagns computer assist binoculars, her face would be clearly visroie. If that person knew her, like Sebastian, or perhaps one of the Marines she’d fought beside, whoever watched her would know why should he or she saw a tear.
But a stranger would wonder, of course, and might, at some later time, ask her, “Why were you crying?”
She would say simply, “Sometimes, when a life ends, one cries; sometimes, too, one cries when a life begins. I think I was crying for both at once, but I am not certain yet. Can I let you know when I know myself how things work out?”
That was the way, of course, to take it an instant at a time and see, see if anything was worth the trouble, the pain. Right now, she was not optimistic. But, the thought of ending her own life was temporarily removed from her list of options. John and Sarah’s son was in danger, in enemy hands.
That much and so much more, she owed them” both.
Fifteen
Starting from the north, the German helicopter gunships began rising from the sand and snow that was now the coastline of Peru, arcing westward and seaward, passing over the sails of the three submarines, men on the decks waving up at them, gesturing with clenched fists and thumbs up.
American flags flew from each vessel.
The sun was high, but not near to noon.
With the fuselage doors open, the interior of the gunship was frigid.
Paul Rtibenssem watched his companions, his family. His wife, iiis fnend iaiso his brother-in-law), his other friend.
He wondered about John’s plan.
Had events finaCy forced its existence, its reality?
It had t>sen obvious that John planned to repopulate the earth, if need be. with the life contained within The Retreat. That, mere than the other genuine reasons, that adults could better cope with a survival situation than children, that the children *one of them was now his wife) needed an uninterrupted time to acquire an education, than anything else was the reason John Rourke awakened, awakened Annie and Michael, then allowed them to age to adulthood.
John had wanted, ail along, to provide for the future of the human race. Three mating pairs rather than one, a husband for his daughter, a wife for his son.
Paul Rubenstein held his wife’s hand; her head rested on his shoulder and she seemed to be asleep.
Michael and Natalia sat opposite him.
A German crewman closed the fuselage doors.
Overhead lights came on automatically. Natalia opened her black bag, extracting a smaller bag from inside it. Paul Ra-benstein almost laughed when he recognized its contents. The two-gun, knife-wielding, martial arts expert was doing some type of sewing. Embroidery, he thought, assuming that because it resembled the same sort of thing Annie sometimes did K> while away the time.
Had Annie taught her?
It certainly wasn’t a course in ‘spy school’ as Natalia sometimes called it. Or, had it been? “Now, Comrades, you shall learn the things that American housewives and mothers do in the event that, someday, while fighting the forces of Imperialism, you must pass yourself off as one of the wives of the Capitalist Exploiters. You must strive to excel, but not to enjoy!” No, he doubted that. Most certainly, it was his wife who had taught her.
He looked at Michael.
To the casual observer, Michael might appear to be the world’s slowest reader, because whenever Paul observed Michael Rourke, he was always reading Ayn Rand’s, Aika Shrugged. It was John’s favorite book, and evidentiy also his son’s favorite. Paul had read it, then read it again several years later, enjoying it even more.
Michael seemed always to be reading it.
There was wisdom in its pages, and Michael loved the pursuit of wisdom with a passion rarely seen.
Paul Rubenstein considered them both.
A man. A woman. So much in common, yet so totally different.
And he wondered, did Natalia see Michael Rourke as Jofea Rourke’s flesh and blood ghost? Paul Rubenstein returned to his journal…
Wolfgang Mann surrendered the controls of the gunship, let
ting the machine’s pilot take charge for a time while he studied the maps on his laptop computer.
The Nazi redoubt was atop and partially within a peak designated only as K-17, not the highest in the subrange of which it was a part, but neither was it the lowest. Its elevation at the highest point was nineteen thousand feet above sea level. But, of course, with the glaciation of so much of the northern hemisphere, sea level figures were invariably incorrect.
The structural data was most interesting. Synth-concrete molded into the shape of the mountain rocks, the effective result camouflaging hs presence from ordinary aerial observation. The framework was a peculiar form of polymer reinforced spun titanium, the most advanced structural material known to the science of New Germany. As strong as the strongest steels, yet hollow and so light an ordinary man could easily transport six twelve-foot beams, three on each shoulder, his only inconvenience the length, the weight bar
ely noticable.
The advantage of polymer reinforced spun titanium was that it was essentially invisible to electronic detection.
Had anyone other than a person mtimate with New Germany searched for the structure? The redoubt would never have been discovered except by the physical accident of walking into it.
On the day when Docror John Rourke led the forces of liberation against the Nazi dictatorship, the records from which the data on the redoubt was derived were about to be subjected to magnetic degausing when anti-Nazi forces seized control of the computer center. The attempt to destroy the computer data was interdicted. At the time, so many other concerns had to be attended to, that Mann had never given a second thought to the redoubt or how it might provide a solid base of operations for Nazi forces.
The new plastic explosives would penetrate the synth-concrete which cocooned the facility, but Wolfgang Mann hoped not to be forced to use them. Instead, as much as any responsible military commander could allow himself to rely on a single gambit, he counted on the new generation energy weapons, several of which were mounted aboard a small num
ber of the gunships in the air armada he would be senthag against the Nazi stronghold.
Only recendy field tested, in experiments at New Germany, the ‘energy cannons’ as they were popularly called, had shattered and burned their way through synth-concrete of equal or greater thickness to that utilized in the mountain redoubt.
But tests were one thing, and combat use another. If, bow-ever, the new weapons did perform as the field trials promised, the lightning strike into the redoubt that Wolfgang Mans so hoped for, could be carried out. On its speed, hinged the entire success of both of the mission’s ultimate goals. Those two goals were to destroy Albert Heimaccher and Deitrich Zimmer’s Nazi organization, ridding the earth of the plague of National Socialism forever; and, to rescue the newborn baby, who was the son of John and Sarah Rourke.