by Ahern, Jerry
The small woman shouted, “It is down there—two levels down!”
The blond girl ran ahead—but on the catwalk as they started across toward the ladders leading downward were men in technician’s coveralls, pistols in their hands, the look of madness in their eyes.
Rourke shoved past the blond, Paul Rubenstein shouldered in beside him, Paul shoving the small girl behind him.
Rourke’s eyes and Paul’s eyes met. “Shoot!” Rourke almost whispered into his microphone.
Rourke stabbed the M-16 forward, Paul the Sch-meisser—both weapons opened up simultaneously ripping the technicians from the catwalk, hurtling them downward into the machinery six floors below.
Rourke ran ahead, reaching the ladder, looking for the controls two floors below—he could see a massive panel on an island of steel which formed the center of a wheel spoked with catwalks from four sides. “Is that it?” he shouted to the Russian woman.
“Yes—I think so,” the blond called back.
The smaller girl shouted. “That is it—the master control is encased in plastic—a big red switch. My lover—he works here and sometimes—”
“Never mind—stay there—hold the catwalk—be careful.”
Rourke reached to the parallel vertical runners, his gloved fists knotting over them, his feet against the
sides of the runners, tight—he let himself drop, skidding down the ladder as though it were a pole, swinging away as he reached the level below. No one. He looked up—Paul was coming but not as quickly.
Rourke reached to the ladder again, the woman a floor above fighting off two more technicians, finally the blond haired soldier using her assault rifle, the concrete and steel around them reverberating with the shots.
Rourke started down the ladder again, dropping, swinging inward to the larger catwalk which ringed the spokes and the hub at the center where the controls were.
He could see the plastic boxed red master control switch—but on the catwalk, between him and the controls, was a man, the man’s size extraordinary. He was a soldier, his helmet gone somewhere, his rifle inverted like a club, his eyes wide with the madness.
John Rourke stepped out onto the catwalk, saying to the man, “I am here to help you and make you well. Put down your rifle—just step back. I need to reach the switch.”
The man screamed, stood his ground.
Rourke started across, edging forward slowly, ready to use a gun, not wanting to.
“Please,” Rourke whispered.
The big man—six foot six or better, over two hundred and fifty pounds—charged, swinging his assault rifle in huge circles over his head.
John Rourke eyed the man.
John Rourke eyed the switch.
Rourke drew both of the small Detonics pistols from beneath his arms, thumbing back the hammers.
The man still came, the madness in his eyes—
John Rourke fired a simultaneous double tap with
the twin stainless Detonics .45s, the massive man’s body rocking, Rourke wanting to reach for him, the body falling back as Rourke stepped toward the man, the rifle falling over the catwalk, the huge man’s body tumbling after it, a scream lingering on the air, a heavy slapping sound as the body stopped against the concrete four floors below.
Rourke closed his eyes for an instant—he opened his eyes and ran forward, toward the island, upping the safeties of the pistols in his hands, inverting them, smashing the butts of the pistols against the plastic protective covering, the plastic cracking, falling away as it shattered.
Rourke stuffed the pistol from his right fist into his belt—he jerked down the switch.
There had been a loud humming sound—and the humming sound stopped.
Chapter Thirty
It had taken three hours for the gas volume to diminish satisfactorily that the men whose minds the gas had affected—those who still survived—simply sat down and fell asleep.
With Paul Rubenstein, John Rourke had vanished from the Underground City, the German force still not strong enough to penetrate it and hold it.
Rourke had stopped for a moment—the large woman lay dead in the corridor where she had gone down fighting to buy Rourke, Rubenstein, and the two other women time in which to shut down the ventilation system.
Rourke had bent over her, closed her eyes, folded her glasses neatly beside her, then run on.
He had a camera, using it to photograph the Soviet defenses, Paul Rubenstein doing the same, both men feeling almost unclean somehow doing it.
There was a chance of peace, perhaps, with the survivors of the Underground City—a chance perhaps.
The small German force, with the aid of members of Jea’s tribe, had performed two tasks: taking prisoners from among Karamatsov’s forces for interrogation and prisoners from among those affected by the gas in order to study the gas’s effects to be able to
defend against it.
The bulk of Karamatsov’s force—more than eight thousand men and women and the majority of the still battleworthy equipment—had moved out to the east, German units following at a discreet distance to plan the next move in the growing war.
Several thousand of the Russians—men and women—had lain down their arms, going to aid then-families and comrades within the Underground City. But those among the thousands in Karamatsov’s force who had broken off from battle made up an estimated three-fifths of the total who had lain down their arms.
John Rourke considered it a sign that humanity still possessed a basic good—even after all that had befallen it.
John Rourke, Natalia Tiemerovna, Annie and Paul Rubenstein, Michael Rourke, Otto Hammerschmidt, Captain Hartman, and Fraulein Doctor Maria Leuden stood on the wall of rock overlooking the Underground City, vehicles still smoldering from artillery or mortar hits, the ground between the high rock wall and the entrance to the Underground City pockmarked with shell holes, blackened with fire, littered with dead.
John Rourke held Natalia’s hand.
John Rourke spoke, his face turned into the wind, the sun bright, his eyes, despite the dark lensed aviator sunglasses, squinted against it. “Karamatsov will need a manufacturing base for resupply. He’ll have to avoid battle until he finds it. He’d have fuel and ammunition cached, but that won’t last forever. If there’s a civilization to the east, he’ll find it, use it. We don’t have the manpower to engage him now. But we have to go after him.”
Annie asked, “What will we do?”
“Try to outthink his next move. If he headed east,
he headed east for a reason. We have to find out what. Before he gets there.”
John Rourke cupped his hands around the battered Zippo windlighter, thrusting the tip of his cigar into the blue-yellow flame.
“Jea asked me something before he was airlifted to the hospital in Argentina,” Natalia said softly.
“What did he say, Fraulein Major?” Hammerschmidt asked.
John Rourke looked at Natalia, Natalia’s voice sounding strained, tired. “Jea asked—‘Is fighting and killing what it means to be civilized’?”
John Rourke stared down at the battleground, at the dead there.
Natalia whispered, “He wanted an answer. I didn’t have any.”
John Rourke didn’t have any either.
Chapter Thirty-one
Vladmir Karamatsov walked slowly across the snow, the whirring of rotor blades in the distance, helicopter gunships on guard against attack by forces of the Underground City or by the Germans.
Natalia’s voice.
It had been her voice.
Her voice had routed his forces, disrupted the attack.
A jet streaked overhead, rising from the airfield at the staging area to which he had withdrawn, but the jet and the others which followed it now, not going to do battle, but reconnaissance.
There were many options open to him.
The Germans could not have a sufficiently large force.
The defenses of the Underground City would be sever
ely depleted.
If he took the Underground City, he would not have sufficient forces, between casualties and defections— eighteen hundred defected, three hundred and ninety-one killed at last count, two hundred more at least injured—to both defend the city and attack the Germans and the Eden Project and the Hekla Community.
Vehicles were still coming in, carrying supplies, the
less seriously wounded.
“Natalia,” he said under his breath, into the wind.
His right hand fingered the butt of his pistol beneath the heavy coat he wore against the cold. It had been Rourke again, perhaps one of the ones who had disrupted the gas attack.
The gas. There was enough of the gas, all of it bled into the smaller cannisters now, that if the proper delivery system could be found—the gas.
He could turn his adversaries against each other, against themselves.
Vladmir Karamatsov closed his eyes, tight, very-tight, so tightly that his eyes began to hurt him. He tried to make the picture he wanted come to life in his mind. And he could see it starting to form—John Rourke, eyes wide in madness, the body of Rourke’s wife, the body of Rourke’s daughter, the body of Rourke’s Jew friend—He could see it, their bodies riddled with bullet wounds, limbs hacked away, a pistol in Rourke’s one hand, a bloody knife in the other, Rourke’s hands covered with their blood.
Michael Rourke—the one who looked so like his father. Michael Rourke, the madness gripping him. Locked in combat, father against son, their fists hammering against each other, John Rourke’s hands finding his knife, the knife gouging into his son’s face and neck and chest. The body still and dead beneath John Rourke.
Natalia screaming from the corner of the room.Rourke turning to her, his pistol empty, throwing down his knife.
Natalia’s pistols—but they fall from her hands because she is crying, proclaiming her love for him— that she cannot kill him.
Rourke’s hands closing around her neck, the whiteness of Natalia’s skin reddening, purpling, her tongue
swelling as it distended, drool mixed with blood oozing from between her lips. A choked scream.
Vladmir Karamatsov opened his eyes.
He stared skyward. Sometimes, he wished there were a God. He whispered to the heavens now. “My hour will come. Inevitably. You can’t stop me—even if you exist. And he can’t stop me.” He screamed at the sky now. “John Rourke cannot stop me! He cannot stop me! John Rourke cannot stop me!” and Vladmir Karamatsov, the Hero Marshal, began to laugh.