by Ahern, Jerry
Rourke pushed his feet under him, dragging the younger man up.
"Paul! Paul!"
"I'm—all—aww, shit—all right," he coughed, doubling over with the spasm.
Blood pumped from the head wound at his right temple.
Gunfire near him. Rourke wheeled, still supporting Rubenstein but nearly losing his balance, the knife in his left fist going forward.
It was Cole. "Come on, Rourke—give ya a hand with Rubenstein there!"
Rourke looked at Cole, his left fist bunching on the knife—"All right," Rourke snapped. "Where the hell were you when—"
"Trapped in the rocks—tell ya later!" And Cole grabbed at Rubenstein, slinging Rubenstein's left arm across his shoulders, starting toward the remaining rubber boat, the boat already visibly overloaded with the survivors of the destroyed craft as Rourke started after them.
Chapter 47
Bullets—strays, the distance too great for aimed fire from the lower elevation of the beach—pinged against the hull of the submarine, Rourke taking Gundersen's right hand in his, letting Gundersen help him up from the rubber boat.
He had been the last man, his arms sore, numbed with cold from the paddling of the rubber boat, helping to fight against the breakers and reach the submarine, the boat so low in the water that the packed survivors had scooped water with their hands as each wave broke, swamping them.
"Doctor Rourke—I see why the president wanted you for this thing with the warheads—-you should have been a field commander."
"War is stupid—fighting's necessary," Rourke answered, his voice a monotone—he was exhausted and knew it.
He shivered, crouching on the missile deck from the sporadic fire as the rubber boat was hauled up.
Gunderson, in cover behind the base of the sail, shouted, "Who the hell gave the order to open fire on the beach there—should court martial him—or give him a medal!"
The voice was quiet and Rourke looked up to the top of the sail. She held an M-in her hands, a half unconscious looking sailor standing beside her, leaning on the rail.
"I did, commander."
Rourke watched Gundersen's eyes. "If your doctor says it's okay, I'll buy you a drink, Major Tiemerovna—soon as we get this boat under the surface." Then Gundersen
shouted. "Secure the deck gun— prepare to dive!"
Rourke stood up, getting to the cover of the sail, surprised that he could still move.
Chapter 48
The "drink" had devolved to a glass of orange juice; Natalia sitting in her borrowed bathrobe beside Rourke in the officers' mess, Rourke feeling the pressure of her left hand on his right thigh through the blanket he had wrapped around him over his wet clothes. He sipped at his coffee—it was hot, almost scaldingly so—good to feel in his throat and stomach.
Gundersen walked in, sitting down, removing his cap and setting it on the table.
"Doctor Milton says Paul Rubenstein is going to be fine—Rubenstein remembers trying to grapple with that wildman who overturned the boat—the butt of the man's machete took care of him. Milton doesn't think there's anything serious but he's keeping Rubenstein confined to bed for the next twenty-four hours just in case of mild concussion. Said you could check, but there really wasn't the need."
"He need any help with—"
"The wounded—Pharmacists Mate Kelly is patching up the lesser wounds, and Milton seems to feel he has the more serious cases under control. Those two survivors of the crucifixions—lots of cuts, bruises, lacerations—the only serious wound was Cole's man who got it in the knee—that knee's gonna keep him out of action for a long time, but should heal satisfactorily—at least that's Milton's preliminary diagnosis."
"Good," Rourke nodded.
Rourke looked across the table, at the far end to his left—Cole sat there, smoking, nursing a cup of coffee.
Rourke said nothing to him.
"Gentlemen—and major," Gundersen began. "We're going to have to find another area to try another penetration. The boat's ammo stores are seriously depleted, and more importantly the manpower. We lost six dead, have fourteen wounded in all."
"What about the wildmen we took prisoner?"
"Disassembled their cot springs, used them to slash their wrists—Milton nearly saved one of them, but the blood loss was too great." Gundersen sighed hard.
"Suicide—what kind of people are these with such total disregard for their own lives—those attacks—they were suicide charges—I heard about them from the men in Korea years ago."
Rourke lit one of his dark tobacco cigars, his lighter too wet still to use, using a match instead. "Did Milton check the bodies for abnormal radiation levels?"
Gundersen nodded, then, "He thought of that too—maybe a death wish because they figured they were dying anyway. He autopsied one of the men while the battle was going on out there—aside from bizarre diet—nuts, berries, things like that, the man was perfectly normal. Physically," Gundersen added.
Cole, his voice odd, detached sounding, interjected, "We've still gotta get to those warheads—the hell with those wildmen or whatever they are—"
"Barbarism," Rourke interrupted. "Civilized men sunk to barbarism—so short a time. Some religion—has to be. They kept shouting, 'Kill the heathens.' Kept shouting it over and over. Half civilized, half savage—that business with the crosses, then burning people. My guess there's some leader who organized these people—survivors of the Night of The War, maybe a religious cult before then."
"There were many crazy religious cults in California—warrior religions and things like that," Natalia murmured. "Before the Night of The War—in KGB, there were plans to infiltrate some of the cults, perhaps use them to start civil unrest—Vladmir—"
"Vladmir?" Gundersen asked.
"My husband—he is dead. He—he, ahh—he believed that if the people of the United States could be made to fear their own homes, the safety of their own beds, they would be that much easier to conquer. Some agents were sent out—perhaps—" She let the statement hang.
Rourke looked at her, saying nothing, then knitting his fingers on the table, the cigar clamped in the left corner of his mouth. "It appears we have to go around or through these wildmen. Have to send a small, well-armed force to penetrate to that airbase. If there is any surviving complement there, we can use their help. Like as not they're under siege by these wildmen, too. If there was a neutron strike, there could have been some personnel in hardened sites or using hardened equipment who survived. Hopefully for our sake, Armand Teal was one of them. He was a good man. For an Air Force officer, a good ground tactician as well. We could use his help if we ever hope to get those warheads out." Rourke looked at Gundersen, saying, "I've got equipment to clean—the salt water. After that, I gotta sleep. I'm no good to anyone the way I feel now. If you can find another inlet further up the coast, then just surface to let us out, then dive again, maybe go to another inlet, attract a lot of attention, maybe we can slip through, past the bulk of the wildmen."
"Wildmen—Jesus," Gundersen nodded. "It's hard to imagine—"
"People are afraid," Natalia told him. "Afraid, and fear does a great deal.
During the Second World War, people were easily reduced to depravities—informing on their friends and families, consuming human excrement to survive—''
Rourke interrupted her. "What she's saying is perfectly valid. Take the basic kernel of a fanatically violent religious cult—the cult offers a family, an ordered society, some element of protection. After the war—if you didn 't join the cult, you'd be an enemy of the cult—a heathen, like they shouted at us. Either join or die. And apparently to lose in battle and still live is the ultimate sin, or close to it."
"But such savagery/' Gundersen said, his voice incredulous.
"The vikings—at least some of them—I read once they'd set their beards on fire as they ran into battle to show their ferocity, their obsession with ta
king enemy life was greater than preserving their own. These people are like that.
Wtldmen is more than apt—savage."
Gundersen held his face in his hands for a moment, then looked up, at Rourke, then at Natalia. "Have all of us done this—with our technology? Have we—ohh,"
and he sighed.
"I think it was Einstein," Natalia began.
"It was," Rourke nodded slowly, his voice little more than a whisper.
"He said that he didn't know what the weapons of World War Three would be when he was asked once. But he said the weapons of World War Four would be stones and clubs."
Rourke looked at her, felt the momentary increase of pressure of her hand on his thigh. "Maybe," he said, his eyes closing, his head resting in his hands, his voice a whisper, "the dark times—or whatever they'll be called—maybe they've already begun."
Chapter 49
Sarah Rourke opened her eyes—she looked at the wristwatch she had taken from one of the dead brigands after the attack on the Mulliner farm. It was a Tudor, the band hopelessly big for her, but the construction simitar to a Rolex like her husband wore—made by the same company before the Night of The War as she recalled. It read a little after ten in the morning.
"Ohh—I was tired," she told herself, sitting up, banging her head on the tent pole above her.
She remembered—where she was—the refugee camp, the resistance commander David Balfry—how she had fallen asleep dreaming of her husband.
Pete Critchfield, the local commander who had, with Bill Mulliner, taken herself and the children to the camp had said there were showers.
She sat up on the blankets, searching through her kit— she found a clean T-shirt, a bra that didn't look too dirty and clean underpants. Mary Mulliner still slept—Sarah realized the trek would had to have been harder on the older woman. She decided to find the shower. She had no towel, but perhaps she could find one—or just be wet—to be clean was more important.
She gathered up the things as she stepped into her tennis shoes, stood up and stepped through the tent flap, finally rising to her full height. She noticed, suddenly, that without being aware of it, she had grabbed up the Trapper .
Bill Mulliner had given her and replaced it in the belt holster on her hip.
"I'm going crazy," she told herself. She started across the camp, hearing children laughing, the sounds of play, from the far left end of the camp. She decided to find her children first—her own two and Millie Jenkins as well. She started through the camp.
More of the wounded, the habitually injured—they walked the impacted dirt of what had perhaps once been a front yard and was now a street. Their eyes—she could see no hope in them.
But the sound of the children laughing—it was nearer. At the furthest extent of the camp itself but still inside the security perimeter was a corral, white painted, though as she cut the distance, running her free right hand through her greasy-feeling hair, she could see the fence paint chipped and cracking.
She could already see Annie, and with her Millie Jenkins and more than two dozen other children, all seated on the ground, some older girls—teenagers, talking with them, the children laughing.
She stopped, not wanting to distract her daughter—the children were beginning to sing a song. Like many more things since the Night of The War, it held religious overtones—a hymn, but a cheerful sounding one, how Jesus loved little children.
She didn't see Michael, and as she started searching the crowd of singing children more closely, she noticed his total absence.
"I'm over here," she heard a voice say, the voice shockingly deep, but recognizable.
She turned, looking at her son—he was growing too fast, she thought absently, watching him sitting on the running board of a Volkswagen beetle, the car dirty, dented, but apparently still serviceable.
"What's the matter, Michael?"
He looked up at her, his brown eyes not smiling, the corners of his still childish mouth downturned, the leanness of his face more pronounced than she ever remembered
having seen it. He had killed, he had saved her life and Annie's life—he had been a man.
"That's stupid—playing. Stupid."
"It's not stupid to play," she began, walking over to him. "Scoot over," and she nudged against him gently, sitting beside him on the running board of the VW.
"Yes, it is stupid—you know why?"
"No—tell me why," she told him.
"You know why."
"No—no, I don't. What is it? Just because you're a man when I need you, you figure you can't be a little boy anymore. Well—you are a little boy. You'll be a man soon enough—don't rush it anymore than you already have."
"That's not what I mean," he answered, looking up at her.
She folded her arms around him, drawing his head against her right breast. She heard the other children playing, the singing stopped, the children running off excess energy, chasing each other around the fenced-in corral.
She held her son very close—the little boy in him had died somewhere and she started to cry as she held him more tightly against her body.
Chapter 50
Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy ordered the driver of the electric car to stop, then stepped out.
Its vastness amazed him.
The Womb.
Everywhere, men moved machinery and equipment, weapons, ammunition, food stores.
At the far end of the long, high-vaulted rock chamber he witnessed the coffm-shaped crates being transported one at a time because of their fragility on yellow, Hyster forklifts. There would be eventually two thousand of these, if time permitted. The first one hundred were already being unpacked, connected to monitoring equipment, being tested for functional reliability.
What they carried meant everything.
The rumble of electric generators being transferred on propane fueled trucks made an echoing sound.
"Comrade colonel—"
He looked at his driver.
"The future—it is here," he told the man. He told the polished stone of the walls—he told himself.
The Womb—he smiled as he thought of it. The most important strategic intelligence operation in the history of mankind—and at least for once, the code name was apt.
The Womb.
"Yes—drive on." He sat down, closing his eyes as the electric car took him ahead.
Chapter 51
Rourke sat with the ship's armorer, the man reassembling an M-after having saturated it in a bath of Break Free CLP. Rourke had done the same with his own and Rubenstein's guns, getting to the salt water in time to prevent damage. He assembled Rubenstein's Browning High Power now, the finish a little the worse for wear but the gun wholly serviceable and no new evidence of rust or pitting.
The armorer had aided Rourke in the detailed reassembly of the German MPsubmachinegun—the older the weapon, somehow, Rourke had always noted, the greater the complexity of parts, The six-inch tubed Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported Colt Python . lay on the table before him, as did both Detonics stainless .s, the CAR-and Rubenstein's MP-Schmeisser there as well—oiled, loaded except for the chamber (the revolver's cylinder was empty) and ready. A mink oil compound had been used on his boots and other leather gear, again preventing moisture damage.
The last item—the Russell Sting IA. Carefully, to avoid destroying the black chrome coating of the steel, he touched up the edge on the fine side of a whetstone, using the Break-Free as the lubricating agent here as well—he always preferred oil to water when the former was available.
He leaned back, breathing a long sigh, watching with one level of his consciousness as the armorer reassembled the trigger group of an M-, and with the other level of his consciousness trying to think. The man Cole—there was something more to him than the swaggering, perhaps cowardly, certainly self-serving too-rapidly-promoted military officer he purported to be. He tried remembering the wo
rds of the dying man—that Cole was not who he seemed to be.
It was a cliche, he realized, but dying men rarely did lie. Other than a last laugh on the world, what was there to gain from it?
The original orders Rourke had seen. They had clearly indicated to him that Cole did indeed carry presidential orders—but orders for whom?
More and more, things seemed to point to Cole being someone other than Cole.
Rourke leaned forward in the chair, beginning to load -grain Military Ball . ACP into the Detonics magazines. At the Retreat, he had large amounts of -grain Jacketed Hollow Points stored.
"At the Retreat," he murmured to himself.
Where he wanted to bring Sarah, Michael, Annie—Natalia, too? And Paul Rubenstein.
He smiled as he whacked the spine of a fresh loaded magazine against the palm of his hand to seat the rounds, then began to load another magazine.
He had been a man who had habitually done things alone. He had a wife, two children. He now had a woman who loved him, whom he loved. And he had a friend so close as to be a brother.
Rubenstein—the wound in his head had not proven serious, nor had any signs of concussion been evinced during Doctor Milton's twenty-four hours of observation.
In a few hours, the submarine would surface, he and Paul and the enigmatic Cole and others would start cross country to Filmore Air Force Base, to find the warheads.
That there would be further fighting with the wildmen—whoever they were—was obvious to him. Natalia had been grievously wounded, near death. Paul had been wounded in the last battle.
He had escaped it all—so far. There was no time for him
to be injured. The skies became progressively redder, the weather progressively more bizarre. The thunder which rumbled in the skies was so much a part of day-to-day existence that he barely noticed it, primarily noting it at all by its occasional absence.