Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins

by Ahern, Jerry

  Gunther Spitz just stood there, limbs shaking with rage.

  His men, collecting around him, were ready to follow his lead.

  Paul said nothing, merely kept the pistol still under the table—aimed at Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz’s center of mass.

  Gunther Spitz snarled, “Our hour will come, Jew.”

  “Any time, Nazi.”

  Gunther Spitz nodded to his people and sat down again, rotating his chair in order to put his back to Paul, perhaps as a show of defiance.

  When John Rourke looked back at Paul the High Power had already disappeared.

  Rourke turned to look at Wolfgang Mann beside him. They sat on a U-shaped couch much like a conventional Twentieth Century sectional sofa, positioned just forward of the aft bulkhead, behind them one of the lavatories, the galley area and some storage space. Since John Rourke cared nothing for the company with the exception of Paul and Wolfgang Mann, and he knew that neither man was bothered by cigar smoke, Rourke took one of his thin, dark tobacco cigars from the outside patch pocket of his bomber jacket.

  The jacket had recently been cleaned, and rapidly so after being impregnated with volcanic ash during the abortive attempt to rescue young Martin, an affair which had resulted in his son’s death. Rourke shook his head in disgust. The tip of the cigar was already excised. Rourke placed the cigar between his teeth and flicked open the cowling of his battered old Zippo windlighter. He rolled the striking wheel under his thumb, the lighter’s blue yellow flame rising at once. Rourke held the flame beneath the cigar, drawing the fire up into it. Once the cigar was lit he exhaled, then rolled it to the corner of his mouth. “It is good to see you again, Wolf.”

  “And you, John.”

  “Tell me, Wolf, what do you remember concerning the time after you were awakened.”

  “Why do you ask? Surely, you have experienced the same sensations.”

  “Curiosity. Please, indulge me.”

  Wolfgang Mann cleared his throat, lit a cigarette. “It was very bewildering at first.” And then he laughed a little. “I was thirsty and, no matter how much water I drank, I could not slake my thirst.”

  “Are you thirsty now, Wolf?”

  “No; I am fine. Why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity. Cryogenic sleep affects every person differently. I felt terribly stiff.”

  “I did not, oddly, but I would have thought that I would.”

  John Rourke merely nodded, then closed his eyes. Thirst, beyond wetting one’s mouth, was not really a problem after cryogenic sleep. Neither of the children—they were adults now, of course—had ever complained of it, nor had Sarah, or Paul or Natalia. Rourke had never experienced it either. On the other hand, thirst was common after some types of anesthesia. And muscle stiffness—from the inactivity—was intense. One felt weak as the proverbial kitten following awakening. Yet Wolfgang Mann had not experienced this and, indeed, the Generaloberst’s walk as he had approached their aircraft earlier had seemed more or less normal. Yet Mann had been decidedly fuzzy-sounding, as if drugged.

  One of the keys to Deitrich Zimmer’s successful microsurgery was the appliances he constructed, then used—surgical tools of his own creation.

  John Rourke respected that rare thing known as genius wherever he happened to find it, and Zimmer possessed it. Had Zimmer somehow found something else to do with his tools?

  John Rourke opened his eyes.

  Wolfgang Mann had returned to gazing out the window. There was nothing to see but clouds, beautiful to be sure but repetitive, always the same.

  John Rourke flicked ashes from his cigar into one of the ashtrays permanently set into the coffee table, anchored to the floor in front of him. He took from his clothes the primary map he would use of the terrain surrounding the mountain enclave. It was an aerial recon photo transposed over a topographical map. From the look of things, it would be an easy enough climb to the presumed site of the main entrance, but that would not be the way to get inside, a fact which no doubt had not eluded Deitrich Zimmer. One could not, after all, just knock, then announce, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve come to pick up something you

  probably don’t know you have—the remains of Adolf Hitler?’

  No, Rourke almost verbalized. Entry to the facility would have to be through some more subtle means.

  He was experienced with this sort of arrangement, of course. His own Retreat (now a museum in Eden), the Soviet Underground City in the Urals of more than a century ago, New Germany’s heart in Argentina.

  All of these facilities, including his own, had one central theme, that the outside and the inside were hermetically sealed away from each other, at least to begin with. That this civilization had not come out onto the surface again either meant that it—the civilization itself—had collapsed or that their system was so efficient as to preclude any necessity of venturing onto the surface. A true underground city, as the Russian and German facilities had been until the atmosphere outside was sufficiently restored.

  Perhaps, although that seemed incredible, these persons had no idea that the surface was, at least for the moment inhabitable, had been so for well over a century and a half.

  If the entire facility were sealed and there was no interchange between the inside and the outside world, then the only means of access would be explosives. John Rourke had planned ahead for that.

  But what he hoped to find instead, was some sort of service entrance, perhaps for the removal of waste gases, but for whatever reason a connection between the outside and the inside.

  And the heat signature near the very top of the mountain well to the north of what appeared to be a vast, gently sloping plateau, suggested just that.

  He hoped.

  If the society within the mountain had grown, progressed, if for nothing else than the cleaning of their environment, they would have such a waste gas cleaning vent. There was no data to support Rourke’s theory beyond the suggestion of a heat signature but he clung to that nonetheless, his best hope.

  Thirty-one

  According to technical specifications, her flight suit would protect her, keep her comfortable to temperature extremes to twenty degrees fahrenheit, and was windproof, of course.

  Evidently the temperature was lower.

  Emma Shaw was cold.

  She wasn’t freezing, yet. But, she wasn’t comfortable either.

  Nothing but snow and ice.

  Her primary chute was folded and partially stowed in its pack. The high-strength windproof synth-silk could be utilized for a variety of purposes—she might make it into a coat in a little while—and the paracord could prove useful as well in a survival situation.

  Her Lancer pistol was still in the issue holster, but the Government Model .45—she’d been hanging around John Rourke too long, and her father too, Emma Shaw thought—was in her hand, chamber loaded, cocked and locked. Emma still wore her helmet, as it would protect her head from the effects of

  the cold, and the oxygen mask was still in place, but switched from the oxygen supply to filtering environmental air. This warmed the air a little before she breathed it.

  Snow crunched under her flight boots as she traversed what seemed to be a vast, featureless plain. By her survival compass, she was moving northward, only because according to her escape map—it was printed on synth-silk and tied around her throat now for warmth—there were human habitations to the north that were not under control of the Eden government.

  She could survive a few nights out here if she had to, and as it appeared now she would probably have to do just that, but eventually Eden forces would track her down, before her own people could get there to extract her. Alone, here in the wilderness, her grey flight suit sticking out like a sore thumb against the whiteness of the landscape, she could not help being discovered.

  At last, after walking for what she judged was four miles or so, Emma Shaw stopped. She shouldered out of her flight harness and began to utilize the parachute. Using her survival knife she cut
a neck hole and two wrist holes in double thicknesses of the synth-silk parachute. In this manner she would be warmer and less visible from the air. She wore a transponding device which would home in rescue forces, so she didn’t need to be observable. And the parachute would still be large enough to utilize as a shelter, if it came to that— the tube shelter in her survival pack somehow was probably not warm enough. In order to have ready-made guys for the shelter, she cut off only a portion of the paracord, weaving what remained attached into modified hangman’s nooses. The rest of the cord she coiled and stuffed into her harness pack, out of which the chute had originally come.

  When she cut the holes in the synth-silk chute she did so in such a manner that nothing was excised. Therefore with the emergency sewing materials in her survival kit, she could close any holes if need be, should the weather turn really severe.

  Emma made herself a cold meal using the rations sparingly. She had a four-day supply, but how was she to know if that would be enough?

  Eyes casting down to glance at the radiation counter in her chest pack, she trudged onward again warmer somewhat (once she got moving again) with her synth-silk poncho. From above she might look like some giant, mobile mound of snow.

  After what she judged to be another mile the terrain started to break up and simultaneously rise. And there, ice was more prevalent than snow. She was deep into the glacier now.

  Another mile onward—she was becoming very tired and needed to rest, perhaps eat again, the cold multiplying the effect of the exertion—and the land just stopped. Before her lay a chasm, incredibly wide and more importantly, seemingly impassable.

  At its center, perhaps two hundred yards below, coursed a river, blue and silver like a ribbon.

  Emma Shaw was beginning to worry that sometime during the various twists and turns and bumps and jars her body had endured, she might have done some real damage to herself. Her head ached. That could be shock, even a mild concussion, or maybe a compression fracture.

  At least, as best she had been able to discern before picking herself up off the ground, nothing seemed broken.

  What to do, she wondered.

  And then, as she scanned the far wall of the chasm in detail through her small field glasses, she realized what her best chance might be. If she could take the near wall downward, perhaps here, as in the far wall, there would be caves. If she could rest, perhaps for the night, she would feel better, warmer too. A fire might even be possible.

  And the river itself might be her way out. It seemed free flowing enough. As a part of her standard kit there was a single-person inflatable life raft. The things were cramped and not the sort of boat one would use for a pleasure cruise. But she might be able to use the raft to carry her downriver. This river eventually would flow to the sea.

  Once she located a port of some sort, it wouldn’t be that hard to find the local anti-Eden forces, or she could just connect her emergency beacon to a satellite dish and bring in the troops.

  Of course none of these ideas might work at all but convincing herself that they would, Emma Shaw began to climb very carefully downward along the chasm wall in search of a cave in which to spend the night.

  Thirty-Two

  The Nazi V-stol touched down with amazing delicacy.

  Immediately, the fuselage door was opened and Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz’s personnel exited into the snow. The last of them was the mortuary sciences specialist, a man named Krause.

  Snow was heavy here and deep in the niches and depressions, but the rock face itself was smooth and reasonably level, blown clean of snow in the nearly gale force wind. The wind was a further tribute to the pilot’s skills.

  The glacial ice was far below them now. Here at the summit of the mountain they could see literally for miles. The only hint of civilization was the thought of that which might have survived within the mountain beneath them. If it had, it had remained untouched for six hundred and twenty-five years.

  John Rourke, in his black arctic parka now, but the snorkel hood down and the front of the coat open so he could access his pistols, despite the cold, jumped down

  from the V-stol. Unslinging his HK-91, then loading the chamber, Rourke started ahead, bending his frame into the wind as he trod over the plateau and toward the ultimate summit. The men fell in around him, Paul close beside him.

  “There wasn’t anything at all?”

  “Not a thing showed up on the aerial photography, nothing showed up on the aircraft’s sensors. Overflew it three times, then twice more for good measure, as you know.” Rourke shrugged his shoulders. “If they’ve got anything, it’s more sophisticated than anything anyone’s operating with, more sophisticated than anything we could imagine.”

  “That’s crazy,” Paul observed. “No defenses, no detection devices.”

  “Could be a community of pacifists,” Rourke noted, but not quite convinced that this was the reason for no apparent defenses, no radar or any sort of sensing equipment. “After the Night of the War and the Great Conflagration, God only knows what people who survived might turn to. They might view something as basic as self-defense as an intrinsic evil. Many persons claimed to believe that even prior to the Night of the War; and, of course, there were some very sincere Christian religious sects which held those beliefs. I always believed that brotherly love was something certainly to strive for, but that making self-defense moral anathema was tantamout to suicide.”

  “And you think there’s a vent up here, for getting rid of poisonous exhaust gases? And that’s it.”

  “Maybe. Either that vent provides us the access we require or we plant explosives and then have the

  V-stol’s missiles or plasma guns detonate them. But that could cause a lot of death and destruction inside. So, hope there’s a vent, Paul.” The younger man nodded.

  Snow crunched under Rourke’s boots as he dug in his heels against the gradually steepening grade. The wind which blew here on the mountain top was bitterly cold, but somehow very clean, refreshing, and because of that almost pleasant. The V-stol’s overflights had confirmed what the intelligence data had suggested very strongly—that there was no radiation danger here, that the air, despite its natural thinness at this latitude and elevation, was perfectly breathable.

  In fact, it smelled fresher than he had remembered air smelling for a very long time.

  But then John Rourke shouted, “Fall back! Fall back! Gas!” John Rourke turned, ran, Paul beside him, the younger man already staggering. One of the Nazis, the medical doctor, who was also a specialist in cryogenics, collapsed. And John Rourke would need him very desperately. Besides that, Nazi or no, the fellow was a human being. Rourke shoved Paul Rubenstein toward Gunther Spitz shouting, “Care for him or die!” Then inhaling deeply of what he hoped was good air, Rourke raced back.

  If this were nerve gas, Rourke and everyone with him was close to dead already. Rourke grabbed up the doctor, hauled him into a fireman’s carry and turned, nearly stumbled, light-headed, then threw himself into a lurching run.

  Paul seemed all right, from ahead started running back to join him. They met, Paul grabbing the man

  from Rourke’s shoulder, taking the doctor over his shoulder. Rourke stumbled. Paul reached for him. Rourke shook his head, waved Paul ahead. Rourke pulled himself to his feet, then ran on.

  The others were huddled about the aircraft, coughing, but apparently unharmed. As Rourke joined them, he sagged to his knees in the snow, breathed tentatively. The air smelled normal not sweet. “Back into the aircraft. Seal everything. Hurry!” Paul was the first up, the Nazi doctor over his shoulder still.

  And John Rourke cursed his carelessness. He was, after all, looking for an outlet vent where poisonous gases generated by industry or waste management could be purged from within. Perhaps this was a defensive system, perhaps not. Either way—it had achieved the same purpose.

  And he had found what he had detected from the photo reconnaissance. “We suit up before we venture out again. Come on,�
� Rourke ordered.

  He could have gotten them killed.

  They hurried into the aircraft, John Rourke suddenly realizing that his face was beaming with a smile. On the floor of the aircraft, in what formed a center aisle between the comfortable lounge chairs and the small work tables, Paul had the Nazi doctor lying flat and was administering coronary/ pulmonary resuscitation.

  Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz just stared in amazement …

  Emma Shaw’s eyes squinted against the darkness. At last she closed her eyes and counted to ten, then opened them again. The .45 in her hand felt as comforting as the teddy bear she’d slept with as a little girl. But when she was little, she never let teddy go first. She let the .45 go first, holding it out ahead of her as though it were some sort of magic talisman, very much like a teddy bear, and would keep the evil of the darkness away.

  But unlike when she was a little girl, it wasn’t imaginary monsters of which she was afraid, but men or animals. She’d heard that bears and wolves had been released into the countryside by the Eden City officials, to restock nature. That was fine, but she didn’t care to have a chat about ecology with either. And because the government of Eden seemed almost intent on disaffect-ing the population, large numbers of persons had either formed independent and sometimes quite primitive societies outside Eden’s direct sphere of influence and gangs of Land Pirates and solitary roving thugs roamed at will in the wilderness areas. These latter might be worse than wolves or bears.

  Some things had not survived the Great Conflagration, and as best she could tell among those were bats. She realized full well that the majority of these flying mammals were thoroughly harmless creatures but she wouldn’t have enjoyed finding this cave to be full of them. Their very representation in an old book or in some of the vid films from the twentieth century made her skin crawl.

  But the cave, more of a deep niche in the rock, seemed uninhabited.

  Emma Shaw shone her handflash and inspected the cave in greater detail. There was no debris to show that

  wild creatures had used this as a home. And she could see why. It was a little cramped. She could stand up, but only barely. Someone the height of John Rourke would have been forced to stoop over.