by Ahern, Jerry
There was a solitary rock, almost inviting in its way, begging her to be seated on something besides cold snow and ice. She accepted the invitation and sat on the rock. It didn’t feel half bad. Her .45 was in her right hand, the flashlight in her left. If she got out of this— WHEN! Emma Shaw reminded herself—she might decide to come back here someday and take the rock back and put it in the living room of her house.
She could always paint it, stencil it. Some women did that sort of thing.
Most women didn’t do this sort of thing. She sat on the rock, exhaled.
The cave would have to do.
The first order of survival after remembering not to panic was to keep one’s body in shape, whether that meant food or water or warmth or shelter. She had everything for that.
She took a swallow from her emergency water ration but only a small one, then took out a partially eaten high energy bar, slowly, almost savoringly consuming the rest of it. And she thought.
Over the course of her several miles of walking, she had considered just where she might be. The Blackbird’s airspeed indicator had gone off the gauge when she activated the rear firing rockets. And she had already been at maximum, the aircraft’s wings glowing red from heat despite the frigid air temperatures. It seemed clear that she was exceeding what the aircraft was built for, and the classified maximum speed was staggering to contemplate. She read a story once about a pilot who so exceeded the speed of ordinary aircraft that he travelled through time. That was impossible at least as far as she knew. But she had travelled through a considerable distance.
The terrain feature beside which she rested in this nichelike cave was not on the map—at least not the map of the southeastern portion of the North American continent.
Had she overflown her area of operations by such a considerable margin that she was in what had been the Northeastern United States?
She was beginning to think so.
And these days, this was essentially uncharted territory.
Some settlements were here, and there were supposedly some few gangs of Land Pirates. That was all. The land was too forbidding for anyone to wish to claim it, although it was—technically speaking—under the control of Eden.
She wished she’d studied geography with more enthusiasm when she’d been in school. Perhaps she would have been able to recognize what river this was which flowed outside. And through what area it passed.
Mentally Emma Shaw stuck to her plan, however, holding fast to its eventual efficacy. Even in the harshest of climates, where a river met the sea there was at least some sort of settlement, however small. If she followed this river long enough she would reach the sea, reach that settlement. Then she could effect her
own rescue.
Failing a belief in that, she was stuck.
There was no sign of game, a fact which at once both heartened and dismayed her. In the absence of game, there’d be no predators. But without game she would run out of food all too soon. Then what, she asked herself?
Stuck. No food. No hope.
Her best chance would be that the Land Pirates got her, and decided she was too pretty to kill—and Emma Shaw smiled thinking there was a fat chance of that.
Thirty-Three
The V-stol, on Rourke’s orders, went airborne again, moving back several miles distant from the mountain top. With the help of the restored Nazi doctor, a man named Mentz, John Rourke took blood samples from each of the men of the party, himself included.
John Rourke had planned ahead. In order to preserve the cursed remains which they sought, it might be necessary to have chemical analysis equipment. For that reason, among other items, there was a computer, which was designed to sniff and otherwise scan trace elements and identify their nature. The blood samples were run through the computer, its monitor flashing up the entire chemical composition in less time than it took Rourke to light his cigar.
“What is this?” Mentz began. “These elements—”
“It’s just what I thought it would be, at least in part,” John Rourke said very slowly, his voice almost a whisper. “Paul? Take a look, will you.”
After a second, Paul Rubenstein was beside him.
Rourke vacated his seat before the terminal and Paul slid in. “Look familiar? Think 1960s.” “LSD?”
John Rourke smiled. “Not in the traditional formula, but evidently gasified and with carriers. Yes.”
Doctor Mentz asked, “You mean the halucinogen?”
“Yes. Apparently, unless there’s some other reason for it that I can’t begin to comprehend, somebody down inside the mountain likes to keep people happy— whether they like it or not—and kill them at the same time. Other elements of the formula were clearly poisonous, and lethally so.”
John Rourke called forward to the pilot, “Captain— have your copilot take over. I need a conference.” He might need more than that…
Wearing a chemical decontamination suit with full self-contained respiration was rather like wearing scuba gear, but on land it was grossly uncomfortable. It was light in weight, to be sure, but one was forever conscious of wearing it.
Paul Rubenstein didn’t like it.
It was toward dusk when the V-stol touched down again and they disembarked, their weapons at the ready, the pilot ordered to go airborne and select a suitable safe landing site, then wait there to be contacted or return in twenty-four hours.
This time they were more careful in approaching the site of the supposed vent.
Various members of the party were equipped with everything from heavy weapons to ultrasensitive devices for sensing everything from radiation to gas to high frequency sound or light.
There was a great deal of chatter in German going on in his ear through the helmet mounted radio. Paul Rubenstein could not understand it, but he knew that John could, and perfectly (although John did not speak German as well as Natalia). Natalia was a veritable polyglot, naturally gifted in languages, with the accents to match.
They passed the point where the gas had overtaken them the first time and Paul Rubenstein could hear the voice of the Doctor, Mentz, saying in English, “My corpsman reports that we are in a cloud of gas identical in composition to that which we identified before. It is becoming more dense.”
“Thank you Doctor.” John Rourke answered. “Please maintain the English language updates for the benefit of Mr. Rubenstein.”
“Of course, Hecr Doctor.”
Beside John, Wolfgang Mann walked along, spryly enough, Paul Rubenstein supposed. Yet there was still something odd about the once Colonel, now Generaloberst. Perhaps it was muscle or joint stiffness, after the cryogenic sleep, but his mannerisms held the hint of almost mechanical detachment.
Why?
John’s voice came again. “We’re approaching a slightly visible concentration. Can you confirm that as the source, Dr. Mentz?”
“A moment, please, Dr. Rourke.” There was a pause, Rubenstein hearing the mortician Krause, saying something which sounded disagreeable, even
without translation. Then Dr. Mentz’s voice returned, “That is the origin, Herr Doctor.”
“All right. Everyone on alert,” John cautioned, then, presumably, repeated his warning in German. The officers spoke perfect English, but the enlisted personnel did not, although most of them understood well enough, Paul deduced.
The party had reached the very pinnacle of the mountain top, and indeed there was a crack in the face of the rock, from below which gas emerged in a cloud just faintly visible dissipating almost immediately in the wind. “Scan this, gentlemen,” John ordered.
Hauptsturmfuhrer Spitz said, “It is not natural in formation, but made to appear so, I think—some type of metal framework within and stretching downward until it is beyond the range of the instruments. The material above it is a form of synth-concrete, or something very similar. The metal is an alloy with which the scanning device is not familiar.”
“So, they do have technology,” Paul observed, forgetting that
everyone was able to listen.
“Indeed,” John remarked, “And it would seem they haven’t stagnated over the intervening centuries, either.”
“And now what, Doctor Rourke?” Spitz asked after a moment.
John Rourke answered him very quickly, evidently already decided upon a course of action. “This doesn’t appear to be in place for defensive means, so it may still be reasonable to assume that the people down below don’t know we’re here. Dr. Mentz?”
“Yes Doctor Rourke?’
“Would you concur that the suits and equipment we wear should protect us from this gas, no matter what the concentration in parts per million?”
“I should think so sir.”
“Good. Spitz, get your people to take this cap off the outlet vent and do it as neatly and quietly as possible. The gas must be bled off because it’s too dangerous to try to clean from the atmosphere. This appeared to be the only heat source in the aerials. That might mean that this is the only chink in their armor. We have to exploit it.”
“I am in agreement Herr Doctor,” Gunther Spitz answered. John Rourke nodded.
Paul Rubenstein was beginning to picture what they might find below, and he didn’t like what he saw …
Darkness had fallen so abruptly within the gorge that it was, almost literally, as if someone had dropped night’s curtain on some sort of stage play.
Emma Shaw had a fire going, a small one, and it was necessary to waft the smoke away toward the mouth of the cave, and even at that, there was still an acrid smell. Her emergency gear had battery-operated heating coils and she would sleep warm in the night without the fire, but for now she used it to ward off the feelings of aloneness. Somehow her flashlight just didn’t make it in that department.
After heating a small amount of canteen water and mixing it with a soup packet—the result was something thick and yellowish and gluey tasting but supposedly
terribly nutritious—she had set about checking the raft that would be her ticket out of here, she hoped.
The raft’s inflation directions were something every pilot had memorized, but she read through them again just to be on the safe side.
Then she lit a cigarette, rationing these as well. She had a pack with fifteen remaining in it and a fresh, unopened pack. She lit the cigarette from the fire, not willing to waste a lifeboat-style match on it.
In the morning, before she set out on the raft (and after she found a safe way into the bottom of the gorge), she would check the river for radiation levels and, assuming they were satisfactory, do some fishing. Some rivers in the North American continent had been restocked in the early days after the return of the Eden Project and a precious few had somehow retained a modest level of life, even after the Great Conflagration. If she could supplement her food supply, that would be helpful. As a little girl, she’d gone fishing in the ocean with her dad and her brother quite a number of times and she wasn’t half bad at it.
There was always the faint possibility—at least she hoped it was no more than that—that the river would be too hot in radiation level and then not only would she not be able to fish but she would not want to risk using the raft, either. If that were the case it would be better to climb up the other side of the gorge (once she figured a safe way across the river) and then continue northward.
Before lighting her fire, but after making certain that she was in a defensible position, she used her radio compass and got her position off one of the satellites.
They were not all in place yet and so it was only possible in this general geographic area to tap in between the hours of six and nine, roughly speaking. By comparing the coordinates that her instrument was passively fed with—her pocket navigation computer— she had her position to within a quarter of a mile.
Actual position, however, told her little. She knew where she was, but not what was where she was supposed to be. She was south of Lake Ontario and east of Lake Erie at roughly 42 degrees north latitude and at 76 degrees west longitude. If she headed straight east she would eventually bump into the Atlantic Ocean sooner or later. And the river flowed generally south and eastward.
It was the “eventually” part which worried Emma Shaw, and all the little things along the way.
If the river proved exceedingly navigable, it might be that the Land Pirates used it as well. Supposedly, Eden forces and their Nazi allies periodically swept these areas, and occasionally used them for cold-weather training exercises. That might be another problem.
At last, Emma Shaw put out her cigarette, then began to put out the fire.
The paper-thin sleeping bag was already prewarm-ing as she tested it with her hands. A good night’s sleep would give her a fresh perspective on her plans. Why had she not begun to execute them earlier? If the enemy were on her trail, she wouldn’t get away from them on a little raft on the river anyway.
Emma Shaw took off her boots then slipped inside the bag. Once inside, she skinned out of her flightsuit, leaving the one-piece outfit inside the bag just in case.
Before settling in, she removed the magazine from her .45, cleared the chamber, replaced the once-chambered round into the top of the magazine then reinserted the magazine up the well.
Emma Shaw had no desire to shoot herself accidentally during the night, but she wanted to be as ready as she could—for anything.
With her right fist closed on the butt of the chamber-empty pistol, she closed her eyes and hoped she could make herself go to sleep.
Thirty-Four
Tim Shaw’s driver, Bob Bilsom, left the car on auto-control too much for Shaw’s tastes, but Tim Shaw had learned long ago that a sideseat driver was a pain in the ass. So he said nothing.
It was almost four in the afternoon, a rainy day in Honolulu and the skies already dark from the rising plumes of volcanic ash and the permanent clouds they made. It was, in a way, nearly as black as night.
His attention was divided, split between the job at hand and thoughts of his daughter, shot down over enemy territory. A friend—Commander Washington to be precise—had sneaked the news to him, telling him that even though the top-secret aircraft Emma had flown was down, there was no reason to suppose that she was dead, or even injured. She was as good as they came in pilots—Tim Shaw already knew that—and the aircraft type she flew had state-of-the-art pilot-escape devices incorporated into its design. Washington’s encouragement and Shaw’s own innate confidence in
his daughter’s abilities didn’t make it easier to accept.
He was relatively safe, playing cops and robbers with a bunch of Nazi terrorists in Honolulu, and Emma, if indeed she was still alive, was stuck in the middle of God-only-knew-where with the Eden Forces at her heels.
“Shit.”
“Whatchya say, Tim?”
“I said, ‘shit,’ Bobby. That’s what I fuckin’ said.”
“Hey, Emma’s got balls, Tim, ya know.”
Under some circumstances, Tim Shaw would have considered the remark a veiled request for a punch in the mouth, but he knew Bob Bilsom considered it a compliment, words of encouragement, “Right, but I still say ‘shit,’ Bobby.”
“Yeah.”
Shaw shook his head and folded out the dashboard computer console, flashing up the street map and acquiring the overhead video monitoring position of the truck convoy then putting the position into the map. The convoy, three blocks up and two blocks over on James Madison Way, was moving right along, no sign as yet that it had attracted the Nazis.
But logic said that it had to.
The terrorist band which had launched the hit against Emma’s place in the mountains was the same group which had hit Sebastian’s Cove Country Day School. Tim Shaw and his son Ed’s SWAT Team had hit them where they were in hiding and knocked out a half-dozen members of the team, found weapons, explosives, maps showing targets, the whole nine yards.
But all of the targets would have been changed, and the terrorists had evidently made contact with local Fifth Columnists to supplement
for the manpower loss.
And this was only one group. How many Nazi units were in the Islands was anyone’s guess with Eden on the verge of attack.
So far, however, this was the group that was making the most noise and, for a variety of reasons, Tim Shaw wanted them. He could live with the volcanic ash, he could live with the rain, he could live with the threat of more vulcanism and war. In a way he could even live with Emma’s being shot down, because she did have balls, real hang-tough-when-it-counts guts. If anyone could make it back out of enemy territory, Emma could.
But these guys, the Nazis he was trying to lure with an irresistible (but not too irresistible) trap, had killed children. For that they’d die.
He switched the console so it would superimpose the map image over the actual video image of the truck convoy. The image was blurry because of the rain, and grey like everything else.
“Think they’ll tumble to this, Tim?”
Tim Shaw stared hard at the computer screen’s video display. There was a blue van perfectly matching the speed of the convoy, about a hundred yards back from the rear vehicle, the one with the Shore Patrol in it.
“Tumble to it, Bobby? Yeah, I think they did. Here.” And Tim Shaw reached over and grabbed for the radio set on the driver’s side of the dashboard. This radio was linked to the Shore Patrol, the one on Shaw’s own
passenger side linked to the police units that were part of the setup. “Watchdog to Lamb, Watchdog to Lamb. You’re waggin’ your tail. Over.”
“Read you loud and clear, Watchdog. Lamb standing by and out.”
Shaw plugged the handset back into the dashboard then grabbed the second radio. “This is Shaw. We got some action. Nobody fuckin’ moves till we got ‘em ready for the bag. Stand by your radios. Shaw. Out.” He reached under his raincoat and the suitcoat beneath it, grabbing the Colt auto. He racked the .45’s slide, then upped the safety. Shaw returned the gun to his waistband; carrying it cocked and locked so near to his crotch, even though he trusted the gun and always had, gave him the creeps. He reached into the right pocket of his raincoat, snatched out the three-inch barreled Centennial, gave the cylinder a good luck look and a spin, closed the cylinder, then dropped the little hammerless .38 Special into the left outside pocket.