by Ahern, Jerry
But the delay was getting to him now, just waiting.
He felt the pressure of Maria Leuden’s hand on his hand, and he turned his eyes from the dirt track which led from Lushun to her face. “How are you going to tell your mother and sister?”
“I was going to do it, but Paul said he’d contact Annie by radio, tell her, let Annie decide if we should tell my mom. Maybe I let Paul talk me into it too easily. I don’t know.”
She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.
In the distance he saw one of the Chinese electric cars coming. And he saw a German field cap waving through the open window. Hammerschmidt was coming… .
Paul Rubenstein sat at the copilot’s controls, the helicopter pilot having left the cockpit to give him privacy. There was a lot of static and Annie’s voice sounded distorted. But still it was Annie’s voice and the sound of
her vnire warmwl him inside
“Say again, Paul. Over.”
“Annie—your dad and Natalia are missing. But we think they are all right. I repeat—we think they are all right. Over.”
“Paul. I’m coming. Over.”
“No you aren’t. Your mother needs you—hell, if you decide to tell Sarah. This situation could deteriorate instantly if Karamatsov moves his forces. I can’t say anything more about it en clair. Over.”
“I’ll my mother. But I’m coming. Don’t forbid me to. Please. Please, Paul. Over.”
Paul Rubenstein’s right fist balled over the microphone. “I’ll arrange for you to be brought to the First City. I love you. Yeah—tell her about your dad. I’ll keep you informed. Michael sends his love. I love you—Paul out.”
He threw the microphone down on the seat as he stood, almost striking his head on the cockpit overhead, despite the fact that he had never considered himself nor been considered tall.
There was no other way than to let her come, he told himself. No other way. She was Annie Rubenstein now, but she would always be a Rourke… .
Natalia had fallen asleep in his arms. For some reason, they had not taken his watch and, periodically, he had glanced at the Rolex. The time so far spent in the submarine’s brig was slightly over two hours. There was a toilet in the far corner by the bulkhead, and he had shielded Natalia from the open doorway with his back turned to her while she had used it. He had used it then, and debated the possibility of cannibalizing it to somehow short-circuit the electrical barrier which kept them prisoner. But there seemed to be no metal parts, all polymers instead.
He had advised that she rest, the exhaustion she felt evident in her expression, in her voice. But he had not slept. Since the fight aboard the Special—the high-speed
Trains from before the Night of the War—there had been little to do except monitor intelligence data coming in from Captain Hartman’s forces which pursued and harrassed the Soviet armies of Vladmir Karamatsov. That and ponder the mystery of the increasingly more frequent raids the Chinese reported on their coastal outpost, occasionally reaching as far inland as the First City.
And the mystery concerning the origin of these raids now seemed resolved. Some powerful Soviet force with extensive undersea maneuverability, their base perhaps the pre-War submarine pens at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, or perhaps some island. And it seemed evident that Karamatsov had no knowledge of this Soviet force, and likely they had no knowledge of his land forces. If the two should link and form some sort of alliance, they would be irresistible.
More than the immediate concern of escape for himself and Natalia, there was the greater concern of notifying the High Command of New Germany and their Icelandic and Eden Project allies—and the Chinese for that matter—of the potential for disaster and that the timetable for a final confrontation with Karamatsov’s forces had to be advanced. With the addition of Chinese forces to what he had come to mentally label as the “Alliance of Happenstance,” the weight of numbers in Karamatsov’s favor was greatly diminished.
But if this new Soviet force should unite with Karamatsov …
He had thought fleetingly that they likely possessed nuclear capabilities. He had left the thought unresolved because if they did, the situation was vastly worse. Scientists of New Germany had been conducting atmospheric sampling tests for decades, and the conclusions derived from these tests seemed incontrovertible. Several average-sized nuclear detonations in the megaton range, perhaps as few as one, could trigger a second ionization effect similar to that which all but consumed the world five centuries ago shortly after the Night of the War. But this time, because of the alreadv tenuous environmental sitna
tion and the severely depleted atmosphere, all the gases associated with carbon-based life would be consumed. The planet would be forever dead and, eventually, for those who did survive in the underground redoubts like that of the Germans in Argentina, the Russians in the Ural Mountains, his own retreat in the mountains of northeast Georgia—there would be no world to return to, even to contemplate. And eventually, even if it were centuries from now, the last human life would end. Because of a bizarre interaction of the ionization effect with the Van Allen Radiation Belts, the Icelandics had survived at the Hekla community and elsewhere in their tiny country. But not even they would be saved.
John Rourke glanced again at the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist, Natalia’s head resting against his chest, the weight of her body against his left arm. His arm had some time ago begun to stiffen, to tingle, but he had not moved her, flexing his fingers instead to restore circulation.
But now she stirred.
He spoke to her quickly, in German, lest she forget and use English or, worse still, Russian. “Anna,” he said, calling her by the assumed name to which they had agreed. “Go back to sleep, Anna. Nothing has changed.”
She looked at him, her blue eyes sleepy still, squeezing her eyes tight shut, then opening them. She smiled at him. “Your arm must be asleep, Wolfgang.”
She remembered, he knew.
“My arm is fine, Anna.”
He heard footsteps along the companionway, saw a fleeting shadow against one of the torpedo racks beyond their confinement on the other side of the companionway.
Kerenin appeared at the doorway, with him the balding man, Vznovski, who was the intepretor. Vsznovski spoke. “I am instructed to tell you by the comrade major that the submarine will soon be docking. You will accompany the comrade major into the city for further interrogation. Your wrists only will be bound. Should you attempt to escape—and there is no place to go—or cause any distur-hnn*»p vnn will hp ahnt with the ^tv-9ftc actain “
Rourke looked quizzically at Vznovski. Kerenin, a massive bandage partially covering his right eye, told Vznovski to explain what the Sty-20 was. “These are our sidearms. Carbon-dioxide-powered, they can be used in atmosphere or in water. They fire darts such as those with which you were both subdued. Additional injection with the sedative contained in the darts while a portion of the substance still remains in your blood streams would prove most unpleasant and could result in permanent neuromuscular dam-age.
“My wife and I—we are both very interested in seeing your city. It will be pleasant to get into the night air. May my wife have her coat returned to her?” Natalia’s coat had caused him a moment’s worry, that some label or mark showing Soviet origin might have been present, until he had recalled that no garment she possessed, she had told him once, had any labels or manufacturer’s markings. It was simpler that way, she had said.
Vznovski was laughing, translating to Kerenin, Kerenin laughing too then.
The two men walked away, still laughing.
“Perhaps their island or whatever is in the midst of a heat wave,” Natalia suggested.
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” he whispered… .
A man of Kerenin’s height, but more powerfully built and with the look of a jungle cat who watched, listened, and waited to act, joined them in the companionway near the elevator bank. John Rourke had been gauging measurements for the undersea craft since their confinement
in the brig had begun, and he was not at all surprised to find elevators here. If the length of the vessel was in excess of a thousand feet, as he had surmised during the dreamlike state in which he had been brought to it, then the height from the torpedo deck to the sail had to be—
The new officer spoke to Kerenin, Rourke listening, attempting not to appear to be. “She is a beautiful woman, nomradp maior. Shp should hp Russian.” Dpsnitp
the circumstances Rourke almost laughed. Natalia, her wrists bound behind her as were his, stood beside him and she simply looked away. “The man did that to you?” And the new officer gestured toward Kerenin’s right eye. “With his hands and feet bound? Very interesting.”
“Yes, Boris Feyedorovitch. Perhaps we can arrange that this self-proclaimed German explorer do the same to you.”
Boris Feyedorovitch—first and middle or first and last name. Rourke logged it away. Boris Feyedorovitch spoke again. “This would bear out the opinions voiced so often, I have heard, in the Presidium—that surface civilizations beyond that of our enemies, the Chinese, do exist. You have not tried drugs?”
Kerenin glanced at Rourke, Rourke trying to make his face reflect puzzlement rather than interest. Kerenin looked back toward Boris Feyedorovitch and told him, “Their weapons reveal much about the state of their technology, if indeed they are who they claim. Their firearms do not utilize caseless ammunition, but rather brass or some other metallic substance is used as cartridge-case material, as with our deck guns until the last decade. The knives these two had—most curious. They appear to be very personalized, as though designed for their use and theirs alone. And there is something else, Boris. The sidearms carried by the man and woman. I believe them to be of United States of America origin, and yet as we both learned in Academy, many of the pre-War United States of America protectorate nations of Western Europe produced their own weapons. I should imagine that individual small arms were among these. So, why are their firearms not German? And her handguns.” And he gestured toward Natalia. Rourke felt what was coming and felt as if his heart had skipped a beat. “The stylized winged surface creature—the bird. There is something vaguely familiar about it. It is emblazoned on the barrel of each of her handguns. It may be a manufacturer’s mark, but it might well be something else. Something— something about it is—how should I put it?” He fell silent as the elevator doors opened.
The guards, two on either side of Rourke and Natalia, apparently Naval personnel from their uniforms, ushered them forward with shoves.
As he shouldered one of the guards away to allow Natalia the lady’s prerogative of entering the elevator first, he began assembling facts. Kerenin was a major and, just guessing from a comparison of uniforms, Boris Feyedorovitch was a captain. Army? But, more likely, a modern-day Soviet equivalent of Marines. Rourke stepped inside the elevator and stood beside Natalia, watching as Kerenin and the second officer entered last so as to be able to stand at the front of the elevator. He gathered they had not entered first because of him and Natalia, prisoners.
Kerenin’s uniform was a deep-blue close-fitting jumpsuit with epaulets of a complicated braid design. The second officer’s epaulets were less complicated in design. Each wore the same insigna—apparently a unit insignia— on the right collar tab, but Kerenin’s left collar-tab insignia, silver-colored, was more complicated in design, a series of interlocking circles. Four of them, Boris Feyedorovitch possessing only three. Rourke thought almost absently that the three interlocking circles actually seemed more aesthetically appealing from a design standpoint than the four circles.
The doors slapped shut, the interior of the elevator illuminated, it appeared, by rather than through lighted panels in the elevator roof. The interior was bright, polished metal, but he doubted by now it was stainless steel.
There was a slight lurch.
The elevator was moving rapidly now, Rourke’s ears popping slightly from it. He opened his mouth and swallowed against the pressure. He noticed Natalia looking at him and he said to her in German, “Anna—everything will be all right.”
“Wofgang—” she began, but one of the guards gestured with his Sty-20 and they both fell silent.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened.
He had read the elevator panel and judged they had stopped just below the sail.
Kerenin and the second officer exited, and Rourke and Natalia were shoved along after them into a wide corridor. There were instrument sounds forward, electronic beeping, printers. But the corridor ended abruptly about a hundred feet aft. Rourke felt the corners of his mouth turning down. The corridor—it was too open to think of it as a companionway—ending so abruptly only further confirmed his suspicions that the vessel had nuclear capabilities. Slightly ahead of the rough balance point between forward and aft sections was the logical point to position the missile tubes. Ohio Class submarines from prior to the Night of the War carried twenty-four Trident-II missiles in their tubes. Considering the vastly greater proportions of this vessel it might well carry more than double that number. Greater nuclear firepower than many of the smaller nations of the pre-War “nuclear club” ever possessed, concentrated in one floating missile base.
Kerenin started across the corridor toward an open watertight door, Rourke shrugging his shoulders, nodding to Natalia that it was all right, then starting after him.
There were stairs here and Rourke took them first after the second officer, who had followed Kerenin. Rourke glanced back once to see that Natalia was behind him.
He saw light overhead through an open hatchway, but— oddly—smelled no sea breezes, no smell of night.
Kerenin and the second officer, Boris Feyedorovitch, disappeared through the hatchway. John Rourke hesitated a moment, taking a deep breath, then stepped up after them.
He blinked his eyes in disbelief.
Chapter Six
The hatch opened onto the gap between the submarine’s sail—it rose perhaps thirty feet into the air—and the missile hatches. He counted the hatches quickly. Four rows port to starboard, fifteen hatches per row. John Rourke’s stomach churned. But neither the height of the submarine’s sail nor the sixty missile tubes had caused him to blink. It was where the submarine was.
There was no island, at least not in any conventional sense. In five centuries, these Russians had been busy indeed.
As he looked over his left shoulder to starboard there was a vast expanse of water, a large lagoon the size of a small lake, fog banked at its outer edges and low clouds hanging overhead, but the light was bright as day. His watch and his internal time clock said otherwise. He raised his eyes toward the sky, squinting against the light. But there was no sun. There was no sky. Above him, perhaps a hundred feet distant from the water’s surface, was the sea. Above him. Between the “sky” and the sea there was … There was a dome.
He looked aft. More submarines were alongside a metal dock, the dock itself as wide as a football field and many times the length of a football field. He was able to count five more submarines.
Natalia stood beside him. She gasped.
Kerenin and the second officer stood a few feet from them, Kerenin laughing. Rourke stepped closer to the two Russian officers so he could see around the sail and
forward. This craft was the first “in line” at the docks, but where the dock ended, perhaps a hundred feet ahead of the bow of the vessel on the deck of which Rourke and Natalia stood, there was an opening leading beyond the dock. As he watched, through it came what he assumed to be a mini-sub, perhaps half the length of the old Skipjack Class subs of the late 1950s, a massive transparent dome replacing the sail, giving the craft the appearance of a marine life-form with a solitary eye rather than a machine made by men. Twin fins cut the water’s surface, the vessel riding low in the water.
The opening out of which it had come drew his attention. A vast hollow hemisphere, an opening cut into a vastly large hemisphere or dome, a concavity within a convexity. John Rourke’s eyes followed the surface of
the dome upward. The dome immediately over his head—the artificial sky—joined it, the actual height of the larger dome lost where the smaller dome and then the sea obscured it.
Natalia’s voice sounded frail beside him. “Wolfgang?”
“There’s nothing we can do now except see the tourist sights. I am here with you.”
Kerenin started walking, the second officer beside him, the guards falling in and flanking Rourke and Natalia, a solitary guard walking behind them as they followed Kerenin and the second officer across the deck toward a long gangplank. On each side of the gangplank were three rows of chain, the chain rows there for safety, one perhaps a foot above the level of the gangplank, another two feet higher, the third at almost chest level. Kerenin and Boris Feyedorovitch started down the gangplank, Rourke falling in behind them, Natalia beside him. Because of the width of the gangplank, the flanking guards fell in behind Rourke and Natalia. For a moment, Rourke considered hurtling Natalia over the gangplank side, then jumping after her. But there was only the dock, unless something lurked behind the mists at the far side of the lagoon. Where could they go? And their hands were bound with the plastic cords which seemed escape-proof without a
knife.
John Rourke exhaled loudly, realizing he had hesitated for a moment, then continued walking, his eyes and Natalia’s eyes meeting briefly.
At the base of the gangplank, Kerenin and the second officer stood, waiting. A third officer, a junior grade by the lack of complexity of his braid and his apparent youth, joined them. Rourke heard the younger officer address Kerenin, then Boris Feyedorovitch as “Comrade Captain Feyedorovitch!”
That settled that. Rourke shrugged.
Rourke thumped his right foot against the dock surface. Although it appeared to be metal, it was not, unless it were some combination of metal and plastic. And he studied the composition of the hull of the submarine. Prior to the Night of the War, the Soviets had utilized a type of rubberized coating on the hulls of their underwater vessels. He wondered if this craft, like old Soviet submarines, was double-hulled.