by Ahern, Jerry
“Tell engineering I want rudder amidships, Sam. And full flank speed maintained no matter what. Bacon, how those cluster charges coming?”
“Armed and ready, sir.”
“Good man—on my command. Fire! Sam! Tell aft torpedo room to fire tubes one, two, three, and four now!
The Island Classer seemed to vibrate, or maybe it was his imagination—he didn’t know which as he hauled back on the diving planes and shouted, “Tell Engineering
I want every ounce of air they’ve got and right now!” “Advising Engineering.”
The video display was a blur now, the Island Classer rising, the detonating cluster charges causing landslides on all sides now, the vent collapsing around them. “More air!”
“I’m tellin’ ‘em. Hold on.” There was a pause. “You got all the air there is.”
“Tell ‘em to red-line the turbines—if I can’t have more air I gotta have more power!”
“Advising Engineering!”
He watched the depth gauge, the Island Classer’s rate of ascent starting to increase drastically, his body being crushed into the back of his chair. “Sonar—can you make out what happened to those wireguides?”
“I’m goin’ deaf, sir—I think—yeah—just like the other noise. There’s one. Another one—holy shit!” And Darkwood craned his neck to see Lang falling from his seat, holding his ears. So much for Sonar.
“Bacon—see to Lang if you can!”
“Aye, sir!”
“Sam—tell Engineering to maintain revolutions no matter what the instrument panels say!”
“Right! What the hell are we doin’?”
“Tell ‘em—if we do it, I’ll clue you in!”
The depth gauge was going wild now, Darkwood’s ears popping as he swallowed, his fists white-knuckled on the diving plane controls.
“I’m back on Sonar, sir. I’ve lost track completely of all wireguides—I think we got ‘em.”
“Good man—stay with it. Bacon—get on Communications and hail the Reagan.”
“Aye, sir.”
“If you get her, tell her we’re surfacing.” Aye, su.
He could hear Bacon reciting the call litany, and then the litany broke. “I’ve got the Reagan, Captain. Wait a minute. They say one Island Class submarine apparently damaged. The Reagan had fired wireguides, sir. Hey!
Hey! Another Island Classer damaged. The Wayne is coming up.”
“Tell Mr. Sebastian to hold off five hundred yards from our bow as we surface and to disengage with the Island Classers and see if they run home to Momma. Convey my compliments to the Captain of the Wayne and ask Commander Pilgrim if he would kindly take up a position five hundred yards off our stern as we surface, and suggest that he might care to disengage with the Island Classers.”
“Aye, sir.”
Jason Darkwood called to Sam Aldridge as he began easing the angle on the bow planes. “Tell Engineering back one third.” They were almost surfaced.
Chapter Fifty-nine
Natalia Tiemerovna stood on the missile deck of the Island Classer, the wind in her hair feeling good to her. The launch the Island Classer had sent out was returning now, and aboard the launch she could see John Rourke coming from the Wayne.
Michael Rourke stood at her right side. He had told her about the internees Vladmir Karamatsov had brought to his little death camp, about the way in which the gas had been stolen, that likely her husband’s forces were trying even now to get it back. There were still so many things unresolved—but John was alive. He was coming to her now.
It was hard to care about anything else, even though she knew that she must.
Jason Darkwood stood at her left side. “I’d always pictured life on the surface as harsh, but peaceful at least. From the way both of you talk, I’m getting the distinct impression we’re all fighting the same war.”
“We are,” Natalia said to him. “Whether the enemy is my husband and his forces or a man like Kerenin, whom John killed, or a man like Feyedorovitch, who’s probably just finding out what happened—it does’t matter.”
“I’m eager to discuss something with Doctor Rourke. Something to our mutual advantage,” Darkwood said.
The launch was coming alongside and moving into its
berth. And as she looked over the rail, John Rourke waved up at her. She blew him a kiss.
He started up the ladder. She stepped back. “Go ahead, Michael.”
Michael looked at her for a moment. “You’re a fine woman,” he said at last. And as his father stepped through the gap in the rail and onto the deck, Michael walked forward and father and son embraced.
And then John Rourke turned to her. His hair was windblown. The dark shirt he wore—black—made his five o’clock shadow more visible than it usually was. His coloring was pale. But he walked toward her vigorously and swept her into his arms.
“I’ll always stay with you—as long as you want me to,” she whispered, his hps touching her cheek. And he turned her face up toward his and his hands exuded strength and life and she wanted to cry and just have him hold her. “Always,” she said again.
And his mouth came down and touched hers and she let her body go limp in his arms for an instant.
Darkwood’s voice. She heard that as she leaned her head against John’s chest. “You seem marvelously recovered, sir. I’m Commander Jason Darkwood, Captain of the Reagan. We’ve met, but I doubt you remember.”
John Rourke turned her around and held her close against his left side as he extended his right hand. She kept her face against John’s chest, her arms holding John tight against her. John Rourke and Jason Darkwood clasped hands.
“Commander—it’s a pleasure to meet again. For saving Natalia and for coming to the aid of my son here,” and he drew Michael against him, his right arm folding across his son’s shoulders, “I will never be able to repay you.”
“Friends don’t have to worry about that sort of thing, do they, Doctor Rourke?”
“No—they don’t.”
“I’m sure you’d appreciate a tour of our captured
Russian submarine, but it appears there are a few urgent considerations still remaining. Want to talk below or up here in the fresh air. I’ll confess, for me it’s a novelty.”
“After the last few days,” John told him, “it’s become a refreshing novelty for me as well.” And John looked at Michael. “How are your mother and sister and Paul? And that Maria Leuden?”
“Michael has been filling me in, John—there are some real problems,” she said, taking her face away from his chest, shaking her hair in the wind.
“And,” Jason Darkwood said, “it appears we also have a chance to nail your Marshal Karamatsov. Major Tiemerovna was supposed to be handed over to him on the Island of Chinmen Tao—it is sometimes called Quemoy—in the Formosa Strait.” And he consulted his peculiar-looking watch. “In just about two hours from now. He was expecting an Island Class submarine, which this is, and he was expecting her to be brought to him by men in Marine Spetznas uniforms, which I am wearing. And we even have the commander of the detail aboard with us, a certain Captain Serovski. Not a nice man. Anything interesting suggest itself to you, Doctor Rourke?”
“Quite a few things,” John told him. “Do you have an extra uniform in my size?”
Darkwood smiled. “I think that could be arranged, doctor.”
John looked down at her. “Now—what about Annie and everybody?”
“Mom’s in Iceland—she’s safe,” Michael told him, standing at the apex of the triangle formed by Jason Darkwood and his father, Natalia still in the crook of John’s arm. “Annie, Paul, Maria, and myself, with the help of Han and Otto Hammerschmidt and a really small force of Chinese, all eventually wound up looking for the two of you in the same place. Karamatsov’s base camp. We didn’t find what we were looking for, of course, but
we found out that Karamatsov had picked up several hundred Chinese and was taking them to a sort of death camp and was planning
to use his gas on them. Maybe as some kind of a test or something. I’m not sure. So, anyway, we stole it, bluffed our way out with the Chinese prisoners, and I went back one more time to see if there were any sign of the two of you. And that’s when I saw this submarine surfacing, and I was watching from up in the rocks overlooking the sea and I kept watching. An officer from this submarine brought Karamatsov a gift— Natalia’s guns and her knife. And I figured that these people had you both. I swam out to the submarine and things were going great.” He smiled. “Then not so great and I got myself nailed.”
“But he also had himself free by the time we took over the ship,” Natalia said quickly.
John said nothing for a moment. Then, “Michael— with the gas and the people you freed from the camp— what is your assessment of what would have been the next logical move for Paul and Annie and the others to make?”
“Maria and I talked about it briefly before I switched to one of the trucks we were using to haul out the internees. I didn’t think Karamatsov would let us get very far with the gas, but I also thought that the gas would have been his primary concern.”
“Could Han or Otto summon help?”
“We had radios, but since we pulled the thing off in the dark, we had a good chance of eluding them temporarily, and if we used the radios, we would have called them in to our position—the Russians. I don’t know what they did after that.”
John was silent again.
“What are you thinking, doctor?”
John Rourke looked at him—they were the same height, Natalia noticed. Exactly. “Probably, the situation with the rest of my family and the stolen gas has been
resolved—but if it hasn’t, they could be in deep trouble. Could I make a two-fold request?”
“Certainly—and since I’m out of range of Mid-Wake,” he said, smiling, “I can’t radio them and ask for permission. So I’ll have to use my own discretion. Request away.”
“Can the Wayne, with my son aboard her, make best speed possible to the coast near Karamatsov’s base camp, let off my son and some Marines? Michael can lead them in toward where Annie and the others might still be. Then the Wayne proceeds along the coast and—the Wayne has the capabilities—it can begin a bombardment of Karamatsov’s base camp.”
Darkwood grinned mischievously. “Doctor Rourke. Aside from the fact that the skipper of the Wayne and myself would be taking it upon ourselves to declare war on a foreign power, I see no fault in the idea at all. And, since I am out of radio contact with Mid-Wake, I can’t ask their advice. So, if Walter Pilgrim isn’t any brighter than I think he is …” And he started to laugh.
John Rourke smiled. “The Captain of the Wayne struck me as being quite an intelligent man.”
“Yes, but he’s as fond of getting into tight places as I am. So—if Walter Pilgrim goes along with it, I believe we can land some Marines and then create quite a diversionary bombardment of Marshal Karamatsov’s camp. And the Reagan can hang back while we take this Island Classer—which has a full complement of nuclear missiles, by the way, so we do have to be a little careful not to lose her—while we take this Island Classer right up to Marshal Karamatsov’s doorstep.”
“He’ll recognize you, John—you can’t …”
John looked at Natalia. “I can stay to the rear of the group. He won’t recognize me until it’s too late. You’re the one who’ll have to be careful.”
“I need my guns and my knife back anyway.” She smiled.
“I got mine—found ‘em in an arms locker below,” Michael announced, patting the two Beretta pistols stuffed into his belt.
“Then we have a plan, gentlemen—and madam,” Darkwood said.
“We have a plan,” John Rourke agreed.
The plan frightened Natalia, but there was no other way.
Chapter Sixty
Paul Rubenstein’s truck had slipped a tread on the half-track and he abandoned it. There was no possibility of one man repairing it in less than several hours. There had been no survivors in the first camp, but he felt certain that most had escaped rather than been killed because he had only found four bodies. He had followed the trail of the Soviet vehicles through snow that was sparse here, the ground soft enough that a blind man could have followed the tread imprints with his cane.
And now he was upon them, at the furthest rear of their lines, mortars firing every few seconds, explosions erupting at the top of the hill beneath which the Soviet positions were located. There seemed to be no answering fire from the hilltop and this worried him, but he rationalized that Annie or Hammerschmidt or Han would have known that conservation of ammunition was more important at this stage, because the mortar fire had only begun within the last forty-five minutes.
And then he saw movement in the rocks below him and to the north. He saw a shock of blonde hair. “Hammerschmidt,” Paul whispered. Hammerschmidt would have done the logical thing for a man with his training, of course. Assembled a small unit and left the camp at the top of the hill, perhaps under cover of darkness, and circled behind the Soviet position.
Paul started working his way obliquely toward where he had momentarily seen the German commando captain, his Schmeisser ready… .
Annie Rubenstein had burrowed as deeply into the rocks as she could, and she had pulled her heavy shawl over her head to afford her as much protection against the constant rain of rocks and dirt as possible. The noise of the explosions as the mortar rounds impacted was unnerving her, she knew, and each time one of the mortar rounds fell near her, she could feel her skin go cold and her stomach churn. But waiting here was the only chance if somehow Hammerschmidt’s mission failed, if somehow Han had not already gotten help to speed toward them. And she had learned the lesson well from her father. “It pays to plan ahead.”
And by staying here hidden in the rocks overlooking the hillside, she was doing just that.
Captain Svetlana Grubaszikova would have to take her forces up the hillside eventually. And when Captain Grubaszikova did, Captain Grubaszikova would be a dead woman. Annie Rourke Rubenstein clutched her M-16 tight against her, protecting the rifle as much as she protected herself, and waited as the rain of debris poured down around her and her ears rang with the cacophony made by the explosions.
Chapter Sixty-one
The girl Michael Rourke ran beside through the surf was so ridiculously pretty, it was hard to imagine she was a Marine lieutenant. He had grown up seeing Marines in videotape movies at the Retreat. And if they weren’t John Wayne, they all tried to look like him. But Lieutenant Lillie St. James, Security Officer of the Wayne, didn’t look a bit like the man the vessel was named after.
She was gorgeous. Blonde. Blue-eyed. Rosy-cheeked. “Hubba-hubba, Marines!” Lillie St. James rasped as they broke from the surf and made for the rocks, Michael still right beside her.
They took up defensive positions at the height of the beachhead, Michael sliding into a niche of rock beside her.
Her assault rifle in her right fist as though it didn’t weigh a thing, she looked at him, and a little smile crossed her pretty lips. “Where to now, Mr. Rourke? I have orders that tell me to take orders from you until we reach the objective. So—where to?”
Michael pulled the compass from his borrowed USMC battle-dress utilities—a better choice of uniform than the Soviet equivalent he had been wearing when he had launched over to the Wayne just before it had gotten underway. She was already spreading out the rough map he had drawn for her, and copied for Commander Pil
grim, the Captain of the Wayne. “As I told you before, lieutenant, I can lead us to the first camp and after that—if, as I suspect, they have abandoned it—we’ve gotta find them.”
“Unless, of course, the Russkies are already hitting them. In that event, we shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding them at all, should we? Lead the way, Mr. Rourke.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned. “May I?” “What?”
“Follow me?” he said softly.
Lieutenant
Lillie St. James laughed and then shouted to her people, “Let’s move out, Marines!”
Michael started from the rocks in a dead run, Lieutenant St. James right beside him. He looked back toward the beach, the rubber boats that had brought them already halfway back to the Wayne… .
John Rourke stood on the bridge of the Soviet Island Classer, Natalia beside him. He looked at her. Beneath her black jumpsuit she had secreted his Sting IA black chrome, and across her shoulders she wore a shoulder holster for one of the U.S. service pistols. The 2418 A2s looked interesting enough, but he wasn’t about to exchange his Detonics .45s for a set of them.
“Mr. Sebastian—our position from Chinmen Tao Island, please.”
“Position as follows, Captain. Twenty-three nautical miles north by northeast. Estimated time of arrival to our calculated offshore position, approximately fifteen minutes. The Reagan is three minutes behind us, Captain.”
“Very good, Mr. Sebastian.” Darkwood rotated his chair to face Rourke and Natalia. Although Darkwood had imported some of his own people from the Reagan, there was still an abundance of vacant seats on the bridge. “I think your later idea is the best course of action—that way, if Karamatsov sees you, so what?”
“Exactly.” John Rourke nodded. “If he sees me as a supposed prisoner, it may arouse his interest but shouldn’t terribly arouse his suspicions.” Rourke wished for a cigar. “Who’s minding the Reagan—with your First Officer here and the others?”
“My Engineering Officer, Lieutenant Commander Hartnett, has the Con, and we’re filling in the best we can otherwise.”
Several officers and some enlisted personnel had come over from the Reagan—the tall, black Lieutenant Commander T.J. Sebastian; the Medical Officer, Lieutenant Commander Margaret Barrow (a rather pretty woman, Rourke thought); the sonar operator, Lieutenant Junior Grade Julie Kelly; and a Chinese Machinist First Class named Wilbur Hong. These and the security contingent under the command of Sam Aldridge, assisted by a young man named Tom Stanhope, were filling in at whatever jobs needed to be done aboard the huge craft. In the brig were several Russian prisoners taken when the Island Classer had originally been commandeered. Darkwood had said that they would be debriefed by hypnotherapy and then incarcerated on Mid-Wake until a prisoner exchange needed to be worked out with the Russians, or until the Mid-Wake taxpayers got tired of feeding them and returned them anyway.