by Ahern, Jerry
The military police cars were closing. Those few of the escapees who were armed opened fire on the vehicles, crippling one, but the others were still coming.
Darkwood opened the portside vent window, shoving the energy rifle which leaned beside him through the open port. It was no good, though, because he could not get low enough to
take a sight picture and still remain in the pilot’s seat. He left the muzzle of the weapon to protrude through the vent anyway, concentrating full effort on the aircraft.
He was almost afraid to look up beyond the immediate area surrounding the craft, afraid that he might see gunships and it would all be finished.
Behind him, he could hear the escapees clambering aboard. “Strap yourselves in. Keep that portside door open in case we have to fire.”
All but five or six of the freed prisoners were aboard now, Darkwood confirming that he had sufficient pressure and temperature, had sufficient RPMs.
“Everyone is aboard!” The voice which called to him was that of the younger man. “We can use the energy rifles and-“
“Don’t engage a target once we’re off the ground unless you have to. We need to get away, not wreak devastation!” “Wreak devastation,” Darkwood almost verbalized-crashing into something important was the most damage of which they would be capable.
Darkwood changed pitch and increased main rotor speed. The machine started airborne, sweeping upward with all the perceived grace of a giant rock with stubby wings. But, they were up.
Darkwood throttled out still more, climbing and slowly accelerating.
He saw something over the horizon and his heart nearly stopped. But the light pattern, as he realized in the next second, originated from a fixed wing craft. Not even Eden Security Forces would be stupid enough to send in a fixed wing fighter aircraft, because it could do nothing except bomb and strafe a ground-based target and there had been no time for the security forces to get a fighter scrambled.
His eyes still on the horizon for gunships, Darkwood praying all the while he wouldn’t see one, he turned the chopper toward the mountains north of the city. He could ditch in the snows there and get help. Darkwood operated on a big assumption, of course, that Eden City’s considerable air defense system, which was designed to keep enemy aircraft from successfully reaching the city, would be essentially ineffective at preventing an aircraft from leaving. Eden City was, after all, much like a prison.
“We made it!” It was one of the women shouting the words, then shouting them again. “We made it!” There followed a chorus of cheers, mostiy for him, people patting him so vigorously on the back that once he nearly lost control of the throttle. Then the singing started, patriotic songs to the United States.
Eden, on the other hand, had its own national anthem; but it was terrible to listen to.
29
There was another landing of a commando group, some forty or so men strong, but John Rourke, Paul Rubenstein and Commander Washington and his Pearl Harbor SEAL Team reached the beach site on the other end of the island of Hawaii too late to intercept them. The Honolulu Tac Team hadn’t accompanied Rourke, Washington and the SEALs, busily engaged instead in tracking down the unit responsible for the attack on the Country Day School at Sebastian’s Reef.
As Rourke went airborne again in one of the SEAL Team helicopters, intending along with the other choppers to make a grid-by-grid aerial search, a radio message came in from Michael. Rourke flipped to the proper frequency as he was notified, saying, “Go ahead, Michael. Over.”
“Dad, there’s something big going on at the University. I You’ll want to be in on it. Over.”
“What? Another terrorist attack? Over.”
“Negative that, thank God. A briefing. All I know is it’s supposed to be really important, something to do with an impending volcanic eruption. And youll be interested in meeting the college professor doing the briefing. His name is Rolvaag. Ring a bell? Over.”
Bjorn Rolvaag had saved Annie’s life more than a century ago, then fought at their sides thereafter. With his faithful dog Hrothgar and his mighty staff in his powerful hands, Rolvaag, ever silent, ever placid had been both friend and ally in the very best sense of those words. An Icelandic policeman who spoke no English and preferred the windswept Arctic wastes to civilization, Rolvaag was the sort of man John Rourke had always respected as a true hero. “This professor, if he’s a descendant of Bjorn Rolvaag, has a lot to live up to. Ill be there. When? Over.”
“In about twenty minutes. Rolvaag and this other scientist, a Dr. Betty Gilder, are supposedly still assembling data. Meeting’s at the University science center. Your pilot should know how to find it. Over.”
“Hang on a minute. Over.” Rourke moved the microphone away from his lips and shielded it with his hand as he shouted to the pilot beside him. “Can you get me to the University science center in twenty minutes?”
“Sure can, General. Land you right in the quadrangle, sir.”
Rourke nodded, flipped the microphone back in front of his mouth. Til be there. See you. Out.”
Rourke waited for his son Michael to sign off, then switched back to the intraship frequency. And he stared at the mountains. They seemed distant right now, but under the wrong set of circumstances, they might seem all too terribly close.
30
The repository for the cryogenic chambers in which Sarah Rourke, Deitrich Zimmer’s son Martin’s natural mother, and Colonel Wolfgang Mann slept so touchingly side by side had been recently moved to enhance security-greater precautions required, it was presumably felt, in the light of the imminence of warfare between Eden and the rest of the world.
For the purposes of what Deitrich Zimmer intended, the new location was vastly better than the old one.
Immediately upon learning of Martin’s capture, Deitrich Zimmer pulled the best of the best among those who proudly wore the Sigrunen, the top men to be had from both the Sicherheitsdienst and the Sicherheitshauptamt; the only one from this former unit unavailable to him was Wilhelm Doring, since Doring had already left for his assignment in the Hawaiian Islands.
In the end, however, Deitrich Zimmer had thirty-six superbly trained and totally dedicated officer and enlisted SS SD personnel.
They stood before him now in this small auditorium within the SS complex beneath the glacier, bounded to the southeast by the vast icefield of Great Slave Lake, to the northwest by the subglacial Mackenzie River. The very existence of this facility was known only to the SS and to each man who, because of a need to know, was told of the facility’s existence. It was called, simply, “Hafen.”
The thirty-six, as well as Deitrich Zimmer’s aids and advisors, held their upraised right hands in salute, their voices responding in Greek-like chorus, “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
Deitrich Zimmer raised his eyes, from the beautifully shining faces of these men, looked above them to the ceiling of the hall, the cross which was poised to roll forward on its right angled legs, set in white on a field of red.
And, behind him, set into the black marble wall, the To-tenkopf, in highly raised bas relief of finest silver, itself the symbol of purity.
And now Deitrich Zimmer raised his hands palm outward, extending them from the podium as he smiled beneficendy on these his stalwarts.
After several minutes, the chorus subsided, the black-uniformed men took their seats and Deitrich Zimmer spoke, his voice soft, low, beautiful, he knew. “My fine young men. After these all too brief moments together, you will go forth on a -mission of incalculable importance to Aryan destiny. You will attack the cryogenics facility in what is so obscenely called “New Germany.” You will find inside this heavily guarded enclosure the worst of all traitors to the Reich, Wolfgang Mann; and, sleeping beside him, whore that she is, the woman who is mother to our beloved Martin, herself the wife of the greatest of all enemies of the Aryan people, John Rourke.
“The temptation will be great, my fine young men, to go beyond the carefully defined paramete
rs of your mission; do not yield to such temptation.
“Once your historic quest has been realized, the way will be clear for the inheritors of the power and the glory of Adolf Hider-Sieg!”
“Heil!” The chorus thundered toward him, every man to his feet, right arm outreaching, hand thrust forward.
Deitrich Zimmer motioned for the young men to be seated and they were. All was silence. Then Deitrich Zimmer spoke again. “The way will be clear at last for the Aryan race to bring order to the chaos of this hideously mongrelized planet. As your beautiful children and devoted wives one day soon
walk in peace and in sunshine, it will be because of what you do. There will be no fear that your mothers and wives and sisters and daughters will be bestialized by their inferiors, no longer will the bastard servant dare raise hand or voice against his biological master.
“The dream of our glorious Fuhrer whose blood flows in the very veins of my son Martin will be at last realized and the epoch of mankind’s greatest achievement will have begun. And it will flourish for a thousand thousand of years! Sieg!”
“Heil!”
“Sieg!”
“Heil!”
“Sieg!”
“Heil!”
Deitrich Zimmer brought them once again to order. “You will soon go forth to your destiny! And the greatness that is the true Aryan Germany is in your hearts and shall be there forever and forever!
“Heil Hitler!”
The auditorium walls, the platform on which he stood, his very eardrums rang with the chorused cheers.
31
There was a mountain trail she liked to walk when she wanted to think. This property, not the house, had been her parents’ property when she was a little girl and Emma Shaw had walked this trail the day she learned her mother was dead. She’d walked it again before deciding that instead of doing policework or something else that was still today a more normal occupation for a woman, she wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot. She’d walked the trail again when Hank Walsh had asked her to marry him and she thought she might be pregnant with his baby. She hadn’t married him and she hadn’t been pregnant, either, just very late.
Emma Shaw, the .45 chamber empty and stuffed into the waistband of her blue jeans, her T-shirt covering its presence, walked the trail again. It wasn’t a steep trail, nor was it any more or less picturesque than anywhere else in the mountains here, but it was hers.
Her father had wanted to give her the property when she’d told him she wanted to build a house here, perhaps feeling sorry for her that she might end up an old maid and trying to show his love for her. But she’d purchased it from him instead, and at a fair price, too. But she’d taken his offer of simple interest.
Her trail was really her trail, even to the point of being paid for.
John Rourke.
Midway along her trail’s length, Emma Shaw sat on her rock.
She took a cigarette from the pack stuffed into a hip pocket of her jeans, took her disposable synth-fuel lighter, fired the cigarette and inhaled.
There were certain times in her life she’d felt downright stupid being a woman, like the time with Hank Walsh and the baby that wasn’t. If she’d married Hank-he was nice, kind, considerate-just because she was pregnant, she would have been trapped by her biology. If she’d had an abortion, which she felt people had a right to choose for themselves (she chose to think it was not for her), she would have been trapped again by her biology.
If love for a member of the opposite sex was a function of biology alone, which she didn’t think it was, she was trapped now. She’d considered the concept of love quite often, as she imagined all women did, or at least the ones she knew. Love was a combination of biology, spirituality, the mind (whatever that really was) and factors she didn’t think anyone really understood at all, least of all herself.
Emma Shaw loved John Rourke.
The sun was setting and she could see it a little bit from her rock on her trail on her portion of the mountain. By craning her neck, in the morning she could watch the sun rise, and at dusk watch it set.
Loving John Rourke was even dumber than considering marriage to good old Hank Walsh. She just flat out hadn’t loved Hank. Maybe her situation was dumber now because she was in love. And John Rourke was like no one else. He was married, and that wasn’t a problem easily surmounted under ideal circumstances. That his wife lay in a coma in cryogenic freeze, never aging but with a bullet lodged inoperably in her brain, made matters even worse. Emma knew that even if she hadn’t had a conscience-which she did-the situation was impossible.
Add to it John’s very nature, the fabric of his being.
Love him, yes, but be blind to him, no.
When she was growing up, she tried living up to the image, later the memory of her mother, to her father’s hopes and expectations and dreams for her, then to the other pilots, the really good ones. She’d had her heroes, her role models. John Rourke, although he wasn’t conscious of it, was his own hero and role model. He lived up to himself.
Either as cause or effect-Emma Shaw wasn’t certain-John Rourke saw himself as an objective entity, not subjectively. John Rourke did or didn’t do something because John Rourke should or shouldn’t do that thing. Then, he did it or didn’t do it, depending on what John Rourke should or shouldn’t do. He analyzed, evaluated.
Emma Shaw stubbed out her cigarette (filterless, there was nothing to police that would spoil the environment) and lit another, something she almost never did. She liked Natalia very much. Natalia was gutsy, pretty (prettier than Emma Shaw had ever been on the best day of her life), everything a man would want in a woman, especially a man like Doctor Rourke. John had loved Natalia, Natalia had loved John. They probably still loved each other, but Natalia was Michael’s woman (Emma Shaw at once hated and envied the idea of “being someone’s woman,” as if somehow a woman were transmuted into property).
Why wasn’t John more-Emma Shaw verbalized her thoughts. “Why wasn’t he pissed off?” But neither the setting sun which shone down over her trail and her rock in long purpling orange streaks nor the fiery gold clouds nor anything at all answered her.
Granted, Michael Rourke was John’s son, but still and all, she thought, John could at least have been angry at the situation if not at Michael and Natalia.
So, here he was, born over six hundred and fifty years ago, living by his own measure (she liked that, even though it irritated her), abandoned by the woman he loved and faithful to a wife who was just this side of dead.
But John’s problems were in the real world, at least.
Her problem was her own stupidity. As Emma Shaw exhaled smoke through her nostrils, she started to laugh. At least now if she became an old maid, she had a reason, pining for a love she could never have.
32
The helicopter descended through the deepening shades of purple into darkness, landing on a grassy patch at the center of an enormous quadrangle that was the exact center of the University complex. All about the four sides stood buildings modeled in Greek Revival style. Fog rolled in from the sea, not heavy, almost ghostly, and the columns, the statuary, took on what was almost the aspect of another time and place. The rotor blade downdraft made the wisps of fog curl back upon themselves, rise, then dematerialize, ghostly-seeming that way as well.
Paul Rubenstein was the first to jump down, ducking needlessly beneath the swirling blades from force of habit, John Rourke just behind him.
Standing well away from the chopper, Paul saw his wife, his brother-in-law, the woman who would, it seemed, someday be his sister-in-law, Natalia. And Tim Shaw and his son, Ed, both from the Honolulu Tac Team were there as well.
Paul smiled to himself, wondering if these men were ever off duty. John and he never seemed to be off duty, Paul Rubenstein reflected.
The Schmiesser in his left hand, Paul fell in step beside John, walking toward John’s daughter, his wife, taking her into his arms, kissing her quickly. “How’d that stuff work out today
with helping Inspector Shaw?”
“Ohh, it was very interesting; I got to see some really neat parts of Honolulu and we may have gotten some leads on this man named Yuri who’s a Nazi sympathizer and a drug dealer, too, you know? It was very interesting.”
“Great. Sounds like you had a lot more run than we did,” Paul told her, smiling good-naturedly, folding his arm around her.
After a round of handshaking, they walked along the north edge of the quadrangle, the science hall, looking like an enormously proportioned temple, rising out of the fog ahead of them.
“Well be passing my car,” Tim Shaw said. “You guys wanna drop your reachers in the trunk or somethin’?”
“Reachers?” Annie repeated quizzically, before Paul could ask what Shaw meant.
John laughed. “1930s gangster slang for a rifle or any kind of long gun, really.” And John raised his HK-91 in his right hand for a moment. “My ‘readier’!”
They stopped beside the trunk of Tim Shaw’s unmarked police cruiser, Shaw opening it, John putting the HK-91 inside, Paul resting his MP-40 submachinegun next to it. There were several other long guns inside, as well as attache-sized high impact plastic cases, likely for handguns. A hardplate flak vest, a riot helmet and shield, a bullhorn and more miscellaneous police-related gear filled out the rest of the trunk space. “Ready for anything, huh?”
Tim Shaw laughed, saying, “Well, ya never know what might go down, Mr. Rubenstein. Take today, for example. We could have needed some of this gear if it’d gone down differentiy.”
Tim Shaw closed the trunk lid. They returned to the quadrangle and resumed walking toward the science building. Michael and Natalia, who hadn’t gone to the car with them, stood on the steps, waiting. Every time Paul saw the two of them together, he could not help at once feeling happy for them and sad for John. John had planned it this way, of course, from the moment they entered the cryogenic chambers at the Retreat on the morning of The Great Conflagration. Perhaps he’d planned it well before that; it was something he and John had never discussed in that regard.