Survivalist - 23 - Call To Battle

by Ahern, Jerry

  “Terrific pitcher, Oakton. If he could hit as well as he throws he’d be the top man in the league. Whatchya think about Staddler? Over.”

  “Staddler’s okay. My kids like Staddler because he’s so young. Needs seasoning.”

  “Fm right over you, Doc. Look up and you should see me. Over.”

  Rolvaag could hear no ambient sound except the explosions of rock surrounding him. It was a battiefield, and nature was the enemy. But, as he looked up, he thought he saw the clouds of gas swirling in a regular pattern. Then there was a beam of light, bright but indirect, like something seen through a dirty window. “Do you have a searchlight on?”

  “That’s us, Doc. We’ll let down a ladder. Don’t try climbing out, just secure yourself to it with your extraction harness and we’ll get you out of here, get you down safe, then get you aboard and we go after Bremen, okay? Over.”

  “Okay. Yes. But hurry. Bremen must be in trouble.”

  “Affirmative that, Doc. But we’ll find him. Hang in there. Over.”

  Rolvaag had no choice …

  The helicopter John Rourke stole, a gunship specially fitted for combat land/sea rescue, was equipped with diving gear, not only the hemosponges and suits with which Rourke had become familiar since his first encounter with the civilization of Mid-Wake, but also conventional tanks. Rourke knew the purpose of these; small, about the length of a Twentieth-Century policeman’s nightstick and only roughly twice the diameter, they were for emergency air supplies when there was no time to don full gear, or for giving an emergency air supply to someone in the water. While Paul, who had turned into an excellent pilot, considering his brave but rather inauspicious beginning, flew the craft toward the island of Hawaii, John Rourke checked the air tanks to make certain they were fully pressurized. In conjunction with gas masks, he could jury-rig breathing apparatus for them. Because the eruption would foul the air where they were

  going.

  Thorn Rolvaag leaned against the wall-it was called a bulkhead, he remembered-and watched hell unfold beneath him as a frighteningly vivid panorama of fire and ash and sulphurous fumes and molten rock reached up into the night toward them. And, somewhere down there, Bremen was in trouble if not already dead. Rolvaag, still sweating from fear and exhaustion, spoke into the radio. “Carl, find some way of signaling to us, please. You can hear me. I feel it. I know you can hear me. Find some way of making a signal.”

  But, what could Carl Bremen do? A flare would go unseen, even the brightest flare.

  Rolvaag shouted forward to the crew of the Navy helicopter. “There must be some way!”

  “This Mr. Bremen, Doc, he pretty sharp with electronics?” It was the pilot who called back to him. And Rolvaag got to his feet, unsteady, unsteadier still because of the turbulence surrounding the helicopter. But he started forward. The pilot, a black man named Butler, began again to speak. “Assume he can hear us but we can’t hear him, right? Otherwise, we’re really outa luck findin’ him. But what if we can talk him through changing his radio around so he can’t receive, but he can send. Then he can talk us in. Hell feel cut off, but we can find him. He’s probably scared shidess by now, so youH have to prep him for it, but if you figure he trusts you enough, maybe this’ll work.”

  Then Buder turned to his copilot. “Jim, get up and give the man a chair.”

  The copilot vacated his seat and Rolvaag sank into it. “But I don’t know if I could change a radio around. Maybe I could, but I don’t know if I could talk him through it.”

  “I can. You start talking to him on your radio, then when you figure it’s time, turn him over to me, Doc. It’s his only chance.”

  Rolvaag nodded. He controlled his breathing as best he could, then switched his radio on. “Carl, this is Thorn Rolvaag. I want you to listen to me very carefully. And Tm praying that you can listen to me”

  Beside Rolvaag, Buder sat bolt upright in his seat. “We’re losing oil pressure in the main rotor. Strap in, Doc! We’re goin’ down. Jim! Get a Mayday out with our position!”

  45

  Great plumes of smoke and ash, alive with particles of molten rock, flared thousands of feet upward into the night, illuminating the volcano’s shield and almost the entire southern portion of the Island of Hawaii. Below Rourke and Rubenstein now the wreckage of the Navy helicopter whose transmissions they had heard-a Mayday signal-was lit by the spewing volcanic vents surrounding it.

  It was a question of immediacy.

  Paul landed the helicopter as near to the crash site as possible in the event there were serious injuries, but it was necessary as well to keep two other considerations in mind: First, that the landing site was safe for the moment from the effects of the eruption and second that the actual landing could not be observed from within the cone, where Thorn Rolvaag had indicated that Martin and the others were located.

  There was nothing to guarantee, of course, that they were still there. Indeed, remaining was folly. But, Rourke had to check, could not run the risk of losing Martin. But, to have allowed Ensign Clyde to alert the base to the fact that Martin had been located would have precipitated even greater difficulties. If the Navy located Martin and the commando unit, there was always the possibility that Martin would be killed. And, if the base were alerted, there would be no preventing Michael, Natalia and Annie from coming to the scene.

  By now, of course, Ensign Clyde would have reported the message and what subsequendy happened. The base would have scrambled helicopters to come after them and, doubdess Michael, Natalia and Annie would be along.

  Rourke made it that they had their fifteen-minute headstart and nothing more, and the few minutes’ time they had been on the ground was cancelled out by the amount of time it would have taken Pearl Harbor to scramble choppers to go after them.

  The HK-91 slung from his shoulder, its pistol grip tight in his right hand, the ScoreMasters thrust into the waistband of his trousers, John Rourke kept to the right side of the rocky defile they paralleled. Paul Rubenstein, his German MP-40 submachinegun in his right fist, walked on the left. Their weapons, aside from Rourke’s twin stainless Detonics CombatMasters, worn in the old double Alessi rig under his battered brown leather bomberjacket, and the little A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome (Rourke always carried the two Detonics Mini guns and Sting IA) and Paul’s Browning High Power, had been stowed in the trunk of the FOUO car Rourke had driven. Rourke’s full-sized ScoreMasters, Rourke’s two-inch barreled Smith & Wesson Centennial and his Crain Life Support System X knife and Paul’s second High Power and the old Gerber Mkll fighting knife, weapons that had helped Rourke and his friend survive as long as they had them coupled with the intelligence to use them properly, were too much to carry in this new, “civilized” world.

  Here, on the face of Kilauea, there was no civilization, only the struggle to survive. When the Mayday signal had come from the crashing helicopter carrying Rolvaag, neither Rourke nor Rubenstein had questioned the necessity of what had to be done first. There was the immediate risk of lives at stake. Martin would have to wait.

  Using a portable direction-finder from the rescue helicopter’s equipment stores, set to the open frequency signal of the downed chopper, John Rourke guided them ahead, homing in. And, just ahead, in the flare from a rupturing vent, Rourke saw the machine.

  The pilot was good at his work, John Rourke reflected. Through the radio built into the gas mask John Rourke wore, he said to Paul Rubenstein, “Over there, about two hundred yards,

  almost obscured by that rock uplift. See it?” It was closer to Rubenstein than it was to Rourke.

  “I see it. It looks like the cabin area is intact, but what I can see of the rest of it looks like the tail section’s sheared away and the-look, down there.”

  Rourke followed with his eyes in the direction where his friend gestured. Two of the enormous blades from the helicopter’s main rotor had furrowed themselves into the rock, almost forming the shape of a cross, molten rock surging up around them. “Let’s see if t
hey’re alive,” Rourke said, starting to change direction.

  Veins in the face of the rock were opening with alarming rapidity, sections of the shield higher up along the cone starting to float away on the magma beneath, huge slabs of the blackened rock periodically slipping downward, stalling, lava building up behind them. So far, none had dislodged completely. When one did, any person in its way would be dead. The rock itself might weigh tons and the lava behind it would turn flesh to ash.

  Traversing the shield now, it was necessary as they moved toward the downed helicopter to constandy alter their course because of freshly opening veins of magma. The gas rising from fumaroles higher up the face of the mountain was becoming thicker, and volcanic ash covered their clothing, anything exposed. The gas masks they wore were of the type incorporating integral hoods, and Rourke was for once grateful for the design which he usually found a nuisance. His coat protected his weapons, except for the LS-X knife and the HK-91. The knife would not be affected by the falling ash and the HK was as rugged a firearm as ever made, either in its semiautomatic sporter form as Rourke carried it, or as a selective fire battle rifle.

  The side of the mountain trembled so violendy that Rourke nearly fell. But he kept his footing, swaying with the motion. There were belches of flame from some of the wider veins in the rock, spouts of lava shooting upward. The volume of ash increased to the consistency of a sudden downpour, and there was a terrific roar which apprehended Rourke’s attention, making him turn to face the summit. Ash spewed from very near to the cone now and lava was flowing in a river of molten rock several yards wide perhaps a hundred yards back, huge slabs of rock floating in it, battering out a channel.

  Rourke and Rubenstein, side by side, clambered over a dislodged slab of volcanic rock. Beyond it lay the partially destroyed Navy helicopter.

  There were emergency lights lit within and Rourke said to Paul Rubenstein, “Maybe we’re not too late.” But, they might already be too late to survive. More than fifteen minutes had passed and, with the pace of the eruption moving at such a frenetic rate they might not make it off the mountain alive, let alone get Martin.

  They kept going …

  Michael Rourke looked at Natalia, then at Annie, then across the desk at Admiral Hayes. “You’re telling me, Admiral, that you can’t let any aircraft approach the volcano. What the hell are my father and my brother-in-law supposed to do, then, wait? They’ll be flying out. All I’m saying is we can get a few helicopters in there and give them some assistance. We don’t even need a crew. Give us one chopper. Natalia and I can fly it. She’s a terrific helicopter pilot.”

  Admiral Hayes smiled at them with soft, blue eyes, as if she understood something they did not and somehow felt sorry for them all because she did. “I even ordered the planes involved with the evacuation effort anywhere within five miles of the south face to go into a holding pattern. Visibility any closer than that is near zero and the ash that’s spewing into the air is clogging air filters on some of the helicopters, causing their engines to stall out. If I let you take a helicopter, I’d be sending you to your deaths. That’s why I had the Shore Patrol bring all of you here under guard. I hold the deepest respect for your family, and your dedication to one another.

  “I think that all we can do now,” Admiral Hayes said, “is pray that Doctor Rourke and Mr. Rubenstein are somehow able to make it out alive. The helicopter carrying Professor Rolvaag is down. We can’t even risk getting an aircraft in there to look for them. Our hands are tied, so I suggest we clasp them together.”

  Michael Rourke was weighing the possibilities concerning how best he could steal a helicopter, and when he looked at his mistress and his sister, he could see that Natalia and Annie were doing the same. He could pray while they flew.

  46

  Where was Gruppenfiihrer Croenberg? Martin Zimmer, his hands shaking and the pit of his stomach freezing cold, grabbed Rauph by the shoulder and spun him around. “We will all be killed here, Rauph! You have to do something! Now!”

  “The Gruppenfiihrer may be having a difficult time getting in because of die eruption, Herr Zimmer. But I am certain-“

  “Fool! You must do something now. I will be killed here. The wlcano is erupting, man! Are you blind? Get me to safety!”

  “Herr Zimmer, we are all stranded here until the Herr Gruppenfiihrer returns. Where can we go?”

  Lava was spewing out of spreading ruptures in the living rock, pouring down and away from them, but the rock beneath Martin Zimmer’s feet seemed to shake more violendy by the second. How soon before the interior of the volcanic cone would crack, and lava would consume them all in flame?

  “What if the Gruppenfiihrer isn’t coming back?”

  Rauph looked at him as if he were insane. “Not come back? Herr Zimmer! What you say! The Gruppenfiihrer would not abandon us, his men, nor certainly you, the son of Deitrich Zimmer, the leader. Never! He has been delayed. That is all, I am certain. At any moment the aircraft will return and we will be taken from this hell. Do not be afraid.”

  “Afraid! You dare say that I, that I am afraid!” Martin Zimmer toned away, walked off, trying to control his breathing, trying to control the trembling of his entire body. If Croenberg had left ■em here to die, there was nothing that they could do.

  And Martin Zimmer not only did not want to die, but the world could not be denied his leadership …

  John’s hands had worked furiously over the pilot, closing up the sucking chest wound over the man’s left lung. A small blade from the tail rotor had sheared away, cut through the gap where the tail section had been, penetrated the pilot from back to front and buried itself in the control panel. The other crewman was dead, his neck broken.

  Paul Rubenstein worked over Thorn Rolvaag, who was unconscious when he and John found the downed helicopter. He was now just coming around. “Bremen. Gotta find Carl.”

  “Carl?”

  “Bremen.”

  Take it easy,” Paul told him.

  “He’s out there somewhere, down.”

  Paul Rubenstein’s mind raced. Assuming that Rolvaag knew what he was talking about, this Carl Bremen, perhaps the graduate student who had accompanied Rolvaag in the taking of his pressure measurements, would have to be below where they had landed their helicopter. Otherwise, he and John would have seen the man. “Look. I think I can find him. Lie still, all right.”

  “Butler?”

  That was the name on the pilots uniform. “John’s helping him. The other man’s dead.” “Jesus!”

  “Whatever,” Paul nodded. As often as he heard it, he would never accustom himself to the way non-Jews used the name of the one whom they considered the Son of God. Annie rarely took the name of the Lord in vain, or that of the one she believed was his Son. “You just take it easy. If you feel it will help, pray for your friend. I think we can find him.”

  John had cursorily examined Rolvaag after putting a hasty compression bandage to the pilot’s wound, pronounced Rolvaag seemingly okay. There was no way to tell about any possible concussion.

  As Paul Rubenstein looked around in order to confer with John, John was not looking at him. John’s face in the yellow light of the emergency overhead lamp seemed more a mask of determination than anything human, as he said, “I heard what you said. You and Rolvaag should be able to get the pilot here down to our aircraft. Then leave them there and look for this man Bremen. Give yourself a time limit. Then, one way or the other, get airborne. If you can do it safely, come over the cone and look for me and for Martin.”

  “John-“

  “Let me finish. We’re out of time. You know that as well as I do. The whole side of the mountain could blow away at any second. We don’t have more than twenty minutes or so of oxygen left. Once we go to breathing regular air, we’ve got maybe a few more minutes before the gas puts us under. The only thing we can do is this-you take care of these men, and I’ll go after Martin.”

  “But-“

  “Ifs not just for Sarah, Paul
; Martin’s still my son.” Paul Rubenstein didn’t try to argue; he would have done the same himself had Martin been his and Annie’s son …

  Any professional military person, perhaps only after one too many drinks, would admit that there were times when orders had to be ignored; but, Emma Shaw had never so obviously gone against orders in all her life.

  But there wasn’t any choice.

  The radio traffic told the story, and it was a story she could not accept.

  John and his friend, Paul Rubenstein, were trapped on Kilauea and the helicopter they had stolen was their only out. A helicopter would have as much chance of making it through the storm of lava, ash and gas as a snowball in Hell. And it was Hell where John and Paul Rubenstein were.

  But if she could reach the volcano in time-unless the whole ming were blown sky high by then, which according to the radio

  traffic could take place at any second-she could get her V-stol fighter bomber in there. It would be a tough jump if she had a lot of people to pack in the bomb bay, but she’d taken off out of tight spots with a full load of blockbuster bombs and they weighed more. She could do it.

  In her mind’s eye, she was picturing how the people would have to pack in along the fuselage in order not only just to fit but to keep from being thrown about against the bulkheads once the aircraft accelerated out of the vertical mode.

  There might be some bumps and bruises, but she could make it, in and out.

  Or try, at least.

  Emma Shaw signaled her wingpersons, “Fm gone, to Kilauea. Return to base. Shaw Out.” And she banked the tip of her portside wing and broke formation …

  Michael made stating the obvious so charming sometimes. Annie moved to the corridor door, looking out. “We’re clear. Take their car, get to the field and do what we have to.”

  Natalia looked at the Rolex on her left wrist. It would take them longer to reach the island of Hawaii than there was time remaining before the eruption-according to the estimates of Doctor Betty Gilder, Rolvaag’s colleague-would be at full force.