Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (22 page)

Rourke was up, to his feet, wresding the Special free of Natalia. “Are you all right?”

“Yes —winded —yes—” He left her, stabbing the revolver into its holster, the helicopter roaring in overhead, machinegun fire strafing the snow on either side of the camp, the defenders of the camp screaming in panic, some dropping to their knees, others running.

A man dove from the shadows beyond the fire, a long bladed, curving sword in his right hand, Rourke dodging back.

But Rourke realized he wasn’t the man’s target. The sword was raised, ready to hack down into a long, formless looking shape at the opposite edge of the fire.

Rourke sprayed the M-16 into swordsman, the .223 bucking in his right fist, the swordsman’s body spinning, falling away.

Natalia was beside him then, both her revolvers in her Fists as she approached the formless thing on the ground.

Rourke let the M-16 fall to his side, opening his parka, ripping the twin stainless Detonics pistols from the leather.

“John,” Natalia screamed over the roar of the helicopter

overhead. The downdraft making a blizzard which swirled around them. “He’s alive. It’s the pilot.”

The J-7V streaked overhead, dipping its wings, the slipstream around it tearing at Rourke’s face and hair as he pulled the helmet from his head.

And he dropped to his knees beside one of the dead men. For all the world, the man looked like a Mongolian warrior.

“Right place, wrong time,” he said under his breath.

And then he heard Paul Rubenstein. “I got one! I got one!” And Rourke looked around, Paul Rubenstein dragging a man through the snow by his heels.

Natalia spoke to the Mongol, having tried several different dialects of Chinese, none of which she considered herself speaking well, until at last there had been some flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes.

He seemed terrified, she thought, terrified not at anything a rational man would have feared, but at being taken inside the German helicopter gunship.

“Now that he knows this thing flies, he is afraid of it, more so than of any of the guns he has seen, or any of us.”

John Rourke said to her, “Ask him if he knows what happened to Michael.”

She tried the dialect that had seemed to stimulate recognition. And he answered her, in such a rapid fashion that she could barely understand every third or fourth word he spoke.

“He says, I think, that he knows nothing about anything.”

She watched John’s face as he lit his cigar, the cigar having been in the left corner of his mouth unlit for some time now. “I’m going to ask him why, if he knows nothing, he tried killing the pilot,” she said, then proceeded to translate her own question as best she could.

The Mongol didn’t answer.

She looked at John Rourke. He winked and looked at Paul

for an instant. She sat back.

Paul stepped forward, taking the black catspaw handled Gerber Mkll from his belt, almost shoving her aside, grabbing the Mongol by the front of the man’s tunic-like shirt, the knife in Paul’s right hand going to the Mongol’s throat. “Then Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he snarled. “And Mary had a little lamb! And what about Mother Goose!” He shook the man and brandished the knife, Natalia looking for the look of fear there.

She found it, then stood, grabbing at Paul, making herself sound frightened, saying to him, “You almost started me laughing, Paul! That could have been terrible! You could have at least said something threatening to him!”

Paul, with overly dramatic reluctance, she thought, stepped back, feeling the blade of his knife and smiling wickedly, John making a show of holding him back.

She looked meaningfully into the eyes of the Mongol and told him, as best she could, that she would let the man with the knife carve him to pieces as he had wanted to do, would not be able to stop his vile temper, if the Mongol remained silent.

He told her that he was a soldier of the Second City. He told her he knew nothing about the tall man’s son or a woman with green eyes or a man with blond hair or a huge red-haired man with a dog that looked like a wolf or a cart on wheels that needed no horses to pull it. He told her he would tell her nothing more.

She asked where the Second City was.

He said the evil man with the knife could kill him, but he would never tell.

She recounted this to John Rourke.

Paul started into his evil man with the knife act again, but John pulled him back.

John turned instead to the pilot of the helicopter, the copilot of the J-7V. “Take her up—just straight up into the air and hover.”

“Yes, Herr Doctor!”

The rotor blades, which had turned lazily before, began to beat in earnest.

She could feel it in her stomach as the aircraft began to rise, the look of terror in the man’s eyes rising with the regularity of an altimeter.

John Rourke, his voice low, told her, “Translate for me. And tell him I mean it, because I do.”

Natalia began to translate.

“He’ll tell me the location of this Second City, he’ll tell me everything he knows he thinks I might want to know …” And he paused as she caught up with the translation. “He’ll tell me everything right now, or …” She translated, huddling into her parka as John Rourke tugged open the fuselage door, the wind and snow swirling inside like needles of ice. “Or 111 throw him out into the air and he will fall to earth and die in such an evil way his spirit will know no peace. Tell him.”

She told the Mongol. And the Mongol dropped to his knees, one of the German security team starting to grab for him, but Natalia waving him back. The Mongol touched his forehead to her feet.

She closed her eyes, hearing John Rourke closing the fuselage door.

Ivan Krakovski had taken personal charge of navigation for the fleet of six helicopter gunships, trusting no one with the coordinates given him by the Hero Marshal.

For a short while, the fleet of gunships had passed out of the teeth of the blizzard, but now the snow swirled around them maddeningly, crusting over the bubble, Krakovski taking the controls of the gunship for a time to relieve the pilot of the strain. The windshield wipers raced crazily, but could not compete with the rate of snowfall and wind driven snow as it lashed against the machine, the five other machines barely visible even by their running lights.

The Hero Marshal had told him that the cache of some thirty Chinese weapons was near the city once called Lushun, in what had once been a mine, the interior of the main shaft reinforced with concrete and steel and capped like something the Hero Marshal had called a well. Krakovski had not asked what this “well” thing was, assuming he would recognize it when he saw it.

It was cold, and colder still from the feeling of fear which he unashamedly admitted consumed him. The machine which he flew was buffeted by winds of what he estimated to be gale force, and the controls had to be manipulated with the greatest precision, not just to keep on course, but to keep

from being thrown into an uncontrolled spin and the machine destroyed.

He used the radio and ordered all pilots to transfer controls to their copilots for periods of at least thirty minutes while they rested from their ordeal.

He would find the coordinates, but if the storm intensified, he doubted he would be able to take off. And the Hero Marshal and the destiny of the Soviet people depended on him …

Michael Rourke studied Maria Leuden’s face in the gray light of the room in which they lay. And his thoughts were consumed with his dead wife. It was not rationalization. She had cherished life and would wish him to do the same. Had he celebrated life by invading Maria Leuden’s loins, or had he merely satisfied lust, he asked himself. He was drawn to her, and for the first time since Madison’s death, there had been a moment when he had felt real happiness. Maria Leuden had cried as she held him, Michael for the first time appreciating the sadness which had consumed her as well. The rape she had endured years before, the scorn of her lover because somehow he had blamed her for it or not having the grace to die during the process. She had whispered to him, it was the first time she had ever been loved willingly by a man and he had wondered at how close she had been to her fiance. It was then she had cried, her body trembling beneath his, and her very trembling drawing him deeper into her — spiritually as well, he wondered?

It was more than unnerving to consider loving a woman who could read your thoughts. If Annie could actually read what Paul thought, she never alluded to the fact. But with Maria, he had known from that first moment aboard the aircraft taking them to Egypt that she could see inside him. He wondered if it had brought him closer to her, or kept him away.

Madison’s body had been more beautiful and he doubted he would ever see a woman who could compare to her in her beauty or her compassion. But he realized, he loved this woman now as well.

He pushed away the sheet and as he started to rise, Maria Leuden came softly against him and he held her in his arms for a time, kissing her lightly on the forehead.

There was something he had to do. And he needed to escape the sensation of being beside her.

Michael Rourke left the bed and skinned into his pants and shirt, taking his two pistols as well. He left her apartment and walked as quietly as he could down the corridor. Rolvaag and his dog were nowhere in evidence and Michael assumed that at last the giant man in green had retired. Michael let himself into his rooms and stripped away his clothes, showering quickly, his body still remembering Maria Leuden’s touch. He towelled his hair as dry as he could make it, then dressed in fresh Levis and fresh shirt and his arctic gear, except for the parka which would be too warm to wear until he left the petal. He had a pass from Han .which would allow him to come and go at the main entrance.

He took only the Beretta pistols and slung the shoulder rig in place. The parka over his arm, he left.

He found the monorail station again. It was fully automated and summoning a car at any hour of the day or night, he had been told, would cause a car to arrive within ninety seconds or less. It was forty-five seconds. He boarded the car and signalled his destination by pressing the spot on the map located beside the sliding doors. The car sped along its single overhead track, the petal of the First City over which he rode all but asleep, some workers moving in a long, narrow street, an electric car crossing an intersection, the lights in most of the residential structures extinguished.

The monorail stopped by the main entrance tunnel and he exited the car, slipping his parka on, but not closing it. He started up the tunnel.

The guard patrol at the tunnel. Two men with rifles stepped from the shadows beyond the yellow light through which he walked, evidently recognized him, one of them nodded, both moving away.

When he reached the end of the tunnel, he found that there was a storm like none he had ever seen. There were several guards clustered about the energy field which formed the main entrance, snow sparking in the field, the invisible barrier crackling, flashing. He could not converse with the officer in charge of the detail. Unlike the Germans, English was not a requirement for the officer corps. It was merely a language of the learned. But with gestures, Michael at last made clear his intent. And it was clear to him that the Chinese guards thought he was a madman to venture into the storm.

The cold that was somehow blocked by the energy field was suddenly there, and a wind which howled maddeningly and hammered at the barrier crackling into place behind him, through him.

Movement along the road surface was difficult because it was so slippery, and slow because of the pressure of the wind, but his meager transmitter would have no effect without his getting far enough into the open. He had told the chairman his intention and the chairman had told him somberly that most likely his companions from the flying machine would be dead, the prey of the soldiers of the Second City who roamed the wildly frigid terrain and would kill without provocation.

Michael Rourke kept walking, the radio handset safely beneath his parka and close to his body to prevent damage to the batteries.

He estimated another hundred yards through the already thigh deep snow would be adequate distance from interfering structures.

He kept moving, fatigue setting in more quickly than he had imagined. Four hours of sleep had all but restored him,

the first relaxed sleep he had experienced since the death of his wife and unborn child. Madison would have wanted this, he suddenly realized. His happiness, such happiness as there could be while an evil of unspeakable proportion prowled the earth and casually claimed the lives of innocent women and babies.

He had made his hundred yards or close to it and Michael Rourke, at peace with himself oddly, took the radio set from beneath his parka and turned it on.

The voice he heard belonged to Paul Rubenstein, caught in mid-transmission. “… can hear, respond. If your receiver is incapable of clear sending, open and close the frequency in series. Over.”

Michael Rourke raised the machine to his lips, pulling away the flap from the hood which protected his lower face. “This is Michael. Paul? Come in. Over.”

It wasn’t Paul’s voice which came back, but his father’s. “Michael — this is Dad. Are you all right? Over”

“Dad —I’m fine. Where are you? Over.”

“Flying the chopper you and and the others left behind. Heading for someplace called the Second City with a prisoner aboard who looks like some kind of movie lot Mongolian. Over.”

“The crew. Over.”

“Gunner dead, pilot in serious condition from beating and exposure and some burns, apparently torture. Over.”

“Do you know your position? Over.” It was a ridiculous question to ask his father.

“Prepare to copy,” and John Rourke gave coordinates, Michael Rourke committing them to memory, telling his father to hold that approximate position while he got precise coordinates — for the First City …

John Rourke rarely looked tired, Paul Rubenstein reflected. But he looked tired now. “He’s all right — “