Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal (23 page)

Otto Hammerschmidt. She saw him, reached out to him, dragged his head toward the surface. She coughed water as she screamed, “Natalia! Natalia!”

And the water suddenly began to foam and hands reached

out for her, figures in black clothing and helmets. She almost lost her hold on Otto Hammerschmidt as she reached for her little knife, but a hand like a vise caught her wrist.

The helmet of one of the figures surrounding her. It was pulled off. The head ducked below the surface and reappeared all wet, curly hair matted over the forehead. “I’m Jason Darkwood. And you must be Annie Rubenstein, the five-hundred-year-old man’s daughter. Anybody else in the water?” He had a handsome face, even all wet.

She realized she was dead and this wasn’t happening. Annie Rourke Rubenstein said, “Natalia,” anyway.

The man who called himself Darkwood nodded and began talking again, but not to her. “Sebastian? How’s Major Tiemerovna? We got her?”

Nothing for a moment, then, “Good. Prepare the Reagan to surface. Mark on our transponders. Put out a raft for us. In just another second here, repeat that last part to this charming young lady I’ve just found. I suspect she’ll be an interested listener.”

And the man with the flippant attitude and the pretty eyes passed over something to her that looked like an ordinary earplug, putting it beside her jawbone. And she heard a voice in her ear, deep, resonant, cultured. “I have been instructed by Commander Darkwood to inform you that Major Tiemerovna has been brought in by two of our divers who immediately administered a hemo sponge so she would be able to breathe. We have every reason to suspect that Lt. Commander Barrow will be able to bring through Major Tiemerovna most satisfactorily. Thank you.”

She was holding the little thing against her jawbone and she dropped it, Darkwood fishing it out of the water, then pushing his hair back from his forehead. “You’re the one my father talked about!”

“The smart ass—that’s me, I’m afraid.” And Darkwood smiled at her, then held the little plug against his jawbone and spoke. “Lieutenant Stanhope—talk to me.”

And he put his head beside hers with the earplug-like thing between them and she could hear, too. “Captain—this man’s been seriously wounded, but I think he’ll make it. Over.”

Darkwood looked at her.

“Hammerschmidt,” she said. “Captain Otto Hammerschmidt. He’s a German commando. He’s my friend.”

“I know the name,” Darkwood told her. And then he spoke through the little earplug thing again. “Tom—that man’s an officer with the forces of New Germany. Make sure-he makes it. Darkwood out.”

She almost screamed as a massive black monolithic shape began to rise out of the water about twenty-five yards from them.

“That’s my submarine, the U.S.S. Reagan. You’ll love it. Trust me.”

Somehow, she did.

In case what they planned worked, with Michael helping, John Rourke had dragged the bodies of those Maidens of the Sun (as Han had called them) who had been left behind down the corridor and beyond the steel doors leading to the staircase, just above the reactor room. Bound with parts of their own clothing, but loosely enough that once they regained consciousness they could eventually work themselves free, at least there they would have a chance to survive the back-blast of the missile firing.

Prokopiev, with Paul’s help, had contacted the Soviet force outside the Second City, established his identity and ordered up a chopper with a volunteer crew, then ordered the rest of the Soviet force to the mountains well away from the Second City.

John Rourke wished Natalia were there. But, by combining Paul’s and Michael’s and Prokopiev’s skills with his own, the barely conscious Han Lu Chen assisting Maria Leuden as best he could while she worked the keyboard for the main portion of the computer, there was, at least, a chance.

Prokopiev and Michael, Prokopiev with considerable difficulty, had climbed the gantry and were, John Rourke hoped, having some success with the onboard guidance system. It should be a matter of gyroscopic adjustment only, Rourke hoped. To attempt to sabotage the entire guidance

system might only have the opposite effect and precipitate premature firing.

John Rourke knelt beside Paul at the rear of the massive computer, Paul rewiring the interior of a large gray panel, the covering off. “What I hope I can do and what Maria says might work,” Paul began, “and what would be a hell of a lot easier if my right hand weren’t so stiff, is to set this sucker up so we can keypunch new guidance coordinates into the system. Maria said it and she’s right. There isn’t any time to get into the memory tapes and fool with them. I saw systems like this, hybrids. Transitional types of computers, half keypunch and half not. We can fool with the keypunch, like Maria’s doing now, but we’ve gotta make it talk to the other part of the system. Get a handshake, like they used to say.”

Six minutes remained before launch, six minutes before the meltdown of the reactors would be beyond recall.

It was a doomsday machine, crude, but of the highest order of lethality.

The missile was programmed to launch and return to point of origin upon re-entry, the radioactive core material of the myriad reactors already punching through into the earth as the missile struck. The largest explosive device ever conceived. And the most deadly.

“How much time, John?”

“Just under six minutes.”

“Shit—”

Rourke stood up, walked quickly to where Maria Leuden was working the keypunch. “How’s it going?”

“I think I’ve got the new coordinates set. But if we only figured them right.” They had punched up a master program of guidance coordinates and improvised. All that remained was to feed the new coordinates into the system.

“So—all I have to do is put the card under that sliding pressure plate—”

“And push this button—I think,” Maria told him.

“You start up the gantry.” “What about Han?”

Rourke looked at the Chinese, half unconscious now, head resting on the work surface before the master console. “I’ll take care of Han. Promise.”

He took her by the elbow and walked toward the gantry. “Paul? Almost?”

‘ ‘Almost—maybe.”

They stopped at the base of the gantry. John Rourke looked upward, shouting toward Michael. “How’s it going?”

“We have realigned the gyroscopic and inertial navigational controls—we think,” Vassily Prokopiev called down.

“Then get up by the hatch so you can get out as soon as the final firing sequence begins and the hatch opens. Maria’s on the way.”

“What about you?” Michael shouted down.

“Don’t worry,” Rourke said uselessly. He helped Maria to the gantry ladder, stayed there as she started up, then returned to Paul.

Paul didn’t look at him as he spoke. “This thing’s either going to work, or cook off all the wiring in the system and fire the missile without altering the trajectory. So.” With some difficulty, Paul stood up. “How much time?”

John Rourke glanced at his Rolex. “Three and one-half minutes.”

“Now what?”

John Rourke reached out his right hand. Despite the injuries to his right arm, Rourke knew, Paul did the same. They clasped hands.

“I mean—if this is it, hadda be a real handshake,” Paul said quietly.

“Help me with Han.” “I’m staying.”

“What about Annie?” John Rourke asked quietly.

“She’d stay, too. You’ll never make it up without me with Han on your back. Who you kidding?” Paul grinned.

John Rourke nodded and their hands parted.

Rourke moved quickly toward the keypunch console, picked up the card. He placed it under the pressure plate in the card hopper. “She said to push this button,” John Rourke said.

“Then I guess we’d better push it.” Paul smiled.

John Rourke felt the corners of his mouth rise in a smile. “Then I guess we’d better push it.”

John Rourke pushed the button.

Nothing happened. But what was supposed to happen? It was a gamble. And life was the only game he’d ever gambled in.

“Help me with Han.”

Paul slung his sub-machinegun behind his back, then helped John Rourke to get the injured Chinese into a standing position, Rourke bending forward, letting Han Lu Chen collapse over his left shoulder.

Rourke stood there a moment, settling the man’s weight as best he could. Then he looked at Paul. “Let’s go.”

Together, they started for the gantry.

“You first in case you need a push with that extra weight, huh?” Paul suggested.

Rourke nodded, put his left foot to the first rung, then started to climb.

The missile, mere feet from them, began to vibrate noticeably. They kept climbing. Rourke glanced at his watch as he moved his left hand toward the next higher rung. Less than two minutes.

Exhaust smoke began to exit from the base of the missile. A low, rumbling sound began. One minute even, now.

The missile began to shake, the gantry ladder shaking too now.

Forty-five seconds.

The hatch was open above them, the gray sky visible, Michael looking down through the hatch opening. John Rourke wanted to shout up to him to get away. But Michael would not have gone.

Climbing.

Thirty seconds.

The very fabric of the mountain seemed to shake.

If the reprogramming worked, the meltdown procedure was aborted, the trajectory of the missile changed.

If. Fifteen seconds. The missile started to lurch upward.

Retaining cables on all sides of the missile snapped away.

John Rourke reached upward toward the hatch. Han’s weight—

Michael’s hands reached down.

John Rourke could feel Paul pushing upward on Han’s body.

Michael grasped Han by the hands and raised him upward, and then there were other hands, black uniform blouses, KGB Elite corps commandoes.

Rourke climbed through the hatch, reaching back, with Prokopiev pulling Paul through. A Soviet gunship was ready to lift off just a few yards from the open hatch in the top of the mountain.

One of the Elite corpsmen reached for John Rourke’s guns. John Rourke’s hands moved. Prokopiev shouted in Russian. “No time. To the gunship!”

Claxons sounded.

The mountain shook.

Great clouds of noxious-smelling vapors issued from the hatchway, Rourke and Rubenstein and Prokopiev running for the chopper on the heels of the Elite corpsmen. “Lift off!” Prokopiev was ordering.

The gunship started to rise, John Rourke at its base, Paul clambering aboard, Rourke and Prokopiev boarding together.

The gunship slipped left across the mountaintop and started , to climb. I

i

John Rourke crouched beside Maria Leuden. Han Lu Chen’s head was in her lap. Michael’s arm was around her shoulders. The missile.

Out of the hatchway it came, hesitating against the gray sky, then rising, so enormous that it seemed impossible, like some optical illusion.

But rising.

“Did you do it?” Prokopiev asked beside Rourke.

Paul answered. “If we aren’t vaporized in—”

“Three and a half minutes,” John Rourke supplied, looking at his watch. “Or, if the center of the mountain doesn’t seem to collapse. If neither one happens, we did it.”

The gunship, per Prokopiev’s orders, hung back about a mile distant from the mountain of the Second Chinese City.

Wind and cold whipped at them, but John Rourke didn’t think any of them cared.

John Rourke’s eyes flickered between the mountain, visible through the open door in the fuselage, and the mountain.

If it worked, the meltdown would be halted and the process reversed.

If it worked, the missile’s trajectory had been altered enough so it would not re-enter, but arc back miles above the atmospheric shield and go off harmlessly into space.

If.

The face of his Rolex.The mountain.

No gray-white streak passed between them an instant before blindingly brilliant light and oblivion.

And the center of the mountain did not collapse.

John Rourke stood up. He slid the fuselage door closed.

“Now what?” Rourke asked Prokopiev.

“I shall drop you wherever you wish within reason and then face a court martial.” Prokopiev smiled, extending his right hand.

John Rourke took Prokopiev’s offered hand.

His thoughts were filled with concern for Natalia, that her mind would be restored, with concerns for his family, that someday they would find peace. And, as he clasped Prokopiev’s hand, this Russian who might be shot for his humanity despite his position as head of the Elite Corps, John Rourke also considered the concepts of hope and honor.