Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (15 page)

Hammerschmidt’s left fist thudded against the little man’s face, then both of them, to their knees, hammered at each other, collapsing into the fire, Hammerschmidt’s clothing aflame, the little man ripping away his robe, flames flickering from it. A pistol was in his hand as Hammerschmidt rolled himself in the snow to smother the flames. The evil little man thrust his pistol toward Hammerschmidt’s head.

“Otto!”

Hammerschmidt looked up, the last of the flames extinguished, the little man laughing. Hammerschmidt shouted to her from the fire. “Fraulein —I am sorry!”

Then she heard another voice. It was Michael Rourke’s voice from the darkness beyond the firelight. “Hello.”

The little man turned toward the sound. The four others were stirring. Michael Rourke stepped from shadow into light. Maria Leuden felt a hand going over her mouth, covering it so she could make no sound, then a voice whispered in her right ear in English. “Make no sound. I am a friend.” She couldn’t see the face as she tried to turn toward the voice, but she nodded and the hand left her mouth and she felt herself being dragged back from the fire. Her eyes were riveted on Michael Rourke.

“Too bad you don’t speak English. I could tell you what

real assholes you are. And as soon as I figure my friend Han here has dragged the girl out of the line of fire, you fellas are gonna be dead. Like that, huh?” And he smiled. The evil litde man laughed. “Yeah, well, your mothers fucked you every night, right?” And there was more laughter. His hands were just at his sides, there was a smile on his face, the firelight making shadows there, making the smile look somehow like death. “And not one of you has the brains of a horse, huh? Well —looks like I kill you now.” He reached for the pistols in the double shoulder holster he always wore.

The evil little man swung his pistol toward Michael and fired, but somehow the gunshot sounded too loud and she realized Michael’s pistols had fired simultaneously and the little man’s body fell backward into the campfire. The other four men made to fire their rifles and Michael just turned toward them, the pistols in his hands spitting tongues of flame against the darkness which framed him, gunfire from the four men, their rifles discharging into the ground, Michael’s hands moving as he would fire at one man then another and then another.

His pistols were still.

The remaining four men were down, their guns still as well.

Maria Leuden breathed.

“Otto—you all right?”

“Michael — yes — where did you—”

“Tell ya later, huh — gonna check on Maria,” and Michael Rourke stepped over the legs of the evil little man, the torso in the fire, smoldering, crossed the few yards to where she lay, her wrists already being untied. He stood over her for a long moment, his voice very soft when he asked her, “Are you okay?”

“I —I never saw anything like that in my life —Michael.”

“My dad’s done it a few times. Always wondered if I were that good. I guess I am,” and he dropped to his knees, saying something to the man, untying her ankles, the man going off

to tend to Otto Hammerschmidt. Michael closed the blankets around her and stood up, with her in his arms. “You’ll be all right now, Maria. No one will hurt you,” and he started walking away from the fire still holding her and she leaned her weary head against his chest and listened to the sound of his breathing.

Michael Rourke was reloading the spent magazines for the Berettas as Maria Leuden slept beside where he sat on the gound next to the German SM-4 vehicle, Bjorn Rolvaag tending Otto Hammerschmidt. It would be dawn in less than an hour and they would use the vehicle then to reach the First City. Some of Hammerschmidt’s burns, to heal properly, would need better treatment than emergency first aid could offer. Michael had gone through more ammunition than he wished to count and he took the time while they waited for the dawn to clean the Beretta pistols.

His father had given the Germans a container of Break-Free CLP and asked them to duplicate it. It was one of these which Michael took from the vehicle, unloading both pistols—he still carried the 629 in the crossdraw holster—and beginning to field strip. Using the disassembly latch, he slid the slide forward and dismounted it. He separated the barrel from the slide and began cleaning. The Berettas disassembled like Natalia’s Walther P38, basically.

“You will like my city. And your friend —he will be well cared for in our hospitals. We have fine doctors and they practice their art with great skill.”

“My father’s a doctor. If all of this ever gets over with,” Michael said slowly, running a patch down the bore of the

disassembled pistol, “I’d like to try it myself. Seems a useful skill.”

“My father too was a physician,” Han said enthusiastically.

Michael scrubbed the feed ramp to get rid of powder residue, then took a dry patch to wipe out the bore. They had spoken throughout the day between attacks of the ongoing war with the forces of Vladmir Karamatsov and how Karamatsov’s forces seemed to be coming this way. “I have watched you with your guns. You are by far the best man at arms that could exist,” Han said suddenly.

Michael laughed so loudly that Rolvaag turned and looked up from ministering to Hammerschmidt.

“Why do you laugh, American?”

“My father is better with guns than I could ever be. Believe me.”

Han said nothing for a moment, then, “And what if you were to discover that you were better than he? Would it disappoint you?”

“My father told me a story once. He and his dad used to arm wresde, you know?” And he looked into Han’s eyes for a sign of comprehension of the term. He saw it and went on. “My dad was always big for his age, strong, worked out a lot. A good natural athlete but he never went out for sports beyond the regular stuff every kid does. But he figured by the time he was sixteen he was strong enough to beat his father at arm wrestling. And so he never arm wrestled his dad again.”

Han nodded. Perhaps it was something all sons could understand, Michael thought. He began reassembling the pistol …

Hartman had not requested that his sleep be interrrupted an hour before dawn, so when it was he came instantly awake. “Herr Captain —the Soviet forces are moving, more rapidly it appears than thev have moved before.”

He looked into the face of his orderly, the man apparently awakened as well.

Hartman sat up in his cot, rubbing his eyes. “Bring my clothes. Then alert the radio operator to contact Herr Doctor Rourke in Lydveldid Island immediately. I will require a meeting with my officers in ten minutes in my tent. See to it that the exact movements of the Soviet force are brought completely up to date. I will require the most exact information,” and he swung his legs from the cot, his bare feet to the floor and stood up, the orderly moving about the enclosure and assembling Hartman’s clothes. He blinked his eyes to focus better and looked at his watch.

He attempted from the outset of his assignment to command the forces of New Germany which monitored the movements of Marshal Karamatsov’s army to analyze his opponent. War was much like chess, he had learned recently. And the Soviet leader’s actions had become boringly routine.

He realized now that perhaps deceptively routine was more apt a description.

It was not disobeying an order, but rather reinterpreting it. Doctor Munchen had left word with Major Volkmer that should any messages be sent to Doctor Rourke from the Eurasian front that he should be notified immediately because of Herr Doctor Rourke’s exhausted state from the ordeal in the crevasse.

Major Volkmer had so ordered his subordinates and now Munchen had been awakened several hours before dawn with a message for Doctor Rourke. He did not presume to read it, but it was from Captain Hartman, the commander of the forces of New Germany on the Eurasian front, so it would be important.

Every moment of sleep he could buy for John Rourke would be that much more beneficial, and so he dressed at his usual pace after having showered first. He could be court martialed, he knew, but he was a doctor and doctors were assumed to act a bit rebelliously toward military orders at times for the continued well-being of their patients.

He did not call ahead for the helicopter, but instead went to the control center for the helicopter fleet and ordered one on the spot, which would take at least ten minutes.

When the helicopter arrived, he boarded it, not telling the pilot to make best speed to Hekla, but simply letting the pilot

fly the short run as he normally would.

When the helicopter landed on the greenway, was met by forces of his own army and by Icelandic police, he told them he had a secret message for Herr Doctor Rourke and walked away from them, from the helicopter, toward the dormitory where Doctor Rourke and his wife, Rubenstein and Annie and the Russian woman Major Tiemerovna would be sleeping. He looked at his watch. He had consumed twenty-three minutes, so far, and could easily stretch that into a half-hour. He stopped, lighting a cigarette from his case with studied deliberateness, pocketing his lighter, then walking on toward the dormitory steps.

Munchen stopped at the base of the steps. There was no security for the building. He started up the steps slowly, mentally ticking off the seconds, then entered the dormitory hallway through the large double doors. He knew the door to their small apartment and walked toward it, the message in his inside pocket. He removed his uniform headgear and looked around the corridor, glanced again at his wristwatch. It had been nearly a half-hour.

Munchen rapped lightly on the door with the knuckles of his right fist. He didn’t knock too loudly, wishing to prolong arousing the Rourkes as much as possible.

He waited a more than respectable time and knocked again, the door opening under his hand. John Rourke stood in the doorway, naked from the waist up, the muscles of his chest and arms rippling, his right hand behind him.

“Doctor —a house call?”

“So to speak, Herr Doctor.”

“Come in—just a moment first though,” and the door closed almost fully and he heard Rourke’s voice just inside the doorway, then the door reopened. Munchen stepped inside as bidden. He noticed in the back of Rourke’s pants a pistol, as though thrust there hurriedly. He imagined it was what had been in Rourke’s right hand when the door had opened the first time. The bedside lamp was on and Frau

Rourke sat up on the edge of the bed, in her nightdress, a shawl about her shoulders as was the custom of the women of Hekla.

“Good evening, Doctor Munchen,” she smiled. “Or good morning might be more appropriate.”

Munchen looked away from Frau Rourke, into Doctor Rourke’s eyes. The face was lined with what might have been a smile or might only have been amusement. Rourke was barefoot, but still well over six feet tall, lean, but not thin. His hair, above the naturally high forehead, was thick, tousled from interrupted sleep. Or from the look on Frau Rourke’s face, perhaps something else interrupted which could be, he felt with his best medical opinion, nearly as salubrious as sleep and definitely more pleasant.

“I have a message for you, Herr Doctor. From Captain Hartman at the Eurasian front. I took the liberty of delivering it personally.” He neglected to mention that he had done so in order to delay it and allow Rourke more time —for sleep or whatever.

“Thank you, Doctor,” and Rourke took the message from Munchen’s hand as Munchen offered it. Rourke didn’t move toward the light and apparently in the semi-darkness it was not even necessary for his light sensitive eyes to squint. Munchen had once contrived to be allowed to test Rourke’s vision. It was almost uncannily good. Munchen often found himself wondering if it were somehow to do with Rourke’s light sensitivity.

Rourke passed the message to Frau Rourke, then turned to look at Munchen. “There was a time stamp on the message. Giving me more sleep, were you?”

“I am that transparent? Sleep or — “

“I am that transparent?” Rourke walked to the nightstand and took up one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars he habitually smoked. Munchen had tried one once but preferred his cigarettes. Frau Rourke took Rourke’s rather battered looking cigarette lighter and lit the cigar for her

husband. John Rourke seemed to study the tip of the cigar as he exhaled, then turned and said, “It appears I won’t be around for that physical examination tomorrow. But, as one medical man to another, let me assure you that the patient is recovering nicely.”

“May I say something, Herr Doctor Rourke —and please accept my comment in the spirit in which it is offered.”

“Yes,” Rourke nodded.

“You are not, in and of yourself, an entire army. Eventually, the laws of probability overtake us all.”

Doctor Rourke said nothing, and Frau Rourke merely closed her eyes …

Paul Rubenstein heard the light knocking at the door and started to sit up, Annie still asleep, his right arm beneath her. He slipped his arm free, experiencing a tingling sensation, his arm partially asleep. She was naked beneath the blankets and he pressed the covers more tightly around her as he slipped, naked, from bed and took the Browning High Power in his fist.

He approached the door, the knocking coming again. He opened the door instantly, the pistol tight at his side as he stepped back. It was John Rourke.

“Hi —you’ll catch cold that way.”

Rubenstein remembered he was naked. He stepped a little left, partially behind the door.

“We have to go,” John Rourke told him.

John Rourke himself was barefoot and naked from the waist up, one of the Scoremasters thrust casually into the waistband of his faded blue Levis. “I’ve got transport being arranged,” his friend continued. “Meet me out front in twenty-five minutes,” and he looked at his wristwatch. Paul Rubenstein did the same.

“To rejoin Hartman?”

“Yeah.”

“You up to it?”

“I’ll take it easy for a few days. Just some soreness, like that.”

“All right. What’s up?”

“Karamatsov’s army broke off in what looks like a direct thrust for northern China. This could be it.” “All right. Tell Sarah good-bye for me.” “Give Annie a kiss for me,” John Rourke smiled. Paul Rubenstein nodded.