Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (18 page)

John Rourke smiled.

Akiro Kurinami writhed, trying to escape the electrical shocks as they came again, his body slamming hard against what could have been a wall or only a wall of rock. Then the electrical charges stopped coming and he heard the voice again. It was through a synthesizer, sounding like the voices of persons who had no voice, an artificial larynx, metallic, grating, and, blindfolded and bound and helpless as he was, terrifying.

“Lieutenant Kurinami. Where are the duplicate files?” It was the same question they had begun asking him hours ago —or was it longer than that? He could no longer be certain. He could smell his body, during one of the sessions with the electrical prods that were used against his body, his muscles had involuntarily relaxed. His bladder had emptied and that wasn’t all.

The files contained the locations of the supply caches where weapons, food, building equipment, and medical supplies had been buried five centuries before for use after their return. The original files had been wiped from the Eden Fleet onboard computers and Kurinami’s copies were the only one which existed, except for the copy whoever had cleared the files had taken. If he surrendered them, whoever possessed the files would control Eden Base unless the

Germans stopped them. And if the Germans were unable to do so—

“Kill me —but you won’t get the files,” Kurinami said, noticing that the resolve in his voice sounded less firm than it had when they had begun the torture. “If I die you will never get them.”

The synthesized voice came again in his darkness and pain. “We will take Elaine Halversen — perhaps she will answer us.”

“No!”

“Then tell!” “No!”

The voice stopped. There was no renewal of the pain and he thought he heard a sound, after a moment, like feet moving across a floor. Then there was nothing but silence. He shouted into it. “Ill kill you if you harm her. I will kill you! I will kill you if you — “

No one answered and Akiro Kurinami realized he was alone.

And they were going after Elaine …

Michael sat in a straight backed chair in the middle of a high ceilinged room at what he estimated to be the exact center of the building. Another straight backed upholstered chair, empty, was a few feet from his, facing him. Han stood beside him.

“You straighten out this ambassador stuff?” Michael asked him.

“I said that it was meant figuratively, rather than literally. Do not worry, American.”

The room was utilitarian in its furnishing, the walls a subdued shade of red with black trim, looking to be made of something like marble. Michael reflected that perhaps it was marble. Han had said nothing which intimated anything about the person whose room this was, whose empty chair

now faced Michael Rourke. In books, the person would have automatically been some wizened old man who spoke in riddles but exuded wisdom. Or perhaps a woman, albeit more mysterious seeming and more seductive looking than Lydveldid Island’s Madame Jokli.

He had seen Bjorn Rolvaag and the dog, making a point of stopping to see them on the way here, Rolvaag sitting calmly reading one of his inevitable books, the Icelandics historically among the most literate people in all the world. He had nodded, said little, stroked the head of his dog Hrothgar between the ears, then leaned back against the wall and continued to read as Michael had left. Rolvaag had apparently preferred the hardness of the floor to the softness of a bed or even a chair.

And he had stopped to see Hammerschmidt. Hammerschmidt, the doctors had said in their quaintly accented but perfectly understandable English, was making good progress. The healing agent in the German spray had been the perfect thing to administer. Michael was flattered at his own diagnostic abilities. But Hammerschmidt had still been sedated.

The walk to this room where Michael now sat had been long, but pleasant, Han explaining that indeed this building was the seat of government of the First City, as well as the residence of the chairman. The additional apartments, like those occupied now by Michael and Maria Leuden and Rolvaag and his dog, were just three of more than two dozen kept on hand for government officials to use in times of emergency when their special abilities might be required by the chairman at any hour of the day or night.

When they had left the building, briefly, to journey by monorail again to the hospital where Otto Hammerschmidt was being treated, Michael had again marveled at this city within the earth. At first glance, past the beauty of its architecture, it might well have seemed forbiddingly uniform, as if all its inhabitants were like ants in a tunnel.

Michael remembered ants.

But there was individualism, subtle, yet definite, everywhere he looked, no two gardens alike, no two buildings identical and, in the hospital, in the monorail station, on the monorail car itself, this a public unit and not the private unit which had originally brought them into the city, the faces of the people bespeaking happiness without anything vacuous, a dignity of personal identity.

The Chinese, he felt based on his readings, had indeed come far.

The doors at the far end of the room opened. They were black, looking to be of lacquered wood but logic dictating rather some sort of synthetic. He had seen few trees and he doubted such a precious Commodity would be wasted for ornamentation.

Through the doors walked a man. He was tall, as tall as Michael or his father easily, and thin without, at the distance, appearing painfully so. His hair was steel gray rather than white, and full but cut short, seeming to crown a craggy face which looked at once Oriental yet western as he approached. His body was covered in a black, ankle length tunic that rustled slightly as he drew near. Michael wondered if it were made of silk, something for which the Chinese had always been famous in his day and before.

The man, his eyes rock steady, hands folded in front of him, stopped some six feet behind the vacant chair. Michael stood.

“I am Lin Tsao Tang, Mr. Rourke. How do you do?”

“An honor to meet you, Mr. Chairman.”

“The honor is mine. Please be seated. I have recently left a rather pressing meeting and find it more comfortable to stand after so much time seated. You and your friends were the subject of the meeting. But rest assured, the meeting was a pleasant one. You are indeed an American?”

“Yes, sir,” Michael nodded, still standing.

“An informal ambassador, I am told —meaning I take it

that you and your friends were exploring this portion of Asia and since you have ‘discovered’ us, shall we say, you would represent your people to us. But let me assure you, we were not lost,” and the chairman smiled.

“I hadn’t thought that you were, sir. But you presume correctly. We were exploring and it was then when we encountered Mr. Han and learned for the first time that your people had survived what we call the Great Conflagration and you call the Dragon Wind.”

“Both rather picturesque terms, Mr. Rourke. You were just exploring?” And he emphasized the word ‘just’.

“As you no doubt know, sir, we —meaning the few surviving Americans, the people of New Germany in what before the Dragon Wind was called Argentina and the people of Lydveldid Island, have formed an alliance against the Soviet Union forces under the command of Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov, a man of unspeakable evil, like myself, my father and mother, my sister, my sister’s husband and a family friend, a survivor from the period before the Night of The War.”

Lin Tsao Tang reached out both his hands as he stepped forward, appearing to steady himself against the back of his chair. “I have misunderstood,” he said in his deep, rich baritone.

“I fear you have not misunderstood, sir. Through a process known as cryogenic sleep, myself, my family and some others, both from among our enemies in the Soviet Union and from among the persons living now in the United States, survived. I was born in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and it is now the twenty-fifth in our reckoning.”

“If you do not wish to sit down, I at least do,” and the chairman eased himself into the chair.

Michael sat down opposite him, feeling it rude to remain standing.

“And you fight a war with the Russians?”

“There was an attempt at a coup in the Russian camp, an attack by the army of Marshal Karamatsov against his government leadership at their Underground City in the Ural Mountains, a less elaborate structure to be sure, I understand. The position of the actual Soviet leadership within the city is unknown, but a state of war exists between ourselves and the forces of Marshal Karamatsov. He took his vast army to the east and I and my companions travelled ahead of his advance to determine his possible destination. I believe we have found it, sir.”

“Indeed,” the chairman said wearily.

The J-7V landed, John Rourke and two men from the four man security unit being the first to disembark the aircraft; the helicopter was some fifty yards away and no sign of anyone around it. Nor was there any sign of the SM-4, the jeep-like vehicle with which Michael, Maria Leuden, Hammerschmidt and Bjorn Rolvaag had set out.

Rourke looked behind him once, Natalia and Paul Rubenstein disembarking, clad in their arctic gear, two more of the German security team with them.

“Paul, have those two men stay with the plane!”

“Right!”

Rourke took the senior of the two Germans with him by the arm. “Fan out to both sides of the helicopter and keep fifty yards back from it and find some cover in case it’s wired to detonate or something. Move out!”

“Yes, Herr Doctor Rourke!” And the first man nodded to his fellow soldier and they split to right and left as they broke into a run, their weapons at high port.

Rourke slung the M-16 forward on its sling and worked the bolt, charging the chamber. He moved the selector to auto, his right first finger, gloved, just outside the guard. “Natalia—take my left. Paul, on the right!”

An icy wind swept across the plain as he walked, the plain longer by far than it was wide, the helicopter pilot having chosen his landing area well. It was moored against the high winds, but already its runners were partially drifted over with snow, the windshield partially covered as well, snow drifted beneath the craft and all but obscuring the chin bubble. It seemed clear the helicopter hadn’t been moved in

at least twenty-four hours.

“I should go in first—I’m better with explosives,” Natalia called to him.

“We’ll both go in —Paul —keep an eye out on the outside.”

“Be careful, guys,” the younger man urged. Rourke had every intention of doing so. As he glanced toward Natalia, she was slinging her rifle across her back, diagonally, muzzle down, and unlimbering the German explosives detector. Rourke had little faith in such contraptions, although he had seen it work and was impressed by the results. But the mind was a better machine by far, and he trusted Natalia’s knowledge of explosives and demolitions far better than any machine.

They were within fifteen yards of the helicopter now, Rourke pushing down the hood of his parka, the cold stinging him even through the toque he wore beneath it. He pulled the toque off over his head and stuffed it into a side pocket. He wanted his hearing unimpaired, as well as his peripheral vision. The wind seemed to increase, howling loud near the derelict helicopter, the rotor blades locked down, but still being pressured by the incessant wind.

Rourke opened the front of his snow smock and his parka, so he could have more rapid access to his handguns. He started ahead again, seeing Paul Rubenstein out of the far right edge of his peripheral vision running toward the chopper at an oblique angle, covering the hatchway with an M-16.

Rourke stopped beneath the main rotor blades and peered inside. He saw no sign of life, but the glass itself was steamed and frozen over and to see in any clarity was impossible without opening the sliding door. Natalia was beside him. “Are you ready, John?”

“Yes —don’t touch anything yet. Let’s get up closer.” He started to close the distance between himself and the machine, Natalia sweeping the German explosives sniffer ahead of them over the snow and ice, the tone it emitted even,

unchanging. If the tone’s pitch increased, explosives would be near. As she swept toward one of the weapons pods, the tone increased, Rourke saying, “That’s normal, isn’t it?”

“Yes. If the tone gets any higher, we’ve got something out of the ordinary.” As she continued the sweep and moved the device away from the weapons pod, the tone dropped in pitch. She elevated the device and swept it over the skin of the craft, near the hatchway. There was nothing. She reached out to work the door.

Rourke pushed her back, safing the M-16 then taking the butt of it and rapping it hard against the door. Nothing happened.

He let Natalia work the door handle as he worked the safety back to the auto position.

She threw open the door, stepping back, Rourke thrusting the muzzle of the M-16 through the opening and inside.

The frozen body of a dead man lay in the widest beam section of the fuselage. But the dead man wasn’t Michael. It was one of the German aircrew, and from the rank, he assumed it had been the gunner.

“Throat slit, it looks like.”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing’s been touched and it doesn’t — ” she peered inside. “There’s no sign of the pilot —or anyone else.” “No. Run the sniffer.”

She swept the interior of the fuselage from the outside, then nodded to him and he helped her step up and inside, Rourke following after her, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the interior more closely. There appeared to be no damage to the instruments, almost as if whoever had killed the gunner had wished to keep the helicopter in good condition — for use?, Rourke wondered.

“Did you sweep the corporal’s body?”

“Yes —and he doesn’t look rigged. But don’t turn him over. I want to check first.”

“All right,” Rourke nodded, but dropped to his knees

beside the dead man. With the conditions of extreme cold, even a detailed autopsy might not accurately fix time of death. There was a bruise on the man’s lower left cheek which appeared to have been incurred just prior to death. With his gloved right hand he felt at the back of the dead man’s neck, just above the hairline. The German military wore their hair short and he could see most of the bruise easily enough. “I think he was hit with a rifle butt or something like it. On the face, then on the neck.”