Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (7 page)

Kerenin started across the corridor toward an open watertight door, Rourke shrugging his shoulders, nodding to Natalia that it was all right, then starting after him.

There were stairs here and Rourke took them first after the second officer, who had followed Kerenin. Rourke glanced back once to see that Natalia was behind him.

He saw light overhead through an open hatchway, but— oddly—smelled no sea breezes, no smell of night.

Kerenin and the second officer, Boris Feyedorovitch, disappeared through the hatchway. John Rourke hesitated a moment, taking a deep breath, then stepped up after them.

He blinked his eyes in disbelief.

The hatch opened onto the gap between the submarine’s sail—it rose perhaps thirty feet into the air—and the missile hatches. He counted the hatches quickly. Four rows port to starboard, fifteen hatches per row. John Rourke’s stomach churned. But neither the height of the submarine’s sail nor the sixty missile tubes had caused him to blink. It was where the submarine was.

There was no island, at least not in any conventional sense. In five centuries, these Russians had been busy indeed.

As he looked over his left shoulder to starboard there was a vast expanse of water, a large lagoon the size of a small lake, fog banked at its outer edges and low clouds hanging overhead, but the light was bright as day. His watch and his internal time clock said otherwise. He raised his eyes toward the sky, squinting against the light. But there was no sun. There was no sky. Above him, perhaps a hundred feet distant from the water’s surface, was the sea. Above him. Between the “sky” and the sea there was … There was a dome.

He looked aft. More submarines were alongside a metal dock, the dock itself as wide as a football field and many times the length of a football field. He was able to count five more submarines.

Natalia stood beside him. She gasped.

Kerenin and the second officer stood a few feet from them, Kerenin laughing. Rourke stepped closer to the two Russian officers so he could see around the sail and

forward. This craft was the first “in line” at the docks, but where the dock ended, perhaps a hundred feet ahead of the bow of the vessel on the deck of which Rourke and Natalia stood, there was an opening leading beyond the dock. As he watched, through it came what he assumed to be a mini-sub, perhaps half the length of the old Skipjack Class subs of the late 1950s, a massive transparent dome replacing the sail, giving the craft the appearance of a marine life-form with a solitary eye rather than a machine made by men. Twin fins cut the water’s surface, the vessel riding low in the water.

The opening out of which it had come drew his attention. A vast hollow hemisphere, an opening cut into a vastly large hemisphere or dome, a concavity within a convexity. John Rourke’s eyes followed the surface of the dome upward. The dome immediately over his head—the artificial sky—joined it, the actual height of the larger dome lost where the smaller dome and then the sea obscured it.

Natalia’s voice sounded frail beside him. “Wolfgang?”

“There’s nothing we can do now except see the tourist sights. I am here with you.”

Kerenin started walking, the second officer beside him, the guards falling in and flanking Rourke and Natalia, a solitary guard walking behind them as they followed Kerenin and the second officer across the deck toward a long gangplank. On each side of the gangplank were three rows of chain, the chain rows there for safety, one perhaps a foot above the level of the gangplank, another two feet higher, the third at almost chest level. Kerenin and Boris Feyedorovitch started down the gangplank, Rourke falling in behind them, Natalia beside him. Because of the width of the gangplank, the flanking guards fell in behind Rourke and Natalia. For a moment, Rourke considered hurtling Natalia over the gangplank side, then jumping after her. But there was only the dock, unless something lurked behind the mists at the far side of the lagoon. Where could they go? And their hands were bound with the plastic cords which seemed escape-proof without a

knife.

John Rourke exhaled loudly, realizing he had hesitated for a moment, then continued walking, his eyes and Natalia’s eyes meeting briefly.

At the base of the gangplank, Kerenin and the second officer stood, waiting. A third officer, a junior grade by the lack of complexity of his braid and his apparent youth, joined them. Rourke heard the younger officer address Kerenin, then Boris Feyedorovitch as “Comrade Captain Feyedorovitch!”

That settled that. Rourke shrugged.

Rourke thumped his right foot against the dock surface. Although it appeared to be metal, it was not, unless it were some combination of metal and plastic. And he studied the composition of the hull of the submarine. Prior to the Night of the War, the Soviets had utilized a type of rubberized coating on the hulls of their underwater vessels. He wondered if this craft, like old Soviet submarines, was double-hulled.

As he mused over these concerns, on another level of his consciousness he listened to the seemingly unguarded conversation of the Russian officers. “The woman,” Feyedorovitch said, “is very beautiful. But do you think, if they really are married, that she—”

Kerenin’s voice sounded like the snap of an animal. “They must be more fully interrogated. In that process, many things may happen. To change the subject,” and his tone moderated as he evidently addressed the younger officer, “you have acted upon our transmission that was sent as soon as we surfaced?”

Rourke logged away that detail. They had not yet developed some means of long-range transmission from ship to base. Perhaps only ship to ship, while still underwater. “All is in readiness, comrade major,” the younger officer answered.

Rourke looked at Natalia, smiling with his mouth, feeling the tightness around his eyes.

Kerenin started ahead again, along the dock, Rourke and Natalia following in behind Kerenin and the two other

officers, the guards again flanking Rourke and Natalia, one behind them.

Kerenin turned off from the docks and into what appeared to be a large tube. It was, Rourke realized, a tunnel. Everything here seemed to be prefabricated, modular. The tube was of some transparent material and, as they walked, Rourke could observe on both sides of the tube what appeared to be a similar lagoon, missing only the mists which enshrouded the outer limits of the larger one. The lagoon seemed alive with dome-eyed mini-subs like the one he had seen from the deck of the Soviet submarine in which he and Natalia had been brought here. The lagoons, he knew, would be kept at their level by air pressure exerted downward, the air trapped beneath the domes. Early types of diving bells had utilized such a system. But in the early diving bells, as the air was consumed the water level rose. To maintain an all-but-constant level for these lagoons here, air pressure would have to be kept constant. The need for the fleet became suddenly obvious—the mini-subs, the larger vessels. There was some other enemy. The Chinese had no ability to pursue the Russians who attacked them into the sea. No power on earth existed of which John Rourke knew that possessed the ability to threaten these Russians in their underwater complex. But the fleet … There was indeed some other enemy. Regardless of the material used for the construction of the protective dome or domes, the material would be vulnerable to destruction. And the pressure of the sea against the material would be almost incalculably great. The slightest crack could start it, a hole would seal the fate of all who resided here.

The Soviet fleet—and perhaps what he saw here was only some small portion of it—would guard the perimeter of the complex against attackers.

And, granted that assumptions were dangerous, it was likely that whoever these enemies of the Soviets were, they would be potential allies.

They left the tube, into a still-larger tube, walkways on either side and vehicles—official, no doubt—parked along

either curbside. Some type of electric cars, he thought idly, with gullwing doors.

Rourke followed the younger officer beneath the door opening and inside, sitting in the rear seat, Natalia beside him, a guard on either side of them, the other guards on a rear facing jumpseat, Kerenin and the other two officers in the forward facing seat in the center, a single-seat cockpit at the left front. The gullwing on the curbside whooshed closed, the driver consulting what appeared to be a very interesting electronic instrument panel from Rourke’s limited sight position, then pulling away from the curb and into the “street.”

The dreamlike experience after being shot with the Sty-20 had occurred within the coffin-like capsule, and although the capsule could easily be utilized for transporting injured personnel away from a land-based battlefield to a vessel beneath the sea, it was more likely that the capsules were utilized for prisoner transfer. He had heard the Chinese agent Han telling of the disappearance of some Chinese after the mysterious attacks. If the Soviet fleet were a defense against some other underwater power, the capsules might well be used for prisoner transport in this context as well.

But did prisoners survive here? Were there potential allies here he could somehow make use of?

The vehicle was definitely electric or something utilizing a system other than internal combustion. The ride was so smooth, he barely noticed that the vehicle had turned. To their right now was the sea, a portion of the dome perhaps fifty yards from the road surface, a greenway there with trees and shrubs growing in abundance. Flower beds. He noticed older women kneeling beside them, tending them. But the women all were dressed the same. Medium-blue tunics and medium-blue slacks, scarves of the same color tied over their hair. To the left, he noticed several younger persons, men and women, dressed almost identically, all in the blue, collarless tunics and slacks, the men wearing long-billed baseball caps, the women scarves. Beyond that walkway, another dome rose, and beyond its surface

Rourke saw water. More vessels of the Soviet underwater fleet? Or something else?

The vehicle turned again, three vast domes suddenly visible as the vehicle moved away from them—one central and two the same size or slightly smaller, clouds visible near the height of the central dome, which he could better observe.

And now they were no longer inside a dome, but rather in a wide structure with a gently curved overhead and gently curved bulkheads, like the belly of a massive ship. The guard across which Rourke leaned to stare through the left-side Gullwing’s window section elbowed Rourke in the ribcage, and Rourke leaned back.

He stared ahead now.

Vehicles of all descriptions were parked beyond an energy barrier similar to that at the opening of the submarine’s brig, the vehicle slowing, Kerenin passing papers through a window beside him to the shorter of two blue-uniformed guards, these uniforms like his, only fitting less well and with different rank. Something else caught Rourke’s eye. Each of the guards was only armed with what appeared to be one of the Sty-20 pistols.

He logged away this detail as well. Were conventional firearms not allowed inside the domes?

The papers were returned, Kerenin casually but with style returning a salute. The vehicle started ahead, the energy barrier turned off, crackling slightly as it reactivated behind them, Rourke watching through the vehicle’s rear window.

The vehicles he had seen parked were more easily identifiable now as the Gullwing glided past them. Armored personnel carriers, massive, flat, their wheels enormous, their color gray.

More personnel in uniform moved about here, attending the vehicles or merely standing beside them engaged in conversation. At the end of this tunnel through which they now moved was another dome, Rourke squinting his eyes against the light as the Gullwing moved out beneath it.

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of tree-lined squares, rising several stories toward the height of the dome. There were smaller domes on either side, quadrants of their hemispheres just visible toward the edge of the tunnel which they had just left.

The gull winged vehicle stopped beside a rounded curb abutting a horseshoe-shaped driveway. The doors opened on both sides this time and as Kerenin and the other two officers got out, Rourke was tugged toward the driver’s side door, Natalia toward the opposite door.

Rourke stood in the light. It wasn’t sunshine, but felt warm to the skin. His eyes squinting against it now even more tightly, he looked “skyward,” the building before which the vehicle had parked a full ten stories high. There were a half-dozen other buildings beneath the dome, none so tall as this, all of them prefabricated in appearance, their color a neutral tan, but pleasing, perhaps because of the landscaping which set them off.

The guard gestured toward the building, Rourke nodding toward him. It would have been easy enough to kill the man, but Natalia was on the other side of the vehicle. And where would they go, even if they could escape? Before escape could be considered, he had to know more.

Rourke stepped onto the curb, Kerenin waiting there. Rourke wondered, suddenly, why the balding interpreter had not been brought along. He licked his lips. Kerenin started toward the large glass-looking double doors which fronted the building. Over the doors, Rourke read the Cyrillic letters which formed the words “Command and General Staff Headquarters Pacific Soviet Socialist Republic.”

If the marble were a synthetic, it not only had the appearance of the real thing, but also the coldness of it. Rourke’s fingers moved away from the gray and black pillar.

Kerenin alone conferred with the three men at the long, table-like desk at the far end of the vaulted room. Behind their seats there was mounted on the wall a familiar device—the hammer and sickle flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with the initials CCCP in gold or some similar metal beneath it.

Captain Feyedorovitch approached Rourke, his hands on his hips. He spoke in Russian, Rourke pretending to be uncomprehending. “I know that you understand me, and that you will not acknowledge that you do. I have seen a man just like you. He had your height, your coloring, your hair, even dressed similarly to you. A brother perhaps? He fought like no man I have ever seen. He was brave in the extreme. And because of that I will tell you this. Comrade Major Kerenin will have your woman, wife or not. That means that whatever befalls you, you will die in the last. Use this information for whatever value it may hold to you.” He turned and walked away.