Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal (19 page)

But after another ten minutes as reckoned by Rourke’s mental clock, the incline leveled suddenly, the yellow light now brilliantly bright and dead ahead of them.

Something inside John Rourke made his pulse race, his breathing faster. He knew the sensation well—fear. But he didn’t know its cause. And that worried him more.

Michael Rourke’s eyes moved from side to side of the access tunnel, searching for some evidence of the electronic security measures warned against. Nothing. No out-of-place-looking seams in the floor, no photo-electric eyes, no speaker panels that shouldn’t be where they were. The walls of the tunnel— well lighted, gleaming—were without feature, perfectly smooth and unbroken.

He stopped moving, carefully turned and looked behind him, Han there thirty feet back, Maria and Vassily Prokopiev behind Han. Nothing had changed.

And the tunnel seemed to go on forever.

For a moment, Michael Rourke wondered if he should turn back, return to the vertical cylinder which had led downward from the shelf off the natural rock chimney at the height of the mountain. But where would that route take them?

Maria called out. “Michael?”

And it started. His name, echoing over and over and louder and louder—“Michael? Michael? Michael? Michael? Michael? Michael? Michael? Michael? Michael?”

His ears rang with it, each time the word, his name, echoed, the sound louder, ever increasing in volume. His hands reached out to the wall surface and the wall surface vibrated in rhythm with Maria’s echoing and re-echoing voice.

He looked back toward Maria Leuden. Her hands were to her ears, her mouth wide open. If she screamed— If he shouted to

her not to scream— Han turned around toward her, the muzzle of his rifle clanging against the wall surface, the clanging repeating over and over and over and over again, ever louder, becoming part of the cacophony already surrounding them, Michael Rourke’s ears throbbing with it.

Michael Rourke reached to his waist, slipped the hitch which bound the rope around him, throwing the rope down, running, Prokopiev’s face contorting into a ghastly looking mask, not human-looking, the Russian officer falling to his knees. Han Lu Chen’s fists beat against the wall, and the rumbling of his fists against the wall surface began to echo and re-echo and pulse along the length of the tunnel, the walls visibly vibrating now, like the tines of a struck tuning fork.

Maria was about to scream. Michael Rourke shoved past Han Lu Chen, half stumbled over the agonizing Prokopiev, threw himself on Maria Leuden, his left hand clamping over her mouth, his right hand smothering her face against his chest. Moisture dribbled down the sides of his neck and he realized his eardrums were probably bleeding, ruptured.

Blood poured from Maria’s ears.

Han Lu Chen’s body flopped against the wall, his knees buckling, his body collapsing. And Michael’s eyes riveted to Vassily Prokopiev’s right hand. A pistol, Prokopiev pointing it along the tunnel’s length blood pouring from Prokopiev’s ears and nose, his eyes wide. Mongols, with heavy ear protection, coming along the tunnel.

Michael risked the shout— “Nooooo!”

But the shout was lost in the already deafening roar. And then Prokopiev’s body was clubbed to the floor of the passageway and Michael’s insides shook and Maria’s body wrenched against his as if she were in orgasm and the inside of Michael’s head felt as if it were boiling over, the walls and floor and ceiling shaking, all hearing gone, his vision blurring, the pain beyond anything he had ever endured and the blackness sweet as a kiss.

John Rourke stopped before the yellow light, separated from its source by a wall several inches thick and totally transparent, Plexiglas or something like it, the transparent material jointed every twelve feet by gleaming vertical metal strips, framed at top and bottom with identical strips, only shorter. The verticals rose hundreds of feet into the air. And beyond the wall lay an area the size of several football fields, its ceiling vaulted to the height of the mountain itself, it seemed. It was all here, under one roof. Unimaginably. Rank upon rank of auxiliary service bunkers connected by gleaming piping systems to more than a dozen breadloaf-shaped concrete structures. Piping into and out of demineralizers, turbines, condensate pumps, feedwater pumps, both main and auxiliary. Beyond these, running the length of the base of the mountain, disappearing over the internal horizon, transformers and storage tanks. And, visible in the mist-shrouded distance, tall, tapered-waist concrete smokestack-like structures. It was the largest fission reactor John Rourke had ever seen.

“This is how they run the mountain,” Paul whispered, his voice sounding awed.

“This is why they’ve had power for five centuries. And it’s a miracle they did. It has to be totally automated.” There were panels of gauges stretching for hundreds of yards in either

direction, untended, he knew, for centuries. No one here possessed the technological sophistication to read the panels. Of that he was certain.

Rourke began walking, his hand trailing along the Plexiglas, his eyes scanning the banks of consoles. After some minutes of walking in silence, he stopped. The Chinese of the Second City could not have comprehended what was here, judging from the barbarism they displayed. And John Rourke, for that matter, understood little of it. But no degree of sophistication was needed to understand the panel farthest rearward from them, at the center of the bank of abandoned instrument consoles before which they now stood, only the Plexiglas wall separating them from it. The panel was larger than all the rest and resembled a thermometer lying on its side. It held a large vertically running gauge and the indicator, for core temperature, was a third of the way into the red zone. “They’re about to lose it all. It’s melting down, Paul.”

“Melting down—”

Rourke studied the machinery for several seconds, wishing Natalia were here with her superior knowledge of such things, her engineering and sabotage background an invaluable mix. “I just had a wild idea,” Rourke almost whispered.

“What?” Paul Rubenstein asked, his voice flat, emotionless.

“If this is melting down, why isn’t there an alarm sounding? And it would stretch coincidence beyond credibility that just when the Second City Chinese are about to detonate a warhead—if that is what they’re planning—the reactor that’s served them all these years just happens to go belly up.”

“I don’t understand what you mean. But shouldn’t we get the hell out of here?”

“If it’s leaking, we’re already contaminated. So there’s no sense running. Think about it. This was a survival retreat, like ours in Georgia, but on a much larger scale. The reactor was to

keep it going—air scrubbers, electricity, water reprocessing, all of it. But between the Night of the War and what the Chinese call ‘the Dragon Wind,’ the Chinese here put their hands on a substantial portion of the People’s Republic’s nuclear warheads. Whoever was in charge here would only have done that for one reason—power. And not for light bulbs. But when the Dragon Wind came, it was realized that the core materials wouldn’t last as long as they’d need them to last. Missiles were only useful for destruction, and destruction was already total. So—” “You mean—”

“You’re looking at the Chinese warheads, Paul. This— this—this huge reactor. The biggest I’ve ever seen, vastly bigger than anyone would ever need for any conventional use you could imagine. You could run fifty places this size, maybe a hundred off one-tenth the power this reactor could generate. And it’s computerized, has to be. The computer is utilizing the nuclear material as needed, otherwise keeping the fissionable material rodded. And at the same time, it’s a breeder reactor, producing more fissionable material than it uses. This entire mountain is a weapon and whoever built this was perfectly aware of that. No warheads, but one ultimate weapon. If this thing goes, the meltdown effect would be incalculable.”

“I remember with the near misses before the Night of the War—” Paul Rubenstein began.

“The ‘almost meltdowns.’ They talked about the core material boring its way through the earth from one end to the other, didn’t they?—and it sounded like something out of a bad science fiction movie, like the story they tell children that if you dig and dig and dig you’ll dig a hole all the way to China. How about a Chinese boy digs a hole? And it’s a mile wide and his shovel digs all by itself and very fast, so fast you can’t stop it. And the other end of the hole is the Atlantic Ocean off the southern coast of Brazil.”

“That’d—ahh—”

“Throw the earth’s rotation off. Maybe rip the planet in half. I’m no physicist.” “How do we—”

John Rourke measured his words. “That steam at the far end by the cooling towers. It probably isn’t radioactive. And we don’t have anything to lose anyway. The control rods are pulling. Slowly would be the way for the maximum effect. Once they reach a certain height, the temperature will reach a certain level and it can’t be stopped. It may have reached that already. If they started this as some religious ceremony, like Annie was saying Maria Leuden thought they might— If that was the way, then maybe whatever they did can be undone. They must have kicked a program into the computer and started all this. Maybe it can’t be stopped by conventional means at all.”

“Could we go inside?” Paul asked. “I mean, I know what’d happen to us. But—”

“There must be fifty rods in each reactor core. The control rods themselves could have begun to melt. Yeah. We could go inside. But I don’t think we’d live long enough to get the job half done. Once we violate the seal on one of the containment buildings, the entire area will be flooded with radiation. Even with protective clothing, we wouldn’t be able to hold out for more than a few hours. But we might have to go inside if that’s the only way.” And John Rourke looked at his friend. “Let’s find their temple.”

Rourke stepped away from the Plexiglas wall, feeling the odd pressure against the exposed skin between his glove and his sleeve, like a breath of wind where there shouldn’t be wind at all, as his arm passed near one of the vertical joints for the enormous Plexiglas panels.

And suddenly he understood about the bear and why there were fewer bones the closer to the Plexiglas wall one came. He shouted, “Paul! Run for it!”

The wind was all around him now and electricity arced between his rifle and the right side of his body, and his body felt as if it were at once burned and stabbed and pain tore through him. Rourke stumbled, still trying to run, falling, blue and silver lines of electrical energy fluxing across the horizontals which supported the Plexiglas panels from below. Paul Rubenstein was shouting something incomprehensible, Rourke twisting his head around to see him, Paul’s body twitching, the muzzle of his M-16 against one of the verticals, electricity arcing over Paul’s chest, around his legs like bands.

Rourke fell flat, rolled onto his back, pain gripping his chest.

Electricity arced still between his rifle and the nearest of the verticals. Rourke’s gloved fight hand grasped his rifle by the plastic buttstock and he tore it sling and all from his body, flinging it against the wall of Plexiglas, the crackle of electricity louder now, the Plexiglas itself starting to blister.

He couldn’t catch his breath.

His mouth wide open, gulping air, Rourke forced himself onto his stomach, his eyes feeling as though they would burst from his head, his eyes riveting on Paul Rubenstein. Paul was dying. Would die.

“No, damnit!”

Rourke lurched up to his knees, fell forward, Paul’s screams subsiding, the electricity almost cocooning him now.

On his feet. The rounds in Rourke’s M-16 began cooking off, bullets spraying in all directions as the controlless assault rifle bounced along the floor.

“Paul!”

A bullet gouged into the floor inches in front of Rourke’s face, and the gun was silent. The gun.

Rourke, his chest still knotted in pain, reached to his right hip, his right arm stiff, barely able to move. The 629.

He had it out of the Sparks flap holster.

Rourke stabbed the six-inch .44 Magnum Smith toward the vertical to which the flash deflector of Paul’s assault rifle was melting. In a moment, Paul’s rifle would cook off as well, he knew.

Rourke fired, Plexiglas by nature impact-resistant, the shot a miss, Rourke’s right hand trembling so, his ears ringing with the concussion, the ricochet whining across the antechamber to the reactor compartment.

He fired again, hitting the vertical, ripping it half through.

An alarm sounded, the reactor compartment’s integrity ruptured. Rourke fired again, then again and again and again, the ricochets only barely audible now over the howling of the alarm, the vertical metal strip severing, the electrical arcs across Paul’s body dissipating for an instant. Rourke let the revolver spill from his fingers as he pushed himself up, hurtled his body against that of his friend, residual electrical charge ripping through Rourke’s body, his left shoulder impacting Paul’s right shoulder, his hands grasping Paul by the clothing, Rourke throwing his weight right and away from the severed vertical, both men tumbling to the floor, rolling.

All motion stopped.

Rourke lay gasping on the floor.

He forced himself up enough to see Paul. Paul wasn’t breathing. Rourke threw himself over his friend’s body, straightening Paul’s upper body as best he could, raising the neck, letting the head loll back, forcing open the mouth. There was no time to check for obstructions. Paul didn’t chew gum, didn’t have dentures.

Rourke sucked in as much air as his own tortured body would allow, the heel of Rourke’s left hand holding the forehead back, Rourke’s first finger and thumb pinching the nostrils shut. He breathed the air into his friend’s mouth, then again, quick, short breaths, four of them. Rourke released Paul’s head, with the heels of both hands hammering down

against the lower half of the sternum. “One … two … three … four…” His arms were so weary he could barely move them. “… thirteen… fourteen … fifteen!” He tilted Paul’s head back, his hand under the neck again, reopening the airway, breathing into him again and again and again and again.