Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain (9 page)

“What do you know, John?” Sarah Rourke whispered, shivering a little. She walked off, joining Wolfgang Mann beside the interior door preparatory to sealing the Retreat and its secrets.

The truck had just been there, no guards surrounding it, not even a likely driver or helper nearby. Perhaps it was some subtle portion of Antonovitch’s plan for him, perhaps just good fortune. But Vassily Prokopiev stole it regardless.

A half-track, climatically sealed, the bed loaded with synth fuel enough to take him from one end of the continent to the other and back, Prokopiev traversed the wild countryside easily, but inside himself he was torn.

For an act of honor and decency in allowing the Rourke family to live because Michael Rourke had not abandoned him to a most savage death, because Doctor John Rourke and Paul Rubenstein had crushed the threat from the Second Chinese City and saved his life in the process, he was condemned, but because of that act he was chosen. To betray his people or to save them?

Prokopiev did not know which.

He didn’t know if he would ever understand. At least for another few minutes or hours until his escape from the Underground City was discovered, he was still the chosen leader of the KGB Elite Corps, given that command by Comrade Marshal Antonovitch himself in the aftermath of the vicious murder of — Had it been a vicious murder, when Major Tiemerovna had killed her husband, the Hero Marshal Karamatsov?

Or had it been justifiable? Who was right?

Did Comrade Marshal Antonovitch even know?

And with him now, Prokopiev carried the collected secrets of the new particle beam technology, given these secrets to share them with Doctor Rourke and Doctor Rourke’s allies.

That part of Prokopiev’s mission was clear to him. With the particle beam technology, if the Germans and others could make use of it, there would be sufficient strategic parity to prevent the forces of the Soviet Union from overrunning the planet and, should that fail, destroying the planet with nuclear weapons.

Few spoke of it openly and they were reckless to do so, but it was well known that the scientists believed that even a single thermonuclear detonation might trigger the destruction of the planet’s atmospheric envelope. Those living in tomb-like cities beneath the ground might survive, but they would never be able to venture forth on the surface as normal human beings again.

What life survived would not be worth living.

Prokopiev kept driving, westward, toward German lines, toward, he hoped, Doctor Rourke. Doctor Rourke would know how to use these secrets wisely.

Island was his sister?

If not the presidential palace, then why not to someone like old son Jan, a tough man and someone Michael Rourke would have relied upon in a fight. Or find some other members of the Icelandic police force? Perhaps the Russians had killed them outright to minimize any threat from within.

Michael kept to the side of the path, the M-16 tight in his fists, two Soviet guards moving lazily on guard patrol at the base of the residential dormitory steps.

Michael watched them intently. If Rolvaag had gotten inside, then so could he. How was another matter… .

Michael Rourke kept low, crossing the greenway from hedge to hedge, pausing in the grove of fruit trees. Where was Rolvaag?

Soviet helicopters were everywhere in the park, the Hammer and Sickle flying limply over the presidential palace. Was Madame Jokli even still alive?

The red-haired Icelandic policeman and his oversized dog Hrothgar—they were both oversized, Rolvaag like some gentle giant in a fairy tale with his green tunic and his mighty staff and the dog like some sort of enchanted wolf—had been moving inexorably toward the residential dormitory where Annie had been staying when their father and Paul had first found her here.

Why there? Why not the presidential palace if it were some solo rescue attempt he was planning. And Madame Jokli was Rolvaag’s sister?

Bjorn Rolvaag had said that before slipping through the vent crack at the head of the tunnel, before Michael had left Maria behind and ventured after him. But Rolvaag’s English was almost nonexistent, so had Rolvaag really meant that, that the president of Lydveldid

Bjorn Rolvaag’s hands gripped his staff. If the enemy Russians had discovered the tunnel, they might well be waiting for someone to enter it. Hrothgar sniffed at his heels and Rolvaag touched a hand to the animal’s muzzle, quieting it. He crossed the basement floor, past boxes and old mattresses and unused beds, stopping beside the far wall. “There must be many fine smells,” he whispered as he dropped to his knees beside Hrothgar, stroking him between the ears.

Now to find the panel.

Michael studied the Rolex on his left wrist. The guards at the front of the building took a minimum Of four minutes to circle the building. There was a period no longer than seventy-five seconds, no less than sixty seconds, when neither man could see the front entrance. There could be a guard inside, or more than one, but if there were he would deal with it …

Rolvaag’s hands cupped a match, the flame unmoving

until he placed it beside one of the seams between the concrete blocks. His fingertips pressed against the sides of the concrete blocks and an opening nearly as wide as his shoulders began to slip into the wall. Hrothgar growled softly. With his eyes mere inches from the seams in the blocks, several minutes had been spent searching for the right pattern, something he remembered only from his youth as a novice in the police department, something shown him by a retiring officer. “This is a room that someone must know about. But only a special someone. We should never have the need for anything which is contained in this room since it is said we are alone in the world. But, if we are not, then—” Bjorn Rolvaag had never known why he was the one entrusted with the knowledge of the secret room, or that he was the only one. He entered it now. …

Michael Rourke’s hands sweated on the butts of the Beretta 92F military pistols. He could not risk the over-penetration possible with the M-16 assault rifle inside a building. So the two 9mms and the .44 Magnum at his belt and the knife made for him by old Jon the sword-maker were his only options. Penetration with any of the handguns—especially the four-inch barreled 629—in the thin-walled domiciliary unit might be bad enough. Killing the innocent while stalking the evil was morally unacceptable.

There were no guards in the corridor and there was no evidence that the building was presently inhabited. Where its occupants might have been taken he could not hazard a guess, but the absence of occupants within the building gave at least some semblance of logic to the haphazard manner in which the two guards patrolled outside it. A stairwell at the end of the corridor, going up and down. Logic dictated that Rolvaag—unless he were looking for someone specific—would not have gone up.

Michael took the stairs down.

It was dark but he didn’t wish to risk a flashlight. He moved slowly, feeling his way downward along the concrete block wall… .

Hrothgar ran toward the door, then back, nuzzling against Rolvaag’s leg as he started to pass through the opening.

Rolvaag stared, watching after the animal as it bounded again toward the door connecting the storage room to the main portion of the basement, a recreation area with ping pong tables and the like.

Michael?

He was a Rourke, after all. Considering that, it only seemed logical that he would follow in Hekla.

Bjorn Rolvaag drew back inside the storage room, pulling the jigsaw pattern of blocks toward him. They closed, but made a clearly audible grating sound.

Michael Rourke froze. From the far side of the basement recreation hall, he heard a sound, uncertain what it was. And he thought he heard breathing.

The Berettas. His fists balled more tightly on them. He kept close to the wall, the staircase behind him now and some of the light from the floor above filtering downward, enough to make shadows everywhere and cast everything around him in a deep textured grayness.

There was a soft patting sound, growing louder, steadily louder, a shadow taking substance as he turned the Berettas toward it and was about to fire.

“Hrothgar,” Michael whispered, dropping back, the dog’s massive front paws against his chest.

And then Michael Rourke heard his own name called. “Michael.”

It was Bjorn Rolvaag. Michael Rourke quickened his pace as he eased the pressure of his fingers against the triggers of the Beretta 92Fs.

John Rourke watched from the missile deck of the Arkhangelsk. The sun was rising. The black German helicopter gunship flew toward it. He chewed on the end of the unlit cigar. “Don’t worry, Doctor Rourke. That island he’s going to has never been used by us and never been used by them. It’s volcanic, unstable. It’s perfect,” Darkwood smiled, clapping John Rourke on the shoulder.

Rourke just looked back toward the silhouette of the departing gunship, saying nothing at all. It was the only practical alternative, of course, but that didn’t mean he liked sending Paul off with the gunship, despite the fact Paul had taken so quickly to learning how to fly it. There was a difference between some technical skills and the experience bred out of time at the controls.

Darkwood kept talking. “Those Marines I sent with him will get the thing camouflaged and the John Wayne’s in the immediate vicinity right now and will put a boat ashore to bring them in. In just a few hours, Mr. Rubenstein will be safely at Mid-Wake, reunited with your daughter. It was the only option besides scuttling the gunship.”

John Rourke knew that, asking Darkwood, “Would you feel exactly relaxed letting your best friend pilot a submarine in enemy territory if he had very little experience at the controls?”

“Not really, Doctor. But you’re needed down below. And after that experience with the missiles, there’s really very little time to lose, is there?”

John Rourke only nodded, the silhouette almost gone. Paul and two Marines with it.

“All right. Let’s go below.” Darkwood was right, of course. There was no time to lose, but awareness of that fact didn’t make it easier to accept.

Michael Rourke ducked his head as he followed Bjorn Rolvaag through the irregularly cut doorway which opened inward from the concrete block wall, the dog already lost ahead of them in the darkness. Rolvaag extended a hand to Michael’s chest. Michael stopped moving, heard the scraping sound as Rolvaag closed the door behind them. They were in total darkness, and the air smelled stale, unused.

Michael flicked on his flashlight at the same moment Rolvaag turned on his.

Michael’s eyes squinted against the light, but he swept the light across the room, seeing a reflection in Hrothgar’s eyes, and then the far wall. Glass, covered with dust, the light glaring back at him.

Rolvaag walked toward it, smudging his hand over the glass. Michael pushed the flashlight closer to it. Behind the glass were weapons. He recognized some few of them as guns he had used, most only as things seen in Jane’s Infantry Weapons or Small Arms of the World, copies of both these standard references part of the library at the Retreat.

Was this what Bjorn Rolvaag had come for?

He shone the flashlight toward the Icelandic’s face, studying Rolvaag’s eyes. Suddenly, there was a flash of amusement there. Rolvaag looked toward the case—as

sault rifles, submachineguns, sniper rifles—and the case running for some twenty feet in both directions along the wall. Rolvaag only started to laugh, then shook his head.

Rolvaag’s flashlight swept away from the case and toward the opposite wall.

There was a tunnel. Michael Rourke could not see where it led.

Abandoning the case of weapons as though it were valueless—Rolvaag even eschewed the use of a sword, his staff his weapon—the Icelandic policeman signaled for Michael to follow him into the tunnel.

Michael followed. Hrothgar bounded ahead into the darkness, then back again into the shaft of the flashlight.

“I have to do this, Daddy.”

That was all she said, then kissed him and ran off. He’d told her about Paul, that Paul would be joining them shortly, as soon as the helicopter gunship was hidden. About her mother, that her mother was safe with Colonel Mann, but on the way to Eden Base in American Georgia. That Michael and Michael’s mistress, Maria Leuden, should be with them, too, unless Michael got sidetracked, a frequent propensity Michael had, but always for a good cause.

Annie told him Otto Hammerschmidt had a good prognosis. Then she said to him, “Natalia’s either going to stay like she is forever, most of the time like a, a—a vegetable, all right? Or she’s going to go violent again and kill somebody else or herself. There aren’t any other options left.”

“You could—” He’d started to say that she could suffer permanent psychological damage herself.

But then Annie said what she said and she ran off.

He could still feel Annie’s kiss on his cheek. He watched her on the ridiculous high heels, his baby, a woman, and a very brave one, and just about as likely to listen to him and change her mind as the sun was likely to rise in the north and set in the south.

He had held the cigar in his hand and now he put it back between his teeth.

He looked at Jason Darkwood. “Is that meeting ready to begin?”

“Yes, Doctor. And look. I’ll get Doctor Barrow over there. I understand from Sebastian that your daughter and Margaret Barrow got to be good friends in the short time they spent aboard the Reagan. She’ll look after your daughter.”

John Rourke only nodded, then took the Zippo from his pocket and lit the cigar… .

“Good to see you again, Doctor.” “Mr. President.”

Jacob Fellows gestured around the table. “You know Admiral Rahn and General Gonzalez.” “We’ve met.”

The President of what was left of the United States gestured toward one of the chairs at the tactfully round conference table. If having his back toward the window signified he sat at the head of the table, then Jacob Fellows did so. Admiral Rahn and Marine Corps Commandant General Gonzalez flanked President Fellows at right and left, respectively. And John Rourke was mildly surprised to see Jason Darkwood, T.J. Sebastian and Sam Aldridge remaining, surprised but pleasantly so.