Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (12 page)

From the opposite side of the corridor, there was a tremendous crash, the floor beneath Rourke’s feet vibrating with it.

One of the Nazis, shot through several times it appeared and close to death, reached up from the floor near Rourke’s feet.

John Rourke put a burst from the rifle into the man’s head.

A cloud of plaster dust belched across the corridor and through the doors into the ballroom, dense as heavy fog. John Rourke held his breath against it, the fighting here all but done.

He ran into the corridor, chunks of the ceiling collapsing around him.

He could hear Wolfgang Mann’s voice shouting over the din, saying, “Kleinermann, assist in subduing the enemy

personnel in the ballroom. The rest of you, to the banquet hall!”

Men were everywhere around Rourke now as he coughed and choked, at last penetrating the cloud of dust inside the banquet hall. Chunks of the ceiling, enormous in size, lay everywhere. All about him were the moans of the injured and dying.

Rourke handed off his rifle.

His skills as a doctor were needed now more than anything else.

Sarah assisted one of the German doctors at an aid station set up in the far end of the ballroom, as distant as possible from the still-unstable ceiling of the banquet hall and the almost as badly damaged corridor. Natalia, Annie, and Maria helped at another aid station at the far end of the corridor, where there was no evidence of, immediate structural damage. Michael, his left arm stiff at his side, the sleeve of his jacket cut away and a blood-stained bandage over his bicep, joined Rourke and Paul Rubenstein.

John Rourke, in his shirtsleeves now, the partially loaded Beretta in his trouser band beside the fully emptied Smith & Wesson revolver, crossed into the corridor once more. Flanked by his son and his friend, he clambered over the debris and toward the center of the banquet hall, where people were still buried alive.

Darkwood called to them from the still-thick clouds of plaster dust, more falling by the second. “John! I’ve got one that’s alive!”

Rourke spat dust from his mouth, calling back into the corridor, Tell Colonel Mann we need those gas masks quickly.”

As they reached Darkwood, kneeling atop a pile of debris, Sam Aldridge appeared from inside the mound, his black hair washed grey with dust, his uniform torn. And Aldridge was coughing badly. “Got a woman down there, Doctor … she’s …” Aldridge began coughing so badly he could not speak.

Rourke looked at Darkwood, who was coughing, too. “Jason, you get Sam out of here, and yourself, too. Get some fresh air and stay out of here until we’ve got masks. Make sure they’re all checked for filters. Now, get outa

here.”

Darkwood nodded, coughed, tried to speak. He hauled Sam Aldridge’s right arm across his shoulders and started helping the black marine captain down the mound of debris toward the doors.

“Let me go,” Paul volunteered. Tm smaller.”

Rourke looked at his friend and nodded. Logic was logic.

Paul handed Michael his High Power and dropped to his knees, then started into the hole, shouting downward, “I’m coming to help you out of there, ma’am.”

John Rourke looked around them as his friend disappeared down inside the hole. The speakers’ table where they had all sat less than fifteen minutes ago was all but buried, the dais on which it had been set collapsed. The podium was partially buried and lay on the floor on its side. As far as could be told in these first moments after the disaster, no one that he knew more than casually was unaccounted for, but that could change at any moment.

Paul shouted up. “John?”

Rourke leaned over the hole, Michael beside him. It was darker inside than he’d expected and he had no flashlight. “What is it? How is she?”

“She might have a broken back; I’m not sure.”

“Fm coming down.” Rourke handed Michael the Beretta, “Here, take this, and this, too,” he said, passing his son the little revolver as well. Rourke’s bowtie was already undone, and he ripped it from beneath his collar now. His hands, which were only partially healed, were already cracking and bleeding in spots from the abrasive action of the plaster. He placed one hand on either side of the hole and started to let himself down.

The hole’s interior diameter was tight, almost too tight for his shoulders. He reached the bottom in a second or so, going into a crouch. He could barely see and the plaster dust was chokingly thick. Ahead of him, he could hear Paul coughing. He started on hands and knees toward the sound. To have fired the Zippo lighter in his trouser pocket for illumination could have been suicidal. With the heavy concentration of dust, he had no reason to suspect it would not be combustible. “John!”

In a moment Rourke was on his knees, stooped over beside Paul Rubenstein. In the poor fight Rourke could make out the woman’s gross features, but nothing in detail. And, he reminded himself, he had better vision in poor light than most people, the concurrent upside to his always inordinate light sensitivity.

Rourke coughed, nearly choking as he bent over the woman, his hands moving along her body. As he stopped coughing enough to speak, he asked, “Paul, what made you think—” And then John Rourke answered his own question. The woman’s body was twisted at the waist at an unnatural angle. She was breathing, but heavily. His hand traveled down her left leg and he pinched it. The woman groaned. There was feeling. With greater difficulty, he got his hands beneath her, feeling along her spine. “It’s not broken. But she does have broken ribs, and likely there’s a fracture in one or both legs the way they’re twisted.” Rourke coughed again; Paul was also choking. “You get out of here. Get the Germans to haul in some of that heavy equipment they’re promising.”

“They were saying they weren’t certain the floor would take it.” Paul began another coughing spasm.

Rourke held back the cough he felt rising in his throat. “Get them to evacuate anything below us in this building, get a move on with any of the other more easily moved casualties. Well need that guest list checked and verified for attendance. Once we’ve got a count, then bring in the equipment. In the meantime, Fil need oxygen down here for her and a gas mask for myself. Find one of the other doctors and get him down here ready for a glucose I.V. to keep her going until we get her out of here.”

“All right … I’ll…” Paul was seized by a fit of coughing again.

“I know; youll be back quickly.”

“Right!” Paul coughed, squeezed past him, and was

gone.

Rourke found the woman’s hand and held it, speaking to her softly in German between coughing spasms. She was coughing. Rourke could do nothing for her. He had his A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome back, so if he’d had something to use as a tube, he could have eased the woman’s breathing with a tracheostomy if that were necessary, but he couldn’t even do that.

He kept holding her hand, telling her that everything would be all right soon, that she’d suffered no permanent damage—he hoped—and no disfigurement, something he’d learned to do with female patients back in his emergency room days just out of school, which was a vital reassurance.

And he waited.

One of the Nazis was under the doctor’s knife now. Natalia watched the German doctor’s eyes over the rims of his eyeglasses. “The bastard has a bullet so close to his heart … I should not try this.”

Natalia looked at him. “If you wait, he will die.”

“If I try to get that bullet out, he could die, too.”

“That’s why they call you a physician. What can I do to help?”

The young doctor looked at her.

“Damn you, Fraulein,” he whispered, then began to roll up his sleeves.

Natalia smiled as a thought crossed her mind. In her ruined evening gown, she had no sleeves to roll… .

“Close him, nurse.”

She hadn’t been addressed by that tide for five centuries. Sarah Rourke looked at the doctor whom she assisted. He was an older man, appearing to be past retirement age, but his hands had been steady when he removed the bullet from the young Chinese officer’s neck. He was already turning to the next patient, too, so she had no choice.

She began closing the wound.

“You were very good, Frau Rourke,” the old man called to her, then turned to his new patient.

Sarah Rourke’s back was killing her from standing, even though she’d kicked off her already-low-heeled shoes. She shook her head, keeping at the suturing… .

John Rourke emerged from the hole, Michael helping

him out. Through the mask, Michael’s voice sounded odd, hollow. “You all right, Dad?”

John Rourke nodded. His back ached from being bent over for so long and, despite the mask, he still coughed, an unnerving enough experience in itself inside the gas mask.

The blocks and tackle were already nearly set. From inside the hole, the young German doctor who had replaced him a few moments ago shouted, “I am staying down here with her while the hole is opened. I cannot leave her alone.”

John Rourke looked into the darkness below and thought, “Good man.”

It was four in the morning New Germany time and he was exhausted, but the canned air of the city would not suffice for him now.

In his plaster-coated black trousers and dirt-stained white shirt, his jacket hooked over his shoulder and one of the captured Berettas in his waistband, John Rourke left the hospital where he had been working nearly nonstop for the last six hours. He had saved some fives but been unable to save others. Such was the physician’s perennial lament, and he wondered as he walked whether or not that, just as much as other reasons, had been why he’d left medicine in the first place.

He wanted to smoke a cigar, wanted to very much. But to smoke would have been counterproductive, since the purpose of his walk was to get fresh air. Military personnel were everywhere despite the hour, reserve units called up by Wolfgang Mann. And latest word had it that calling up the reserves was not at all unwarranted, nor was it premature. The Soviet submarine fleet was no longer merely on station but was maneuvering off the coast. Soviet presence in the Falkland Islands, a staging area used by the Soviet Forces for the past several weeks, was increasing by the hour.

Rourke neared the main entrance, the enormous blast doors closed and secured. He approached the young first lieutenant who had the guard. The man saluted, “Herr Doctor General!”

“At ease. Fd just like to use the litde access door over there and go outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“But, Herr Doctor General! It would be very dangerous to do and—”

“Lieutenant, isn’t there a considerable presence of the

forces of New Germany on the other side of those doors? Armor, infantry, even Long Range Mountain Patrol units?”

“Yes, Herr Doctor General, but—”

“Then how could I be any safer? Open the door, and please listen when I knock to return. Should we have a code knock?”

“I will—I will be able to see you, Herr Doctor General, on the video monitoring system.” “See, Fil be safe as church.” “As-“

“As church.Church, synagogue, temple, mosque … all means to the same end.”

“To the same end, Herr Doctor General?”

“Yes. Ill pass through that access doorway now, please.”

“Yes, Herr Doctor General!” And the young man saluted.

Rourke nodded.

He followed the man toward the doorway, and the young officer directed his subordinates—of which there were many—to open the door so the Herr Doctor General could pass. Rourke was beginning to worry that this tide, ungainly and embarrassing as it was, might stick.

Then, at last, as he stepped over the flange and into the night, he could breathe proper air again. As he filled his lungs with it, he experienced an almost giddy sensation. It was cool, impossibly fresh and, because of the jungle vegetation so near, heady by comparison.

And he realized that he had not been so starved for real air, he would likely have sniffed synth-fuel residue, because outside the blast doors that protected the interior, German armor and other vehicles were everywhere.

The German armor was very good, highly mobile, fast, but so vasdy smaller than the Soviet armor that Rourke doubted the German war machines would have much of a chance against their Soviet counterparts.

The batde which, for some time, John Rourke had considered inevitable, was nearly at hand.

As a boy, because it was there and deserved to be experienced, he had read the Bible in the King James Version. He recalled now, “And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”

Enough fresh air consumed, he decided he could have that cigar now. He removed one from an interior breast pocket of his coat, the tip already excised as was his custom. He lit the cigar in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo, inhaled the smoke slowly into his lungs, flicked the lighter’s cowling closed, then dropped it into his pocket.

As he exhaled, he began to walk, officers passing him, saluting him, Rourke nodding in return. He’d never been a military man and would not affect that he had.

At any moment, the sky would rain death.

He knew that.

And, so, he enjoyed the moment of quiet and peace like that exquisitely rare and wonderful thing that it was. There might never be another.

The air raid sirens did not waken him as much as Sarah’s movement in bed beside him. “John?”

He sat bolt upright, his right arm around her, his left hand pressed against her abdomen. He kissed her lighdy, then hard on the mouth.

The telephone beside the bed rang.

He let it ring, holding her.

Finally, Sarah reached for it. “Yes, Wolf. He’s here.”

Rourke squinted as Sarah turned on the light and the grey darkness dissolved into a yellow wash. He was very tired. “Colonel?”

Mann sounded as tired as Rourke felt. Rourke looked at the Rolex Submariner on his wrist. He’d gotten to bed at five. It was almost, but not quite, two hours later than that. “The Soviet Fleet off our coast has ceased movement. Bombardment seems imminent.”