Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (17 page)

But he had it.

Spiraling.

Where was the wall?

Now was a good time to think about that, he told himself.

Grasping the charge as tighdy as he could, John Rourke pushed it away from his body, forcing his eyes to focus in the almost total blackness surrounding him. Was that a crack or a shadow?

It was gone.

He forced himself to watch more carefully. How many seconds remained?

He had no idea.

He laughed. “Do or die!”

A crack, nice and wide.

John Rourke punched the charge into the crack, his right hand nearly torn away, part of the outer layer of the glove ripped away, he guessed.

How many seconds?

Together, both arms wrapped around the body of the man, they spun downward, deeper and deeper.

And behind John Rourke, there was a roar.

And the roar grew and grew, Rourke’s body and the body of the German slamming against the wall of the abyss. They stopped. Nausea swept over him.

The current.

“…the flow.”

A wall of rock tumbled toward them, blocking the flow of the current as it was sidetracked around. But John Rourke knew on the most primitive level of intelligence that if he stayed where he was, the rock would crush him, and if it did not, then the current would grab them again.

Rourke held the German in his left arm and reached out with his right, praying that his wings still functioned. He flung himself and the German commando away from the wall and into the black water beyond, tons of rock crashing around them, the already nearly nonexistent light further obscured as loose dirt and debris dislodged by the avalanche formed a cloud around them. A current eddied across the void, Rourke twisting his body to escape it, dragging the German with him.

The water churned around them.

Rourke held the German commando to him.

And as the last of the rocks tumbled away into the deeper reaches of the abyss, Rourke hovered there in the water with the German still in his arms.

And there was nothing but silence and darkness.

Annie had fallen quiet, and Sarah assumed the sedative had taken its full effect.

Maria Leuden held Annie’s hand as she knelt beside her.

The bombardment continued, Natalia’s hair and the shoulders of her black jumpsuit streaked grey with dust. Sarah shook her own hair carefully, dust falling from it onto her BDU blouse and black pants. Natalia had stopped crying now, and she knelt back on her heels and began to speak calmly. “If he dies, even if we win, I cannot help but feel all of this was for nothing.”

“No. Don’t say that. Look at you.”

Natalia almost laughed. “I am covered with dust. I’m trapped where my only real skills are valueless. Look at me, indeed.”

“No,” Sarah insisted. “Look at who you were and who you are, what you’ve survived and triumphed over. You were on the wrong side, but instead of a devil, you were only a slighdy tarnished angel. And John helped you to realize that. You even went through a nervous breakdown and survived that … triumphed. You’re a better person today than you ever were.”

Natalia did smile this time. “Isn’t it odd, you and I being friends?”

Sarah looked down at her abdomen, smiling. “Yes. We both love the same man. I guess that gives us a lot in common. And Fm glad you’re my friend. And despite things, I think we always would have remained friends.”

“Fil stay with you and the others until your baby’s come, if you like. You’re pretty good at protecting yourself, but for a while you might need a protector.”

“A friend,” Sarah corrected. “And Fil need a friend always.” “Look!”

It was Maria who spoke and Sarah turned toward the girl, who was staring at Annie. There was a look of peacefulness on the face of her daughter, which Sarah Rourke had not seen before.

“Do you think—” Natalia began, her voice catching.

“Yes. Maybe. He’s hard to kill, the man we love.” And Sarah Rourke took Natalia’s right hand and squeezed it tighdy… .

Jason Darkwood hovered by the rail of the Island Classer’s missile deck, vision intensification off but the missile hatches close enough that he could see them clearly at the depth. The filtered sunlight overhead and the face of his wristwatch agreed. Mid-morning now, nearly as bright as it would get at the depth. Mid-Wake Naval Intelligence knew very litde about the Island Class submarines’ missile launching procedures, but Sebastian, first officer of the Reagan, was one of the two smartest men Jason Darkwood knew. John Rourke, likely dead now, was the second. And Sebastian had calculated a computer program on the launch sequence system of the Soviet Island Classers’ missiles. As Darkwood surveyed the missile deck now, matching closed by contrail-blackened hatch areas, Sebastian’s program seemed to be holding.

“It is relatively simple, Jason, to a point. Admiral Severinski’s chief of staff, as we well know, is a devotee of chess and piano, both devotions much to his credit, may I add. In chess, of course, there are thirty-two pieces, sixteen major and sixteen pawns.”

“Tes, Sebastian, thirty-two pieces. So what?”

There are forty missile tubes, Jason.” And Sebastian had cocked his eyebrows, Darkwood getting the distinct impression that his tall, lean, muscular, and extraordinarily intelligent black first officer expected him—Jason Darkwood—to draw some marvelous conclusion from the relationship between the numbers thirty-two and forty. Darkwood took a stab at it. “The missile deck incorporates one-fifth more

tubes than the number of men on the chessboard.”

“Actually, the chessboard incorporates four fifths of the number of missile tubes, Jason, but indeed, fifths are the key.”

“Fifths? You mean, like fifths of whiskey?

Sebastian had smiled, not indulgendy (thank God), but as if sharing Darkwood’s joke, which hadn’t been intended as a joke at all. “Yes … well, the Soviet Fleet Grade officers have been known to imbibe a bit, I suppose, although vodka is their usual preference. But I refer, of course, to the interval of five diatonic degrees, or the tones of the standard major and minor scale to the exclusion of the chromatics. So, if the forty missile tubes were viewed as forty keys on the piano, where, of course, there would normally be eighty-eight, then we proceed from the point of origin by whole steps. Therefore, whichever missile tube were fired first would serve as the starting note, but would, of necessity, be a whole step. Further, assuming the progression would begin to approximate Middle C, which would most closely approximate the number of tubes as opposed to the number of keys remaining on the piano, then the missiles would fire in sequence of the sixth, the thirteenth, the eighteenth, and so on. Once that progression is exhausted, I confess to being totally befuddled. The program within the computer of the Roy Rogers”—the name given the captured Island Classer Sebastian currendy commanded—“is so deeply encoded as to be currendy indecipherable. So, dependent on whether the reference point were fore or aft, the sequence would involve firing the sixth, then the thirteenth, then the eighteenth tube, moving on to the twenty-fifth and then the thirtieth,
etc.
Once the firing possibilities were exhausted, unless the program were devised by someone who wished his logic to be almost diabolically obtuse, one might readily assume that the progression would be begun again, run until the battery were fully exhausted, but this latter is, I’m afraid, mere supposition, Jason.”

“Oh.”

Jason Darkwood eyed what should, following Sebastian’s mathematical progression, be the next tube fired. If it fired as he approached, he was dead. If, after he accomplished his bit of sabotage, the tube were still fired, they’d all be dead, because the submarine itself would explode. If a second tube were fired, simultaneously with the first, the result might be either his death alone or the destruction of the submarine, hence the death of all of them.

“Fraught with peril,” Jason Darkwood muttered into his helmet.

And he swam forward, with the precisely turned crowbar-shaped rod in his right fist.

He crossed over the missile deck, careful lest a flipper inadvertendy touch against its surface, his eyes riveted to the next tube Sebastian’s reasoning suggested would fire. There was no movement of the hatch, nothing but Sebastian’s second-guessing the Soviet computer programmer to make Darkwood select this very hatch.

And, at last, he hovered over it. Carefully, he let himself down over the hatch, hoping the hatch lid was not sensitized, hoping, too, that video observation would not detect his presence.

He bent over the hatch and inserted the rod between the double hinges, effectively—he hoped—locking the hatch in the closed position.

As his hands moved away from the rod, the hatch moved, started upward, Darkwood swimming away, using wings, flippers, and hands. As he glanced back, the tube hatch had reached a height of approximately two inches off level from the deck. And it raised no farther. Darkwood quickened his pace, because the first reaction of the launch crew would be to get a visual fix on the nature of the problem.

And, with any luck at all, once it was realized the hatch was jammed, a frogman team would be dispatched to manually open it.

And they would come through the main diver lock near which his attack force waited—with any luck.

John Rourke pushed the body of the German commando into a natural cavelike niche in the wall of the abyss. There was finally time now to check the man, to see if he were alive or dead.

Free from the overwhelmingly powerful current that had driven them downward, John Rourke realized there was no time for any other consideration but to escape the current before it could reclaim them. The chances of two such powerful currents—essentially underwater rivers—being so terribly close to one another within the walls of the abyss into which they’d been pulled were exceedingly remote. Yet, they would never escape this current or a similar one if captured again, so any chance was too great a risk.

He judged they had traveled upward for more than, a hundred feet before finding the litde cave. Inside it now, Rourke first examined the German to determine whether or not the man still lived, which, indeed, he did.

Exhaustion and relief tempted John Rourke to lean back against the cave wall and rest, but because the German was alive now didn’t mean the man would survive. Carefully, Rourke began the difficult task of examining the unconscious but regularly breathing German commando through the dry suit. He found evidence to suggest that the man had suffered several cracked ribs, but none of them seemed broken; and, as best Rourke could ascertain under the circumstances, neither lung seemed punctured. His initial examination for obvious head or back or neck injuries complete, Rourke began to examine the man in greater detail. His eyes were closed, and there was no way to check pupillary reaction without compromising the protection of the dry suit and killing the man. His breathing was still regular, but in the beam of

Rourke’s flashlight the man’s color seemed pale, even for a blond-haired German.

Shock, obviously, but the suit would aid in keeping the man supplied with breathable air and warm at the same time; and, evidendy, Rourke’s own manipulation of the body while holding on to the man had aided in keeping him respirating.

The important thing was to get the man to the surface, where proper medical treatment could be administered—to the surface or into a submarine.

John Rourke felt a smile cross his lips.

He worked the chest pack, punching up coordinates and trying to determine his position in relationship to the Soviet Island Classers above.

As best he could tell, he was a mile away from the original Island Classer and another hundred feet below it. How far he and the German had traveled while stuck in the current was impossible to determine, because his heads-up readout indicated more than seven miles traversed. It seemed impossible to consider that the current had wound so intricately within the abyss.

In any event, Rourke decided, the best option was to go straight up, reassess his position, then try to rejoin Darkwood and the rest of the attack force. By now, they might well have penetrated the Soviet vessel. But if they had, why were there missiles still firing?

Like distant claps of spring thunder, John Rourke could hear them.

He checked his and the German’s suits, then eased the man into his arms, like an adult would carry a child. Using wings and flippers alone, Rourke launched diem from the lip of the cave mouth and into open water again, starting upward… .

They sheltered in the coral and rocks about fifty yards off the Island Classer’s main diver lock, just aft of the Island Classer’s towering sail.

When the second and diird Island Classer—Darkwood

was reasonably certain there were only two more—had fired their missiles, another storm of violent currents, rock particles, and silt had washed toward them in a fast-moving wave. But they survived, and now, with the hatch opening, missile firings from the other two vessels would logically be halted while friendly divers were in the water.

There was a broad shaft of yellow light, piercingly strong, and the hatch was fully open. The Soviet divers began exiting in order to repair the hatch over the missile tube, security with the rifle versions of Sty-20 shark guns guarding the hatchway.

Jason Darkwood and the men clustered around him on the rock shelf waited.

At least, the bombardment of the German mountain city was temporarily ended.

How much devastation the missile strikes might have wrought was anyone’s guess, and clearly, even given his limited experience in surface warfare, the missile attack was merely the softening up prior to a full-scale assault.

There were literally thousands of Soviet personnel in the field, their armor obviously superior, their air power virtually a match for the German air power from everything Jason Darkwood had heard.

The only significant German advantage—aside from right being on their side, which as an American, Darkwood had always taken as a definite plus—was that the Germans fought from a strongly defended home base, with easily accessed lines of supply.