Survivalist - 22 - Brutal Conquest (15 page)

Michael Rourke could barely hear the low frequency response coming back through Darkwood’s radio, but he didn’t care. He grabbed up the shotgun-sized grenade launcher he’d been carrying ever since they got into the car to leave Eden—he’d had no intention of being taken alive—and started walking onto the field. Aboard the aircraft, he told himself, he could sleep… .

There was clear evidence of a fight. That was certain.

Croenberg said, “Herr Doctor, I tried my best. But the young Rourke, I am afraid, was able to overpower me. One of the main floor guards was found in the alley beside our building. He was given an injection and has not yet been revived by our doctors. But it is safe to assume young Rourke escaped. And I am also afraid” Croenberg continued, “that our beloved Martin has fallen into enemy hands.”

Deitrich Zimmer looked into Croenberg’s eyes. He could not read them, but then Croenberg was an accomplished man, and lying might be one of his accomplishments. …

John Rourke swung down out of the miserable excuse for a saddle, his tailbone hurting him.

He drew both Scoremasters from his belt.

The door to the farmhouse opened.

Her grey eyes scowling, Hilda stepped out so rapidly that John Rourke nearly shot her to death.

“I understand that you have Martin.” Her German accent was showing a litde. “I also have just been notified that the Americans are sending out a group of Interceptors to pick you up and then find the rest of your party. It is a pity, really, because I wanted to see Martin.”

John Rourke didn’t put away his guns, and wouldn’t until he saw the inside of the house and made certain everything was as it should be. But he smiled as he told Hilda, “If you’ve seen my face, you’ve seen Martin Zimmer’s face. Got anything hot I can consume after I take care of the horses?”

She flew into the sun.

The first time she’d been up at the controls of an aircraft—despite the fact she had a senior pilot instructor with her—the beauty of what she saw struck her. It hadn’t left her in all the years since.

Aviation was lost to the United States while she survived only beneath the Pacific at Mid-Wake. One of the first —if not the first—citizens of Mid-Wake to be aboard an aircraft in five centuries was the heroic Captain Jason Darkwood, later Admiral of the Fleet. Mid-Wake’s aviation program began in earnest, with the aid of New Germany, in the decade immediately following the conclusion of the war.

Almost immediately after the Underground City in the Urals was taken by Dr. Rourke and the Allied armies, and Jason Darkwood led his famous raid against the Soviet Undersea Complex, the people of Mid-Wake began returning to the surface.

Some made what later proved to be a colossal error, going to what had been the United States and was now Eden. Almost from the beginning, Eden had became the antithesis of its name, not a paradise but a boot camp for hell instead.

But other citizens of Mid-Wake reestablished an American presence in the Hawaiian Islands. The islands had changed considerably during the five centuries they were uninhabited. With the global climate change, temperatures ranged from below freezing in the winter to the mid to upper eighties on the Fahrenheit scale during high summer. Topography had changed as well. Hawaii’s several volcanoes had been particularly active during those five hundred years, and sea levels rose and fell and rose again. No one who had known the islands during the Twentieth Century would have recognized them now. They were still as close to paradise on earth as man could attain, but of a different sort … less fragile. Orchids still grew, but the snow in the high mountains was so reliably deep that skiing had become one of the islands’ favorite pastimes.

In the one hundred twenty-five years since the end of the war, the United States had once again become a surface power and was now at parity with New Germany in air power. And, of course, the United States had the greatest navy in the world.

New Germany possessed a token navy at best but had the second largest-standing army, second only to Eden. Australia had a modesdy sized but well-respected air force and navy. Eden’s navy was small but wonderfully well equipped.

But to think that for centuries no Americans had flown was almost incomprehensible to her. To Emma Shaw, flying was as much a part of life as breathing. And the Interceptor she flew was the finest aircraft of its type in the world.

The Interceptor was based on the concept behind the much-revered prewar SR-71, an aircraft capable of high altitude flight and ultra high speed, which was nonetheless enormously handleable. Archaeologists kept finding things all over the world, relics from Before The Night Of The War. If, somehow, an archeological team ever dog up an SR-71, she’d almost kill to fly it.

But the Interceptor was better. It could do Mach 7 if it had to yet had the ability to convert to V-stol operation, so it could land on a postage stamp and take off from the roof of a building. The Interceptor had the capacity to carry twelve persons plus a two-man crew (or equivalent cargo weight) and no one quite knew just how high it would fly if pushed. Someday she wanted to do that. Its variable swept-wing-forward leading canard design was the ultimate best. To fly a plane in combat, she knew, it was imperative to think of that aircraft as the best there was. But she truly believed it.

There was considerable talk of a space program as a cooperative effort between members of the Trans-Global Alliance, but nothing would happen with that until the crisis with Eden was resolved.

And Emma grew ever more convinced that would only be resolved with a war.

Unlike the SR-71, the Interceptor was a battle plane. The SR-71, according to what she had read, did not carry armament because it outflew its attackers, but missiles, flew much faster these days. And, aside from missiles on the weapons pods, there were forward and aft firing electric mini-guns.

Emma looked to the right and left, her wingmen just where they should be. The volunteers to fly the three aircraft in and extract the Rourke party were just whom she thought they would be—Marie Hayes and Wally Theodore. Wally was out of the Academy only two years but was naturally gifted as a flyer.

Marie was tops as well.

Between the three aircraft, since none had a copilot/ navigator aboard, they could carry mirty-nine passengers and gear. According to the Intell tapes she’d viewed and the printouts she’d seen, there were twenty-four female prisoners rescued from the hands of the Land Pirates, John Rourke, his daughter and her husband, Major Tiemerovna, and an unnamed male prisoner.

She wondered if the man were the leader of the Land Pirates or perhaps one of the Nazi advisors to the Eden Forces. Whoever it was, taking any sort of Eden official prisoner was a political hot potato.

And what was the second half of her mission, once she got in, made the pickup, and got out?

Maybe taking Dr. Rourke to Hawaii or Mid-Wake to meet with Admiral Hayes?

Emma Shaw dwelt on the idea of John Rourke.

Meeting him was like meeting … she didn’t know whom, but perhaps George Washington was the closest. He was a living legend, homage to John Rourke and the common language of English, all that the United States and Eden had in common these days.

John Rourke’s face was on both nations’ currency, postage, in every history textbook.

Sometimes, being a woman was a pain. Male officers didn’t have to worry about panty hose to go with dress uniforms, artfully arranging hair so it looked in regs, things like that. Yet sometimes, when it came to meeting a man like Dr. General John Thomas Rourke, being a woman was a pure delight.

He had to be the sexiest man in human history, or at least she hoped so, because otherwise she’d be terribly disappointed… .

Michael Rourke slept through the plane ride, consumed a hot meal while he was debriefed by Allied Intelligence personnel in New Caracas, then had his wounds re-dressed, showered, and changed into German Batde Dress Utilities.

Ten minutes later, a selection of weapons flown up

from New Germany was shown to him. Knowing his fondness for what he and the rest of The Family individually and collectively considered “real guns,” these were reproductions of classic Twentieth Century small arms manufactured in Hawaii by Lancer Corporation.

He’d seen Lancer repros before going to Eden and was impressed, the exactness of detail, right down to metallurgy, markings, and of course, all functional characteristics beyond reproduction more like forgery of the highest order. Somewhere on each piece, artfully hidden, was the Lancer name and corporate logo, a knight on horseback carrying a lance. This was out of necessity.

Archaeologists were constandy uncovering relics from the pre-war civilization, and the few antique arms recovered fetched enormous prices in the collector market. To prevent the Lancer guns from being represented as the original articles, they bore their microscopic markings.

Michael Rourke’s own weapons, among those his two Beretta pistols, were in the custody of his family and he was certain he would have them back as soon as he and The Family were reunited. A German ordinance officer had offered him what he later found out was a year’s salary for just one of the Beretta 92Fs, but he refused.

From among the Lancer reproductions, he selected a gun with which he had always been fascinated. It was ultimately practical for his use. The gun was an identical duplicate of the onetime widely available and subsequently banned-for-importation 9mm Parabellum Uzi carbine. In his father’s firearms reference library and videos, he’d seen the Uzi carbine as rugged, durable, and utilitarian, features he found irresistible.

Now he had one, a duplicate of the “Type B,” the last model imported in the declining years of the Twentieth

Century before misguided do-gooder lawmakers labeled various inanimate objects as evil and proscribed their importation.

There were submachine guns available to him, but although selective fire weapons were useful at times, he liked the longer barrel of the semi-automatic carbine. With a variety of magazines, ranging from the short twenty-rounders to thirty-two rounds in length, he felt he was adequately armed for the trip to Hawaii should unforeseen trouble arise.

Lancer also made identical duplicate ammunition, based on the Federal Cartridge ammunition his family had always used. He laid up a supply of this as well, having the bulk of the 115-grain jacketed hollow points and most of the magazines sent to the aircraft he would soon be boarding, keeping one primary magazine and two spares with him. An issue German bayonet would do until he had his own knife back.

Before boarding the aircraft, he met again with the agents from Allied Intelligence who had briefed him, a man in his fifties with an open, smiling face and a woman in her thirties. She didn’t seem to know how to smile properly but was otherwise pleasant enough, although rather plain.

New Caracas was principally a German Air Base, with a small town grown up around it. They met in one of the pilot ready rooms.

The woman closed the door.

Michael sat down, his legs still paining him a litde and the wound in his side bothering him as well. But he was mainly tired.

The woman said, “Herr Rourke, I must commend you for the intelligence coup you have achieved. The data concerning the invasion of Hawaii and the attack on Pearl Harbor seems to check out. But we have no

indication how soon the attack is to be launched. Can you remember nothing else?”

“There was nothing else. When my sister and I were growing up in The Retreat, I used to play memory games with myself. I’ve always been able to memorize things rather easily. If there were any other data, I would have remembered it and told you when I was debriefed.”

The smiling-faced man asked, “Then what is your impression? Just the mood of the briefing you were privy to. What do you think their timetable might be? If you had to guess, I mean.”

“Does this mean I have to guess?” Michael asked in return, smiling.

The woman paced the room, hands thrust into the pockets of her slacks. “Something subliminal, Herr Rourke, might seem like mere supposition to you but might be a starting point for us to utilize while we attempt to judge what their timetable might be.”

Michael considered that, seeing no harm in giving a guess, but seeing little potential good in it, either. “Fine,” he said at last, mentally shrugging. “And this is based on nothing but my gut level reaction, all right?”

“That is what we want, Herr Rourke,” the smiling man said, nodding cheerfully.

“I’d say within two weeks at the most, but more likely a week.”

“Why?” The woman stopped pacing and stared at him abruptly.

“It was—” He thought about it and really didn’t know why. At last he said, “Just vibes.”

“Vibes, Herr Rourke?” She looked as if she did not understand his use of the word, and he realized she probably didn’t.

“Just a feeling, okay?”

“A feeling. Good!” She nodded her head and resumed her pacing of the room, between him and the door.

“If you should remember anything else,” the man said, “well, of course—” And he smiled good-naturedly.

“Of course,” Michael told him.

The woman opened the door.

Michael Rourke guessed that meant it was time to leave. But he didn’t stand up yet. There was a question he wanted answered. “What about my people?”

The woman replied. “Your memory is better than mine. I was so concerned with asking you questions that I forgot to tell you something.” She looked at her wrist and the timepiece there, rather large for a woman now that Michael noticed it. “In approximately eight minutes, three United States Interceptor long-range fighter transports should be making first contact with the Allied agents whom you encountered in the Wildlands. After that, it is a matter of searching the area in which your family was operating. There are no reports that the Interceptors were picked up on Eden defense systems.”

That sounded good, Michael thought. On impulse, he asked the woman, “Do you know the name of the officer commanding the mission? I mean, I don’t know anybody at Mid-Wake or in Hawaii, but I’m just kind of curious.”