Survivalist - 22 - Brutal Conquest (9 page)

“How our father must admire you, sister dear. You are tough like a man.”

“Sex doesn’t matter when it comes to believing in what’s right, Martin. What’s right is right. But the man who raised you preferred to raise you on a pack of lies. You wondered if I’d really pull the trigger. I would. And Daddy is proud of me. And so’s my husband.”

“The Jew, yes.”

She didn’t say anything, because if she kept at it and Martin kept at it, too, maybe she really would blow his manhood away.

In many respects, James Darkwood had always considered himself quite a bit like his illustrious ancestor, Jason Darkwood, the fondness for antiques a common trait. On those occasions when he had to carry a gun (to be found as a civilian in Eden in possession of a firearm was punishable, sometimes by death), he favored a cartridge arm to the more modern hand-held energy devices.

There was a firm in Hawaii that still made such firearms; to this day such guns were quite popular among target shooters and purists, in New Germany according to articles he’d read in magazines devoted to guns and shooting.

He reached under his coat to that cartridge arm now. The gun was very nearly as old a design as one could find that still fired a fixed round. Yet, it was one of the best.

“That man exiting the building. It’s either John Rourke or Michael Rourke. And look at the way he’s holding his side, Manfred.”

“The guard is coming after him,” Manfred Kohl responded matter-of-facdy.

James Darkwood nodded, saying nothing. He had the gun out. It was a nearly identical duplicate of the classic Colt/Browning model 1911A1, but with similar design modifications to those incorporated into the Detonics .45s carried by John Rourke. Like those guns and the later

Colts—one of Darkwood’s hobbies was arms history—this gun was in stainless steel.

And Darkwood doubly trusted the firm that made it— Lancer. Lancer was the company that designed and produced the 9mm Caseless Lancer 2418 A2 pistol, which saw considerable use in the closing years of the War. Jason Darkwood had carried one of those into batde. Manfred Kohl had often commented to him, “Only seven rounds plus one in the chamber; you are insane, James. What if you are in a firefight?”

But those seven rounds were 185-grain jacketed hollow points, the bullet nearly twice the weight of more commonly encountered handgun projectiles in those relatively few handguns that even fired projectiles in this day of energy weapons. The loads were duplicates of those Dr. Rourke had used and still did use in his own guns, as originally made by Federal Cartridge during the Twentieth Century.

At all times, Darkwood carried at least two spare magazines for his Lancer .45 ACP. Should a situation arise beyond twenty-two rounds being sufficient, he was in trouble. But he didn’t walk into such a situation by choice. If a firefight should loom, he would take an energy rifle. Going to a gunfight by choice was stupid enough, but going to one by choice armed with only a handgun was insane.

Hawaiian-based Lancer produced various antique firearms from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, all handcrafted, many of them meticulous duplicates of other guns of Dr. Rourke’s together with the appropriate ammunition.

The .45 was in his hand, his thumb poised over the hammer as he started across the street.

Manfred Kohl had his weapon out as well, just under his coat. Darkwood’s gun was beside his right thigh as he cocked the hammer and called out to the guard from half1

way across the street, “Say, excuse me! Hi! I’m a litde lost, I think, and—”

The guard wheeled around toward him, snarling, “Fuck off!”

Whichever Rourke it was walking slighdy bent over and in obvious pain—he looked more like Michael Rourke the closer James Darkwood got—turned around and called to the guard, “Return to your post. That is an order.”

James Darkwood didn’t know what was going on at all, but in his business that was nothing unusual… .

Natalia Tiemerovna reined in her mount.

“Stop your horse, Mary Ann,” Natalia ordered the girl who rode beside her.

The girl’s one admirable quality (under these circum-1 stances, at least) was her quickness to obey, but Natalia felt a growing concern for her as a person. Mary Ann was so used to being abused that she had forgotten, it seemed, how to assert herself as a woman, had she ever known at all.

But now Natalia’s attention was drawn to one thing only—the immediate crisis. Two heavily tracked vehicles were just coming over a low rise. If the occupants had not already picked up two mounted riders and the additional horses, visually or with sensing equipment, they would in an instant. !

Natalia stood in her stirrups. There was a defile to the north. “Come on! Hurry, Mary Ann!” As she dug in her heels, Natalia wrapped her right hand more tighdy in the I lead rope for the four mounts she led. “Bring the horses. Don’t lose them!” Natalia looked back. Mary Ann was | turning her horse toward the defile, the four horses she j led were struggling to be free. Natalia made an instant j decision. j

Natalia drew in the reins of her own animal and, as j

Mary Ann struggled past, shifted the lead for the four horses to her left hand, holding that and the reins of her mount as well. Natalia bit off her right outer glove, then reached for the Bali-Song. She wished she had brought along the sword that had been made for her more than a century ago.

The Bali-Song’s blade flew open in her fingers, her right arm already arcing downward, severing the lead rope to the four animals Mary Ann had in tow.

“Run for it!” Natalia commanded. Mary Ann’s horse vaulted ahead through the snow, toward the defile.

Natalia already had her knife closed, pouching it. She grabbed the glove from her teeth. It was heavy and of a German synthetic that so closely matched real leather it even tasted like it. She slapped the glove across the rump of the nearest of the just-freed horses, the animal bucking once, then running back the way she and Mary Ann had come.

Natalia glanced once toward the armored personnel carriers. A swastika banner was visible on the nearer of the two machines.

Muttering “Damn” under her breath, hauling tight on the lead rope for her own four spare horses, Natalia used the glove like a riding crop across the rump of her own animal, starting it into a loping gallop toward the defile. With any luck, sensors or visual observation from the APCs would pick up the four loose horses and nothing else.

With any luck… .

Michael Rourke had Croenberg’s litde pistol in his right hand. As the guard from the entrance to the high rise started to swing his assault rifle forward toward James Darkwood and Manfred Kohl, Michael put the muzzle of the pistol to the man’s head. “Unlike an energy weapon, even a litde one like this will punch a hole right through the side of your head.”

The guard lowered his weapon. Manfred Kohl, a gun in his right hand, pushed the Eden defense forces trooper into the alley. James Darkwood reached for Michael, saying, “You look like shit.”

“Glad somebody noticed.” And then Michael Rourke almost started to laugh, but the pain in his side was too intense for that.

The horsemen who pursued him by torchlight rode re-lendessly across the snow. Although John Rourke was easily able to stay ahead of them because he had planned ahead and brought a spare mount, at the pace he had to push both animals, there was no time for resting. At this rate, the horses would be played out in another few hours, as would those ridden by the posse, their mounts probably sooner.

But the fact remained that without a horse, John Rourke knew he would not reach the rendezvous point with the agents from Allied Intelligence. Therefore, aside from his own predicament, Paul and Annie and Natalia would be stranded with Martin Zimmer and the women, one of whom couldn’t even walk.

This side of the rift valley, although sparsely populated, seemed to be a dangerous place. The people here whom he had met, constandy on the defensive against the attacks of the Land Pirates, had sunk to the level of their enemies. Mary Ann had clearly been mentally abused before falling victim to the Land Pirates and John Rourke somehow doubted she was atypical. Few of the women he and the others had rescued from the fortress of the Land Pirates seemed to possess anything of culture, or even civility. AD seemed worn beyond their years. Transformations such as that did not come about overnight.

John Rourke had rested his mounts as long as he dared now. He climbed aboard the grey. The animals seemed litde better cared for than the women around here, and both the grey and the litde mare were starting to show signs of fatigue. The cold, intense with the night, didn’t help matters.

John Rourke urged his animals ahead. In his mind, he was constructing a contingency plan to alleviate the deteriorating situation… .

The “safe house” was, indeed, a house; how safe it was remained to be seen. It was one of the homes built better than fifty years ago when Eden had gone through a single-family housing boom. Deep within Eden City itself, it was now substandard and most of the houses in the area were abandoned. There was no electricity. Synth-fuel lamps burned at either end of the table.

There was no glass in the windows anywhere, the openings boarded over. But blankets, by contrast new looking, were hung inside to prevent any light from showing.

Six centuries ago, the area would have been called a slum. Michael Rourke had read about such places. Now he was experiencing it… .

“Pearl Harbor?” James Darkwood repeated, but as a question.

Michael Rourke nodded his head. Kohl was trained as a medic and set about cleaning the wound on Michael’s side. “This is not too bad, Michael. A litde rest and taking it easy for a while, you should be fine.”

“You’ve gotta get people alerted to what’s happening, but first you have to send out some sort of a rescue party” Michael told them. He’d refused any sort of pain killer while Kohl worked on his wound. To risk dulling his

senses now could spell disaster in more ways than he could calculate.

“Are you sure they weren’t aware of who you were, Michael? And this Martin guy is really your brother?”

Michael looked squarely at Darkwood. “Martin Zimmer is some sort of product of Deitrich Zimmer. He has to be. Whether it’s the way Martin was raised or there was genetic tampering or … I don’t know. But the point is, Croenberg wouldn’t have come to kill me himself if anybody else had known. He was banking on the idea that I’d at least temporarily be mistaken for Martin Zimmer, long enough for him and his people—”

“You mean Croenberg and his ‘cronies’” James Darkwood suggested with a smile.

“You laugh, fine. But Croenberg wants the power for himself and his faction But none of that is important now. The deal about an attack on Pearl Harbor was real. Croenberg can’t substantially change the plans without a reason. What’s he gonna say?”

James Darkwood nodded his head. “He can’t very well say that he knew you weren’t Martin and tried to kill you so he could organize a coup. And, if he figures something may have happened to Martin, Croenberg’s better off not saying anything about what happened, or anything more than he has to in order to cover for the fight you two had. You’re right. If the Pearl Harbor thing is really on, there may be some minor detail changes. He could get away with that. He might even move up the timetable. But he can’t cancel it out.”

Michael Rourke controlled his breathing in order to control the pain in his side. “Get some people out after my dad and Natalia and everybody. We get Dad, hell know what to do.”

“Getting a rescue party up is not that easy,” Kohl said as he affixed an adhesive dressing over the wound. “Getting over the rift valley is dangerous. Unless we fly so high that well be picked up on Eden defense sensors and get shot down anyway, we have to keep very low. That means that a storm over the valley can destroy us.”

Michael Rourke was trying to think. There had to be a way.

James Darkwood lit a cigarette. As he exhaled, he said, “I think I know how we can handle this. If HQ, approves it, it’ll work and expedite the whole thing.”

Michael blamed it on the pain, but he didn’t understand. “What’s your headquarters have to approve?”

“An incursion on Eden soil. Technically, at least, the entire continental United States with the exception of Alaska is an Eden protectorate, even though west of the rift valley isn’t part of Eden itself. We’ve got submarines off the west coast. One of the patrol sectors covers from what used to be Chihuahua up along Arizona to as far north as Reno Harbor. If I can get a commando team flown in, they can locate your family, evacuate them and the women, then fly your father and the rest of them right out to Pearl.”

“Then do it,” Michael told him. “Some of those women will need medical attention. And you’re going to have to find a safe place to stash Martin Zimmer. We need him for our own reasons.”

“You stay with Michael” Kohl offered. “I will get out of the city and make the satellite uplink.”

James Darkwood’s eyes showed worry. Michael forced himself to stand up. “Well all go, then get out of Eden City and find some transportation to Pearl Harbor.”

“You should not be moving about,” Manfred Kohl advised soberly.

“I should not be living in this century, either, should I?” Michael felt mildly nauseous, but he wasn’t about to mention it.

»

Natalia lay in the snow, the stock of her short-barreled assault rifle extended and snug against her shoulder. The weapon would be useless against the armored personnel carriers, of course, but not against the occupants, should they emerge.

The two tracked vehicles had stopped some time ago, near the hoofprints. Lights played over the snow, but that was all.

Mary Ann lay beside her. “If we give up,” the girl said in a low, hoarse whisper, “they won’t murder us. They’ll wanna fuck us and then well be all right.”

Natalia looked at her, stunned.

“When the Land Pirates hit us, they killed a whole lot. Me, I figures what’ll work and it does,” Mary Ann went on. “When they breaks in where I hid, I ripped open my dress and let ‘em see my tits. Then I says, Who wants a blow?’ And-“