Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (23 page)

“Hungry? I can fix some bacon, some—”

“Aren’t you afraid of the Land Pirates, I mean assuming you are who you say you are?”

“As a matter of fact, Emma, I hold a healthy respect for their seeming fascination with death and destruction for its own sake. But there aren’t any Land Pirates for at least fifty miles, unless you brought some with you.”

“You heard the rocks I dislodged, didn’t you? And why aren’t there any Land Pirates here?”

“Because there is something worse, and I knew someone was coming down the side of the gorge long before you dislodged those stones.”

“What’s worse than the Land Pirates?” Emma Shaw pressed. “Nazis? Eden Defense Forces?”

“If I were to tell you, Emma, one of two things would result. You’d either believe me and keep me up all night explaining, or you’d think me a liar. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” He offered her a cup of coffee. “Here, it’s a clean cup.”

She took it.

Forty-Two

It was another vent and they wore CBR (Chemical/Biological/Radiological) protective gear as they approached it. But there was no gas emerging from it, other than carbonmonoxide, a by-product of the burning of carbon-based fuel or synth-fuel. Yet their sensors read out other warnings to them: high frequency microwave transmissions. At the same instant, Wolfgang Mann was speaking about how he missed New Germany.

The frequency of the transmissions was so high, their instruments nearly missed it. By the time that one of Spitz’s men announced the interception, John Rourke realized that it was already too late, that they had fallen into two traps at the same time.

The only weapon Rourke had to hand was his HK-91 rifle. His right fist tightened on the pistol grip. He spoke into his radio, in German, ordering the pilot of the V-stol, “Rourke to aircraft. Rourke to aircraft. Respond. Over.”

The pilot did not respond and there was only the

faint crackle of static.

John Rourke turned toward Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz half thinking that perhaps he should shoot the man and be done with it, but realizing that Gunther Spitz had been played just as he had, played for a fool. Rourke stayed his hand. “Let’s get out of here,” he said in English. “Quickly, but not running.” They were within yards of the vent pipe which was the heat source that had been identified from the air, the aircraft a quarter mile back, having stood ready to come in for them should that be required.

John Rourke had a thought.

Now the aircraft was not responding. And they were too far away from it to be able to tell by sound whether or not it had taken off. But, Rourke knew that it had.

“What is happening, Herr Doctor?”

Rourke looked at Spitz, rasped into his radio, “Give me a straight answer to this, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Do you have any form of sealed orders which were to be opened upon penetration of the mountain? Tell me now, because you may not have the chance later.”

Gunther Spitz said nothing for a moment, but his radio was open, Rourke could hear him breathing.

The HK-91 in Rourke’s hands felt ridiculously light, as a weapon sometimes did when its use seemed somehow, inexplicably imminent.

Rourke heard Paul racking the bolt of his submachinegun.

At last, Hauptsturmfuhrer Spitz said, “I have such orders but I do not know their content.”

“Tell me about Generaloberst Mann. Is there anything you know about him that I do not?” “I do not know what you mean, Herr Doctor.” Rourke rasped, “Is Herr Doctor Zimmer experimenting with cloning?” “What?”

They were moving together in a brisk commando walk, Spitz’s men flanking them on either side, assault weapons at the ready.

“When your people raided the cryogenic center in New Germany, did you have all the details? A complete layout, all the data concerning sentry positions, movement. You had an inside man?”

“But he was killed; that was the instruction, Herr Doctor.”

“You only think you killed the contact; you only killed one of his underlings,” Rourke said. “The cryogenic chamber had been raided before, even before Dr. Zimmer awakened from his own cryogenic sleep, but by his orders nonetheless.”

Paul cut into the conversation, saying, “Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on?”

Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz’s voice held not its usual condescending tone when Spitz replied. “I do not know, Herr Rubenstein.”

“We’ve been set up,” John Rourke remarked. “Spitz, keep your men on a tight leash, follow what I do.”

“I do not—”

“We will be attacked. If it’s a gunfight, we all make a run in the direction where the aircraft was. The rocks west of the aircraft could make a suitable defensive position. If we’re outnumbered and outflanked—” As if John Rourke could somehow predict what was about to happen—to have had that ability would have been a curse, he’d always thought, despite its being handy at

times—the ground below their feet began to move leftward.

“What is this!” Spitz shouted, Rourke’s ears ringing with the sound of the man’s voice.

But, before John Rourke could answer, there was a voice, the English very American and perfect. “You are surrounded! You will stand still. Do not raise your weapons or you will be cut down. You are surrounded!”

Then Wolfgang Mann began to speak almost as if his voice were disembodied. “There is an entryway opening at coordinates—” And he recited degrees, minutes and seconds of longitude and latitude. John Rourke could not risk movement. He said into his radio, “Are we getting a microwave transmission reading?”

“Hurry!” Spitz shouted.

The enlisted man burdened with the communications equipment stammered in response, “It is—it is in the high—”

And John Rourke had one of those moments of instant clarity, when all stood naked and revealed.

And he spoke through his radio set to Paul, Spitz and the others. “Do as they say. We’re surrendering.”

“We—” Spitz began, but did not finish.

Forty-Three

The enlisted personnel were led away separately, only John Rourke, Paul Rubenstein, Spitz, and Doctor Mentz kept together, surrounded by two dozen men armed with assault rifles of a type John Rourke had never seen before.

Rourke’s only visible weapon, the HK-91, was taken from him, as were the issue rifles of the other men and Paul’s German MP-40 submachinegun and M-16. But no attempt was made at a search, almost as if any weapons which might have been secreted on their persons would not have been worth bothering with.

Each of the enemy personnel wore some sort of environmental suit and respiratory equipment. And they were the enemy; of that, John Rourke was certain. On the shoulder of each man’s uniform there was a brassard sewn or otherwise attached. The symbol adorning the brassard was a white cross surrounded by a golden sunburst, the cross superimposed at the junction of its cross members with a black swastika.

Nothing of the guards’ faces could be seen under

their breathing apparatus.

Rourke, Rubenstein, Spitz, and Dr. Mentz moved at their center, the enemy personnel filed on either side of them and ranked across both front and rear. The enemy personnel, weapons at a stylized high port, marched with parade ground snap and in perfect step over the snowfield and toward the massive mawlike opening in the ground before them. The enlisted personnel, likewise surrounded, had gone in first, two of the enemy—presumably military or political officers—conferring for some time before John Rourke and the others were started into motion.

Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz began to ask Rourke a question, but Rourke snapped, “Radio silence; I’m sure they’re reading our transmissions.” And inside John Rourke there was a deep and gnawing fear. Should Paul Rubenstein be discovered as a Jew, perhaps through some careless or intentional remark of one of the Nazis, push might instantly come to shove.

John Rourke had urged surrender for two reasons. They were vastly outnumbered by a well-armed force, which would have made escape dicey at best, and escape to where was part of that; and he needed to get inside this facility in order to find out why he had really been sent. Sarah’s life, that of Wolfgang Mann, the lives of Michael and Annie and Natalia as well, might all hang in the balance.

But at last it was clear to John Rourke what had been done—not why, though. Prior to Deitrich Zimmer’s own awakening from cryogenic sleep, along with Martin, or perhaps even prior to Zimmer’s taking the Sleep, Zimmer’s personnel had carried out very specific orders. These orders involved the theft of cellular material from Wolfgang Mann’s body, and Sarah’s as well.

A simple skin cell was all that was needed. In John Rourke’s day, more than six centuries ago, frogs and other animals were replicated in this manner, called cloning, but—to Rourke’s knowledge at least—never any higher animals. Each cell contained the DNA code for replication of the entire organism, a duplicate, like a Xerox copy.

Unlike in some science fiction, however, there was one inherent problem with cloning, other than moral concerns. That was that even though the physical characteristics would be identical between the original and the. replicant, as of then—and, he assumed, still today—there was no means by which the contents of the original subject’s brain could be transferred or duplicated within the replicant.

It was all so abundantly clear that John Rourke cursed his own stupidity for not having seen it earlier.

Seeing indeed.

Deitrich Zimmer saw with two eyes.

Deitrich Zimmer had had himself cloned, the replicant grown to adulthood, then its left eye—the ultimately perfect tissue match—removed, given to him to replace the one he had sacrificed in order to fake his own death a century earlier.

And Wolfgang Mann’s bizarrely subdued behavior.

What had, in the final analysis, made John Rourke realize what Zimmer had done was that Wolfgang Mann, no matter how poorly he felt, no matter how slowly he was emerging from the effects of the Sleep, was at once a gentleman and in love with Rourke’s

wife, Sarah. From either motivation, Wolfgang Mann would have done what he did not do, ask how she was.

This Wolfgang Mann either already knew or didn’t care.

And—a chill again ran along the length of Rourke’s spine, terminating in the hairs at the nape of his neck— the Sarah whom John Rourke had seen in her recovery was probably not Sarah at all.

They were in the maw, now.

And it was no simple synth-concrete tunnel through which they moved. Rather it was more like a landing bay of enormous and, at least to John Rourke, unprecedented proportions. The interior surface was all rust-colored metal, with buttressed supports vaulting upward into the darkness of the domelike ceiling, extending from side to side as well. The span at surface level where they walked was more than two hundred yards across, their guards staying to the north side of the structure.

There was a muted roar, and John Rourke’s eyes followed toward it across the vast expanse. There were aircraft of all sorts there, as though somehow they were a collection rather than a fleet. One of these was taxiing forward now. And in one instant of recognition what had remained a mystery to John Rourke and his entire Family for well over a century was resolved.

On the occasion when Michael originally discovered the survival retreat where Madison’s people had lived, Michael had set out not to find a colony of survivors, but instead to find an object he had seen in the sky. He found it, too. The mysterious object was an ordinary aircraft, extraordinary in that it definitely dated from the period Before the Night of the War, or was at least a faithful duplicate.

The aircraft which moved forward now was such a craft, a U.S. F-14 Tomcat. But there were aircraft of all modern vintages, even propeller-driven models dating from the period of World War II. And there were the most modern aircraft as well, either purloined or cloned from state-of-the-art warplanes in the air forces of the world.

But how was it that such aircraft had never been detected by the Nazis who so carefully observed this mountain and its environs? Or, had they?

Rourke’s eyes were on the apparent leader of the group which surrounded them. A man, presumably enlisted, walked in the fellow’s wake, Rourke’s rifle and Paul Rubenstein’s submachinegun slung at the man’s left side.

Although most of Rourke’s usual arms were beneath the protective suit that he wore and would be slow and ^difficult to reach, John Rourke planned ahead. The A.G. Russell Sting IA Black Chrome, minus its usual sheath, was taped under the flap of the CBR suit’s utility pouch, instantly accessible. It was only a knife, but one of the best in the world, and it would be enough.

There was no evidence to suggest that the atmosphere here in the landing bay area was at all unbreathable, that the environment suits worn by the military personnel surrounding Rourke, Rubenstein and the others were anything more than a precaution.

But John Rourke did not feel like taking chances with anything not requiring risk. He would maintain the integrity of his suit, just in case, but before their situation became more difficult, he would take steps

to alter the odds.

Paul Rubenstein walked beside him, and as Rourke glanced toward his friend, their eyes met. There was wariness in Paul’s eyes, and a look of amazement, too. John Rourke imagined that Paul’s eyes mirrored his own. Whoever these people were, they were technologically sophisticated in at least a quirky sort of way, and somehow he felt they were very powerful.

Forty-Four

Since she could not sleep, Emma Shaw lit a cigarette.

The self-proclaimed Alan Crockett, his big single-action revolver in his right hand, slept opposite her, on the other side of the dying fire.

Electronic surveillance sensors were set up about the camp’s perimeter. She had her guns. Emma Shaw should have felt secure.

Instead, she did not. If this man really was Alan Crockett—and the more she studied his face, the more pronounced the resemblance seemed—he was in some ways a modern-day John Rourke. Crockett, unlike John, was not a physician, nor had he been in the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, there was no Central Intelligence Agency in this century, only the various internal divisions of ONI, or the Office of Naval Intelligence. But he was a survival expert in his own right, and a weapons expert as well. Crockett, however, was an archaeologist.