Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion (11 page)

Rourke thought of Michael—Sarah had told him of Michael’s bravery, as had Annie years later.

Wolfgang Mann began speaking again and Rourke tuned the man in. “I early became fascinated with the history of the place we call The Complex. Its earliest beginnings, its construction. Like most officers, I have a degree in engineering. It was forbidden to travel in the tunnels beneath The Complex and surrounding it, forbidden because there were many possible dangers from cave in and rock slides. But like most young men, I cared little for danger and more for adventure. So I explored the tunnels without the knowledge of my parents or my friends. I became expert in maneuvering there. And, since it seemed logical that there should be, I persevered, Herr Doctor, until I had discovered a way out of The Complex via the tunnel system. When I originally planned the rescue of Deiter Bern, I entertained the thought of utilizing the tunnels as a means of escape from The Complex. I never dreamed that the leader would be launching the campaign so soon. I believe that part of his reasoning was that I would be away when the execution took place on Unity Day.”

“Sounds like a sweetheart,” Rourke observed.

“He is a clever man. I shall warn you now—if somehow he were to have discovered my intended use of the tunnel system, it will likely not be closed, but booby-trapped instead. I believe that is the Americanism—booby-trapped, yes:

“Yes.” Rourke nodded, uncomfortable in the English-style saddle—he had never cared for English tack. It seemed to him as sensible as riding a motorcycle mounted atop a postage stamp. “These tunnels, where do they end—how do we enter The Complex?”

“It takes some great amount of explanation, Herr Doctor. I will tonight make a diagram which will better enable you to understand.”

Rourke looked ahead. The sun was lowering in the west.

The modern German equivalent of a Coleman stove had been used to heat the water with which their food had been prepared by the young sergeant who had accompanied them and practiced English with Sarah throughout the hours they had ridden side by side. Rourke had learned from his wife that the young sergeant—Conrad Heinz— had aspirations to the officers corps. From Rourke’s earlier conversations with Mann, Rourke remembered that a command of English was one of the basic requirements.

Rourke supposed that it was somehow flattering that the German high command had assumed that somehow the language would still be viable and necessary.

Conrad Heinz had taken the first shift at guard duty, along with two of the other noncoms, four in all besides Heinz having accompanied them.

John Rourke, Sarah Rourke, Natalia, Wolfgang Mann, Manns haupsturmfuehrer and Elaine Halverson and Akiro Kurinami sat about the stove in a ragged circle, sharing the meager light in the darkness, as heavy as velvet, which surrounded them. The haupsturmfuehrer’s name was Hartman.

And Hartman spoke, his voice rather high-pitched for a man’s, his English heavily accented but syntactically correct. “I would like to ask, Herr Doctor—and perhaps I am speaking out of turn.”

“You are free to speak, of course,” Mann noted.

“Thank you, Herr Standartenfuehrer.” Hartman turned to face Rourke. “Herr Doctor—as someone viewing this apart, so to speak. How do you then view our chances of success?”

Rourke inhaled on his cigar, exhaling a thin stream of gray smoke as he spoke. “Our success or failure in the specified mission depends on too many variables, but I’d say the basic probability of reaching Deiter Bern is comfortably high. The exact nature of the operation I’ll have to perform and what in practice rather than theory must be done with that device which I remove—that is difficult to say. But the overall success of your goals, Mr. Hartman, seems to rest with how accurately Colonel Mann and the rest of you have gauged the public support for this Deiter Bern. If freeing him causes the people of The Complex to rise up against the leader, and those military forces loyal to the leader can be neutralized or held at bay, then chances for success seem very good. But some of the ‘ifs’ are very important ones. And can’t be ignored.”

“But you—but you, Herr Doctor, you and Major Tiemerovna—you are both veterans of such enterprises, is that not so?”

Natalia answered. “Perhaps that’s why John is reluctant to be more specific, Herr Hartman. I think the best example I can recall is something Sarah told me.”

Hartman turned from looking at Natalia, who sat at Rourke’s left, to Sarah, who sat at Rourke’s right. “And what is this, Frau Rourke?”

“I think Natalia is talking about an operation I was involved with through the Resistance—the people who were still fighting the Russians once our country was invaded. Many of the men of the Resistance were imprisoned—it was along the eastern coast of the United States. There was a storm, I remember. Their women were in self-imposed exile on one of the offshore islands. A group of us—all of us

women—went to the prison, forced our way in and out and rescued the men just before they were to be shot. I think what Natalia means is that just looking at the odds from a clinical standpoint isn’t necessarily a way to judge things. You do what has to be done for no other reason than necessity. And maybe you can get through on nerve.”

Rourke folded his right arm around his wife’s shoulders.

Wolfgang Mann began to laugh.

Akiro Kurinami said, “In Japan, we have the legends of the samurai. One man would take on vastly superior odds—and he would win.”

“You have to consider both sides of the coin,” Elaine Halverson began. “This is basically a struggle for freedom. This is nothing new to people of my color. Freedom is hard won. I hope you win yours, Colonel, Captain Hartman. So that we can win ours. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know that we lived in a world where every man and woman and child was free? Where there were no dictators? No slaves? The old world that died five centuries ago—we can’t afford to let history repeat itself, can we?”

Sarah murmured, “Amen.”

John Rourke realized the one problem with stoves rather than real campfires—there was no flame into which he could toss his cigar.

It was odd; he felt as though somehow he were cheating on Natalia—because Mann’s troopers had set up a separate tent for Rourke to sleep with his wife.

They had not slept together since before The Night of The War.

They lay beside one another now, on rigid inflatable air mattresses which rose some eight inches above the ground. Rourke stared at the ceiling of the tent. He could hear Sarah breathing.

“John,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“However this turns out, I’m glad I’m with you.”

“I’m happy for it too,” Rourke answered her.

“I think I’ve come to understand what you did with the children. I’ll never like it—but as children, they might never have survived. And if the Eden Project hadn’t returned—”

“I tried to do what I thought was best, Sarah.” “Why haven’t you—you and Natalia, ahh—” “Made love?” “Um-hmm.”

“You’re my wife. Before I found you, I figured that if there were any chance you’d still be alive, well—I couldn’t. It would have been wrong. And now—well, it’d still be wrong. At least to me it would be.”

“Do you—do you—do you still, ahh, do you want me?”

Rourke stared upward. “The trouble from the beginning—it’s that I love both of you. You said that yourself. I want you—but I’d be less than honest if I said I didn’t want Natalia too. And I reject the idea of …” He didn’t finish it.

Sarah did. “Having two wives.”

“Yes.”

“We haven’t made love—for five centuries,” and she started to laugh.

Rourke eased closer to her, folding his left arm around her. Her head moved to his chest. “That’s crazy to think of. That we were born in the twentieth century and it’s the twenty-fifth century. And—and the other thing, it’s crazy too, I guess.”

In the darkness he could barely see his wife’s face.

“Pretend,” she whispered, Rourke feeling Sarah’s breath against his chest, her fingers knotted in the hair there. “Pretend—well, that none of it, none of it happened, John—please.”

Rourke drew his wife’s face up to his, then bent over her,

as she rolled back.

Pretending—it was something he had never been able to do, even as a child,. He had lost himself sometimes—with characters in books. But he had never pretended.

But he did now—that The Night of The War hadn’t happened, and Rourke crushed his wife’s lips beneath his, his right hand moving beneath the blanket which covered her. She had worn only panties and a T-shirt—Rourke had seen her remove her bra, slipping the straps down along her arms and taking it off without removing her shirt.

But he raised the shirt now, first his hand, then his lips finding the corona of her left breast, touching at it. She had nurtured both their children and he too had tasted her milk. His hands touched at her, exploring her and he felt the hardness rising in him as he pushed down her panties, felt her hands opening his jeans.

John Thomas Rourke slipped between his wife’s thighs—it was no longer pretending then, no longer pretending at all.

Had it not been for the arrival of the fighter planes from The Underground City which he had summoned just after sending word to Krakovski to break off any engagement with the Wild Tribes of Europe, Vladmir Karamatsov realized that all would have been lost against the Nazis.

But with the arrival of the planes, what had been doomed to defeat had become a glorious, if costly, victory. Eight of his helicopters were destroyed totally. Three more were in need of serious repair and work crews even at this late hour—he checked his watch, it was nearly two a.m. here—labored over them. Sixty-three men and women had been killed or seriously wounded.

One of the jet fighters had slight damage which was being repaired.

The Nazi force had not only been beaten back, but taken what Karamatsov estimated as over twenty percent casualties and lost nine machines totally. Their casualty figures could have been higher. Twelve of the peculiar yet efficient-seeming mini-tanks were destroyed as well.

But at the height of his despair of the losses suffered, he had received an encrypted radio message from Nicolai Antonovitch—that the Nazi headquarters had been located in a rain forested area of Argentina.

Vladmir Karamatsov walked the length and breadth of his camp.

His plans were firm now.

Soon, Krakovski’s elements would be arriving. But he would not wait for Krakovski and his helicopter squadrons and troops.

He had recalled the jet fighters from pursuit of the retreating Nazis.

He had ordered Major Antonovitch to secure a landing site where troops could be debarked, where helicopters and jets could be refueled.

Karamatsov stopped near one of the prefabricated hangars, watching as a work crew restored one of the damaged helicopters.

They worked with great efficiency.

He took pride in their work.

And after conquering the Nazi headquarters in Argentina, he would return to Georgia and the Eden Project. And he would utterly destroy it.

Vladmir Karamatsov studied his watch again for a moment. The work crews would not have completed the repairs until dawn. And shortly after dawn there would be the perfunctory burial services for his fallen troops.

And then …

He had once thought that victory could be tasted. Vladmir Karamatsov longed for that taste again.

“He has gone!” “Yes, Helmut.”

“Where?” Helmut Sturm watched the eyes of Sturmbannfuehrer Axel Kleist, ignoring the fact that he was speaking to a superior officer. He was tired, dirty, discouraged—and hours of letters that had to be written to the families of his dead lay before him.

“Standartenfuehrer Mann—” and Sturmbannfuehrer Kleist seemed to slightly regain his composure. “He has been forced to return to the New Fatherland.”

Helmut Sturm lit a cigarette, staring down at his muddy boots—they had set down in a swamp in what had once been Louisiana in order to tend to some of the wounded. “Why, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer?”

“That is not the concern of a junior officer—or need I remind you, Hauptsturmfuehrer Sturm?”

Helmut Sturm stared beyond his boots—at the encampment from which a dozen of the machines and a full company of men were missing. Two dozen more of the machines were preparing for departure. “But an entire legion, Axel.”

“Helmut—the standartenfuehrer knows what he is about.”

“The Soviets cannot be attacking The Complex—not yet, at least. Nor can these Americans.” He waved dismiss

sively in the direction of their camp several miles to the south. “Not in their antiquated spaceships. There is only one reason why the standartenfuehrer would authorize such a large number of men to return to the New Fatherland.”

“Do not say this, Helmut,” Kleist whispered, his blue eyes narrowed, his narrow shoulders hard-set in his short frame. The man was almost a miniature and barely the height requirement for an officer. Helmut Sturm towered over his superior.

“Do not say treason, Axel? Do not say that he goes to somehow attempt to effect the rescue of Deiter Bern before the execution which is scheduled for Unity Day? Do not say this. If you tell me it is not true, I will not.”

“The standartenfuehrer has the best interests of the German people at heart.”

“Wolfgang Mann has never been a Nazi—and neither have you. You have never shared the dream and neither has he, is that not so, Axel?”

“You—you overstep your bounds. You could be shot. I could have you shot.”

“And I, Axel—I could have you both shot. And I will,” and Helmut Sturm drew his pistol from his belt, the Walther P-38 which his ancestor had carried into battle for the Old Fatherland generations ago. He pushed off the safety catch, worked the slide back to chamber a round.

“Helmut!”

Helmut Sturm pulled the trigger once, then again, point-blank, placing both rounds into the center of his superior’s chest.

He shouted to his obersturmfuehrer who stood some hundred yards away, gaping open-mouthed. “I have relieved the sturmbannfuehrer of command—take what men you can who are loyal and assault the departing gunships. Be quick, man!”