Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (2 page)

If, with Annie helping her, they brought the critically injured young German officer back to The Retreat, Rausch would at last know The Retreat’s precise location and, worse yet, the location of its primary entrance.

If they did not bring the man inside, the young helicopter pilot would surely die. And, if they waited outside, they would eventually die, too. As a matter of course, she and Annie had brought emergency rations, as well as a good supply of ammunition, and were dressed for temperatures even lower than what they now experienced.

They could survive several days, especially if they erected a shelter or found some natural rock formation that would serve as a windbreak.

But, what then?

“You’re worried,” Annie said over the keening of the wind.

“You’re right. Are you reading me?”

“Right now, anybody could read your mind, Natalia.”

Natalia rubbed her gloved hands together. “He i£our problem, this poor man. I think we are being observed by more of the Nazis, perhaps Freidrich Rausch himself.”

“I’ve felt someone watching us,” Annie said. “But we can’t let him die.” She gestured to the young man on the travois.

Natalia nodded. John always triumphed through reasoned daring. “Are you up to a climb?”

Annie pulled down her snow goggles. “What do you mean?”

“I have an idea.” Natalia dropped to her knees in the snow, checking the young man for a pulse and finding one, but barely.

If he’d been dead, their options would have been greater, but human life was of more concern to her than expediency. And, as she stood, she caught up her piece of harness on the travois. Annie repositioned her goggles and did the same.

“We have to hurry,” Natalia said. As she spoke, she pulled her scarf closer over her mouth and started hauling on the harness again.

The road leading to The Retreat had never seemed as steep to her as it did now, nor as long. The windchill was something she could only guess at, but it had definitely increased since they’d left the warmth of John’s Retreat to trace the mysterious radio message. Sarah and Maria Leuden, the lover of Michael Rourke, would be anxious for them now, of course, the time factor considerably more protracted than had been predicted.

As they continued along the road toward The Retreat, Natalia silendy wondered if this time she might be gambling too much, because if she lost, not only would she lose The Retreat, but all of their lives as well… .

Hugo Goerdler rubbed his double-gloved, nonethe-less cold hands together. The rocks behind which he and Freidrich Rausch now hid served as a moderately effective windbreak, but not effective enough. He was chilled to the bone.

Rausch held infrared binoculars to his eyes, peering down over the lower portion of the rock wall toward the road across the wide chasm and somewhat below them. Along the road, the two women who had defeated Rausch’s team of men still moved, towing after them a litter on which was the body of the helicopter pilot whom they had used as bait to draw the women out.

“Soon, Goerdler. They will have to enter the mountain hideaway soon. Then, we have them.”

“Have them,” Goerdler mentally echoed. He was reasonably convinced that the women would have been a better choice to aid him in achieving his goals … better than Rausch and his bully boys.

“And what then, after we have them, Freidrich?” Goerdler finally asked him.

Rausch, without shifting his gaze, still looking through the binoculars, said, “I have the explosives ready with which to blast our way inside, and then I will summon the remainder of my force. We detonate, invade the facility, and Rourke’s wife will die. His daughter and the other two women will be held hostage for Rourke’s cooperation in our plans. Success.”

Hugo Goerdler admitted to himself that Rausch’s plan sounded very simple and very effective, but whether or not it could be accomplished was another question… .

Natalia stood guard at the outer Retreat door until Sarah and Maria helped Annie get the near-death pilot inside. Natalia abandoned the closed door now, racing through the red lit chamber between the outer and inner doors, then through the vaultlike inner doorway. Annie and Sarah hauled the inner door closed, securing the locking system.

Natalia tugged off her gloves, pushed down her hood, and started unwinding her head scarves as she went to the electronics console. John Rourke’s external security system for The Retreat had recendy been upgraded with state-of-the-art German technology. Before she even sat down, she started summoning up on the various closed circuit screens vision-intensified video images of the area immediately surrounding The Retreat.

She stripped off her gunbelt that held the two L-Frame Smith & Wessons, opened her parka, and undid the bib front of her snow pants, letting them fall to her waist.

As Natalia shifted from one video source to the next on the main screen, she picked up movement, then changed video sources for the secondary and tertiary screens and began manipulating direction controls on the three cameras that were trained on the same spot. “Come here, Annie,” Natalia called out.

As background noise, below her level of concentration, she could hear Sarah, an experienced nurse, telling Maria what she needed. Natalia considered the young pilot’s chances for survival nearly zero, but they had to try to save him nonetheless.

In a moment, Annie was behind her, looking over her shoulder. Natalia glanced at her, then turned away. “Those two men. They were watching us, of course, and from their vantage point, they could certainly see The Retreat entrance. I doubt they could tell there’s the inner door, but even so, we’re compromised.”

“I’m ready when you are.”

Natalia nodded, saying, “He’ll use explosives, if that’s Freidrich Rausch. And I’m sure it is. Explosives and a backup team, but this time his good people, not the ones he sent against us before. Get one of your father’s sniper rifles for me … ammunition for it. Take some grenades.”

“And rope,” Annie almost whispered.

“Yes, plenty of rope.”

Annie and Natalia left the Great Room, entering the principal storage room (although there were other storage areas within and below The Retreat). Here even greater quantities of ammunition than before were stored, because John Rourke had recendy restocked with fresh supplies fabricated for him by the Germans. John had always, ever since Natalia had first met him, displayed a marked preference for one brand of ammunition and only one, that from Federal Cartridge Company. Now, he had so successfully induced the engineers of New Germany to duplicate the Federal loads for his firearms-185-grainJHP for .45 ACP, 180-grainJHP for .44 Magnum, 115-grain JHP for those few chores he deemed best served by a 9mm,
etc.
— that the Germans had even reproduced the familiar red and white boxes to the last detail.

In addition to the ammunition, of course, there was a wealth of material.

There were crates of everything, from feminine hygiene necessities, to synthetic motor oil, to dehydrated freeze-dried foods, holsters, gas masks and bags, gas mask filters, state-of-the-art German cold weather gear, German chemical-biological-radiological protective suits, cleaning supplies for everything from kitchen countertops to firearms, spare parts, hoses, and belts for every piece of motorized equipment in The Retreat, from the hydroelectric generators that powered it to the videotape machines. Replacements for items that could not be readily repaired were held in storage, ready to be brought on line.

Natalia wondered what John was getting ready for. She looked toward Annie.

The two of them crossed the room, set down their arctic parkas, and put their combined weight and strength against

the high-rise metal tool cabinet, moving it aside but barely able to do so.

Behind the tool cabinet was a steel door, three feet square, a combination lock on it. Natalia deferred to Annie, who put her hand to the dial and turned it right, then left, then right. She put her left hand to the handle, twisted, and the door swung open.

Natalia shouldered into her coat, picked up the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, and leaned it against the wall. Then she fetched a large metal tool box, placed it under the door, stepped up on it, and pulled herself into the crawl space of the exit tunnel, a mini flashlight clamped in her teeth. She smiled, realizing that she’d just applied lipstick and would leave it on the tube of the flashlight. Annie passed her up to the SSG and musette bag of ammunition, then called softly from behind her, “I’m with you.”

She crawled toward the first rung, the rungs anchored into the living granite three feet apart from one another. The diffused light through the door behind her suddenly died as Annie slammed it shut. Natalia turned her head, aiming the flashlight in her teeth toward her friend’s right hand as Annie moved the interior combination dial, locking the door.

Natalia looked ahead and upward, the tunnel angling steeply toward the summit of the mountain. Annie behind her, she began to climb. The solitary beam of light from the flashlight she held clamped between her teeth swayed left to right as she alternated hands and feet on the evenly spaced rungs. At last, weary of the weight of the rifle and her other weapons, warm in the heavy German arctic gear, she reached the second door.

Not combination locked, it was otherwise identical to the door in The Retreat wall that was covered by the high-rise tool cabinet. There was a steel bar, heavy-looking, lying across it. Both the door and the frame around it were fitted with heavy synth-rubber gaskets, newly replaced when John had gone through The Retreat substituting anything that could possibly be wearing out or deteriorating. She balanced herself on the rungs, pushing, pushing harder, finally dislodging the bar.

The door was harder to dislodge, the seal between the rubber gaskets like a powerful suction. But, at last, she was able to wrench it open.

Beyond, in the beam of her flashlight, was more of the upthrusting tunnel, the rungs three feet apart. She pushed her way through the doorway and began to climb, looking back once. In the wavering light, she could see Annie, struggling through the opening in her heavy clothes, with her burdens.

As Natalia continued the climb, she could hear Annie behind her now, closing the door.

At last, Natalia stopped at the third door. Like the intermediate door, it was only sealed with a bar and surrounded by heavy synth-rubber gaskets. But surrounding the doorway were wires, all connected to a plastic and metal unit roughly the size of a package of cigarettes.

John had placed the new alarm on the outermost door. Routinely, rather than bothering Sarah and Elaine below, Natalia disabled the high-tech unit, then used her muscle power against the bar.

It moved. She shifted it aside.

Annie was close beside her now. As Natalia wrenched open the door, she was greeted by a faceful of icy cold snow. And Annie laughed.

Michael drove the Atsack, while his father slept from a mild sedative cocktail he had administered to him, the elder Rourke’s hands bandaged and treated with some of the new ointment from the doctors at Mid-Wake, even a more powerful healing agent (although less conveniendy administered and non-antiseptic) than the German spray that had become part of their standard equipment.

And Paul Rubenstein entered in his journal, “We have just done what under normal circumstances, viewed objectively, I would have considered impossible — again. For a time, I thought that this time we would surely not make it, that never again would I be with my wife, John’s daughter, Annie.

“Times like these, when there is quiet and no imminent danger, are the times I miss her the most, times when I can think.

“So, now we have an all-but-operational sample of the Soviet particle beam energy weapon. Coupled with the plans brought to us by the KGB Elite Corps officer Vassily Prokopiev, we should have the means by which to duplicate this awesome weapon.

“And, I have mixed feelings concerning that. Is introduction of a new weapon of wholesale slaughter to mankind’s ultimate advantage? Objectively, of course not. But, subjectively, we have no choice. The Russians of the Underground City, once they have united with their counterparts beneath the sea, the historic enemies of Mid-Wake these past five centuries, will have nuclear capabilities and platforms from which to launch the enormous Soviet submarines known as Island Classers. To prevent ourselves from being overrun and being forced to utilize the still-experimental nuclear weapons the Germans are fabricating to counter the Russian threat, we must achieve parity on the battlefield and turn that parity to superiority.

“Why did Nicolai Antonovitch, the commander of the combined armies of the Underground City and the forces which served under Karamatsov, dispatch Prokopiev to us in the first place? Obviously, he trusted the young officer. Indeed, Prokopiev proved himself an honorable man (and probably sealed his fate at the same time) when he assisted us at the batde for the Second Chinese City, helping us to neutralize the nuclear warhead missile the Chinese of the Second City were about to launch as part of some religious ritual which still terrifies me just to think of it.

“But, why?

“Antonovitch must realize that the planet cannot endure a second thermonuclear confrontation. His superiors in the hierarchy of the Underground City do not realize that.

“He values the fate of human kind above ambition. Bless him.

“I feel that very soon this seemingly endless battle will conclude, one way or the other. Annie and I have decided wisely to wait before having children. I sometimes worry very much for the child John gave Sarah that she still carries to term. Will the child die before birth, in a final war?

“Or will the child be born to a world of peace and freedom?

“I hope that it will, and that soon after it the first child of Annie and myself will join it in that new world. But the threat of what lies before us is so great that sometimes that peaceful time is beyond my imagining.

“How, if that world comes, will I support my wife? I was a young editor at a trade magazine Before the Night of The War, the very night I met John Rourke. I have lived many lifetimes of danger since then. Could I return to electronics or writing, or any ‘normal’ occupation in this new world? Or would I die, instead, of boredom?