Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend (25 page)

He looked down at the guns in his hands, then back toward the light and she was no longer there. The light was growing

stronger and he wasn’t walking toward it anymore, but k was surrounding him. His eyes squinted against it. “Sarah? Where are you?” There was no answer.

He turned around and the light became desert and a sum. hot and glowing, glared down at him like some malevolent eye from a sky that was a brilliant blue.

He looked down and his guns were still in his hands.

He started walking.

Somehow, his sunglasses were on and the light was less bothersome to him because of that. This was a strange desen. because it had all the heat and desolateness of a desert, ba there were houses ranked on sand covered streets and there were sand dunes everywhere. But sometimes, poking through from inside he could see parts of automobiles and trucks and airplanes.

But, there were no people.

“Sarah? Are you out here?”

He looked at the house on his right, saw movement from behind a porch window.

John Rourke started toward the house, the sand very deep here and the going slow. He was on the steps, the treads mounded with sand and piles of ash. He stepped onto the porch.

In the window, the same window, he saw movement.

It was his own reflection, but there was something wrong with it. “What’s going on?”

Only his own voice echoed back to him, that and the loneh keening of a hot wind.

Eighteen

Each time there was an air strike, the staircase vibrated, and it vibrated regularly, meaning the J7-Vs, under the command of Wolfgang Marin, were doing their job well.

At a mid point in the stairwell, there was a landing, and leading off from it a corridor shaped like a large pipe, tubular and of gleaming metal.

Til check it out,* Paul volunteered

Tm going with him,” Annie said.

“All right, Paul, but be careful,” Michael cautioned, the tube a perfect place for a trap. “Well send a dumbass first Otto?

Harnrnerschxradt nodded, already ordering one of his men to unlimber his pack. The pack’s seams were composed of a hook and pile fastening material, the pack body stripping away easily. The interior of the pack was foam formed, configured to the shape of the object within. That was a dumbass, a robotic device specifically designed to attract every possible danger, sparing the human operators behind it, the experience.

The dumbass was started along the tube. About fourteen inches high, with a telescoping mast and built in video relay capabilities, it hummed along on miniaturized tank treads.

Harrmiersdmiidt, before Paul and Annie could start down the tube after it, ordered two of his men in a safe distance back from the dumbass, one of them the operator. Four more of Hammerschmidfs personnel fell in behind Paul and Annie, one of the Commandoes carrying an energy weapon.

Michael and Natalia at the lead, Harrrnierschmkk took Ae rest of the column down through the stairwell, continuing toward the bottom where there seemed to be some sort of vat stone hall.

“How’s it going for Paul and Annie and your men?”

Hammerschmidt nodded toward a man just above them ox the stairwell, the man-one of the Long Range Mountain Patrol people-monitoring a video display about the size of t twentieth century audio cassette. “All is in order, Herr Major.* the corporal volunteered.

“Good,” Hammerschmidt nodded.

They continued down the stairwell, more of the hall below them becoming visible. It seemed to have been carved frocs the mountain’s fabric itself, or was perhaps a huge natural vault within the mountain to begin with, but there was rwthing that seemed manmade about it.

The stairwell broke from within the natural seeming cylinder within the rock through which it passed, Michael Rourke and Natalia on the tread just above lum, stopping there.

“The Hall of the Mountain King? perhaps,” Hammerschmidt suggested.

The hall was vast enough that a small aircraft could hw operated within it with considerable impunity. As Michael started to say something, there was loud click.

Natalia shouted, “Trap!”

Firing ports opened from hidden positions within the ceflmg through which the stairwell passed, surrounding the stairweE totally. Michael Rourke shouted, “Hit the ropes!” And, as he said it, he dropped his already safed M-16 to his side on is sling, clamping on the lead from his vest’s rapelling pack to one of the verticals supporting the stairs. The muzzles of automoatic weapons began to protrude through the ports.

Natalia was helping one of the German commandoes whose gear was malfunctioning. As he clamped on, Natalia began to access her own rapelling kit.

Automatic weapons fire started from the firing ports and Michael Rourke vaulted over the railing, grabbing Natalia into

his left arm and holding her against him, saying, “Hold onto me!” He jumped, gunfire everywhere around them now, bullets pinging off the metal substructure and the treads, some of Hanmierscmmdr’s men going down.

A bullet tore across Michael’s right shoulder, skating over his vest’s ballistic layers. He nearly lost his hold of the rope, but held it, controlling their descent just enough that he could break their fall without snapping the rope.

Down they went, other ropes snaking out around them, men skidding along them, gunfire from the floor of the hall now, some of the German personnel under Hammerschmidt’s command taking hits, some returning fire. Some men merely skidded along their ropes, out of control, others locked in place, dangling there, dead or wounded.

Natalia shouted through her radio, “Look down!”

Michael looked down.

The source of the gunfire from below was a group of men in a ragged circle around the base of the stairs, perhaps fifty men in all.

There was a voice over a loudspeaker system, shouting in German. *Hoid your fire! Hold your fire!”

Michael Rourke slowly started their descent, Natalia still clinging © him. The men below them, in black BDUs with Nazi insignia armbands, held assault rifles, some fixed with bayonets.

Michael eased Natalia and himself down the remaining twenty or so feet, separating from the rope as Natalia let go of him, both of them standing there, back to back, surrounded by Heimaccher and Zimmer’s Nazis.

Hammerschmidt and those of his men who survived the rapel hit the floor, weapons raised and ready.

Again, over the speaker system, came the same voice. “You will throw down your weapons and surrender to the forces of the Reich! Or, you will die!”

Hanurierschmidt’s voice came through the radio set into Michael’s ear. ‘That is Zimmer’s voice, I think.”

Michael estimated the odds at slightly better than three to

one against them.

He looked at Natalia. Visible through her mask, be coatt see her eyes as she blinked, just looking at him then.

Michael Rourke nodded, licking his hps. He tore away BB gas mask. He could understand some German, speak very little of it despite having slept with a native German speaker. Maria Leuden. So, in English, he shouted, “I am Michari Rourke. I have come for the return of my brother. Who is m charge here?”

Michael turned slowly around in a circle, looking at the faces surrounding ,them, the nearest of the Nazis encircling them was perhaps twenty yards away.

The formation broke and Michael turned and looked. A man, smallish-looking, dark haired, a classic Hitlerlian mustache centered like a small black blotch at the middle of his upper lip, stepped through the opening. Like the others, he wore black, but he had a better tailor, Michael thought.

“Is it Halloween?” Michael Rourke shouted to him. “I mean, you’re dressed up like Hider, and I certainly can’t see someone doing that everyday. The fake mustache is really great, by the way.”

The man-Heimaccher, obviously-stopped, hands on his hips, his jodhpured legs thrown slightly forward as he threw his head back and laughed. “If you and these traitors with you surrender, your lives will be spared.”

Michael Rourke nodded his head, inhaled, then spoke, his voice barely a whisper. “Unless your people are very good, there’s a superior rnilitary force all around and through this place, air power beating it apart and you’ve got about ten or twenty minutes before you’re overrun.”

The self-styled Fuhrer said nothing, merely smiled.

Michael Rourke continued. “I came for my brother, and I won’t leave until I have him. And, of equal importance really. I came for Deitrich Zimmer, to shoot his God damned brains out. If I interpret your intentions, we surrender, you hold us hostage against Colonel Mann’s forces taking you, then make some sort of dramatic escape, after which, of course, you’ll

kill us anyway, right? Heimaccher started edging back.

“Well,” Michael Rourke said, “not today.” Michael’s left hand rested on the butt of his crossdraw carried revolver, and he twist-drew the Smith & Wesson and double actioned the trigger, putting a single 180-grain jacketed hollow point into Albert Heimacchefs natural target, the mustache.

Michael’s right hand swung up, the M-16 at his side, its safety tumbler set to full auto as he moved the muzzle of his revolver right and killed the nearest man to him who was about to return fire.

As the Nazi went down, falling over Heimaccher’s already sprawling body. Michael Rourke jerked back the trigger of the M-16 and held it ag-zagging the muzzle of the assault rifle right and and left, killing as many of the Nazis as he could before one of them killed him.

Gunfire was everyw”here.

A bullet creased along Michael Rourke’s thigh, another across his right forearm.

The M-.6 was already empty as the momentary shock caused hus to lose his grip on the weapon. The Smith & Wesson revolver was emptied as well, and Michael Rourke crashed it down over the head of a Nazi less than a yard from him, smashing the nose and teeth.

There was a blur of motion beside him and he heard Natalia’s voice, uncftered bv a aas mask, shouting, “Dodge right!

Nowr

Michael Rourke sidestepped and ducked as he stabbed the revolver between his gunbelt and abdomen, his right hand, still a litrie numb, groping for the Beretta under his left arm.

He had it. bat before he could use it, Natalia opened fire, hosinz rive phalanx of black-clad Nazis with 5.56mm from her rifle.”

A Beretta 92F in each hand now, Michael Rourke fired into the men point blank, killing as many as he could.

Nineteen

Deitrich Zimmer had always prided himself on anticipating the moves of his enemies and countering them before they could be accomplished for his undoing.

He walked along the corridor now, the baby screaming its lungs out for food or because its clothes were wet or dirtied or because it had gas or for some other one of the myriad reasons why babies screamed and cried and always had.

None of that mattered. The National Socialist movement mattered and it was not confined to here, alone. In New Germany, there were partisans aplenty to aid him, and he had the means to get there; then start again. His sole purpose for coming to the redoubt had been accomplished, and gloriously.

As he turned a bend in the corridor, he saw a little mechanical contrivance moving along the floor. He recognized it at once as a dumbass, the robotic sacrificial lamb that was one of New Germany’s most recent military developments.

But, before Deitrich Zimmer could turn back, there were soldiers, and then the Jew, Rubenstein, and his wife. “Freezer the Jew shouted.

There was a pump shotgun, rather primitive but devastatingly effective under the proper circumstances, in the womans hands. Its muzzle did not tremble. Zimmer took it as a sign of maturity and skill that she did not bother to work the action but already had the chamber loaded and merely pointed the gun at him.

Zimmer’s pistol was pressed against the baby’s head. “No, I will not freeze, Jew, because I have the muzzle of my pistol and the litde boy’s head both, just where they should be. All that is necessary for me to do is to twitch my finger and the child dies. Even if you or your wife-she is a disgrace to her race-but if you or she should think that firing upon me will somehow negate my abilities to pull this trigger, then think again!”

Zimmer pressured the muzzle of the pistol so hard against the baby’s head that the baby cried.

The Rourke girl, now the Jew’s wife, shrieked at Zimmer, “Leave the baby alone, damn you! Try me! Afraid of a woman? Try me!”

“Annie, hold off” the Jew told her. Then he turned his gaze toward Zimmer. “You kill that baby and death will be something you’ll beg for. Understand?”

“I am so terribly frightened,” Zimmer laughed. “My hand is shaking so badly I might even pull the trigger of this pistol by accident.”

The Jew and his bitch did nothing.

But, Deitrich Zimmer had to get past them to survive this, to make the future of the world secure, for him.

“We’re at an impasse,” the Jew called out. “Let the baby alone and you have my word that you’ll walk out of here alive ami unmolested. My word.”

“The word of a Jew!?”

The military commander with them was a lieutenant of good family, the last person Zimmer would have suspected of associating with a Jew or harboring anti-Nazi sentiments.

“Kill the Jew, join me!”

The young officer spat onto the corridor floor as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Rubenstein. What better place for a traitor than standing beside a Jew, Zimmer thought.

The lieutenant announced, “If the child is killed, Herr Zimmer, you will have no leverage, and no other fate will await you but death. You must know that.”

“I know, young man, that even a traitor must have sufficient

intelligence to realize that, in my position, I will not surrender the baby. The only way any of you will get the child is as a corpse. If that is your wish, I can kill the child now.”

Zimmer drew back slightly on the trigger.

The Jew’s wife screamed at him, “He’s my brother, damn you! Don’t do it!”

“Then, let me pass. Otherwise, I will spare this child the pain of growing up and discovering that his sister has defiled her race and her body by fucking-“

“You son of a bitch!” she shouted, starting toward him.