Survivalist - 23 - Call To Battle (2 page)

well, and sometimes the 9mm Parabellum cartridge suited a particular tactical need and he used it.

Cartridge arms of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries were only from two sources, these days: original pieces of enormous collector value (like the guns Rourke himself wore) and reproductions made by Lancer.

John Thomas Rourke assumed none of the SEALs carried original antiques, but to a man they carried Colt/Browning-style .45 ACPs.

What made him smile was the thought that if, somehow, those staunchest of the staunch supporters of old Slabsides could have known that, nearly seven centuries after the first .45 Auto rolled off the line as the original 1911, the same basic gun was the choice of an elite unit such as this, they would have smiled, too.

There were knives of every description, most of these based on familiar designs as well, Bowies, tantos, Big Ugly Ones, double-edged commando daggers of the Fairbairn-Sykes or stouter Randall patterns.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “We are approaching the L.Z. Touchdown in five.”

John Rourke slung the double Alessi rig which carried the twin stainless Detonics CombatMasters across his shoulders, then looked to the rest of his weapons …

They’d exited the chopper in admirable time, the Tac Team and SEAL Team personnel-they trained together often-functioning smoothly as a single unit, setting up perimeter security the instant after the chopper was on the ground, maintaining that security as Rourke, Rubenstein and the others, Ed Shaw and Lieutenant Commander Washington among them, reached the treeline, then covered the security element’s withdrawal.

The grass here was high, untrammelled, whipping wildly back and forth in the cool downdraft of the rotor blades, the palm fronds moving as well.

Once they linked up, they split again, but into two operational teams, Rourke and Rubenstein staying with Shaw and his Tac Team personnel, moving northwesterly toward the beach, which was more than a mile distant…

*

Over the intervening centuries since John Rourke had first visited Hawaii, the coastlines of the islands had changed radically, on account of natural volcanic growth and on account of the generally lowered sea levels-a result of glaciation in the northern hemisphere-which had sigmficandy increased the collective Hawaiian land mass. Now, there were high-ranging cliffs, more like the English coast near Dover than anything John Rourke had seen here centuries ago.

They stopped to rest and reconnoiter at the height of these cliffs, where the coasdine lay more than a hundred feet below them, rugged in the extreme, with black rocks like a fortress wall against the attacking breakers, the waves advancing, retreating, assaulting the land again. This was not the sort of coastline John Rourke would have chosen for a clandestine landing.

The potential for arriving unseen was significant, but even more significant was the potential for arriving dead unless every man jack of the SS commando unit was a superb swimmer and reckless in the extreme.

Rourke said as much to Paul Rubenstein and Ed Shaw. Shaw responded, saying, “They couldn’t have picked a more remote spot. No one comes here. The occasional fishing vessel or pleasure craft might lie well off the coast, there,” and Shaw gestured to the west. “But they won’t have the risk of bumping into military personnel, civilians, anyone. We’ve trained on cliffs like these, but the surf down there is too wild to risk a man’s life in a training exercise.”

John Rourke looked at his watch.

Washington’s team should be in position.

And, in ten minutes, it would be within the window for the arrival of the commando unit.

“We’d better move out,” Rourke advised.

“Agreed,” Shaw nodded, then began signaling his men.

There were niches within the cliff faces, perhaps once volcanic pipes, now the haunts of the occasional seabird-wildlife was returning, in some cases in significant numbers-or merely empty holes in the bleached rock. In one such hole, John Rourke, Paul Rubenstein, Shaw and two of the Tac Team men stopped, the other ten men moving on, to find similar positions here midway along the cliff faces over the rockstrewn beach below.

Shaw and the two other Tac Team men began unlimbering their powered hang gliders.

John Rourke watched Paul’s face. The expression there was one of skepticism, but Rourke said nothing. After a moment, Paul asked Shaw, “Why do you guys use those things? They’re like a kite with a lawn mower motor!”

“A lot of the terrain was given a beating since The Night of The War, and in some places-a lot of places in these islands-the terrain was pretty rugged to begin with. Electronic sensing gear is so high-tech these days, if we had a helicopter waiting to come in anywhere within a mile or more, the bad guys’d know it. This way, we can move in fast, silently, and we have such a low sensing profile, we don’t usually get spotted. Once the bad guys are on the beach, we can get down there in seconds.”

“They can shoot at you,” Paul noted.

“Hard to hit a fast-moving aerial target. Anyway, we can shoot back. You wanna fly one?” Ed Shaw grinned.

Paul grinned back, “Only if I have to, Ed.”

John Rourke racked the action of his HK-91, chambering one of the 7.62mm Boatails. He moved into a kneeling position. The safety on, he settled the rifle to his shoulder, surveying the beach over the rifle’s iron sights. Theirs was a waiting game now, waiting until the commando team started up onto the beach. When the enemy fought its way past the rocks, through the surf, their equipment suddenly feeling as though it weighed twice as much as it had, their breathing hard and rapid, their attention focused only on making it through, getting onto the beach, then it would be time to strike.

War wasn’t a sporting proposition.

Nearly an hour passed. Rourke’s head was starting to ache slighdy from the eyestrain caused by constantly peering out over the ocean, both with unaided eyes and through the borrowed pair of German field glasses he was using.

Nothing relieved the sea’s surface except the occasional bird. Many species of wildlife, birds included, were preserved over the centuries at Mid-Wake, Lydveldid Island, New Germany and at the Chinese First City, the creatures subsequendy released to the wild. This was, at first, done under controlled conditions. Such controls had long since vanished. Although the diversity of species was vasdy reduced, the numbers among those species extant were growing steadily. Rourke found that wonderfully encouraging.

Far in the distance, the normal naval traffic could be observed, but veering off from the coast of Molokai here and toward Oahu. Much of this was military, the majority originating in an American port, but there were some Chinese and Australian vessels as well; and, of course, Russian freighters. The Russians, although they had only paramilitary police units for domestic security, and a Coast Guard, were very active in merchant shipping. Eden vessels rarely came nearer to the Hawaiian Islands than just close enough to engage in electronic espionage, a role the Soviet Union had always played with much gusto in the days Before The Night of The War.

The Tac Team personnel worked so much with the SEALs that they were able to identify each vessel by profile. The Tac Team personnel were, as was usually the case with such units, on the

young side. The oldest among them was Ed Shaw, somewhere in his middle thirties, Rourke guessed, and Shaw was their commander in field operations such as this.

There were other personnel that belonged to the Honolulu Tac Team, Tim Shaw, who was Ed’s father and Emma Shaw’s father, too, among them. Many of these men, as Rourke was able to ascertain, were older, but not all of them. The Tac Team worked as a street unit and for SWAT and HRU applications. Depending on the gravity of a particular situation, both elements functioned together or separately. These younger men, in snatches of conversation Rourke overheard, would joke about the older guys (their most polite way of referring to them), but Rourke noted a distinct hint of respect, as well.

There were periodic low-frequency radio checks with Lieutenant Commander Washington’s SEAL Team personnel. The same story came from their observation post: Nothing.

To relieve the monotony, Rourke took one of the spare bootlaces from his musette bag and showed the Tac Team personnel how to make one of the old OSS string holsters, a trick he’d learned years ago, Before The Night of The War, from one of his best friends. One merely tied the ends of the shoelace together-a bootlace was a little long for the thing but he wasn’t about to cut it-and formed a circle, this made into a double loop. Then, one slipped the pistol-Rourke used a .45 volunteered by one of the Tac Team men-within the loops, inside the trouser band. Loosen the knot, then tighten it to fit and trim away the excess. That was all there was to it. The loops kept the pistol from sliding down inside the pants when the string holster was cinched up properly. In an emergency, the holster could be discarded and no one would give it a second look.

This demonstrated, they returned to the boredom of waiting. Rourke lit a cigarette, in the confined space of the rock niche preferring it over a cigar because so many of the Tac Team personnel were nonsmokers, a self-discipline Rourke commended.

An hour and a half was gone, still nothing in sight on the ocean’s surface. A squall line was forming to the north, blue-black thunderheads rolling in rather quickly, low over the water.

Ed Shaw suddenly said, “Maybe we got it wrong, or somehow the SS found out we hit the estate and they cancelled the insertion or-“

“Think again, Ed,” Paul almost whispered. Paul was looking through the electronic imaging telescopic sight of a counter-sniper rifle one of the Tac Team personnel carried. “Try about two o’clock on the surface, maybe two hundred yards out.”

John Rourke dropped into a prone position beside Paul, his elbows set on the rock, the German field glasses to his eyes. Around them were the sounds of field glasses being uncased, gravel crunching as men repositioned themselves with equal haste. At first, Rourke saw nothing, so he put the glasses down, focused his eyes on the approximate spot, then raised the glasses and tried again.

This time he saw something on the surface of the water, only an irregularity, unidentifiable, but somehow out of place. Paul was saying, “Ifs a snorkel. Someone near the surface, maybe reconning the beach.”

The optics were treated, of course, but Rourke ordered, “Glasses down, everybody. Pull back. Ed, tell Washington, and tell him to have his men do the same.”

“All right,” Shaw said. “We got ‘em.”

Just because the SS commando unit was coming toward the shore, there wasn’t proof positive of victory. Rourke decided not to burst any bubbles, however, so he didn’t mention that at the moment…

Dark shapes moved near the surface of the water, breaking the foam-flecked crests of the waves with their bodies. Rourke’s eyes squinted against the light as he watched them over his iron-sighted rifle. “Be patient,” John Rourke counseled the men around him. The storm clouds were rolling in more rapidly now Rourke gave the weather system between five and ten minutes before it crashed over the beach.

There were telltale clicks, scrapes and ripping sounds within the cavelike niche of rock here in the cliffs, too soft to be heard more than a few feet away, the sounds those of safeties being checked, equipment snaps and buckles double checked, hook and

loop fasteners being resecured, a knife blade given a few last-minute honing strokes.

The radio frequency shared by the Tac Team and Washington’s SEAL Team was continually open now, because if the SS commando unit moving out of the water and onto the beach had not picked up a transmission by now, they would not pick it up at all. The danger, of course, had been that they scanned. Rourke would have done so, moving such a large body of men. These SS personnel apparendy had not. A tactical error, and everyone made one from time to time; only occasionally were they critical. Similarly, Rourke would not have brought such a group in without cover of darkness, even in so remote and little-frequented a spot as this.

But, this latter would not be a tactical error, rather circumstances imposed by the inescapable exigency of some rendezvous that could not be set for a more advantageous time.

Fortunately, those problems he mentally enumerated were those of the SS unit’s commander, not John Rourke’s. But John Rourke’s problems were sufficient without borrowing those of someone else. The size of the SS unit was impressive, vastly larger than Rourke had anticipated. All told, he estimated there were some sixty men in diving gear reminiscent of the underwater equipment he had first used with the heroic men of Mid-Wake more than a century ago, but obviously further advanced.

To his credit, Ed Shaw did not ask, “What the hell do we do now?” But the question was implicit in his tone when he murmured, “More than we thought, huh?”

Their numbers-the Tac and SEAL Teams combined-amounted to a rough half of those of the enemy.

John Rourke glanced at Paul Rubenstein, saw the worried look in his friend’s eyes as Rourke advised Ed Shaw, “Get the rest of your people and Washington’s people ready to move out. All the men with these powered hang gliders? How safe are they?”

“Pretty safe, if the operator does his part.”

“Controls pretty simple?”

“Just a joystick. Push it forward and you nose down, pull back-“

“I get the idea. How about lateral orientation? Side to side?” “Yeah.” “And speed?”

“Twenty-five miles per hour, tops, but you’ve gotta ride the thermals or you crash like a stone. You’re not thinking-” “Yes I am,” John Rourke nodded …

Fully five minutes had passed, Rourke strapped into the harness for the powered glider. He thought, sometimes, when he encountered technology so radical as this, that he had to be dreaming, that this was all a nightmare and, when he awoke, he would still be aboard the jet passenger liner on The Night of The War on his way to Atlanta, Georgia, and none of this was happening at all, but rather all of this was a figment of his imagination, engendered merely by something which disagreed with him in the airplane food.