“Any word?”
“Nothing” Michael called back to her without looking around.
Annie made the rounds of hugs and kisses, Paul a handshake here and there.
Michael Rourke looked at his watch. There was nothing to do but wait, he supposed . . .
The coordinates from the Eden computer pinpointed the location of Doctor Rourke’s mountain retreat to within a hundred yards. There was no mistaking the location from binocular range, Weil thought.
A pinnacle of granite extending upward above the surrounding peaks. But even at highest magnification, there was no hint of an entrance.
Horst too was studying The Retreat, Weil not shifting his gauge but listening as Horst spoke. “As soon as the other teams are here, we will go up there. We will find the way inside. This Herr Doctor Rourke is so very clever, but we shall see how clever, I think.”
Weil let him talk. Horst had always displayed a propensity for talking before thinking, in the old days at the beer sessions after the party meetings, back at the youth rallies. Some things never changed.
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Weil stamped his feet against the cold, the binoculars moving slowly over what Dodd called Rourke’s Mountain .
The pilot of the helicopter gunship announced, “Comrade Colonel. We are past the coordinates. You requested to be notified.”
“Thank you,” Antonovitch said perfunctorily. He switched on his headset. “Antonovitch to ground control. Connect me with Major Prokopiev immediately.”
There was the standard response accorded, then a pause he measured as barely exceeding thirty seconds. Prokopiev’s voice came through his headset. “Comrade Colonel. This is Prokopiev. I await your instructions. Over.”
Antonovitch smiled. The man he had chosen to head up the newly reorganized Elite Corps was efficient. Whether or not he would prove to be too efficient remained to be seen, “Prokopiev. Plan Omega is activated. Necessary data will be transmitted following. Good luck, Comrade. Antonovitch out” He switched off, then changed to intraship. “Signalman. Transmit the data.”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.”
He would keep his colonel’s insignia for a while longer, despite the Principal Secretary calling him Marshal. He would wait and he would see …
Akiro Kurinami entered the reserve arms locker. Rourke’s personal weapons were encased in glass on the wall of the Great Room and he would no more think of touching one of these without permission than touching another man’s wife. But the reserve arms locker was another matter.
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Sleep would not come to him. He envied Elaine, soundly asleep on the guest room bed. And she looked beautiful in the borrowed nightgown. He imagined it was the property of Rourke’s daughter, Annie, who seemed the frilly type despite her prowess with weapons and her cold logic.
The reserve arms locker was a vault within the vault that formed The Retreat itself.
He recognized some of the long guns: collapsible stock Colt AR-15s, the civilian semi-auto versions of the M-16 variant known as the XM-77, the barrel only slightly longer; Steyr-Mannlicher SSG sniper rifles; there were also a dozen M-16s. Rourke had told him once that before the Night of The War he had not bothered with automatic weapons. The licensing provisions were intrusive of privacy, the licensing fees exorbitant and the cost of the. weapons themselves astronomical. And, for someone operating independently of an armed force and the sources of supply it would provide, automatic weapons invited ammunition over-expenditure. But since the Night of The War, Rourke had, on several occasions, “liberated” (as he put it) the selective fire versions of the Colt rifle. And, as Kurinami’s eyes traveled across the olive drab metal boxes stacked along the floor beneath the rifle rack, ammunition supply was apparently no longer a potential problem. The Germans, of course. Rourke had gotten them to fabricate for him all the ammunition he needed in the calibers he favored and hence required.
Twenty and thirty round magazines were crated beside the ammunition. He took six of these latter and one of the metal boxes of 5.56mm Ball and one of the M-16s from the rack, stacking the items neatly beside the door.
There were various handguns, a blued version of the little Detonics .45s Rourke habitually carried, a half dozen of the Beretta 92F military 9mm Parabellums.
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He took one off the rack, the oil heavy on it as it had been on the M-16 when he’d touched it. The gun was marked as made in Italy, meaning it was from one of the early runs before production was shifted to the United States. He took several spare fifteen round magazines and two of the twenty-round magazines, setting gun and magazines beside the already stacked weapons. He set about finding 9mm Parabellums ammunition. 115-grain jacketed hollow points. This would, of course, duplicate the Federal cartridge loads, Rourke a man of definite tastes. He set the ammunition on the floor.
A blade. Somehow, a blade was what he would take the greatest comfort from. And he found one. Knives marked Gerber and Cold Steel were suspended against a pegboard wall inset. He took down one in the classic conformation of a coffin-handled Bowie fighter. The handle was of some sort of black checkered rubber-like substance, the fittings brass, the steel gleamingly bright. It was marked “Trail Master”
Rourke had explained to him once that each weapon he inventoried was logged in the P.G. on disc with pertinent information.
Kurinami found a sheath that seemed right —it was black leather—then in several trips took his borrowed weapons from the arms locker back into the Great Room.
He secured the arms locker, washed the oil off his hands in the kitchen sink —he would worry about the oil on the kitchen counter later— and dried them.
Kurinami went to the computer, several transparent lid plastic boxes beside it, each loaded with discs. He began to search through these, finding the disc marked, “File Master” then inserting it into the drive and punching it up. File Master was a key to the contents of the discs and he found the one he wanted: “Weapons Data.” He changed discs and worked through the formatted file
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list, finding the right file, punching it up.
The Beretta: it had been throated and checked with hollow points and shot to point of aim. The M-16, like the Beretta listed by several number, was listed as functionally reliable but not the most accurate of the several M-16s logged. The Trail Master Bowie: A special type of high carbon steel, it was not stainless but, according to Rourke’s remarks, was admirably strong and sharp.
Kurinami shut off the P.C. and replaced the discs in the proper slots in the boxes.
He was wide awake still. He stood up, walked back to the kitchen counter and set about finding what he needed to clean the guns.
Dodd wanted him dead. That was obvious. Why? And as he began to field strip the Beretta, he remembered the face of one of the men who had tortured him, kidnapped Elaine, would have killed them both.
It was a face he had never seen before, neither among the Eden Project survivors nor among the German garrison.
But whose face was it?
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CHAPTER NINE
John Rourke looked down on Rolvaag’s face. “Old friend. I wish you could understand me.”
Annie leaned over the Icelandic policeman as his eyelids fluttered, then opened. She seemed to have a natural gift for Icelandic or perhaps just a gift for speaking with Rolvaag and her voice sounded almost as if she were singing as she spoke, Rolvaag’s face still weary but a momentary brightness in his eyes, a slurred word of recognition, then a look of peace on his face as he closed his eyes again when Annie kissed him on the forehead.
“He knows,” Annie said, looking up, Paul folding her into his arms. “That he’ll be all right now. He knows” And her eyes danced for a moment. “And I told him Hrothgar’s all right, too.”
John Rourke had all the principals together in one room and he used the moment. “Paul and Annie and I’ll go to Georgia and see about clearing up this business with Kurinami and Elaine Halversen. Michael— don’t take this mission to the Second City too lightly. And remember that Han, despite the fact he’s your friend, as you told me yourself, owes the death of his family to raiders from the Second City. Men driven by revenge can view the world a little differently, as you well know. Remember the first thing you said to me when we met again after Karamatsov was killed?”
“I said that you cheated me of doing it myself. But Natalia really did it,” Michael Rourke said quietly. “And
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I told her that I had wanted Karamatsov’s death more than I wanted anything and now I’d never have it and maybe I should thank her.”
“Remember your own emotions this trip when you try to interpret Han’s emotions, then,” John Rourke told his son, then to all of them, “Paul and Annie and I should be back in a few days. All of us have to be concerned with getting Natalia well, maybe getting her back to Iceland. She might be happier there and she’d be farther away from her memories there.”