“But a good rest awaits you at the German facility outside Eden Base,” Rourke smiled, the officer seating himself at the pilot’s controls. “Somehow, that doesn’t seem to cheer you, Lieutenant.”
The young* German laughed as he took the yoke and Rourke released simultaneously. “My wife, Olga, is in New Germany— Argentina as you would call it, Herr Doctor. I have not seen her for three months.”
“Men have survived longer periods than that,” Rourke smiled again, unstrapping, rising from the co-pilot’s seat. “But I hope you get to see her soon.”
“She is very pretty.”
“I noticed the picture,” and Rourke gestured toward the photograph wedged between the mounting frame and the landing gear control panel. She was blonde, trim waisted and almost classically large bosomed —and undoubtedly much more pleasant to hold on a cold night than the controls of a J7-V V-Stol fighter bomber.
“Then you know what I mean. It will be good to rest at our facility near Eden Base. But —”And he exhaled long
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and softly. “It is not the same as being with my Olga.”
“Here.” And John Rourke took his wallet from his jacket where he’d taken to carrying it since The Awakening. Wrapped inside a waterproof plastic bag, he opened the bag, then extracted one of the laminated photographs from inside. “Her name is Sarah.” He extended the picture in his hand and Lieutenant Lintz took it.
“She is so pretty, your wife. Very beautiful. You are having a baby, I understand?”
“Sarah isr actually,” Rourke nodded. The young fellow was apparently starved for conversation, or naturally curious, or perhaps both. Rourke took back the photograph of his wife, returning it to his wallet, returning the wallet to the bag and then to his pocket as he continued. “She’s through the first trimester.”
“You must be excited. Olga and I— we want children. If I speak out of turn, Herr Doctor Rourke, please tell me to be quiet. But —your daughter —in there — ” And Lintz gestured with a cock of the head toward the compartment just aft of the cockpit.
“She’s twenty-eight.”
“I have heard the story —I know I am rude — ”
Rourke sat back down and buckled in. There was time. “Briefly, after we took the cryogenic sleep as the Great Conflagration began, I awoke early, then awakened my son, Michael, and my daughter, Annie. I stayed with them for five years and returned to the Sleep when I thought they were adequately prepared to function together on their own. I continued in the cryogenic sleep until Annie was nearing the end of her twenty-seventh year. The children had aged to adulthood, while I only aged five years and my wife, Sarah, aged virtually not at all. The same held true or the man who’s now her husband, Paul Rubenstein, and, of course, Major Tiemerovna.”
“Ahh —she is pretty. Major Tiemerovna. I saw her.
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She has a face a man would die for, I think.”
“Yes,” John Rourke almost whispered . . .
Weil felt suddenly oppressively warm and began removing his parka. In the night, outside, it had been bone-chillingly cold, the temperatures throughout the period of the last several days dropping almost imperceptibly at first, but now more than a man could bear at night. Would they continue to drop? He longed for the warmth of his native New Germany. But the spirit of the Reich had to be served, and participating in this Dodd’s conspiracy was the only available means by which this end could be accomplished. If the Japanese officer and the black woman with him had been unable to reach Herr Rourke’s mountain retreat there would have been no need to worry over them. Without one of the hermetically sealed tents, they would have died, regardless of whatever survival training they had been given. Weil sat at the table now, the men from the other teams idling away the night playing cards, reading. Only Horst was still out in it, still scanning the mountain with his vision intensification binoculars, huddled as close as he could get to the field heater, searching for some secret and penetrable entrance into Rourke’s Mountain.
Failing that Horst found such an entrance, there was the other alternative. Weil glanced toward the explosives stacked in the far corner of the tent. He lit a cigarette . . .
John Rourke saw to his gear, the Lowe Alpine Systems Loco Pack secure, his leather jacket inside. Snow-shoes or cross country skis might have been useful, he thought, considering the weather. He pulled on the heavy gray woolen sweater, glancing at the Rolex on his
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left wrist. Nearly time. “Paul?”
“All set, John,” the younger man called back, kneeling, helping Annie with her boots.
Rourke found himself watching his daughter intently. It was odd seeing her in pants, but even with her decidedly feminine tastes she hadn’t said a word when they had discussed the return to Georgia and he—John Rourke — had cited German meteorological reports. The pre-dawn low here was anticipated to reach minus twenty degrees, the windchill factor creating the effect of minus fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Regardless of clothing, however prepared they might be, it would be impossible to remain in these temperatures for long without retreat to some sort of shelter.
For this and a second reason, he had determined that once the J7-V landed, he and Annie and Paul would strike immediately for The Retreat, in order to reach shelter and to ascertain whether or not Kurinami and Elaine Halversen had reached there.
If they had not, there was considerable likelihood they were dead by now. But he would find some means of making Annie stay behind in relative safety at the Retreat and set out with Paul using the truck, looking for them anyway.
The insulated snow pants already on, Rourke shouldered into his parka, almost instantly stifling in the warmth of the J7-V’s fuselage.
Lieutenant Lintz’s voice came over the speaker. “Doctor Rourke. We will be touching down in precisely five minutes. Please-prepare to secure for landing.”
Rourke checked his pockets, the insulated toque there, the snow goggles as well, the insulated gloves on top of the pack. “All right —Paul! Annie!”
“Right, daddy,” Annie called back, sliding onto the bench-like seat, strapping in, Paul beside her. Rourke shoved his pack into a safe corner and sat flanking
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Annie. “I hope we find them.”
“And what’s going on” Rourke added, securing the seat restraint.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Michael Rourke reined back on the Asian horse under him, his eyes squinting against the full brightness of the sun, the stocky little gray bucking slightly, Michael knotting his fists into the coarse black of its mane, almost wrestling the animal into control.
“You look like your father without his sunglasses, your eyes half-closed against the sun like that,” Otto Hammerschmidt said half through his teeth, reining in beside him, having more apparent difficulty with his mount than did Michael, The animal’s hide ran from chestnut almost through black with every shade between somewhere represented, glistening with sweat at the flanks.
“We will be encountering their roving patrols soon,” Han observed, handling his horse better than either Michael or Hammerschmidt. Michael wondered absently if it were just that Han Lu Chen knew better what to expect and, through anticipation, could counter the moves of the ill-tempered little creatures because of that. The other six men of the detail —three Chinese and three German, all enlisted personnel —formed a ragged semicircle around them.
“Better break out the banner, then,” Michael Rourke suggested to Han.
“Agreed —although it will have very little effect, I
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think,” Han said, his voice even, emotionless, as though he were stating some obvious fact. Han swung out of the saddle easily, handing over his reins to Michael, Michael knotting his left fist more tightly into the gray’s mane, Han’s animal immediately beginning to squirm, tug at the reins Michael held now in his right.
The pack animal one of the three Chinese soldiers had led at the rear of the column stood docilely enough as Han dug beneath the covering over the pack saddle and produced a neatly rolled length of silk, the backs of embroidered lettering visible here and there. From the side of the pack saddle, Han took a pole some five feet in length, one end of the pole semi-sharp. He took a few paces back from the pack animal and stabbed the pole into the ground with considerable ferocity. But the ground was so hard that the pointed tip barely penetrated beyond, as it appeared from Michael’s vantage point, anything more than two or three inches.
As if on cue, a gust of wind crossed the rock strewn gray plain on which they had paused, the deeper, almost purplish gray of the mountains jutting savagely upward in the distance, the mountains white-capped with snow from the approximate mid-point of their elevation. The gust of wind caught up the banner, unfurling it as Han began to affix the top of the banner to the staff. They were Chinese characters, embroidered in a deep blue against the field of pearl-cast white silk.