Michael Rourke could not read them, but knew their meaning nonetheless. The banner proclaimed that the riders came in peace, despite their weapons, in order to speak with the great leader of the Second City concerning a matter of grave importance. His indulgence was begged that they might be allowed to speak with him in an honorable fashion.
And Michael Rourke was beginning to wonder if his father’s implication —that this was a fool’s errand —
84
might not be true. In those mountains lurked the Mongol mercenaries who had been about to rape Maria Leuden, nearly caused Otto Hammerschmidt’s death. Beside him, Otto’s expression seemed to have deteriorated from serious to grim.
Han handed the banner to one of the Chinese soldiers, then took back the reins of his animal and moved into the saddle.
Michael reached beneath his leather jacket, taking out his gloves.
“We ride to the base of the mountains, Han?” Hammerschmidt asked.
“If we get that far, Captain Hammerschmidt,” Han answered, digging in his heels and starting his mount ahead.
Michael grinned at Otto Hammerschmidt. “Well, he sure told you, didn’t he?”
Hammerschmidt lit a cigarette in the cup he formed with his gloved hands, saying as he exhaled, “I was ordered to do this. Why are you here? Hmm? Who’s the stupid one?” And Hammerschmidt laughed loudly as he signaled the six enlisted men, then spurred his mount after Han Lu Chen.
Michael held his animal back, watching after all of them for a moment. Han was by now a considerable distance ahead of the column composed of Hammerschmidt and his German/Chinese force, the banner suing for peace and diplomacy held high in the wind.
Michael’s horse started to rear, Michael twisting the animal violently into obedience. His right hand drifted to the saddle scabbard and the M-16 there.
The man they went to see called himself Mao, after the iron-fisted totalitarian who ruled post World War Two Communist China. As Michael Rourke’s hand lingered on the butt of the M-16, he recalled something Mao Tse Tung was credited with saying: “All power
85
comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
Michael Rourke dug in his heels, his animal coming instantly to a gallop, like a coiled spring released.
Mao’s words made for sobering thoughts.
86
CHAPTER TWELVE
The J7-V hovered over the ice-packed, wind-hardened snow crust. The cloud of falling snow from the growing blizzard and tiny specks of loose ice swirled so densely around the machine and the three people who jumped from it that visibility extended barely beyond the length of John Rourke’s reach.
His eyes were goggled, his face toqued, his head hooded, his hands gloved, but still the shock of cold penetrated almost to the bone as he reached out for Annie, Paul already having her by one arm, Rourke taking her by the other, both men leaning their bodies into the swirling snow and ice and wind and propelling her forward, the J7-V banking and slipping as it climbed, the ice and snow driving down on them now like microscopic daggers.
Rourke dragged his daughter ahead, Paul pushing her forward, Annie making some sort of barely intelligible sound, scream-like, but perhaps only the sound of labored breathing. Rourke’s own breath came in cold gasps. He looked upward, his goggles almost instantly covered with a thin coating of snow and ice, the ice impacts against the plastic of the goggle lenses like a suddenly deafening cacophony which he felt through the bones in his face rather than heard; but the J7-V was banked nearly away. Rourke gathered his daughter in his arms, further attempts at movement pointless until the aircraft’s cyclonic downdraft was abated.
Paul’s hands protected her, face and head. Rourke
87
embraced her closely. It had been a mistake to bring her here, but a mistake she had pushed for, beyond volunteering, insisted upon. They had been exposed for less than a minute. And bitterly, Rourke thought, if Kurinami and Halversen were out in this, they would be dead.
The downdraft from the German V-Stol aircraft was suddenly gone, Rourke shouting now over the keening of the wind, “We have to get moving! Annie? Will you be all right?”
“If everyone stops suffocating me by trying to protect me!”
He touched his covered-over lips to the hood of her parka and let her go, Paul shouting, “We have to get inside and out of this. The wind!”
Rourke nodded vigorously, not only for agreement’s sake, but that his gesture be understood. He had shot a last minute azimuth on his compass before the aircraft had touched down, and he oriented himself now toward the ground and gestured and shouted, “Follow me!”
It was the wind, howling at gale force, which heightened the cold, made it penetrate despite the heaviest of outer garments. And his plotted course would soon take them into a defile. They would have to labor along its sides because of the depth of the snow —it was impossible to tell exactly how high because of the downdraft of the machine —but in the defile they would be out of the wind.
Paul began feeding out rope, Rourke using a carabi-ner clip to secure the leading end to his equipment, Annie six feet down its length and between them, then Paul clamping on, the remainder of the climbing rope coiled over his right shoulder.
Already, John Rourke was moving, his body leaning into the wind, he hoped shielding even marginally the effect of the wind on his daughter. He kept moving.
88
The drastic qualities of the weather here only deepened his concerns, developing over the last several weeks, that the climate was somehow eroding, as some had predicted it might. German high altitude observation craft had monitored band upon band of disturbances swiping toward the North American continent and toward Europe, Asia somehow shielded from the flow. But what was coming?
Rourke kept moving, the height of the snow more easily judged on the terrain over which they trudged, at least two feet or perhaps a bit more, but where the drifts were —which was all but every where — as high as four feet in places. Rourke’s legs were already tired, but he felt no effects from the surgeries performed on him at Mid-Wake. The doctor, the techniques, all were peerless in his experience. He lifted his left leg, forced it down through the powder, then through the ice crust beneath and found footing, then the right leg, intentionally keeping his stride narrow so that Annie could follow in his footsteps and be spared the additional fatigue of carving out fresh ones. He glanced back once. She was a tall girl, but seemed pitifully small even by comparison to Paul, a slightly built man, She seemed all but lost inside the great folds of her parka and snow pants.
Rourke kept moving.
The defile was ahead. He quickened his pace, keeping his stride narrow though, not bothering to shout to Annie and her husband that the defile was near, barely having the breath for it if he had tried. Keeping moving was the thing. He did that. The defile was perhaps a hundred yards away now, Rourke bending his upper body so into the wind that as he placed one foot in front of the other, he sometimes began to lose his balance.
Almost without consciously realizing it, the height of the drifts began to decline, the force of the wind slacken. The torture of each step became slightly easier to en-
89
dure. He reached the defile, trudging forward to get Annie and then Paul into its protection, then collapsing into the comparative warmth of the snow, the wind suddenly gone.
Annie sagged against him, and he couldn’t tell if she cried or laughed . . .
Men in white snow smocks — he assumed they were men — moved like spiders, their web a network of climbing ropes taking them along the face of the mountain which housed the Retreat, rather than along the road bed. One man would founder in the snow, be lost momentarily from sight, then appear, the others seeming almost to drag him onward for a time, then another man would endure the same. But through it all, they kept going.
Slung over the white snow smocks were M-16 rifles and backpacks and carryalls and other gear.
John Rourke brought the binoculars down from his eyes and quickly drew his goggles back to protect his already numbing skin.
“What the hell are they doing?” Paul whispered loudly over the keening of the wind.
“Assaulting the Retreat, it appears,” Rourke answered emotionlessly.
“Why? And who are they? From Eden?” Annie interjected, sounding incredulous.
“Evidently, Akiro and Elaine are inside the Retreat. Or at least our friends out there think they are. In either case, unless they’re total imbeciles, they must be planning to plant explosive charges where they think the main entrance is. Aside from ourselves, only Kurinami and Halversen know the secret of the entrance. It seems safe to assume that if either of them had been captured, the secret of the entrance could have been extracted. If