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both of them had been captured, there would be no reason to penetrate the Retreat. Logic indicates they’re both inside and that whoever sent these men knows it.”
“Could conventional explosives do anything?”
Rourke shoved his hood back a little from his face, looking at Paul. “If the right kind of explosives were used and whoever planted them or instructed them to be planted had some engineering and geology skills to back him up, unfortunately so. Possibly more damage than they think. I built the Retreat to withstand everything except a direct hit, selected the site accordingly, but no location is completely insusceptible to explosive damage if the job is done correctly.”
“Shit,” Paul snarled.
“Indeed” Rourke nodded.
“Then what will we do?1 Annie asked.
Rourke didn’t answer her, but pulled down his goggles as the skies had caught fire. Almost as if they knew.
Rourke licked his lips beneath the covering of his toque.
He looked at his daughter and his best friend, her husband. “Somehow, I think they know about the escape tunnels, or at least the one which leads out onto the top of the mountain. I can’t begin to fathom how they could, but it’s the only logical conclusion. They’re hauling explosives to the top of the mountain to blow their way in through the escape tunnel.”
“Something we said — ” Annie began.
“Anything we said wouldn’t have betrayed the exact location. If they plant explosives all over the top of the mountain, that won’t help them inside. They have to crack the double doors, otherwise they’d just be burying the tunnel entrance. Somehow, they know, it appears. So-”
“What do we do?” Paul asked.
“Even if Kurinami has the Retreat secured from in-
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side — and I didn’t show him how — he’ll become aware of someone trying to enter. So, you can get inside without him letting you in or he’ll let you in. Either way — ”
“What are you doing?” Annie asked suddenly.
“I’m going up around the back side to the top of the mountain. I’ll beat them by a good ten to fifteen minutes if I leave right away and they continue at their present rate of ascent. The two of you get to the main entrance and get inside, then secure the Retreat, Paul. I don’t want anyone getting in through the front door just in case they know about that. Then Paul, you and Annie set up by the base of the tunnel leading to the top of the mountain. M-16s in a crossfire ought to do the trick in case they get past me.”
“Suggestion?”
Rourke looked at Annie. “Suggestion.”
“You and Paul take the back way around. I can get to the main entrance myself and I can get inside. I’ve done it before when I’ve had to. If Akiro and Elaine are inside, the three of us can keep guard at the base of the escape tunnel. With you and Paul going up top, there’s less chance they’ll ever make it through. And it doesn’t take any great skills to put that escape tunnel entrance in a crossfire inside if we have to.”
Rourke looked at his daughter and felt himself smile. “You’re smart, you know that?” He looked at Paul. “You game? Why should I ask such a silly question.” He hugged Annie for a brief instant. “Be careful. Go straight down there and if there’s the slightest sign of any more of those guys, hide out until it’s over. Understand?”
“If I were Michael you wouldn’t say that.”
“You’re right — chiefly because he might not have sense enough to listen. Take off, sweetheart” and she embraced him, then Paul, then started along the defile, wading through drifts that were waist high to her, her
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M-16 held high in both hands over her head.
Rourke looked at Paul as he —Rourke—recased his binoculars. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” the younger man nodded.
Rourke was up, moving, along the width of the defile and starting up into the higher rocks. He glanced back once along the defile, but Annie was already through the narrow pass at the base and had disappeared . . .
“This is Weil. We rest for a moment. Secure your positions” He anchored his harness to the climbing rope, sagging back into a depression of rock where the snow was only partially drifted and he could, for a moment at least, escape the icy howling of the wind. His ears rang with it, what little there was of exposed flesh numb with it. Horst’s vigil overlooking Rourke’s mountain had yielded an interestingly promising result. Infrared emissions had indicated a marked difference in density at several locations along the mountain, beyond what Horst, a geologist by training, had considered normal. The story of Rourke on the last day before the ionization of the atmosphere had taken hold and the sky had caught fire was known to all by now, that he had used an escape tunnel and gone to the top of the mountain and from there, single-handedly, armed only with the little pistols he perennially carried, combated the last Soviet helicopter.
One of the anomalies Horst had detected was at the very crown of the mountain itself and, if they had any luck, the tunnel spoken of in the story.
Explosives such as they carried would crack through any artificial entrance way and then they would be able to penetrate the tunnel itself, utilizing more explosives at the base —because doubtless there was an interior door—and then the gas. The Japanese and his black
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mistress were too dangerous to be allowed to live.
There was always the threat that Rourke would, for some reason or another, return to his Retreat. Rourke or one of his armed and dangerous children or the Russian woman Rourke was so fond of. Weil discounted any true danger. Even if Rourke and three or four of his family were to return, they would be hopelessly outnumbered.
Weil looked to his weapon instinctively. The American M-16 was primitive, but satisfactory, although he would have preferred a weapon of German design, even one of similar vintage as these five centuries old museum pieces, perhaps the Heckler & Koch G-3. He had see these in the museums at New Germany, though never fired one. They appeared more substantial and, according to the data he had read on them, used a more substantial cartridge as well.
Weil mentally shrugged. The rockets he and his men carried would more than compensate for any shortcomings of their firearms, more than take care of this almost mythically endowed American, John Rourke. And then, work could progress to advance the cause of Nazism .
The snow made the going glower than Rourke had anticipated, so he quickened his pace against it, viewing the falling snow and the bitter cold of the winds almost as a human enemy, yet trying to account as best he could for the toll the exertion would take on him and not so hopelessly fatigue himself and Paul Rubenstein that, by the time they reached the top of the mountain, they would be too exhausted to fight. But it was imperative to attain the summit before the eight men with explosives reached it. “Hurry, Paul!”
“Right behind you.”
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It was necessary to raise his knees almost to the height of his waist in order to wade through the drifts, and the snow was very wet, uncharacteristic for Georgia at earlier time of his recollection, and so its very heaviness weighed against him. But John Rourke kept moving . . .
Annie Rourke fought through the drift since there was no way of getting over or around it, her arms too tired to keep the rifle anything more than chest height, the snow almost to her waist. It was necessary to plunge into it, then lift the legs as high as they would go, then plunge forward, compacting snow beneath the feet only to lift again and move perhaps two feet forward. Then repeat the process.
But ahead, she could see the entrance to the Retreat. It was coming home for her, the only real home she had known since she was a little girl. The difference in ages between herself and her brother were nothing now, but his memories of the incidents before the Great Conflagration were more detailed because he was two years older. And she didn’t envy those memories, the time between the Night of The War and when the skies caught fire and ail seemed ended and they took the Sleep as a last desperate gamble. It was hard for her to recall that interim period and the few years of normal childhood in anything more than generalities.
Annie Rourke Rubenstein could envision the Mul-liner’s dog and the farm field where, Michael told her, that they used to run and play. But how much of that vision was recollection, how much suggestion?
There were isolated, vivid memories of the house where they had lived before the Night of The War, memories of her mother’s studio and the paintings that became the drawings used in the childrens’ books Sarah