95
Rourke had written and illustrated, memories of warm smells in the kitchen, bread baking, cookies fresh from the oven.
But the other memories —the fear, the running, the hiding, the killing–she envied Michael not at all.
She stopped before the entrance to the Retreat and pushed back the hood of her parka, pulled down her goggles, undid the woolen scarf tied over her head, tore the toque away, her hair caught up in the wind, her face and throat and ears instantly as cold as ice, tingling. But if Akiro and Elaine were monitoring the entrance, they would recognize her that way. If not, she would attempt to open the door herself. If, somehow, Akiro had secured the entrance and she was not noticed, she would return to the rocks and wait in what shelter they would afford.
She would give it another two minutes before beginning to redon her headgear. If she could last that long. Already, her skin was numbing . . .
Prokopiev worked his way along the wall’s base, the wall almost seeming to radiate tension. Senior Sergeant Piotr Yaroslav was just to Prokopiev’s rear as he glanced back, the men following Yaroslav in a single file. Prokopiev’s fists were balled tightly to his rifle at the pistol grip and small of the stock, this the newest version of the service rifle, issued just prior to the Hero Marshal’s assault on the Underground City. Like its predecessor, it was modularly constructed, firing a caseless round as did all firearms of modern design. But it was constructed entirely of stainless steel, high strength aluminum alloys and polymers, the forty-round disposable magazines firing the 5.12mm X 35. The Vasonov-26 was state-of-the-art. He felt its art would be needed soon.
Beyond the wall lay a vast field, at its furthest extent,
96
perhaps a smile, the gray base of a mountain and” in the mountain, the entry way to the Second Chin, City.
Prokopiev wanted battle, not reconnaissance. But duty was duty. He wanted to crush any and all Chinese for their betrayal of Communism, their support of what was then the United States during the critical period following the exchange of missiles and bombs. But the Comrade Colonel Antonovitch wanted their trust first, and then their destruction could come. Prokopiev would wait, would follow orders —at least for now. He kept moving . . .
The mountain top. John Rourke had climbed to it to raise the Stars and Stripes, shot it out with Rozhdest-venskiy, dove to the tunnel as the flames had closed around him. He had used the tunnel again, to see if there was a world at all remaining after he had first awakened from the Sleep.
He stood atop the mountain now, “lost in thought” the expression which came to mind, despite its triteness, accurate.
Paul Rubenstein stood beside him.
“I was never up here. You could see — in good weather you could—-”
“A lot of Georgia. Into the Carolinas. When I built the Retreat, I never wanted it to be used for this. But I saw it coming Paul. God help me, I saw it coming.”
“Mene, mene, Tekal upharson,” Paul Rubenstein whispered.
“The handwriting on the wall,” Rourke nodded, then started for the side along which the enemy climbers were coming.
97
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
John Rourke crouched beside the rocks near which he had stood bracing Rozhdestvenskiy five centuries before. But rather than a helicopter gunship, he waited for eight men. And this time, he was not alone, Paul Rubenstein hidden a few dozen yards off, prone behind ice-slicked boulders which had weathered millennia here. And fire did not well up to consume the skies now, snow and sleet driven on gale force winds swirling about the mountain top instead.
The Python in the full flap holster at his right hip was packed with snow between the rear of the trigger guard and the grip front strap, the flap not providing enough protection. He had left the Scoremasters in the backpack, the pack hidden away closer to the far edge of the mountain top. But it would not come to guns immediately, perhaps, because if the attackers had kept to their climbing formation, only two of them at a time would reach the summit and to open fire would simply have alerted the others to trouble. It would be easy enough to shoot down at them on the rocks but there were a sufficient number of wide ledges along the face that the objects attached to their packs— rockets apparently — might be employed. And Rourke had no idea of their capabilities.
Had the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG been with him rather than left behind with Sarah at the First Chinese City, the proposition would have been little different. He would
98
have been pushing the yardage to attempt, from hiding, to have picked the climbers off the mountainside rather than climb up to intercept them. And, the .308s the SSG fired would have behaved erratically in the high winds.
Instead, he waited, his right fist clenched tight to the haft of the Grain Life Support System X, the LS X his weapon of choice for the task at hand.
John Rourke saw the first of the climbers, the crown of a hooded head surfacing over the edge, then a hand groping, then both hands bracing and the chest visible, then all at once the white snow smocked figure had attained the top. The man paused for the briefest instant, then turned back toward the face of the mountain, helping the second climber over the top.
Rourke’s gloved right fist balled on the LS X.
He knew Paul would be watching for his move. He made it.
Rourke stood, stepped forward two paces, the first climber starting to turn around, Rourke’s left hand going to the man’s face, snapping the head and neck back and tensioning the head against the upper segment of the internal frame pack, Rourke’s right hand driving forward. At the edge of his peripheral vision, he could see Paul Rubenstein, the Gerber Mk II in his right fist, hurtling himself toward the second climber, bulldogging the man to the ice-slicked surface as Rourke’s own knife angled past the right side edge of the pack and punched through fabric and flesh and kidney and his left hand over the toque-covered mouth stifled the scream that the howl of the wind would have rendered otherwise inaudible.
The man sagged downward, knees buckling, Rourke guiding him to the ice as Rourke rammed the LS X further inward, upward. He could see Paul Rubenstein, straddling the second climber across the chest, the knife
99
in Paul’s right fist hammering down like a spike into the man’s chest, wrenched free, then raking across the throat on the backswing, all movement from the man beneath Paul suddenly stopped in one violent spasm.
At once, Paul began dragging the body back into the rocks where it could not be seen, Rourke already doing the same. Rourke glanced toward the edge. Only seconds before more of them would be coming. But he had to know the capability of the rockets. Quickly, Rourke unlashed the one at the right side of the internal frame pack. He rubbed snow away from the rocket’s casing, ice packed to it in a thin film, but some of the words visible on the tube. The words were in German. All thought of discerning more concerning the nature of the rocket itself vanished.
Rourke sagged forward for an instant, then looked over the dead man toward the edge of the mountain top. Another climber. Rourke picked up the Grain knife, drew back deeper into the rocks, waited, his mind racing. Duplicity on the part of Colonel Wolfgang Mann and his leader, Deiter Bern? Rourke dismissed the thought. There was a firm bond of personal friendship between him and Doctor Munchen at the very least, even Hartman, the military commander with whom he had so closely worked. Rourke told himself he would have sensed something if he hadn’t been told it.
If these men were Germans, why M-16s, Eden Project equipment doubtlessly? Why were they performing the evident bidding of Commander Christopher Dodd?
The climber was rising over the edge. And over the wind’s howl as the man turned away toward the edge, Rourke could just make out the man’s shout. “Weil — something is wrong here!” And the man’s words were in German.
John Rourke was up, moving, driving his body forward toward the edge, his arm driving his knife forward
100
still faster, Rourke’s body slamming against the climber, pulling him down, Rourke’s knifehand arcing around the man and driving the blade inward and downward through the chest at the man screamed.
Paul — Rourke saw the younger man moving toward the edge, the Gerber shifted into his left fist, the Schmeisser swinging forward, tensioning on its sling. Rourke let the dead man fall to the ice, the LS X still in him as Rourke’s right hand let it go, arcing back to find the pistol grip of the M-16.