“Remember, Comrades,” Prokopiev hissed into his headset. “Do not kill the horses. Open fire on my command.” Prokopiev blinked his eyes several times, began to regulate his breathing as he cheeked tighter to the rifle’s straight line buttstock . . .
Michael Rourke felt it inside him, an uncomfortable feeling as if some other sense beyond the normal five were operation. Was he becoming like Annie?
But he felt something.
“Wait, Han.”
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Han reined back. Michael Rourke looked up into the rocks flanking them. “Ever hear of “The Lone Ranger?”
“Who?”
“Nothing —but somehow —
The first shots rang out, a burst of sharp cracking assault rifle fire echoing and re-echoing among the rocks so rapidly, so loudly that it was impossible to tell its origin, one of the Chinese soldiers going down from the saddle, his horse rearing, falling. And as Michael Rourke reached for his M-16, he shouted, “Remind me to tell you the story sometime!” Otto Hammerschmidt, who had been riding with his rifle in his hand, was returning fire, as were the three other Germans who had ridden the same way.
Michael’s own horse began to rear, Michael fisting the rifle as he threw his right leg over the saddle horn and knotted his fists in the reins and mane, the ail-but worthless animal’s neck twisting at an unnatural angle as it tumbled gracelessly to the unyielding ground. Michael Rourke threw himself behind it, firing his M-16 wildly up into the rocks, gunfire general now, Han’s horse wheeling, Han firing a pistol toward the rocks on either side of the gap.
One of the German soldiers went down, his horse spilling head over heels, the German’s body unwillingly cartwheeling away, the rifle skidding across the rocks and gravel.
The story, if he lived to tell Han about it, dealt with a massacre in a gap like this, but in Texas, thousands of miles and six centuries ago, long before men had ever thought about nuclear warfare and its barbaric, tenuous aftermath. Michael Rourke kept shooting.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He had found his Python, the Metalife finish unscathed, but the cylinder impacted out of the frame, the rear sight broken off and the barrel sprung, or wrenched out of true with the frame, as he had described it. Gun and holster had become separated during the tumble from the mountaintop.
Annie poured her father a drink, he and Paul fresh from another forty-five minutes in the arctic-like temperatures searching the bodies of the climbers and searching for the lost, now recovered but irreparably damaged, revolver.
Was this whiskey more of the Seagram’s Seven or was it some of the whiskey he had gotten the Germans to duplicate for him and which — according to Michael—he had put into the original, centuries old bottles? They had duplicated his pet Federal loads for the family’s firearms, had duplicated parts and lubricants and all sorts of items.
She sipped at the glass she had poured for herself. It tasted the same as Seagram’s Seven had always tasted, but it would have, of course, or her father would not have wasted his time bringing it to the Retreat. It was a gross understatement, but John Thomas Rourke was a man of definite tastes.
Annie Rubenstein took two glasses in hand and walked back toward the sofa which dominated the center of the great room, setting two down, then going
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back to the kitchen counter, up the three steps, Elaine having poured the other two glasses. Annie took her own glass, sipping at it again, not rejoining them, watching them as Elaine brought her own and Akiro’s drink to the low table and set them down, then settled onto the floor at Akiro’s feet.
Annie set down her drink, burrowing her hands into the slit pockets at the sides of the ankle length black full skirt she had changed into, a shawl cocooned around her shoulders over the open collared gray blouse, her black stockinged feet in flat-soled Icelandic walking shoes.
She felt almost human again, and physically more comfortable. She had showered under steaming hot water (thank God Akiro had activated the water-heating system) and changed when it had proven useless that she might argue her way into accompanying her father and her husband back into the storm, as Akiro had.
Elaine had stood by the bathroom door, talking idly while Annie had scrubbed hair and body under the steaming spray, just letting her innermost being thaw out, unwind. “Why are they trying to kill you and Akiro, Elaine? I mean, what’s behind it, Commander Dodd?”
“I think it’s because of the computer files. They were wiped out, but Akiro had made copies before that, just in case— duplicates, you know?”
“Uh-huh— and they want the duplicates? —I mean, Dodd wants them?”
“I think that was it at first, but I think they gave up on that and decided their ends would be served just as well if Akiro and I were dead and nobody at all knew where the duplicate files were hidden.”
“Where are they hidden, Elaine?”
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“Akiro buried the copies he made about halfway between Eden Base and the German installation. You don’t think it was the Germans, do you? I mean, they’ve helped all of us so much and all — ”
“No —I don’t think it was the Germans. Did I remember to put out a towel?” She knew that she had, but she had wanted to change the subject and the momentary casual question had accomplished that.
Annie fished her left hand from her pocket now and took up her drink. It was strange, but she’d put ice cubes into it. She had been so cold and she was having a drink and she used ice cubes. She wondered if hu-rnans were just simply insane?
And an annoying feeling had been invading her thoughts; there had been no chance to mention it to Paul, and she didn’t want to add the doubt it would sow to her father’s already overwhelming burden: Natalia, her own mother and the baby, the problems of Akiro and Elaine with Commander Dodd—all of that. And now her father’s revolver destroyed. But she sensed, no matter how she tried to fight it, that Michael was somehow in danger.
Annie took a healthy swallow of her drink and the feeling still didn’t ebb away. She walked down toward the sofa, listening as her father talked.
“So you think Dodd is up to something with some unknown group of conspirators? Correct?”
“Yes, Doctor Rourke.” Akiro Kurinami answered almost deferentially.
Paul was trying to struggle out of his boots and Annie set down her drink and settled to her knees at his feet. “Let me do that,” she whispered, her voice low so she would not interrupt her father, her hands becoming busy with the boot laces, her mind busy with her father’s words, but the nagging thoughts of Mi-
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chael being in some sort of danger penetrating her thoughts like rapier thrusts. She almost had the first boot off, Paul leaning back, evidently enjoying her domesticity, which was why she had volunteered to remove his boots from him in the first place. Men wanted little things like that done for them, and liked it even when they didn’t deserve it. Paul deserved it.
Annie began untying the second boot.
Her father again began to speak. “Those men were probably German. No identification, of course, but one of them was named Weil and another of them called out for a man named Horst, evidently the third fellow we killed on the mountaintop. The rifles were M-16s —I’d venture to say the serial numbers would match up to some of those missing from the Eden supplies. The handguns were German, the rocket launchers German, but the launchers not something I’ve seen in current German military inventory. Possibly something superceded and put out as surplus, more likely stored and subsequently stolen. I’d say, just as a guess, that they’re Nazis.”
“Nazis?” Elaine Halversen seemed to gasp the word.
“Nazis again,” Paul said dispiritedly, Annie looking up from her knees at him as he spoke. He had pretty eyes. She pulled off his second boot, then curled up at his feet, putting his feet up into her lap to warm them and her hands, curling her legs under the fullness of her skirt. He smiled down at her as she raised her eyes toward him, Annie feeling his hand touch gently at the hair at the nape of her neck.
It was good to be married, even better to be in love.
“When Colonel Mann crushed the Nazi Party in New Germany, it was only to be expected that the closet Nazis, or some of the ones who swore allegiance to Deiter Bern weren’t ‘reconstructed’, as they used to
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say,” her father began again. “It would have been impractical at the least to attempt any sort of spiritual alliance with the Communists, but someone at the German installation outside Eden Base could have sounded out Dodd, then laid out a deal. I never trusted Commander Dodd very far. If power was waved in front of him, as evidently it was, as well as the promise of unlimited access to German technology, it’s well within the realm of probability that he succumbed.”