He dismissed the man mentally, the submachinegun still spraying into the wall as Rourke wheeled toward the doorway. The Scorpion had a six-round magazine and
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Sarah loaded the chambered round off the top of the magazine just as he did with his Detonics pistols and that meant only two rounds were left.
He crossed the corridor, again choosing, he hoped, not for life or death. Michael and Maria Leuden — Natalia would have wanted him to do that.
The Chinese security people were nearly to the doorway of Michael’s and Maria’s apartment but Rourke was through the doorway first. Three men. Three submachineguns. All three pointed at the unconscious forms of Michael and Maria on the bed they shared. John Rourke stabbed the pistol toward the furthest of the three assassins and fired, the man’s head snapping away and his body following it as the submachinegun sprayed across the wall and then into the headboard of Michael’s and Maria’s bed, the front of the assassin’s face bloodied and deformed. Rourke moved the pistol left and fired at the second assassin, the right eye gone as the body slammed back against the wall and the submachinegun fell from his hands onto the bed. John Rourke was already running, hurtling himself toward the third man, the pistol, slide locked open, empty, turning in his right hand. As Rourke’s body impacted the third man, Rourke’s right hand hammered down, the butt of the handmade pistol smashing down along the crown of the skull and across the bridge of the submachinegunner’s nose, Rourke’s body slamming the man into the wall, the submachinegun between their bodies, discharging, Rourke’s right knee slamming upward to find the groin, the thumb of his left hand puncturing the assassin’s right eyeball, gouging and ripping, hooking, Rourke drawing the man’s head toward him, then punching it into the wall, again and again and again, the submachinegun stilled, Rourke letting the body fall away, fluid from the eyeball mixed with blood, dripping from Rourke’s left hand as he turned toward the bed. Michael and Maria
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were unscathed.
Rourke heard submachine gunfire from the next suite of rooms— Natalia.
The nearest dead man’s submachinegun. Rourke caught it up, jumping over the corpse as he ran toward the corridor, then toward the sound of the gunfire.
But it was already over.
Three black-clad Soviet commandos lay on the floor just beyond the bedroom doorway, clustered around Natalia. She lay on the bed. Rourke shoved his way past the Chinese guards, then sank to his knees beside her bed, his right hand abandoning the submachinegun, touching at her throat. There were no visible wounds. And his fingertips felt her pulse.
John Rourke closed his eyes for an instant, then ran from the room, into the corridor. Chinese guards milled about the entrance to the Bjorn Rolvaag’s room. John Rourke shoved past them. Three of the black-clad commandos were dead on the floor. The huge dog, Hrothgar, lay at the foot of the bed; sprawled half out of the bed, a pool of blood around his face, was the Icelandic policeman. Rourke looked at the pistol in his hand. Its butt was matted with blood and hair. He set it down on the floor as he dropped to his bare knees beside the man.
The killing was done and it was time for other things.
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CHAPTER TWO
He had seen too much of hospitals lately, John Rourke thought. And he realized as he thought it that such a thought was strange for a doctor. There had been his own confinement and the virtually miraculous curative powers of the medical personnel at Mid-Wake. There had been the time spent there while Michael and Annie and Paul and Sarah and Natalia had all been examined to see if, as it had been with him, the death of radiation-linked cancer lurked within them as well. But he had been the only one in whom it had been discovered and ever since it had been found and cured, he had felt reborn. He had been near death when he had taken a stomach full of assault rifle fire, lost great amounts of blood, nearly expired from shock before anything else could have claimed him. But as miraculously as the medical personnel of Mid-Wake had saved him, he had rapidly healed. Once it was safe to do so, he had begun a regimen of physical exercise more strenuous than any he had undertaken since the Awakening.
He had stayed at Mid-Wake for weeks afterward, learning all he could of their advanced techniques, at his side the German officer and physician, Doctor Mun-chen. Munchen had spoken of dire rumors heard of Eden Base and the power struggle that was inexorably leading to confrontation between Akiro Kurinami and Commander Dodd.
What had struck John Rourke then and what he
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pondered now as he waited in this Chinese hospital, his wife beside him, was that mankind had learned so little. The entire world had been nearly destroyed. Out of greed, envy and distrust. Greed, envy and distrust were growing again. And when they were again harvested, would the world this time survive?
He smoked one of the non-carcinogenic cigarettes the Germans made, the package taken from Natalia’s suite. It was too confined here to smoke one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars that were his favorites.
The gas used to quell any possibility of resistance to the assassins was still being analyzed, both from blood samples taken from Annie, Paul, Michael, Maria and Natalia and from the unmarked canisters found on the bodies of the dead Russians. The origin of both the gas and the men was frighteningly clear. Indeed, some one or more of Karamatsov’s senior officers had taken charge of his armies and was leading them. Where? To what ends? It was vital that no link be allowed to form between the Soviet forces on land and those of the Soviet underwater complex which still battled the friendly forces of Mid-Wake in five centuries of unabated submarine warfare. Such a link would give the Soviets on land unlimited access to nuclear weapons. Already, Rourke suspected, the Germans would be working to produce nuclear weapons as a counter-measure to the missing elements of the Chinese nuclear arsenal should the land-based Soviet forces locate them.
History was repeating itself. Santayana had put it best: “Those who do not learn the lessons of history shall be forced to relive them.” No one had learned the lessons as well as Sarah, Annie, Paul, Michael, Natalia and himself, the only six persons on earth who had lived through the era of the holocaust, discounting the few who had taken The Sleep with Karamatsov and who still served Karamatsov’s memory. The Eden Project survi-
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vors had escaped earth the moment the thermonuclear nightmare had begun, returned to the ruins of earth only after its voracious appetite for death had been sated, its thirst for blood slaked. They had never known the death.
And this time, the earth’s atmosphere was too delicate a fabric to withstand another assault. All life, all humankind, would perish.
“What are you thinking about? You should see your face. It looks like some sort of mask —rage, fury. What are you thinking, John?”
John Rourke looked at his wife. A voice was calling over the intercom in Chinese, summoning a doctor if his recently acquired yet still meager knowledge of Chinese served. Rourke said to her, “Some used to say that after a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead. Remember?”
“I remember”
Except for his wife and children and Natalia and himself, there was no one else who could have remembered.
The Chairman himself entered the waiting room, bowing deferentially to Rourke and his wife, then looking Rourke square in the eye as Rourke stood. The Chairman was an aesthetic looking man, tall and thin, immaculate, with penetrating eyes that showed neither hardness nor emotion. “I am pleased to report, Doctor Rourke, that our doctors indicate that the condition of your children, Mr. Rubenstein, Doctor Leuden and Major Tiemerovna improves by the minute. The effect of the gas, I am told, is merely temporary. Even now, your daughter is returning to consciousness. But I am also advised that it might be well to allow your daughter and the others to rest for some time lest they suffer from undue exertion. The Icelandic policeman, Rolvaag, is an exception. Although he was also gassed, apparently
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because of his great size, the gas took effect more slowly and he was subdued with a blow to the head. His condition is guarded. I took the liberty of anticipating that you might indeed have concern for the welfare of the dog which is his constant companion. The veterinary center relays the information that the animal is well.”
Rourke was about to speak as the door into the waiting room opened again, the German Captain Otto Hammerschmidt entering, the shoulders of his uniform parka wet with melted snow, his blue eyes pinpoints of light as he doffed his cap and ran the fingers of his left hand back through his militarily short hair. “Herr Chairman. Herr Doctor Rourke. Frau Rourke. I have only just heard — “