Earth Fire

THE SURVIVALIST #09

By Jerry Ahern

Earth Fire

Chapter One

Reed jumped from the Jeep before it had fully stopped, shouting to his driver, “Get up the road to the high school and warn headquarters and tell ‘em to pull out fast—use Emergency Plan Three—got that, Corporal?”

“Yes sir, but—”

“Just do it—move out—”

“What about you, Colonel—”

Reed started to run toward the grammar school building that had been converted to a field hospital — the wounded needed to be evacuated before the Soviet choppers struck. “I’ll get transportation—now boogey, soldier!”

“Yes, sir!”

Reed hit the steps, taking them three at a time in a long strided run toward the front doors of the school building which more resembled an elaborate courthouse in some rich Eastern states county.

The guard just inside the door was clambering to his feet, getting his rifle up to present arms, Reed snarling, “Can it, soldier—get into the administrator’s office—fast—tell him we’re evacuating—we’re using Emergency Plan Three—on the double, boy—”

“Yes, sir—”

Reed left the man gaping, punching through the inside doors and into the main corridor—the classrooms had been converted to laboratories and wards, the largest of the wards the lunchroom itself. But it was one of the smaller wards he ran toward—the only ward which housed the few female patients being treated. He sprinted along the corri-dor, shouting to one of the medical technicians, “We’re evacuating—Soviet Air Cavalry unit five minutes away— maybe six—get some of these patients ready to travel, sol-dier!”

“But, Colonel Reed—”

“No buts—do it,” and Reed sprinted on, reaching the end of the corridor, a nurse there, rather than white uniformed wearing clean but ragged fatigues that looked at least two sizes too big for her. “Nurse —start getting the patients ready,” Reed snapped, dragging the woman toward him for an instant by the shoulders of her uniform. “We’re movin’ out fast—Russian choppers five or six minutes away!”

He didn’t wait for an answer, taking the bend in the corri-dor left, running toward what had been one of the kinder-garten rooms, skidding to a halt on the worn heels of his combat boots, twisting the doorknob and pushing inside.

There was space for three beds—but there was only one bed, a white-haired woman lying in it, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her a white-haired man. The man’s face looked carved from stone—pain etched around the eyes, the jaw set. An IV tube ran between a half empty bottle and the woman’s arm. Reed walked across the room to the bed. The man stood up. “Colonel Reed—”

Reed saluted, despite the tattered civilian clothes the man wore rather than a uniform. “Colonel Rubenstein— sir—there’s a Soviet Air Cav Unit on the way—we don’t have much time. Mrs. Rubenstein has to be moved.”

Reed watched the older man’s eyes flicker. “You’re active duty—I’m just a retired Air Force officer. This is your show. But she can’t be moved. You move the other ones, Colonel—my wife stays here. And I stay with her—”

“Sir, they’re gonna—”

“I know what they’re going to do, Colonel Reed — but she can’t be moved. She’s dying—she knows it. I know it. I’m not going to take the last few hours she might have left away from her—anymore than can’t be helped anyway. If the Russians come, then maybe we’ll both die together—”

Reed shook his head. “No— no—what about your son— “

“Paul would understand, Colonel—”

Reed shook his head again. “No, he wouldn’t—if I were Paul Rubenstein, I wouldn’t understand — you’ve got an ob-ligation to live, sir. Your wife’d be the first one to tell you that—she’d—”

“That’s enough Colonel—get out of here—let Paul’s mother die in peace and maybe I can die with her—”

Reed balled his fists together along the outside seems of his fatigues. He opened his fists, turned around and found the doorknob, twisted it and stepped into the corridor. He wasn’t seeing too well and he closed his eyes, leaning against the door for a moment as it closed. His own mother had died of cancer, and Paul Rubenstein’s mother was doing the same.

“Shit,” he snarled, hammering his fist against the wall. “Damnit it to hell!” He pushed away from the door. As he started running back along the bend in the corridor, he could hear the voice of the hospital administrator over the intercom—he was announcing the evacuation, that there was nothing to fear if order could be maintained. Nothing to fear—to Reed, since the Night of The War, there had been nothing but fear. Some little fear at times for his own safety, but when there was a job to do that required intelli-gence gathering against the enemy, there was no time for personal fear. But fear—that the War would never end, fear that the Russians could never be displaced from the power they had seized in North America, fear that the guy you shared a smoke with was someone you’d never see again. After the evacuation of the Florida peninsula before the mega-quakes which severed it from the continental U.S., he had come to know the Rubensteins like a second set of par-ents, suffered with them both when it had been learned Mrs. Rubenstein was dying of bone cancer and nothing could be done to save her. He had come, in the precious little time since the discovery of the rapidly progressing disease, to accept her death as inevitable, but not the death of her husband who had become, even more since the nature of Mrs. Rubenstein’s illness had been revealed, a close friend.

He reached the end of the corridor, starting to thread his way through the evacuees and toward the doors leading to the outside.

Reed checked the Timex on his left wrist—the Russian gunships would fill the skies at any moment. From the bat-tered flap holster hanging at his right hip, he drew the 1911A1, working the slide of the .45, jacking a round into the chamber, leaving the hammer at full stand and upping the safety.

He pushed through the inner doors, his left hand helping ease a wheelchair patient through the doors. He reached the outer doors; the guard there was directing the flow of traf-fic —

wheelchair patients to the ramp, ambulatory patients down the steps.

Trucks were pulling up in front of the school, men pour-ing from the trucks to aid in the evacuation.

Above the din, the shouts, the blaring of the PA system, he heard the thrashing noise in the air.

In the distance, he could see their outlines, like huge, dark insects, like a swarm of mechanical locusts coming to devour all in their path.

He closed his eyes an instant, hammering his left fist against his thigh. Inside the improvised field hospital — Reed almost prayed Mrs. Rubenstein would die now so that her husband, his friend, might take the chance to live.

But he knew inside him that it wouldn’t happen that way.

Reed stared at the helicopters—they were coming closer. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair. He shouted toward the sky, toward the Soviet force, “God damn you all to hell!”

But he wondered if hell could be worse than the War.

Chapter Two

Rozhdestvenskiy stood beside Comrade Professor Zlovski, lighting a cigarette despite the fact that posted everywhere throughout the laboratory were boldly lettered signs Kureetvaspreshahyetsa. Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdest-venskiy realized he was someone for whom signs which ar-bitrarily gave orders no longer possessed the slightest meaning.

He watched; the coffin shaped object’s blue light seeming to flicker, the swirling clouds inside it parting, as did clouds before the dawn, he thought. And in a very real way, Rozhdestvenskiy considered, it was a dawn— the dawn of a new age for Earth.

If the man had survived.

Rozhdestvenskiy looked at Zlovski, noting the man’s chin trembling slightly from the oscillation of the spear point of his little beard. “When will we know, Comrade Professor?”

“Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy—we—we shall know in a matter of seconds. The cryogenic chambers are designed to stimulate the occupant toward awakening, yet not abruptly. We—we shall know in seconds.”

Rozhdestvenskiy only nodded, turning his attention back to the coffin shaped cryogenic chamber. It was one of the Soviet made chambers, but had been altered to match func-tion for function those twelve chambers of American man-ufacture which had been confiscated from the ruins of the Johnson Space Center along with the ninety-six three litre bottles of the nearly clear green liquid which was the all-important serum. The subject of the cryogenic suspended animation test—Rozhdestvenskiy had memorized the man’s name as a courageous hero of the Soviet Union, whether the man survived or not—had been injected with the correctly calculated amount of the cryogenic serum based upon body weight. The volunteer’s name was Corpo-ral Vassily Gurienko.

“Corporal,” Rozhdestvenskiy called out. “Do you live, Corporal? Vassily?”

Inside the chamber, as the clouds of the blue cryogenic gas dissipated, there was movement.

“It could only be a reaction of the body—an autonomic response, Comrade Colonel,” Zlovski cautioned.

“Vas-sil-y!”

“Comrade Colonel!”

“Vas-sil-y!”

Slowly, the body inside the chamber rose, like a figure in a child’s nightmare sitting up from a coffin, the covering, the lid of the chamber elevating in perfect synchrony with the form inside. Slowly, the torso bent until Corporal Vas-sily Gurienko sat fully erect. The man was naked save for a light blue cloth covering over his legs, this partially dropped away, his private parts unconsciously displayed now.

Rozhdestvenskiy walked toward the cryogenic chamber. “Corporal?”

The occupant of the cryogenic chamber—his lower jaw dropped. “Comrade Colonel—I—what is— I feel—”

Rozhdestvenskiy spoke slowly. “You were born where, Corporal?”

“Minsk—Minsk, Comrade Colonel.”

“Three times nine is how much?”

“Twenty-seven,” the man answered after an instant’s pause.

“What is the mathematical equivalent of pi?”

“Ahh—three point one four one six, Comrade Colonel.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Comrade Colonel—I volunteered to serve the State,

Comrade Colonel—”

“How?”

“To test, Comrade Colonel, to test the cryogenic cham-bers which will carry ourselves of the Committee For State Security Elite Corps and the selected female comrades and the support personnel five hundred years into the future to reawaken—to reawaken and to conquer the planet and to destroy the six returning United States Space Shuttles with our particle beam defense systems before they are able to land, Comrade Colonel, and to—”

“Never mind,” Rozhdestvenskiy whispered. Rozhdestvenskiy took a half step back, bringing his heels together, raising his right hand to his forehead, “I salute you, Com-rade Corporal Gurienko, as a Hero of The Soviet Union.”

Rozhdestvenskiy dropped the salute, turned to look at Professor Zlovski. “Well?”

“I have told you, Comrade Colonel — there is no proper test of so short a duration and —”

“The indications?”

“They are all good, Comrade Colonel—the corporal, he must be subjected to extensive medical tests before we know more and —”

Rozhdestvenskiy made a slicing motion through the air with his right hand, dropping his cigarette to the laboratory floor and heeling it out. He picked up the red telephone on the edge of the nearest lab table. “This is Rozhdestvenskiy. Give me Communications.” He waited, while the connec-tion was made, a ringing sound once, then a voice beginning a formal answering procedure. “Never mind that—this is Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy—send message seventeen. I re-peat, message seventeen. Send continuously until there is response. I am in the Cryogenics Laboratory and shall be returning to my Command Center.” He hung up.

“You are not curious, Comrade Professor?”

“About what, Comrade Colonel?”

Rozhdestvenskiy felt himself smiling. “Message seventeen—what it is?”

“I was not listening, Comrade Colonel— I would not pre-sume—”

“It is a coded signal to the Kremlin Bunker—it is only one word. ‘Come.’ Sometimes,” he nodded, starting to walk away, “one word is all that is needed. I shall wish to peruse the medical findings of the corporal’s condition personally, and have you available to me all the while for consultation. See to it, Zlovski.” Then Rozhdestvenskiy stopped, lighting another cigarette—he would have five centuries to break the habit. “The corporal is to be treated with the dignity which would be accorded a hero of his stature.” And he smiled at the professor. “Comrade Professor Zlovski — thank you very much—a most worthwhile entertainment— most,” and he walked away, listening to the click of the heels of his Italian loafers on the hard laboratory floor.

All but like the gods of Greco-Roman myth, he was im-mortal now.

Chapter Three

John Thomas Rourke slipped the Low Alpine Systems Loco Pack’s straps over his shoulders, watching as Natalia prepared herself—at least physically—for the ordeal which remained ahead of them. The twin stainless L-Frame Meta-life Custom Smiths had never left her throughout the con-ference with her uncle, General Varakov, in the mummy room of the museum by Lake Michigan, nor had the shoul-der holster—he had found out it was a Ken Null SMZ—with the special silencer fitted stainless American Walther PPK/ S. But she was slinging her two M-16s to her body now, as Rourke watched her. And there was Captain Vladov, the Soviet Special Forces Leader. One of his men had brought forth Vladov’s additional gear. Other than the Smith & Wes-son stainless Model 659 9mm he had worn earlier, Vladov now carried a second handgun, identical to the first. Still a third Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol he carried in what ap-peared to be a handmade tanker style holster, this gun the almost black looking 469, called the ‘Mini’ Gun before The Night of The War. The factories which produced American small arms had been occupied and in some cases made to continue production, mostly assembly from existing parts, Natalia had told him.

Rourke turned to the face of the man who had changed his destiny, or perhaps helped him to fulfill it, if indeed there were destiny at all. General Ishmael Varakov, Su-preme Commander North American Army of Occupation of The Soviet.

The general still sat on his backless bench, his secretary Catherine standing beside and behind him, her left hand resting gently on the massive old man’s equally massive left shoulder. The second Soviet Special Forces officer had ar-rived, with his men as well, a Lieutenant Daszrozinski.

General Varakov spoke. “The assault which I propose, Dr. Rourke, is the only means by which the KGB can be pre-vented from fulfilling its goals. But I feel a guilt that I send you all to your deaths despite this knowledge.”

John Rourke checked the Gerber fighting knife he had added to his gear before leaving for Chicago. As he sheathed the black handled MkII, he spoke, “Captain Vla-dov has five men and Lieutenant Daszrozinski has five men—a total of twelve Russians, plus Natalia of course. If there were only thirteen Russians,” he smiled, “an assault on the Womb to recover the cryogenic serum or destroy it and knock out the particle beam weapons there might be doomed to failure, I agree. But I’m an American. That’ll make the difference.” He watched Natalia’s eyes grow wider as he spoke, their incredible, surreal blueness brighter somehow in the contrast of the dim light of the mummy room. “And, if as you proposed, General Varakov, I can get the help of U.S. II in this, well,” and he laughed, “even just two or three more Americans added into—” and he paused, gesturing toward the Soviet SF-ers around him, knowing they were his allies now against the KGB, but finding it still hard to realize fully—”this assault force, well. You know what they always say. One American can lick any couple dozen people from anywhere else in the world. So, a thou-sand of Rozhdestvenskiy’s Elite KGB Corps, the thousand women he has there to perpetuate the KGB, all the support personnel, the thousands of American small arms stored there, the millions of rounds of ammunition. All of that— well, if mankind survives somehow after the ionization ef-fect begins and ends, well — history will probably show that this—” and he gestured again to the even dozen Soviet Spe-cial Forces troops and then to Natalia and himself— “this assault force just took advantage of those poor misguided KGB people.”

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna began to laugh, hysteri-cally, doubling forward with it, holding the M-16s back on their slings, falling to her knees. And suddenly, Captain Vladov, whom Varakov himself had labeled the best sol-dier in the Soviet Union, began to laugh, Lieutenant Daszrozinski joining him, the sergeants each man had, the enlisted personnel laughing, too.

Catherine, Varakov’s secretary with the too-long uniform skirt, smiled. Varakov, his face seaming, began to laugh, a laugh that sounded like a child’s dream of Santa Claus as it rolled sonorously from his massive body.

John Rourke began to check one, then the other of the twin stainless Detonics Combat Master

.45s he wore—it was the first time in his life, he smiled, that he had ever been funny. And in view of what lay before them, he thought, most likely the last time as well.

Chapter Four

Dawn came—the world had not perished by fire as it would, perhaps the next sunrise, or the next. It was an in-definite sentence of death — sometime, some sunrise within the next seven days at best, because of the electrically charged particles which had been thrust into the atmo-sphere during the bombings and missile strikes of The Night of The War, the total ionization of the atmosphere would take place. The atmosphere would catch fire, the fire spreading as the electrically charged particles were acted upon by the sun. It would be the last sunrise for humanity. As the earth rotated and the sun eventually rose throughout the twenty-four hours, there would be twenty-four hours of death, the sky itself aflame, the surface of the earth de-stroyed, the atmosphere all but completely burned away, much of the ozone layer destroyed. Humanity and all the lower life forms would be obliterated—forever.

And General Varakov had held out one chance—that in a hermetically sealed shelter such as Rourke’s own survival Retreat in the mountains of northeast Georgia not far from the town of Helen, his wife Sarah, his son Michael and his daughter Annie could survive, and that he—Rourke—could survive as well, and so could Natalia and Paul Ruben-stein and any others the Retreat could accommodate. All through the use of the cryogenic chambers originally devel-oped for deep space travel, in use with the six craft of the Space Shuttle Fleet somewhere on an elliptical voyage to the end of the solar system and back. The cryogenic sleep chambers, coupled with the almost mystical serum which allowed the human brain to be awakened from the life sustaining, unaging sleep, could allow Rourke’s family to sur-vive the scorching of the earth and the sky, to survive the centuries while the lower plant forms gradually rebuilt the atmosphere to a level comparable to the highest altitude mountain atmospheres—but liveable. The chambers and the serum without which the chambers would be a perpetual living death from which there could be no awakening would allow his family to awaken five centuries in the future to a world, once again and however marginally, habitable. And to awaken to the hoped for return of the Eden Project survi-vors, an international corps of deep space astronaut train-ees recruited because of their skills and their physical perfection from all the western aligned nations. To return with their microfilm libraries of the accumulated knowl-edge of mankind, their cryogenically frozen embryonic life forms—domestic animals, livestock, even birds to sing again in the air if indeed there were air.

An Ark.

But Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy, successor to Vladmir Karamatsov, the husband of Major Natalia Tiemerovna whom John Rourke had killed in a standup gunfight engineered by Natalia’s uncle General Varakov, had assembled the one thousand finest of his Elite KGB Corps. With one thousand handpicked perfect Soviet fe-male specimens, with the secret of life sustaining cryogenic sleep stolen with the American cryogenic serum, they would survive the global holocaust to use particle beam weapons already installed at what once had been NORAD

Head-quarters at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, they would sur-vive in what Rozhdestvenskiy had dubbed “The Womb” to destroy the returning Eden Project before the last survivors of the world democracies could land, could reclaim the purged earth.

It was this that was his mission, John Rourke realized, sitting in the semi-darkness at the height of the mezzanine steps, but in shadow from the first floor of the museum itself. He could see the two figures of mastodons fighting. Natalia had told him how her uncle watched these without cease. He understood the reason—and like the mastodons, he was now prepared to fight unto extinction because the circumstances of his own life had issued him no choice. It was his mission, above the saving of his wife and children, beyond saving Natalia and Paul and even himself for a world five centuries from now—it was his mission to pre-vent the KGB Elite Corps from utilizing the cryogenic se-rum, destroy the particle beam weapons, prevent the ultimate Soviet domination of the entire earth, the ultimate victory for evil.

It was an involuntary nerve response, a paroxysm, the shiver which ran along his spine—as a doctor he could think of a multiplicity of medical related reasons for it. But the truest reason was within himself and what he had to do.

Chapter Five

Sarah Rourke, wearing a borrowed sweater—Natalia’s things fit her almost perfectly—and her own blue denim skirt, the only skirt she owned, sat on one of the high rocks not far from the Retreat entrance, her pistol in its holster on the ground beside her. On the next rock, Paul Rubenstein sat, an M-16 across his lap, some kind of submachinegun slung diagonally across his back, a pistol—she recognized it as a Browning High Power—in a shoulder holster that posi-tioned the pistol half across the left side of his chest.

“Are you sure you’re well enough—”

“It was only my left arm, Mrs. Rourke—I shoot with my right—”

“I didn’t mean that -and it’s Sarah—”

“Sarah,” he nodded, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up off the bridge of his nose with his right index finger. “Any-way, the fresh air’s good for me.”

“Do you think the children—”

“I left a note on the pillow next to Michael—he can read it, know we’re just outside—I just—”

And he looked at her. “Why’d you come out here? John tell you to keep an eye on me with my arm?”

She shook her head—it was such a good feeling to have clean hair, to wash it with seemingly limitless hot water. She suddenly wondered—shivering —what it would be like when all the supplies stored in the shelves and cabinets of her husband’s Retreat were depleted. She had looked through the library—there were books which showed how to weave cloth, books which showed how to make soap from animal fat. Would they someday wear rags? Live by the light of homemade candles because the supply of light bulbs and fluorescent tubes had been depleted—she laughed at the irony. Limitless electricity from the hydro-electric generators her husband had installed—but electric-ity was useless without lights. She laughed —out loud—

“I’m sorry—”

“What is it?” Paul Rubenstein asked her.

“Nothing—I was just thinking—how stupid I’ll feel someday running around in rags or animals skins cooking wild rabbit by candlelight on a microwave oven.”

Paul Rubenstein started to laugh and she laughed with him. It was nice to have something to look forward to, after all, Sarah Rourke thought.

Chapter Six

He had taken an M-16 from a soldier killed in the first pass the helicopters had made across the school grounds. As the machines banked, their guns opening up again, plowing waves in the dirt on both sides of the disabled, al-ready burning truck behind which he had taken cover, Reed leveled the assault rifle toward the bubble dome of the near-est of the machines—they were American Bell 209 Huey Cobras, taken over by the Russians, a red Soviet star embla-zoned over the American markings. Reed squeezed the trig-ger, firing, emptying the M-16’s magazine, the helicopter’s 7.62mm multi-barrel Minigun still firing, the helicopter un-swerving, unaffected.

“Shit!”

He tucked down, the ground on both sides of the truck erupting as another of the machines made a pass, the sound of bullets ricocheting off the metal of the truck body. Screams — not all of the patients had been successfully evac-uated from the building and those that were, were still pinned down in the trucks, some at the far end of the road, others still in front of the school.

The sound of a missile firing—Reed looked up. The con-trail, then one of the two and a half ton trucks at the far edge of the driveway seemed to bounce upward for an in-stant, then was consumed in a ball of flame. Men, women, their clothes and hair afire, fell from the back of the truck.

“Bastards!” Reed screamed at the machines as they fin-ished the pass. They were coming back.

For some reason he turned around—he had never be-lieved in a sixth sense beyond the uneasy feeling one sometimes got in combat. But Colonel Rubenstein had left the school building. The man stood there. He screamed, “My wife is dead!” His hands tore at the collar of his shirt, rip-ping it. Suddenly, Reed was conscious of Rubenstein being a Jew and Reed seemed to remember that the rending of some article of clothing was a tradition for the death of a loved one.

Reed started to shout, “I’m sorry.” But then the school steps vaporized in a ball of flame and Colonel Rubenstein was gone.

Reed stabbed the M-16 skyward, firing it out uselessly, screaming the word again and again,

“Bastards!”

He pushed himself to his feet, out of magazines for the M-16, running toward the nearest of the trucks which could still move, shouting toward the cab, “Driver—get us out of here!”

As he started to climb aboard, hanging on to the stakes that surrounded the truck bed, he realized the truck’s engine was not running. “Driver!”

His .45 in his fist, Reed jumped to the ground. Screams of the wounded and dying were drowned out by the rattle of machinegun fire, the long staccato pulse that sounded like a solitary drone of some huge wasp as it beat its wings. The truck beside him was hit, Reed throwing himself to the dirt and gravel of the driveway, a shower of the material of the driveway raining down on him.

Flames engulfed the truck beside him—screams, bodies on fire hurtling themselves from the vehicle.

A missile impacted the front of the school, flames now belching from the roof as he pulled himself to his feet. He climbed up into the truck cab—the windshield was pep-pered with spiderwebbed bullet holes—the driver’s eyes were wide open in death, the front of the fatigue blouse dark and wet with blood.

Reed shoved the body through the driver’s side door, “God bless you, son,” he murmured, starting the deuce and a half. “Hang on back there,” Reed shouted behind him. “Hang on!” The sick, the wounded—he didn’t want to add them to the ranks of the dead.

He pumped the clutch, stomping the gas pedal, letting the truck start rolling forward, the gunships coming through for another pass. One of the helicopters was coming right at him as he upshifted, cranking the wheel hard left and out of the driveway. Reed ducked, machinegun fire blowing out the window—he was losing control of the truck—losing it. As he moved on the seat, he could feel the shards of glass falling, hear the tinkle of glass as it fell from his clothes, breaking, feel the crunch of it under and around him. He fought the wheel, trying to get control. A tree—he cut the wheel hard right. He felt it as he threw himself down, the lurch, the tremor of the truck cab around him, the shudder-ing of his own body as he slammed forward and rolled from the seat, his right elbow hitting the driveshaft hump, his head striking the dashboard.

With his left hand he felt for the door handle, twisting at it, his right hand clutching for the cocked and locked .45 which was back in his holster. He found it, half falling from the truck cab to the ground, steam rising in a whistling column from where the nose of the deuce and a half had struck the tree.

Reed staggered, falling to his knees, still clutching the .45.

He looked skyward—the Soviet marked gunships were breaking off, disengaging.

Reed looked around him now—the school was awash with flames, all but two of the trucks burning or otherwise disabled.

Bodies lay everywhere about the driveway, moans of the dying filling the air as the beating of the helicopter rotor blades died on the air slowly.

Reed got to his feet. His left hand was bleeding, he real-ized, and his head ached badly.

He staggered toward the rear of the truck, ripping back the tarpaulin cover there.

“Jesus.” He turned away, feeling the thing in the pit of his stomach, gagging as the vomit rose in him, falling to his knees as it poured from his mouth onto the ground.

The twenty or so people in the back of the truck were all dead.

He set down his pistol just to the side of the puddle of vomit, his left elbow aching as he moved the arm, both hands finding the lapel of his fatigue blouse. For Colonel Rubenstein, for Mrs. Rubenstein—for all the dead. It was hard to tear the fabric, but on the third try, it ripped.

Chapter Seven

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Major, Committee for State Security of The Soviet, felt the warmth and strength of her uncle’s arms around her, a warmth and strength she had felt and loved since she was a little child, something she would never know again. She tasted the salt of her own tears mingled with the salt of General Ishmael Varakov’s tears as her head rested against his chest. “All—all of it—in the letter to John Rourke—about my real parents—my real mother—it—it only made me love you more, Uncle Ish-mael—it only—”

“I told all of those things in the letter because I thought perhaps, child, that I might never see you again, and you had the right to know these things. How goes it with the American Rourke?”

She still let her uncle hold her, there in the quiet darkness of the mummy room. “He has found his wife and children, Uncle—”

“What of you, child?”

She closed her eyes so tight she could see red and green floaters in them.

“What of you, child?”

“She knows — his wife knows that I love him. And that he loves me—he actually loves me.”

“A man does not have two wives—at least not a man like this Dr. John Rourke.”

“We—we—”

“Perhaps he thinks of the Jew, Rubenstein, of him for you should the Eden Project not return—”

She kept her eyes closed. “I love Paul—but like he were my brother, Uncle—like that only. I would rather go on lov-ing John Rourke and have him never touch me than to lie that I could love someone else.”

“She is older than you?”

“She is thirty-two, perhaps thirty-three, I think, there is only four or five years of difference between us—”

“Then you will both outlive him if you somehow survive this holocaust.”

“I would not want—”

“To live if this Rourke man were dead?”

“Yes—I would not.”

“You are skilled in many ways, child—”

She closed her eyes still tighter, like she had when Karamatsov had beaten her before Rourke had killed him. “I could never—it would—it would be—”

“I know that you could never,” and she felt his body shud-der as he laughed. “The efficient KGB killing machine— you were called that once and I never told you. A killing machine in skirts and silk stockings—a member of the Pol-itburo spoke of you that way when you and Karamatsov worked together in Latin America before The Night of The War. But I knew that what the Politburo member said was wrong. Your heart—it has always been the heart of your real mother—did I tell you in the letter that her name was Natalia as well?”

“Yes—yes, Uncle,” she whispered. “You told me that—”

“An old man forgets, child. But there are some things— some things that an old man can never—” He ceased to speak.

“Forget,” she whispered for him.

“There are some things, and perhaps for you John Rourke is such a thing—would that she had so worshiped me as is evident you worship this Rourke—”

“He is—”

He released his arms from her, turning up her chin with the tips of the fingers of both his massive, spatulate hands.

“He is a man—”

“He is more, Uncle—he—”

“I am not a religious person—but it is wrong to speak of such things, I think. For a man to worship a woman, or a woman to worship a man—this can be. But —but he is not your god. Perhaps, child,” and she looked into his eyes, tear-rimmed, large, loving seeming to her,

“—perhaps, child, neither you nor I can have a god. And if in the hour of my death, I should discover one, it will be the same one that someday perhaps you shall discover, and Dr. Rourke shall discover too. And your John Rourke—he will not discover his god by staring at his own image in a reflecting pool and being deceived. It is in this Rourke’s eyes — that he is not this sort of man. If you love him so, then respect him also for what he is and what he is not and would never pretend to be.”

She closed her eyes again, hugging her arms as best she could around her uncle’s chest—and it was something un-changing since she had been a little girl—her fingertips would not meet no matter how hard she tried, how tightly she squeezed . . .

Chapter Eight

If free will were in its exercise an intrinsic good, then those who would consciously and totally abrogate the exer-cise of free will for the bulk of mankind for their own pur-poses were, by contrast, intrinsically evil.

Good. Evil.

Rourke considered these as he stood at the height of the mezzanine steps, staring down at Varkov’s figures of the mastodons which dominated the museum hall. John Rourke looked at the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist. Varakov indicated they would have to be clear of the mu-seum by eight forty-five at the latest. It was almost eight-thirty. But the thought of rushing Natalia’s last farewell to her uncle, though it entered his mind, was something Rourke instantaneously dismissed.

He had removed his pack again, placing it on one of the benches at the rear of the mezzanine, his M-16 beside it, only the CAR-15 slung cross body from his left shoulder under his right arm now. He looked back, hearing foot-steps.

It was Natalia, walking slowly beside her uncle.

Rourke turned back toward the great hall, whistling low, once, Vladov’s man beside the brass doors leading to the outside turning, acknowledging.

Rourke turned back to stare at Natalia. As he did, he spoke to Vladov, on the mezzanine beside him. “Captain, looks like we’re ready.”

“It would appear so, Dr. Rourke.”

“How do you feel about this—going against other Rus-sians like yourself?”

“At the Womb?”

“Yes, at the Womb?”

“They are other Russians—but they are not like myself.”

Rourke looked at the man. “Fair enough,” Rourke nod-ded deliberately. He turned back to Natalia, watching. Varakov, beside her, stopped as he reached the edge of the mezzanine.

Rourke listened as the old man spoke. “It is time, child.”

Natalia only nodded, her face turned down, as if staring at her uncle’s feet or her own.

Rourke stepped forward toward them, his left arm fold-ing around her shoulders. He extended his right hand. “General Varakov, I think we could have been friends if all of us hadn’t been so bent on butchering each other, sir.”

Varakov took his hand—the grip was warm, firm, exud-ing strength. “I think that you are quite correct, Dr. Rourke. You will care for her—”

“Like my own life, sir—more than that.”

“I trust you and you alone with the greatest joy of my life.”

Rourke nodded, almost whispering, “I know that, sir.” Their hands were still clasped.

“We Communists are taught that there is no God to be-lieve in—like Marx spoke of. But in the event we have been wrong all these decades since we attempted to liberate man from his chains, then I wish that God—if He exists—bless you all and protect you.”

“We capitalists are taught,” Rourke smiled, “that hedging your bet is never a bad thing, General. May God bless you, too.”

The old man nodded, his eyes lit with something Rourke could not read, but something somehow Rourke could un-derstand. They released each other’s grips.

Varakov folded Natalia into his arms, speaking to her in Russian. “I love you—you are the daughter, you are the life I never led. Kiss me good-bye, child—forever.”

Rourke closed his eyes, opening them as Natalia moved into her uncle’s arms, then turning away.

He heard her voice behind him, in English, saying, “I’m ready, John.”

Rourke turned back. Varakov stared, past him. Rourke looked behind him. Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozsinski stood at stiff attention, right hands raised in salute.

As he looked back to Varakov, the old man, his uniform tunic open, his shoes unlaced, his shirt collar open, re-turned the salute sharply. “God—if He hears me and if He is there to begin with

— God speed.”

As Rourke drew Natalia to him, he said only one word. “Sir.”

Chapter Nine

Across the profile of Vladov’s AKS-74 assault rifle, as John Rourke looked at him where they stood beside the massive brass doors, Rourke could see tears rimming the Soviet Special Forces captain’s eyes.

Rourke looked at Natalia—she was staring behind them, and Rourke looked back then once. Varakov, his secretary Catherine beside him, stood at the balcony of the mezza-nine, only staring.

Rourke rasped, “Let’s go—our best tribute to him is to do what the general called us here for—Captain?”

“Agreed,” the man nodded, licking his lips.

“Natalia?”

She stared at him, her blue eyes awash with tears. Then she nodded, “Yes,” and pushed through the crack between the doors, Rourke right behind her.

The sun was higher over the lake than Rourke would have supposed, but it had been a long time since he had seen a Chicago sunrise. Thunder rumbled in the sky to the east as Rourke, a step behind Natalia, his M-16 in his hands, raced down the museum steps, diagonally, and toward the lanes of Lake Shore Drive which cut between the museum and the aquarium and the planetarium beyond, the click of the So-viet Special Forces troopers’ boots on the stone steps loud and oddly reassuring. Rourke shot a glance at his Rolex, the cuff of his bomber jacket already rolled back—it was eight forty-two. At eight forty-five for some reason Varakov had not specified, there could be trouble.

Natalia sprinted ahead, toward Lake Shore Drive, no traffic there—nothing as she ducked under the horizontal safety lines and into the street. Rourke followed her, hear-ing Vladov snap from behind him, “Look there, Dr. Rourke—from the south!”

Rourke drew up to his full height— coming up Lake Shore Drive now from the south was first one, then another, then another, and he imagined still more behind—trucks. “KGB,” Vladov murmured.

Rourke looked ahead— Natalia was nearly across the drive. Rourke broke into a dead run behind her, rasping, “Come on, Vladov!” His M-16 at high port, the CAR-15 banging against his side as he ran, Rourke reached the far side of the drive, Natalia still sprinting ahead, crossing be-yond the sidewalk and onto the grass, heading toward the lake side of the spit of land beyond the aquarium, roadway, parkway strip, then roadway and more parkway, then fi-nally the lake to Rourke’s right. But the shelter of the rocks was beyond the aquarium. “Come on,” Rourke shouted. “Hurry— follow Major Tiemerovna!” Rourke picked up his run, glancing once to his right and behind him—the trucks, KGB personnel on motorcycles flanking them—he could recognize them by the green tabs of their uniforms. He hit the grass, running alongside the aquarium now, Natalia dis-appearing behind the aquarium, Rourke running after her.

Rourke reached the back end of the building, taking a quick left behind it, running. Ahead the ground dropped off, Rourke reaching the edge, remembering what lay be-yond well enough not to jump for it. But he flipped down, picking his landing spot in the instant before he moved, missing an eight-inch wide crack between the slabs of tan colored natural rock and chunks of concrete which formed the low sea wall against the Lake Michigan waters. He ducked down, Natalia already there, one of her M-16s up, ready.

Vladov was the first of the SF-ers down, then Lieutenant Daszrozinski and like something choreographed, one after the other, the remaining ten Soviet SF-ers.

“What do we do, Comrade Major?” Vladov asked, sounding slightly out of breath. Rourke couldn’t be certain, but the pounding in his own chest led him to the conclusion. “Do we wait here or proceed?”

“Those trucks,” Natalia panted. “They—they are heading for Meiggs Field?”

“Yes, Comrade Major. Each day the KGB have been ship-ping out supplies by nine-fifteen —

we do not know what.”

“How big are the planes they use?” Rourke interrupted.

“They are American Boeing KC-135Bs.”

Rourke nodded, thinking. “There were steel mills beyond the bend in the shoreline—could be billets of steel—maybe Rozhdestvenskiy wants some laid in at the Womb to handle early construction after the awakening.”

“Perhaps,” Natalia mused. “There were also automotive assembly plants — perhaps engine parts.”

“Whatever the hell it is, what do you think?” Rourke asked her, his voice low. “You know the KGB better than any of us.”

He watched her eyes. “My uncle has the boats waiting just beyond the planetarium. Some of the GRU men he trusted are with them, but they are not insane. If we wait and do not make our rendezvous—” and he saw her eye the gold ladies Rolex she wore on her wrist for an instant—

“they will leave and we will be stranded here.”

“No choice for it then,” and Rourke turned to Vladov. “Have your men keep low and have ‘em watch their footing. We’ll follow this out all the way to the land’s end—”

“Agreed,” Vladov nodded, saying to his men, “As the doctor has said—keep low—be careful of your footing among these rocks—we follow the major and Doctor Rourke.”

Natalia started up from her knees, Rourke grabbing at her right forearm, looking at her for an instant. “I’m sorry—sorry this had to happen. All of it—except meeting you.”

“I as well—except for that,” and she pulled away from him, breaking into a crouching run along the rocks, Rourke after her.

Chapter Ten

Sam Chambers, president of U.S. II spoke slowly. “This is butchery—pure butchery—”

Reed closed his eyes, inhaling on his cigarette, slowly say-ing to the president, “It proves what I’ve been saying, Mr. President—a major Soviet offensive directed against us. They’re softening us up. That’s why they did this. Demoral-ize us. For the last two weeks at least, there’ve been all the signs. Airborne reconnaissance shows units of the Army and KGB units too massing in east Texas and in central Lou-isiana. They’re going to bite us right between ‘em—”

Reed looked at Chambers—it was better than surveying the bodies in the elementary school driveway, better than watching the few surviving medics working with those who weren’t quite dead yet. Chambers’ helicopter’s rotor blades beat slowly, rhythmically at the far side of the drive. Then Chambers spoke. “Your efforts to contact the reorganized Texas volunteer militia—”

“I don’t know, sir. I sent Lieutenant Feltcher out three weeks ago—we haven’t heard from him since. If he did make contact, they could have killed him as a spy—I don’t know. Since the death of Randan Soames, the leadership has changed at least a half-dozen times—could have been infiltrated with more of the Communists—we don’t know. And there were the rumors some of the larger brigand bands had formed some sort of alliance with the militia. We just don’t know, sir.”

“But they’re the only hope we have, aren’t they, Reed—”

Reed nodded, dropping his cigarette to the gravel, heel-ing it out. Suddenly the nausea passed over him again—stuck to a piece of the gravel near his boot was what looked like a pink piece of human flesh, burned at the edges. He breathed deeply, to make the feeling pass, then tried to an-swer. “If they come and link up with us before the Russians strike — somehow — then we can beat this Russian force. If they get caught up with the Russians in east Texas, then we can take on the Russians in central Louisiana. If they don’t come at all, it’s either surrender or be crushed. It’d be a slaughter.”

“We won’t surrender,” Chambers said firmly.

“I didn’t think we would, sir,” Reed told him. Because there were other members of the civilian cabinet nearby, and some younger officers as well, Reed didn’t add that all surrender would mean was a firing squad or worse. It was better to die standing up, fighting for what you believed in.

Reed lit another cigarette—where the hell was Feltcher, he thought. Had he reached the Texas Volunteer Militia or just died trying?

Chapter Eleven

They had reached land’s end, the lapping of the waves loud against the rocks beneath them; Rourke peered round the rock border along which they had moved, seeing three six-man Avon rubber boats, the kind divers sometimes used. All three boats, fitted with impressively large out-board motors, were moored to the rocks, a solitary man holding an AK-47 standing guard beside them, using the wooden buttstock of the AK to push the boats away from the rocks when the waves forced them too close. Two other men stood further in on the rocks, away from the Avon in-flatables, AK-47s at the ready position.

Rourke turned back to Natalia, using hand signals to re-veal his findings. She nodded, murmuring the three letters, “GRU.” Rourke nodded. Natalia peered around the edge of the rocks for a moment, then looked back at Rourke. She repeated the three initials, “GRU,” then stood up, the rocks shielding her from view further back along the land.

He watched as she stepped—slowly—from behind the rocks, her voice a low whisper, “I am Major Tiemerovna, gentlemen. You wait for me.”

Rourke followed after her, the Soviet SF-ers behind him. The GRU man beside the three rubber boats didn’t even turn around, but one of the other two did, the man nearest them. He brought his AK-47 to present arms, “Comrade Major Tiemerovna—it is an honor.” She only nodded, her hair caught up in the wind now off the lake, her left hand, unconsciously it seemed, but gracefully pushing the dark, almost black strands back from her face.

“You are ready for our departure?” she asked, Rourke leaning now against the rocks, partially blocking her from the GRU man who had saluted and spoken to her. It was still difficult to trust a self-proclaimed Soviet agent. Yet he realized the absurdity of it—he trusted Natalia with his life.

“Yes, Comrade Major—but the outboard engines—they are loud. If the KGB should hear they could open fire at us—these are only rubber boats and not bullet resistant.”

“I’ll take a look,” Rourke interjected quietly. He handed over his M-16 to Natalia, pushing the scoped CAR-15 back further along his body, starting up the rocks to get his head even with the level of the land above. It took only a few seconds for Rourke to reach the level of the land above. Slowly, he raised his head to peer across the spit of land. The trucks were in full view now, the motorcycle personnel attending them parked at the perimeter of the airfield to his far left.

But driving slowly along the spit of land was a vehicle, coming toward the planetarium.

He didn’t know why.

He ducked back down, clambering down from the rocks, standing beside Natalia again, rasping to her, “There’s a car coming—they’ve got a radio antenna—one of the converted Chicago PD

cars—”

“That is a patrol—this area is patrolled regularly—we have waited too long,” the GRU man who had spoken ear-lier declared. “We are trapped here. There will be three men. There always are—usually they are only two man patrols but by the lakeside they use three. They will exit the car and come down here to look—one of them always urinates over the side of the rocks.”

“Wonderful,” Rourke barely whispered.

“We cannot run the outboard motors— they would hear us—”

“Then we kill ‘em,” Rourke shrugged. “Before they can use their radio and get any of the troops by the airfield over here.”

“But there is no time,” the GRU man said. “Soon, the planes from the field will be taking off. If we are not well away from here, we will be spotted by one of the cargo pi-lots. And we cannot hug the shoreline—the coastal watch-ers.”

“Sounds like a marvelous plan you guys had,” Rourke commented drily. “Then we take those guys out quick — get everyone away in two of the boats and leave the last boat for those of us who take out the three KGB patrolmen.” He looked at Natalia. “I’d like to say we’ll do this together, but one of the two of us has to get away—otherwise there’s no chance for Sarah and the children, for Paul—”

“I will stay,” Natalia announced. “I will stay.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Rourke nodded, his right hand flashing up, the knuckles catching the tip of her chin, his left arm scooping out, catching her as she sagged back limply, her eyelids fluttering, then closed.

“You struck the major!” the GRU man snapped.

It was Captain Vladov who interceded. “He struck the major in order to save her life.”

“Doesn’t matter how tough a woman is,” Rourke com-mented, sweeping Natalia up into his arms and starting to-ward the nearest of the three Avon inflatables, carrying her. “Almost always count on ‘em to have glass jaws—”

“A jaw of glass?” the GRU man asked, puzzled sounding.

“Old American expression,” Rourke told him. Then he looked at Lieutenant Daszrozinski.

“Lieutenant, get some of your men down into this boat so I can hand the major down to you. If it’s all right with Captain Vladov, he and I can stay behind with one other man and take out those KGB patrolmen.” And Rourke looked at the only one of the three GRU men who had yet spoken. “One of your guys stays be-hind to keep the boat ready—and as soon as we do what we have to do, signal the other two boats to start their engines and make time.”

“Make the time?”

“Go fast,” Rourke explained.

“I will stay,” the GRU man said.

“Good,” Rourke nodded. Daszrozinski and two other men had already climbed down from the rocks into the nearest of the Avon rubber boats—and Rourke began handing Natalia into Daszrozinski’s and a second man’s arms. “When the major wakes up, well, tell her not to be mad at me, huh?”

Daszrozinski’s very Slavik, red-cheeked face showed a grin. “I will try my best, Dr. Rourke.”

Rourke nodded, “Right.”

He turned to Vladov—already Vladov had one of the men beside him—a corporal. “Corporal Ravitski will assist us, Dr. Rourke.”

Rourke nodded

“May I suggest a plan, Dr. Rourke?”

“Certainly, Captain,” Rourke agreed. Already, the first of the rubber boats was pushing off, the second loading. Rourke looked once more after Natalia.

Chapter Twelve

She knew what he had done as soon as she opened her eyes, the light hurting for an instant as she squeezed them closed against it. He had done it so expertly that aside from a little tenderness as she moved her jaw, there was no pain. Her teeth felt fine.

The spray pelted at her as she sat up, Lieutenant Daszrozinski smiling at her, “Comrade Major, the doctor and Cap-tain Vladov and one other man are seeing to the KGB patrol—one of the GRU men waits with them with the third boat. He will signal when we can start our engines.”

She didn’t say anything, but sat up, feeling slightly ridicu-lous that Rourke had—she remembered the expression, the Americanism—”cold-cocked” her so easily.

“What is their plan, Lieutenant Daszrozinski?” she fi-nally asked him.

“I do not know, Comrade Major, but the comrade gen-eral has told Captain Vladov that Dr. Rourke is extremely competent in these matters, and, of course, Captain Vladov himself is a veteran of many such missions and—”

“Yes—enough, Lieutenant,” and she dismissed listening to him. She could make out the police car, the red star em-blazoned over the lakeside door, the door open. But detail beyond that from where she sat in the boat was impossible. If the plan were going well, or going badly, she could not tell.

She could only sit in the rubber boat and wait while the enlisted Special Forces personnel paddled the boat against the lake swells. At any moment, the occupants of the police car would look out onto the lake and see her craft and the companion vessel, she knew. They would start shooting. Better than two hundred meters offshore, she realized their marksmanship would have little effect. Maximum effective range of the AKM—what the KGB patrols were armed with—was three hundred meters on full auto, four hundred meters semi-automatic mode. But it took an exceptional marksman to be effective at such a range. Had the men been exceptional marksmen, they would have been assigned other duties. Hence, logically, she was in no danger.

But Rourke—the man she loved, all she had left in the world now after making her final good-byes to her uncle— Rourke was much closer than four hundred meters, or three hundred meters. He could very easily be killed by even an indifferent marksman. She realized she was wringing her hands. She turned to one of the enlisted men near her, tell-ing him in Russian,

“Move aside, I wish to help to propel the rubber boat,” and she took the paddle from him before the man could protest.

It was something to do, at least.

Chapter Thirteen

He had raced along the rocks of the sea wall built against the lake waves which could run to heights as high as sixteen feet, the air temperature cold, his breath coming in short puffs, but the air fresh, clean. He had positioned himself on the far side of the planetarium, behind the police car. And Rourke waited now, watching as the three KGB patrolmen exited the police car, one from the front passenger seat, one from the driver’s side, one from the rear passenger com-partment behind the driver’s side, only two of the men car-rying assault rifles, but all three wearing pistols in military flap holsters on their belts.

If he had had Natalia’s silenced Walther, he reflected, but he did not.

The three men started walking toward the end of the spit of land jutting out into the lake, across the grass that had once been green, then along the circular parking area disap-pearing behind the planetarium. No longer able to see them, they could no longer see him, and Rourke, eyeing the roadway leading from Lake Shore Drive and the airfield as well—no one was coming—pushed himself up, taking the steps from the lower rocky walkway to the planetarium level three at a time in a long strided run, the M-16 and the CAR-15 left behind with Vladov and Corporal Ravitski, the long bladed Gerber MkII in his right fist as he followed the men.

Ravitski’s job was the most unpleasant—to take out the man who regularly urinated over the side of the sea wall. For the purpose, he had long handled wire cutters he had taken from the side of his backpack.

Vladov was to back him up.

Rourke kept running, the Gerber ahead of him in a fencer’s hold, his black combat booted feet soundless as he raced along the pavement of the walkway, finally reaching the far wall of the planetarium, hugging against it, able to see the three KGB men again. He was to await the cut from Ravitski.

He saw the center of the three KGB-ers, arching his body slightly forward, one of the others laughing. The one about to urinate was one of the two armed with an AKM and the assault rifle was slung across his back. The one who had laughed was speaking animatedly, Rourke unable to follow the conversation because of the keening sound of the wind off the lake.

Rourke waited, ready to move, the Gerber ready in his balled right fist, his left hand palming the black chrome Sting IA from its sheath behind his left hipbone inside the waistband of his faded blue Levis.

He waited, both knives ready for their work.

The man with the fixation to empty his kidneys took two steps forward, toward the sea wall, the other two men—the one still laughing—turning their backs as he bent forward.

There was a scream, in Russian the man who had been about to urinate shouting, “My penis—”

The body sagged forward.

Ravitski’s long handled wire cutters had done their grisly work.

The two men—as Vladov had anticipated and Rourke had agreed—turned back, reaching out, groping toward the sea wall to snatch at the body of their stricken comrade.

Rourke threw his body into a dead run, across the once living grass, leaping, airborne, coming down on his feet, his knees buckling to take the force of the fall, throwing him-self forward into a dead run, the Gerber reaching out, the spear pointed tip thrusting into the back of the man to his right, severing the spinal cord he hoped.

He left the knife there, the second man starting to turn, the pistol coming into his hand as Rourke’s left hand punched forward, the point of the little Sting IA black chrome puncturing the adam’s apple, cutting through, the man’s eyes wide open, no voice box left with which to scream.

Vladov was up from the sea wall beyond, his fighting knife — a bastardized Bowie pattern, custom made, Rourke had surmised—hacking left to right across the throat of the man Rourke had stabbed with the big Gerber, severing the carotid artery and slicing through the voice box before there could be a scream.

Rourke’s hands were moving—the man with the little A.G. Russell knife in his throat, Rourke’s right hand thrust-ing upward, palm outward, open, the base of his hand im-pacting the base of the man’s nose, punching the bone upward, through the ethmoid bone and into the brain, his left hand ripping the knife downward through the adam’s apple and locking against the bone beneath the hollow of the throat.

Rourke ripped the knife free, turning as Vladov guided the other man to the ground.

As Vladov wiped his blade clean on the man’s clothing, Rourke drew his own knife—the Gerber—clear.

They had killed each man at least twice to be sure.

From the converted police car, Rourke could hear a radio call.

“It is KGB headquarters—perhaps a routine radio check—”

“Let’s get the hell out of here—have the GRU man give the signal.”

“It is already done, I think,” Vladov nodded, sheathing the Bowie pattern knife to his equipment belt, flipping down over the sea wall to the rocks below.

Rourke followed after him. In the distance, as he im-pacted the rocks on the soles of his boots, he could hear the drone of the outboard motors, already started up.

Rourke glanced at Corporal Ravitski—the young Rus-sian SF-er’s face was white. He looked at the man’s hands— the massive wire cutters, stuck into the apex of the blade halves were something unmistakable as a human organ.

Rourke’s eyes drifted downward—at the man’s feet was the third KGB patrolman, blood oozing through lifeless fin-gers clamped over his crotch.

He would have been dead in seconds from hemorrhage, Rourke realized—but Ravitski too had taken no chances — the front of the throat was hacked open, little blood there. Perhaps the heart had already stopped pumping from shock.

A Bowie pattern bayonet for an AKM—he imagined it worked with the AKS-74 the corporal had slung across his back—lay blood smeared beside the KGB man.

Vladov took two steps and was beside the young corpo-ral. “Andreyev, you have done your duty.”

“Comrade Captain, this man was a Russian—”

“Hard tasks await us, Andreyev—hard tasks which per-haps when compared will make this task you have so effi-ciently performed seem easy.”

“Comrade Captain—I —”

Rourke, his voice a low whisper, said, “Look, boy, that you didn’t like doing this is to your credit, that you could still do it anyway is more to your credit. But it’s time to move out.”

The young Russian corporal turned to face him, staring. “Yes, Doctor—it is—”

“Time to move,” Rourke said again.

And Rourke didn’t wait, jumping down into the inflat-able as it heaved toward the rocks, his M-16 and his CAR-15 already soaked with spray.

He made a mental note to clean them as Vladov and Cor-poral Ravitski joined him in the boat.

The GRU man tugged clear his line. In the distance

Rourke could hear the sound of aircraft engines revving, from the field, he realized—but there was no sound of po-lice sirens—at least not yet.

John Rourke silently wondered how many more of hu-mankind would lose their innocence in the few days human-kind had remaining. Too many, he thought.

Chapter Fourteen

Soviet personnel were everywhere, Rourke imagined sparked by the wild chase the previous night through the Chicago expressway system and along underground Wacker Drive, and of course the murders of the three KGB patrol-men at the lake that morning. After ditching the rubber boats in what remained of Belmont Harbor and transfer-ring to a medium-sized cabin cruiser, they had gone out far-ther into the lake. There had been a tense moment—a Soviet patrol boat. But Vladov was prepared for this —or-ders from the KGB, forged, given him by General Varakov. The patrol boat had passed, but as a precautionary measure Vladov had ordered the GRU pilot to change course, dan-gerously hugging the shoreline.

It had been late afternoon by the time they had pulled ashore near Waukegan, factory complexes—abandoned now—littering the shoreline.

Working in two teams—fire and maneuver—they had worked their way through the factory complex and into the streets of Waukegan proper, continuing the two team move-ment, the process slow.

The sunset was purple, the haze almost something Rourke could taste on the air as he knocked on the rear door of the American field hospital which was in reality Resist-ance headquarters for northern Illinois and southern Wis-consin, as he had learned earlier.

The hole in the back door of Waukegan Outdoor Sports-man opened, a face peering through, back lit. “Tell Tom Maus Major Tiemerovna and I are back to see him—I’m John Rourke.”

“Wait a minute,” and the peephole in the door was closed.

Rourke waited exactly a minute, watching the sweep sec-ondhand of his Rolex, Natalia standing beside him, her eyes trained on the street as he looked at her. Vladov, Lieutenant Daszrozinski and the others were hiding down the alley.

The door opened—Tom Maus, his good-natured, slightly gravelly sounding voice low, said,

“You’ve been a busy man, Doctor Rourke—you and Major Tiemerovna have been very busy. Come in—”

“We have some friends with us. I wanted to tell you first.”

“What kind of friends?”

“Two Soviet Special Forces officers and ten enlisted men, but they’re on our side so to speak—”

Maus started to slam the door. Rourke stepped into it, pushing the door back. “Look—in a day, maybe six days at the most, nothing will be left. It’s the end of the world, Maus — for real, the end of the world.”

Rourke watched Maus’s face in the grey-purple light, dark shadows blanketing part of it, but what light there was catching in Maus’s eyes.

“You’re joking—and it’s in poor—”

“I’m not joking,” Rourke told him quietly.

“He is telling the truth,” Rourke heard Natalia whisper beside him. “I wish to God he were not

—”

Rourke looked at her and smiled.

“What the heck is going on here?” Maus asked

“One last mission, to maybe save some of humanity. And we need your help.”

Rourke watched Maus’s face. The darkness was growing. Maus nodded, then. “All right, inside with you both —”

“Our twelve friends?”

“God knows why,” Maus murmured, shaking his head. “This is stupid—but yeah — but don’t mind it if some of my people keep their guns drawn—”

It was Natalia’s voice. “Don’t mind if some of my people keep their guns drawn, too.”

Rourke made a single, long, low whistle, and as he started through the doorway after Natalia, he could faintly hear the shuffling sounds of twelve pairs of combat boots hitting pavement in a dead run.

Chapter Fifteen

Emily, the Polish American Resistance captain they had first met when landing in Illinois, sat at the far edge of the room, her ungainly six-inch barreled revolver on the table beside her. Vladov sat a few feet from her, perched on the edge of a heavy worktable. Emily’s eyes constantly flickered toward him. A young man, very young looking, thin, a pleasant grin on his face, sat at the radio set, tuning the fre-quency. Maus had identified him—the young man working the radio—as his top field operative against the Russians despite the man’s youth. A six-inch blue Colt Python was on the radio table beside him as he worked. And as he worked, he spoke. “We almost never use this radio—can’t afford to. If the Russians picked up a transmission from around here, well, they’d know where to look.”

“This is important, Mr. Stanonik,” Natalia told him.

“Marty—everybody calls me Marty, Major—”

“I am Natalia.”

“Natalia—right. Russian or not, you’re awful pretty to be a major. Take Tommy there,” and he jerked his thumb toward Maus. “Before The Night of The War he was in the Reserves— he’s a major. And I’d sure as hell rather look at you, ma’am, than look at Tommy there.”

“If this were still a gunshop and you still worked for me—”

“I know,” Stanonik laughed. “You’d fire me—here—I’ve got it, I think,” and he flicked a switch on the radio set in the store-room near Maus’s office. “This is Shooter calling Eagle Two—come in. Shooter calling Eagle Two—” There was no answer, only static over the speaker. This is Shooter calling Eagle Two—do you read me—acknowledge. Over.”

Static—then, “Eagle Two—code sequence verify. Over.”

Marty Stanonik looked at his watch, then began flipping through a Rolodex file beside him—Rourke noticed it because it had been painted and was no longer black with a metallic framework. It was painted gold. “A gold Rolodex,” Rourke said under his breath, shrugging it off. Stanonik was apparently reading off a series of cards in the file, “Series twenty zero eight—Tango—reading now. Bob, Jack, Willie, Mary Jane, Harold. Awaiting verification.”

Rourke smiled to himself—the code was ingenious and sim-ple. And the oddly painted gold Rolodex was its key. Series twenty zero eight translated to the time—eight twenty. Tango was the standard phonetic alphabet correspondent to the letter T—T was the twentieth letter in the alphabet and the first names Stanonik had read over the radio were from the T section of the gold Rolodex, apparently arranged randomly and read in a cer-tain pre-arranged order.

The radio crackled with static. “Shooter, this is Eagle Two— verifying. Series twenty zero eight plus twenty-seven—” Twenty-seven would mean plus one since there were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet. “Uniform—repeat. Uniform. Mabel, Alice, Fred, Pablo, Maurice, Joe. Awaiting verification.”

Stanonik flipped through the Rolodex—into the U section. Then he looked to his microphone.

“Got a man here to talk with Eagle Two Leader—gotta make it quick. Shooter Over.”

“Eagle Two is real busy, Shooter—give it to me—”

“Tell him it’s John Rourke, Marty—and tell him to tell Presi-dent Chambers I have confirmation of a worst case post holo-caust scenario—six day countdown.”

“A what?” Stanonik looked over his shoulder at Rourke.

Rourke started to speak, but Maus said it, “The man here tells me the world is going to end, Marty.”

“Ohh, shit—”

Rourke thought the remark summed it up rather succinctly.

Chapter Sixteen

The radio was designed to automatically change frequen-cies and despite the fact that Soviet monitoring equipment existed which could still pick up such a set-up easily enough, it was a far better arrangement than a single frequency sys-tem.

“I cannot summon a large force, Dr. Rourke. But Varakov is right. I of course knew the post holocaust scenario possibilities and I was never certain the Eden Project got away in time before Kennedy Space Center was destroyed. I don’t doubt that he has the data to support the scenario. I can send you a dozen volunteers. No others to be spared. KGB forces and Army units under KGB command have our backs to the wall here—boxing us in. Our only chance is volunteers from Texas. Reed here is telling me I’m stupid to be saying this en clare , but what’s the difference now. We’re going to fight. I should have known a set-up for a slaughter like this wasn’t General Varakov’s doing. They’ve been making strafing runs on hospitals, bombing civilian en-campments—the whole thing. The largest troop commit-ment they’ve made since invading the continent. I’ve got a volunteer, your old friend Colonel Reed. Where do I send him and the man he’ll take with him?”

Chambers’ radio procedure left a great deal to be desired, Rourke thought. “I saw Reed with a western novel once. I recall reading the author was particularly interested in a cer-tain location. For four reasons. See if he understands — Rourke over.”

It was Reed’s voice, half laughing. “Rourke—I’d love to meet you there—love it.”

Rourke nodded unnecessarily to the voice so far away, then said, “As quick as you can and bring whatever you can carry. Rourke over.”

“Reed—over.”

Rourke handed the table microphone to Marty Stanonik whom he stood beside.

He walked away from the radio set as Marty closed the transmission.

“I do not understand,” Natalia began, looking puzzled.

“The most famous western writer in history. I’ve got a lot of his books at the Retreat—you should read them. His name is French for love. The Four Corners—where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico’s state boundaries all meet. I read about his interest in the area some years back. Reed— I figured he’d know, too. Lucky for me he did. And lucky for me you didn’t—”

“Why?”

“A Russian wasn’t supposed to be able to understand it,” and he winked at her.

Chapter Seventeen

Reed stood in the darkness on the steps of the church, looking out across the wooded area beyond the parking lot. “The men are ready, sir,” Sergeant Dressler’s voice came from behind him.

“Very good, Sergeant,” and he turned and started through the open doorway, Dressier stepping aside to let him pass.

Military courtesy sometimes amused Reed, sometimes affronted him. Sergeant Dressier had seen active duty dur-ing the closing days of World War II as a tanker, served the country during the Korean conflict, been retired during the Viet Nam conflict and now — in his sixties — was once again in uniform. That a man of Dressler’s age and experience should step aside for him —

Reed — seemed somehow wrong.

But it was too late to change any of that, Reed thought, walking up the aisle toward the front of the church. “Ten-hut!” Dressier snapped.

Reed shook his head, “As you were—take your seats, gentlemen.” Ten other men sat in the first pews on each side of the aisle. Reed stepped up the three low steps leading to the pulpit, just short of entering it. Reed stood beside it in-stead, feeling odd wearing a pistol on his hip. “All of you were told before volunteering that this was likely a suicide mission. Rourke couldn’t get too specific on the radio—but I’ve talked with him often enough. Apparently the Russians have some move afoot to destroy what was called the Eden Project. Our earth—well, we told you that, too. In six days at the most, perhaps at dawn tomorrow, the sky will catch fire, the atmosphere will all but completely burn away and the earth itself will burn. We’ll all die then anyway. But ap-parently the Russians have some system for surviving it somewhere. My guess is the old Norad headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain but we won’t know that until we ren-dezvous with Rourke and his force. It’s our job to knock out the Russian base, so they can’t survive the holocaust. Otherwise, when the 138 people of the Eden Project return to earth, the KGB’ll be waiting for them, to shoot down the space shuttles before they land. And the Russians will have won it all, Communism will have the ultimate triumph. We owe it to the future, if there is one, and to every man and woman alive today or whoever lived, whoever sacrificed life or security or pleasure to defend the ideal of freedom—we owe it to all of them not to let Communism win, not to let the KGB be the masters of earth. And dying fighting for that is a hell of a lot better—” and he felt sorry for the word, remembering suddenly he stood in a church—”a lot better than being incinerated when the end comes. Are there any questions?”

A young face at the far end of the right hand pew— “What is it, Corporal?”

The man stood. “Sir, I mean, I know what you say is right, but what can twelve of us do—well—”

“Against the might of the Soviet Union? Well, not just twelve, Rourke has some volunteers —

he didn’t specify. Maybe a Resistance group or something. Say maybe there’ll be a couple dozen of us. And what can we do? Everything. Anything. Die if that’s the only way. But we’ll do what we can, soldier—that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? I don’t mean just here, in this church, at this briefing. I mean here on earth for. To do what we can. And now we have a chance unique in all of history. Sometimes people have accused me of being a little too far to the right, a little too anti-Commu-nist. Maybe I was. Maybe I am. But we have a chance to rid the world of an evil, an evil that contemplates shooting the only survivors of the civilized world, of the democracies —

shooting the only survivors out of the sky. I don’t know how, again, Dr. Rourke couldn’t be too specific. Maybe particle beam weapons like supposedly they used to zap some of our missiles on The Night of The War. But what-ever it is, whatever it takes, I don’t want a single man with me who isn’t ready to give it his best shot. Maybe we’ve got the chance here to eradicate all the pent-up evil in the world all at once, to give mankind a fresh start five hundred years from now. And maybe we don’t—but as Americans, well— we gotta try it.” Reed cleared his throat. He looked at the Timex on his wrist. “We should be moving out. Any man who wants not to go, well, stay in the church here a while and pray for those of us who do. I won’t think any the less of you.”

“I think we all wanna go, sir,” Sergeant Dressier said, standing. “But could you maybe lead us in a moment’s prayer, sir?”

“I’d rather you would, Sergeant. I’m not too experienced at praying.”

“Colonel, sir, I think the men’d rather that you did, sir.”

Reed nodded, closing his eyes, bowing his head. “Heav-enly Father—help us to see your will and to do it. And bless us all for trying. Amen.”

He looked up. “Like I said, Sergeant—I’m an amateur at it.”

“It sounded pretty good to me, Colonel.”

Reed nodded, starting down the aisle of the church, hear-ing, feeling the men of his detachment fall in behind him. And then a voice—the young corporal who had questioned him. He began singing, “Onward Christian soldiers —”

The sergeant’s voice joined him, “Marching as to war—”

Reed didn’t know the words perfectly, and he felt almost silly—and his voice had always been bad. Before his wife had died during the bombing on The Night of The War, she had always joked with him that he couldn’t carry a tune with both hands and a bucket. But he joined his men any-way.

“...leads against the foe; Forward into battle, see his banners go.”

Outside, the Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk Chopper was already waiting and Reed picked up his rifle.

Chapter Eighteen

They walked in darkness, Emily leading the way, Natalia behind her, Vladov and the Soviet SF-ers after them, Rourke, Tom Maus and Marty Stanonik bringing up the rear. The airfield Varakov had arranged for the GRU pick-up was still perhaps a quarter mile away, Emily, who knew the countryside best, had told them. They had gone by truck from Waukegan and into the farmland of northern Illinois. They had been walking, Rourke judged, for nearly a mile.

Marty spoke. “It’s kinda hard to believe—I bought a house before The Night of The War—I

—”

Maus touched at the younger man’s shoulder.

Then Maus said, “I’ve been thinking. Pretty hard about this. I haven’t mentioned it to Emily or any of the others yet, but I’m planning on starting an all-out offensive against the Russians in metropolitan Chicago.”

“Go down fighting,” Rourke commented.

“Something like that, but more than that. Ever since the Russians moved in, they’ve been using Soldiers’ Field Sta-dium as an internment camp. Some other internment camps there. They treat them well enough—that’s where their medical headquarters is at Soldiers’ Field. But it’s the idea, the people there aren’t free. Americans shouldn’t die that way if they have to die. Penned up, under guard. Maybe it is that—go down fighting. They should have that chance, the Americans the Communists are holding.”

“I’ll ask a favor,” Rourke murmured in the darkness, pushing aside a low hanging branch, holding it for Marty and Tom Maus and then continuing on. “Don’t make a direct assault on Soviet Headquarters at the museum. Let Varakov die his own way.”

“Agreed,” Maus answered. “That’s the funny thing—the way Major Tiemerovna spoke about her uncle, before and in the truck just now, and what he’s done now to fight the KGB—General Varakov sounds like a good man.”

“He is.”

Marty said it, “Kind of stupid, isn’t it—I mean, if you assume we’re good men, too. Why were we fighting each other all these years?”

Rourke had no answer for him.

Chapter Nineteen

Sarah Rourke, barefoot, wearing a pair of the blue jeans her husband had stocked for her and one of her husband’s shirts, listened to the sounds of her children over the muted sound of the waterfall to the rear of the Great Room. The children were playing poker with Paul Rubenstein and laughing because they were beating him at it, consistently.

He owed Michael thirteen trillion dollars, Michael had run to tell her.

Michael was a boy again. At least for now.

And Annie—there was a sparkle in her eyes and she gig-gled when Paul would tell her a joke. She had even blushed when Paul had told her she was a pretty little girl.

Sarah sipped at her drink, a book open on her lap—she hadn’t begun to read it past the first line.

She had listened to music earlier—her husband’s library housed records and cassettes ranging from The Beatles to Rachmaninoff, from original recordings of Enrico Caruso to Charles Aznavour.

The children had watched a movie on the videocassette recorder—she had been surprised that their interest had sus-tained in the original version of Lost Horizon starring Ronald Coleman. Perhaps it was the novelty of even seeing a television—the last program they had seen was the red haired Atlanta newsman warning of the impending Soviet attack.

They had played.

They had eaten the dinner she had prepared, not using the microwave, but slowly, lovingly prepared on the con-ventional electric stove. She had baked bread. She had made an apple pie using some of the dehydrated apples she had found in one of the freezers.

She felt human again.

Behind a series of vault doors in a cave inside a mountain in the middle of World War III, perhaps Soviet soldiers or brigands prowling nearby.

But she felt human again.

It was a feeling she did not want to lose.

But she could not concentrate. She worried that John Rourke still lived somewhere out there. That he would be able to come back to her.

And despite the fact the beautiful Russian woman was her rival, she worried—and she found herself smiling at the thought — for Natalia Tiemerovna.

“I’m crazy,” she murmured, listening to her children laugh.

Chapter Twenty

The GRU aircraft—a Beechcraft Super King Air—had made its pass over the field, Vladov radioing to the aircraft, getting the proper recognition signal. There had been a schedule of appointed rendezvous times, five in all and this was the fourth.

The Polish American woman, Emily, who was a self-pro-claimed hater of the Russians, had laughed as she had bro-ken out the flares. She had said, “If I’d ever figured I’d be lighting a field so a bunch of Commies usin’ a stolen Ameri-can airplane could land safely I’d have had myself commit-ted to the funny farm.” But with Lieutenant Daszrozinski and several of his men helping her, she had done just that.

In the brush at the far edge of the field now, Rourke, Na-talia, Vladov, Maus and Marty Stanonik waited, their as-sault rifles ready, the rest of Vladov’s men sprinkled around the field with Daszrozinski and Emily at the far end.

“That GRU man is a good pilot,” Rourke commented, watching as the Beechcraft touched down, bouncing across the field, slowing, slowing still more, then turning into a take-off position. “Makes me feel like a drug dealer waiting for a marijuana drop,” he laughed, pushing himself to his feet, staying in a low crouch, running, the CAR-15 across his back, the M-16 in his hands, Natalia, Maus, Stanonik and Vladov in a wedge around him.

It was two hundred yards as he reckoned it—a healthy run with a heavy pack, several handguns and knives and two assault rifles. But he didn’t slow or stop until he reached the aircraft, hearing Vladov on the small radio giving the code phrase, “Red, white and blue—red, white and blue—”

The irony didn’t escape him.

The door in the fuselage opened, a tall, thin man appear-ing in the shadow and moonlight.

He looked down. “You are the American doctor?”

“I’m Rourke.”

The man extended his right hand, hesitantly. Rourke shifted his assault rifle, holding it by the front handguard in his left hand, taking the GRU man’s hand. “We had an ex-pression here in America—I don’t know if you ever heard it. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Anyway—I’m glad you made it.”

The GRU man nodded.

Rourke felt Natalia’s presence beside him. “I know you — you are Captain Gorki.”

“Yes, Comrade Major—I met you once in Moscow—you remember faces well. I am Major Gorki now.”

“It is good to see you, Comrade.”

Rourke shrugged his shoulders.

Maus and Marty Stanonik, M-16s in their hands, were coming from the nose of the plane, dipping under the star-board wing. “You’d better get airborne and get the hell out of here,” Maus announced.

“I was planning on it,” Rourke nodded.

At the edge of his peripheral vision he saw Vladov and Daszrozinski, Daszrozinski leading the Soviet SF-ers to-ward the fuselage. Rourke stepped away to give them room.

The GRU pilot had hopped down, standing beside Maus now. “There are two of us — myself and a Sergeant Druszik. We will accompany you, Comrade Major Tiemerovna, and be ready to fly you out should that be possible.”

Rourke watched as Natalia nodded. “We’ve got a slight change in plans,” Rourke said, then. “I couldn’t inform U.S. II of the exact rendezvous point we’d been given—the possibility of the KGB listening in. But I’ll give you a new rendezvous spot—easy enough to get to.”

“I have charts aboard the aircraft, Dr. Rourke. If you’ll follow me, while the gear is being secured.”

Rourke nodded. He turned to Tom Maus. “Tom, good luck to you. I hope you can do what you plan.”

Maus laughed, saying, “All I can do is try—don’t have much to lose, do I?”

Rourke shrugged. He extended his hand to Marty Stanonik. “Pleasure to meet you, Marty. I wish you the same—good luck.”

The young man nodded. “Yeah, knowin’ Tommy here, we’ll need it,” and Maus laughed.

Emily was there as well. “Ma’am, without your help we wouldn’t have made it this far. Thank you.”

She said nothing, only nodded.

Natalia stepped forward, leaned toward Maus, kissing him on the cheek, then did the same to Marty. “Thank you both,” she said softly. She turned to Emily. “And thank you, thank you very much, Mrs. Bronkiewicz.”

The woman who hated the Russians, her voice barely au-dible, told Natalia, “God bless all of you,” then turned and walked away.

Chapter Twenty-one

The Four Corners were not a precise location place wise, but geographically quite precise. There was a marker nearby Rourke knew —he hadn’t bothered to read it, having read it years before.

He sat in the shelter of high rocks, overlooking the only logical landing site for an aircraft of sufficient size to land a dozen men and a crew. Natalia slept in his left arm, her head against his shoulder. Only Vladov, and two men, besides Rourke, were awake. Rourke had slept aboard the aircraft, as had Vladov and most of the men. Natalia had not been able to sleep and it had taken her some time after landing and coming into the rocks, their own aircraft camouflaged, until she had drifted off.

“The Comrade Major, she loves her uncle a great deal, I think,” Vladov whispered.

Rourke nodded slowly, so some sudden movement would not awaken her.

“And she loves you, too, I think, also a great deal. It is written in her eyes. Women—even if a woman is a major in the KGB—they write their emotions across their eyes. For you, that is what is written there.”

“I know,” Rourke answered, trying nottural microbes, which had been all but ignored by commercial enterprises. The unexpected advent of recombinant-DNA techniques from Rourke.

“What are they like?”

Rourke knew where the Soviet captain was looking—to his two sentries on the far side of the grassy plain which the rocks overlooked. “They’re like you, like me, very much like us both, I’d imagine. So far as I know, only one of the men is a man I know personally.”

“The Colonel Reed of whom you speak?”

“Yes, Colonel Reed.”

“What is he like? I have heard of him before. The chief intelligence officer for United States II.”

Rourke felt himself smile. “He is that. Strange guy—fluc-tuate from an occasionally bizarre sense of humor to a guy who wouldn’t laugh if his life depended on it. He’s a career man so to speak. Any Intelligence on active duty for a long time, then in the Reserves, then called up to active duty when all of this started—before the War.”

“He hates Russians then.” It was a statement Vladov made, not a question, shifting his position, moving the 5.45mm AKS-74 onto his lap from the ground beside him.

“Yeah, he hates Russians with a real passion.”

“It is something very strange,” Vladov said. “But before The Night of The War, I hated Americans very much. And I realized after our troops came in as part of the first invasion force I had never met an American. Not ever. I wondered how it could be that I could hate someone whom I had never come to know. I still wonder this.”

“You’ll turn into a pacifist if you’re not careful,” Rourke laughed softly.

“Yes, a pacifist. It would be most amusing for me to turn into a pacifist. I fought in Afghanistan. I served in a secu-rity contingent in Poland. It should be most amusing were I to become a pacifist, as you say.”

Rourke chewed down on the end of his cigar—it was clamped between his teeth in the right corner of his mouth. There was no need to be particularly watchful, Vladov’s men would do that. He closed his eyes. He said to Vladov, “I was pretty much the same way. I met Natalia, saved her life, and she saved mine—mine and my friend Paul Ruben-stein’s life—”

“This Rubenstein—it is Jewish, correct?”

“Yeah,” Rourke nodded, electing not to mention that Natalia was also half Jewish as her uncle had revealed in his letter.

“In Russia, we do not like Jews—”

“You ever think maybe all of that was just as smart as not liking Americans?”

The Soviet Special Forces captain didn’t answer for a mo-ment, then from the sudden darkness when a cloud blocked the moon, Rourke heard his voice. “You do not hate the Russians?”

“I don’t hate her, do I? And I can’t see any reason to hate you. Do you hate me?”

“No, of course not, there is—”

“Reason?”

“Yes—no reason.”

“Too bad,” Rourke smiled. “Too bad we couldn’t have all sat down like this before it all got blown up and destroyed, before this whole holocaust scenario came about—”

“Too bad, yes. This Eden Project—perhaps for them it will be different. If we can do what we have set out here to do.”

“Perhaps,” Rourke agreed. “But in a way, maybe it won’t be.”

“What do you mean?” Vladov asked, the flare of a match cupped in his hands making a rising and falling sound as the phosphorous burned, Rourke smelling the smoke of the cig-arette mingled with the phosphorous.

“It’d be nice if somehow they could know what we’re talk-ing of here tonight, and learn from our mistakes. It’d be nice if they could.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t think they will—you got an extra cigarette? If I light a cigar, the smell’ll wake up Natalia.”

“I hope you like them,” Rourke heard Vladov laugh. “They are American cigarettes.”

“Any port in a storm.” Vladov fired the cigarette from his own already lit one, passing it to Rourke. “Camel?”

“Yes, I like them. I used to buy them on the black market and smoke them in Russia, and in Poland, too.”

“Don’t tell Natalia I bummed a cigarette,” Rourke smiled. “I’m always telling her to quit—that it’s bad for her health,” and he laughed, hearing Vladov laughing too.

“I had quit smoking cigarettes for two years, before The Night of The War. After this, I started again. It did not mat-ter.”

“Yes,” Rourke told the Soviet captain. “It didn’t matter.” In the distance, Rourke heard the drone of aircraft engines. He turned his body to see his wrist beyond Natalia’s shoul-ders, rolling back the cuff of the battered brown bomber jacket to read his watch. It was set still to Eastern time. In an hour or so, in the East, it would be sunrise. It was hard to think that in Europe, in what remained of Great Britain, perhaps the world had already ended.

John Rourke inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply into his lungs — wondering what it mattered.

But he felt Natalia’s breath against his skin as she moved in his arm. And Rourke realized that it still did matter.

Chapter Twenty-two

Vladov had aroused his men, the men going out onto the prairie and lighting the flares already set there after their arrival. For the second time in the darkness that night, Rourke watched an aircraft land. But there were no radio communications—to have agreed on a frequency would have been risking the security compromised.

The aircraft — an old civilian aircraft Rourke couldn’t im-mediately identify—slowed, turning, prepared for take-off, the fuselage door opening, men pouring from it, dropping flat in the high grass, the wind stiff now and the clouds moving briskly overhead, making the moonlight come and go with the nagging irregularity of a flickering strobe light, making the movements of Reed’s men as they assumed de-fensive postures surrounding the aircraft look jerky, like something from a silent film that had been shown once too often.

Rourke had awakened Natalia. Vladov on one side of him, now, Natalia on the other side, Rourke walked across the prairie, the grass high, something he could feel as it moved against his Levis, the grass nearly to his knees in spots. Natalia squeezed his left hand in her right. He squeezed hers back.

He kept walking, toward the aircraft, seeing Reed now in a flicker of moonlight standing beside the wing stem.

He heard Reed’s voice. “I should have figured you’d have her with you, Rourke.”

Natalia answered. “I too looked forward to seeing you again, Colonel Reed.”

“That’s not Rubenstein unless he’s grown a couple of inches—got yourself a new sidekick, have you?”

Rourke answered him. “I found Sarah and the children. Paul was injured. He’s recovering at the Retreat and look-ing after my family.”

“Good for you—spend these last few days with them— why the hell are you here?”

“A job to do,” Rourke answered, his voice low, stopping walking, standing two yards or so from Reed. He had seen the bristling of Reed’s men when they had spotted Vladov’s Soviet fatigue uniform.

“That’s a clever disguise—he looks just like a Russian Special Forces captain.”

“Colonel Reed, I am Captain Vladov, at your service, sir.” Vladov saluted, Rourke watching from the corner of his right eye. Reed didn’t move. Vladov held the salute.

“I’m not in full uniform, Captain,” Reed nodded, gestur-ing to his hatless condition.

Vladov held the salute.

Reed snapped, “Shit,” then returned the salute.

Rourke felt a smile etch across his lips. “Glad to see you haven’t mellowed, Reed.”

“You got any more Russians, or just these two?”

Natalia answered. “There are eleven other Soviet Special Forces personnel, surrounding the field.” Rourke wanted to laugh—she couldn’t pass it up. “One officer and ten enlisted personnel. In addition, one officer and one enlisted from GRU.”

“Aww, that’s fuckin’ wonderful. What we got here, a Commie convention?”

“What we’ve got,” Rourke answered for her, “is fourteen highly skilled men who value human decency over dialec-tics. You got any problems with that, climb back on your goddamn airplane and we’ll knock out The Womb all by ourselves.”

“The Womb?”

“One thousand of Rozhdestvenskiy’s Elite KGB Corps, one thousand Soviet women picked for their health and ge-netic backgrounds. Maybe a couple hundred support per-sonnel. The president tell you about the cryogenic chambers?”

“Yeah, he told me.”

“Well, that’s where they’re at. And particle beam weap-ons installations to destroy the Eden Project before they can land. The entire Soviet Politburo is either on its way to The Womb or already there. They’ll all wake up in five hun-dred years or so — well. You know the rest.”

“There are twelve of us — even. I’m the only officer. When do we get started?”

“I will order the camouflage removed from our aircraft,” Vladov answered, taking off in a dead run.

Reed turned to a white-haired master sergeant beside him. “Dressier, send one of our guys—make it two of ‘em— to give the Soviet captain a hand.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll sure do that,” and Dressier started barking orders.

Rourke watched Reed. Natalia squeezed Rourke’s hand tighter.

Chapter Twenty-three

Patches of snow dotted the rocks, drifts occasionally sev-eral feet high in the depressions as Rourke, at the head of the column of U.S. II and Soviet Forces, Natalia beside him, Vladov and Reed behind them, walked on. The two planes had dropped them what Rourke judged from map distance as ten miles from the main entrance of the Chey-enne Mountain underground complex. The light around them was grey as they walked, climbing slightly now, the Colorado Rockies air thinner, cold, and exertion telling on all of them, he realized, as he led them onward.

In another mile or so, he would send out an advance party to scout for Soviet patrols. But he waited, holding back. In a few moments they would reach the height of the lower elevation peak they traveled, and from there, be able to see the horizon.

If it were aflame, sending out an advance party would be pointless, for they would all be dead in minutes.

He felt Natalia’s gloved right hand brush against his gloved left. “If it happens,” he heard her whisper, “I shall love you after death as well.”

He found her hand, holding it, climbing upward with her.

Thunder rumbled in the sky, so loud that at times it drowned the beat of his heart that he could hear in his ears. It was not the exertion, but instead what he knew might happen.

Rourke suddenly realized that if this morning were the morning, that his wife and his children, that Paul—if they had been caught outside, or failed to completely secure the Retreat—that they were dead.

If they had been inside, and the Retreat sealed, the fresh oxygen the plants under the grow lights generated from ex-haled carbon dioxide would allow them to survive for per-haps several weeks until the air became too foul to breathe. The food would last for years. The electrical power from the underground stream—if the stream itself never reached the surface as he had always suspected was the case — would run on infinitely, or until the generators and the back-up generators malfunctioned and stopped.

But his family would be gone to him forever.

John Rourke loosed Natalia’s hand, folding his left arm around her shoulders as they ascended the last rise.

The sun—lightning crackled round it in the air on the ho-rizon, but there were no flames.

John Rourke put on his dark lensed sunglasses, staring eastward.

“There is another day, John.”

“Yes,” he told her, just holding her for a moment, watch-ing it, for the first time in his life appreciating it.

One of the Americans standing behind them began to say the Lord’s Prayer aloud.

Chapter Twenty-four

Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy stood beside the corpsman at the master radar control screen, watching. The blips—the corpsman had described them as an Aeroflot passenger jet and six Mikoyan/Gu-re-vich MiG-27 fighters — were at the ninety-mile radius. The Aeroflot was a special craft, similar to the Presidential E4 747 Doomsday Plane which the late and last president of the United States, suc-ceeded by Samuel Chambers and U.S.II —had not been able to use even to save his own life let alone direct a successful war effort.

The timing would be critical.

He turned to his aide, Major Revnik. “Major, order that the system be energized to ready status.”

“Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy—are—”

“You have your orders,” Rozhdestvenskiy nodded, not taking his eyes from the radar screen. Sixty-five miles now and closing. “Sergeant, order the airfield elevated for recep-tion of the premier, the Politburo and the Committee Lead-ership.”

He heard the sergeant who assisted the duty officer echo-ing the commands. “Duty Officer, begin tracking.”

The captain nodded, answering, “Yes, Comrade Colo-nel.”

Rozhedestvenskiy waited.

His aide announced, “Comrade Colonel. The system is energized to ready status.”

“Very good,” Rozhdestvenskiy nodded. He was letting them come in close. He wanted to see it when it happened, not just as radar blips disappearing from a screen. He turned his eyes to the high resolution television monitors overhead in the command center. They were faint, the im-ages he saw on the screen at the center. “Greater resolution, technician!”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel,” and then to another technician, “Bring up camera two—four, three, two, one—on camera two.”

The image suddenly changed on the screen—enhanced, he realized. But he could see them.

One large, passenger-sized aircraft. Six smaller aircraft— the fighters.

“Excellent, excellent. Stay on them.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

Rozhdestvenskiy addressed the duty officer, “You have them.”

“Tracking, Comrade Colonel.”

“I shall take charge of the firing sequence. Do not hesi-tate to correct me, Captain, in the event that I should make an error.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

Rozhdestvenskiy picked up the microphone. “Firing cen-ter, act on my commands. Zero deviant flux on my signal. Ten. Nine. Eight.” He watched the growing images of the six aircraft on the center screen. “Seven. Six. Five. Four.” It was the ultimate act. “Three. Two. One. Activate laser charge through the particle chamber now!” He eyed the du-plicate control panels in front of him. He had memorized the firing sequences, learned the very functioning of the sys-tem itself to be sure. He could trust it to no one else’s hands. He served as commander and technician.

“Switch on. Charging — one-quarter, one-half, three-quarter power—full power. Boost two and three.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel, actuate firing,” the technician’s voice came back.

Rozhdestvenskiy focused on the computer readout di-odes. “Boost ionization fifteen points,” he called into the microphone.

“Boosting ionization fifteen points,” the technician’s voice came back.

“Capacitance function readout check,” Rozhdestvenskiy called.

The technician’s voice came back, “Ten to the fourteenth capacitance, to the fifteenth, to the sixteenth.” The techni-cian’s voice paused for a moment. “Ten to the seventeenth capacitance—”

“Hold on ten to the seventeenth,” Rozhdestvenskiy or-dered.

“Holding on ten to the seventeenth capacitance, zero flux.”

“Designating targets. Grid placement!”

Over the radar screen before him a grid of green lines ap-peared, masking the screen, Rozhdestvenskiy command-ing, “Television—put up grid Theta.”

“Putting up grid Theta on Camera Two—on my signal, Comrade Colonel. Five, four, three—ready animation— roll—two, one, punch up—grid Theta on Camera Two, Comrade Colonel.”

“Very good,” Rozhdestvenskiy murmured. The grid on the radar screen and the grid overlay on the television moni-tor were perfect matches. “Switching from radar to video on my mark,”

Rozhdestvenskiy announced. “Three, two— ready to switch—one—switch now!”

The weapons system was feeding from the video screen, the radar running now as a crosscheck—at the range visual more precise than radar. “Designating targets now! Grid fif-teen, target one, twenty-six, twenty second delay, target two, grid thirty-eight, target three, grid forty-three, target four, grid fifty, target five, grid nineteen, target six. Grid twelve, target seven.”

He licked his lips. “Automatic target acquisition and destruction on my mark—six, five, four, three, two, one—Mark!”

He could see it on the monitor.

He had programmed the delay between target one and the taking of target two so there would be time for the cam-era to restore picture function, time for him to visually con-firm the strike.

One instant—the Aeroflot aircraft carrying the Polit-buro, the premier, the leaders of the KGB—one instant it was there. A blinding flash of light, Rozhdestvenskiy invol-untarily closing his eyes against it, counting from the flash. “...fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.” He opened his eyes—the airliner was gone, “eighteen, nineteen, twenty—” Another flash, the flash brighter now, the camera totally disfunctioning.

“We have lost our video, Comrade Colonel Rozhdest-venskiy.”

Rozhdestvenskiy began to laugh. “We have lost our video— indeed — but we have gained something far greater. Tell me—to please stand by,” and he laughed so loudly he realized all of them must have thought he had suddenly be-come insane.

But the master of an entire planet could afford the luxury.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Holy shit—what the hell was that—it’s starting!” Reed stared skyward, Rourke looking upward as well. There was fire in the sky, a pencil-thin beam of light visible for an in-stant—Rourke shouted, “Look away!” He turned his own head away, the roar from above deafening now, Rourke sweeping Natalia into his arms, pulling her to the ground.

The roar gradually died.

Rourke opened his eyes, Natalia’s blue eyes staring at him.

“Was that it?” Reed snarled. “But we’re still alive—”

“That wasn’t the ionization,” Rourke rasped. “It was the particle beam system.”

“But what is it that they were firing at to make such a loud—”

Rourke interrupted Vladov. “Those weren’t drones. It wasn’t a test.”

Natalia, still in his arms, beside him on the ground. Her voice was low, even, steady. “My uncle had predicted Rozhdestvenskiy would do this thing. And he was right. He has just destroyed the entire Soviet government. He has killed them all. The premier. The Politburo. The heads of the various branches of the KGB. It must have been that for Rozhdestvenskiy to utilize the particle beam system.”

Rourke pushed himself up to his elbows, the fire gone from the sky.

“All those people—he just murdered them,” Reed whis-pered.

“Assassination—that’s the better term,” Rourke advised.

“I cannot believe this thing,” Vladov murmured.

Natalia sat bolt upright from the ground, her blue eyes saucer wide as she spoke. “He has made himself—Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy has—he has made himself the master of the entire world should we fail. The total master. Rozhdest-venskiy alone.”

It was one of the U.S. II troopers who spoke, one of the two black men of the group.

“Me—ma’am—I don’t like folks what thinks they’re somebody else’s master. We’re gonna have to get that sucker. Get him good, we are.”

Rourke got to his feet, helping Natalia to stand. Her hands were shaking as he took them in his.

“The corporal said it, we’re gonna have to get Rozhdestvenskiy—gonna have to get him good. Reed, you and Vladov pick some men—ones who can be good and quiet. Put out a recon ele-ment so we don’t go walking into something.”

“I’ll take ‘em, sir,” Sergeant Dressier said, pulling his fa-tigue cap off, running his five pound ham-sized right hand through his hair then replacing the cap.

“All right, Sergeant, co-ordinate with Captain Vladov,” Reed nodded.

“I think,” Vladov said quietly, “that the good Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy has just made all of us into one unit, has he not?”

Reed nodded. “Agreed, Captain, for now at least,” and Reed started forward.

Vladov just shook his head, turning to converse with Ser-geant Dressier.

As Rourke started ahead, he held Natalia’s right hand in his left—somehow that had become more important to him.

And her hand still shook.

Chapter Twenty-six

Rourke imagined himself in Rozdestvenskiy’s shoes. He doubted the KGB commander had any more precise data on the exact time of terrestrial destruction than did anyone else. With his armored Bushnell 8x30s now, Rourke peered across the corridors of granite and toward the entrance of Cheyenne Mountain. A level plain was before it, surround-ing this when Rourke had seen the complex once years ago — only from the outside—there had been a single twelve foot high chain link fence with electrified barbed wire at the top. Now, some distance forward of this, there was a sec-ond fence of identical seeming construction. He judged the distance between the fences as perhaps twenty yards.

Men armed with M-16s traveled the area between the fence in pairs, one of each pair restraining a guard dog on a leash, the dogs either Dobermans or German Shepherds.

The sentries were at three minute intervals, hardly enough time to cross the outer perimeter electrified fence and reach the inner fence, let alone cross it. Natalia had been given detailed information gathered by the GRU in her uncle’s behalf, detailing as much as GRU had been able to ascertain pertaining to Womb defenses. Included in this in-formation was the fact that in addition to the human and canine sentries, the area between the two fences was cov-ered with closed circuit television cameras with at least four operators manning the camera monitors at all times.

Beyond the interior fence for a distance of twenty yards was a mine field, the exact nature of the mines something GRU had been unable to fathom. A smaller fence—perhaps eight feet high—formed the third and innermost boundary.

Running through the boundaries was one road, two lanes wide at best, which passed through the gates and toward the base of the mountain. Forming an outside perimeter some five yards or so before reaching the first twelve foot electri-fied fence were concrete barriers, these made of a special formula concrete of the type used to circle the White House following the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Leba-non, forming a shield against vehicles, explosives-laden or otherwise.

Rourke scanned along the roadway, toward the base of the mountain. Flanking the main entrance were a brace of 155mm M198 Howitzer guns—he imagined in the event something somehow penetrated the three fences, the con-crete barrier and the mine field, not to mention the teams of armed sentries and their guard dogs. The doors themselves were fabricated of a special titanium alloy, given special heat treatment, constructed of various layers, the spacing between the layers of interlaced chain link and wire mesh. These were only the exterior bombproof doors. A short dis-tance inside, a similar single door, twice the thickness, weighing literally tons, was positioned, this a massive vault door rigged to a combination lock system and automati-cally closing when the facility went to final alert status and unable to be opened until the alert status was cancelled in a specified manner. When this door was closed, automati-cally the climate control system for the complex would take over and the complex was hermetically sealed.

To Rourke’s left—to the south—lay the airfield which served the mountain. A central section of the main runway functioned like the elevators aboard an aircraft carrier, able to raise or lower planes to or from the runway surface.

It would have been obvious to suppose, he realized, that here lay the chink in the armor. But a similar system of fences, guards and blast barriers formed a perimeter sur-rounding the field —

although GRU doubted the area be-tween the second and third (smaller) fence would be mined, this in the event of a landing or take-off difficulty. Teams of sentries utilizing guard dogs roamed the field in seemingly random patterns. As an aircraft would make an approach, the sentries would disperse, then claxons would sound again and the sentries would resume their random seeming pat-terns of movement across the field.

Once the elevator would lower an aircraft to the below ground hangar complex, there was a system of doors dupli-cating exactly the main door system. In addition, the run-way elevator had sliding panels which could be brought into place to bombproof this opening as well.

Rourke swept his binoculars along the profile of the mountain. Spaced what appeared to be approximately a quarter mile apart were radar scanning devices, the dishes moving, searching, like hungry mouths wanting food.

At the height of the mountain, in what appeared almost a dish-shaped valley, but the dish of concrete, looking for all the world like a massive radio telescope, were the particle beam weapons. These were ringed by conventional radar controlled anti-aircraft guns and banks of surface to air missiles. The particle beam devices rose perhaps five hun-dred feet skyward on huge crane-like gantries. There were two of these and the mountings at their bases seemed mo-bile which would give each unit more than one hundred eighty degrees of movement and nearly a full one hundred eighty degrees of movement from the horizontal.

A low flying aircraft could get under their range of move-ment — but the surface to air missiles and anti-aircraft guns would take care of that possibility.

“I have been watching you,” Natalia whispered from be-side him. “Watching the set of your jaw, watching your mouth—it is impregnable, the Womb, isn’t it?”

Rourke put down the Bushnell binoculars. He let out a long breath which became a sigh. They lay side by side in a hollow of rock which would keep them from overhead visi-bility. He said to her, “It’s as impregnable as anything can be made. We can’t sneak in, we can’t shoot our way in, we can’t blast our way in with explosives, we can’t fly in, we can’t rappel down into it. We can’t even wait until nightfall—the infrared system the GRU said they have, the starlight sys-tems. And anyway, the main doors are closed and the Womb is hermetically sealed in the event of the next dawn bringing the ionization effect. We can’t even crash a plane into the particle beam weapons. A plane big enough to carry sufficient explosives wouldn’t fly low enough to avoid the system, and even if the system were down and they didn’t have time to bring it up to emit the pulse, the anti-aircraft guns and the surface to air missiles would knock us out. Maybe a thousand planes, all of the pilots kamikazes, each aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon—maybe that’d do some good.”

“What if the particle beam weapons already had targets they were locked to—”

“The SAMs, the anti-aircraft guns again. And anyway, it takes only a few seconds to switch targets once the system is activated and charged—at least that’s what your uncle’s data tells us. And besides, even if we knocked out the parti-cle beam weapons so Rozhdestvenskiy couldn’t use them against the Eden Project when it returns, he’d have time to rebuild them, possibly once it was safe to move about on the surface again. If we don’t destroy their cryogenics ability, a thousand highly trained men from the KGB Elite Corps would be more than a match for one hundred and thirty-eight men and women who are scientists, doctors, teachers, pilots, farmers—like that.”

“Perhaps the Eden Project shuttles will land out of range of the particle beam system,” Natalia offered.

“Just postpone the inevitable—and anyway, if you were the commander of the Eden Project and returned to an earth where everything had changed, been obliterated, what would you do?”

“Use my onboard systems to scan for power supplies, power sources—in the hopes of finding something left of civilization.”

“That’s why they built the Womb here,” Rourke told her, “and not somewhere else. They’ll home right in on the Womb, like kids running home from school looking for a snack. And there’s no way to warn them. And if we could warn them, what would they do? Where would they go? Somehow, we have to get inside. And we have to do the job today. There might not be a tomorrow. And we have to get in before nightfall. And if we have any hope of ever getting out with any of the cryogenic chambers and the serum, we have to be able to get out before nightfall, too, when the Womb is hermetically sealed—otherwise, we’re trapped in-side unless we can get to the control center and beat the in-formation out of the master computer which is locked into the defense system.”

“It is impossible,” Natalia whispered, her eyes wide, star-ing—at what he didn’t know.

Rourke felt a smile cross his lips. “But that’s to our ad-vantage. Making it impossible for us will force us to try something thoroughly desperate, something only people who were doomed and had no alternatives would try. And that’s the sort of thing no system of security can be made to anticipate.”

“Then we have a chance?”

“If there’s one thing I believe in—besides you, besides Sarah and the children, besides Paul’s friendship — I believe that as long as you never give up, you’ve always got a chance. So yeah—we have a chance.” And Rourke shifted the binoculars back to his eyes, watching the entrance to the Womb. Just what exactly their chance might be—of that he wasn’t certain.

Chapter Twenty-seven

There was a certain let-down. He had accomplished all. He sat quietly in his office, smoking a cigarette, studying his Colt Single Action Army revolver which lay on the desk beside him. He would never need to use it again. There were no more enemies to fight.

He—Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy—ruled the world.

It was the dream of Caesar, of Alexander, of Napoleon, of Hitler, perhaps of Stalin.

But he had achieved it.

Twenty years after the awakening, his population could easily have tripled. It was believed that the cryogenic proc-ess served to restore the body while it slept. If that were the case, perhaps, he thought, perhaps —

His father had lived to the age of seventy-three. His mother still survived, well into her eighties. His grandpar-ents had been long lived as well.

Perhaps, through the cryogenic process, his life span might surpass theirs. Disease on the new earth would be vir-tually unknown, the same process which would destroy all sentient life destroying much of the world’s disease produc-ing organisms.

A world without infectious disease.

He smiled.

The Eden Project. “A Garden of Eden.”

And he would be its master.

A barren garden at first, but the plants, the embryonic animals which were even now being cryogenically frozen under the aegis of Professor Zlovski.

Rozhdestvenskiy touched his fingertips to the desk top—soon he would touch his fingertips to the earth and give it life again.

Because of his abilities and his ruthlessness—one was no good without the other, he had always known.

He stood up from his desk, walking across the office, to stare at himself in the mirror.

Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy saw the face of God and it was his own face.

Chapter Twenty-eight

They had followed the course of the roadway leading down from Cheyenne Mountain. It was patrolled by four wheel drive vehicles with one driver and two guards, each vehicle fitted with an RPK 7.62mm light machinegun, each of the LMGs fitted with a seventy-five round drum maga-zine.

Rourke, Natalia, Reed and Vladov watched the road from a quarter mile distant. “I agree with you, Rourke, with all these people who speak Russian like natives—”

“We are natives, Colonel,” Vladov interjected.

Rourke laughed.

“Anyway,” Reed observed, “we might be able to bluff our way through if we can take over one of the smaller convoys. But how the hell we’re gonna do that with those patrols on the road I don’t know.”

“In the Chicago espionage school,” Natalia began, taking a cigarette, Rourke lighting it for her with his Zippo, “we were taught that what is familiar is the least suspected. We can utilize this to our advantage. We have, after all, twelve men in Soviet uniform who are in fact Soviet soldiers.”

Rourke reached out and touched her hand. Then he lit his own cigar, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, exhaling as he said, “I think what Natalia’s getting at is that those guys in the road patrols can’t be too high up the echelon. What if Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski just marched their men down onto the roadway and flagged down one of the patrol vehicles—then take out the guys running it.”

“And then,” Natalia smiled, “the captain could replace the three soldiers with three of his own men. It would merely be a matter of changing uniform blouses. The vehi-cle proceeds down the highway toward a convoy of suffi-ciently small size which we had pre-selected. The vehicle stops the convoy. If another of the patrols comes by, it can be waved on. The suspicions of the convoy would not be aroused—there are so many of the road patrols that they must by now be a familiar sight to them.”

“Maybe the Jeep could be given a flat tire or something and stopping the convoy would seem more natural.”

“Exactly,” Natalia told Reed. “And once the convoy is stopped, the rest of us sweep down to attack.”

“We eliminate the personnel of the convoy,” Vladov said, as if thinking out loud. “Assuming they are KGB, we take their uniforms—”

“Knives would be better than guns if we can get away with it,” Rourke noted.

“Knife holes are more easily covered up,” Natalia nod-ded. “And if the knifework is done properly, there can be little bleeding to stain the uniform.”

“We get the convoy orders, drive up there and we fake it,” Reed nodded.

“Maybe a little more precise than that,” Rourke began. “Between Natalia, Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski, we should be able to get all the information from the convoy leadership that we need—and their orders—we can work on that after we make the switch and start back up the road. We won’t have more than ten minutes or so until an-other convoy comes along. Vladov and Daszrozinski can do most of the talking—and we’ll have to find the smallest waisted of the convoy personnel so we can get Natalia inside looking at least moderately convincing.”

“I must dress as a man—I don’t like that,” she smiled.

“I like you better as a woman, too—but,” and he laughed. Then he looked to Reed, “Why don’t you send some of your guys down the road where it bends there to find a likely convoy—space men a half mile apart to use as relay runners to get the information back to us. We can’t risk radio here. Don’t know what frequency the convoys use, or what fre-quency the patrols use.” He looked at Natalia. “You go with Reed’s men—run the thing—” and he looked at Reed, “Un-less you have some objections.”

“I wanna get the job done — however we do it — I can ob-ject later, if there is a later.”

“Agreed,” Natalia nodded.

Rourke told her, “You pick the convoy—you’ll have the best idea of how many uniforms we should be able to net out of how many vehicles. Start the runners, then get back around here. I’ll be up in the rocks, riding herd on Vladov and Daszrozinski’s men in case they bump into problems. One of your men,” and he turned to Captain Vladov. “I saw him with a 7.62 SVD with a PSO-1 telescopic sight—have him leave that with me so I can long distance any trouble you might have if I need to. I left my SSG at the Retreat.”

“Yes, of course, Doctor.”

Rourke looked at Vladov, Reed, and Natalia in turn. “We all set then?”

Reed said to Vladov, “Good luck—I mean with nailing that patrol vehicle, Captain.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

Natalia smiled.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Reed had stayed behind in the rocks with Rourke. Ac-companying Natalia, leading the American force, was the veteran, white-haired Sergeant Dressier. They moved along a ridge line at a brisk, stiff-legged, wide-strided Commando walk, Natalia mildly amazed that Dressier seemed to show no fatigue. There was still some distance to go and she” opened conversation with Dressier. “Tell me, Sergeant, what did you do as a civilian, between the period of the Viet Nam conflict and your being recalled to active duty.”

Dressier, sounding barely out of breath, laughed good-naturedly. “Not much to tell, Major, really. Farmer. Worked my farm, helped my wife meddle in the children’s lives, watched my grandchildren come into the world—that’s what I did. Had a part-time job with the city we lived near, worked on vehicle maintenance. But all I ever been mostly is a soldier or a farmer. How about you, Major, did you do anything before you joined the KGB?”

“Interesting?” she laughed. “I studied at the Polytechnic. I suppose I am qualified as an engineer of sorts, in electron-ics. I studied ballet — I studied that a great deal.”

“I never did see a ballet, ma’am, not a real one, anyways. One of my daughters took ballet some when she was little. Watched her dance in some of them recital things they’d have every year or so. I bet you was pretty as a ballerina, Major.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” she smiled. “I enjoyed it—a great deal. And when I became involved in the martial arts, it was vastly easier for me because of my ballet training.”

“Ma’am,” Dressier began walking beside her now, “you think we got a prayer of gettin’ in there and doin’ what we gotta do?”

She looked at him a moment, then nodded her head, brushing her hair back from her face with the back of her gloved left hand. “A prayer, Sergeant—I should think we have that at least.”

She had loaned Vladov her silencer fitted stainless Walther PPK/S. Rourke waited with the 7.62mm SVD sniper weapon to back him up.

A prayer—it was likely all they had, she thought. And the thought of that amused her and at once frightened her.

Prayer was not something taught in the Chicago espio-nage school inside the Soviet Union.

But as she walked beside Sergeant Dressier, she tried to formulate one.

Chapter Thirty

Captain Vladov walked briskly along the trail leading down from the rocks, Lieutenant Daszrozinski beside him, the ten other men of the Special Forces unit walking two abreast. He had intentionally taken no security precau-tions — friendly forces in friendly territory needed no such precautions and to bring off the ruse, openness, inno-cence—these were necessary, more crucial than guile.

He raised his right hand, signalling a halt. “Order the men, Lieutenant, to charge their weapons but to leave the safety tumblers in the normal carrying mode. We do not wish a sharp-eyed soldier to see something amiss. And not a shot is to be fired without my order.”

“Very good, Comrade Captain,” Daszronzinski re-sponded, then turned to the men. “You have heard your commander, charge your weapons, leave the safety tum-blers in the standard carrying mode. No shot is to be dis-charged—none—unless on the specific order of Comrade Captain Vladov.” There was the rattle of bolts being cycled, the shuffling of feet, a murmur of conversation from one man to another.

“Silence now,” Vladov ordered.

He withdrew the Walther pistol loaned to him by Major Tiemerovna from beneath his tunic.

He edged the slide slightly rearward, re-checking that a round was chambered. He gave the longish, chunky silencer a firm twist, but the silencer was already locked firmly in place.

The safety on, he tried withdrawing the weapon from be-neath his tunic several times until he could do it smoothly.

His first target would be the machinegunner at the back of the vehicle. If his men had not dispatched the driver and the second man by the time he had killed the machinegunner, he would turn the pistol on these other two.

None of his men had spoken of it, but he knew his men well enough to read what they thought—to kill their fellow soldiers was something no training, however rigorous, could have prepared them for.

It was not to be looked upon as combat—but as murder, he knew.

He turned to his men. “Your attention. I shall say this once and once only. The cause we serve is the cause of the people, because it is the cause of humanity. Alone, we rep-resent the noble spirit of the Soviet People against a menace to all humankind which we ourselves have created. The ulti-mate expression of Communism has been and is to serve the worker, to break the chains of oppression. Working with our American allies this day, however uncomfortably, we shall be doing just that. Serving the cause of the People of the Soviet Union and oppressed people throughout the world. Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy and the KGB—they have ceased to be Communists. They are barbar-ians. They must be liquidated. As your captain, it is not something I enjoy to order you into battle against your fellow countrymen, but the cause we serve is just. We do not kill our comrades, we kill our enemies. And we had better be as efficient as possi-ble in this for once we penetrate the Womb, we shall be out-numbered at least forty to one. If the women and support personnel have combat skills, then eighty to one. But we are Special Forces. We are the best. We have been trained to march in the vanguard or hold the barricade. We take with us the pride of our heritage, the faith of the Soviet People. Our personal honor.”

He turned away. Along the road now he saw one of the four wheel drive patrols. And he checked getting the Walther from beneath his tunic one more time.

Chapter Thirty-one

In the rocks above, Rourke watched — he could see Vladov and his men. He could see the sentry vehicle. He charged the chamber of the Dragunov SVD’s bolt, running one of the 7.62mm type 54 R rounds into the chamber, his hand wrapping back around the pistol grip through the skeletonized buttstock.

He settled himself, his legs wife spread, his breathing even, his right eye squinted through the dark lens of his sun-glasses against the light, the scope—more than fourteen inches long—well back from the action and closer to his eye than he would have liked, despite the rubber eye cup. But he settled into it, into the unfamiliar rifle, the weapon in his hands rock steady.

“What the hell’s the range of that thing?” Reed asked from behind him.

Without moving, Rourke murmured, “Maximum effec-tive range is eight hundred meters with the specially selected ammo the gun’s issued with. But I don’t like a single trigger system on a sniper rifle. And I don’t like a semi-automatic in a sniper rifle. And I’ve never fired a Dragunov before so I don’t know what kind of quirks it might have. And if I do fire it, the scope’s gonna go banging right into my eye and so my follow-up shot’s gonna be slow and likely gonna be off. It uses the same rimmed cartridge they use in their PK GPMG and the RPK LMG—high pressure load. Any more questions?”

“No.”

“Then shut up and let me concentrate,” Rourke rasped, watching now as Vladov led his men down into the roadway. Soon, a runner should be coming back from Natalia that a convoy had been targeted.

Soon, Vladov would either flag down the approaching sentry vehicle or attempt to stop it on the fly. Rourke settled the scope on the machinegunner in the back of the four wheel drive vehicle. A quick shot would put him away and give Vladov’s men a chance to stop the vehicle before get-ting gunned down.

He waited, suddenly remembering when it had all started—when he and Paul had taken cover in the rocks above the wreckage of the jet liner and he had used his own sniping rifle against the brigands who were systematically murdering the survivors of the crash.

How long ago had it been, he wondered, not consciously wanting to remember?

And then the vehicle began to slow, the face of the man with the machinegun something he could read through the Dragunov’s PSO-1 sight. There was suspicion written all over it.

“Watch out,” Rourke told Reed.

Chapter Thirty-two

Captain Vladov stood in the middle of the roadway, his right hand raised. He shouted, “Halt!”

The vehicle had already begun to slow, but even at the distance, he did not like the look in the eyes of the soldier manning the RPK light machinegun in the vehicle’s rear.

He had no story to tell—military small talk for thirty sec-onds or so until he could get into position, then he would draw the gun and kill the machinegunner.

The vehicle ground to a halt, the brakes screeching slightly.

Vladov approached the vehicle, the man beside the driver moving his AKM slightly.

Vladov kept walking, his men behind him — he could hear their combat booted footfalls on the road surface. “I seek information. There was a convoy, just going up the road ten minutes or so ago—”

“Yes, Comrade Captain,” the man with the AKM began. “I too have seen this convoy—nothing seemed to be irregu-lar.”

“My opinion,” Vladov rasped, “exactly—what a pity, no?” The butt of the Walther PPK/S filled his right hand, the silencer hanging up on the inner seam of his tunic.

The driver was starting to move his hands on the wheel, the man from the front seat opening his mouth, raising his AKM.

Vladov’s eyes shifted to the machinegunner—the weapon was swinging toward him, the bolt being worked.

The silencer— “Damnit!” He ripped the silencer clear of his clothing.

Vladov thrust the pistol forward and pumped the trigger, the safety off before he had repositioned the pistol in his belt the last time. One round—a neat hole where the right eyebrow of the machinegunner had been. A second round—the bridge of the nose ruptured blood.

He swung the silenced Walther to his right. Daszrozinski and Corporal Ravitski were on the man with the AKM, Daszrozinski ripping open the man’s throat with a knife.

Ravitski was thrusting a bayonet into the soldier’s abdo-men. Three of Vladov’s men were swarming over the hood of the vehicle toward the driver, but the vehicle was already in motion, moving.

Vladov fired the Walther once, then again and again, into the back of the driver’s head and neck. The driver slumped forward.

Ravitski had the wheel, leaning across the already dead soldier with the AKM, his hands visibly groping for the emergency brake.

The vehicle stopped.

Vladov shot his cuff, looking at the face of his watch— eight minutes, perhaps less before the next patrol vehicle would be along.

“Quickly—their uniforms,” and he dropped the safety on the Walther PPK/S American’s slide and started toward the vehicle. “There is little time, Comrades.”

Chapter Thirty-three

The runner had returned almost the same instant Vladov had shot the driver of the patrol vehicle, almost the same instant Rourke had begun a trigger squeeze on the Dragunov sniper rifle. But as the driver had slumped forward across the wheel, Rourke had eased the pressure, then set the safety to listen as the runner detailed to Reed the partic-ulars of the convoy Natalia had selected. From the man’s words, it seemed that the convoy would intersect the por-tion of the road where now Vladov’s men replaced the KGB in under ten minutes.

Rourke looked at the runner. “You rest easy here for a couple of minutes. Join us down by the road unless the con-voy’s too close—if that’s the case stay here until it’s through—don’t wanna tip our hands.”

Rourke pushed himself up, snatching up his own rifles, slinging each cross body to opposite sides of his torso, then picking up the Dragunov. “What the hell’s that, sir?” the enlisted man asked.

Rourke looked at him and smiled. “Ask the colonel later—he knows all about it now.”

Holding the Dragunov in his right fist, Rourke started down from the rocks, the distance to the road approxi-mately six hundred yards as he estimated it, but slow going because of the rocky, uneven terrain.

He glanced behind him once—Reed was coming, his M-16 in both fists at high port.

Rourke lost himself in thought as he ran. He would never understand Reed. It seemed as though gruffness and abra-siveness were a shield he used to cover whatever really lay inside him. He had observed the growing respect in Reed for Vladov and his men, noted the grudging quality of Reed’s remark to Vladov—good luck.

Rourke jammed a deadfall pine, sidestepping a depres-sion that was covered by some of the lingering mountain snow—but the snow was sagged downward at the center, betraying the depression beneath. He reached the trail—it would be easier going now, he thought.

He glanced behind him again, Reed was coming, and from the sniping position in the rocks above, the runner was starting down.

Below him on the roadway, three of Vladov’s men were already boarding the sentry vehicle, three others of his men dragging the bodies of the dead to the side of the road to-ward the varied assortment of large sized fallen rocks. To his right on a track which would intersect the trail down from the higher rocks, he could see Natalia, running, be-hind her the remainder of the American force.

If he could set it up properly, Rourke realized, they would have a solid chance against the convoy, but after that once they reached Cheyenne Mountain and tried to bluff their way in, he didn’t know. But it was the sort of thing one had to play a step at a time, he thought, saying it under his breath as he ran, “A step at a time.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Two of the Americans and two of the Russians were sent back up into the rocks, with them were left the assault rifles, backpacks and other heavy gear of the remainder of the force.

Rourke, Natalia beside him, Reed, then Sergeant Dressier behind her, waited in the drop of the far side of the road from the high rocks where Rourke had waited earlier with the Dragunov. The next patrol had been waved past by Vladov, the Jeep’s hood up, Vladov proclai-ming a loose battery cable.

Vladov himself had assumed the driver’s slot aboard the sentry vehicle, Corporal Ravitski and Lieutenant Daszrozinski with him, the lieutenant manning the RPK in the back of the vehicle.

Once again Natalia had her silenced stainless Walther, freshly loaded. None of the AKS-74s were silencer fitted, nor the M-16s. Putting a silencer to a .45 was something Rourke had always felt absurd and revolvers could only rarely be effectively silenced. For the rest of them, beyond Natalia’s pistol, it was nothing but knives and hands.

In Rourke’s right hand now, he held the Gerber MkII fighting knife, the spear point double edged blade given a quick touch up on the sharpening steel carried on the out-side of the sheath.

Rourke still carried his hand guns, but had no intention of using them. A shot fired would blow the entire opera-tion, because in the mountains as they were, sound could carry for great distances.

They waited, Rourke listening for the first rumbling sounds of the convoy. Three trucks, U.S. Army deuce and a halves, and two motorcycle combinations, these Soviet M-2s, the sidecars fitted with RPK light machineguns with forty-round magazines only as best Natalia had been able to observe from above the road.

What the trucks carried or how many men beyond the two men visible to Natalia earlier in the truck cabs, there was no way of knowing.

They waited.

Rourke shifted position, tempted to tell Natalia to hang back, let him and the other men join the battle.

But it was a ridiculous thought and he dismissed it almost instantly. She would not — and he doubted he’d be able to cold cock her so easily a second time. And she fought better than most men fought to begin with. So she was more useful in battle than any of the others.

He said nothing.

But he looked into her eyes — she winked at him once.

He winked back.

They waited.

Then he heard it—the sound of a two and one-half ton truck’s gearbox, the roar of an engine. Then the sound of one of the motorcycle combinations.

There was no need to signal to the remainder of Vladov’s men, who occupied positions in the rocks on the other side of the road. They would have heard it, too.

There was the sound—a sound of steel being drawn against leather—Sergeant Dressier with what Rourke recog-nized as a Randall Bowie.

There would be no sound of Natalia’s Bali-Song being opened — she would open it when she needed it and not be-fore. It was usually her way.

No one said, “Ready,”—none of them was fully ready but they were as ready as possible. Knives against assault rifles and light machineguns.

Rourke pricked his ears, listening as Vladov shouted to the convoy. “There is trouble along the roadway—we must see your papers.”

There was the screech of brakes, the sounds of transmis-sions gearing down. Rourke didn’t dare to raise his head above the lip of rock and peer across the roadway.

“We must see your papers—who commands this con-voy?” Vladov’s voice.

Another voice, the voice with a heavy Ukranian accent. “I command this convoy, Corporal—what is the meaning of this? These materials are consigned to the Womb Project.”

I must check your papers, Comrade Major—I am sorry, but I have my orders—from Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy himself, Comrade Major.”

“This is preposterous—what sort of trouble along the road?”

It was like a stage production, waiting in the wings for the cue line to enter—stage right and stage left, Vladov’s men and some of Reed’s men on stage left, Rourke and Natalia and the others below the level of the road on stage right.

Vladov had been fed the proper line.

“The trouble, Comrade Major—it is very grave. A group of Americans and renegade Russian soldiers have infil-trated the area and are preparing to attack one of the con-voys in order to gain entrance to the Womb and sabotage the efforts of our leaders.”

“This is criminal—these men—they must be stopped.”

“No, Comrade Major—they must not be stopped. Not yet—”

“Yet”—Rourke jumped up from the rocks, rolling onto the road surface, to his feet now, the Gerber ahead of him like a wand—a wand of death.

Vladov was scrambling over the roof of the patrol vehi-cle, jumping, hurtling himself at the KGB officer.

There was a plopping sound from behind Rourke— Natalia’s silenced Walther, he knew, the AKM armed man beside the KGB officer going down as he raised his assault rifle to fire.

Rourke dove the two yards distance to the man standing beside the nearest truck, Rourke’s right arm arcing forward like a fast moving pendulum, the spear-point blade of the Gerber biting into the throat of the man, Rourke twisting the blade, shoving the body away to choke to death on blood, Rourke clambering up into the truck cab—the driver was pulling a pistol, a snubby Colt revolver. In that in-stant — Rourke guessed the man had taken it off some dead American—Rourke thrust forward with the knife, hacking literally across the man’s throat, blood spurting from the sliced artery, the blood spraying across the interior front windshield, Rourke’s left hand grabbing at the man’s gun-hand, his left hand finding the revolver, the web of flesh between thumb and first finger interposing between the hammer and the frame as the hammer fell.

“Asshole—gave me a blood blister!” Rourke snarled.

He freed the Colt of his hand — a Detective Special.

There would be a blood blister.

Pocketing the little blued .38 Special, Rourke shoved the body out on the driver’s side to the road, rolling back, jumping down to the road on the passenger side, onto the back of a KGB man with an AKM. The man was a Lieuten-ant. Taking the man’s face in his left hand, as Rourke dropped back, he wrenched the head back, slashing the Gerber from left to right across the exposed throat, then ramming it into the right kidney, putting the man down.

Natalia fired the PPK/S, the slide locking back, open as the man in front of her went down to the silenced shot.

She wheeled, raking the silencer across the face of an-other man, then switching the pistol into her left hand, the right hand moving back. Rourke saw it, knew it was com-ing, the right hand arcing forward, the click-click-click sound of the Bali-Song flashing open, then her right hand punched forward, the Bali-Song puncturing the adam’s apple of the man whom a split second earlier she had hit with the pistol. He fell back, Natalia wheeling right, three men rushing her, Rourke diving toward them, snatching one man at the shoulder, bulldogging him down, imbedding the knife into the chest, twisting, withdrawing.

Natalia’s Bali-Song was opening, closing, opening, clos-ing, opening—it flashed forward, the second of the three men screaming, blood gushing from his throat where she’d opened the artery.

The third man was stepping into her, raising a pistol.

Rourke took a long step forward on his right foot, pivot-ing, his left leg snapping up and out, a double Tae Kwan Doe kick to the right side of the man’s head, the man falling away, as he did, Natalia’s knife flashing toward the man, slicing across the gunhand wrist, the pistol—a Makarov— clattering to the road surface along with the last two fingers of his hand.

Rourke stepped toward the man, his right foot snaking out, catching him at the base of the nose, breaking it, driv-ing the bone up and through and into the brain.

Rourke stopped, turned—

Vladov stood there a few yards from him—Reed was be-side him—both men’s knives glinted red with blood in the sunlight.

The fighting had stopped.

The personnel of the convoy lay dead and dying.

“No casualties,” Reed murmured. “Looks like anyway.”

“Many casualties,” Vladov corrected. “Too many, I think.”

Rourke said nothing.

Chapter Thirty-five

The trucks were rolling, Vladov and Daszrozinski each man-ning one of the M-72 combinations and two of the Soviet SF-ers riding the sidecars respectively to man the RPK LMGs. Rourke drove the first truck, his Russian good enough, he knew, Nata-lia had confirmed, that if he avoided a protracted conversation he could convince the guards they would encounter at the checkpoints outside Cheyenne Mountain that he was indeed Russian. Beside him, Natalia. She was changing into the small-est of the Soviet enlisted men’s uniforms they could find. “If I’d wanted a uniform, I could have brought my own uniform.”

“Yeah. But the Russians don’t use women for details like this—and besides, dressed like a woman you’re too recognizable to the KGB.”

“Maybe I should take my eyebrow pencil and paint on a mus-tache.”

“Do you use eyebrow pencil—”

“Not very often,” she laughed. “But a woman needs to have one just in case.”

“You shouldn’t have ridden in the front truck in the convoy.”

“I didn’t have any choice,” she laughed. “I wanted to be with you—and besides, you’re the only man here I’d undress in front of.”

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not,” he told her, looking at her for an instant. She had stripped away her jacket and her black jumpsuit and her boots—she looked bizarre, a silk one-piece undergarment that somewhere at the back of his mind he recalled was called a “teddy”

or some other ridiculous sounding name and black boot socks. “That’s a kinky outfit.”

“Hmm—I saw you when you were changing into your uniform—boot socks don’t go much better with jockey shorts.”

Rourke laughed. “If we get out of this—we can get the cryo-genic chambers we can steal and the serum—we can get it to the Retreat—maybe get Vladov and some of his men there and Reed and some of his men. We could accommodate more than the six of us. And you can get things ready—I can go after your uncle and Catherine and try and get them out—”

“No—”

Rourke looked at her as she pulled on her borrowed uniform pants. “Why don’t you—”

“Because you’d be killed—it’s as simple as that. There are three people I care for in the world. I’ve resigned myself to los-ing my uncle. But I wont risk losing either of the other two—

yourself, Paul. If you go, Paul will go, too—you know that. When I looked at his wound I realized he’d be at full capacity in another few days—by the time we get back—if we get—when we get back, you won’t be able to stop him. You might morally excuse punching a woman in the jaw for what you considered was her own good, but you couldn’t morally excuse doing that to Paul. No, I love my uncle—he’s the only real parent I ever had—but I won’t let you die trying to bring him back. He’s ready to die—he feels he’s lived his life. I don’t accept that, but I respect it. You’d never get him out alive. If we pull this off, if we destroy the Womb’s capabilities to survive the holocaust, if we steal the chambers, steal the cryogenic serum we need and de-stroy the rest, if any of Rozhdestvenskiy’s men survive, they won’t rest until they hunt you down or the fire consumes them. You’d never reach Chicago, you’d never get out of the city if you did. I won’t let you go—if I have to shoot your kneecaps to stop you, I won’t let you leave me.”

Rourke didn’t know what to say to her.

Chapter Thirty-six

The concrete barricades were just ahead.

Vladov had read the orders, then given them to Natalia— the trucks carried plastique, C-4

explosives. Rourke watched Vladov through the windshield, aboard the right flanking M-72

motorcycle combination.

In the second truck, Lieutenant Daszrozinski was wear-ing the uniform of the dead KGB major. In the third truck, Corporal Ravitski wore the uniform of the slain lieutenant of the KGB. The Americans were hidden in the trucks, be-hind the cases of C-4—not a convenient place to be in the event of a gunfight, Rourke thought. C-4 was quite stable as an explosive, but there was always the chance—

Natalia beside him, in male drag, the uniform of a corpo-ral, said, “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Will we make it inside, I mean?”

Rourke shrugged. “Tell you one thing, keep your mouth shut beyond a yes or no, you’ve got girl all over your voice. And watch your eyes — squint or something. They see those they’ll figure something’s wrong.”

“Why don’t I just hide in the back of the truck,” she said sarcastically. “These clothes are uncomfortable anyway.”

“Because if there is a fight, you’re better than anybody else.”

“Except you, maybe.”

“Maybe,” said Rourke glanced at her and laughed. “My ego will be bruised.”

“Your ego is too big to bruise,” she laughed.

“Touche,” he nodded.

There was another convoy in front of them and Rourke slowed the truck, then stopped, the two M-72 motorcycle combinations stopping as well. Already, in the sideview mirrors, he could see Daszrozinski and Ravitski climbing out—to do the impatient officer routine while the convoy was forced to wait. Rourke felt Natalia’s left hand against his right thigh, groping for his hand—her palm sweated.

“That’s another thing that’ll blow your disguise,” he mur-mured. “Holding my hand.” And she started to take her hand away, but Rourke held it tight. “But I’ll tell you when it gets dangerous and you have to stop.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

“We’ve gotta assume that Lieutenant Feltcher never made it through to contact the TVM, so we’re in this thing against the KGB and the Army units under their control all alone.”

Sam Chambers studied the faces of his officers and his senior non-coms. He looked away from them, up into the barn rafters for a moment, trying to search for the right words. He turned his face back to his men. “I—I don’t know what to say. I was never a politician—I was a scientist basically—I guess that was all I ever wanted to be. As your president, I should be able to say something consoling, something inspirational to you at this time. The Russians are closing in from both flanks, we have enough aircraft to evacuate some key personnel, but there isn’t any point to it. A dawn today, I considered the fact that God had given us another day of life. By dawn tomorrow or the next day or within a few days after that, the world will be ending. As a scientist, I had no means at my disposal to confirm or deny any of the hypotheses formed for post-war scenarios. But the Supreme Soviet Commander, General Varakov, had ac-cess to scientific data. High altitude test flights were still available options to the Soviets, as a means of confirming the level of ionization and the rate of buildup. As a scien-tist, it might be a pat answer for me to say that I blame my-self and other scientists for developing weapons systems and delivery systems which were capable of bringing about the destruction of our planet. Or I could shift the blame to the military for weapons build-ups. Or to the citizens of the various nuclear powers for letting their governments go on a headlong path to destruction.

“But the truth is,” Chambers continued, “that I don’t know who to blame. I blame myself as an individual matter of conscience. And maybe each of us should do that. And you can’t say that the anti-nuclear people were right and somebody else was wrong. Because they never gave us an alternative to nuclear defense as a deterrent to warfare. But of course we never gave them an alternative to warfare as a way of solving problems. But I don’t think we were put here—

however we were put here—to lie down and die. And I don’t think we were put here to compromise our beliefs and principles in order just to cling to life for a little while longer.

“So,” he nodded, “God gave us this extra day. It’s clear our Soviet adversaries don’t know of the coming holocaust. I think it’s up to us to use this day—in the defense of an ideal that somehow, even after all mankind is dead—some-where there is a spark that won’t die. I’m talking about lib-erty. That’s all I have to say besides God bless us all.”

It started with one man, then another and then still an-other—hands clapped to applause, but Samuel Chambers, first and last president of United States II, realized the ap-plause were not for the words he had uttered, but for the feelings the words echoed from the hearts of the Americans he stood before.

Unashamed, as he stood there beneath the rafters, Sam Chambers wept.

Chapter Thirty-eight

The convoy ahead of them was moving up, the traffic officer near the concrete barricades waving them ahead. Rourke duti-fully waited for Daszrozinski, disguised as the KGB major with the convoy, to gesture for him to move out. Rourke double clutched to get the old transmission into gear, easing up on the clutch, letting the truck barely more than idle forward, toward the barricades, the M-72 motorcycle combinations falling in at the front of the convoy, just ahead of Rourke—he could see a dark stain near the small of the back on the uniform Vladov wore—blood. He hoped no one else could see it. It wasn’t the sort of spot one cut oneself shaving.

Natalia whispered, “Like they say in your American mov-ies—dark of the moon.”

“Yeah,” Rourke nodded, letting out a long sigh, letting the vehicle roll ahead without feeding it much gas.

He knew where Natalia had her Bali-Song knife—inside the right front trouser pocket. Her hand rested over it. She had laughed when she had placed it there, saying that by moving the pocket lining to the side, with the knife there she might convince a casual observer she had something between her legs that really wasn’t there.

Rourke hadn’t found the remark amusing.

The M-72 combinations were flagged to a halt just past the sentry box, between the first and second fence.

Rourke braked the deuce and a half.

In the sideview mirror, he could see Daszrozinski walking up toward the head of the column, Ravitski, still disguised as a KGB lieutenant, walking beside him and slightly behind at his left side.

The guard sergeant from the sentry box snapped to and sa-luted Daszrozinski. Smartly, but not too smartly, Daszrozinski returned the salute. Through Natalia’s open passenger side win-dow, Rourke could hear as Daszrozinski and the guard sergeant spoke. “Comrade Major—your papers, please.”

Daszrozinski was playing it to the hilt, removing one glove very casually yet very definitely, gesturing with a nod of the head to Ravitski to produce the papers.

Inside himself, Rourke waited for Ravitski to make some sort of mistake, show some sort of deference to the guard sergeant who in real life outranked him, Ravitski only a corporal.

But Ravitski, a studied air of surliness about him, handed the papers to the sergeant.

The sergeant saluted and moved off with the papers.

Daszrozinski lit a cigarette, offering one to Ravitski. Ravitski lit up as well.

Rourke eyed Natalia, shifting his focus from the two men just beyond her, outside the cab—she was licking her lips. He didn’t know if in need of a cigarette herself or simply from ner-vousness.

Her hair was pulled back and up, stuffed under her garrison cap—the cheekbones would give her away, the set of the mouth.

Rourke shifted his gaze to Daszrozinski, the counterfeit ma-jor checking his watch anxiously.

He heard Daszrozinski telling Ravitski, “Give the men per-mission to smoke, Lieutenant.”

“Very good, Comrade Major,” Ravitski nodded, bowing slightly.

Ravitski approached the cab of the truck, leaning up toward Natalia, under his breath murmuring, “The lieutenant believes they are taking too long with the papers, I think—be alert, Comrade Major.”

Natalia nodded almost imperceptibly, Ravitski concluding as he stepped down from the running board, “But watch how you extinguish your cigarettes—these are explosives we carry—re-member,” and he walked on toward the next truck.

Natalia took out a cigarette—Rourke slapped his hand against her left thigh hard, eyeing the cigarette case—one of the type that looked like a smaller version of a woman’s handbag. Quickly, she took two cigarettes, putting the case under her tu-nic. She raised her eyebrows.

Rourke lit her cigarette, taking one and lighting it for him-self—a Pall Mall. He put away the Zippo, tempted to laugh as he watched Natalia posturing to smoke a cigarette like a man did rather than a woman, intentionally trying to make her hand look less than graceful when she held it, keeping her right wrist stiff, holding the cigarette between her thumb and first finger rather than between the first and second finger as she usually did, fingers extended.

She started to pluck a piece of tobacco from her lower lip— Rourke slapped her against the thigh again and she nodded, moving her hand away.

Rourke turned his attention to Ravitski who had rejoined Daszrozinski.

They still waited the papers and the return of the guard ser-geant.

Rourke glanced to his left. Guards were there, but not seem-ing to pay particular attention to him. Rourke had purposely selected a slightly over large uniform tunic—both Detonics Combat Master .45s were under it in the double Alessi shoulder rig. In the times before The Night of The War, in discussion of survival, often he had been asked why as his primary sidearms for survival use he had selected the Detonics rather than a larger pistol. His answer had always been that in a survival situation, the need for concealment shouldn’t be entirely discounted. And no other pistol, as he had told them then and still believed now, could be so counted on for trouble free reliability, maintenance free utility, and the combination of compact size and big caliber. There were too many buttons on the uniform to reach the pis-tols as quickly as he would have liked, but it felt good to him having them there.

He looked past Natalia again, inhaling the cigarette smoke deep into his lungs, wishing he had a cigar instead, but the im-age was too capitalistic for a supposed Soviet soldier.

Daszrozinski and Ravitski still waited, but from the sentry box now, Rourke saw the guard sergeant and an officer, a ma-jor, coming forward. Like the guard sergeant, the major was KGB.

Daszrozinski and the major from the sentry box exchanged curt salutes, Rourke overhearing as the new major informed Daszrozinski, “I am sorry for this regrettable delay, Comrade, but the experiments inside the Womb reach a critical stage now—in another week, security can be lessened I am sure and future shipments will be less delayed.”

Rourke felt a smile cross his lips—the impending ionization effect, hence the real purpose of the Womb, were being held secret from those not part of the project. Would that there were a way of capitalize on this, Rourke thought. But he could see none.

Daszrozinski asked, “Then we are free to move ahead, Ma-jor?”

“You certainly are, Comrade—but because of the security re-strictions, I’m afraid your shipment must only be taken beyond the primary doors to the receiving area. From there, Womb per-sonnel will take over the vehicles. We have arranged a rest area in a tent near the airfield while your cargo is being unloaded. For the enlisted personnel there is some of this American con-coction known as Cold-Aid—”

“Kool-Aid,” Rourke corrected under his breath, smiling.

“And for the officers, vodka or hot coffee, whichever one might wish. “You will find other convoy personnel there and the wait should not be that terribly long until your trucks are re-turned and you can move down the mountain again.”

“Excellent, Major, then we shall proceed?”

“Yes, Comrade, very good,” the KGB major nodded, again giving a curt salute, Daszrozinski returning it smartly. Daszro-zinski turned toward Rourke, waving him forward, calling something Rourke didn’t catch to Vladov and the other motorcycle driver. Their machines started. Rourke could hear the KGB major telling Daszrozinski, “Major, there is no need for your motorcycle escort to enter the facility—”

Daszrozinski—Rourke barely able to hear as he started the truck—turned abruptly to face the KGB major. “Major, my or-ders explicitly state I am to provide security for the cargo of explosives we carry, security until the cargo is transferred to the KGB personnel inside. I shall follow my orders, thank you, Comrade.”

The KGB major nodded his head to the side, shrugging, wav-ing the trucks and the two M-72

motorcycle combinations for-ward.

Rourke let up the clutch, Daszrozinski jumping to the run-ning board on Natalia’s side. Under his breath, the Soviet SF lieutenant rasped, “What is the American expression?”

“So far so good,” Rourke whispered, letting the truck roll for-ward past the sentry box.

The M-72 combinations passed under the lintel of the bomb-proof doors, Rourke involuntarily ducking his head a little as the cab of the two and one-half ton truck passed under it after them.

Inside, beyond the doors, he could see a vast horseshoe shaped turn-around, at the far end loading docks and beside these, the vault door leading into the Womb itself. The vault door was open as it should be.

Rourke whispered to Natalia and Daszrozinski. “Watch Vla-dov, he’ll have caught your conversation, Lieutenant, so I think he’ll make the first play.”

“Yes, Comrade Doctor—”

Rourke looked at him, Daszrozinski saying, “I am sor—”

“In what we’re doing, we are comrades in the real sense of the word—no offense taken, Lieutenant.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

There was not an AK type weapon to be seen—as if Kalashnikov had never lived—the KGB

personnel all carried M-16s and those few personnel who carried side arms wore .45s, the “U.S.”

symbols on the flaps of the holsters bizarre, Rourke thought. Natalia, as Rourke drove the vehicle into the horseshoe, mur-mured, “According to my uncle, they have standardized here on American weapons totally for the logistics of supplying the Womb and in the event that at some future date any buried weapons and munitions caches which would have survived the holocaust untouched might be found.”

“Interesting,” Rourke noted. “So the AKMs outside are just for show, just like the dodge about experiments—lying to their own people—”

“Yes—yes, they are,” she answered softly.

Ahead of him, a sergeant wearing white gloves and a white cap cover was directing traffic, Rourke following his lead, aim-ing the nose of the deuce and a half toward the loading dock area, breaking off from the main horseshoe of the driveway.

There were more military traffic cops, gesturing for Rourke to move the vehicle around into a slot from which he could back toward the dock itself for unloading. “Whatever Vladov’s play is going to be, it’s gonna have to be quick,” Rourke murmured, cutting the wheel into a hard left, intentionally missing the ma-neuvering bay, the traffic director shouting up to him in the cab, Rourke making a rude gesture—they were of equal rank, then backing the truck slightly, hearing the vehicle behind him screech its brakes, then Rourke cutting the wheel slightly right, edging forward into the maneuvering bay. He was stalling for time—time for Vladov. “Be ready,”

Rourke rasped through his tight-clenched teeth.

He brought the truck to a halt, then started into reverse, fum-bling the gear box, making the gears grind, stalling again for time. He started backing the vehicle toward the loading dock. Once the first of the boxes was moved, the Americans inside the truck would be spotted—and push would have come to shove.

He let the engine die, making a show of starting again, letting the engine die, half tempted to flood it, but worried that he might so overdo the incompetent driver routine as to raise suspi-cion. Instead, he let the engine catch, then eased the truck back toward the loading dock lip. The traffic director was cursing. Rourke grinned at him.

Vladov and the other motorcycle combination driver had parked at the farthest end of this section of loading dock, near to the vault door that led into the Womb.

Rourke said quickly, “Tell the convoy personnel to disembark the vehicles. When they holler at you for it, tell them the men are tired from the drive and you’re going to rest them—you out-rank everyone I’ve seen out here.”

“All right, very good, Doctor,” and as Rourke slammed the vehicle to an uneven halt, intentionally bumping into the load-ing dock—watching in the mirror as the loading dock personnel jumped back—Daszrozinski jumped down.

“Disembark the vehicles. Stay near your tracks,” Daszrozinski shouted.

Rourke could hear Ravitski, from the running board of the second truck, echo the command as the track pulled into its slot beside them.

The third track was still in motion.

Rourke cut the engine, leaving the vehicle’s transmission in reverse, leaving the emergency brake off. He started down from the driver’s side as the third vehicle pulled into its slot.

He made a show of stretching, but not so much a show as to profile the guns under his tunic.

From the loading dock, he could hear a voice shouting, “Comrade Major, the men are not allowed to leave their tracks.”

“Captain, these men are tired. They shall not damage your precious loading dock.”

“But, Comrade Major—”

“Yes—it is Major—do not forget that, Captain.”

The conversation ended, Rourke smiling. From the tone of Daszrozinski’s voice, Rourke surmised the lieutenant had al-ways wanted to talk to a senior officer that way and was making the most of the opportunity of pulling his spurious rank.

Rourke could see Natalia standing beside the front of the cab, at the right fender, trying to stand with her legs apart, her hands locked behind her—trying to look like a man. It wasn’t working to anyone who looked closely, Rourke thought.

He glanced toward Vladov, following Vladov’s gaze. A ramp led from the level of the horseshoe up toward the level of the door into the Womb. Vladov looked at him. Rourke nodded, he hoped imperceptibly.

The loading dock personnel were approaching the trucks now—it would be time.

Each of the personnel inside the trucks—mostly Ameri-cans—carried five pounds of the C-4, liberated from the pack-ing crates, the rest of the C-4 in the three trucks wired to detonate—Natalia had seen to that quickly after the takeover. The battery from the comman-deered patrol vehicle had been wired into the plastique in the center truck, the charges posi-tioned to blow outward toward the flanking trucks and deto-nate the plastique there. The last man out would leave the wristwatch commandeered from one of the dead KGB men be-side the battery—set for two minutes.

Rourke knitted his fingers together, bracing them against his abdomen, working open two of the uniform tunic buttons as he did—the Python was under his jacket as well, stuffed in his trouser band. It would be the first gun he could reach.

The loading dock personnel were starting to lift the tarp cover.

Rourke heard the roar of Vladov’s motorcycle combo, Vla-dov shouting in Russian, then in English, “We attack!” The RPK on the sidecar was already opening up, Vladov racing his machine toward the ramp and the vault door, Rourke reaching inside the deuce and a half s cab with his left hand, awkwardly, finding the ignition switch, starting the engine. Still in reverse, the emergency brake off, the truck lurched backward into the loading dock and the men starting to lift the tarp, Rourke’s right hand finding the butt of the Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported Py-thon under his tunic, ripping the six-inch Colt .357 clear, his right index finger double actioning the revolver into the face of the traffic director who was already pulling his .45. Rourke fired again, killing a KGB guard as he raised his M-16, men pouring from the backs of the three trucks now, assault rifles— M-16s and AKS-74s—blazing into the dockworkers and the guards. Rourke pumped the Python’s trigger once more, gun-ning down another of the military traffic cops, snatching up the M-16 from the guard he’d shot an instant earlier. The selector moved under his right thumb as he switched the Python into his left hand, opening up with the M-16 on full auto, three round bursts punching into targets of opportunity as he ran for the loading dock, jumped, rolled, on the dock now, the Python fir-ing once, then once again, shearing the nose and left ear from the face of another of the guards.

Rourke was on his feet, emptying the last round from the Python into another of the military police, the man’s body jack-knifing, his .45 discharging into the loading dock surface near Rourke’s feet.

The tunic open fully now, Rourke rammed the fired out Colt into his trouser band, snatching up a second M-16, forwarding the selector, opening fire—he had gambled twice the chambers would be loaded and they were.

An M-16 in each hand, he started to run, for the vault door, claxons sounding in the air around him, shouted commands, curses, the M-72 combination Vladov piloted through the vault door now, each side of the door littered with bodies cut down by the RPK light machinegun. The second M-72 was moving along the horseshoe, the RPK in the sidecar firing at anything that moved beyond the loading dock.

Rourke saw Natalia, an AKM in her tiny fists, the muzzle spitting bursts of fire, KGB guards falling before her as she raced along the ramp, up toward the vault door.

Daszrozinski held an M-16, firing it out in neat bursts, cutting down guards on both sides as he covered the dock area.

Reed, along with a half dozen Americans, was holding the center of the loading dock—they looked like a picture of Ous-ter’s last stand, Reed at their center, wingshooting a .45 from each hand, the men kneeling around him, firing their rifles. Where Reed had gotten the second .45, Rourke didn’t know.