The Arsenal, page 10
"Remember, Comrades," Prokopiev hissed into his headset. "Do not kill the horses. Open fire on my command." Prokopiev blinked his eyes several times, began to regulate his breathing as he cheeked tighter to the rifle's straight line buttstock . . .
Michael Rourke felt it inside him, an uncomfortable feeling as if some other sense beyond the normal five were operation. Was he becoming like Annie?
But he felt something.
"Wait, Han."
111
Han reined back. Michael Rourke looked up into the rocks flanking them. "Ever hear of "The Lone Ranger?"
"Who?"
"Nothing —but somehow —
The first shots rang out, a burst of sharp cracking assault rifle fire echoing and re-echoing among the rocks so rapidly, so loudly that it was impossible to tell its origin, one of the Chinese soldiers going down from the saddle, his horse rearing, falling. And as Michael Rourke reached for his M-16, he shouted, "Remind me to tell you the story sometime!" Otto Hammerschmidt, who had been riding with his rifle in his hand, was returning fire, as were the three other Germans who had ridden the same way.
Michael's own horse began to rear, Michael fisting the rifle as he threw his right leg over the saddle horn and knotted his fists in the reins and mane, the ail-but worthless animal's neck twisting at an unnatural angle as it tumbled gracelessly to the unyielding ground. Michael Rourke threw himself behind it, firing his M-16 wildly up into the rocks, gunfire general now, Han's horse wheeling, Han firing a pistol toward the rocks on either side of the gap.
One of the German soldiers went down, his horse spilling head over heels, the German's body unwillingly cartwheeling away, the rifle skidding across the rocks and gravel.
The story, if he lived to tell Han about it, dealt with a massacre in a gap like this, but in Texas, thousands of miles and six centuries ago, long before men had ever thought about nuclear warfare and its barbaric, tenuous aftermath. Michael Rourke kept shooting.
112
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He had found his Python, the Metalife finish unscathed, but the cylinder impacted out of the frame, the rear sight broken off and the barrel sprung, or wrenched out of true with the frame, as he had described it. Gun and holster had become separated during the tumble from the mountaintop.
Annie poured her father a drink, he and Paul fresh from another forty-five minutes in the arctic-like temperatures searching the bodies of the climbers and searching for the lost, now recovered but irreparably damaged, revolver.
Was this whiskey more of the Seagram's Seven or was it some of the whiskey he had gotten the Germans to duplicate for him and which — according to Michael—he had put into the original, centuries old bottles? They had duplicated his pet Federal loads for the family's firearms, had duplicated parts and lubricants and all sorts of items.
She sipped at the glass she had poured for herself. It tasted the same as Seagram's Seven had always tasted, but it would have, of course, or her father would not have wasted his time bringing it to the Retreat. It was a gross understatement, but John Thomas Rourke was a man of definite tastes.
Annie Rubenstein took two glasses in hand and walked back toward the sofa which dominated the center of the great room, setting two down, then going
113
back to the kitchen counter, up the three steps, Elaine having poured the other two glasses. Annie took her own glass, sipping at it again, not rejoining them, watching them as Elaine brought her own and Akiro's drink to the low table and set them down, then settled onto the floor at Akiro's feet.
Annie set down her drink, burrowing her hands into the slit pockets at the sides of the ankle length black full skirt she had changed into, a shawl cocooned around her shoulders over the open collared gray blouse, her black stockinged feet in flat-soled Icelandic walking shoes.
She felt almost human again, and physically more comfortable. She had showered under steaming hot water (thank God Akiro had activated the water-heating system) and changed when it had proven useless that she might argue her way into accompanying her father and her husband back into the storm, as Akiro had.
Elaine had stood by the bathroom door, talking idly while Annie had scrubbed hair and body under the steaming spray, just letting her innermost being thaw out, unwind. "Why are they trying to kill you and Akiro, Elaine? I mean, what's behind it, Commander Dodd?"
"I think it's because of the computer files. They were wiped out, but Akiro had made copies before that, just in case— duplicates, you know?"
"Uh-huh— and they want the duplicates? —I mean, Dodd wants them?"
"I think that was it at first, but I think they gave up on that and decided their ends would be served just as well if Akiro and I were dead and nobody at all knew where the duplicate files were hidden."
"Where are they hidden, Elaine?"
114
"Akiro buried the copies he made about halfway between Eden Base and the German installation. You don't think it was the Germans, do you? I mean, they've helped all of us so much and all — "
"No —I don't think it was the Germans. Did I remember to put out a towel?" She knew that she had, but she had wanted to change the subject and the momentary casual question had accomplished that.
Annie fished her left hand from her pocket now and took up her drink. It was strange, but she'd put ice cubes into it. She had been so cold and she was having a drink and she used ice cubes. She wondered if hu-rnans were just simply insane?
And an annoying feeling had been invading her thoughts; there had been no chance to mention it to Paul, and she didn't want to add the doubt it would sow to her father's already overwhelming burden: Natalia, her own mother and the baby, the problems of Akiro and Elaine with Commander Dodd—all of that. And now her father's revolver destroyed. But she sensed, no matter how she tried to fight it, that Michael was somehow in danger.
Annie took a healthy swallow of her drink and the feeling still didn't ebb away. She walked down toward the sofa, listening as her father talked.
"So you think Dodd is up to something with some unknown group of conspirators? Correct?"
"Yes, Doctor Rourke." Akiro Kurinami answered almost deferentially.
Paul was trying to struggle out of his boots and Annie set down her drink and settled to her knees at his feet. "Let me do that," she whispered, her voice low so she would not interrupt her father, her hands becoming busy with the boot laces, her mind busy with her father's words, but the nagging thoughts of Mi-
115
chael being in some sort of danger penetrating her thoughts like rapier thrusts. She almost had the first boot off, Paul leaning back, evidently enjoying her domesticity, which was why she had volunteered to remove his boots from him in the first place. Men wanted little things like that done for them, and liked it even when they didn't deserve it. Paul deserved it.
Annie began untying the second boot.
Her father again began to speak. "Those men were probably German. No identification, of course, but one of them was named Weil and another of them called out for a man named Horst, evidently the third fellow we killed on the mountaintop. The rifles were M-16s —I'd venture to say the serial numbers would match up to some of those missing from the Eden supplies. The handguns were German, the rocket launchers German, but the launchers not something I've seen in current German military inventory. Possibly something superceded and put out as surplus, more likely stored and subsequently stolen. I'd say, just as a guess, that they're Nazis."
"Nazis?" Elaine Halversen seemed to gasp the word.
"Nazis again," Paul said dispiritedly, Annie looking up from her knees at him as he spoke. He had pretty eyes. She pulled off his second boot, then curled up at his feet, putting his feet up into her lap to warm them and her hands, curling her legs under the fullness of her skirt. He smiled down at her as she raised her eyes toward him, Annie feeling his hand touch gently at the hair at the nape of her neck.
It was good to be married, even better to be in love.
"When Colonel Mann crushed the Nazi Party in New Germany, it was only to be expected that the closet Nazis, or some of the ones who swore allegiance to Deiter Bern weren't 'reconstructed', as they used to
116
say," her father began again. "It would have been impractical at the least to attempt any sort of spiritual alliance with the Communists, but someone at the German installation outside Eden Base could have sounded out Dodd, then laid out a deal. I never trusted Commander Dodd very far. If power was waved in front of him, as evidently it was, as well as the promise of unlimited access to German technology, it's well within the realm of probability that he succumbed."
Annie spoke. "But what could he have offered them in return, daddy?"
Her father looked down at her and smiled. "I'm just guessing, sweetheart, but I think the best thing he had to offer was a little legitimacy. He'd give the Nazis something they could work through, like in the old days when organized crime would buy into legitimate businesses or unions just so there was a front operation they could hide behind." And the corners of her father's mouth drew out and downturned, but, his eyes smiled. "We may be sitting in at the dawn of a new era in perfidy."
Annie felt Paul's fingers tense against her neck for the briefest instant. She took her drink from the table and swallowed half of it, then leaned her head against Paul's right knee and closed her eyes for a moment.
117
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Michael Rourke had six full thirty-round magazines and two partially empty ones. The contents of these latter, as he quietly assessed the situation, his M-16 across his squatted legs, he combined into one magazine. At the distance, handguns were useless noise-makers and a knife was mere wishful thinking.
Fighting their way into the rocks on the far west end of the gap had been bought only through the wounding of another of the Chinese soldiers. But barricaded here as they were, it was impossible for the attackers on the west end of the gap to shoot down on them because of the overhang and the only enemy fire that could reach them was from the rocks on the eastern side of the gap. The range between the so far anonymous ambushers and the position from behind with Michael Rourke, Han Lu Chen, Otto Hammerschmidt and the others, including one of the wounded, returned fire was at least two hundred yards. There seemed to be no immediate danger of being attacked from the rear by the enemy force above.
Michael Rourke was reminded of the term "standoff and shared that insight with the Chinese intelligence agent and the German commando captain. "A 'stand-off, as the term was used, was a situation in which neither party could gain the advantage, nor conveniently disengage."
"That summarizes it well. Who are they, do you
118
think?" Hammerschmidt rasped through a cloud of cigarette smoke. "This Mao character's Mongol mercenaries or the Russians?"
"Russians, I think," Han said softly. "The Mongols wouldn't have been denied the blood sport of riding down on us, even for a tactical advantage. And the Mongols would have shot the horses. Whoever is up in those rocks — Russians is my estimate — wants the horses alive. Notice how carefully they avoided firing at you for example, Michael, when you brought your horse down and fired from behind it." The animals they had ridden, and the pack animal, grazed some distance away, where the snow covering was thin and there was some sparse ground cover, brown and dead, but evidently sufficiently tempting to keep them from bolting further away beyond the gap despite the sporadically noisy interchanges of gunfire. "We cannot go forward, nor can we go back," Han concluded with an air of finality.
Michael Rourke had rescued his rifle, his saddle bags, his water bottle and his sleeping bag, which was now warming one of the injured enlisted men. Inside the saddle bags was a medical kit, most of the contents already used in the preliminary treatment of the injured. Like his father, he had taken to carrying a musette bag almost constantly, inside it additional medical supplies which his father had carefully taught both he and his sister, Annie, how to use to stay alive. But advanced first aid training was not adequate to saving the lives of the wounded and the condition of the German who had been shot off his horse in the first instants of battle was deteriorating rapidly.
Michael Rourke, as a volley of automatic weapons fire from the eastern side of the gap subsided, shouted
119
over the rock barricade, "Who are you?"
There was total silence, except for the eerie whistling of the wind among the jagged gray rocks surrounding them. But then a voice broke the silence, the English heavily accented, the accent unmistakably Russian, but the English none-the-less quite syntactically correct. "I am Major Vassily Mikhailovitch Prokopiev. I take it that you sue for surrender terms. To whom do I speak?"
"Bastard," Hammerschmidt snarled under his
breath.
Despite the situation, Michael Rourke laughed. Then he shouted back to the Russian, "I am Michael Rourke." He had debated whether or not, if these were Russians, to reveal his true identity; but to conceal it seemed pointless. The present situation was one step away from the grave. "We do not sue for terms that we might surrender to you, but instead offer you and your men a guarantee of fair treatment on condition of your surrender."
Michael tucked back down, waited. Laughter reverberated from the rocks on the eastern elevation of the gap, but that was to be expected. Without changing position, Michael shouted back, "Go ahead and laugh, Major Prokopiev. When my father, Doctor John Rourke, and the rest of the German-Chinese force arrives, let's hope you'll find that amusing as well."
Michael Rourke said nothing more, but neither was there any more gunfire. He felt it might be wise to explain the American term "bluff to his compatriots. But he'd save that for later. "If the Russians weren't interested in shooting our horses," he began, looking at Hann and Otto Hammerschmidt, "then the logical
120
inference, if we can assume they aren't all dedicated animal rights activists, is that they require the horses, which may, in fact, be the purpose of the attack. Clearly, they're in what would have to be considered enemy territory with Mao's armies on the loose. What if our friends up in the rocks need our mounts in order to escape a pursuing force from the Second City? Hmm?"
"That would make sense" Hammerschmidt said, almost as if to himself. "What if we shot the horses?"
"If there is a Second City army pursuing these Russians," Han said hastily, "I would be loathe to encounter them on foot. Assuming we do make it out of this, some of us at least, horseback is our only chance. And if these Russians have somehow provoked Mao's wrath, we may not even have the opportunity to show the peace banner and be laughed at and disregarded. We will be slaughtered before they come sufficiently close to read it."
Michael followed Han's eyes to the rocky surface at the approximate center of the gap. The meticulously embroidered banner lay there, flapping in the wind, useless. "If they want our horses, they're trying to get to a rendezvous. Helicopter gunships, probably. This could be a reconnaissance patrol for a larger force. Shit," Michael rasped.
The stalemate was still unchanged, despite having possibly deduced a rationale for it.
He gambled again, raising his voice to shout across the gap to the Soviet commander. "Prokopiev! How close is the army from the Second City? Think they've heard the gunfire yet? Think they're going to come more quickly now? Think you have a chance alone against them? We'll shoot our horses first!"
121
There was a long silence, punctuated only by the wind, Hammerschmidt lighting another cigarette, Han's eyes darting nervously to the opposite side of the gap.
And then Prokopiev's voice came. "Will you meet with me down there beside your banner?"
Michael looked to the floor of the gap where the banner lay, then up into the rocks on the eastern side.
"Once you step out into the open, what is to stop them from cutting you down?" Hammerschmidt whispered hoarsely, snapping his cigarette butt from his fingers.
"If we do not do something," Han said softly, "we shall all be dead. But I will go instead," Han declared.
Michael Rourke looked at both men, then back toward Prokopiev's position. "Five minutes. You come armed and so will I, and that way if anyone tries any treachery, the other will assuredly die."
"Agreed, Rourke. Five minutes."
Michael consulted the time as he leaned his M-16 against the rocks behind which he crouched, then began removing the spare magazines for it from his gear. He ripped one of the Beretta 92F military pistols from his shoulder holster, perfunctorily checking its condition of readiness even though he already knew it, re-holstering it, performing the same operation with its twin. "I'll leave my rifle. There wouldn't be time to use it out there. If Prokopiev brings a rifle, so much the better. Slower to get into action." He withdrew the four-inch Model 629 from the holster at his side, opened the cylinder. UI don't know what's going to go down out there, so be ready to follow my lead." He closed the .44 Magnum revolver's cylinder, re-holster-ing it as well.
122
"I should go — " Han insisted.
"No. You know your way out of here. You can speak Chinese in case we do get to Mao's forces or they get to us. If I can convince him my father is coming, after what my dad and Natalia did to Karamatsov, it might buy us out of here. And Prokopiev wouldn't have reacted so quickly if he didn't have some sort of force from the Second City breathing down his collar. No —this is the only way."
