The Arsenal, page 6
She couldn't name the melody, but it was very sad and just hearing her own voice cooing it brought a melancholy feeling over her that hadn't been there, the sadness replacing the calm, the razor blade falling from her fingers as tears welled up in her eyes and she felt them roll down her cheeks, her tears seeming to her like acid burning her eyes and her flesh and her soul.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Michael Rourke, his gear packed and sent off with Han and Otto to the waiting German helicopter, stepped from the monorail, Maria Leuden beside him. Maria looked beautiful, he thought, wearing one of the Chinese style dresses they called a chong san. Michael Rourke was in full battle gear, his handmade double shoulder rig with the twin Berettas, the knife made for him by old Jon the Icelandic bladesmith, the four-inch Smith 629 in the holster at his hip.
"You look like you are on your way to a war, not a peace mission," she said quietly, looking up at him, her gray-green eyes half shadowed by her lids, her eyelashes seeming impossibly long at the angle, like a long ago memory of a butterfly folding its wings.
"Peace through superior firepower," Michael grinned, letting Maria walk ahead of him through the pneumatic doors into the hospital lobby. His father, the battered old brown leather bomber jacket wide open (his guns would be under it), paced the floor, his mother standing beside the machine which dispensed hot Chinese tea in various flavors. Sometimes Michael found himself longing for the scenes he vaguely remembered from his youth— soft drink machines everywhere and real Coca-Cola that wasn't five centuries old like the few bottles left at The Retreat.
"Mom. Dad," he began, his father ceasing to pace in mid-stride, turning toward them, Maria moving ahead
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slightly, his father embracing her like a daughter (would he —Michael —ask Maria to be his wife? he wondered). His mother set down the two red plastic cups of tea on the small table beside the long couch beside which she stood, then embraced Maria in turn.
"Son" John Rourke said, extending his right hand. Michael took it, held it a moment. He sensed his father's awkwardness as much as he sensed his own, smiled, released his father's hand, his father's eyes smiling. His mother put her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly on the lips, then held him close to her for a moment. Biologically, as opposed to chronologically, Sarah Rourke was barely old enough to be an older sister and he and his father, he was reminded once again, looked enough alike to be twin brothers. "Any word on Bjorn, yet?" Michael asked.
"Nothing," his mother told them. "But I suppose no news is probably good news in this case. Sit down. Would you like some tea?"
"I can get it, Frau Rourke" Maria Leuden volunteered, drifting off toward the dispenser.
"How about Natalia?" Michael asked, taking a seat opposite his father and mother as they sat.
His father just shook his head.
"Nothing has changed. She's resting," Sarah Rourke told them. "I think she's just really tired. And, God help her, what she did —it's a miracle Natalia hasn't lost her sanity. All of us need a rest, and she needs it more than any of us. The tension —of all this," Sarah Rourke concluded, taking a sip of her tea, setting it down, folding her hands in her lap then with an air of helplessness. With her hands in her lap that way, the baby seemed suddenly noticeable. As a grown man, it was hard to accept the fact that he would soon have a new brother or sister. Doctor Munchen, or for that matter the medical wizards of Mid-Wake, could have determined the sex of
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the child or even altered it to suit the desired sex with relative ease. Eye color, hair color, all could have been altered. But Sarah Rourke had insisted that she wanted to find out the old fashioned way.
Michael Rourke secretly felt that his mother and father's decision was probably best, but had said nothing. It was not his affair to say.
"Look — ahh — " As Maria handed him one of the red plastic cups of tea, he started to suggest that he and Maria could go up and visit Natalia, but he heard Annie's voice behind them.
"Any word?"
"Nothing" Michael called back to her without looking around.
Annie made the rounds of hugs and kisses, Paul a handshake here and there.
Michael Rourke looked at his watch. There was nothing to do but wait, he supposed . . .
The coordinates from the Eden computer pinpointed the location of Doctor Rourke's mountain retreat to within a hundred yards. There was no mistaking the location from binocular range, Weil thought.
A pinnacle of granite extending upward above the surrounding peaks. But even at highest magnification, there was no hint of an entrance.
Horst too was studying The Retreat, Weil not shifting his gauge but listening as Horst spoke. "As soon as the other teams are here, we will go up there. We will find the way inside. This Herr Doctor Rourke is so very clever, but we shall see how clever, I think."
Weil let him talk. Horst had always displayed a propensity for talking before thinking, in the old days at the beer sessions after the party meetings, back at the youth rallies. Some things never changed.
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Weil stamped his feet against the cold, the binoculars moving slowly over what Dodd called Rourke's Mountain .
The pilot of the helicopter gunship announced, "Comrade Colonel. We are past the coordinates. You requested to be notified."
"Thank you," Antonovitch said perfunctorily. He switched on his headset. "Antonovitch to ground control. Connect me with Major Prokopiev immediately."
There was the standard response accorded, then a pause he measured as barely exceeding thirty seconds. Prokopiev's voice came through his headset. "Comrade Colonel. This is Prokopiev. I await your instructions. Over."
Antonovitch smiled. The man he had chosen to head up the newly reorganized Elite Corps was efficient. Whether or not he would prove to be too efficient remained to be seen, "Prokopiev. Plan Omega is activated. Necessary data will be transmitted following. Good luck, Comrade. Antonovitch out" He switched off, then changed to intraship. "Signalman. Transmit the data."
"Yes, Comrade Colonel."
He would keep his colonel's insignia for a while longer, despite the Principal Secretary calling him Marshal. He would wait and he would see ...
Akiro Kurinami entered the reserve arms locker. Rourke's personal weapons were encased in glass on the wall of the Great Room and he would no more think of touching one of these without permission than touching another man's wife. But the reserve arms locker was another matter.
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Sleep would not come to him. He envied Elaine, soundly asleep on the guest room bed. And she looked beautiful in the borrowed nightgown. He imagined it was the property of Rourke's daughter, Annie, who seemed the frilly type despite her prowess with weapons and her cold logic.
The reserve arms locker was a vault within the vault that formed The Retreat itself.
He recognized some of the long guns: collapsible stock Colt AR-15s, the civilian semi-auto versions of the M-16 variant known as the XM-77, the barrel only slightly longer; Steyr-Mannlicher SSG sniper rifles; there were also a dozen M-16s. Rourke had told him once that before the Night of The War he had not bothered with automatic weapons. The licensing provisions were intrusive of privacy, the licensing fees exorbitant and the cost of the. weapons themselves astronomical. And, for someone operating independently of an armed force and the sources of supply it would provide, automatic weapons invited ammunition over-expenditure. But since the Night of The War, Rourke had, on several occasions, "liberated" (as he put it) the selective fire versions of the Colt rifle. And, as Kurinami's eyes traveled across the olive drab metal boxes stacked along the floor beneath the rifle rack, ammunition supply was apparently no longer a potential problem. The Germans, of course. Rourke had gotten them to fabricate for him all the ammunition he needed in the calibers he favored and hence required.
Twenty and thirty round magazines were crated beside the ammunition. He took six of these latter and one of the metal boxes of 5.56mm Ball and one of the M-16s from the rack, stacking the items neatly beside the door.
There were various handguns, a blued version of the little Detonics .45s Rourke habitually carried, a half dozen of the Beretta 92F military 9mm Parabellums.
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He took one off the rack, the oil heavy on it as it had been on the M-16 when he'd touched it. The gun was marked as made in Italy, meaning it was from one of the early runs before production was shifted to the United States. He took several spare fifteen round magazines and two of the twenty-round magazines, setting gun and magazines beside the already stacked weapons. He set about finding 9mm Parabellums ammunition. 115-grain jacketed hollow points. This would, of course, duplicate the Federal cartridge loads, Rourke a man of definite tastes. He set the ammunition on the floor.
A blade. Somehow, a blade was what he would take the greatest comfort from. And he found one. Knives marked Gerber and Cold Steel were suspended against a pegboard wall inset. He took down one in the classic conformation of a coffin-handled Bowie fighter. The handle was of some sort of black checkered rubber-like substance, the fittings brass, the steel gleamingly bright. It was marked "Trail Master"
Rourke had explained to him once that each weapon he inventoried was logged in the P.G. on disc with pertinent information.
Kurinami found a sheath that seemed right —it was black leather—then in several trips took his borrowed weapons from the arms locker back into the Great Room.
He secured the arms locker, washed the oil off his hands in the kitchen sink —he would worry about the oil on the kitchen counter later— and dried them.
Kurinami went to the computer, several transparent lid plastic boxes beside it, each loaded with discs. He began to search through these, finding the disc marked, "File Master" then inserting it into the drive and punching it up. File Master was a key to the contents of the discs and he found the one he wanted: "Weapons Data." He changed discs and worked through the formatted file
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list, finding the right file, punching it up.
The Beretta: it had been throated and checked with hollow points and shot to point of aim. The M-16, like the Beretta listed by several number, was listed as functionally reliable but not the most accurate of the several M-16s logged. The Trail Master Bowie: A special type of high carbon steel, it was not stainless but, according to Rourke's remarks, was admirably strong and sharp.
Kurinami shut off the P.C. and replaced the discs in the proper slots in the boxes.
He was wide awake still. He stood up, walked back to the kitchen counter and set about finding what he needed to clean the guns.
Dodd wanted him dead. That was obvious. Why? And as he began to field strip the Beretta, he remembered the face of one of the men who had tortured him, kidnapped Elaine, would have killed them both.
It was a face he had never seen before, neither among the Eden Project survivors nor among the German garrison.
But whose face was it?
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CHAPTER NINE
John Rourke looked down on Rolvaag's face. "Old friend. I wish you could understand me."
Annie leaned over the Icelandic policeman as his eyelids fluttered, then opened. She seemed to have a natural gift for Icelandic or perhaps just a gift for speaking with Rolvaag and her voice sounded almost as if she were singing as she spoke, Rolvaag's face still weary but a momentary brightness in his eyes, a slurred word of recognition, then a look of peace on his face as he closed his eyes again when Annie kissed him on the forehead.
"He knows," Annie said, looking up, Paul folding her into his arms. "That he'll be all right now. He knows" And her eyes danced for a moment. "And I told him Hrothgar's all right, too."
John Rourke had all the principals together in one room and he used the moment. "Paul and Annie and I'll go to Georgia and see about clearing up this business with Kurinami and Elaine Halversen. Michael— don't take this mission to the Second City too lightly. And remember that Han, despite the fact he's your friend, as you told me yourself, owes the death of his family to raiders from the Second City. Men driven by revenge can view the world a little differently, as you well know. Remember the first thing you said to me when we met again after Karamatsov was killed?"
"I said that you cheated me of doing it myself. But Natalia really did it," Michael Rourke said quietly. "And
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I told her that I had wanted Karamatsov's death more than I wanted anything and now I'd never have it and maybe I should thank her."
"Remember your own emotions this trip when you try to interpret Han's emotions, then," John Rourke told his son, then to all of them, "Paul and Annie and I should be back in a few days. All of us have to be concerned with getting Natalia well, maybe getting her back to Iceland. She might be happier there and she'd be farther away from her memories there."
"You should spend some time with her before you go, John," Sarah announced.
"Momma's right," Annie whispered.
"I know your mother's right. And I'm going to see her. Paul? Come, too?"
"Of course " the younger man nodded.
John Rourke said nothing, but embraced his son tightly for a moment, then left the room, Paul after him .
"I'm fine. Really I am. I mean, the doctors are right. I should relax a little. Maybe focus my energies on something else. I'm really just fine," Natalia smiled, her eyes sparkling—but perhaps she had only just been crying, Paul Rubenstein thought. He stood a bit back from the two of them, watching. They were made for each other, Natalia Tiemerovna and John Rourke. He had said it often in the pages of the journal he kept with intermittent but satisfactory regularity even since the Night of The War. He was reminded of the somewhat trite sounding expression "star-crossed lovers," but indeed they were that.
John held her hands in his. "Are you sure you're feeling better?"
"You know Russians — depression comes and goes
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nth us. I'm fine. I'd be a liar if I said everything was perfect and I was happy, but I'm all right, John. You take care of this thing with that crazy man Dodd accus-ng Akiro and Elaine. I only wish the doctors would elease me so I could go too. But they want me here for mother few days. I'll be out and around and Sarah and Maria and I can see everything there is to see in the First City. You know the last time I shopped? Five hundred years ago! And I've got all the credit I want since these people insisted on rewarding us for stopping that train with the missiles. So see? What more could a woman ask? Unlimited funds, two friends to chatter with and a whole city to explore and buy out," she laughed, but the laughter didn't sound quite right to him. "I want some of :hose dresses like Annie's been wearing. And, you know, they even sell silk underwear here! and I love silk underwear. So, I'll be fine. Now, both of you, kiss me. None of [his peck on the cheek kissing, either, Paul," and Natalia held out her arms to him.
Paul Rubenstein was suddenly afraid for her, and as he embraced her and softly kissed her lips he felt a cold shiver deep within.
He hugged her, stepped back, John leaning over the bed, drawing her close to him, holding her for a long time. "And don't you dare say it, John" she smiled. And then John Rourke kissed her and Paul Rubenstein looked away . . .
Six-Pak loaded with six-round Detonics magazines. He threaded the belt the rest of the way and cinched it closed.
The A.G. Russell Sting IA black chrome. He secured the knife in its spring clip sheath near the small of his back inside the waistband of his jeans.
His gunbelt with the Metalifed and Mag-na-Ported Colt Python six-inch. He secured it just below his trou-ser belt, the sheath for the Grain knife going over it.
Rourke picked up the twelve-inch bladed knife, turning it in his hand. With this knife, Natalia had ended the life of Vladmir Karamatsov. Although weapons were only instruments, he wondered if it better belonged in a museum for veneration by those who would no longer have to live in fear of the madman. But he sheathed it, because there were other evils in the world.
Rourke took up his musette bag, slinging it cross body from right shoulder to left hip, then skinned into the battered brown leather bomber jacket. He patted the pockets. His immediate supply of cigars, his sunglasses, his gloves.
Rourke caught up the M-16 and the second bag, this filled with magazines for the assault rifle.
Like the knife and his other weapons, he knew that he would have a use for it. He gave a last glance at the empty apartment — Sarah would be waiting by the tunnel leading out of the city—and started for the doorway. . .
John Rourke, a light blue snap front cowboy shirt half out of his Levis, slung the double Alessi shoulder rig across his back, the twin stainless Detonics .45 Combat Masters chamber loaded and secured. He stuffed the shirttails the rest of the way down, beginning to thread his belt, the black leather sheath for the Grain Life Support System X going on his left side, then the Sparks
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Six-Pak loaded with six-round Detonics magazines. He threaded the belt the rest of the way and cinched it closed.
The A.G. Russell Sting IA black chrome. He secured the knife in its spring clip sheath near the small of his back inside the waistband of his jeans.
His gunbelt with the Metalifed and Mag-na-Ported Colt Pythonsix-inch. He secured it just below his trouser belt, the sheath for the Crain knife going over it.
Rourke picked up the twelve-inch bladed knife, turning it in his hand. With this knife, Natalia had ended the life of Vladmir Karamatsov. Although weapons were only instruments, he wondered ifit better belonged in a museum for veneration by those who would no longer have to live in fear of the madman. But he sheathed it, because there were other evils in the world.
Rourke took up his musette bag, slinging it cross body from right shoulder to left hip, then skinned into thebattered brown leather bomber jacket. He patted the pockets. His immediate supply of cigars, his sunglasses, his gloves.
