Survivalist - The Web Part 6

The boy looked up, and Rourke gave him a nod, driving on. He pa.s.sed the post office; the street angled slightly toward the town square.

He stopped the Harley beside the curb, staring at what he saw. It was just as he'd seen it from above-a band flaying, some younger people dancing, clogging or step-dancing, children running and playing, some tugging on their mothers-perhaps two hundred people in all around the square.

He turned off the key for the Harley. He couldn't help himself as he sat there, listening to the music, but hearing different music-a song he and Sarah had always called their own song, danced to so many times. In the faces of the strange children, Rourke saw the faces of his own. What he couldn't stop, what he felt-tears-a world gone.

Had Sarah seen him, he smiled, she would have thought he was almost human.

The blue-gra.s.s band had stopped, and a record player was humming through the loudspeakers; there was the scratching sound of a needle against plastic, then a country song, and through a momentary niche in the wall of humanity surrounding the center of the square he saw more children-girls in green-and-white plaid dresses with short skirts and petticoats that made the skirts stand away from their legs, the oldest of the girls perhaps twelve, the youngest looking to be Annie's age-five or so.

Boys in green slacks and white shirts and green bow ties-only a few boys (hough-stood beside them, all in a rank. They started dancing; clogging, it was called.

Rourke srnelled something, then turned and looked to his right. A gleaming truck, the kind that would come to factories to bring coffee and doughnuts and hamburgers, was parked at the edge of the square.

He saw a sign above the open side that formed a counter-the sign read, c.o.kE.

Rourke walked toward the truck. A little girl pa.s.sed him, coming from the truck, a half-eaten hot dog in her right hand, yellow mustard around her mouth and dribbling down her chin.

Rourke automatically felt his pockets. He still carried his money clip-but was there anything in it? "Yes," he murmured. Something just hadn't made him give away or throw away money. He pulled out a ten and walked over to the truck.

"What]] ya have, mister?''''

"Ahh-two hot dogs and a c.o.ke. Make it three hot dogs."

"You new in town, ain't ya? Related to anyone 'round here?"

"What's the occasion?" Rourke asked, something making him evade the question. He jerked his thumb toward the town square behind him.

"It's the Fourth of July, mister. Ain't you got no calendar?"

"I-I've been camping-up in the mountains. Kind of lost track of time."

"I reckon you have." The man smiled, handing Rourke the three hot dogs in a small white cardboard box. Rourke handed him the ten-dollar bill and took the c.o.ke, then started away.

"Hey!"

Rourke turned around.

"You forgot your change!"

"Keep it," Rourke told him. "Maybe I'll wan! another hot dog later."

Rourke turned and spat his cigar b.u.t.t into a trash can near him. He walked across the square a short way, finding a tree and leaning against it, listening to the music, seeing the children clog. He took a bite from the hot dog nearest him in the box, the c.o.ke set down beside Jiim on the ground. It wasn't near the Fourth of July.

The man who had sold him the hot dogs wasn't from here, either-he had said "you" not "y'all" and that went with the territory. Rourke had made the speech pattern as midwest em.

Maybe it was the Russians-something that would be a trap. But for whom?

The town, the dancing, the Fourth of July. If he wasn't crazy, all of them were.

He wasn't crazy, he reminded himself, feeling the comfort of his guns under his jacket as he nudged his upper arms against his body. "I'm not crazy," he verbalized. The hot dog had tasted good and he started to eat the second one, dismissing any worry it was drugged. The little girl was dancing around, helping the doggers; the only thing apparently wrong with her being terminal mustard stains. . . .

Rourke sipped at his c.o.ke-it was real Coca-Cola. He hadn't had any since- He worked along the perimeter of the crowd, watching the faces, the genuine smiles. He nudged against a man and the man turned, smiled, and said, "Hey!"

It was the universal southern greeting that Rourke had learned long ago as a transplanted northerner.

"Hi." Rourke smiled, as the man turned away to watch the clogging. This was a second group of doggers, dressed the same but in red and white rather than green and white. The green- and white-clad girls and boys stood at the edge of the crowd now, watching the others.

Rourke saw a face; it was the only face not smiling. It looked promising, he thought, and gravitated toward the woman belonging to it. As he neared the woman," the clogging stopped- abruptly-and an announcer, a fat man wearing a red-and white-checkered cowboy shirt and a straw cowboy hat, said through the microphone, "Let's give these little folks a big, big hand!" Rourke held his cup in his teeth a moment and applauded, then kept moving toward the woman with the unsmiling face.

Slower country music started to play and the crowd started splitting up.

Rourke cut easily through the wave of people now, some of them gravitating toward the edge of the square, some pairing off and dancing to the music.

The woman with the unsmiling face apparently wasn't with anyone; she turned and started away. Rourke downed the rest of his c.o.ke and tossed the cup into a trash can nearby, then called out to her. "Hey-ahh." The woman turned around.

Rourke stopped, a few feet from her, saying, "I, ahh-"

"Y'all want to dance?" she smiled.

"All right." Rourke nodded, stepping closer to her.

She slung her handbag in the crook of her left arm on its straps. Rourke took her right hand in his left, his right arm encircling her wais*- She was about forty, pretty enough, but not a woman who seemed to try to be pretty at all.

Her face was smiling, but not her eyes.

"Who are you?" She smiled, coming into his arms.

"John-my name's John," he told her.

"You're carrying a gun, John," she whispered, her head close to his chest.

"I read a lot of detective stories. I'm the librarian. I know."

"You oughta read more," he told her softly. "I'm carrying two."

"Ohh-all right, John."

"Hasn't anyone heard about World War III here?" he asked her, smiling as they danced their way nearer the blue-gra.s.s band.

"If anyone else heard you mention the war, John, the same thing would happen to you that happened to all the rest of them. We'll talk later, at my place."

"Ohh." Rourke nodded. He wondered who the rest of them had been. As he held the woman's hand when they danced, he automatically feit her pulse; it was rapid and strong. . . .

Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy stepped down from the aircraft to the sodden tarmac of the runway surface. "The weather-it is insane," he shouted to the KGB man with him.

"Yes, Comrade Colonel." THe man nodded, offering an umbrella, but the rain-chillingly cold-had already soaked him, and Rozhdestvenskiy watched, almost amused, as a strong gust of wind caught up the umbrella and turned it inside out.

He shook his head, and ran through the puddles toward the waiting au tomobile. He read the name on it as he entered. "Suburban." He ran the name through his head-it was a type of Chevrolet. . . .

The ride had taken longer than Rozhdestvenskiy had antic.i.p.ated because he had been unable to use a helicopter. But as the large Chevy wagon stopped, he felt himself smiling-it had been worth the wait.

There was already a searchlight trained on the ma.s.sive bombproof doors-they had been bombproof at least. They were wide apart now, gaping into darkness beyond.

"Mt. Lincoln," Rozhdestvenskiy murmured. The presidential retreat.

He stepped out and down, into the mud.

"Comrade Colonel," the solicitous officer, who had tried the umbrella, said as he joined Rozhdestvenskiy in the mud.

"It is all right, Voskavich-do not trouble over the mud. The facility is secured?"

"Yes, Comrade Colonel-there were no prisoners." The KGB officer smiled.

"I wanted prisoners."

"They were all dead when we arrived, Comrade. A fault in the air-circulation system. The bodies, were, ahh . . ." The younger man let the sentence hang.

"Very well-they were all dead, then." Rozhdestvenskiy dismissed the idea.

"We will enter-it is safe to do so then?"

"Yes, Comrade Colonel." He extracted from under his raincoat two gas masks.

"This is for-"

"The bodies, Comrade Colonel-they have not all been removed as yet and-"

"I understand." Rozhdestvenskiy nodded. He ran his fingers through his soaking hair as he started toward the entrance, nodding only at salutes-he was dressed in civilian clothes-and stopping before the steel doors. "You were able to penetrate these?"

"One of the particle-beam weapons ordered here by the late Colonel Karamatsov, Comrade. It was brought here for this purpose I presume?"

"Partly. It is sensitive material that we cannot discuss here in the open.

It was efficient," Rozhdestvenskiy said, looking at the doors and feeling genuinely impressed. The entire central section of both doors looked to have been vaporized.

He ran his fingers through his hair again, pulled on the gas mask, and popped the cheeks, blowij^out to seal it; then he started forward with a hand torch given him by the younger KGB officer. Through the gas mask, hearing the odd sound of his own voice, he said, "You will lead the way for me, Voskavich."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel." The younger man was a captain and Rozhdestvenskiy decided that the man had no intention of remaining one.

"You have done well, Voskavich. Rest a.s.sured, your superiors are aware of your efficiency."

"Thank you, Comrade," the younger man enthused. "Be careful here, Comrade-a wet spot and you might slip."

Rozhdestvenskiy nodded, staring ahead of them. There was a lagoon; or at least there appeared to be one in the darkness of the ma.s.sive cave inside the mountain.

"We have boats, Comrade Colonel. The Americans used them I believe to inspect the lagoon and we must use them to cross it. This was a service entrance and the most direct route to the presidential suite is-"

"I know, Voskavich; I, too, have read these plans until they were something I dreamed about. We shall take one of the boats-Charon."

Rozhdestvenskiy laughed at his own joke-the boatman to take him across the river Styx.

But Voskavich was not the boatman; another KGB man, a sergeant, was running the small outboard. Rozhdestvenskiy climbed aboard from the lagoon sh.o.r.eline, rea.s.sessing his nomenclature in terms of the American language. This would not be a lagoon, but rather a lake because of its progressively greater depth. A man-made lake? he wondered. None of his readings of intelligence reports dealing with Mt. Lincoln had ever indicated the origin of the waters there.

There was a small spotlight jury-rigged to (he helm of the large rowboat; and between that and the flashlights both Rozhdestvenskiy and Voskavich held, there was ample light to see the even surface of the waters. At its widest, Rozhdestvenskiy judged the lake to be perhaps three-quarters of a mile across. He leaned back as best he could; he liked boat rides, despite wearing the gas mask, despite the lighting. When he someday returned a hero to the Soviet Union, he had decided, he would get a boat and a house on the Black Sea. There were many beautiful women there, and somehow beautiful women seemed especially fond of influential KGB officers.

And influential he would be if he were able to solidify all the speculations regarding the Eden Project, and thereby eliminate this last potential U.S. threat. He favored the most popular theory-that the Eden Project was a doomsday device. The Americans had always been kind and careful people so if they had a doomsday device encircling the globe now, there would be some way of deactivating it in the event it had been launched by mistake. He would find that way of deactivating it, then be the hero.

It was simple.

He even knew where to look for the plans for the device. Part of Mt.

Lincoln held a filing room containing duplicates of the most highly cla.s.sified war-related doc.u.ments, for the reference of the president. It was there that this most cla.s.sified of doc.u.ments would be kept- there that he would find his answer.

Rozhdestvenskiy felt the motorized rowboat b.u.mp against the far sh.o.r.e of the lake. The ride was over. . . .

Rozhdestvenskiy felt like a graverobber, like an unscrupulous archeologist invading the tomb of a once-great Pharaoh-and perhaps it was a Pharaoh's tomb, the tomb of the last real president of the United States. He discounted this Chambers; he had taken the power, but by all reports from the late quisling Randan Soames, Chambers had taken the power reluctantly.

The power had not been given him as it was to other American presidents-such a strange custom, Rozhdestvenskiy thought as he shone the light of the torch across the gaping mouth of a partially decomposed U.S.

Marine. To hold free elections and trust the ma.s.s of the people to select a leader who was accountable to them.

"No wonder they didn't prevail," Rozhdestvenskiy murmured.

Voskavich asked, "Comrade Colonel?"

"The Americans-their absurd ideas of doing things- it accounts handily for their failure." The thought crossed his mind, though, that Soviet troops were now retreading to regroup for the fight against American Resistance on the eastern seaboard. Their failure had not yet been completely recognized.

Voskavich stepped across the body of the dead Marine, saying, "These men were trapped here-perhaps locked inside."

"That is not the American way. They were probably happy to have died in the service of their country. Give the devihhis due, Voskavich."

Rozhdestvenskiy picked his way over the bodies, seeing ahead of him at the end of a long corridor what he thought was the room.

It recalled the Egyptian tomb a.n.a.logy to his mind- fhese Marines, priests of the order, guardians of the Pharaoh, who was their high priest. The priests of De- mocracy-an outmoded religion, Rozhdestvenskiy thought. But he did not smile. Despite himself, he was saddened to see the death masks o[ these priests, the anguish, the sorrow, the shock. He wondered what loved ones they had left behind, what dreams they had held dear. They were young, all of them, these priests.

He stopped before the "temple." There was a combination lock on the vault like doors, "I shall need experts in this sort of thing-immediately,"

Rozhdestvenskiy ordered.

"Yes, Comrade Colonel," Voskavich answered, starting to leave. The younger man paused, turning to Rozhdestvenskiy. "Should I leave you here, Comrade?"

"The dead cannot hurt me," Rozhdestvenskiy told him. Voskavich left then and Rozhdestvenskiy stood amid the bodies, by the sealed doors, studying the faces.

In not one of them could he find disillusionment. They had died for something important-what was it? Rozhdestvenskiy wondered. . . .

A sergeant, a corporal and two lieutenants had labored over the locking system ofthedoors,formorelhanahalf hour, and now Voskavich turned to him, saying, "Comrade Colonel-they are ready."