“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.