Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion Read Free Page A

thirty-eight seconds.”
    Rourke sat back on the rock, setting the rifle down—his hands, the bandages blood-soaked, pained him. “So, let me ask you. The shackle about Deiter Bern’s neck—is it such that it can be slipped away from the location of the implant?”
    “This is my doctor’s opinion—yes,” the standartenfuehrer nodded.
    “So then the only means to free Herr Bern is to penetrate The Complex, reach the detention area and somehow perform the surgery right there on the spot while he is presumably still under guard and shackled to the wall, without disrupting the current.”
    “That is the only way. I understand that once men believed in a being known as God—”
    “Some men still do,” Rourke answered unbidden.
    “That prayers were offered to this God. It is as if you came in answer to such a prayer. I observed the great daring you displayed there at the Soviet encampment, and later in rescuing the man from the burning helicopter.”
    “Paul Rubenstein is my friend. At the encampment, my wife, my daughter, a woman whom I have very much feeling for, a girl who carries my son’s child, two
    friends—”
    “This is a man who seeks liberty, Herr Doctor—someone with whom I should think you might have a great deal in common. My legions pursue the Communists regardless of your decision, and I personally have no desire to make war upon you. But if Deiter Bern is executed, the leader’s armies will sweep over the earth. Such weapons as you might possess will be useless against us.”
    Rourke laughed. “I know—don’t tell me. We’ll be powerless to resist.”
    “Yes, but I suspect you might resist at any event. If the Communists have a substantial force and are well entrenched, two corps will not be sufficient to undo them. It is your choice—to aid a potential ally for peace, or to combat and eventually succumb to what I feel is an old enemy and what I fear would be a new one. And then to contemplate with your last breath that these two enemies will fight each other to the death, perhaps until this time all life on this planet is indeed destroyed forever.”
    John Rourke lit another cigar, weighing the battered Zippo wind lighter in his hand. “I can’t speak, Herr Standartenfuehrer, for the Eden Project—”
    “This Eden Project—”
    “The Eden Project—you guessed correctly—was a doomsday mission. That was the code name given it. But I can’t speak for the men and women of the Eden Project. But for myself, Herr Standartenfuehrer—”
    “This SS rank—I am a colonel, and proud of that. I am not SS—a party member. I have read the forbidden books.”
    “No book should be forbidden except by individual taste or preference.”
    “You remind me, Herr Doctor, of some of the men whom I have read of in these forbidden books.”
    “Colonel, why don’t you tell those two friends of yours— the one with the assault rifle about ten degrees north
    northwest and the other one with that thing that looks like a LAWS rocket—why don’t you tell them to stand down? You keep your pistol—principally because I’d like to see it. And go for a walk with me.”
    “It, like your rifle, my pistol is an antique, a Walther P-38. There is a man in The Complex who makes the ammunition. It—the ammunition of those days—is very expensive. But this Walther was carried by my father and his father and his father before him and for generations.”
    “It should be quite a pistol.” John Rourke smiled. And he gestured to the twin stainless Detonics pistols he wore. “These are five centuries old themselves—but I wouldn’t call them antiques just yet,” and Rourke slid off the broad flat rock where he had again seated himself—it was damp there anyway. His back was stiff from the weight of Paul Rubenstein when he had gotten Paul out of the burning helicopter. And he was generally sore and stiff from the exertion. It hadn’t been daring, as the German-accented colonel had called it, Rourke