Survivalist - 17 - The Ordeal Read Free

clanging of military equipment, the gunfire again.
    He looked at the second Russian’s face. It was purple enough and he let go.
    There were bloodstained white trousers in front of him, now, and Rolvaag looked up along their length and then up the body contour—a female body contour—and into the prettiest Chinese face he had seen here.
    She smiled at him as she dropped to her knees beside him.
    She told him something he didn’t understand.
    He told her she was very pretty, knowing she would understand him no more than he had understood her.
    She was trying to help him stand up.
    And so he did that, but his head hurt very badly; not, he confessed to himself, so badly that he needed to hold on to her quite so tightly as he did when she helped him back into his room. But almost…
    They had all moved into one van, presenting less of a target on the road leading to the site of the soon-to-be-begun German outpost, lest the Soviet gunships should return.
    But Sarah Rourke doubted that they would—not until they were through destroying the First Chinese City.
    In the distance, the high plateau rose ahead of them, stretching for miles, it seemed. But she knew the area to the last foot, having tramped across it at the request of Colonel Mann and worked with one of his engineering officers and a
    staff of men to do rough sketchwork preparatory to an overall plan for the base. At first, she had thought Mann’s corresponding with her personally by military messenger might have been something put together by her husband, John Rourke, and the commander of the Forces of New Germany in Argentina, just to keep her busy. But it hadn’t proven out that way. It had seemed logical to Mann that with a professional artist available on the scene—albeit her professional experience was from five centuries before and in the rather left-handed field of children’s literature—the preliminary sketchwork could be handled with adequate efficiency. She had never so labored over drawings since the acceptance of her first published illustrations.
    The van was moving inexorably nearer to the plateau, the hermetically sealed German tents seeming barren, lonely there, the few men of the temporary garrison in full battle gear, their solitary anti-aircraft emplacement sandbagged and manned, men with assault rifles at the entrance that would pass them through the electrified perimeter.
    The tents were so few as to be missable from high-altitude observation unless one were specifically looking for them, and extrapolating the flight path of the Soviet gunships, they would have passed out of visual range of the base. Hence, the few men here were still alive and there was still hope that Colonel Mann and his J-7Vs could do something.
    The chairman of the First Chinese City spoke to her for the first time since they had entered the van. “I am hopeful, Mrs. Rourke, that there is some chance. My city will be in ruins within the hour if the aerial attack is not, somehow, forced to cease.”
    The security waved them through and the van continued on until it stopped before the largest of the few tents arranged with geometric precision here on the plateau.
    To have returned to the First City, despite the fact that it would have taken considerably longer to get there, would have
    been pointless. The Chinese here had a substantial and well-equipped army, but nothing to combat airpower except will and courage.
    The chairman rose and began to alight from the van, Sarah gathering her skirt and following after him. He helped her down.
    A young German officer—a lieutenant—came to attention, saluting them, offering his hand to the chairman who received it, bowing as he offered his hand to her. He held her hand briefly as if it were something very fragile. He’d evidently never seen her fire a gun, wrangle a horse, butcher a chicken or change a diaper.
    A stiff, cold wind was blowing over the plateau; the two German gunships that serviced the tent base vibrated on