Reed — seemed somehow wrong.
But it was too late to change any of that, Reed thought, walking up the aisle toward the front of the church. “Ten-hut!” Dressier snapped.
Reed shook his head, “As you were—take your seats, gentlemen.” Ten other men sat in the first pews on each side of the aisle. Reed stepped up the three low steps leading to the pulpit, just short of entering it. Reed stood beside it in-stead, feeling odd wearing a pistol on his hip. “All of you were told before volunteering that this was likely a suicide mission. Rourke couldn’t get too specific on the radio—but I’ve talked with him often enough. Apparently the Russians have some move afoot to destroy what was called the Eden Project. Our earth—well, we told you that, too. In six days at the most, perhaps at dawn tomorrow, the sky will catch fire, the atmosphere will all but completely burn away and the earth itself will burn. We’ll all die then anyway. But ap-parently the Russians have some system for surviving it somewhere. My guess is the old Norad headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain but we won’t know that until we ren-dezvous with Rourke and his force. It’s our job to knock out the Russian base, so they can’t survive the holocaust. Otherwise, when the 138 people of the Eden Project return to earth, the KGB’ll be waiting for them, to shoot down the space shuttles before they land. And the Russians will have won it all, Communism will have the ultimate triumph. We owe it to the future, if there is one, and to every man and woman alive today or whoever lived, whoever sacrificed life or security or pleasure to defend the ideal of freedom—we owe it to all of them not to let Communism win, not to let the KGB be the masters of earth. And dying fighting for that is a hell of a lot better—” and he felt sorry for the word, remembering suddenly he stood in a church—”a lot better than being incinerated when the end comes. Are there any questions?”
A young face at the far end of the right hand pew— “What is it, Corporal?”
The man stood. “Sir, I mean, I know what you say is right, but what can twelve of us do—well—”
“Against the might of the Soviet Union? Well, not just twelve, Rourke has some volunteers —
he didn’t specify. Maybe a Resistance group or something. Say maybe there’ll be a couple dozen of us. And what can we do? Everything. Anything. Die if that’s the only way. But we’ll do what we can, soldier—that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? I don’t mean just here, in this church, at this briefing. I mean here on earth for. To do what we can. And now we have a chance unique in all of history. Sometimes people have accused me of being a little too far to the right, a little too anti-Commu-nist. Maybe I was. Maybe I am. But we have a chance to rid the world of an evil, an evil that contemplates shooting the only survivors of the civilized world, of the democracies —
shooting the only survivors out of the sky. I don’t know how, again, Dr. Rourke couldn’t be too specific. Maybe particle beam weapons like supposedly they used to zap some of our missiles on The Night of The War. But what-ever it is, whatever it takes, I don’t want a single man with me who isn’t ready to give it his best shot. Maybe we’ve got the chance here to eradicate all the pent-up evil in the world all at once, to give mankind a fresh start five hundred years from now. And maybe we don’t—but as Americans, well— we gotta try it.” Reed cleared his throat. He looked at the Timex on his wrist. “We should be moving out. Any man who wants not to go, well, stay in the church here a while and pray for those of us who do. I won’t think any the less of you.”
“I think we all wanna go, sir,” Sergeant Dressier said, standing. “But could you maybe lead us in a moment’s prayer, sir?”
“I’d rather you would, Sergeant. I’m not too experienced at praying.”
“Colonel, sir, I think the men’d rather that you did, sir.”
Reed nodded, closing his eyes, bowing his head. “Heav-enly Father—help us to see your will and to do it. And bless us all for trying. Amen.”
He looked up. “Like I said, Sergeant—I’m an amateur at it.”
“It sounded pretty good to me, Colonel.”
Reed nodded, starting down the aisle of the church, hear-ing, feeling the men of his detachment fall in behind him. And then a voice—the young corporal who had questioned him. He began singing, “Onward Christian soldiers —”
The sergeant’s voice joined him, “Marching as to war—”
Reed didn’t know the words perfectly, and he felt almost silly—and his voice had always been bad. Before his wife had died during the bombing on The Night of The War, she had always joked with him that he couldn’t carry a tune with both hands and a bucket. But he joined his men any-way.
“...leads against the foe; Forward into battle, see his banners go.”
Outside, the Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk Chopper was already waiting and Reed picked up his rifle.
Chapter Eighteen
They walked in darkness, Emily leading the way, Natalia behind her, Vladov and the Soviet SF-ers after them, Rourke, Tom Maus and Marty Stanonik bringing up the rear. The airfield Varakov had arranged for the GRU pick-up was still perhaps a quarter mile away, Emily, who knew the countryside best, had told them. They had gone by truck from Waukegan and into the farmland of northern Illinois. They had been walking, Rourke judged, for nearly a mile.
Marty spoke. “It’s kinda hard to believe—I bought a house before The Night of The War—I
—”
Maus touched at the younger man’s shoulder.
Then Maus said, “I’ve been thinking. Pretty hard about this. I haven’t mentioned it to Emily or any of the others yet, but I’m planning on starting an all-out offensive against the Russians in metropolitan Chicago.”
“Go down fighting,” Rourke commented.
“Something like that, but more than that. Ever since the Russians moved in, they’ve been using Soldiers’ Field Sta-dium as an internment camp. Some other internment camps there. They treat them well enough—that’s where their medical headquarters is at Soldiers’ Field. But it’s the idea, the people there aren’t free. Americans shouldn’t die that way if they have to die. Penned up, under guard. Maybe it is that—go down fighting. They should have that chance, the Americans the Communists are holding.”
“I’ll ask a favor,” Rourke murmured in the darkness, pushing aside a low hanging branch, holding it for Marty and Tom Maus and then continuing on. “Don’t make a direct assault on Soviet Headquarters at the museum. Let Varakov die his own way.”
“Agreed,” Maus answered. “That’s the funny thing—the way Major Tiemerovna spoke about her uncle, before and in the truck just now, and what he’s done now to fight the KGB—General Varakov sounds like a good man.”
“He is.”
Marty said it, “Kind of stupid, isn’t it—I mean, if you assume we’re good men, too. Why were we fighting each other all these years?”
Rourke had no answer for him.
Chapter Nineteen
Sarah Rourke, barefoot, wearing a pair of the blue jeans her husband had stocked for her and one of her husband’s shirts, listened to the sounds of her children over the muted sound of the waterfall to the rear of the Great Room. The children were playing poker with Paul Rubenstein and laughing because they were beating him at it, consistently.
He owed Michael thirteen trillion dollars, Michael had run to tell her.
Michael was a boy again. At least for now.
And Annie—there was a sparkle in her eyes and she gig-gled when Paul would tell her a joke. She had even blushed when Paul had told her she was a pretty little girl.
Sarah sipped at her drink, a book open on her lap—she hadn’t begun to read it past the first line.
She had listened to music earlier—her husband’s library housed records and cassettes ranging from The Beatles to Rachmaninoff, from original recordings of Enrico Caruso to Charles Aznavour.
The children had watched a movie on the videocassette recorder—she had been surprised that their interest had sus-tained in the original version of Lost Horizon starring Ronald Coleman. Perhaps it was the novelty of even seeing a television—the last program they had seen was the red haired Atlanta newsman warning of the impending Soviet attack.
