The Inheritors of Earth Read online

  Sarah had married Wolfgang Mann, President of New Germany, with Rourke’s blessing. Michael had married Natalia, Annie had married Paul and he himself had married Emma Shaw a beautiful, competent and cocky fighter pilot. There had been blessings, unexpected but blessings all the same; he had won a victory.

  A victory that he had courted, a victory he had sought—but one he had never truly believed was possible. The history of his challenges and battles had been recorded. The legacy he had given to the world was now taught in schools, but he remained uneasy, restless. Too many times he had won, only to find himself thrust into unexpected territories against unexpected and often times incomprehensible enemies, to ever truly relax his guard; but for a few moments he had rested.

  Shaking himself from his reverie, seeing the ocean and the water birds for the first time—in how long? Glancing at the Rolex on his left wrist he realized it had been too long. He shrugged his shoulders to let the double Alessi shoulder holster with the Detonics CombatMasters find their usual positions. Unconsciously, his hand passed over the A.G. Russell Sting A-1, as always in its usual place. Turning, he finally noticed the surroundings; clean sand, sparkling waves and the sprinkling of clouds overhead.

  “Today is a good day,” John Thomas Rourke said aloud feeling both peaceful and rested. He pulled his Zippo lighter from his watch pocket and from a stainless steel flip-top cigar case in his jacket, pulled one of the new thin, dark cigars he had cultivated, cured and recently had started smoking; on rare occasions. Rolling the striker wheel on the Zippo he put the yellow-blue flame to the tip of the cigar and puffed. When the cigar was going to his satisfaction he flipped the lighter closed, stuck it back in the watch pocket of his jeans and turned.

  At that moment, a chill came over him and a shadow seemed to pass over him, but looking up he frowned, there were no clouds between him and the sun. No birds passing. He wrote it off to coincidence; after all, tomorrow he and Emma were to travel to what was New Germany for a special presentation then on to the Mediterranean on an archeological dive. All was good, what could go wrong? Then he frowned, “Who knows what can go wrong?” he said aloud. “I need to plan ahead!”

  Map of the New World

  Prologue: In the closing years of the 20th Century…

  A long, ragged burst from an AK-47 struck the segments of fuselage behind which John Rourke crouched. Whoever commanded the six man KGB unit wouldn’t like that. Rourke rolled left, the borrowed HK-91 coming to his right shoulder as his left shoulder impacted the snow and whatever lay under it. He fired once at what looked to be a man’s leg, firing twice more before pulling back as the snow rippled under the impacts of more automatic weapons fire. Rourke drew the rifle up close to him, seventeen rounds remaining in its magazine, three spare twenty-round magazines in the pockets of his borrowed parka. The Russian personnel were more heavily armed. As if punctuating his thoughts, bursts of automatic weapons fire peppered the snow on both sides of the wreckage. Rourke stayed as close to the fuselage as he could, knowing his adversaries had no desire to intentionally damage the fuselage or anything associated with the crash.

  John Thomas Rourke had no idea of the specific nature of the KGB unit’s orders, although he could guess and felt he wouldn’t be far off. But, he knew his own orders and—however reluctantly—would follow them, even if something irreplaceable were lost in the process.

  David Roth had followed protocol to the letter. The moment the Russian “working group” had arrived on site and opened fire, he’d accelerated the fire engine red snow tractor into a ragged U-turn and driven off. Roth had photographic evidence of the crash site—actually, video tape—and all the artifacts and tissue and blood samples. These could not be lost, regardless. Rourke had to somehow get the best of the six Russians who had come for the same thing he had, and do it quickly enough that Roth would still be in the equivalent of CB-RADIO range and could somehow be convinced Rourke was not being made to speak under duress—and come back before the night fell upon the snowfield and the temperatures dropped and Rourke would have to use all his survival skills just to live through until morning. Without a vehicle or dog sled—or, even snow shoes—making it forty miles back to the Suburban in near blizzard conditions with the limited supplies Rourke had on his person wasn’t likely. If he succeeded in killing the six Russians, he could always steal their snow tractor, unless one of them blew it up, the latter probably being the case.

  John Thomas Rourke had always prided himself on paying attention to the detail which could enable him to succeed, his catch phrase, “It pays to plan ahead,” something he wouldn’t have minded having on his gravestone. The irony of those words under such circumstances would be interesting, at the least.

  Realistic planning ahead at the moment would have included serious thought about making his peace with God. Six to one odds and, more importantly, his adversaries’ likely hundreds of rounds of 7.62X39mm ammunition and whatever else they had with them against the fifty-seven rounds of .308 Winchester Rourke had on body did not bode well for a favorable outcome. Rourke popped up and fired three quick shots over the fuselage, then ducked down behind it again. Fifty-four rounds. Beneath the borrowed parka and above the borrowed Wooley Pulley, he wore the double Alessi shoulder rig with his twin stainless Detonics CombatMaster .45s. There was a Milt Sparks Six Pack on his belt; but, combined with the magazines in the CombatMasters themselves, that only gave him forty-eight rounds of pistol ammo, not upping the odds even close to favorable.

  John Rourke rarely used profanity. But, as Soviet rifle rounds plowed through the snow and drifted near to the fuselage, he couldn’t help but feel that the word “clusterfuck” best described the situation…

  Chapter One

  The mission he was returning from had been satisfying, not earth-shattering but, not everything that was construable as “doing good” had to be on a grand scale. Rourke, three CIA contractors and half dozen Columbian soldiers, had freed fifteen prisoners from Communist narco-terrorists. There was no truly accurate guess as to how many innocent hostages were being held for ransom by the FARC in remote camps in Columbia. For decades, the Fuerzas Armada Revolucionarias de Columbia had financed its war with the legitimate Columbian government through drug dealing and ransoms, some hapless victims spending years in captivity. The fifteen hostages had only been singled out for rescue because one of them happened to be the niece of a United States Senator, and the mission only even possible because a village priest had spotted the blond haired girl.

  Rourke, the three contractors and the six Columbian army personnel had a pproached the FARC encampment from the north, helicoptered in some fifteen miles deeper into the mountain jungles than the camp itself; in that way able to come at the camp from the least guarded direction.

  The furthest out guard post was about a mile—everyone else in the hastily assembled unit referred to the distance as two “clicks” or “kilometers—from the camp itself. There was no designated marksman, nor was there a dedicated long range rifle. Rourke had worked his way in as close to the guard post as he dared—he estimated the distance to be three hundred yards. Since he had no idea how this particular M-16 he’d been given would shoot, he couldn’t risk a head shot, because he might miss. He’d have to go for multiple hits on center mass.

  It was a one-man post. There would be radio checks—that was only common sense—and, if no one answered or someone responded improperly to preset code phrases, personnel would be sent out in force and the entire encampment would be on alert and the hostages might even be moved or worse.

  Rourke settled himself on a small outcropping of rock, examining his surroundings to ascertain that he wasn’t likely in mid-squeeze to be interrupted by something nasty. One of the contractors—Moises Ortega—served as Rourke’s S spotter. There was no scope on the M-16, but the contractor had binoculars.

  “Can you see him, Rourke? He’s coming across that little clearing.”

  “I see him. His upper body’s not turned towar
d me. He’s too skinny a target. I have to wait.”

  “He’s just standin’ there. Shit.”

  Rourke whispered, “The guy seems to be looking around and up at the sky. Anything you see?”

  “Naw—wait! Shit, it’s his replacement! We’re fucked.”

  Rourke closed his eyes for a moment. He was never much taken with people who used a limited range of profanity to cover up an even more limited range of vocabulary. He opened his eyes. “Moises, here’s what you do. When the relief checks in, he’ll have to make some sort of radio contact. Let him. The guard being relieved will want to be on his way pretty quickly, since he’s got a mile walk through the jungle and the terrain is pretty steep. Get on your radio and get one or the other of the two contractors and two of the soldiers to head him off—just like in the western movies. As he walks down the trail, intercept him and kill him silently. You think one of your guys can do that?”

  “Halstead’s as good a knife man as I’ve seen. Yeah,” Moises Ortega responded.

  “Make it happen. Once the guard being relieved is dead, I’ll kill the relief. Have Halstead or one of the guys with him radio you when the guard being relieved is dead. If I shoot the replacement beforehand, the other guy might get on the radio and alert the camp.”

  “Gotchya, Rourke,” Ortega said.

  Rourke kept watching across his sights. Of course, he had several perfect shot opportunities, but couldn’t take them. He felt the corners of his mouth raise slightly in a smile. He looked away, closing his eyes.

  “Okay. I got Halstead and a couple of soldiers in motion, so they can cut the guy off. The replacement’s just about to break into the clearing. See him?”

  “I’ve been resting my eyes. Now I see him.” A fly loudly buzzed Rourke’s right ear. The sun was bright. Rourke took the dark lensed aviator style sunglasses from the pocket of his light blue shirt, squinted, then put them on, his eyes instantly feeling less strained. He had always been light sensitive, giving him far better than normal night vision, but dictating the use of sunglasses more often than most people needed them.

  Rourke watched the next person he was going to kill as he—thankfully, not a she—handed over some sort of message to the man he was about to replace. There were many women in the FARC.

  Rourke observed as the two men seemed to exchange some sort of pleasantry. Largely, Rourke was guessing. He could only identify gross movement at the distance.

  The man who’d been replaced started out onto the trail his replacement had just traversed. After a moment or so, he was out of sight in the jungle.

  Rourke waited, the lenses of his sunglasses staining with drops of perspiration. He set the rifle down, wiped his forehead with a bandanna and breathed on his glasses, then wiped them as dry as he could. He closed his eyes against the sunlight.

  “Rourke. Our guys see him. Halstead’s gonna take him out.”

  “Let me know when—exactly.” Rourke cheeked the rifle again. He despised truly hot weather, and jungles—even high mountain ones—were factories for heat and humidity. Rourke tugged the bandanna from the hip pocket of his faded blue Levis. He wiped his brow for the last time. He smiled, thinking back to medical school and his internship. If he’d been readying himself to cut into a living person, a nurse would have given his forehead a wipe. No nurses were readily at hand and, likely; most nurses would have thought that what he was doing—waiting to long distance another human being—was wrong, possibly evil.

  Rourke put the glasses in his shirt pocket, cheeked tightly to the M-16 and moved the selector.

  “Rourke! Halstead got him!”

  “Protect your ears,” Rourke advised, taking a deep breath, letting out part of it, steadying himself. He’d have to ever-so-slightly lead the man he was about to kill, as the man was walking toward the edge of the small clearing. “He’s going to take a leak, which means he’d be on edge to me. I’ll get him as soon as he turns around.”

  The man who was about to die watered the plants and turned around. Rourke fired three rounds, stitching them from the man’s sternum into the man’s throat. As the man crumpled to the dirt, Rourke stood up and put on his sunglasses. “We’d best hurry. Chances of the encampment hearing three moderate reports at a mile distance through heavy foliage are slim to none, but we don’t want to take any chances. Let’s move. Tell Halstead and his guys to search for any documents, secure all weapons and get themselves up to about a quarter mile—a half a click—from the FARC camp. Get the rest of the guys to check the man I shot for documents and stuff and we’ll meet them on the trail. Quickly,” Rourke advised.

  They’d moved single file along the jungle trail at a fast paced commando walk, little worried about mines and snares, since the path was well worn down between the guard post and the camp itself. As Rourke and the bulk of the force moved silently along the trail, he had two men get about a hundred yards ahead, who would stop when they were up even with Halstead and the two soldiers with him who’d become the de facto advance guard.

  More careful the closer they came to the FARC camp, when Rourke, Moises Ortega and the soldiers reached Halstead’s position, they resorted to whispers and hand signals. Halstead had—wisely—been studying the encampment, timing the guards’ movements. Rourke hauled out the photos taken by the retasked satellite, matching physical features of the encampment as shown in the photos to the reality that lay before them.

  Rourke assigned two of the soldiers to counting heads and both men, after fifteen minutes, came up with thirty-eight FARC personnel, of the number nine of them women. Rourke was sexist enough to avoid killing women, when he could; but, women pulled triggers as well as men and often better. From the satellite photography, taken over the course of several days and at various times of day, it seemed clear that female hostages were being held in a long green tent halfway between what looked like a privy and a guard post. Male hostages were held on the other side of the encampment, near a meandering stream and an obvious cook tent.

  The number of FARC personnel indicated that, as hoped for after setting out bait in the form of a weapons convoy, much of the FARC force was away. The weapons convoy was a fake, to draw as many of the FARC personnel away from the camp as possible. It had worked.

  Rourke ran his plans through his head once again. Halstead and the third contractor, Billings, would position themselves to guard the two tents occupied by the hostages, Halstead and Billings each equipped with electric mini-guns. Rourke, Ortega and the six soldiers would be positioned in pairs strategically ringing the camp. At a pre-arranged time, rocket propelled grenades, rifle grenades and automatic weapons fire would be used against the thirty-eight FARC personnel. In the American old west, when an attack such as this was conducted, it had sometimes been called a “murder raid.” But, since the goal of this action was a far loftier purpose, the name wouldn’t apply, Rourke told himself, smiling.

  Rourke and one of the Columbian soldiers, Corporal Canales, took up their position. The sun was still very high and very warm. The young man was sweating, but not from the heat, Rourke realized. He clapped the fellow on the shoulder and whispered, “Just keep telling yourself if we don’t kill these people, the hostages they’re holding could die here, never see their families, their friends, never live their lives. We’re not killing people; they just look like people. The humanity is gone.”

  In almost perfect English—Rourke had heard Canales speak earlier on—the young soldier said, “I know, Señor Rourke. But, it is good to hear you tell me what you told me.”

  Rourke nodded. He eyed the black face of his Rolex, watching as the sweep second hand came toward the inverted triangle that was the “twelve.” Rourke and Canales each raised their rocket propelled grenades. Rourke glanced at his watch face, rasping, “Now, Corporal!”

  Their RPGs fired almost simultaneously into clusters of FARC personnel, six other RPGs firing at the same time. Body parts, dirt, weapons and foliage flew upward, crashing to the ground as Rourke and others opened fir
e with their M-16s, picking still moving targets. As any of the FARC moved toward either of the hostage tents, the electric mini-guns Halstead and Billings wielded segmented the FARC personnel into unrecognizable chunks.

  The raid took under three minutes, but freeing the startled and confused hostages consumed almost fifteen more minutes, Rourke counting the seconds, unable to convince himself that someone in the encampment or one of the perimeter guards to the south, east or west had not somehow alerted the main body of the FARC from this encampment, or another of the FARC encampments not far away.

  Rourke ordered, “We’re out of here in two minutes. Anyone who can’t walk will have to be carried. Canales! Take three other soldiers and rig up some litters.” Rourke lit one of his thin dark tobacco cigars with his battered Zippo.

  An hour into their trek toward the extraction point, Rourke sent one of the soldiers up into a tree, as high as he could climb. The young man had signaled back that they were being pursued. The only way back from the FARC encampment to the extraction point involved a Burma bridge, crossing over a fast moving stream. One of the freed hostages had lost her footing, fallen and been carried away in the current. Gear and all, Rourke jumped from the rope bridge and dove in after her. He’d slipped out of his pack once he’d hit the water, but his twin stainless Detonics CombatMasters in the double Alessi shoulderrig had stayed with him for the swim.

  Rourke caught up with the terrified woman—the one belonging to the Senator—and got her to the opposite bank. Rourke walked upstream, waded into the current and retrieved his pack. There was time for nothing more than pouring the water out of his pack and continuing the escape, FARC personnel hot on their trail. They’d reached the extraction point after a brief firefight with lead elements of their FARC pursuers, and then had gotten everyone out by helicopter.