His father had lived to the age of seventy-three. His mother still survived, well into her eighties. His grandpar-ents had been long lived as well.
Perhaps, through the cryogenic process, his life span might surpass theirs. Disease on the new earth would be vir-tually unknown, the same process which would destroy all sentient life destroying much of the world’s disease produc-ing organisms.
A world without infectious disease.
He smiled.
The Eden Project. “A Garden of Eden.”
And he would be its master.
A barren garden at first, but the plants, the embryonic animals which were even now being cryogenically frozen under the aegis of Professor Zlovski.
Rozhdestvenskiy touched his fingertips to the desk top—soon he would touch his fingertips to the earth and give it life again.
Because of his abilities and his ruthlessness—one was no good without the other, he had always known.
He stood up from his desk, walking across the office, to stare at himself in the mirror.
Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy saw the face of God and it was his own face.
Chapter Twenty-eight
They had followed the course of the roadway leading down from Cheyenne Mountain. It was patrolled by four wheel drive vehicles with one driver and two guards, each vehicle fitted with an RPK 7.62mm light machinegun, each of the LMGs fitted with a seventy-five round drum maga-zine.
Rourke, Natalia, Reed and Vladov watched the road from a quarter mile distant. “I agree with you, Rourke, with all these people who speak Russian like natives—”
“We are natives, Colonel,” Vladov interjected.
Rourke laughed.
“Anyway,” Reed observed, “we might be able to bluff our way through if we can take over one of the smaller convoys. But how the hell we’re gonna do that with those patrols on the road I don’t know.”
“In the Chicago espionage school,” Natalia began, taking a cigarette, Rourke lighting it for her with his Zippo, “we were taught that what is familiar is the least suspected. We can utilize this to our advantage. We have, after all, twelve men in Soviet uniform who are in fact Soviet soldiers.”
Rourke reached out and touched her hand. Then he lit his own cigar, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, exhaling as he said, “I think what Natalia’s getting at is that those guys in the road patrols can’t be too high up the echelon. What if Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski just marched their men down onto the roadway and flagged down one of the patrol vehicles—then take out the guys running it.”
“And then,” Natalia smiled, “the captain could replace the three soldiers with three of his own men. It would merely be a matter of changing uniform blouses. The vehi-cle proceeds down the highway toward a convoy of suffi-ciently small size which we had pre-selected. The vehicle stops the convoy. If another of the patrols comes by, it can be waved on. The suspicions of the convoy would not be aroused—there are so many of the road patrols that they must by now be a familiar sight to them.”
“Maybe the Jeep could be given a flat tire or something and stopping the convoy would seem more natural.”
“Exactly,” Natalia told Reed. “And once the convoy is stopped, the rest of us sweep down to attack.”
“We eliminate the personnel of the convoy,” Vladov said, as if thinking out loud. “Assuming they are KGB, we take their uniforms—”
“Knives would be better than guns if we can get away with it,” Rourke noted.
“Knife holes are more easily covered up,” Natalia nod-ded. “And if the knifework is done properly, there can be little bleeding to stain the uniform.”
“We get the convoy orders, drive up there and we fake it,” Reed nodded.
“Maybe a little more precise than that,” Rourke began. “Between Natalia, Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski, we should be able to get all the information from the convoy leadership that we need—and their orders—we can work on that after we make the switch and start back up the road. We won’t have more than ten minutes or so until an-other convoy comes along. Vladov and Daszrozinski can do most of the talking—and we’ll have to find the smallest waisted of the convoy personnel so we can get Natalia inside looking at least moderately convincing.”
“I must dress as a man—I don’t like that,” she smiled.
“I like you better as a woman, too—but,” and he laughed. Then he looked to Reed, “Why don’t you send some of your guys down the road where it bends there to find a likely convoy—space men a half mile apart to use as relay runners to get the information back to us. We can’t risk radio here. Don’t know what frequency the convoys use, or what fre-quency the patrols use.” He looked at Natalia. “You go with Reed’s men—run the thing—” and he looked at Reed, “Un-less you have some objections.”
“I wanna get the job done — however we do it — I can ob-ject later, if there is a later.”
“Agreed,” Natalia nodded.
Rourke told her, “You pick the convoy—you’ll have the best idea of how many uniforms we should be able to net out of how many vehicles. Start the runners, then get back around here. I’ll be up in the rocks, riding herd on Vladov and Daszrozinski’s men in case they bump into problems. One of your men,” and he turned to Captain Vladov. “I saw him with a 7.62 SVD with a PSO-1 telescopic sight—have him leave that with me so I can long distance any trouble you might have if I need to. I left my SSG at the Retreat.”
“Yes, of course, Doctor.”
Rourke looked at Vladov, Reed, and Natalia in turn. “We all set then?”
Reed said to Vladov, “Good luck—I mean with nailing that patrol vehicle, Captain.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Natalia smiled.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Reed had stayed behind in the rocks with Rourke. Ac-companying Natalia, leading the American force, was the veteran, white-haired Sergeant Dressier. They moved along a ridge line at a brisk, stiff-legged, wide-strided Commando walk, Natalia mildly amazed that Dressier seemed to show no fatigue. There was still some distance to go and she” opened conversation with Dressier. “Tell me, Sergeant, what did you do as a civilian, between the period of the Viet Nam conflict and your being recalled to active duty.”
Dressier, sounding barely out of breath, laughed good-naturedly. “Not much to tell, Major, really. Farmer. Worked my farm, helped my wife meddle in the children’s lives, watched my grandchildren come into the world—that’s what I did. Had a part-time job with the city we lived near, worked on vehicle maintenance. But all I ever been mostly is a soldier or a farmer. How about you, Major, did you do anything before you joined the KGB?”
“Interesting?” she laughed. “I studied at the Polytechnic. I suppose I am qualified as an engineer of sorts, in electron-ics. I studied ballet — I studied that a great deal.”
“I never did see a ballet, ma’am, not a real one, anyways. One of my daughters took ballet some when she was little. Watched her dance in some of them recital things they’d have every year or so. I bet you was pretty as a ballerina, Major.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” she smiled. “I enjoyed it—a great deal. And when I became involved in the martial arts, it was vastly easier for me because of my ballet training.”
“Ma’am,” Dressier began walking beside her now, “you think we got a prayer of gettin’ in there and doin’ what we gotta do?”
She looked at him a moment, then nodded her head, brushing her hair back from her face with the back of her gloved left hand. “A prayer, Sergeant—I should think we have that at least.”