Read Survivalist - 15 - Overlord for Free Online

“My father has an expression that he got from his father. It sums it up best. As John Rourke puts it, ‘Plan ahead.’”

Chapter Four
    John Rourke had finally slept, for seven hours, angry that Natalia or Paul had not awakened him sooner, but forgiving of their motives.
    He sat now, beneath a rocky overhang around a German military portable heater unit, eating from a bag of German field rations and listening as Captain Hartman discoursed on the intelligence data gleaned so far from the Soviet prisoners. “The attack against Hekla seemed, of course, inevitable. In addition to alerting Major Volkmer, I have also alerted our forces with the Eden Project Base in Georgia. I believe that Marshal Karamatsov plans to attack at several locations using those forces not already joined with him in the possible hope of drawing us away from the main body of his force.”
    “What about the possibility of an attack on New Germany itself,” Natalia suggested.
    “Colonel Mann has been alerted as well. He has placed our forces on alert.”
    “I doubt Karamatsov would attack in Argentina, Iceland and Georgia simultaneously,” Paul Rubenstein noted.
    John Rourke looked at the younger man and nodded. “I’m in full agreement. It won’t take much to cause grief for Eden Base. Likely, Karamatsov’s forces will send in as few people
    as they can get away with to go against Eden, because they’ll need substantial forces to go against Hekla. Hekla and the German base outside Hekla are considerably more defensible. There’s been no sign of Karamatsov bleeding off forces from his main body of troops and if that pattern holds, that means he’ll be relying on the forces he already has in the field under his commanders. And there’s no telling what the loyalty situation is among Karamatsov’s people now, after his attack on the Soviet Underground City. He’s not going to want to dissipate his forces while the possibility exists for defection.
    “And,” Rourke continued, setting down the food packet and plucking one of the long, thin, dark tobacco cigars from the right pocket of his shirt, “he hasn’t been able to hand his people a victory. The attacks we’ve been running, although militarily ineffectual, have to have been demoralizing.” Rourke flicked back the cowl of the battered Zippo with the thumb of his right hand, then rolled the striking wheel, thrusting the tip of the cigar just above the lighter’s blue-yellow flame, drawing the flame up into the cigar. It was one of the non-carcinogenic German cigars, physically identical to the cigars he had always smoked and to the ones Annie had rolled for him, but somehow just slightly less satisfying.
    “What would you propose, Herr Doctor,” Hartman asked, lighting a cigarette.
    “I’m becoming more convinced that Karamatsov has some definite goal which he’s drawing closer to and that he sees it as some sort of panacea for his current situation. It can only be one thing.”
    “The Chinese,” Natalia supplied.
    “Yes,” Rourke nodded. “Obviously, he has additional intelligence data from before the Night of The War which has led him to believe that some substantial advantage lies to the east. He still has the gas, but without a base from which he can manufacture more of the substance, the scope of its use is rather limited. I think we’re talking nuclear weapons.”
    Paul Rubenstein visibly shuddered. Natalia made to light a cigarette, Rourke lighting it for her instead with the Zippo.
    “That would be insanity, Herr Doctor Rourke,” Hartman said softly.
    “Vladmir is insane,” Natalia murmured.
    “If a stockpile of Chinese nuclear weapons exists, and since the Chinese, as far as everything I’ve learned of the aftermath of the Night of The War seems to attest, utilized only tactical nuclear weapons in their land war against the Soviet Union, the rest of their nuclear arsenal was unused when the Great Conflagration took place. If some of it could be made usable,