Countdown by Jerry Ahern

Author:Jerry Ahern [Jerry Ahern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Military, Spies & Politics, Terrorism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Thrillers, Pulp
ISBN: 1612322891
Amazon: B00IMQLH8I
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Published: 2014-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“You’re thinking that’s what has happened to Sarah, aren’t you? That she’s been cloned?” John smiled, shrugged his eyebrows, sipped at his drink. The small bar in the officers’ mess was more elaborate than some of its onshore counterparts where Emma Shaw had shared a drink with a man, but no man like this. John Thomas Rourke was as much the stuff of preposterous tall tales and fact-based legend as Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok or Buffalo Bill, as much the heroic historical figure as George Washington, Daniel Boone or Teddy Roosevelt. When he didn’t answer her question about Sarah’s being cloned, Emma Shaw tapped him on the shoulder and he turned and looked at her. She looked him right back, saying, “Don’t you?”

John’s fingers played with a thin, dark tobacco cigar, his lighter beside his drink. “Yes.”

“Isn’t there some way you can tell?”

“Yes, at least I think so,” he answered.

“Go ahead and light the cigar. You’ve smoked them around me before.”

“You’re sure you won’t mind?” John asked her.

“I won’t mind your smoking the damned cigar! But, will you just tell me what’s happening? Please, John?”

John shrugged his shoulders under the elbow-patched black military sweater he wore. Even though Emma Shaw saw no evidence of the fact, he would, of course, be armed; but, he always was. She was armed as well, which was strictly against regulations, of course. Only with a knife, a switchblade her father had given her, which she kept regularly in a pocket of her flight suit and now carried in the purse that was on the barstool beside them.

“So, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“About Sarah! How would you tell, I mean?”

“Very simple, really,” John answered, smiling indulgently at her, his high forehead furrowing just slightly. “If she’s Sarah, regardless of any programming that Deitrich Zimmer might have inflicted upon her, she won’t kill me. If she is a clone, she’ll possibly kill me. Either way, she’ll try. Zimmer wouldn’t have let us get her so easily otherwise.”

“Easily!”

“Emma, he’s probably got a half dozen of each of us—Sarah, me, Annie and Paul, Michael and Natalia. And Wolfgang. If you’d been with us in cryogenic Sleep in New Germany, he’d have a few spares of you lying around. Trust me on that. I’m learning how the man thinks. And, he thinks very well, however twisted his purposes. Either way, though, I suspect he’s counting on the fact that Sarah or her clone won’t succeed, but that I’ll be convinced enough that she is Sarah that I’ll come to him for a deal.”

“Would you?” Emma Shaw asked him pointedly, picking up his lighter, opening it awkwardly, rolling its striking wheel under her thumb. She fingered the instrument as she closed it, thinking how smoothly, how effortlessly John made the thing make fire for him every time.

“Yes—go to him, I mean. What I said to you earlier, about loving you. I meant that. And whoever the real Sarah is, she’ll leave me. You see, I’m convinced that the real Wolfgang Mann is the Wolfgang Mann with us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.