by Jerry Ahern
Chapter 9
Rourke looked at the woman, his eyes squinted against the sunlight. "You'll be safer here, so relax. It should take me about an hour to get into Savannah on foot. Then once I find my contact I might be able to snitch some transportation to get back faster."
"But why aren't you taking your guns? What will you do if—"
Rourke cut her off. "If I get spotted with a gun, I'm automatically nailed. Soviet-held cities don't even allow Americans to carry pocket knives, let alone firearms. You should like it," Rourke added. "It's total gun control."
"Yes," she began, "but this is different."
"Tell me about it sometime," Rourke said, not particularly caring for her ethical two-facedness. He started walking, the cowboy boots from his pack feeling unfamiliar after all the time he'd been spending wearing combat boots. The brim of the grayish-tan Stetson Canyon was pulled low over his face against the sun, despite the dark glasses he wore. He'd unintentionally lied to the woman, he thought as he started down from the low rise where he'd left her. He wasn't completely weaponless. The heavy trophy buckle on the belt that held up his Levis made a good weapon in a pinch, there were his hands, too, he reasoned. Rourke's spine shivered slightly— without a gun he felt naked, but perhaps that was the best way.
There was always the disturbing possibility the woman would lose her nerve, steal the bike and the guns, and be gone when he returned. He could always steal a bike himself, he thought, reviewing the possibilities. He'd miss the big customized Harley, though. The other Harley, the one he'd taken from a Brigand he'd killed back in New Mexico after the marauders had slaughtered the survivors of the crashed 747— that Harley was at the Retreat now and he supposed he could work it over to come close to the Low Rider he'd left with Sissy. If he had to.
The guns would be the biggest problem, Rourke decided, leaving the high ground and paralleling a two-lane palm-lined highway leading into the city of Savannah. The twin Detonics stainless .45s would be impossible to replace, as would be the Python and the CAR-15. There was a standard AR-15 at the Retreat, his Metalifed Colt Government .45 was there too. For a revolver he could always use the Metalifed Custom .357 Magnum, the heavily modified three-inch K-Frame with his name engraved on the flatted heavy barrel. It was a superlative gun but still a K-Frame, and high-performance .357
Magnum ammo was not its best diet. He'd used the round-butted Smith & Wesson several times with superior results as a concealment gun. He supposed it would fill the bill now.
He stopped, surveying the road some distance beyond the defile through which he walked, smiling. Likely the woman would be there when he returned; and the guns and the Harley would be in good order. But the mental debate he'd had with himself had passed the miles. In the distance now, he could see the outskirts of Savannah.
Chapter 10
Sarah Rourke had ridden Tildie as close to Savannah as she had dared, leaving Michael in charge of the weak, yet conscious, Harmon Kleinschmidt— as well as Annie. Kleinschmidt had insisted that if she reached Savannah and found the boat he'd spoken of, she could take it and get them all to one of the offshore islands where he could recuperate and she could rest with the children. Sarah had agreed to try.
She'd left her rifle with Kleinschmidt, just taking the .45 automatic in Tildie's saddlebags. She judged it to be an hour's walk when she'd unsaddled Tildie and left her in a clearing, no fear the animal would bolt and run off. She had stored the saddle and the rest of the tack in a wooded area not far from the clearing, then changed clothes, thinking she'd draw less attention to herself if she didn't look as if she'd just come in off the trail. As she walked down the grassy hill now, she could feel the taller grass against her bare legs beneath the hem of the wrap-around denim skirt she wore— a gift from Mary Mulliner who'd gotten it one Christmas from her husband and never worn it. She'd taken a light blue T-shirt that didn't have holes in it yet and worn that; and she even wore a bra for the first time since leaving the Mulliner farm. She hadn't been able to wash her hair, but it was long enough to put up now and she'd done that— hoping for the best.
She reached the road and could see the city ahead. Feeling oddly nervous without her gun, she smiled.
"My gun," she whispered, thinking that before the War she would barely touch one and since the War she carried one in the waistband of her pants and slept with it at night. Shaking her head, feeling herself smiling, she started down the road into Savannah, toward the docks where Harmon Kleinschmidt had told her the boat was secured.
Chapter 11
Rourke lit one of the small, dark tobacco cigars. He'd seen a few other men smoking and had decided it wouldn't draw undue attention to himself. But he'd left the Zippo lighter along with his guns and the motorcycle. It stood to reason, he'd decided. Cigarette lighters, which required fuel, would be in disuse generally— no one but the Russians and a few select, important Americans working with them had fuel. He used a stick match instead, cupping his hands around the flame in the slight wind as he stood at the far end of the rough wooden pier, staring down its length toward a decent-sized fishing boat moored there. The name on the boat was Stargazer II—
it was the name he recalled from the memorized list originally given Paul Rubenstein by Captain Reed. The captain of Stargazer II was supposed to be Cal Summers, the local Army Intelligence contact. Rourke hoped that hadn't changed. He tossed down the match and started walking along the dock, the cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes.
There was a man working on the deck. It was early enough that the fishermen of the area hadn't all left yet, and Rourke understood the fuel situation was such that not all boats were allowed out of port each day. Fishing in the surviving coastal towns, Rourke had been told by Reed and confirmed through casual conversation with others he had met, was a vital industry—
given another year, the average American survivor of the Night of the War would be starving to death. When the Russians had bombed the center of the country into a nuclear desert, they had also destroyed much of America's prime growing areas. The loss of California and the Imperial Valley's fruit and vegetable crops had been an added disaster. Florida had been so heavily bombed that very little could be grown there. Rourke shook his head. With famine would come even more violence.
He stopped on the pier just behind the aft section of Stargazer II. There was a man standing under the canopy, working near the controls. "Excuse me," Rourke shouted over to him.
"What'd you do?" the man answered without looking around.
Rourke smiled, hunching his shoulders against the gathering wind. Without his leather coat, the cowboy shirt he wore suddenly felt inadequate. "I'm coming aboard. You Captain Cal Summers?" Rourke asked, stepping down from the pier and into the boat.
The man turned around, and as he did Rourke's eyes drifted to the man's belt line. There was no bulge, but the sweater had pulled up slightly as the man moved.
"Git off my boat, fella," the man in the sweater stated flatly.
"If you're Cal Summers, we've got business," Rourke went on, his voice low, even.
"I'm Cal Summers, but I ain't got no business with you, fella. Now go on— git!"
Rourke took a step forward, glancing over his shoulder, leading with his right hand, certain no one was watching. As the man in the sweater started to move, Rourke's left hand reached out, scooping at the butt of the gun under the sweater.
The gun was in his hand as Cal Summers started to react, but Rourke had already dodged, moving back toward the stern of the boat.
Rourke held the gun close in front of him, saying half to himself, "Smith & Wesson 66
21/2, with a Barami Hip Grip— not bad."
Cal Summers took a step toward him and Rourke raised the muzzle of the stubby-barreled stainless steel revolver. Summers stopped. Rourke glanced over his shoulder, making certain again that no one was watching, then over-ended the gun in his left hand, not really making a full spin. He reached the gun out for Summers to take the black butt.
/> Summers, his eyes shifting from right to left, snatched the gun and rammed it into his waistband, under his sweater. "What the hell you want? Who are you?"
"Let's go inside," Rourke told him. "Not out here."
"Below deck then," the man said, his eyes wary.
Cal Summers started below first, and Rourke, glancing left, then right, followed him down.
Chapter 12
Sarah Rourke stopped, a gust of wind catching at her skirt, her body cold in the sudden chill. She looked down along the pier. At the far end she could see the name Kleinschmidt had told her to look for— the Ave Maria. It looked awfully big to her, but she walked along the pier, determined to see it up close anyway. There were many boats, looking to belong to fishermen, ranked one beside the other; only a few of the slots along the pier were empty. Few of the craft showed anyone near them.
She stopped again, staring— a shiver coursing up her spine, but not from the cold. It had been the cowboy hat she decided. John had worn one just like that sometimes. She wondered what a man wearing a tannish-gray Stetson was doing going down into a fishing boat. There was something about the set of the shoulders as the man had moved his head quickly after glancing over his right shoulder, a familiarity as he had stood there a moment peering down into the cabin.
"Eerie," she muttered, then walked on, past the boat. She glanced at the name, the tall man with the cowboy hat below deck now. The boat was called Stargazer II. As she walked on, toward the huge craft at the end of the pier, Ave Maria, she glanced over her shoulder toward the Stargazer II. But the man who'd reminded her for an instant of John Rourke was nowhere in sight.
Chapter 13
Rourke searched for a butt can or ashtray, found neither and flicked the ashes from the small cigar into his left palm.
"Now, who the hell are you?" Cal Summers leaned against the far bulkhead by the forward section of the below-deck cabin, his right hand close to the front of his pants— close to the stainless .357 Magnum under his sweater.
"My name's John Rourke. Army Intelligence gave me your name, name of the boat."
"Which army?" Summers snapped.
"Ours— or what's left of it," Rourke answered softly. "Captain Reed— know him?"
"Yeah. How do I know you do?"
"Well," Rourke said thoughtfully, "if I were a Russian, you'd have already hanged yourself."
"Bullshit— you'd be wantin' to get next to me to find out where the rest of the Resistance people are holed up."
"How close you keep in touch with U.S. II?" Rourke queried.
"None of your damned business."
Rourke smiled. "You hear about the deal when Chambers got nabbed by the Russians?"
"Maybe," Summers grunted.
"Well, hear about a guy who busted him out?"
"There was another fella with him," Summers admitted.
"Yeah, but Paul Rubenstein's down in Florida, trying to see if his parents made it through the War or not."
"Anybody can learn names," Summers snapped.
"What do you want, then?" Rourke asked.
"There was somethin' peculiar about the guy's gun," Summers began. "At least that's what I heard."
Rourke smiled. "Well, I don't know who you heard it from, but I imagine you mean 'guns'
rather than gun." Summers's expression began to soften. "I usually carry a matched pair of Stainless Detonics .45s—
left 'em back with the rest of my gear, just outside of town. That what you're lookin' for?" Rourke smiled again.
"Sorry," Summers said, taking a few steps forward across the cabin and stretching out his right hand. Rourke shook it, then Summers stepped back. "Here— I got an old butt can around here somewhere." He disappeared into what Rourke guessed was the galley, then reappeared a moment later. There was a small, round plastic ashtray in his left hand and he reached it onto the flat railing beside Rourke.
Nodding, Rourke asked, "Aren't you a little reckless with that gun? People could see it."
"Gotta be," Summers agreed. "See, the Communists nailed most of the Resistance people— maybe a couple got away. Their wives, girl friends, sisters, whatever— all the women and the kids are on one of the offshore islands. I try smugglin' out food and some medical stuff when I can. But the Communists could find me out any time. You might wanna get out of here, yourself. I figure I'll go down shootin' rather than wind up with the KGB skinnin' me alive or somethin'— I heard about them when I was R.A. years back."
"So, what?" Rourke asked. "You were Regular Army, got in the reserve or something, then after the Night of the War they called you up. How?"
"I got tied in with the Resistance— that Captain Reed and some sergeant hunted me out here after I'd already sort of volunteered through the Resistance. Reed brought me a radio, in case I needed to contact him. Shouldn't have took it," Summers said soberly.
"Why?" Rourke asked.
"Well, there's some kind of traitor— gotta be— in U.S. II. The Resistance had a big raid planned last Friday night."
"What the hell day is it today?" Rourke asked.
"Thursday."
"Yeah— what happened?"
"I radioed in, used a code Reed said the Reds didn't have. Then when the raid came off, the Reds was there— jumped the Resistance guys, killed some, arrested the others. Got 'em in an old textile plant, and they're usin' it as a prison. Best I can learn, they ain't exactly makin' 'em feel like it's a big hotel or nothin', but they're feedin' and lookin' after 'em— they're executin' some of them too. I guess they gotta, to be fair to 'em. Maybe we'd do the same with a Resistance movement. They do what they gotta do; we do what we gotta do, I figure. Some damned silly game gettin' people killed. Wish we could cream all them Reds and send the ones left packin' to Moscow. Someday, you think?"
"All we can do is try," Rourke commented noncommittally. "But I've got a more immediate problem. You don't think they cracked your code do you?"
"I was in Intelligence for ten years before I decided not to re-up, then with the Reserve until the War. They didn't crack this code— I'd guarantee it."
"Is the radio safe then?" Rourke asked.
"That why you come to see me?"
"Well, yeah," Rourke admitted. "I picked up a woman yesterday morning. She's a scientist. She discovered something with a bunch of the people she worked with, and we've gotta let U.S. II know about it right away. That's why I came here. Figured a radio was the fastest way of getting the information out."
"If you gotta. But I don't trust them people back there in U.S. II— some kind of Red-nosed rat is in with 'em if you get my drift."
"I get your drift, but I've got no choice," Rourke told Summers flatly. "Where's the radio?"
"Help me cast off. Hope you can swim, too— that water's too cold for me these days."
Rourke eyed the man, nodding. Pulling the Stetson back low over his eyes, he started up on deck. Rourke stood there, feeling the wind on his face, smelling the salt-scented air over the water. As Rourke followed Summers's lead and began casting off, he looked up the length of the pier. There was a woman— odd he thought— staring at a large fishing boat, larger by far than any of the others. Rourke squinted against the light. It looked to him as though the name were Ave Maria. He looked at the woman as he coiled in the line. The wind was blowing up the back of the blue denim skirt she wore. She had pretty legs, he thought; and for a moment she reminded him of Sarah. Shaking his head slowly as the woman walked out of sight beyond some bales at the end of the pier, he snapped the cigar butt into the water.
Whatever happened with the predicted quake along the new fault line in Florida, he wanted the thing resolved. He wondered how much time there was left to find Sarah and the children. The wind was blowing harder and Rourke tugged the brim of the Stetson down lower over his eyes.
Chapter 14
Sarah Rourke leaned against the bales at the edge of the pier, hugging her arms close about her against the cold wind that whipped at her hair and at her legs ben
eath the skirt. She looked at the Ave Maria.
"Too big," she whispered to herself.
She couldn't envision Harmon Kleinschmidt being well enough to steer the boat away from the pier for at least a week or perhaps longer. Michael could help her cast off, but the only boats she had ever operated had been small outboards. Once she had driven a slightly larger boat when John had been waterskiing. She shook her head, telling herself she couldn't handle it. She would have to steal something, something smaller. She started back along the pier, noticing the Stargazer II that had attracted her attention earlier. There was a man wearing a sweater and a knit watchcap at the wheel, the boat pulling away from the pier. There was no sign of anyone else.