The Doomsayer
Page 16
The control tower loomed up ahead and Rourke fought the controls, working the ailerons, trying to bank the plane to starboard to miss the control tower with the portside wing tip. “Pray!” Rourke shouted, feeling Natalia’s hand on his thigh as he cut the controls, seeing the control tower drop off to his left, the building already starting to collapse.
As Rourke leveled off the twin Beechcraft, he looked down. Where there had seconds before been an airport runway, now there was ocean, waves surging as far as he could see.
Chapter 49
Sarah Rourke skidded the car to a halt. The brakes were bad, she thought, but at least it had gotten her to the beach. She could see the fisherman start toward her with the children from the rocks by the beach as she exited the car.
She ran across the rain-flooded highway, dropping to her knees in the water, hugging Michael and Annie to her.
She looked up at the fisherman. “Thank you. I just couldn’t have gone back with them.”
“I know, lady. That Kleinschmidt is a good fella, but comes on heavy. Hey—“
What was it, she thought. “I don’t understand.”
“Your name Sarah?”
“Yes, I thought you—“ but she stopped. She’d sent the children down with Mary Beth, had never seen the fisherman from less than a distance of several hundred feet.
“I just put it together— you and them kids. Sarah and Michael and Annie,” he said.
“Who?” Sarah started up to her feet, pushing the wet hair back from her eyes.
“He’s gone now. Went to Texas there by the Louisiana border to U.S. II headquarters. Some kind of mission. Name of John Rourke. Was lookin’ for you.”
Sarah dropped back to her knees in the rain-flooded highway, hugging her wet children to her. “Daddy’s alive!” John, she thought. John...
She could tell the difference. Now not only was there rain water running down her cheeks, but tears.
Sarah Rourke looked up at the fisherman. “After I get the horses, how far is it?”
“I don’t follow you, lady.”
“To Texas, I mean.” She hugged Michael and Annie again, not hearing if he had answered her or not.
Chapter 50
John Rourke stood in the rain. He’d landed the Beech-craft because the plane had almost been out of fuel. As best he’d been able to judge from the maps, the plane was about twenty-five miles from Chambers and U.S. II headquarters.
Paul was sitting in the plane, talking to his parents, the pilot had gone to find some kind of transportation. The radio wasn’t working well, too much static.
Beside Rourke stood Major Natalia Tiemerovna. “The truce will be over soon, John— it is over now, I think.”
“At least it showed we’re still human beings, didn’t it?” Rourke said quietly, his left hand cupped over his dark tobacco cigar, his right arm around Natalia.
“You will go on looking?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Where do you plan to go?”
“The Carolinas, maybe Georgia by Savannah. She was likely headed that way.”
“I hope you find her— and the children.”
Rourke looked at the Russian woman. Rainwater streamed down her face— and his. “Thank you, Natalia.”
The woman smiled, then lowered her eyes. She stood beside Rourke in the pouring down rain.
The End