by Ahern, Jerry
He holstered the gun, having upped the safety, then looked back at the half-eaten skeleton in the car. He knew now what had half-eaten it.
He found rags and made a torch, lit them from the licking flames of the gas station office and tossed the rags into the car seat to dispose of the dead man. The rabid dogs should be burned or buried to prevent the spread of infection, he thought. Cursing softly, he went back to the Harley, got his gloves and his trench shovel and started up the shoulder of the road, looking for a soft spot.
Digging the grave and hauling the six dead animals had consumed forty-five minutes, he noted, as he wiped off the blade of the trench shovel and strapped it with his pack on the back of the bike. “Dammit,” Rourke muttered half-aloud. He stowed the gloves in his pack and remounted his cycle. He had not wasted the time spent digging the mass grave for the rabid animals. He turned the Harley down the road leading from the Interstate. The fire had probably been set—that meant brigands, and Rourke wanted an idea of their strength. He started up toward the mountains again.
When Rourke stopped once more, his watch and the sunlight agreed—it was approximately three o’clock: the wind was stronger and the temperature getting cooler. He had left the highway—a two-lane road—and turned off onto dirt and followed this along toward a valley. Lying on his belly, he stared into the valley now, his eyes tight against the binoculars, the objective lenses sweeping the town in the valley floor. There was one main street, and at its end by the edge of the town was a large, wide grave. For two people, he thought. In the town, standing around a long abandoned pickup truck were more than a dozen men and women, their vehicles parked at the opposite end of the street—an assortment of pickup trucks, several motorcycles of varying quality and one badly damaged station wagon.
More of the brigands waited by the vehicles: Rourke guessed there were thirty of them in the valley all told. He edged along the lip of the valley, getting back into tree cover to avoid detection; he was concerned they might have someone exploring the rim of the valley.
Still able to see into the town, though his field of view was reduced, Rourke waited for more than fifteen minutes, observing through the Bushnells— finally, the knot of brigand men and women broke up around the abandoned pickup truck and they started back toward the vehicles and the rest of their number back at the other side of the town. Rourke didn’t smile. He planned to slip down into the town; the large grave bore investigation, he thought.
It was another ten minutes before the last of the brigand vehicles disappeared in the distance, then Rourke waited another five minutes. Patience was something he knew he could never sacrifice. Swinging the CAR-15 into position—slung now just under his right arm suspended from his right shoulder—the chamber still loaded, the safety on, he slipped down along the side of the valley, past pine trees, guiding around through bushes. He skidded the last few feet to the valley floor on the dirt and gravel, dropping into a low crouch, the muzzle of the CAR-15 sweeping from one side of the street to the other. Standing—the safety off, his finger near the trigger—he edged forward, the scoped rifle’s stock collapsed, his left hand free.
Spent cartridge casings littered the ground and where there was dirt rather than paving, the cartridges were half buried. From the corrosion and the depth to which the cartridges were covered with dirt, he judged there had been a large scale, prolonged gunfight there—but several weeks earlier. There were picked clean bones in the street, some of the skeletons still partially clad with rotting clothing, but all this with rips and tears. He stopped at one body, looking through the shredded shirt and the bare bleached rib cage. There was a tarnished police badge on the ground. Rourke looked at the empty eye sockets in the skull. The skull was punctured by what Rourke judged as .45 ACP Slugs. The man had apparently died doing his duty trying to defend his town. Rourke scanned the ground, found a half-fallen-down wooden sign, ripped it down the rest of the way, and dragged it back, laying it over the top half of the dead police officer. He kept walking. There were more cartridge cases, some plastic shot-shell cases, a rusted and bent-out-of-shape magazine for some pistol he couldn’t immediately identify.
He walked back through the town then, going up to the grave, which was unmarked. He wondered, debating whether to go back up to the bike and get his shovel. He started to turn toward the near side of the valley, to climb back toward where he’d hidden the bike, but stopped. There were motors rumbling in the distance and he saw the grille of a pickup truck turning down the street into the town. Rourke ran, his lips drawn back from his teeth, toward the closest edge of the valley. He half dove into the brush, then dropped: the brigands were returning. He couldn’t afford to be trapped in the valley. He started up the slope. His bike was in the other direction, but he could circle to get it. Rourke reached the rim of the valley, sinking to the ground from the uphill deadrun.
The brigands were returning in force. He mentally noted to return and check the gravesite later. He started off through the brush again, circling wide along the rim of the valley toward the Harley. He heard a noise, dropped into a crouch near some bushes and waited. The noise did not repeat itself, and he dismissed it, but stared at the ground.
He took the bayonet from his belt—the Bowie knife was in his pack—and scratched at the ground with the tip of the blade. It was a foil packet from some of the food similar to what he had left for Sarah, buried but partially uncovered. Some animal had probably scented it, begun to dig it out then, but been frightened off. In the corner of the package was a black ink date stamp—he stamped all his food with the date of acquisition.
“Sarah,” he thought, muttering the name out loud. He moved along the ground on his hands and knees, searching for some further clue he hoped to find. He stopped again. More of the food packages—and a footprint. He dropped back on his haunches, leaned against a tree trunk, and his face broadened with a smile. “Annie,” he sighed. He took off the sunglasses and stared at the footprint, faint but clear. With the tip of the bayonet blade he deepened the lines of the footprint—a child’s tennis shoe with a design in the center. He remembered when he’d been with Sarah and the children prior to leaving for Canada, a few days before the night of the war. Annie had proudly made him look at the soles of her new tennis shoes: there was a daisy, a raised yellow daisy in the center of each sole. As he scratched the ground with the point of the bayonet, he drew out the design of a flower— a daisy. “Annie!” He walked the area, uncaring about the brigands in the valley below. There were the remains of several fires, branches to which he could tell horses had been tied. They had camped there, were traveling by horseback and, from the branch markings, he judged, there were three or four horses—Tildie, Sarah’s mare and Sam, his own horse—and at least one, possibly two other horses. He sat down on the ground. The Jenkins family had lived nearby, he remembered suddenly; they rode. Mr. Jenkins—Rourke couldn’t remember his first name—had been in the Army or Marine Corps, Rourke couldn’t remember which. A retired non-com, Rourke recalled. If Sarah and the children were with Jenkins and his wife—didn’t they have a daughter, he tried remembering?
Rourke realized too that if this had been their camp—and he was sure it had—they were likely miles away, but on horseback the mileage they could cover was nothing compared to what he could cover on the Harley.
He got to his feet, searching the camp area in greater detail, the light starting slowly to fade now, the wind picking up again. He could tell nothing of the direction in which they had gone, but he guessed the mountains. On a hunch, he decided to head north. If the mountains were thought safe, then the deeper in the mountains, the safer. He took off at a run for the Harley, checking on the brigands in the town down in the valley once more, then emptied the chamber of the CAR-15 and mounted up.
“Tennessee,” he said half-aloud, starting the bike between his legs. With horses they would be lucky to make twenty miles in a day—especially with the children—there would have to be other campsites, telltale leavings of foo
d, footprints. He wondered if there would be more cartridge cases, forcing himself not to consider what could lie in the large grave at the edge of the town.
Chapter 18
Rourke skidded the Harley to a stop. In the half-light as darkness was laying long shadows from the tall pines across the ground he had almost missed them, six men, armed, wearing camouflage clothing and moving in rapid dog trot across the clearing.
Rourke started for the Detonics .45 under his left arm, his nearest gun, wrestling the bike to the left with his left hand, the stainless Detonics coming into his hand, his thumb drawing back the semi-spurless hammer, the muzzle snaking forward to fire, his left hand free of the bike already reaching for the second of the two pistols under his right armpit.
“Rourke! Is that you?”
Rourke stopped his left hand, his right arm fully extended, his finger against the trigger. “Rourke? John Rourke?” Rourke lowered the Detonics in his right fist, but only slightly, not quite recognizing the voice, but knowing it sounded familiar. “John Rourke!” the voice repeated.
Rourke stepped off the Harley, balancing it on the stand, the gun hanging at his right side, the hammer still cocked, his finger beside the trigger guard. He started toward the tallest of the six camouflaged figures, the man speaking. He recognized the voice now.
“Reed? Captain Reed?”
“Yes. John Rourke! God, what a sight for sore eyes, man!”
Rourke hated that expression: “a sight for sore eyes.” If it made your eyes sore, he’d always thought then why want to see it? And if your eyes were sore to begin with, seeing something however welcome would do little to make them less sore. He realized as he walked toward Reed, that among his many credits before the war had not been a famous sense of humor.
“Captain Reed,” Rourke said softly, realizing he still had the gun in his right hand. He upped the safety and switched it to his left hand, and took Reed’s offered hand.
“Rourke, we got airdropped in here last night. I kept hoping somehow we’d bump into you, man.”
“Well,” Rourke said, glancing over his shoulder around the clearing, “if we keep standing around out here in the open, we won’t be air dropped, we’ll be dropped. Come on.” And without waiting for Reed, Rourke turned, walked across the clearing in broad strides, lowering the safety then lowering the hammer on the Detonics, reholstering it under his jacket as he approached the Harley. He climbed on the bike, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll meet you over in those trees there.” He lighted a cigar, sheltering the lighter from both the wind and anyone who might be watching, and started the bike off slowly across the clearing and into the trees.
He sat straddling the bike, waiting for Reed and the other five men, hearing them approach a moment later at a run, Reed barking commands, “Bradley, get over there and keep a lookout. Michaelson, same for you but over there. Jackson, Cooley, Monro, take up positions along the tree line on that side about twenty or thirty yards apart. Move out! Alert is a long whistle, then two short.” As the men started off, Reed called after them, “Everybody whistle?” Then he waved for them to go on, turned to Rourke, and fished out a cigarette. Rourke pulled out his lighter and flicked the wheel of the Zippo. Reed bent down to the flame cupped in Rourke’s hands. “It’s gettin’ cold. You know, you miss that, no weather forecast, and then the weather has been changing so much.” “Yeah, I know,” Rourke offered.
“So what are you doin’ here?”
“Haven’t seen a dark-haired woman and two children, maybe with another man and a woman and a child—little girl, I think—probably on horseback?” “No,” Reed said staring at the Harley. “Nothin’ even close to that. Why?”
“My wife and children—saw some sign of them back about thirty miles, but it’s from several weeks ago.” “But at least they’re alive,” Reed said, slapping
Rourke on the shoulder.
“Question is to find them though,” Rourke said. Rourke opened up with few people he realized, and Reed—a nice enough guy, Rourke thought—wasn’t one of them, “Hey, listen,” Reed said. “I could use a guy like you—ex-CIA, weapons specialist—you’re from around here—could even give me the lay of the land.” “I’m otherwise occupied,” Rourke said flatly.
“Yeah, but it’s important.”
“So’s finding my wife and children, Reed,” Rourke responded.
“I know that, but this is for the good of all of us.”
“I don’t really give a damn about the good of all of us. Organized government screwed things up the first time, it’ll screw things up again. I’m finding my wife and children, and then I’ll figure what kind of game I’m playing.” Rourke started to ease up on his bike. Reed reached out and put his hand on Rourke’s left arm. Rourke glared at him in the gathering shadow. “Don’t!” “Wait—maybe I can help you if you help me.”
“I’m listening,” Rourke told him.
“All right. Let me explain what we’re doing.”
“I don’t care what you’re doing, Reed. No offense, but I don’t give a damn.”
“Yeah, but I can help you find your woman and kids.”
“How?” Rourke asked.
“We’ve got an intelligence network getting together, all sorts of places, use couriers, low-frequency radio—lots of ways of keeping in touch. If I put out the word that’s dozens more pairs of eyes looking for them. How fast is one man going to find them? Huh?” “What do you want?” Rourke almost whispered.
“Some cooperation—maybe an extra hand with a gun if it comes to that. You in?”
“Just how good,” Rourke rasped, “is that organization of yours, Reed, good enough, big enough to find Sarah?” “We won’t know unless we try. This’ll maybe cost you a few days, maybe save you weeks or months, maybe make the difference for you in finding them or not.” “I’ll find them,” Rourke stated. “Tell me what you’re here for.”
“All right,” Reed said, stomping out his cigarette butt on the ground.
“That’s got a filter,” Rourke said. “They take years to disintegrate; some kinds can take decades. Dead giveaway someone’s been here, too.” Reed looked at Rourke, then bent over, and picked up the cigarette butt, stripped away the paper and tobacco and pocketed the filter in the breast pocket of his camouflaged fatigue blouse. “Satisfied?” Reed snapped.
Rourke nodded.
“Okay, then,” Reed began again. “We’re here for two reasons; We want a low down on the Soviet posture in Georgia—Karamatsov just got transferred in here on assignment—you should be interested in that.” “Natalia,” Rourke murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Rourke said, trying to mean it.
“All right, but the main reason we’re here, and probably Karamatsov too, is we’re looking for a guy—you might even know him—he has a place somewhere around here, vacation home. Name is Jim Colfax. He’s an ex-astronaut, big shot in NASA public relations before the war.” “Why would anyone want him?”
“Ever hear of something called the Eden Project when you were with the company?”
Rourke thought for a moment. There were so many coded files, so many top-secret projects. But the Eden Project wasn’t one he recalled.
“I haven’t heard of it,” Rourke told Reed.
“Well, neither had anybody else. We were sifting through the ruins of the Houston space center— found a charred file folder, and inside all we could make out was Eden Project, but nobody’s left from NASA that we can find, except Colfax if he’s still alive that is—and he should be right here in Georgia.” “Why, just because he had a vacation home here?”
“And he was speaking at the University in Athens the night before the bombing. It was the last engagement on a speaking tour, then he had a few weeks off.” “Hell of a way to spend a vacation—with a nuclear war,” Rourke observed.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Reed said.
“So you want to find him to find out what the Eden Project was.”
“We t
hink it has to do with some launches at Cape Canaveral, just before the place got a direct hit—and we think the Russians are interested in it too.” Rourke looked up at the darkening sky. Was there someone up there, he wondered, or something that was a new horror. “I’ll give you a description of my wife, my son, my daughter, the horses they were probably riding—then some poop on the Jenkins couple they might have been with—get it out as fast as you can. Got a radio?” “Yeah, if I only use it a few minutes at a time so they can’t peg us.”
“You want my help,” Rourke said, “then you get the description out—now. I’ll write the details for you, and I’ll listen while you send.” Rourke fished a zippered notebook from his backpack on the back of the Harley, then began to write. He stopped. Was beautiful a valid description for Sarah, and how about Michael and Annie—handsome for him, cute for her? He decided on something more exact in nature.
An hour later, the message was sent and Rourke had committed to meet Reed and the others outside Athens at noon the following day. Two hours from the retreat, Rourke rode hard through the night.
Chapter 19
Rourke sat on the sofa, his hair still wet from the shower, a glass of whiskey in his right hand, a cigar burning in the ashtray beside him. Rubenstein had already eaten by the time Rourke returned, and nearly jumped out his skin, as Rourke had thought, when he’d seen Rourke walk in—three days early and with news of an American Intelligence team insertion in the area.
“Did Captain Reed ask about me?”
“No, sorry,” Rourke told the younger man.
Rourke had fixed himself a can of stew and poured the beef, vegetables, and gravy over bread, then eaten it quickly. He sat in the great room, wanting to think. Finally, sipping at the top of his second drink, he shouted to Rubenstein, who was sitting on the far side of the room, reading. “Paul! What do you think— the Eden Project, something to do with Cape Canaveral—what does it suggest?” Rubenstein seemed lost in thought for several moments, then looked up, and said, “Well, the Eden reference seems to mean some sort of beginning— maybe beginning again.” “Yeah,” Rourke said.