The Quest s-3
Page 16
“Here.” Reed handed Rourke a dirty, folded Tennessee highway map. “It’s marked—up near some place called Mt. Eagle in the mountains. You know it.” “What,” Rourke said absently, not even opening the map, just staring at it in his hands. “Yeah, Mt. Eagle, yeah, I know it.” “John, thank God.”
Rubenstein threw his arms around Rourke, and Rourke slapped the younger man on the back.
“Reed,” Rourke stammered. “Fulsom—can you thank him for me, will you—?”
“I’ll see him. Just in case, I’m leaving Paul the radio set we have and some spare parts from the kit. You want to contact us, the frequency’ll be marked. One other thing.” “Yeah,” Rourke said, already standing at the edge of the rocks and staring down at the departing Russian troops. There was a small residual team up in the woods, carrying out the rubber bagged body of Colfax. “Looks like they’re going to give him a decent burial anyway.” “John, they’ll think maybe you found out before Colfax died. The Russians’ll want you. They want to know what the Eden Project was—almost more than we do. And you were right about that traitor—looks there’s someone in Chambers’s advisors who works for the Communists.” Almost disinterested, Rourke stuck out his hand. Reed took it. “I’ll be seeing you, Captain. Say goodbye to your men for me, huh?” Then, turning to Paul, Rourke said, “I’ll have Sarah cook you the best meal in the world at the retreat. I’ll see you there as soon as I can get them back.” “Sure, John—hey, John?”
Rourke turned and looked at the younger man.
“If something goes wrong, just—”
“It won’t,” Rourke said, smiling and snatching up his CAR-15. “It won’t.”
Chapter 43
It was dark, cold, raining still and the roads slick as Rourke turned off the highway and into the mountain passes. It had been a fool’s play taking what had once been the Interstate, but the fastest route. He’d dodged a Russian roadblock perhaps seventy-five miles back, then taken to the Interstate again.
The farm where Sarah was staying was less than twenty miles ahead according to the map.
Rourke passed a farm house, a demolished sandbag fence crumbling around it, the roof burnt off, and no signs of light or life in the rainy darkness.
He traveled on past dense woods, higher into the mountains, and saw a yellow light in the darkness. Rourke checked the map with the flickering blue-yellow flame of the Zippo, stopped and stared at the yellow light, lighting one of his small cigars and keeping the smoke cupped under his left hand as he stared past the darkness.
Sarah—he remembered the last time they had made love, just before he had gone to Canada just a few days before the night of the war. They had decided to try again. His passion, as she called it, for guns, for planning for disaster, for studying survivalism had been the undoing, she’d said so often, but she had been willing to try again, to see somehow if the two of them could resolve his planning for the inevitable with her yearning for peace. He remembered the look and smell of her dark hair, the gray-green eyes. He stared up at the starless sky, rain bathing his face. He remembered kissing her in the rain and how she tasted.
And there would be Michael, just six, but a man in so many ways already, the best of Sarah and the best of himself. And little Annie, four, small, beautiful, prone to too many tears and bizarre, but lovely laughter. Annie.
Rourke chewed down on the cigar butt, turned the bike toward the light and searched the trees for a path, found one and took the motorcycle across the field, the rain driving harder now.
Rourke stopped the jet-black Harley, kicked out the stand and dismounted, walking through the sloshing mud toward the small porch, the light—yellow and warm looking in the darkness—from a kitchen ceiling fixture. They apparently had a generator of their own, Rourke thought almost mechanically.
A dog barked, but not the howl of a wild one, and he stepped to the door and knocked. The door opened, the small porch flooded in the yellow light, and a red-haired boy in his mid-teens stood, his left arm in a sling and a pistol in his right hand.
“Relax, son,” Rourke almost whispered, seeing the older woman behind him. More to the woman than the boy, Rourke said, “I’m John Rourke. Are you Mary?” The woman nodded.
“My wife, Sarah—my boy, Michael—my daughter, Annie? I’ve come for them.”
“Oh, my God,” the woman said, tears welling up in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.
Rourke said nothing.
“She was worried about you. I offered that she could stay, or at least leave the little boy and girl here after what she did for my sister’s girl. I offered.” “Where are they?” Rourke whispered, staring down at the woman into the yellow light framing her just past the doorway, rain dripping from his face and hair, the light making him somehow lightheaded, around his eyes, and in his throat a tight feeling coming.
“She wouldn’t—wanted to go look for you. Back into Georgia. She left this morning—”
“Horseback?” Rourke asked, his voice funny sounding.
“Yes—one for her, one for the boy and girl, and one for their things.”
“Armed?” Rourke asked, the tight feeling growing in him.
“An AR-15 that somebody converted to full auto and a rubber-gripped .45 pistol,” the red-haired boy said.
“Are they well? No one had been injured?” Rourke asked as though filling out a report.
“Fine—healthy—nothin’ wrong with ‘em I reckon,” the woman stammered.
“Toward Georgia, you said,” Rourke asked. “Any idea of the route?”
“I think she was gonna take the old highway that runs along the Interstate, you know it,” the boy with the red hair said.
“Yes—thank you—and thank you, ma’am. We’ll never forget your kindness. Should she come back before I find her—her and the children—keep her here. And you, son,” Rourke said to the red-haired boy, his words hard now, “if she ever does, or you hear of where she is or where she’s been, get the Resistance to contact Army Intelligence in Texas. Somehow.” “Yes, sir,” the boy stammered, straightening his shoulders.
“Good night, ma’am,” Rourke said to the woman named Mary.
Wringing her hands on the floral-print apron she wore, she whispered. “God bless you and let you find them.” “Yes, ma’am,” Rourke said, forcing a smile, turning, walking down from the porch. He stopped by the Harley, the rain falling in sheets.
He was glad the woman hadn’t asked him to stay. She’d known, he felt, that he wouldn’t.
This morning—gone. Rourke sank to his knees in the mud beside the Harley, his lips drawn back, staring up at the lightless sky. “Why!” he shouted.
Rourke climbed up from his knees, realizing some of the wetness on his face wasn’t the rain, mounted the motorcycle, kicked up the stand, balanced the machine with his feet out of the mud ruts and throttled up as fast as he dared in the rutted field leading back toward the road.
He passed through the trees, turned back onto the country road, watched the rain in his single headlight, and gunned the Harley into the darkness, screaming, “Why!” -end-
FB2 document info
Document ID: 073fc645-b7fe-4859-933d-aca00c6b44d7
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 7.5.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.48 software
Document authors :
Ahern, Jerry
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