by Ahern, Jerry
Paul kept his cool. He shouted back, “Hey, you don’t wanna see ‘em, no big deal! m move on and sell ‘em someplace else.”
“The hell ya will!”
Paul stood his ground, his pistol still in his hand.
The big man was coming through an opening made for him in the barricade, his stride so long, it looked almost as if he could have crossed from one side of the river to the other without even needing a bridge to keep his feet dry.
“Blue eyes, huh? And he walked straight up to her, past Paul, grabbing Natalia by the neck with his right hand and almost lifting her off the ground. “Let’s see ‘em bitch!” She looked right at him. If he held her like this much longer, she’d have to try to kill him, because she couldn’t breathe.
“Keep your hands off til ya own her, man,” Paul said from behind him.
The big man started to laugh, his breath when he opened his mouth-his teeth were yellow, except for the ones that were black-more malodorous than anything she’d ever smelled in her life.
Then he let go of her neck and she almost fell, deciding to let herself tall, dropping to her knees, leaning forward and making a show of gasping for breath. On ber knees, she was even less to be noticed, less of a possible threat.
Above her, Paul and the big man-she hoped he was Boris-argued. “I don’t give no six rifles apiece for no damn piece o’ ass. I can take these from ya right now. Three rifles for both o’ ‘em and the drugs you wanted. That’s my deal, man. Take it or leave it.”
“Boris, huh? You a Russian?”
“So what? You want the three rifles or you warma be dead?” “What if I can get you more women like this?” “If they’re virgins?” “Virgins,” Paul said.
“Hell, for a steady supply of virgins-which you ain’t got, asshole-but I’d swap ya a rifle apiece and all the drugs ya want. Get high as the moon, I don’t give a shit.”
Paul touched his left hand to the back of his neck, as though rubbing away a cramp.
Natalia was waiting for the signal …
John Rourke heard the beeping in his left ear, one beep, then two, then one, men two. Paul was activating the radio signalling device located under the collar of his shirt.
John Rourke gave his son a “thumbs” up signal and they both started to climb …
Paul said, “You know, these two women. They’re worth a lot to me. Maybe I outghta take ‘em to the Land Pirates.”
Land Pirates was the signal.
Paul stabbed his pistol toward Boris.
Natalia’s right hand moved forward, the ropes falling away from her wrists as she made it to her feet, her left hand pulling away her gag, then clawing across Boris’s face, grabbing his right ear and twisting his powerful neck left, as the Bali-Song went click-click-click in her right hand and she had the point of the knife against his carotid artery behind and below his right ear. “Unconscious in five seconds and dead in twelve, if you move, fd just as soon you moved.”
Thirteen
John Rourke flipped the railing on his left hand, the ScoreMasters corning into his hands as his feet hit the bridge surface. “Hold it!”
As expected, the men who were starting to react to Paul and Annie and Natalia-six by the barricade and four beside the truck and one just climbing out from behind the wheel-turned toward him, starting for their weapons.
But John Rourke had planned ahead, arranging with his son that he would come onto the bridge the instant after he heard him shout.
Michael was on the bridge, an assault rifle in his right hand, the 44 Magnum Model 629 four-inch gleaming in his left. “Move and you die!”
Two of the men moved anyway, the driver of the truck and one of the men beside the barricade. John Rourke shouted as he fired, “Truck!”
The Detonics Scoremasters bucked once each in his hands as Rourke wheeled toward the barricade, the man dropping before his assault rifle could fire. Annie, one of Paul’s High Powers in her hands, fired at the man in the same instant, his body on its side, on the floor of the bridge.
The report from Michael’s assault rifle still echoed off the bridge’s metal struts.
No one else moved. Rourke shouted, “Natalia! Get that tiling into the truck. Annie! Get his weapons and toss them over the side into the river. Shoot his kneecaps out if he
causes any trouble. He just needs to be able to talk, not walk.”
Michael, a gun still in each hand, started herding die remaining nine men toward the center of the bridge. In minutes at the most, the rest of Boris, the slaver’s men, would be coming and John Rourke didn’t care to wait around to see them…
She locked three sets of disposable plastic restraints around Boris’s massive wrists, her knife to his ear as Annie secured his ankles. “You need a tongue to talk and one ear to listen, so this one is expendable if you move.”
“You-“
“Go ahead,” Natalia hissed through her teeth. “Call me something and see how fast you start losing body parts!”
He shut his mouth. Annie finished with his ankles and jumped down from the back of the truck, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
Natalia caught up her skirts with the same hand in which she held her knife and jumped to the bridge floor. “Go up to the cab with Paul. Ill join you in a minute.”
“All right”
“But give me Paul’s other Browning.”
Annie passed the 9mm to her, saying, “Ifs hot.”
“Right.” Natalia’s eyes glanced down at the pistol as she settled it in her hand. Cocked and locked. There had been thirteen rounds plus one in the chamber, and Annie fired two.
Twelve rounds, nine men. She flipped Bali-Song closed left-handed and dropped it in the side seam pocket of her dress. Natalia, her left hand holding together the top of her dress, started toward the nine men at the center of the bridge. One of them was the man who had talked so big, while she’d been bound and gagged.
Michael and John were looking at her as she approached. Michael cautioned, “We’re ranning out of time, Natalia.”
“Then these things who call themselves men had better
hurry or I will shoot each one of them.” And she shouted now at the nine men who stood with their hands clasped over their heads “Hear that? I am in a hurry. Remember how you shed your weapons?” Their guns and knives were in a pile on the bridge, near the far railing. “Let’s see you shed your clothes the same way. Be quick or be dead!”
Some of the men looked at one another, then looked at her. Natalia pointed the High Power at the biggest of the nine men. “Guess where I will shoot you!”
He started to undress…
Michael Rourke started hurling the guns and knives taken from the slavers over the bridge rail and into the river. Most of the guns were post-War and in terrible condition. There were a few Beretta 92F military pistols, but in such a condition of neglect that their value for parts would be dubious. The knives were big and flashy and of poor quality.
The last of the weapons tossed away, he looked back toward the center of the bridge.
Natalia was tall for a woman, but very slender. In the torn long dress she wore, she looked almost frail, her left hand holding her clothes together, her right hand holding a gun.
The last of the nine men was down to nothing.
Time was running out, but Natalia owed herself this, Michael Rourke realized. “Now, I want all of your to hold hands and form a circle, backs to the center. Move!
The nine men did as she ordered, looking stupid, just as she wanted, he knew.
Michael looked at his father. John Rourke, a .45 still in each hand, as he was standing beside the rear end of the truck, laughing out loud.
“Now,” Natalia ordered. “You will walk that way toward the tar end of the bridge. The first man who breaks the circle, dies. Start walking! Go on! Walk!” Tripping over each other, but holding hands as though their lives depended on it, they
started moving. “Faster! Come on!”
Michael Rourke, shaking his head, sm
iling, started for the truck…
Michael helped Natalia up into the cab of the truck Paul had driven here. The gesture, however unnecessary, was the gentlemanly thing to do.
John Rourke ran forward along the passenger side of the Eden military truck they were stealing from the slavers, toward the cab, climbing aboard, one foot inside, the other hanging free, his body weight on the open door, his right hand holding the radio detonator.
“We’re rolling!” Paul shouted, the truck starting forward, grinding through the gears of its automatic transmission as it picked up speed.
The truck carrying Michael and Natalia was already off the bridge and on the semi-paved excuse for a road leading to it, gathering speed.
John Rourke looked back. The nine naked men were running for their lives now, vehicles of all descriptions coming onto the bridge from the far end, some of the naked men rwinting beMnd them, toward the near end of the bridge.
The vehicles were entering onto the bridge, driving four across, filling the bridge from one side to the other. Shots rang out, the range too great for any accurate effect.
John Rourke looked at the detonator switch in his right hand. The stolen truck was clear of the bridge, onto the road. “Daddy? Are you going to-“
Tm holding out for maximum effect, Annie. Just another few seconds,” Rourke told his daughter.
The wind of their slipstream tore at Rourke’s face and hair and ears.
The lead element of the enemy vehicles was approaching the near end of the bridge, coming up fast. John Rourke flipped the release from the protective cover.
He put his thumb over the red button.
He depressed the button and counted, “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three-” John Rourke didn’t throw away the detonator because doubtless, he would need it again.
The near end of the bridge buckled upward, the supports beneath it flying outward to right and left, the sounds from the six explosive charges all but blocked by the sound of twisting and tearing metal.
The near end of the bridge collapsed inward, men and equipment careening through the air, where seconds earlier die bridge had been falling, now the bridge collapsing around them.
John Rourke swung into the cab and pulled the door closed. He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and said, “On to bigger and better things.
Fourteen
The trail used by the smugglers and slavers who dealt with the Land Pirates was not through the rift valley but along the plateau to its west. Much of the land here was radioactive or chemically contaminated. By trial and error, the smugglers and slavers had found a safe route.
But it could be traveled by horseback alone, the electrical storms which whipped across the plateau on either side, coming without warning, sometimes lacerating the barren ground with heavy rains. Sometimes electrical activity alone, would neutralize the electrical system of any vehicle the smugglers and slavers possessed. So, teams of horses, four abreast, as many as twelve animals in all per vehicle, were used to tow engineless trucks which carried in plunder and carried out women, from the stronghold of the Land Pirates.
Boris was left to Natalia and Annie to interrogate, and whatever they threatened to do to him-Paul Rubenstein did not want to know-Boris proved a font of information. Like bullies everywhere, without his friends to back him up, he was a coward. The tapes made of his answers during the interrogation provided even more information that they had expected.
Indeed, Martin Zimmer was with the Land Pirates. For years, Zimrnef had let them exist, even helped them, but now he was forming a formal alliance. With promises of the latest in Eden military equipment and a steady supply of women and anything else they wanted from Eden, he was consummating an arrangement by which the Land Pirates would systemati
cally hit every settlement in the Wildlands.
The objective, as far as Boris knew, was to kill anyone who might oppose Martin Zimmer, kidnap the usable women and kill the rest, along with the children who were too young for sexual or other uses. Then he would impress the healthy men into the service of Eden. Boris knew many of the details, he revealed, because he was trying to work an alliance with the Land Pirates where he could “get in on the action” and make a profit.
Martin wanted to assemble an army in the west before he attacked the Allies, an army that would cover his back.
Boris also revealed that route used by the Land Pirates through the rift valley was secure not so much because it was a secret, but because of the plasma energy weapons that were installed along its length. The weapons-energy cannons-were programmed to fire automatically when motion sensors hidden along the walls of the rift valley, detected movement.
When the Land Pirates exited or entered, the defense system was shut down in stages, but never completely off.
The larger vehicles used by the Land Pirates-and intelligence data corroborated this-were enormous, mobile fortresses almost the size of World War Two aircraft carriers, moving over any obstacle their sheer momentum and weight did not crush, on a system of independentiy operating treads, each of these many times larger than those used in twentieth century tanks.
Paul had wondered, from the intell data and again after Boris’s interrogation covered them, how such machines could operate without just sinking into the ground out of sheer weight.
But the tread design and independent drive for each tread system, John theorized, allowed the vehicle to tow itself out of anything, without ever becoming stuck or bogged down.
The Land Pirates possessed ^sufficient technology to build such vehicles, or program computer controlled weapons. But, Eden did. According to Boris, agents of Eden actually con
trolled the Land Pirates. And the vehicles were built in Eden. Even if no one knew, Boris had said, Eden had hundreds of these vehicles, built in secret, ready to deploy against the allies.
Paul Rubenstein had studied Latin five days a week in high school (and Hebrew over the weekend, of course). At last, he finally remembered something he’d been trying to recall since the first data on Eden was given to him, after this last Awakening.
It was about Martin Zimmer’s name. In Latin, Martin meant the warlike. It seemed to be a name that fit.
Fifteen
It was good to be back in her own clothes, her skirt a respectable length.
She remembered the lovely young Chinese agent who had ridden sidesaddle, and tried to teach her to do the same. Annie Rubenstein could have done it, she supposed, but what was the sense? Riding astride had once been considered terribly unfeminine, she knew, from the books she had read, the video tape movies she had watched. But, riding astride was the most practical way to get from one place to another on horseback.
Someday, there might be a world in which she could ride for pleasure, because she genuinely liked riding horseback. But not in this world.
After two nights of camping in the Wildlands without even so much as an hermetically sealed tent, she felt positively grubby and didnt even want to think about her hair. But this was her job as much as it was her father’s job or her husband’s job or her brother’s job-or Natalia’s.
She had noticed it subconsciously, feelings from her rather, about this man named Martin Zimmer. And the nearer they came to the Land Pirates stronghold, the greater sense of unease she felt.
Last night, in their dark and cold camp, the electrical activity in the sky becoming maddeningly intense and cold rains washing down on them, her father had spoken of their plan. This Martin Zimmer, whoever he is,” her father began, “is
getting ready for war. If he attacks the allies, eventually it will come to nuclear weapons. Intelligence data indicates he has gas and biological weapons as well. The allies won’t have any choice but to defend themselves with their own nuclear weapons. Parts of the earth are starting to return to life. Other parts may never come back. If there’s another nuclear war now, we all know what that will mean.
“And Martin has to be counting on that.”
Why did her father call this man by his first name, rather than calling him “Zimmer”? The feelings were stronger in her, as if someone were invading her thoughts without trying.
She urged her horse ahead along the track that paralleled the rift valley where once the Mississippi had flowed.
This was once the land of Mark Twain and his Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and his Becky.
But in another few hours’ ride, it would be the stronghold of the Land Pirates …
He had already formulated a plan, and if the terrain, as the talkative Boris had described it, were close enough in reality, they would have a decent chance of making it inside. Escaping the stronghold was another question, but he had plans for that as well, again very dependent on Boris’s information.
Martin Zimmer.
John Rourke was already beginning to understand that. He could see it in Annie, almost sense it in her. But, even if he had Annie’s ability (gift or curse)-and he thanked God that he did not-he would have fought it, rejected it.
Martin Zimmer.
It was not that sort of feeling, any sixth sense message. It was something that to him would always be more powerful and inevitable.
It was logic.
It was necessity.
John Rourke urged his mount ahead with his knees and
heels.
To travel anywhere near the rift valley, Hilda and Dan and Margie required horses. These animals, she understood, were in part the descendants of horses given to Eden by New Germany over a century ago. The animals given to them by the Allied agents were a curious breed.
Natalia had ridden horseback all over the world, only occasionally for pleasure. The German horses were very strongly Arab in their lineage. But these horses of Eden were only partly Arab and part American quarter horse. Aboard the Eden shuttles, there were cryogerucally-frozen embryos of all the domestic animals that could concievably be useful is the retaking of a devastated earth.
The horse, after the camel, was the ultimate form of four-legged transportation, and far easier to control, not to mention more comfortable to ride.