by Jerry Ahern
“Triangle,” he said in English.
In his mind he formed one leg of a triangle be-tween Bevington, Kentucky and the crosshatched area where peninsular Florida had once been, to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. He looked to the west across the map.
There was only one other place—and somehow Karamatsov must have known of it, the reason why a KGB base had been established at the over-run Air Force Base in Texas. He drew the other leg of the triangle, Be-vington, Kentucky and the factory there repre-senting the triangle’s apex.
His eye drew the baseline—between the Ken-nedy Space Center and Houston, Texas.
“The Johnson Space Center,” he whispered.
After the Texas volunteer militia and U.S. II forces had retaken the base, Karamatsov and Ma-jor Tiemerovna barely escaping with their lives, Soviet freedom of action in Texas had been se-verely reduced.
“The Johnson Space Center—”
He turned to the telephone on his desk—waiting an instant. If he were wrong, there was really no other place to look and he would be dead. They would all be dead.
He lifted the receiver. “This is Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy—the Elite Corps strike force duty officer—I wish to speak with him immedi-ately—”
The cigarette had burned down between his fin-gers and yellowed his flesh.
Chapter Twenty-one
She leaned against the fuselage of the plane, the prototype F-111. One more crate remained, M-16
rifles. She looked skyward—the horizon was pink-tinged, thunder rumbling in the east, streaks of lightning across the pink line between day and night.
She could hear Paul coming back from the cam-ouflaged Ford pickup—and she turned to watch him. He moved like a man twice his age, his left arm stiff at his side. Natalia turned quickly away from him, to the crate of rifles, reaching out for it, drawing it to-ward her—it was only twenty feet or so to the truck and perhaps—
“Hey— what the hell are you doin’?”
“I’m trying to move the crate—what’s it look like, Paul?”
She felt him shove past her, felt, heard the pain it caused his arm as they made contact. His right hand was beside hers on the crate’s rope handle, wrenching the crate away from her at an awkward angle.
“I take one end, you take the other—just like we’ve been doing,” he said, not looking at her.
“I can do it—your arm—”
“Bullshit—your abdomen, probably still weak from the surgery—all I need is for you to rupture that area where John operated—now get out—”
Her left hand went against his chest as she turned to face him, shoving him back. “All I need is for you to die—get your arm bleeding again. Bullshit to you, too, Paul!”
She was screaming at him.
She stopped.
Rubenstein leaned forward, against the fuse-lage. He was laughing. Natalia, too, felt herself begin to laugh. “What do you say we just leave this crate of rifles, huh?” he smiled.
“What do you say we just carry it like the other ones—hmm? That’s a better idea.”
“Yeah—it is a good idea—and you’re a good lady,” and then he turned to face her fully, and as his right arm moved out to her, she leaned her head against his chest.
Without his strength—not the physical kind, despite her sex she was his equal in physical stam-ina and endurance, though he was better in agil-ity—life would have been sadder for her.
Chapter Twenty-two
Mary Mulliner stood beside the entrance to the bunker, the children pressed against her as she hugged them, John Rourke stood next to Sarah Rourke, beside the dented light blue pickup truck Pete Critchfield had scrounged for them—like Rourke’s own pickup, which he imagined by now Natalia and Paul had used to empty the F-l 11 and ferry the supplies to the Retreat, this too was a Ford. It was a “loan,” but both Rourke and Critchfield had known the likelihood of the truck’s being re-turned was remote to the point of nonexistence.
Rourke held his wife’s right hand in his left, his right hand holding the scoped CAR-15. The golden retriever belonging to Mary Mulliner ran between Sarah and where Mary and the children stood—it yelped.
It looked like a good dog, Rourke thought.
He let go of his wife’s hand, to glance at the black-faced Rolex Submariner he wore. It was nearly eight-thirty.
The Harley was packed, ready.
“I know,’” Sarah told him softly. “But she loves them—always acted like a grandmother to them, or an aunt. I can’t just say—”
But then Mary Mulliner’s voice, from across the yard, cut her off. “John Rourke—I don’t know if you know what you got here. These two chil-dren—and this boy of yours is more of a man than most men I’ve ever heard tell of. And your wife—she’s been pinin’ for you, John Rourke. Keep her good.”
“Yes, ma’am—I intend to,” Rourke nodded.
Then Mary Mulliner started across the yard. Michael and Annie hugged against her hips as she walked. The dog was barking maddeningly.
“Hush,” she hissed to the dog, and the golden obeyed, stretching out at her feet as she stopped a yard away from Rourke and his wife. “The dog—misses Bill, I guess,” and she started to smile, then burst into tears. Sarah folded the older woman in her arms and hugged her tightly. Rourke watched, felt his children tugging at him. Affection, he suddenly realized, had always been hard for him.
He closed his eyes as the golden retriever started barking again.
Chapter Twenty-three
She drove the truck, tears in her eyes, Annie sit-ting—quietly—beside her. Ahead of her was John Rourke, riding behind him on the Harley-Davidson sat Michael, Mi-chael’s hair blowing in the wind, as was her hus-band’s—Michael was his miniature—in almost all ways. In the side-view West Coast mirror—cracked by a bullet—she could see them standing there, Pete Critchfield, Tom, Mary Mulliner—the others.
Sarah Rourke looked down at her T-shirt—she had changed back into her normal clothes after the gunfight, no time for sleep, for rest—only time to prepare for the trek to the Retreat. Pinned to the front of her T-shirt—she felt at once stupid and proud—was a Silver Star. The medal had been given Pete Critchfield’s son who had died years earlier in the Viet Nam War. Pete, pinning it to her T-shirt, startling her as he’d reached for her, had said, “Sarah—this war, well—we don’t have no medals, nothin’ for brav-ery. Like you’ve been ever since we met you. You hadn’t killed those first coupla Brigand bikers last night, no tellin’ if n they’d have got down into the bunker and maybe killed us all—or a lot of us, leastwise. So—my boy won it, then got blown up by one of them mortar attacks—near the DMZ. So—it’s your medal now—earned it just as much as he did, I reckon,” and he had kissed her.
She looked down at the medal again.
She didn’t need the Silver Star to remember Pete Critchfield, or Mary Mulliner’s husband’s pistol to remember young Bill who had given it to her.
She would remember David Balfry. The black man, Tom. Curley, the radio specialist. Mary Mulliner—remember them all, her family for a while.
Until her dying day.
She upshifted as she finished the turn out of the burned-down quarter horse farm. The Cunningham place.
Chapter Twenty-four
The camouflaged Ford was parked, the cases of rifles and ammunition and medical gear and other supplies from the aircraft in the truck bed—Nata-lia too exhausted to bother moving them, Paul too weak.
She had insisted he go to bed—he had insisted on a shower. She had been too tired to argue it with him. She sat, now, on the floor just outside the bath-room, listening for the sounds of him in the shower, afraid he was too weak to keep standing. She had offered to bathe him—and he had actually blushed. She smiled at the thought.
Love was a strange thing.
Her love for Paul was deep friendship, her love for Rourke something else entirely. But Natalia wasn’t certain what.
There was a loud squeaking noise
and she heard a gasped “Shit!”
She was on her feet, inside the bathroom, rip-ping open the shower. She dropped to her knees beside the tub, bending into it, Rubenstein’s left arm dripping blood, Rubenstein collapsed in the back of the shower, the blood washing across his naked body, making a tiny stream of pinkish red toward the drain, his right leg drawn up, his left outstretched. Natalia was up, stepping into the bathtub, care-ful of her footing, her left hand turning down the shower, her right hand reaching out for Paul.
His head raised, his eyes odd-seeming without his glasses on—she sometimes forgot they ever came off. His speech slurred a little, he whispered, “Slipped, I guess—ha,” and he forced a smile.
“Did you hit your head?” she said leaning over him. As her eyes glanced down, she saw him com-ing erect between his legs.
“Get out of here—”
Tm going to see if you’re all right—”
“I haven’t been this close to—”
“I know,” she smiled. “There’s nothing to be em-barrassed about—it’s a normal reaction—you haven’t got any clothes on, that’s all—”
And Rubenstein laughed, “This is stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” she said, feeling the back of his head, parting his wet hair to see if he’d injured himself.
“I’m naked in the shower with the most beauti-ful woman I’ve ever seen and what am I doing—wishing for an erection to go down because I’m embarrassed.”
She kissed his forehead quickly, stepping out of the shower, reaching out to help him to his feet.
“That didn’t help me,” he smiled….
She had stopped the bleeding, bandaging his arm after forcing him to let her finish washing him—men were babies, she thought. As if any woman could reach maturity and not know what a penis looked like. And she put him to bed, giving him some of the painkiller John had prescribed for him, covering him, turning off the light, and going immediately back into the bathroom. It needed cleaning after the flood from the shower. She started working at that, getting up her bootprints, drying the floor. She badly wanted a shower, but more badly wanted a cigarette, leaving the bathroom, walking down the three steps and into and across the Great Room to the couch. Her guns, still holstered, were on the coffee table. She found her cigarettes in the black canvas bag that doubled as purse and light-load backpack. She lit one, inhaling the smoke deep into her lungs, sitting back in the couch. She stared up at the ceiling for a while—the sta-lactites there reminding her of something she didn’t wish to be reminded of, really, but making her laugh. “Paul,” she smiled. She rolled onto her belly, supporting herself on her elbows.
On the end table beside the couch she saw the photograph—Rourke, Sarah, Michael, and An-nie. Michael was his father—the perfect minia-ture, she thought. And someday, if they all survived that long, he would be the perfect dupli-cate rather than perfect miniature.
She looked at Sarah’s face. “What kind of woman are you, Sarah?”
She rolled onto her back then, closing her eyes, still smoking her cigarette. She was past falling asleep. If Rourke found his family, or if he found that they could not be found, it would forever change her life. She could not sleep.
She thought about Sarah Rourke—how was it to be the wife of John Rourke? To cook for him, to keep his clothes clean? How was it to sleep with him?
She—Natalia—had slept beside him, in his arms. He had kissed her. But because of Sarah, he would not—
Natalia sat up, stubbing out her cigarette.
She decided to light another one.
Alone in the Great Room, through an exhaled cloud of gray smoke, she told herself, “I would be blindingly lucky at cards.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Rourke skidded the Harley to an arcing stop— “Shit,” he snarled. Coming around the bend of the two-lane highway they rode, Mi-chael behind him on the Low Rider, Sarah driv-ing the borrowed pickup truck, Annie with her, there was a Soviet motorized patrol. The lead men on motorcycles slowed their bikes, stopped them, raising AKs, one of them shouting in poor English, “To halt—to halt! To raise the hands!”
Rourke raised his right hand, snatching at the Python in the hip holster, rasping to Michael, “Hang on tight, son!” He double-actioned the Metalifed six-inch .357 twice, the Mag-Na-Ported Colt rock steady in his balled right fist, the Russian who’d spoken, then taken both slugs, falling backward across his motorcycle, rolling to the roadway surface.
The second Russian biker was sweeping the muzzle of his AKM to fire—Rourke emptied the remaining four shots from the Python’s cylinder into the man’s center of mass, the AKM starting to fire, into the road surface, then up, Rourke passing the revolver back to Michael— “Here—hold this—barrel’s hot—” The Harley, Rourke wrenched it around, gunning the engine, shout-ing to the truck, “Sarah—get out of here!”
But the vehicle was already backing up, cut-ting a ragged, bumping, lurching arc in reverse, the light blue Ford pickup shuddering visibly, the engine roaring, a screech of tires as the pickup cut a sharp left down the highway, Rourke almost up even to it.
Sarah was shouting something as he came level with the cab—Rourke couldn’t hear over the engine noises, the slipstream, and the gun-fire coming from behind them.
But he knew what she wanted—he nodded to her, raising his left hand, then slashing it down quickly. The Ford started into a skidding stop, Rourke slowing the Harley, stopping beside the truck cab. Sarah was leaning across the seat, the passenger side door opening fast, bouncing back on its hinges.
“Michael—into the truck—gimme my gun—you and your sister—down on the floor!”
He half threw the boy from behind him on the bike saddle to Sarah’s hands reaching across An-nie, crushing her, it seemed, against the seat-back—but Annie was reaching for him, too— “Got him,” Sarah shouted, Rourke slamming the door as his son cleared it, gunning the Harley as he holstered the empty Python, the Ford peeling out, gravel bits and a cloud of dust in its wake. The CAR-15—Rourke swung it forward on its sling, earing back the bolt, both hands on it ten-sioned against the sling, the stock collapsed. He started pumping the trigger—Russian soldiers, some running on foot, Russian bikers behind them—he fired into the lead elements, AK fire pouring back toward him. He fired out the magazine, changing sticks, working the bolt release, then cutting the bike into a tight left and gunning the machine out— assault rifle fire tore into the road’s surface on both sides of him—he could hear ricocheting sounds as bullets hammered into the rocks on the right side of the road—or perhaps his ma-chine.
He ripped one of the twin stainless Detonics pistols from the leather under his left armpit, reaching around behind him, jacking the ham-mer back, firing once, twice, a third time—it was useless. Upping the safety, he rammed the cocked and locked pistol into his belt, lowering his body over the Harley, gunning the engine—faster.
The pickup was dead ahead—he was gaining on it—gunfire rained around him, the roaring of Soviet bikes making his ears ring.
His wife—his son—his daughter— “Damn!” He shouted the word—maybe heaven would hear him, he thought.
The wind of the slipstream tore at him, sting-ing at his ears, his forehead, Rourke feeling his lips drawing back from his teeth—he didn’t want to see his face.
The road angled sharply upward and into a curve, Sarah taking it fast, he saw—too fast? The Ford’s rear end seemed to fishtail, the truck lurching, rising up and down on its shocks, then vanished around the curve. Rourke took the curve in a wide arc, cutting into the oncoming lane, skidding off the far lane and into the loose dirt and gravel of the shoulder, his feet out, bal-ancing him, dragging as he fought to control the machine. His hands worked—the machine was pulling ahead—Rourke gunned the engine, gravel spraying up around him, pelting at his ex-posed hands, making pinging sounds against the steel of the Harley—
The exhaust—he could hear it thunder under him, behind him.
Back on the
road—low over the Harley, gun-fire tearing into the pines beyond the road shoul-der, ripping into the tarmac under him, gravel and bullet fragments spraying around him, sparks on the roadside as bullets impacted small stones.
His lips drawn back tight, his neck—the ten-dons something he could feel distending— He let out the Harley—to catch the truck.
He was out of the curve, still climbing, the blue Ford pickup about a city block’s length ahead as he leaned into his machine.
More gunfire, a stillness for an instant as the Soviet column must have taken the curve. Rourke had the half-shot-out Detonics back in his right fist, thumbing down the safety, swinging left in the Harley’s saddle, keeping low over the machine, firing once, twice, a third time—the lead Soviet biker’s machine skidding from under him, spilling the man onto the high-way, the biker nearest behind him, jumping his machine to clear his comrade, the machine out of control, the man and the machine separating in midair. The bike crashed down—a Soviet truck behind the bikers skidding, losing con-trol—in an instant shooting across the oncom-ing lanes and over the shoulder, impacting against a stand of pines.
Rourke leaned into his machine again, ram-ming the spent pistol into his hip pocket—rid-ing. He glanced back again—he had stalled the column.
Ahead, Sarah’s truck was slowing. “Why?” He shrieked the word into the wind of the slip-stream. Michael—he could see the boy—Sarah’s M-16—he was firing it through the open passenger window—ahead of them.
The truck was doing a high-speed reverse, Mi-chael’s head and the rifle tucked back inside, the pickup lurching onto the shoulder on Rourke’s side, the near shoulder, gravel and dirt spraying up as the truck’s rear wheels fought for traction, then the pickup bisecting the highway, crossing the oncoming lane, bouncing up and over the far shoulder, then disappearing below the rim of the highway.
“Why!”
Rourke looked behind him—the Russians were coming again, bikers riding low-profiled against their machines, men in open-topped transport trucks firing assault rifles. Where the Ford pickup had been, ahead now Rourke could see what had made Sarah turn, leave the road—Brigands.