by Jerry Ahern
Rourke fired the CAR-15 empty as he reached the end of the sidewalk, jumped the bike down the curb and into the street. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see Rubenstein close behind him, the "Schmeisser" shot empty, the Browning High Power firing from his hand as he jumped the sidewalk and into the street, Rourke heard the rebel yell again as the noise of the gunfire died in the background behind him. Under his breath, bending low over his bike, Rourke muttered, "That kid's really gettin' into it."
Chapter Eleven
Major Vladmir Karamatsov glanced to Captain Natalia Tiemerovna at his side in the gathering darkness. He could just make out the outline of her profile, the skin of her face smudged with black camouflage stick, a black silk bandanna tied over her hair, her hands fitted with tight black leather fingerless gloves, a close-fitting black jumpsuit covering the rest of her lithe body. He noticed her hands again—she held an assault rifle the way most women held a baby, he noted. A smile crossed his thin lips, his black camouflage-painted cheeks creasing at the corners of his mouth into heavy lines.
Karamatsov upped the safety catch on the blued-black Smith & Wesson Model 59 in his right hand. Like all the people in his special KGB liquidation squad, he carried strictly American or Western European-made firearms. In the event that they encountered a substantial American force, regular or irregular, there was nothing to identify himself or any of his handpicked, personally trained team as Soviet—their English was perfect midwestern, all of them trained, as was Karamatsov himself, at the KGB's top-secret "Chicago" espionage school. They had read American books and newspapers, watched videotapes of American television, worn American-made clothes, trained on American-made firearms. American food, American slang—everything so American that they soon thought, talked and acted like Americans who had lived in America all their lives—with the one exception being their often-tested allegiance to the KGB.
Like most of the top clandestine operatives in the KGB, Karamatsov—like the girl beside him in the darkness—had gone to the Chicago school in his mid-teens. He had grown up playing basketball and betting on the World Series. For years, Karamatsov's one outside interest besides chess had been American football. He had arranged to attend three Super Bowls and had sat in the crowd happily munching hot dogs; drinking beer and shouting and cheering no less earnestly than everyone around him. He had been Arnold Warshawski of South Bend, Indiana, or Craig Bates of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or someone else. Karamatsov was a past master at dying his hair, creating life-mask wrinkles or built-up noses. Sometimes he would stroke his cheek expecting to find a full beard and remember suddenly that that had been yesterday—instead of forty-three with a red beard and broken nose he was twenty-eight with blond hair, a small mustache and a nose that looked as though it had been the model for a Roman or Greek statue.
And very frequently over the years he had worked with the magnificent Natalia—sometimes they had posed as husband and wife, sometimes as brother and sister, sometimes as father and daughter. He liked her best as she looked now, the black hair just past the shoulders, her own strikingly dark blue eyes rather than contacts which had made them appear brown or green, her own slightly upturned nose—the figure that he had warmed himself beside so many nights. She was technically his second-in-command, his right hand. Her heart was too soft, sometimes, he reflected; but it had never interfered with her work.
He stared into the darkness, trying to make out the shapes of the others of his team who were there— Nicolai, Yuri, Boris, Constantine… he could not see them and Karamatsov smiled because of this.
His head itched under the black watch cap he wore. He scratched the itch, checked the Rolex watch on his wrist and felt again in the darkness the safety catch on the fifteen-shot 9mm pistol he held, checked the position of the tiny blue Chiefs Special .38 in the small of his back, checked the 9mm MAC-10 slung from his shoulder.
He watched the face of the Rolex, and as the hand swept into position, he raised up from his low crouch and started into a dead run, Natalia—as she always was, he thought comfortably—beside him, ready to die for him. The ranch house was just beyond the end of the bracken and as he reached the clearing, he could see the others of the team breaking from the shadows as well.
There was gunfire coming from the house, slow as though from a bolt action rifle. A shotgun went off in the darkness—none of his men carried a shotgun and he cursed. He kept on running, the pistol raised in his hand, 9mm slugs—115-grain jacketed hollow points—spinning from its muzzle toward the plate glass front of the building. He could hear glass shattering. There was a faster-working rifle now firing into his team in the darkness, and he tried to make out the sound. As he turned to bear his pistol down onto the suspected target, he turned to his left and saw Natalia, down on one knee, the H-K assault rifle to her shoulder, firing steady three-shot bursts, the window that had been Karamatsov's projected target shattering and even in the near total darkness the ill-defined shape of a body falling forward through the glass and into the bed of white flowers just outside.
Karamatsov started running again, first to reach the front door, kicking at the lock, which held, then stepping back and blasting at it with the MAC-11 on full auto. Natalia was beside him, her left foot smashing toward the lock, kicking the shot-through mechanism away, swinging the door inward. Karamatsov rolled through.
The house was in near total darkness. He fired the MAC-11 at a flash of brightness, his gun going empty on him. Rather than swapping magazines, he reached for the Model 59 pistol—he gauged there were at least eight rounds left in it.
There was another flash in the darkness and he fired twice, hearing a moaning sound then a heavy thud as there was another gunshot, the fireburst of the muzzle going off in the direction of the ceiling.
He stood in a crouch, his fists wrapped around the pistol butt, the first finger of his right hand poised against the revolverlike trigger of the auto-loading pistol.
He could hear the rustle of Natalia's clothes as she moved through the darkness.
"There is no electric power here, Vladmir."
"Lights—and on guard," Karamatsov shouted. There was a clicking sound, followed immediately by a second similar sound and suddenly the room was bathed in light. He glanced obliquely at the powerful lanterns now in the middle of the floor, staying out of the circle of light to guard against still another defender being alive somewhere in the house.
"I don't think Chambers is here—President Chambers," Natalia added as an afterthought and walked toward Karamatsov, standing beside and a little behind him, the H-K in her hands, its muzzle moving like a wand through the darkness.
Karamatsov put his arm around her shoulders, whispering, "As always—you are my right arm, Natalia."
Then Karamatsov moved away from her, issuing orders to the men standing on the edge of the wall of darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna moved through the darkness toward what she perceived as the outline of a staircase. "I'm searching upstairs," she declared, then added, "Yuri—back me up," glanced over her shoulder—her eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness—and saw the blonde-haired Yuri a few steps behind her, the dark mass of a pistol in his right hand. "Sure thing, little lady," he said. She disliked the Texas-style accent Yuri had trained in recently. She turned, glaring at him, hoping somehow that even in the darkness she could signal her displeasure.
She witnessed his shrug, then she turned back toward the stairs and took them two at a time, the stock on her H-K collapsed, the .308 calibre selective fire assault rifle held at her hip like a submachine gun.
She reached the top of the stairs and stopped against the wall, flat, buttocks and shoulder blades against it, listening. She pulled the black silk bandanna from her hair and shook her head, stuffing the scarf in the front of her jumpsuit. Balling her fists around the rifle, she turned in one fluid motion into the hallway, the H-K's muzzle sweeping the open space.
"Check the rooms on the left," s
he commanded to Yuri, then without waiting for a response started to examine the first room on the right. The door was open halfway and she kicked it in, dodging inside and across the doorframe, going into a crouch, the H-K's selector on auto, her finger poised against the trigger.
Nothing.
She left the room and went into the hallway. One other room remained on the right—the side facing the front yard. She was almost certain there had been someone there with a rifle as they had stormed the house. The door was closed.
She stopped in front of it, took a half-step back and kicked it in, firing the H-K in rapid three-shot bursts as she sidestepped away from the doorway and into the room. She could hear breathing there in the darkness to her left, heard a brief flurry of movement and opened fire, two three-shot bursts. There was a heavy groaning sound and the dull thud of a body hitting the floor.
She mentally flipped a coin, then, holding the H-K in her right hand by the pistol grip, took the small Tekna light from her waist and twisted it on awkwardly one-handed, flashing its beam in the direction of the noise. There was a man on the floor, eyes opened, a lever-action Winchester in his hands— he was dead. "Not Chambers," she whispered to herself. The man was Latino—a Mexican ranch-worker, she theorized, one of many thousands she had been taught were exploited by the capitalists for long hours and short wages. She looked at the dead man once again, regretting his death and pitying him for having died defending his exploiters against those who would liberate him from his chains.
She turned and left the room, brushing a stray lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her still gloved left hand.
Chapter Thirteen
Very slowly, Sarah Rourke climbed back up the slope and out of the valley. At the back of her mind, she knew she couldn't leave Ron Jenkins' body on the street in the town below—there were packs of dogs running the hills and mountains now and his body might well be partially devoured by morning. She was tired, at the prospect of burying Ron Jenkins and from the added weight of his pistol and rifle. The pistol was a gun like the one she carried in the waistband of her Levis, a .45 Colt Automatic, but smaller than her husband's gun and having a differently shaped hammer. She had no idea what kind of rifle Jenkins had carried, but it was heavy, she decided, as she reached the top of the rise and turned through the darkness toward their camp, her breath short.
It was as though she had never left, she thought. Michael was sitting up with Annie's head on his lap. Carla Jenkins was sitting stock straight on the ground a few feet away from him, staring blankly into the darkness, her daughter Millie cradled in her arms. Sarah Rourke walked toward Carla Jenkins, dropped to her knees on the ground beside the woman and said nothing. Carla turned, even in the darkness the frightened set of her eyes unmistakable to Sarah Rourke.
"That's Ron's rifle—and you got his pistol belt there, too," she said softly.
"Carla—I don't. I, ah… I don't know how to tell you—"
"He is dead," Carla Jenkins said flatly.
"Yes," Sarah murmured.
"I'd like to be alone for a few minutes, Sarah. Can you take care of Millie for me?"
Sarah nodded, then realized that in the darkness Carla Jenkins might not have understood and said, "Of course I will, Carla." The Jenkins woman handed the ten-year-old girl into Sarah Rourke's arms and Sarah, leaving Jenkins' guns beside Carla, walked the few feet toward her own children. She dropped to her knees, trying to get into a sitting position.
She turned her head before she realized why—a gunshot, she realized. Putting Millie down on the ground, Sarah half crawled, half ran the few feet to Carla Jenkins. Sarah reached down to the Jenkins woman's head there on the ground by her feet. Her hand came away wet and slightly sticky. "Can you take care of Millie for me?" Sarah had told Carla, "Of course I will."
"Ohh, Jesus," Sarah Rourke cried, dropping to her knees beside Carla Jenkins' body, wanting to cover her own face with her hands but sitting on her haunches instead, perfectly erect, the bloody right hand held away from her body at arms' length…
Sarah Rourke couldn't load Carla Jenkins' body across the saddle without getting her son, Michael, to help—and the thought of asking him had revolted her more than manhandling the body, but he had done it, simply asking her why Mrs. Jenkins had shot herself. Miraculously, Millie was sleeping still, as was Annie. Sitting with Michael a few feet away, not comprehending how the girls had slept through the gunshot, she began, "Well—sometimes death is awfully hard for people to accept. Do you understand?"
"Well," he had said, knitting his brow, "maybe a little."
"No—" Sarah said, looking down into the darkness and then back at her son's face. "See, if all of a sudden on Saturday morning—before the war—I had told you that you couldn't watch any cartoon shows at all and never explained why, told you you'd never see a cartoon show again, how would you have felt?"
"Mad."
"Sad, too?" she asked.
"Yeah. Yeah, I would have been sad."
"And probably the worst part of it making you mad and sad would have been that there wasn't any reason why—huh?"
"Yeah—I'd want to know why I couldn't watch TV."
"Well, see when Mr. Jenkins died, I guess his wife—Mrs. Jenkins—just couldn't understand why he had to die. And losing someone you love is more important than missing cartoon shows, right?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Well, see, once somebody is dead you never get him back."
"But in church they said that after you die you live forever."
"I hope so," Sarah Rourke said quietly.
Chapter Fourteen
"I never ate something so bad in my life," Rubenstein said, starting to turn away from Rourke to spit out the food in his mouth.
"I'd eat that if I were you," Rourke said softly. "Protein, vitamins, sugar—all of that stuff, including the moisture—is something your body is craving right now. Just reading a book burns up calories, so riding that bike all day, especially in this heat, really draws a lot out of your body."
"Aww, God, but this tastes like cardboard."
"You eat much cardboard?"
"Well, no, but you know what I mean."
"It doesn't taste good, but it's nutritious. Maybe we'll find something better tomorrow or the next day. When we get back to the retreat, you can stuff yourself. I've got all the Mountain House freeze-dried foods—beef stroganoff, everything. I've got a lot of dehydrated vegetables, a freezer full of meat—steaks, roasts, the works. I've even got Michelob, pretzels, chocolate chip cookies, Seagrams Seven. Everything."
"Ohh, man—I wish we were there."
"Well," Rourke said slowly, "wishing won't get us there."
"What I wouldn't do for a candy bar—mmm…"
"Unless you're under high energy demand circumstances, candy isn't that good for you. Sugar is one of the worst things in the world."
"I thought you said you had chocolate chip cookies," Rubenstein said.
"Well—you can't always eat stuff that's healthy for you."
"What kind of chocolate chip cookies are they?" Rubenstein asked.
"I don't remember," Rourke said. "I always confuse the brands."
"I found your one weakness!" Rubenstein exclaimed, starting to laugh. "Bad at identifying chocolate chip cookies."
Rourke grinned at Rubenstein, "Nobody's perfect, I guess."
Rubenstein was still laughing, then started coughing and Rourke bent toward him, saying, "Hold your hands over your head—helps to clear the air passage."
"This—pukey—damned baby—baby food," Rubenstein coughed.
"Just shut up for a minute until you get your breath," Rourke ordered. "Then let's get a few hours' rest and get started before first light again. I'd like to put on as much desert mileage as we can during darkness—want to make Van Horn and beyond tomorrow."
"What's at Van—Van Horn?" Rubenstein asked, coughing but more easily.
"Maybe food and water and gasoline. Good-sized town,
a little off the beaten track, maybe it's indecent shape still. At least I hope so. Knew a guy from Van Horn once."
"Think he's still there?" Rubenstein said, speaking softly and clearing his throat.
"I don't know," Rourke said thoughtfully. "Lost touch with him a few years ago. Might have died—no way to tell."
Rubenstein just shook his head, starting to laugh again, saying, "John, you are one strange guy. I've never met somebody so laid back in my whole life."
Rourke just looked at Rubenstein, saying, "That's exactly how I'm going to be in about thirty seconds— laid back. And sleeping. You'd better do the same." Rourke stood up, starting away from the bikes.
"Takin' a leak?" Rubenstein queried.
Rourke turned and glanced back at him. "No—I'm burying the jar from the baby food. No sense littering, and the sugar clinging to the sides of the glass will just draw insects."
"Ohh," Rubenstein said.
Chapter Fifteen
Karamatsov paced across the room—dawn was coming and lighting it, drawing long shadows through the shot-open windows. "We must find Chambers—he would still be in Texas. This is his power base, and the militia units we have heard of and observed would be satisfactory troops around which he could organize armed resistance."
"Perhaps he is only hiding," Natalia observed, leaning back on one elbow on the long sofa where she had slept the remainder of the night after securing the house.