The Quest s-3

by Ahern, Jerry

  “So, maybe it’s some sort of manned flight that would have been too risky, unless there wasn’t anything to lose—a lot of people thought the world would just get flattened after a full nuclear exchange—maybe it was some sort of space colonization effort or something.” “Or maybe just the opposite—a doomsday device. You’ve got to remember one thing, Paul, intelligence-operations names rarely have anything to do with the actual operation—just the opposite—so maybe a new beginning simply means a surprise ending.” “You mean some kind of superbomb orbiting the earth and timed to blow up soon?”

  “Maybe not soon,” Rourke said soberly. “Maybe not for five years, or ten years, or maybe the next five minutes. And maybe it’s nothing we’ve thought of. I’ll tell you what Reed wants me to do,” Rourke said then, recounting his conversation with the Army captain and their scheduled meeting the next day. Rourke looked at his watch. It was already the next day—fifteen minutes into it.

  The two men talked for a while longer. Afterward Rourke went to bed before Rubenstein. More to keep out the light than for privacy, Rourke drew the curtains separating the master bedroom from the rest of the cavern and stripped away his clothes, then lay down on the double bed, his left hand reaching out to the empty side of the bed, his mind filled with thoughts of Sarah.

  Chapter 20

  Rourke, Reed and three of the five Army men walked past the university, turned left, and walked to the downtown area of the city. Rourke’s skin crawled. He was weaponless, not by choice, but necessity. To be caught with firearms or even a knife in the Soviet-occupied city would certainly mean discovery and most likely death. Rourke had decided on the course of action as the only means of contacting the Resistance. There was a man he knew in Athens and, if there were a Resistance forming, this man would be in it—Darren Ball, ex-Special Forces, ex-mercenary—tough, hard, experienced, and as anti-Communist as any man Rourke had ever met. Ball, before the war, had taken to running a bookstore specializing in militaria, weapons books, and related items. He had lost a leg in Rhodesia, which had effectively ended his military career.

  Rourke, wearing a beat-up straw cowboy hat and dark sunglasses, scanned the street. The sight of the Kalashnikov-armed Soviet troops strolling casually in the cold sunlight through an American city disgusted him. Twice Reed had had to restrain one of his men, Bradley, a young black sergeant, who was fiercely anti-Soviet.

  With Reed and the three soldiers, all disguised as civilians and, like Rourke, weaponless, Rourke stopped on the corner. Without moving his lips, Rourke muttered, “Hope nobody stops us for papers or anything, hmm? Bradley, you come with Reed and me. You two drift around and act cool. We’ll meet you back here. Try and assess the composition of the Russian units here; how many, what equipment—listen and learn—go,” and without waiting for acquiescence, Rourke, Reed, and the headstrong Sgt. Bradley started toward where Rourke hoped to find Darren Ball, the Liberty Book Store and B.S. Emporium.

  Almost brushing shoulders with a half-dozen Russian soldiers, Rourke, Reed, and Bradley reached the far corner, and Rourke stopped. The bookstore windows were boarded over and the wooden sign hanging over the storefront had been spray-painted black, lining out the name.

  “What do we do now?” Reed asked.

  “We keep our shirts on,” Rourke said almost disgustedly, then slowly walked around the corner. A knot of young people was standing there, Rourke guessed in violation of some Russian rule against public assembly. Settling the straw cowboy hat low over his eyes, squinting in the sunlight despite the glasses he wore, Rourke walked over toward them, the two military men behind him. Rourke fished a small cigar out of the pocket of his snap-front cowboy shirt, and stopped beside the young men and women, bending his head low toward the flame of the Zippo held cupped in his hands, talking without looking at them, “Any of you people know what happened to the guy who used to run this place—the B.S. Emporium? Fella named Darren Ball, missing a leg.” One of the younger men looked squarely at Rourke, saying, “What—you want information? Go to hell.” A girl, about eighteen, grabbed the young man’s arm as Rourke looked at him, the girl saying, “Cliff, don’t. If he’s one of them he’ll only—” “Relax,” Rourke rasped, turning away and looking back into the street. “I’m an old friend of Darren Ball’s. What are you so afraid of—if I’m one of who?” He looked past the young man to the girl. She brushed her hair nervously from her face with the back of her left hand, her eyes shifting uneasily from side to side—they were pansy blue. “I didn’t mean anything, Mister. Neither did he.” “I can take care of myself, Patty,” the young man snapped, stepped toward Rourke, shaking the girl’s restraining hand from his arm.

  Rourke turned, faced the young man, glanced from side to side on the street, and smashed his right knee up, higher than for a groin shot, just smacking into the stomach in the soft part of the gut, and as the young man—Cliff, Rourke remembered the girl calling him—doubled over, Rourke flicked his right hand down across the left side of the boy’s neck, the knife edge chopping above the musculature and behind the ear. The young man collapsed. Rourke caught him under the armpits and got the boy—unconscious—to his feet.

  “Here, you and you,” Rourke snapped swaying the unconscious Cliff toward two of the other young men in the crowd. They had been edging toward Rourke, but catching Cliff had forced them to move back.

  Rourke drew his lips back over his teeth, inhaling hard on his cigar, then exhaling the gray smoke, watching it catch the wind as he scanned the street on both sides for evidence that he had been watched. It seemed clear. He looked at the girl. “Patty, now tell me what you mean—you think I’m spying for the Russians. What?” “I—I didn’t say that,” the girl stammered.

  Rourke bent toward her, his face inches from hers, her eyes looking up into his. He removed the glasses, saying, “I’m not going to tell you why I want to see Darren Ball. That would only maybe get you in trouble. He and I are old friends and if you dislike the Russians as much as you seem to fear them, then you should tell me—now. Do you know where he is?” “I’m afraid,” she said, looking nervously from side to side. “You don’t have to do anything wrong. The Russians pay for informers and people have started informing on anyone whether he’s done something or not, and sometimes they let you go after it—sometimes they kill you. My sister—they let her go. She hadn’t done anything, but she hasn’t opened her mouth to say a single word since—” She drew in her breath hard and it made a sort of scream, Rourke thought. He glanced behind him: six Russians, armed, were rounding the corner.

  Rourke looked at her. “Now—quick—where?”

  “A tent down by the fire station—all I—”

  “You—the cowboy hat!” The voice was hard, young, filled with authority. Over the years Rourke had come not only to distrust authority but to resent it.

  Rourke turned around. Reed and Bradley had drifted off, and he could see them across the street. “Yeah?” “You’re supposed to say—” the girl started behind him.

  “That is an improper form of address,” the young Russian lieutenant snapped.

  “Well, what am I supposed to call you?”

  Rourke knew the drill, he thought, and under normal circumstances, he realized, he would have played the game to get away quietly and do his business, but the fear in the girl’s eyes made him think differently. The Russian and his five men edged toward Rourke. Rourke put his sunglasses back on, rolled the cigar in his mouth to the left corner, the half-burnt cigar clamped in his teeth there.

  “I asked you a question. What am I supposed to call you? How about wimp? That seems to fit you real good, boy.” “What is this wimp?” the young Russian officer asked.

  Rourke heard laughter from behind him. Rourke looked down at the toes of his cowboy boots—they went with the hat—and then up into the young Soviet officer’s eyes. “Gee, that’s hard to explain, boy, sort of like a pussy-whip. Ever hear of that?” “Pussy what?”

  “Here,” Rourke began. “I’ll sh
ow you.” And Rourke started to reach into his breast pocket as if for the stub of pencil sticking out there, then swung his right arm back in a broad arc, the knife edge of his hand smashing hard against the young Russian’s windpipe, smashing it, killing the boy. Rourke’s left hand flashed down to the brown leather flap holster on the officer’s belt, and grabbed at the pistol there as he shoved the already dead Russian back against his five men, Rourke’s left hand on the automatic, his right hand snapping back the slide—a Makarov PM 9mm—just in case there hadn’t been a chambered round, his left first finger pulling back on the trigger. The gun fired point blank in the face of a Russian sergeant standing immediately behind the dead officer.

  Rourke started to run, into the street, across it. The other four Russians, shouting angrily, started into the street behind him. He caught Reed’s eye, shook his head. “No!” He kept running, then turned, snapped off two shots, the Soviet pistol in his right hand now. One more of the Russians went down.

  He could see Bradley, the black American intelligence sergeant, starting into the street, bent down beside the dead Russian, then his hands came up, an AK-47 at his hip, the gun spitting fire. Rourke ducked behind a painted-over mailbox, fired two more rounds. A Soviet soldier fell less than six feet from him. Rourke lunged toward the dead man into the street, away from the mailbox, rolled as the pavement around him chewed up in fragments of tar and concrete, his hands on the AK-47 the Russian soldier had dropped, the pistol clattering to the pavement, his fingers searching out the safety on the Kalashnikov as he rolled. Suddenly there were more than a dozen Soviet soldiers in the street, guns firing everywhere around him. He stopped in mid-roll, got to one knee, fired, his first three-round burst catching the last of the original six Russians.

  On his feet, Rourke ran toward the far sidewalk, Bradley beside him, his AK-47 firing. Rourke grabbed at the man, swinging him around roughly by his shoulder, shouting, “Hothead!” Then he ran down the sidewalk, better than a dozen Russian soldiers after them, the crowd of unemployed, listless citizens parting like waves before them—men and women with the life drained from their eyes ducking into abandoned storefronts to escape the Soviet gunfire and the two men, Rourke thought, the two madmen fighting the Russians.

  Rourke glanced behind him, saw the pansy-eyed girl fleeing unmolested. Rourke had killed the men who could have caused her trouble. Then he saw Reed running after her. Rourke, firing a burst from the AK-47, ducked into a gangway between two buildings, Bradley beside him.

  At the end of the gangway there was a concrete fence blocking his way. Rourke stopped, glanced behind him once, then at the nearest wall. He thought bitterly that if it had been a movie scenario there would have been a fire escape, but it wasn’t a movie. Instead there were staggered rows of wooden-framed windows in the concrete, the sills large enough, Rourke hoped. He reached up, the AK-47 slung across his back diagonally, his right foot purchased against the sill of the lowest window, then pushed himself up, bracing his foot against the center of the window where it opened, pushing himself, clawing the concrete to grasp the lowest portion of the next higher sill, his legs swinging free a moment, his hands tearing away from the rough and splintering wood under the weight of his body, then his right leg swinging up for a purchase, finding it, Rourke pulled himself upward, snatching at the center of the window frame.

  Rourke glanced below him—gunfire. Bradley was spraying the far end of the gangway, the dozen or so Soviet soldiers temporarily stopped there. Rourke started up again, hearing the gunfire below him stop. He glanced down; Bradley was ripping the banana-shaped magazine from the AK-47, throwing it to the gangway surface. Rourke started to reach back to his own gun, to strip the magazine from it, then thought better of it.

  Looking up, Rourke could see the roof line. He pushed himself up, both feet angled against the windowsill, his hands flat against the building sides, then he reached up, pushing up from the center of the window, his right hand grasping for the roofline edge, his mouth open, shouting, “Bradley! Come on, man—after me!” His fingertips could barely touch the roof line. Rourke looked down. The Russian troops were starting into the gangway, firing, Bradley pulling back.

  Rourke pushed himself up, jumping for the roof edge, his fingers over the edge, slipping, his nails digging into the rotted wood and rusty metal, his hands holding, his right foot braced against the top of the highest window, his left leg swinging free in the air.

  Getting his left foot against the window, he half jumped, half shoved himself upward, his right hand over the edge of the roof line, then his left, then his right leg swinging up.

  Rourke flattened against the roof line—no time for a breath—wheeling to his knees, the muzzle of the AK-47 over the roofline, Rourke fired it into the Russians advancing through the gangway, the soldiers drawing back and firing back at him.

  He looked over the side, shouting down to Bradley, “Come on, man!”

  And Bradley, the useless and empty AK on the gangway surface, started for the first window. Rourke fired another three-round burst, covering the black sergeant. Bradley was reaching for the second window, then, shorter than Rourke, barely got his hands to the higher ledge and pulled himself up. Rourke fired another burst at the end of the gangway. Bradley was on the second window ledge, half up, reaching for the roof line, his fingers splayed against the wall, but a good six inches too short to touch it.

  Rourke dropped the AK, pulling his belt from the loops of his jeans, snaking it over the roof line. Bradley reached for it and grabbed it. The belt in Rourke’s right hand, he fired another three-round burst with the AK from his left.

  Bradley’s right hand was on the roof line, then Rourke felt the tension on the belt slacken as Bradley’s left hand reached up, Rourke snatching for it with his right, his fist locking around the black man’s wrist. Rourke fired the AK-47—it was empty.

  Bradley clambered over the edge of the roof line. Rourke stood, hurtling the AK over the side on a Russian soldier trying to scale the wall.

  “Come on!” Rourke rasped, starting across the roof. At the far side he saw a fire escape, started toward it as a Russian soldier came on to the roof, his AK-47 coming on line.

  The belt was still in Rourke’s right hand, and he swung it, the heavy trophy buckle lashing across the Soviet soldier’s right cheek and nose, opening a gash in the face. The man fell back toward the edge of the roof. Rourke dove for him, catching him, snatching the AK-47 still clutched in the man’s hands, then snatched the utility belt and the spare magazines there.

  “Here!” he shouted to Bradley, throwing him the gun and the belt, then Rourke shoved the half conscious Russian over the edge of the roof. The man’s body hurtled down on the Russians streaming up the fire escape below him.

  Rourke scanned the roof line. There was another building beyond, the roof at approximately the same height.

  “Come on!” he rasped to the sergeant. “Just like television—” Rourke started in a deadrun for the far edge of the roof, jumped, his legs extended in midair between the building, his body crashing down on the neighboring roof, going into a roll.

  Bradley had stopped on the edge. “Catch the gun.” He tossed the AK-47 across the airspace, then the belt. Rourke looped the belt across his shoulders and under his right arm. Bradley ran back, then started forward, bent against his stride and his face set, his lips drawn back.

  “Look out!” Rourke shouted. Bradley cleared the roof line as a Soviet soldier came up by the fire escape, his AK-47 opening up.

  Bradley’s arms flew away from his sides, like a bird trying to fly, a look of fear on his face for a fleeting instant, then the eyes wide. Bradley was dead; his body fell between the buildings. Rourke dropped to both knees and opened up with the AK-47, a three-round burst hammering into the face of the Russian who’d killed the black sergeant.

  Rourke got to his feet, backing away, knowing the Russians were coming up the fire escape. He scanned the roof he was on: there were no buildings near, no hope of e
scape, he thought. The AK-47 braced against his right hip in an assault position, Rourke started to squeeze the trigger of the AK, then spun to his right. From the far end of the downtown section there was an explosion, then a fireball belched up into the sky.

  “The fire station!” Rourke rasped. “Reed—Darren Ball!” Rourke edged toward the far side of the roof, the street below him in panic, fire belching up from manhole covers and sewers.

  Rourke turned. Three Russian soldiers were coming up on the opposite roof. He fired, burning out the magazine, then rammed home a fresh one from the belt.

  A truck was parked by the curb on the street side,

  a pickup with a camper top over it. “What the hell!” Rourke rasped. He took a few steps back from the roof edge to get up momentum, then with a running jump clear of the roof, crashed down toward the camper top, his body impacting hard against it, sliding off, and rolling down into the street.

  Rourke pulled himself to his feet. There was a single Russian starting toward the roof line above. Rourke raised the muzzle of the AK-47 and fired a three-round burst, then turned and ran, as the Soviet soldier fell screaming from the roof onto the street. The fires still raged from the manhole covers. Sirens were wailing in the distance.

  Chapter 21

  Varakov’s one abiding wish ever since assuming military command of the Army of Occupation had been, he thought, a simple and basic one—he would have preferred that Lake Michigan be facing west of the city so he could watch the sunset over it. He walked along the lakeshore, watching the deep blue of the water, then looking beyond toward the city he commanded and wondering about the country that lay beyond it. He walked along stone ramparts, slick and slippery from the water, but he walked very carefully, watching the waves break below him. Finally, he sat, staring out at the darkening water, thinking.