by Jerry Ahern
Rourke laughed. "I wasn't going to tell you that. You look twenty-eight to me."
"Well," Rubenstein started to say, but Rourke held up his hand and ground the Chevy to a halt.
"What is it?"
"Listen," Rourke said. "Gunfire. Just down the road and off to the right there. Sounds like it's from the plane."
He accelerated through the gears, speeding the Chevy down the dirt road they'd been driving along for the last ten miles. Abruptly, he started to slow down, at the same time punching the lights off As they neared the crash site, he killed the engine. The sound of the gunfire grew louder. He eased the car to the side of the road.
"Paul," he said to Rubenstein. "You want one of my pistols or the rifle?"
"Let me try the rifle."
"Fine." Rourke reached into the back seat, removed the scope cover and showed Rubenstein where the safety lever was. He worked the bolt and introduced a round into the chamber. Fishing in his pockets, he found the two spare five-round magazines for the Steyr-Mannlicher 550 that he had brought along and handed them to Rubenstein. "Just look through the scope. When you see the image clearly—with your glasses on—it should pretty much fill the scope. Get the crosshairs over your target and squeeze the front trigger. You'll be a terror with it. Come on."
Rourke threw open the driver's door and started for the rocks, Rubenstein behind him. The sound of the gunfire was dying now, and above it, they could hear muted voices calling back and forth to each other. By the time both men had climbed up into the rocks and looked down onto the flatland below, the gunfire had totally ceased.
Rubenstein, beside Rourke, rasped, "Oh my God—we were too late!"
"Yeah," Rourke said, reaching under his coat and stripping a Detonics from under his left shoulder with his right hand. He had two more full magazines with him. "They're starting to move out," he said, peering toward the campsite. As best as he could tell, all the passengers had been killed. The bikers—nearly two dozen of them—were going through the baggage, which they had spread on the ground. He watched as they came to the body of a woman—from the distance, Rourke couldn't be sure, but the blue skirt and the blonde hair made him think it was the stewardess, Sandy Benson. He saw one of the bikers bend over her and take his own glinting Metalifed six-inch Colt Python from the ground beside the woman.
"Give me the rifle," Rourke whispered to Rubenstein.
Taking the SSG, spreading his feet along the ground, and snugging the butt of the stock into his shoulder, Rourke squinted through the telescopic sight, settled the crosshairs on the biker standing by the stewardess, and pulled the first of the twin, double-set triggers. The man stood and whirled around toward the exploding dust behind him. Settling the crosshairs on the biker's forehead, Rourke pulled the rear trigger. He touched the first trigger, the SSG rocked against his shoulder, and the .308's 165-grain boat-tail bullet split the biker's forehead like it was a ripe melon. The man's body fell back in a heap on the ground.
As the other bikers started to react, Rourke speed-cocked the bolt and leveled the SteyrMannlicher again. A biker wearing a Nazi helmet was sitting on a three-wheeled bike. Rourke felt he didn't need as much finesse on this shot—he worked the forward trigger all the way through, without using the rear trigger. The helmeted biker threw his hands to his chest and fell back, his bike collapsing to the side as his body hurtled over.
Rourke worked the bolt again. There was a woman biker, her arms laden with belongings of the dead passengers. She was running across the camp. Rourke swung the scope along her path. A bald biker, riding a big, heavily chromed street machine, was waving frantically for her.
Rourke followed her with the scope as she crossed the camp, past the bodies of the murdered passengers. As she reached out to touch the hand of the bald biker, Rourke fired, killing the bald man with a round in the left temple. He speed-cocked the Steyr's bolt, and swung the scope to the woman. He couldn't hear her above the sounds of the motorcycles revving in the camp area now, but through the scope he could see her mouth opening and closing. He imagined she was screaming. She dropped to her knees, and he shifted the scope downward a few degrees and pulled through on the first trigger. The rifle's gilding metal-jacketed slug skated over the bridge of the woman's nose smashing a crimson red hole into her forehead. Her body snapped back, then her head lolled forward, as though in death she was somehow still praying not to die.
Rourke swapped magazines on the sniper rifle, worked the bolt action, and clipped a biker with bright hair in the right side of his neck. His bike half-climbed a small rise, then rolled over. Rourke worked the bolt again. He swung the scope onto another biker. Like one of his earlier kills, this man was wearing a Nazi helmet. Rourke fired. The Steyr's 165-grain boat-tail soft-point splattered against the right side of the helmet. The biker threw his hands up and fell from his motorcycle. He rolled over and then lay still.
Rourke worked the bolt, swinging the scope along the ground. He spotted another biker in a sleeveless denim jacket with a gang name across its back—the only thing, Rourke thought, that distinguished him. The biker crawled along the ground, then got to his feet and broke into a dead run for a group of bikers to Rourke's left. Rourke fired and hit the biker in the back. The impact threw the man's body forward on his face into the dirt.
Rourke swung the scope, working the bolt action fast and ripping the last three shots into the group of bikers whom the last man he'd killed had been running toward. Three bodies fell. The other three jumped onto their machines. Rourke swapped magazines on the Steyr and brought the rifle back to his shoulder, firing twice more, killing two more of the bikers as their machines moved out of the campsite.
He brought the rifle down from his shoulder and clicked the safety on.
Rubenstein, lying on the rocks beside him, said, "You just killed twelve men!"
"No," Rourke said. "Eleven men and one woman. Come on, let's see if any of the passengers are still alive down there."
Chapter Thirty-two
Rourke tossed the rifle to Rubenstein and started running along the rocks down toward the campsite. The wind started to whip up from the lower ground, catching the dark Stetson he wore and blowing it from his head. He ran the long fingers of his right hand through his hair, then reached under his coat and snatched out one of the Detonics pistols—in case any of the bikers had survived his fire and decided to return it. As he reached the flat space beneath the rocks, he broke into a crouching run toward the lifeless form of Sandy Benson.
He dropped to his knees beside her, rolled the body of the dead biker away, and leaned over the girl. He raised her head in his hands. She opened her eyes. Her blonde hair fell back from her face, as she looked up and smiled at him.
Rourke said, "Like I told you before—you got a pretty smile, Sandy."
"I knew you'd come—I knew it, Mr. Rourke." Her head fell back, and after a moment, Rourke bent over and kissed her forehead. He closed her eyelids with the tips of his fingers, then rested her head back down on the ground. He found his Python beside her in the dirt, picked it up, and opened the cylinder. All six rounds had been fired. Searching through her purse, he found the two speedloaders he'd left with her and emptied one into the gun, tossing the empty cases into his pocket.
He looked up. Rubenstein had come up behind him. Standing, Rourke blew the sand from the big Colt revolver, closed the cylinder, and stuffed the gun in his waistband.
"I found Quentin—the Canadian. He's dead. I started checking some of the others. I think they're all dead."
"Will you help me here?" Rourke asked, looking down at the dead girl by his feet. "I want to haul all the bodies up by the plane, then torch the plane. We can't possibly bury them."
"The bikers, too?" Rubenstein asked.
"I wouldn't spit on them," Rourke answered.
The grisly task of getting the bodies to the makeshift funeral pyre took more than an hour. Before they set the plane ablaze, Rourk
e sifted through the passengers' belongings and the things the dead bikers had with them or had left behind. With Rubenstein's help, he placed everything that might be of use to them in a pile in the center of what had been the camp. He told Rubenstein to wait for a few moments, and left. When he returned, he had his flight bag and gun cases. "I stashed these," he said, "back on the other side of the plane."
"You always plan ahead, don't you John?"
"Yeah, Paul," Rourke whispered. "I try to."
Rubenstein was half in shock. He could not get over the mass slaughter committed by the bikers. More than forty people had been murdered for no reason, no sense.
Rourke changed into his own clothes from the flight bag, packing the clothes he'd taken in Albuquerque inside it. He wore a pair of well-worn blue denims, black combat boots, a faded light blue shirt, and a wide leather belt. He squinted toward the rising sun through his dark glasses. About his waist was a camouflage-patterned Ranger leather gunbelt, the Python nestled in a half-flap holster on his right hip. The double Alessi shoulder rig was across his back and shoulders like a vest, magazine pouches for the twin .45's on his trouser belt. The Sting 1A boot knife was inside the waistband of his trousers on the left side.
He took his two-inch Lawman Paul had found—the Canadian, Quentin, dead with the little revolver locked in his right fist—and placed it inside his flight bag. He walked over to the bikes left behind by the killers, selected a big Harley, and strapped the flight bag to the back of it. Then he slid his SSG sniper rifle into a padded case and secured it to the side of the bike.
All the time, Rubenstein kept talking. Finally, Rourke turned to the smaller man and said, "Can you ride one of these things, or do you want the car?"
"I'm goin' with you. You're goin' after the rest of the bikers, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Rourke said, pulling the leather jacket on against the predawn cold that still clung to the desert.
"I was thinking about what you said earlier. My parents—in St. Petersburg. Maybe they're alive, maybe they could use my help. And I wasn't much good back there against the bikers. Maybe I could learn to be better. I want to get them, too." Rourke looked down to the ground. He checked his spare Rolex in the winking sunlight on the horizon. "Let's call it seven-fifteen," he said.
He walked over to the pile of weapons and accessories by the burnt-out fire. "One of 'ems got my CAR-15," he said absently. He picked up a World War Two-vintage MP-40 submachine gun from the pile, sifted through the debris, and came out with four thirty-round magazines. "Call this a Schmeisser. In the vernacular," he said.
"Can I come with you?" Rubenstein asked.
Rourke smiled and looked over at the younger, smaller man. "Wouldn't have it any other way. Now, like I asked before," and Rourke gestured toward the motorcycles. "You know how to ride one of these things?"
"Nope," Rubenstein grunted, shaking his head.
Rourke sighed hard. "Can you ride a bicycle?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I'll show you how the gears and the brakes work. You'll catch on. Between New Mexico and the East Coast lies more than two thousand miles. You should get the hang of it. Now, give me a hand here." With Rubenstein helping, Rourke searched the guns that had been dropped by the bikers, scrounging some .38 Special ammo that would work in his .357 revolvers in a pinch and some additional .308 ammo in the process.
"Should I take a handgun?" Rubenstein wondered.
"Yeah—you won't need a rifle. Once I get my CAR-15 back, we'll have two. Here, use this for now." Rourke reached into the pile and found a vintage Browning High Power. "This is a nine-millimeter. One of the best there is. After I get through using this," and Rourke gestured to the German MP-40 submachine gun on the ground beside him, "There should still be plenty of nine-millimeter stuff available."
They siphoned off gas from the other bikes to fill the tanks of the Harley that Rourke had selected for himself and the second Harley he had chosen for Rubenstein. While Rubenstein gathered his belongings and strapped them on the bike, Rourke took the remaining loose ammo from his gun cases—which he was leaving behind—and replenished the magazines for his Detonics pistols and the Steyr-Mannlicher rifle, packing away the spare magazines for his CAR-15 for when he got it back.
By early morning, Rourke and Rubenstein were ready. Foodstuffs from the airplane were their only provisions. Rourke had checked it all with the Geiger counter. They were low on water, so took the two-day-old coffee as well. Then, filling every container they could find with gasoline from the remaining bikes, they prepared the crashed aircraft for the funeral pyre.
Standing well back, Rourke took a gasoline-soaked rag and started to light it. Rubenstein stopped him.
"Aren't you gonna say anything over them?"
"You do it," Rourke said quietly.
"I'm Jewish, most of them weren't."
"Well, pick something, nondenominational," Rourke responded.
Rubenstein, looking uncomfortable, coughed, then began. "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters..."
Rourke, almost without realizing it, began saying it with him. "He restoreth my soul."
Rubenstein turned and looked at Rourke, and both men went on. "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." Rourke's thoughts were filled with images of Mrs. Richards, and Sandy Benson, whose courage had seemed unending. There was the Canadian businessman whom Rourke had started out disliking—Quentin.
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over."
Rourke thought of the Chicano priest back in Albuquerque and the burn victims there in the church—in his mind he could see the little girl whom he had worked over to save. Then she had died.
"Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life..."
He closed his eyes. Where was Sarah? Where wa and Ann at this moment? Were they even alive?
"And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
Rourke opened his eyes and saw Rubenstein turned to face him. "You've gotten all the rotten jobs, John. It's my turn, now. Give me the torch." Rourke said nothing, but handed the gasoline-soaked rag to Rubenstein, then the lighter. "Be careful," he said, then watched as the younger man flicked the lighter and touched the flame to the rag. In an instant the rag was a torch and Rubenstein—hesitating for a split second—threw it into the gaping hole in the fuselage.
"Come on," Rourke rasped, his voice suddenly tight and hoarse.
Rubenstein was still standing by the plane, and Rourke walked up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Paul. We got work to do."
Rubenstein looked at Rourke, took off his glasses for a moment, but said nothing. The sound of the flames from the plane was all there was for either of them then to hear.
Chapter Thirty-three
The ride across the desert, trailing the bikers, had been hot. Rubenstein had fallen off the big Harley once but had not been hurt. As Rourke and Rubenstein stopped on a low rise, Rourke turned to the younger man, saying, "I think you're getting the hang of it, Paul. Good thing, too. Look." He pointed down into the shallow, bowl-shaped basin before them.
"My God!" Rubenstein said, shuddering.
In the basin—once a lake bed, Rourke supposed, but now nothing but sand and some barrel cactus dotted here and there—were the bikers they had been trailing. Rourke recognized, even at the distance, two of them from the clothes they wore. One man in particular, whom Rourke had picked as the leader of the gang, wore a Nazi helmet with steer horns jutting from each side, not unlike a Viking helmet. None of the other bikers in the basin had such a helmet. There were at least forty.
"What is it—some kind of convention?"
"What? Rourke asked absent
ly, then, realizing what Rubenstein had said, he commented, "They were probably part of a larger biker gang and they all set this spot as a rendezvous. Could be more of them coming."
"Damned bikers." Rubenstein spat in the dust.
"Hey—we're bikers, now, aren't we?" Rourke said, looking at Rubenstein. Taking off his sunglasses to clean the dust from them, he went on, "Most bikers are okay—some of them, badasses. But you can't generalize. Just 'cause somebody's got a machine under him and he doesn't much care for authority doesn't make him scum. It's just these guys—they're scum."
"But there's gotta be almost three dozen of them down there."
"I make it forty, give or take," Rourke said lazily. He checked his watch, then checked the sun. "In another two hours, it'll be dark. Looks like a good moon tonight, though. We'll get 'em all then."
"There's just two of us," Rubenstein said. "That's twenty-to-one odds."
"Yeah. At least they can't accuse us of taking unfair advantage of them."
"Twenty-to-one, John?"
"Remember what we said over the men and women they killed, back at the plane? 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.' Well, I never cared for fearing things—doesn't help anything much." Then, pointing to the desert behind them, he said slowly, "See all that Paul? Now, that's something we're never going to cross in fear. What's out there in that country after the war, neither of us knows. Nuclear contamination, bands of brigands that'll make these suckers down in the basin look like sissies, probably Russian troops. I don't have the idea that we won the War, really. Good knows what else. There'll be plenty of chances to be afraid later, I figure. No sense starting before we have to."
As quietly as they could, then, Rourke and Rubenstein took their Harleys behind the cover of some large rock outcroppings, ate some of the food they'd brought from the plane, and rested. Rourke told Rubenstein of his plan. When he had finished, Rubenstein said, "You're gonna get killed." Rourke shrugged.
They waited until past sunset and well into the night. The moon was up, and the sounds from the biker camp in the basin indicated to them that everyone was pretty well drunk. While they'd waited, another half a dozen bikers had come into the camp.
