by Jerry Ahern
"Good," Rourke whispered, glancing around the hallway. There was no one behind him, but he knew that as soon as they reached the end of the hall and turned right, the corridor would fill with Russian soldiers, just waiting for their move.
"What do you want in the radio room?"
"You're going to call off the air strike with the neutron device," Rourke told him.
Karamatsov stopped, not moving. "She told you that?"
"I'm a psychic," Rourke said. "Now move unless you want your brains decorating the ceiling tiles— come on."
Karamatsov started walking again, saying to Rourke, "Why would I call off the air strike, and even if I did, why would they listen to me?"
"You'd better hope they do," Rourke said. "Because when I get out of here—with Chambers—I'm going to try and save your tails and get the assault force called back, if I can. We're in the same spot, friend. 'Cause I'm leaving here through the elevators onto the air field, and if I'm reading this place right, this wouldn't be a neutron hard site with the access doors open to the elevators—so all you guys would get fried. You tell your bosses that," Rourke concluded. He knew nothing about the construction of the underground complex and had no reason to suppose that the site would be vulnerable with the access doors to the elevator section opened, but he was gambling that Karamatsov and his superiors wouldn't be sure of that, either.
They reached the end of the corridor and turned right. Behind him, Rourke could hear the shuffling of boots, but there was no one ahead of him. "How far's the radio room, Vladmir?"
"There," and the Russian raised his hand, slowly, gesturing toward a door perhaps a hundred yards down. "That is it."
"Good," Rourke said. "Now, when we get there, you knock on the door and they bring the radio microphone out to you—got it? We don't go in." Rourke could see the KGB man's shoulders sag slightly. "And when it comes up, they can use alligator clips to make the connection if the microphone cord's too short."
The Russian started to turn his head and Rourke gave the Python a little nudge and the movement stopped. "You will never make it out of here alive, and if by some chance you do and you do not kill me, I will find you, if I have to search this entire dung pile of a country. I will look and look until I find you."
"Because of this," Rourke said, nudging the gun slightly, "or because of her?"
"What do you think?" the Russian snapped.
"Nothing happened—it could have, but nothing did. I think all you've got is a very lonely girl. You were already married to your job when you married her. It happens to a lot of guys in a lot more prosaic jobs. She's a hell of a good woman—you're lucky. I guess that's maybe the real reason I don't want to kill you."
Karamatsov stopped and turned, ignoring the muzzle of the gun at his head, staring at Rourke. Rourke whispered, "I almost envy you—with her. If you're fool enough to lose her, I should shoot you," and Rourke pushed the muzzle of the Python against Karamatsov's head again and they walked the last few yards to the door of the radio room. "Now knock—be polite," Rourke whispered.
Karamatsov knocked on the door, shouting in Russian, "It is Major Karamatsov—open the door— immediately."
The door opened and there was a soldier there with a gun in his hand and Rourke, in Russian, said, "Put it away or you've got a dead major—you want to be responsible, go ahead and be a hero of the Soviet Union." The soldier hesitated a moment, then stepped back into the room. "Call for the radio hookup," Rourke rasped to Karamatsov in English.
The Russian hesitated, then shouted into the radio room. In a moment, the same young Russian who had appeared at the door with a rifle appeared with the microphone, passing it to Karamatsov. Rourke jockeyed Karamatsov into position, so he could see the inside of the radio room over the Russian's shoulder. He glanced down the hallway, saw a face peering around the corridor, then the face withdrew. Rourke said to the KGB man, "Now, get on the radio and make it good—call off the neutron strike. Remember, my Russian's just fine."
Karamatsov pushed the button on the microphone and began speaking into it, then from the speaker inside there was heavy static, then a guttural voice, coming back to him. Rourke listened to the voice on the speaker and Karamatsov arguing, Karamatsov finally admitting the situation he was in. There was a long silence, then the voice was replaced by another voice, speaking in English.
"This is General Varakov—your name is Rourke, no? I do not want Karamatsov killed, at least not yet. He was too proud, perhaps this will be good for his— what is it—the Latin word, the ego. Yes. I have called off the neutron weapon strike. I will meet you some day. It is hard for me to believe you are acting alone, though."
Karamatsov glanced toward Rourke, and for a moment Rourke could read his eyes, then Rourke took the microphone from Karamatsov, saying, "General—I wasn't acting alone. I freed President Chambers and he helped me—you've got a tough adversary in him. I'll give you some advice—don't underestimate him."
"And some of the advice for you, my young friend," the voice on the loudspeaker came back. "You have just used all the nine lives of a cat this night. Do tell this to your President Chambers—do not underestimate me." And the radio went dead.
Rourke ripped the microphone free of the cord and tossed it down the empty corridor, saying to Karamatsov, "Now let's get out of here so I can call off the attack before it gets started." Running in a slow lope beside the KGB man, the gun still trained on the Russian's head, Rourke started down the hallway toward the aircraft maintenance section. Behind him, he could hear the shuffling of the Russian boots on the corridor floor, but he didn't bother to turn around.
Chapter Forty-Three
The elevator section of the underground hangar and maintenance complex was huge, more vast in size than Rourke had ever imagined. The twin engine prop plane was ready, the bikes loaded aboard, Chambers—Rourke had breathed a sigh of relief finding that the new president knew how to fly—was at the copilot's controls. At gunpoint, Natalie had moved Rubenstein, complete with the I.V. and the stomach tube, from the hospital section, and had him already loaded aboard. She had said nothing to her husband as Rourke had brought Karamatsov in still at gunpoint. The doors leading to the elevator section were closed behind them, massive steel doors that effectively sealed the compound.
"How are the RPMs, Mr. President?" Rourke shouted in through the hatch in the port side of the fuselage. The president gave a thumbs-up signal and Rourke turned back to Karamatsov, saying, "Well, major—looks like we take off. Do I have to cold cock you—that's slang for knock you out—or will you just stay here and wait?"
Karamatsov said nothing, then Natalie spoke. "I will guard him, John—you don't need to knock him out."
Rourke looked at her, saying, "I can't leave you here—you'll be—"
"If I go with you, I am still a KGB agent. Your people won't welcome me with open arms. Besides—" and she left the word hanging.
"I can let you off between here and there," Rourke suggested, his voice low.
"If the entrance doors are opened, they will be able to scramble some of the captured American fighter planes and pursue you—they'll shoot you down."
"I can't let you stay here," Rourke said. "What about what you've done?"
The girl looked at her husband, saying to Rourke, "I don't think Vladmir will admit to what I've done—he'll find a way to cover it up. Varakov doesn't want him dead, and Varakov would not kill me and leave Vladmir alive. Perhaps I'll just retire as an agent."
Karamatsov spoke, saying to Rourke, "I will not kill her."
Natalie cut in, saying, "No—he'll let me live. He'll remind me of it each time I look at him, with everything he doesn't say. Vladmir and I have been comrades together much longer than we have been husband and wife—I know his secrets, too."
"We've wound up in the middle of a soap opera, haven't we," Rourke said, smiling at the girl.
There was confusion in Karamatsov's eyes, and the girl laughed then, saying, "That was a class at
the Chicago school you did not have to take Vladmir, darling. The female agents were briefed on the story lines of the dramatic programs shown on television here during the afternoons—so we could convince another American woman that we were just like they were." Then she turned to Rourke, saying, "Does your Sarah watch these soap operas, John—or did she?"
"No," Rourke said, smiling at the girl.
"I didn't think she would," Natalie laughed.
Rourke reached into his hip pocket and handed her husband's revolver, the Chief's Special he'd pocketed earlier. He wanted to say that he hoped he'd see her again, he wanted to kiss her good-bye, but he stuck out his right hand, saying, "Good-bye?"
The woman smiled, the corners of her mouth raised slightly, her lips parted, and she leaned toward him and kissed him on his lips, almost whispering, "Dasvidanya."
"Yeah," Rourke said, stepping into the plane. "Hit the button for the elevator then and dasvidanya." Rourke started forward to the cockpit, and as he strapped himself into the pilot's seat and put on the headphones he thought of the woman—dasvidanya was like the German auf wiedersehen, he recalled. '"Til we meet again.' "
The elevator was rising, the doors above them parting, and through the open cockpit wing window Rourke could smell the night air. Rourke glanced over his shoulder at the sedated Rubenstein, sleeping a few feet behind them.
"Mr. President," Rourke began. "I may have to pull up quick, so be ready to help me on the controls." Rourke reached over his head, checked the switches, and as the elevator stopped, hit the throttle, the plane starting forward into the darkness and across the runway. Rourke turned into the wind and throttled up, the runway fence coming up as they cut across the tarmac.
The president was shouting, "What are you doing?"
"I'm avoiding the trap they've probably got at the end of the runway—pull up now!"
And Rourke hauled back on the controls, the nose coming up, the plane bouncing against the runway surface, then lifting off, the fence clearing just below the landing gear.
Rourke left his running lights off, banking steeply, his right hand twirling the radio frequency dial. Chambers said, "Who are you calling on the radio, Mr. Rourke?"
"I made a promise, Mr. President—I figure if you get on that frequency they'll call off the attack for you."
"Why should I?" the voice asked out of the darkness.
Quietly, Rourke said, "Mr. President—with all due respect, this plane flies two ways—away from the Russians back there and right back toward them— don't think I wouldn't!"
There was silence, then Rourke found the frequency, hearing the ground chatter in English. "You're on, sir," Rourke whispered in the darkness.
He let out his breath when he heard the president begin to speak into the headset microphone.
Chapter Forty-Four
Rourke knelt on the ground, listening, the CAR-15 in his hands, the leather jacket zipped high against the night cold. He could hear dogs howling in the night, and throughout the late afternoon and early evening before dusk he had seen signs of trucks and motorcycles and men on foot in the woods and the dirt roads cutting through the forested areas. "Brigands here, too?" he wondered. He knew the ground he was covering—he had owned it before the night of the war and supposed he still did if anyone owned anything anymore.
He listened to the night for a moment.
After the flight out of the KGB stronghold, Chambers, by radio, had cancelled the night attack, but the attack had merely been postponed. There were several hundred airmen held prisoner at the base, the ground commander, an army National Guard captain named Reed had explained. Rourke wondered if by now, a week later, the attack had taken place. It was hard getting used to a world without news, without information. He had landed the aircraft in east Texas, where Rubenstein had been given additional medical aid and pronounced fit enough for limited travel less than twenty-four hours ago—Rourke checked the luminous face of the Rolex on his wrist. It was past eight o'clock, if eight o'clock indeed existed, he reminded himself.
Chambers, the air force colonel, Darlington, and some of the others had asked him to stay and fight with them, or work as their spy. They'd told Rourke that he would now be a hunted man, followed by the KGB, his name and face known. He'd told them he knew that already and that he had business of his own. And he was here now, at the farm. In the distance beyond the stand of trees, he would see the house, he knew, but he sat on his haunches by a dogwood tree—it hadn't bloomed for a long time, or at least when he had been there to see it. But he remembered it.
Intelligence reports had come in that Karamatsov had left the KGB base, and there had been a dark-haired, beautiful woman with him. Another report had indicated that Karamatsov had possibly been spotted by one of the growing network of U.S. operatives outside of the area immediately surrounding Texas and western Louisiana. There weren't enough reports yet to provide a continuous flow of accurate or even reasonably accurate information, but there were enough to provide interesting bits and pieces of information—and perhaps it was valid.
Rourke had left Rubenstein with one of the bikes and the bulk of the supplies about fifty miles southeast of the retreat. To have traveled on with the rough going of the last miles would have lost Rourke another twelve hours, perhaps, and the younger man had insisted he'd be all right until Rourke returned. Rourke had left him the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, in a secure position in a high rock outcropping from which to shoot if necessary. Then Rourke had started toward the farm.
He had argued with himself silently all the long walk after he'd left his Harley hidden two miles or so back. He had tried to imagine a scenario for all the possibilities of what might have happened at the farm. In each case, he had determined that Sarah, Michael and Ann would no longer be there. But perhaps there would be a clue to where they had gone. There had been one scenario that he had rejected since the night of the war—that he would find their bodies there.
He was armed to find them, if they lived. The retreat contained more than enough supplies for several years, enough ammunition for his needs, and there was hydroelectric power, which he had engineered himself, using the natural underground stream as the source. The one thing he had lacked was gasoline and now he had that—by way of repayment, President Chambers had shown him a map, which afterwards Rourke had memorized and burned but was still able to reproduce from memory. It showed strategic reserves of gasoline cached throughout the southeast. For Rourke's comparatively meager needs, the supply was infinite.
Rubenstein had spoken of going south to Florida to see if somehow his parents had survived, and Rourke supposed that soon the younger man would.
He hoped Paul would return. Rourke had counted on few people as friends in life and Rubenstein was one of these few, perhaps the only one left alive. He supposed that perhaps he should count the Russian girl, Natalia—he rolled the name off his tongue in the darkness so that only he could hear it—had there been anyone else present.
After leaving Chambers, Rourke had used the twin engine plane to carry him across the Mississippi with the still weakened Rubenstein. There had been nothing. Once thriving cities were obliterated, the course of the river itself even seemed altered. From the air, Rourke had seen no signs of life, and the vegetation that still had stood had appeared to be dead or dying. Captain Reed had rigged the plane with a device similar to a Geiger counter that was a sensor which worked from outside of the craft. The radiation levels—if the device had been accurate— were unbelievably high.
Rourke had landed the plane just inside the Georgia line—what had been the Georgia line before, just below Chattanooga. The city was no longer really there—a neutron bomb site, Rourke decided, since the majority of the buildings were standing but there were no people at all.
Finally, the cigar burnt out in the left corner of his mouth, Rourke rose to his feet and started forward through the woods again, in a low crouch, a round already chambered in the CAR-15, the two Detonics .45s cocked and locked
in the Alessi shoulder rig, the Python riding in the Ranger scabbard on his right hip. He had no pack, just a canteen and one packet of the freeze-dried food and a flashlight.
He edged to the boundary of the tree line and stopped. The frame of the house was partially standing, like bleached bones of a dead thing, the walls burned and the house itself gone. Rourke stood to his full height, the CAR-15 in his right hand by the carrying handle, awkward that way for his large hands with the scope attached.
He walked forward, hearing the howling of the dogs. The moon was full and he could see clearly, not a cloud in the sky, the stars like a billion jewels in the velvet blanket of the sky.
He stopped by where the porch had been. Michael had liked to climb over the railing and Rourke had always told the boy to be careful. Annie had driven her tricycle into the railing once, and knocked loose one of the finials, if that was what you called them, he thought. He remembered Sarah standing in the front door that morning after he had come back. She had taken him inside, they had had coffee, talked—she had shown him the drawings for her latest book, then they had gone upstairs to their room and made love. The room was gone, the bed, porch—probably even the coffee pot, Rourke thought.
The barn was still standing, the fire that had gutted the house apparently not having spread. He started toward the barn, then turned back toward the house, studying it for a pattern. After circling it completely, he had found two things—first, that the house had exploded, and second, the charred and twisted frame of Annie's tricycle.
Rourke sat down on the ground and stared up at the stars, again wondering if there could be places where the things that called themselves intelligent life had elected to keep life rather than wantonly spoil it. He looked at the wreckage of the house behind him and thought not. He started toward the barn, then stopped, hearing something behind him.
