The Nightmare begins s-2

by Ahern, Jerry

  "Knock it off?" Rubenstein demanded, his lips drawn back in a strange mixture of incredulity and anger. He pushed the glasses off the bridge of his nose, saying, "It's not enough that the Russians have destroyed the world practically, they killed millions of Americans—yeah, knock it off! What about you, John? You gonna knock it off? Just 'cause you miss your wife and you think maybe she's dead and this one comes along and she's a knockout and she's got the hots for you to get into her pants? What—you think I'm blind? She's a goddamned communist agent, John!" and Rubenstein was shouting.

  "I didn't drop any bombs, I didn't give any attack orders, Paul! Leave me alone!" The girl nervously pulled another cigarette from the pack and tried lighting a match, but her hand was shaking so badly the matches kept breaking.

  Rourke took his lighter and flicked it, holding the flame for her.

  She looked at him in the glow of the flame, saying, "Well—what are you going to say?"

  Rourke leaned back, closing the lighter, saying, "He's right, you're right. You didn't drop any bombs—you were just being a patriotic Russian. And now you're here in this country and you're looking for Samuel Chambers. What? To kill him?

  So he doesn't serve as a rallying point for resistance? Right?"

  "I'm just doing my damned job, John. It's my job!"

  "I had a job like that once. But you know what I did? I quit. That's where you remembered me from— South America, a few years ago. I was down there a lot in those days. I didn't quit because my philosophy changed or anything—I just quit because I wanted to and figured I'd done my time. You could do the same, couldn't you?"

  "I've got other reasons," she said, staring into the cigarette in her right hand. "I believe in what I'm doing."

  "You didn't see your face when you looked at those refugees, the woman with the dead baby. You're on the wrong side."

  "Is that why you didn't try and kill me when you recognized me?" she asked, looking up at Rourke.

  "No—that isn't why," Rourke answered.

  "How long have you known, John?" Rubenstein asked.

  "Long enough—after the first couple of days I was sure." Then turning to the girl, he said, "Is Karamatsov here too? You always worked with him down south."

  The girl said nothing for a long moment, then, "Yes."

  "Who the hell is Karamatsov?" Rubenstein said, leaning forward.

  Rourke started to answer, but the girl cut him off, her voice suddenly lifeless-sounding, Rourke thought. "He's the best agent in the KGB—at least he thinks so and everyone tells him that. He's—I guess it doesn't matter—he's in charge of the newly formed American branch of the KGB—he's the top man in your entire country. The only man who can overrule him here is General Varakov—he's the military commander for the North American Army of Occupation."

  "This is like some kind of a nightmare," Rubenstein started, taking off his glasses and staring out into the rain. "During World War II, my aunt was trapped over in Germany when the war broke out. They found out she was Jewish and they arrested her and we never heard from her again. I grew up hating the Nazis for what they'd done. What the hell do you think American kids are gonna grow up hating, Natalie? Huh? How many houses and apartment buildings and farms—schools, office buildings… how many places just stopped existing, how many children and women and little dogs and cats and everything else that matters in life did you people kill that night? Jees—you guys make Hitler look like some kinda bush leaguer!"

  "This was a war, Paul," the woman said. "We had no choice. The U.S. ultimatum in Afghanistan, there was no choice, Paul—no choice. We had to strike first! And then your own president held back U.S. retaliation until the last possible minute—we didn't know!"

  "Do you hear what you're both saying?" Rourke asked quietly. "Things haven't changed at all since the war, have they?" Rourke closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the edge of the pickup's tailgate. No one spoke for a while and all he could hear was the unseasonably heavy rain.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Rubenstein had elected to sleep in the bed of the pickup truck and was snoring occasionally as Rourke and Natalie lay beside one another under the tarps, listening to the rain. An hour earlier, one of the brigands had passed by, sticking his head under the shelter flap, then seeing Rourke and the girl together, grunted, "Sorry, man—I didn't know if— see ya," then walked away.

  Rourke had had one of the Detonics pistols under the blanket, the hammer cocked and the safety down, his finger against the trigger.

  After the man had gone and Rourke had lowered the hammer on the pistol, the girl started to cry. Rourke heard the strange sound from her before he turned and saw the tears. Then he asked her why.

  "He's right—what we did," she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

  "Yes, Paul is," Rourke said. "But if everybody who isn't Russian winds up hating everybody who is Russian, what's that gonna do, huh?"

  "What kind of man are you—he was right, he was right, you know," the girl said to him. "I did try everything I could to get you to come after me—I guess I still am. What? Was it because you knew who I was, thought I was Karamatsov's woman or something?"

  "That didn't really have anything to do with it," he said, then fell silent. The rain fell heavily and Rourke glanced at his Rolex—it was well after midnight.

  The girl spoke again.

  "Why then?"

  "Why then what?" Rourke said, not turning to look at her.

  "What we were saying before—you didn't care that I was a Russian agent, that I might be Karamatsov's woman—then why?"

  "Forget it," Rourke whispered. "You'll wake the kids," and he pointed up toward the truck bed, listening to Rubenstein snore.

  "I won't forget it," she said. "Is it that wife you have—the one who's maybe still alive? What are you afraid of—you'll stop trying to find her?"

  "No—I won't stop," he said. "Give me one of your cigarettes—I don't want to smell up the place."

  The girl turned away from him a moment, fumbled in the pocket of her jacket and handed Rourke the half-empty pack. Then she took it back, extracted one of the cigarettes and lit it—her hands steady, the match lighting the first time. She inhaled hard, then passed the cigarette over to Rourke. He stayed on his back, the cigarette in his lips, staring up at the top of the shelter and the darkness there.

  "Is it that you'd be unfaithful to her?" Natalie said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  "Somethin' like that," Rourke said, snapping ashes from the tip of the cigarette out the partially open flap and into the rain.

  "But—what if she isn't—" and the girl left the question unfinished.

  "Then it wouldn't be somethin' like that," Rourke said quietly, dragging hard on the cigarette, then tossing it out into the rain.

  He could feel the girl moving beside him under the blanket. "Are you human?" she whispered.

  He turned his head and looked at her, then without getting up reached out his left hand and knotted his fingers into the dark hair at the nape of her neck, drawing her face down to him, looking for her eyes by the dim light there through the shelter flap. All he could see was shadow. He could feel her breath against his face, hear her breathing, feel the pulse in her neck as he held her.

  Her lips felt moist and warm against his cheek as she moved against him, and Rourke took her face in his hands and found her mouth in the darkness and kissed her, her breath hot now and almost something he could taste, sweet, the release of her body against him something he could feel in her as well as himself, She lay in his arms and he could hear her whispering, "You are human."

  Rourke touched his lips to hers again, heard her say, "Nothing is going to happen, is it John?"

  "I don't know—go to sleep, huh? At least for now," and he felt her head sink against his chest and heard her whisper something he couldn't hear.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Rourke opened his eyes, glancing down at the watc
h on his left wrist. It was three A.M. The girl was still sleeping in his arms, and to see the face of the Rolex he'd had to move her. He heard the sound again, a shot, then another and then a long series of shots—submachine gun fire, light like a 9mm should sound.

  "The damned fools," Rourke said aloud, feeling the girl stirring in his arms, then feeling her sit up beside him.

  "Shots?"

  Then Rourke heard Rubenstein, sliding off the pickup truck bed, beside them suddenly under the shelter. The rain was still pouring down outside, and Rourke stared out from the shelter flap, then pulled his head back inside, his face and hair wet. Without looking at either Rubenstein or the girl, Rourke said, "The damned fool paramils—it's a blasted night attack. Damn them!"

  As Rourke pulled on his combat boots, whipped the laces tight and tied them, the sound of the gunfire became more general, shouts sounding as well from all sections of the brigand camp, the engines of some of the big eighteen-wheelers roaring to life and, as each did, the shots were drowned out for a moment.

  Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, over the din, "Paul, start getting this shelter taken down and get the truck ready to roll—Natalie, give him a hand! I'm going up by the road." Rourke slipped into his leather jacket, got to his feet in a low crouch and started through the shelter flap, then dove back inside, shouting, "Mortars!"

  He dove onto the girl and Rubenstein, knocking them to the shelter floor. The shelter trembled, the ground trembled, the blast of the mortar was deafening.

  Then came the sounds of rocks and dirt hitting the shelter, added now to the drumming of the rain. Rourke pushed himself up on his hands, rasped, "Hurry!"

  and started back toward the shelter flap, then into the rain. There was the whooshing sound of another mortar round, and though the pouring rain muffled the sound, he instinctively dove left, the mortar impacting behind him and to his right. Rourke pushed himself up out of the mud, the CAR-15 diagonally across his chest in a high port as he ran zigzag across the mud, avoiding the brigand men and women running everywhere around the camp in obvious confusion and panic.

  Some of the eighteen-wheelers were starting to move, inching forward, then backward, the very shape of the circle in which they'd parked prohibiting them from maneuvering. Some of them were entrenched deep in the mud of the plateau, and mud sprayed into the air as the wheels bit and slipped and dug themselves deeper.

  Ahead of him, from the glare of the truck headlights and the few lanterns, Rourke could see a knot of several dozen men by the head of the single road leading up to the top of the plateau, and he could see the flashes of gunfire and hear more small calibre automatic weapons fire.

  Rourke spotted Mike, the brigand leader, without a shirt, his body visibly trembling in the cold, the riot shotgun in his hands. As Rourke ran up to the men around Mike, the brigand leader stopped talking and glared at him a moment, then nodded slightly, and went on. The words were hard to make out with the missing teeth and the stitched, swollen lip. "… ey can't get up here after us. I figure maybe we got fifty or a hundred of 'em trapped halfway up the road down there in the dark—we keep shootin' into 'em, we're, ahh—we're gonna pin 'em down all night— first light we get we can finish 'em."

  "What about the mortar rounds—all you need is one hittin' a fuel tanker and this whole spot is a huge fireball. I don't think that can wait till morning." Rourke heard some of the brigands grunting agreement, one from the rear of the knot of men around Mike shouting out, "One of them mortar rounds almost hit my truck—I was parked right next door to one of the diesel tankers. The new guy's right!"

  "All right, smart ass," Mike said, turning to Rourke, "what do we do—huh?"

  "You're the leader," Rourke said, hunching his shoulders against the rain. "But if I were you, I'd take about fifty or seventy-five men, maybe in two groups, and work my way down both sides of the road—right now. No shooting at all until you reached those fifty or so guys in the middle of the road. Try and get 'em by surprise, maybe, then from their position, you can just dig in and start pouring out a heavy enough volume of fire to push that mortar crew back out of range of the top of the plateau. If you dig yourselves in well, by the sides of the road rather than by the middle, you can keep your casualties down, then just before dawn, pull back. Hold your fire then until the mortar crew gives the middle of the road a good enough workout to figure you've pulled back, then start firing from the rims of the plateau here—you might even catch 'em out in the open trying to retake the position in the middle of the road. Simple."

  Mike didn't say anything for a long minute, then, "You volunteering to lead one of the two groups?"

  Rourke sighed heavily, then said, "Yeah—wait 'til I tell my lady what's up. You line up the guys—I'll meet you back here in five minutes." Without waiting for a comment, Rourke started in a slow run back across the camp and toward the pickup truck. He had no intention of sitting out the rest of the darkness in a foxhole in the middle of the road.

  Another mortar hit off to Rourke's right as he took shelter beside one of the truck trailers, then he started running again—back toward the pickup truck.

  Natalie and Rubenstein—their differences, Rourke judged, put aside—were drenched, the girl's hair alternately plastered to her forehead or catching in a gust of wind, Rubenstein's glasses off and his thinning hair pushed back in dark streaks. The lean-to was down and Rubenstein was just closing up the gate of the truck bed.

  "We gotta get out of here—fast," Rourke said, standing between them both. "I don't have any kind of good plan, but it's the best I can think of—now listen,"

  and Rourke leaned forward, saying, "I'm leading a group of the brigands down along one side of the road, there'll be another group on the other side—kind of pincer-type thing. When we reach the paramils—there are maybe fifty of 'em in the middle of the road about halfway up to the summit—we're going to knock them out, then lay down some fire on that mortar crew to push 'em back out of range of the plateau. Before they hit one of the fuel tankers. Now," Rourke continued, "once I get down there and you hear the mortars stopping or pulling back, you and Paul take the bikes—"

  "Wait a minute—shh, I hear something," the girl said.

  Rubenstein looked skyward, saying, "Yeah—so do I, John. Listen."

  Rourke looked skyward. He could see nothing but blackness, the rain still falling in sheets across his face and body and the ground on which he stood. "I hear it, too," Rourke almost whispered. "Helicopters—big ones and a lot of them—the paramils don't have that kind of equipment—"

  Suddenly, the entire campsite, the whole upper surface of the plateau was bathed in powerful white light, and there was a voice, in labored English, coming over some kind of loudspeaker from the air above them. Rourke turned his eyes away from the sudden brightness. The voice was saying, "In the name of the Soviet People and the Soviet Army of Occupation you are ordered to cease all hostilities on the ground. You are outnumbered by an armed force vastly superior to you—lay down your arms and stay where you are."

  Behind him, Rourke heard Paul Rubenstein, muttering, saying, "You can all go to hell!" And as Rourke started to turn, Rubenstein had the "Schmeisser" up and had started firing.

  Rourke shouted, "Down!" and grabbed at Natalie, forcing her down into the mud, the roar of heavy machine gun fire belching out of the darkness above him, Rubenstein crumpling to the mud, doubled over, the SMG in his hands still firing as he went down. Rourke crawled across the mud toward the younger man, then the voice from the helicopters shouted over the speaker system again, "No one will move! Lay down your arms and surrender or you will be killed!"

  Rubenstein's eyes were closed and Rourke could barely detect a pulse in the neck. Natalie was beside Rourke in the mud. As Rourke raised Rubenstein's head into his lap, he glared skyward. Still, he could see nothing but the light.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Once Samuel Chambers' advisors had stopped arguing, one of the naval officers—second in co
mmand to the air force officer, the ranking military man—had suggested using a Harrier aircraft to travel to Galveston. It could fly low, below radar, was fast, armed, and could land or take off vertically, with the capability to hover, if necessary. Chambers had agreed. The flight from the Texas-Louisiana border area had been short and, Chambers admitted to himself, exciting. The Harrier accommodated only two men, himself and the pilot, and he felt happy that he wasn't too old yet to have been able to stare into the darkness and the rain they had encountered halfway through the trip and fantasize that he had been at the controls himself. He had flown twin engine conventional aircraft for many years, but never a jet. As the Harrier aircraft began to touch down in the Cemetery parking lot just outside Galveston, Chambers felt almost as if now he had flown a jet, and the feeling was good to him, uplifting, rejuvenating—better than the air of depression that he could feel settling over him when he thought of the sad state of affairs on the ground.

  Because the plane had been for two men only, he was without his aide, without security. He had armed himself, borrowed a .45 automatic from one of the National Guardsmen, and the pilot was also armed, with a small submachine gun.

  As the plane touched down, any fears Chambers had held of security problems on the ground vanished. He could see more than a dozen men in U.S. military fatigues, holding M-16s and coming out of the shadows and toward the landing zone, itself illuminated with high-visibility strobe lights that had been placed there, Chambers understood, just for his arrival.

  The aircraft slowed its engines and there was a loud whining noise as it stopped, the landing completed. The pilot scanned the ground, then made a thumbs-up gesture to Chambers behind him and the canopy over their heads started to open with a hydraulic-sounding hiss. The apparent commander of the soldiers on the ground stepped toward the plane, saluting, saying, "Mr. President—we've been waiting for you, sir."