by neetha Napew
"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 watch 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 command 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."
The pilot stepped out and reached up from the wing surface and helped Chambers
out of the copilot's seat in the camouflage-painted jet. Chambers climbed out
over the side of the fuselage, awkwardly and conspicuously, he thought, then
down onto the wing where the pilot helped him to the ground.
Chambers smiled at the army officer—a captain— and then turned to the pilot,
extending his hand, saying, "Well, lieutenant—I enjoyed that flight. Got my mind
off the troubles we all have for a few moments—it was like twelve hours' sleep
and then a date with a pretty girl and a steak dinner all rolled into one!"
The pilot smiled, taking the offered hand, then his eyes hardened, his hand drew
back and swept down to the small submachine gun slung diagonally across the
front of his body. Chambers spun on his heel, as rough hands smashed him against
the side of the aircraft fuselage, then a coughing sound, once, twice, and
splotches of blood appeared almost magically on the pilot's forehead and he fell
back against one of the wing flaps.
Chambers pushed himself away from the fuselage and started to run from the
plane, away from the circle of lights. Looming up ahead of him were several men,
all clad like those by the plane, in military fatigues. From behind him, he
heard a voice, the English perfect, but odd-sounding when he heard the name the
voice spoke. "I am Major Vladmir Karamatsov, Mr. President, of the Committee for
State Security of the Soviet—you are under arrest. You are surrounded. You
cannot escape. If you attempt to resist, you may only become unavoidably
injured."
/> Chambers stopped running, his breathing hard. He smoked too much, he told
himself. He wondered if getting to the pistol under his windbreaker would do any
good.
"I assume, sir, you may be armed—I would advise against any attempt to use a
weapon against yourself or any of my men. It would only result in needless
bloodshed."
"Needless bloodshed?" Chambers shouted angrily. "What about that boy—the pilot?
What about him— major?"
"He was armed with a submachine gun and would have used it—we were protecting
your life as well. Since he likely had orders to prevent your falling into our
hands."
"Bullshit!"
"Perhaps—but that is unimportant—now, your weapon. You will hand it
over—please!"
Chambers surveyed the dark faces beyond the edge of the light, then shrugging
his shoulders reached slowly under his windbreaker. He heard the sound of a
rifle bolt, he thought, then heard Karamatsov shouting something in Russian.
Chambers produced the gun and held it out from his body. The major was walking
across the lighted area toward him, left hand extended, in the right hand a
strange-looking handgun with a very long, awkward-looking barrel. The major was
saying, "Please do not attempt any useless heroics, Mr. President. You can be of
greater value to the American people alive rather than dead—we mean you no
physical harm."
Chambers closed his eyes and felt the pistol being taken gently from his hand.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Soviet forces had landed two of their helicopters on the plateau, the
others still hovering overhead, their floodlights illuminating the rain-soaked
ground in a white glare that Rourke was almost getting used to as he knelt in
the mud, using the pressure of his right hand to stem the bleeding from the
gunshot wounds in Rubenstein's abdomen.
The girl had ignored the Soviet commander's directive to stay beside the
vehicles and approached the nearest helicopter, shouting something in Russian
which Rourke had been unable to catch with all the noise and confusion. He could
hear gunfire from the ground level below the plateau and assumed the paramils
were making a run for it, trying to use the darkness to hide their retreat.
