Chapter 1
John Rourke pulled up the zipper on the fly of his Levis with his right hand,
his left moving across his body plane to the Detonics stainless under his right
armpit in the double Alessi rig, his fingers knotting around the black checkered
rubber Pachmayr grips, his left thumb poised to cock the .45 as soon as it
cleared the leather. He gave the pistol a short, firm tug, hearing the speed
break through the trigger guard unsnap. His thumb jerked back the hammer.
Rourke wheeled, the .45 in his left hand snaking out from inside the brown
leather bomber jacket, moving forward, his right hand reaching for the gun's
twin under his left arm. He already had the target—a man about six-foot four,
unshaven, his black leather jacket mud-stained, a riot shotgun in his hands, the
pump tromboning as the twelve-gauge, roughly .70 caliber muzzle swung on line.
Rourke's trigger finger twitched once, the second Detonics already out, in his
right fist, the hammer jacking back. Rourke fired the second pistol as well, the
discharge like an echo of the first punctuating the riot shotgun as it fired.
Rourke threw himself down and right, the shotgunner right handed and the impact
of Rourke's first slug pounding the man in the right side of the chest, twisting
the body right, pulling the shot column right as well. The ground three feet
from Rourke seemed to erupt, the .30
caliber-sized pellets raising a spray of loose dirt and dead leaves, the dirt
showering down as the shotgunner spun, twisted and lurched toward the lank
Georgia pine beside which he'd stood. The body slipped along the length of the
pine's trunk, then stopped, almost sagged down to the knees, the shotgun falling
as the hands went limp.
Rourke pushed himself to his feet, muttering, "Can't even urinate without
somebody tryin' to kill ya—hell." His pistols held close to his sides at hip
level, Rourke moved toward the man, Rourke's eyes behind the dark-lensed
aviator-style sunglasses scanning from side to side. Where there was one brigand
there were usually a dozen or more nearby.
But he saw no one else.
He stopped beside the body—the front of the leather jacket the dead man wore was
caught up on a stump of branch. Blood oozed from the right center of the chest
over the lung and from the left side of the neck near the hinge of the jaw, the
eyes wide open in death, still clear.
Rourke shoved the body down to the ground, letting it flop into the rotted
leaves and the brown and brittle pine needles there. The shotgun was a
cheapie—Rourke had no interest in it. Rourke unzipped his bomber jacket, shoving
one of his Detonics pistols into his belt, the safety upped. His left hand free
now, the right fist clenched tight on the other Detonics, Rourke
began—methodically—to search the dead man.
A poor-quality lockbiade folding knife—Rourke didn't need it. A disposable
cigarette lighter—Rourke tried it under his thumb and it lit. He had no use for
disposable anythings, but extra fire was always useful—Rourke pocketed the
lighter. Cigarettes—Rourke didn't smoke them and he stuffed them back in the
dead man's pocket. A Freedom Arms .22 Magnum Boot Pistol. "Hmm," Rourke
murmured. He inspected the little gun; it seemed in perfect working order. He
searched the pockets, finding
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a plastic box of fifty rounds, only four holes in the plastic grid for the
missing rounds. He stuffed the box of ammo in his bomber jacket patch pocket and
put the boot pistol's hammer to half cock, twisted the cylinder base pin and
withdrew it, then removed the cylinder. Four rounds, all unfired. He had used
the little Freedom Arms guns a few times as last ditch back up ordnance. They
worked well and were accurate, despite their size. But he carried no single
action revolver ever with a round under the hammer. He pushed out one of the
four loaded rounds, using the base pin to urge it out of the charging hole in
the cylinder, then reassembled the gun, pocketing the loose fourth round. Rourke
tucked the three-inch tubed gun in another pocket, then quickly resumed the
folded up picture of a naked blonde-haired woman. It looked clipped from a
magazine, and there was twenty dollars. The money was really useless, more
suitable for fire starting than a means of exchange since the Night of The War.
Rourke took the twenty and pocketed it anyway, then thumbed closed the eyes.
Looking around the wooded area past the body, he upped the safety on the second
Detonics, dropped the pistol in his hip pocket and picked up the shotgun,
mechanically emptying the magazine tube. He unscrewed the nut at its front,
tossing the nut into the trees, then pulling the magazine spring. He bent and
twisted this, then threw it away, letting the emptied and nearly useless smooth
bore fall to the ground. It could be fired awkwardly single shot, but there was
no time to remove any less obvious parts.
He started back across the clearing now and away from the dead man. More
brigands would be coming soon, having heard the gunfire. He was mildly surprised
none had come yet. To have left an operable weapon behind him for someone else
perhaps to use against him would
have been foolish.
As he started to mount the Harley, he thought better of it, turned and pulled
down the zipper of his fly, finishing what he'd started to do before the
interruption . . .
"I tell ya those was shots—shots, Marty—maybe he's in trouble or something
Crip!" His hands shook as he lit a cigarette, the lighter not working for him.
The taller, thinner man crouched beside him in the pines took a Zippo from his
pocket and worked it. "Here—and if Marty's in trouble, then that's too fuckin'
bad, Jed—too fuckin' bad,"
The first man, Jed, poked the tip of the cigarette into the lighter's flame,
nodding through a mouthful of smoke, coughing as he said, "But if he bumped into
somebody—maybe—' *
"Somebody comes this way lookin' for us, we take care .a them too—there's plenty
of us and only six of them Army guys comin' and if we could hardly hear them
shots, a cinch them Army guys didn't." Jed's eyes followed Crip as the taller
man turned and glanced down along the defile and toward the valley below.
Spotted behind rocks and boulders and trees were more than two dozen men—armed
with everything from riot shotguns to automatic weapons. And past these, at the
far side of the valley, more visible from the wake of trodden down grass and
wild oats tracking their line of march, were six figures in olive drab.
Crip was peering through binoculars now, "Those guys gotta have maybe a coupla
hundred rounds of ammo apiece on 'em—and the six M-16s. Maybe got other shit we
can use."
"We could use gas better," Jed murmured.
"Yeah—well—with more ammo and better guns, maybe we can get us some
gas, too. 1
been plannin'—"
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"But killin' Army guys—maybe they're fightin' the Commies or somethin'—maybe—"
"Maybe shit," Crip laughed. "You wanna go fight Commies, go on and do it. Me—I
wanna stay alive, stay cookin'—like the guys down there want. I take 'em to war
with the fuckin' Russians and they'd run like hell. I take 'em to war to get
some neat shit, to have some fun—they stick, they fight. Them Army guys down
there's like ever'body else—fair game. They'd plug us soon as shit—but we'll ice
'em first."
Crip went back to looking through the binoculars. Jed puffed anxiously on the
cigarette—and his hands still shook . . .
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna brushed the dark lock of hair back from her face,
dismounting the bike, walking across the clearing. The fingers of her left hand
swept back through the hair again, tiny knots in it from riding the bike against
the wind. She made a mental note to put her hair up after she brushed it, either
that or tie a scarf over it. The fingers of her right hand were half hidden
under the full flap of the black leather holster on her right hip, the
Goncala Alves stocks of the round butted Smith L-Frame, the firsf finger poised
and slightly outstretched, to reach into the revolver's trigger guard as soon as
she cleared leather.
She heard a rustling in the trees, but didn't react to it and draw the .357—it
was Paul, her eyes having caught sight of his movement in the instant prior to
the snapping of the twig. What Paul Rubenstein still lacked in expertise, she
felt he more than compensated for by ingenuity and tenacity—and she liked him
anyway. She saw a form on the ground at the edge of the trees—but it was
unmoving.
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Her left hand unsnapped the flap of the Safariland holster on her other hip,
both of the customized, slab-side barreled stainless L-Frames coming into her
hands and their muzzles leveling toward the treeline's edge. She kept walking,
lengthening her stride, glancing down once at her black booted feet beneath the
black whipcord slacks.
The leaves—multi-colored the way autumn had always been near Moscow when a
little girl on her way to ballet—were beautiful.
She stopped, five yards from the form of the man on the ground—dead. She glanced
from side to side, then walked forward, knowing Paul was still in the tree
cover, watching for signs of a trap.
Natalia stopped beside the body, kicking it fast once in the exposed rib cage
just to be sure, then stepping back quickly. There was no betraying
movement—however slight. She bolstered the revolver in her left hand, then
dropped to her knees.
Her skin touched its skin—still warm. The eyes were closed—unnaturally, by
whoever had put the twin holes in the body, she deduced. "Not heartless," she
murmured to herself, then more closely inspected the wound in the neck and in
the chest. "But very good."
She stood up, walking in the direction from which she judged the shots to have
been fired. She stooped to the ground—a piece of brass, still shiny and bright,
freshly fired. .45 ACP—Natalia glanced at the headstamp, recognizing the ammo
brand. It was what Rourke carried, as did she herself. "Hmm," she murmured.
There was a second cartridge case and she picked it up, noticing a disturbance
in the leaves a few feet further on. She walked toward that, already noting the
imprint of motorcycle tracks.
"John?" She studied the tracks. For the last seven days, she and Paul Rubenstein
had been searching for him. There was the urgent message from her uncle. There
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was the fear that somehow Rourke had not survived the storms which had swept the
coast and central section of the country. There was the loneliness she felt—and
the confusion of purpose, identity. She was Russian—she was helping Americans.
America and Russia were technically still at war, despite the fact Soviet forces
occupied much of the land. She was KGB—a major.
She shook her head to clear it.
There would be time later to wrestle with herself—wrestle with herself as she
had done already.
Natalia walked past the motorcycle tracks, seeing something glistening on the
leaves. She bent over, taking a dry leaf and touching it to the moist leaves
that had shown the glistening effect. Without bringing it too close to her nose,
the smell confirmed her initial suspicion—urine. Probably human. There was
another, similar wet spot a few feet to the left.
"Natalia!"
"She glanced behind her. Paul was running toward her, his Schmeisser
submachinegun dangling from its sling under his right arm, a riot shotgun—or at
least the major pieces of it—in his right hand.
"I found this—somebody deliberately made it inoperable."
"It could still function single-shot—hand chambering. I noticed it, too. I think
John was here, Paul—and just a few minutes ago."
"That louder shot was from this—"
"And the two lighter ones from these that we heard," she nodded, showing him the
spent cartridge cases.
Rubenstein took them from her, inspecting them. "That's John's brand all right—"
"But also one of the largest ammunition manufacturers in the world—the cases
could have been from a thousand other people—ten thousand. But I found this,"
and she gestured toward the motorcycle tracks. "And signs of
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someone urinating here about the time we heard the shots. That dead man's flesh
is still warm. I think it was John—stopped to—to—"
"To piss," Paul nodded, smiling embarrassedly.
Natalia felt herself smile, "Yes," she nodded. "And somebody came up on him—that
man over there. John shot him, then disassembled the shotgun so no one could use
it afterward. Then he finished—pissing. Then he drove off."
"But when there's one brigand, there's usually a bunch of 'em—"
"There aren't any signs of them—did you find any?"
"Nothing—no," and Rubenstein shook his head, his left hand pushing his
wire-rimmed glasses up off the bridge of his nose, then sweeping across his high
forehead through his thinning dark hair.
''And neither did I—if you were John—"
Rubenstein laughed. "Ha—if I were John—if anybody is closer to John in the way
they think—you are. What would you do—kill one brigand and figure there are more
around?"
"John urinated twice—as if he'd been doing it when he heard the man, then there
was the gunfight, then John checked the man's pockets—I noticed that when I
checked the body. Then John finished what he'd been doing."
"That's John for you," Rubenstein smiled.
' 'He would have been here long enough to tell if others were coming—and none
did. Which would mean this dead man could have been a straggler—"
"There wasn't any bike—no signs of a truck or anything—"
"Or he could have been alone and on foot."
Paul shook his head. "I don't think so."
"Neither do I—his boots were marked from riding a bike, and the soles were
polished almost smooth—but they weren't worn down as if he'd walked a great
deal."
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"John would have figured there were brigands in the' area and whatever they were
doing, hearing what maybe would have been gunshots wasn't important enough to
pull them away—"
Natalia nodded. "Laying a trap—ambuscade—"
"What?" Rubenstein asked, his face quizzical looking to her.
. She felt herself laugh—"That's only English, Paul—ambuscade—it means ambush."
"Ohh," and he nodded. "Yeah—I knew that," and Rubenstein laughed.
She touched her left hand gently to his right forearm. "John is probably looking
for the other brigands—the rest of the dead man's gang."
"Can't be more than a couple miles—guy wouldn't have left his wheels—"
"He could have been a scout—maybe from a base camp. But you're right, Paul—not
more than a few miles."
"If we can backtrack him through the woods—"
"We'll know soon enough if John did the same thing," she interrupted. "And we
can find him—"
"Before he runs into a dozen or two brigands I hope," Rubenstein added soberly.
"Before—yes—come on," and she started running back toward her bike, glancing
over her shoulder as Rubenstein threw the useless shotgun into the trees, then
started running in the opposite direction—for his bike, she knew.