almost whispering so Taco alone could hear him, "You know how some guys—" Rourke
panted, "how some guys have a glass jaw—me, I'm just the opposite." Taco's left
flashed forward again and Rourke let it come, dodging his head right just before
impact, feeling the rush of air as the bloodied knuckles passed his face, then
straight-arming Taco with his own left fist, then crossing with his right, then
his left, then his right, hammering the brigand back, forcing him to his knees,
then feigning a low right, but instead, hammering up with his right knee,
catching Taco on the tip of the chin and snapping the head and neck back with an
audible crack.
Rourke stepped away as Mike climbed to his feet, his lower lip split wide, blood
and teeth spitting from his mouth as he tried to stand. Rourke lashed out with
his left foot, catching Mike square in the face over the nose and driving him
back to the ground.
Rourke wheeled, feeling, sensing rather than seeing or hearing, Kleiger coming
for him. It was too late to step away, and as Kleiger's right foot punched
toward Rourke's crotch, Rourke blocked the blow with both hands crossed in front
of him, the scissor formed by his wrists and forearms taking its force.
Kleiger's right heel of the hand was driving up for Rourke's nose, and Rourke
wheeled, his left elbow coming up and knocking the blow aside, then his left
hand snapping back and downward into the side of Kleiger's neck, Rourke's right
already drawn back and driving forward, the middle knuckles of the hand bunched
together and hammering into the base of Kleiger's nose, and rather than driving
the bone upward into the brain, withdrawing, snapping back, leaving Kleiger
stunned, reeling, no guard to block the series of short left jabs Rourke
hammered now toward Kleiger's jaw. As Kleiger stumbled, Rourke crossed Kleiger's
jaw with a go-for-broke right and the man fell, straight back, stiff, his head
snapping hard against the dirt of the field, bouncing a little.
Rourke stood, waiting. Mike was moving on the ground, but not getting up. Taco
was down for the count, Rourke felt, as was Kleiger.
"Natalie," Rourke shouted, perhaps a half-dozen feet from her, extending his
left hand, watching as the CAR-15's sling slipped from her shoulder and the gun
sailed from her right hand and toward him. He caught the rifle, shifting it into
his right hand as he worked the safety off, his right fist wrapped around the
pistol grip, as a dozen or so of the brigands started toward him in a rush. But
Rourke heard a grunting sound, almost not human. Mike, the brigand leader, was
on his knees, gesturing rapidly with his right hand, starting to talk, still
spitting teeth and blood into the dirt, as the rain fell now in a thin mist, the
clouds above them now darkening like the clouds in the northwest had been. The
rain felt good against Rourke's body, the dirt and sweat intermingled there with
spattered blood from the men he'd fought down.
"Wait!" Mike finally shouted. "He won—it was fair. Could've killed Kleiger—I
saw—"
Mike gestured to some of the brigand men and women standing near him and a group
of them hauled him to his feet and Rourke lowered the muzzle of the CAR-15 as
they approached.
"I been thinkin'," Mike said, his speech hard to understand, the smashed teeth
and the cracked lips having resulted in a lisplike effect. He was less than two
yards from Rourke now. He started to speak again. "I been thinkin'—maybe you
don't like to kill. So I got one more test—some stakes. You make it this time,
you're in—but I don't think you're gonna make it."
Rourke looked at Mike, his voice low, saying, "You better hope I do—I'm a doctor
and if somebody doesn't put some stitches into that lower lip of yours, you're
gonna bleed to death."
Mike's eyes flickered, but he said nothing, then, "I want you to brace Deke—with
guns."
"Who's Deke?" the girl said, before Rourke could answer.
Mike's eyes smiled a moment, then the brigand leader said, "He's my right-hand
man—and he's so good with a piece you wouldn't believe your eyes, lady."
"Where is he?" Rourke asked.
"Right here," the voice answered and Rourke slowly turned to his right. There
was a slim, blonde-haired man with a little imperial on his chin and pansy-blue
eyes standing at the edge of the circle of brigands. Rourke's mind flashed back
to the description the refugee woman had given of the man who'd shot her baby.
This was the man. And on his right hip in a cut-away Hollywood-style fast-draw
rig was a glinting, nickel-plated single-action revolver, the hammer spur built
up, the butt canted rearward, muzzle forward. A heavy leather glove covered the
man's left hand. Rourke knew the drill—he'd tried competitive fast-draw, had had
good friends who competed in the sport. And he knew the light-speed draws a
trained fast-draw man could make. "You want it now, or you wanna clean up so you
make a good-lookin' corpse?" Deke said, an Aussie-style camouflage cowboy hat
low over his eyes.
"Catch you in five," Rourke said and turned away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Rourke stood by the cab of the pickup truck, Rubenstein trying to look casual
with the MP-40 subgun in his hands, the bolt still locked open, just waiting for
a touch of the trigger. As Rourke splashed canteen water on his face, he could
feel Natalie's hands on his back, a handkerchief or something in her one hand
and cool water being rubbed across him. He splashed water on his chest as well,
then took his shirt and started to dry himself with it. He started to pull the
shirt on, but heard the girl murmur, "Wait, John," and in a moment she was back
with a fresh shirt for him from his pack.
As Rourke buttoned the shirt, stuffing the shirt-tails into his jeans, the girl
came up beside him, the wet handkerchief in her hand, daubing at the right side
of his mouth where he'd been cut. "I'm fine," Rourke whispered.
The girl—Natalie—stepped back. "You're not really going to do this—I mean you're
good with guns and all, but this is like apples and oranges."
"She's right, John," Rubenstein commented, not looking at Rourke but watching
the brigands. They had gone back to the trucks again, like natives in a death
ritual, starting to drive them once more in a huge circle. But this time there
was little dust; the rain was starting to fall more heavily now.
Rourke said, "You mean can I outdraw Deke? I don't think so, but there's a
difference between drawing down on a timer and drawing down on a man—we'll see
what happens."
"I've seen that kind of shooting before," the girl said.
"So have I," Rourke said softly, looking into her blue eyes. "He holds his hand
on the gun butt, his left hand edged in front of the holster, and on the signal
he rocks the gun out of the leather, the hand with the glove slaps the hammer
back, fans it and the gun goes off. I couldn't see whether he's got the trigger
tied back or not so he doesn't even have to bother touching it."
"He probably does," the girl said. "You want this?" she asked, gesturing toward
the Python still slung diagonally across
her body.
"No—I'll use these," he said, reaching into the cab of the truck and taking the
Alessi double shoulder rig and the Detonics .45s. He put his arms into the
shoulder harness and raised the harness up over his head and let it drop to his
shoulders, then settled the holsters comfortably in place. He snatched the gun
from the holster under his left armpit and buttoned out the magazine, then
jacked back the slide, catching the chambered round. He reinserted the sixth
round in the magazine and then slapped the spine of the magazine into his left
palm, to seat the cartridges all the way back. He worked the stainless Detonics'
slide several times, then locked the slide back, reinserted the magazine and let
the slide stop down. The slide hammered forward. He raised the thumb safety,
leaving the pistol cocked and locked, then settled it back into the holster,
closing the snaps for the trigger guard speed break.
As he began the same ritual on the gun under his right arm, the girl looked up
at him, her eyes hard, her jaw set. "You're crazy—you can't match that kind of
speed with a conventional gun."
"These aren't conventional guns," Rourke told her. "Faster lock time than a
standard .45, less felt recoil, good trigger pulls—the whole bit. Grip safeties
are deactivated."
He left the second gun cocked and locked and replaced it in the holster under
his right arm. "That doesn't have an ambidextrous safety," the girl said,
insistent. "How will it do you any good to have a cocked and locked gun in your
left hand?"
"Well," and Rourke withdrew the gun again. "Advantage of big hands." He craned
his left thumb behind the backstrap of the pistol in his left hand and whiped
off the safety, adding, "If I have to use it, I can this way. Probably one will
be enough."
"You are crazy—you're going to get us all killed, all of them killed!" the girl
said, her voice uncharacteristically shrill.
"You know," Rourke almost whispered to her, "you're a funny girl—you use a gun
better than most men, you're pro all the way—know your stuff. Like I said, I
remember you. Different hair, contacts for different eye color. I know who you
are, why you were out there in the desert, and I know you and I are going to
bump heads sooner or later. And you know it too. But you seem to genuinely care
about those people over there, like you did with the refugees back down the
road. And even though I know you know we're on opposite sides really, I honestly
think you care what happens to me. Maybe I got problems going out there and
facing Deke," Rourke said, gesturing toward the center of the circle of trucks,
the trucks slowing now as the time approached for the gunfight, "but I think
you've got problems in there," and Rourke gently tapped his right index finger
against her left breast where her heart would be. "And you know just what I
mean, lady."
She took a half-step back from him and said, "Remember that dumb line from all
the old western movies? A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do? Well, that goes
for women, too."
"I don't want us to wind up doin' a number with guns—you know."
The girl bither lower lip, her voice barely audible, saying, "I didn't mean what
I said the other night when I was drunk—about Mr. Goody-goody. Well, I meant it,
but—"
Rourke sighed hard, then reached out and touched her face gently with his left
hand. "You were right, anyway," he said and bent over and kissed her cheek.
The trucks had completely stopped now and as Rourke walked away from Rubenstein
and Natalie, he thought how insane the whole thing was—the last quarter of the
twentieth century and yet he was facing off in a nineteenth-century gunfight,
with a gang of ritualistic murderers and renegades as the spectators, in a world
that—for all Rourke knew—could itself have been in the last throes of death.
He could see Deke emerging from the crowd of brigands, the crowd itself
splitting into two flanks with a clear space behind Rourke and space clearing
behind Deke as well. The blonde-haired man—the baby-killer, Rourke reminded
himself—had the Aussie hat dangling down his back now from a cord around his
neck. The rain was falling more heavily, and already Rourke's fresh shirt was
soaked through. The blonde man's hair hung in limp curls plastered against his
forehead, the pansy-blue eyes riveted on Rourke as the two men moved slowly into
position. From the corner of his right eye, Rourke could see Natalie, standing
close beside Rubenstein, their eyes staring toward him. Rourke shot a glance
toward Deke's right hip, then let his eyes drift upward to Deke's eyes. The two
men were perhaps seven yards apart, Rourke gauged; it was the classic shootout
distance—neither man could likely miss on the first shot. The single action Deke
had strapped to his thigh with a heavy leather band at the base of the holster
would be a .45 Long Colt calibre, the bullets themselves weightier than even a
hardball .45 ACP load, the round an inherent man-stopper like the .45 ACP was.
The rain was heavy now, falling in sheets, blowing across the muddy surface of
the field. Rourke's hair and face were wet, and he blinked the rain away from
his eyelashes, knowing what would happen.
Deke's pansy-blue eyes set hard; the left hand with the glove for fanning was
Detonics .45 under his left armpit, his first wrapping around the checkered
rubber Pachmayr grips, the stainless pistol ripping from the leather. Deke's
sixgun was out, his left hand streaking back faster than Rourke could see
clearly, the big revolver belching fire and roaring like a grenade going off
near his ears. Rourke hit the mud and rolled, the Detonics in his right hand
firing once, then once again, the first round thudding into Deke's midsection,
splitting through the left forearm as the gun fanned its third shot, punching
through the arm and into the blonde-haired man's gut. The blonde-haired man
wheeled, dropping to one knee in the mud, a trickle of blood from the left
corner of his mouth as he heaved forward, Rourke's second shot impacting into
Deke's chest as the single action in Deke's hand—thumb cocked—fired, the bullet
spitting into the mud less than three feet in front of him.
Rourke fired the Detonics a third time, the 185-grain jacketed hollow point
punching into Deke's head, almost dead square between the eyes. The head snapped
back, the body lurched forward and sagged into the mud.
Rourke got to his feet, mud dripping from his shirt and Levis, the heavy rain
now washing around him in a torrent. Natalie was beside him—he could feel her
hands on his left arm. He walked forward, toward the body in the mud.
Deke—Rourke edged the body over with the toe of his boot. The body rolled, the
gunhand slapped into the mud, the revolver fell from it. The pansy-blue eyes
were wide open, the head cracked up the forehead—the eyes were just staring
though as the rain fell against them, and for a moment Rourke could do nothing
but stare down into them himself. He had kept his promise to the woman with the
&n
bsp; dead infant.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rourke sat behind the wheel of the pickup truck, the windows barely cracked open
for air, the rain driving down with almost unbelievable force. Rain still
dripped from his hair, and the girl beside him and Rubenstein on the far
passenger side were wet as well. The brigand force would be moving out and now
Rourke, Rubenstein and Natalie were a part of it. One of the brigand outriders
had returned in the aftermath of the gunfight. The paramils were now closer than
Rourke or any of the brigands had thought them to be, and it was imperative now
that the brigands head to safety and put as much distance as possible between
themselves and the paramils while they found a secure site for the battle lines
to be drawn.
The brigand leader, Mike, had rejected Rourke's offer to stitch his lower lip
and stem the flow of blood. Rourke had shrugged and turned and walked back into
the truck. Rourke had watched then, as eventually some of Deke's comrades had
dragged his body from the mud. He'd watched too, as the townspeople were
released. Wet, dirty, bedraggled and terrified, they had slunk past the pickup
truck, some turning and quickly eyeing Rourke, then all of them starting to run
as they'd headed out of the circle of trucks—alive. But Rourke had wondered if
they were really better off now—the new world that had taken shape after the
night of the war was a violent one, and Rourke knew that many of them would not
survive. Some would die because they could not cope with the violence, some
would perhaps eventually revel in it and become brigands themselves. Silently,
he'd wondered how his own wife and two children were faring—were they even still
alive? He felt the pressure of Natalie's hand on his and stared out into the
rain…
By evening, the rain was still falling and the weather had turned cold. Twice
during the afternoon, one of the massive fuel tanker trucks had stopped and
some of the bikes had refueled. Rourke had counted one, possibly two trucks
loaded with gasoline and at least three trucks loaded with Diesel, he
guessed—enough to keep the brigand army rolling for prolonged periods away from
the remains of civilization. During the middle of the afternoon, one of the few