brigand outriders brave enough to keep to his bike in the driving rain had
pulled alongside Rourke in the pickup truck and shouted up that Mike, the
brigand leader, had changed his mind on the stitches. Rourke had pulled off
along the shoulder and passed the bulk of the truck caravan and then pulled
alongside Mike's truck. The caravan had stopped then and Rourke, using
improvised materials, had stitched together the lip. There was no anesthesia
available, and Mike just consumed more of the whiskey he had been drinking ever
since the fight in order to control his pain. The inside of the eighteen-wheeler
trailer was fitted with a collection of sofas and reclining chairs and
beds—things obviously stolen from all the towns along their route. And the walls
of the eighteen wheeler were lined with weapons as well. If the other trucks
were anything like the one Mike occupied, Rourke decided, the brigand force
would decidedly defeat the paramils when the eventual confrontation came.
Rourke had asked the woman attending Mike— apparently his wife or mistress—what
was the convoy's destination, and she'd confided that it was a massive plateau
some fifty or sixty miles further out into the desert, with one road leading up
only, defendable against almost any size army without air support—or at least
Mike believed that. As Rourke finished the stitching and told the woman how to
make Mike more comfortable, then started to leave, the woman had stopped him,
saying, "Hey—whatever your name is."
"John Rourke," he'd told her.
"Well—John Rourke—listen. You did my man a good turn so I'll do you one—there's
a kind of rule around here—any snatch that ain't claimed at night is open
property for anyone in the camp. So you or the little guy had better be sleepin'
with that chick you brought in with you, or you're gonna have a fight on your
hands. There's almost twice as many guys as there's women around for 'em. You
get what I mean?"
Rourke nodded, asking, "How'd you get teamed up with Mike over there?" He looked
over her shoulder and saw the brigand leader dozing now in an alcoholic stupor.
"They hit my town, two nights after the war— weren't many of 'em then. Killed my
ma and pa and said he'd kill me if I didn't treat him good. So I treated him
good—we're kinda attached now, see," the woman told him.
Rourke said, "Doesn't it bother you how you got that way?"
"He coulda killed me too, I figure—so I owe him something."
Rourke looked hard at the woman, saying, his voice a whisper, "Yeah—and you know
what you owe him, too, I think—right at the back of your mind somewhere. One of
those bayonets over there in his kidney. Think about it. How old are you,
anyway?"
"Seventeen," she said.
"You look at yourself in a mirror lately?" Rourke turned and walked to the
partially open back door of the truck. The rain was streaming in, the floor
boards were wet. Rourke had jumped down to the mud and snapped his coat collar
up, then started back to the truck.
The drive had gone on then, and now as they slowly pulled into a circle for the
evening camp, the rain heavier even than during the day, Rourke stared out into
the darkness beyond his headlights. It had been hard to judge the height of the
plateau, but the crude road leading up to it had been steep and narrow, and if
Mike's woman had been right, the brigand leader's estimate of the defensive
posture he would now have hadn't been off. All that needed defending was the
narrow road itself, and a half-dozen well-armed men could have held the road
against twenty times that number of equally well-armed attackers.
Soon, lights could be seen burning in some of the eighteen-wheelers' trailers,
while others from the brigand group were erecting a variety of lean-tos and
shelters on the lee side of the trailers to get as much protection as possible
from the rain.
"What do we do now?" Rubenstein asked.
"Well, we can't sleep and cook and everything inside the cab here," Rourke said.
"You and I take some of those ground clothes we've been using and run a canopy
out from the rear bed of the truck—we can sleep maybe in the truck bed. After we
cover the bikes and everything it should be pretty dry back there." Then turning
to the girl, Rourke said, "And you can keep an eye peeled while Rubenstein and I
get the shelter up—huh? And stay dry."
"I can do my share of the work," she said angrily.
"I know you can," Rourke said softly. "But you're not going to." He piled out of
the truck cab then and closed his leather jacket against the rain, his CAR-15
and Python still in the cab with the girl. The mud had washed off his clothes
and boots from his previous sorties throughout the day into the driving
rainstorm, and as he moved through the mud now beside the truck bed, he could
feel his feet sinking into it, feel the rain soaking through his damp Levis and
running down inside his collar.
Rubenstein was already freeing the extra tarps and ground clothes from the
truck. Fighting the wind it took Rourke and the younger man several minutes to
set up the covered portion of the shelter, sticking out perhaps seven feet
beyond the rear of the truck and on a level as high as the sides of the truck
bed itself. Days earlier when Rourke had cut wood for their first fire after
finding the truck and the provisions, he'd cut small saplings and trimmed them
to use as tent poles if need be, and once the "roof" of the shelter was secured
and one of the sides dropped against the driving rain, it was relatively simple
for him and Rubenstein to complete the ground covering and then secure the
opposite sides of the shelter.
Over the roar of the rain and the rumbling of the truck engines around them,
Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, "Paul—get the stuff from the truck so we can get
some food going. I'll get Natalie out." Then Rourke took one of the spare ground
cloths and walked around through the rain to the front of the pickup, hammered
on the window with his fist and signaled to the girl to open up. Using the
ground cloth like an umbrella against the rain, he helped the girl from the
truck, secured his weapons and made sure the truck was locked, then, with her
huddled beside him, started back toward the impromptu tent.
Rubenstein had already broken out the small Coleman stove and the Coleman
lantern and was sorting through the Mountain House meal packets. Natalie found
some of the fresh water and put some on to warm up, then started making some
order out of the chaos of the shelter.
They ate later in relative silence, all three exhausted from the ordeal of the
day. At Rourke's suggestion, they broke out another bottle of the whiskey and
each drank, but only moderately. Finally, the shelter flap partially open for
ventilation, as they sat beside its edge staring out into the rain, Rubenstein
asked, "John—what are we gonna do now? It looks like they'll be setting up for a
battle as soon as the rain slacks up."
Rourke sighed heavily, lighting one of his cigars and holding the flame of the
Zippo for Natalie's cigarette. "The paramils won't be moving far in this
weath
er—they looked less prepared for rough weather than the brigands did. I
don't think we're gonna see much before this lets up, probably not for several
hours afterwards. I could be wrong. I'd imagine if Mike's awake, he's putting
out guards by that road, just in case. Depends on how tough the paramils are."
"We gonna try and get out?" Rubenstein asked.
"We can't," the girl said. "Not until the battle starts and if we're still up
here, I don't see us getting out then."
"She's right," Rourke said. "Once the battle starts, depending on whether or not
we're here, then we get out. But if we are still up here, that's going to be
next to impossible. Just have to do our duty as good brigand troopers and hope
the bad guys win instead of the good guys."
"The paramils are good guys?" Rubenstein asked, laughing.
"Well, I admit we had a kind of bad experience with them. But somebody's gotta
go up against the brigands and it doesn't look like there's any kind of
government left."
"What do you think is left?" Rubenstein queried, taking off his glasses and
rubbing his eyes.
"Probably more of Russia than there is of us," Rourke said, glancing toward the
girl. "But I don't know for certain. Looks like a good deal of the country is
going to be uninhabitable for a long time. Look at this weather we're having,
too. It's supposed to be hot out there, but I bet the temperature is pushing
down to forty or so. You notice the sunsets? Each night they've been a little
and staying there."
"You mean we're all gonna die?"
As Rourke started to answer the younger man, the girl cut in, saying,
"No—listen. Just trust me, because I know something about this. The radiation
couldn't have done that much damage. The world is going to survive—I just know
it."
Rourke looked at her, saying, "I know you know it—and it's not Natalie, is it?
At least not in the language you grew up with. Right?"
Rubenstein started getting up, saying, "What do you mean—not in the language she
grew up with? You mean she's…"
"Sit down and relax, Paul," Rourke commanded, his voice low.
The girl sighed heavily, snapping the butt of her cigarette through the opening
in the shelter flap and into the mud outside. "He means I'm Russian."
"Russian!"
"She's one of the top women in the KGB—the Committee for State Security—the
Russian version of the CIA and FBI rolled into one," Rourke said, exhaling a
cloud of the gray cigar smoke.
"What—you!" and Rubenstein started toward her, but Rourke's left hand shot out,
pushing against Rubenstein's chest and knocking the younger man back. Rourke
glanced down. The medium-frame automatic size four-barreled COP derringer pistol
was in her right hand.
Her voice was trembling as she rasped, "Please Paul—I don't want to use this,
please?"
"What do you mean?" the younger man said. "You mean after all we've been through
together, after the way you lied to us? We saved your life, lady!"
"I didn't ask you to come along and find me. I don't mean any harm to either of
you—I almost love you both—please, Paul!"
Rubenstein was starting to get to his feet. Rourke— almost in one motion—pushed
Rubenstein back and twisted the COP pistol out of the girl's hand, saying, "Now
both of you—knock it off!"
"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.
"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?"