"Victory," he shouted. "The final victory over the Americans!" Suddenly
the glass from the wire-meshed corridor windows shattered over his head,
shards of it falling on and around him.
He stepped away from the wall, looking through the corridor windows into
the dawning sky—a huge star-burst, the largest firework he had ever
seen—pale colors against a pale sky. And the concrete beneath him began to
tremble, the walls to shake, dust and infinitesimally small chunks of
debris drifting down.
"My God!" Where had he learned that? he thought. "They're blowing it up!"
He started to run, the crates— the precious crates—behind him. Survival
was more immediate now as the cross supports began crumbling and a
three-foot section of concrete killed the commando beside him—just beside
him.
Squads of assault rifle-armed Soviet infantrymen were pouring through the
streets.
"Damn it," Rourke rasped, both of the twin Detonics stainless .s in his
fists. Suddenly, the ground beneath him began to rumble, to shake.
He glanced at the black luminous face of the Rolex Submariner on his left
wrist, then squinted skyward— full dawn. The explosions had begun just as
Martha Bogen had said they would.
There was no time now—no chance to save the town. Russian troops—why?
The explosions. Already, in the distance near the high peaks of the rim of
the valley, he could see rock slides starting.
He had waited near the school, still several blocks from Martha Bogen's
house—and the garage where his Harley should still be hidden.
But waiting for the Soviet troops to clear the street in front of him
would be suicidal now.
Thumb-cocking both pistols, he started to run, the ground shaking beneath
him still more violently.
Gunfire. Soviet AK series assault rifles, firing toward
him, glass shattering in the louvered classroom windows beside him as he
jumped a hedgerow, running.
Rourke wheeled beside a concrete vertical support for a portico rooi. He
fired the pistol in his right hand, then the pistol in his left, bringing
down an assault rifle-armed soldier. The man's body spun, his assault
rifle firing wildly, into his own men.
Rourke started to run again. Past a flagpole. During the day there would
have been an American flag there and a Kentucky state flag as well.
He was nearly to the street beyond the school front lot. The ground
trembled again.
He tried envisioning what the men and women of the town would have done to
ensure their mass suicide. The ground trembled again and he saw a black
disk sail skyward out of the street. There had been a large natural-gas
storage area. . . .
"Natural gas," he rasped, throwing himself to the grassy ground beneath
him.
The gunfire, the shouts, the commands in Russian and in English to
halt—all were drowned out. Rourke dropped his pistols, covering his ears
with his hands.
The street a hundred yards ahead of him was a sea of flame, chunks of
paving hurtling skyward. They had mined the gas system.
Rourke grabbed for his pistols, pushing himself to his feet, running,
stumbling, running again. A line of explosions—smaller ones—ripped
through the road ahead of him in series. He had to cross the road to reach
Martha Bogen's house on the other side.
He ran, bending into the run, arms distended at his sides. The gunfire
resumed from behind him; he couldn't hear it, but could see the grass and
dirt near his feet
chewing up under it.
He hit the pavement, still running, the explosions gutting the road
drawing closer. Debris—bits of tarmac and cement and gravel—rained down on
him. His hands, the pistols still in them, were over his head to protect
it.
The road was now twenty-five yards away; his body ached; the waves of
nausea and cold were starting to take hold.
"Narcan," he rasped. He needed the Narcan shot. He tripped, sprawling,
pushed himself up, then ran on.
Ten yards. He was feeling faint, sick, the morphine was taking hold of him
again.
Five yards. He jumped, the street ripping as a manhole cover less than a
dozen yards to his right sailed skyward, roaring up on a tongue of flame.
The street behind him exploded and he was thrown forward.
Rourke rolled, still clutching his pistols.
He started to his knees, hearing—not hearing but feeling—something behind
him.
He wheeled, hitting the road surface, firing both pistols simultaneously.
Two Soviet troopers fired at him; the ground beside him erupted under the
impact of their slugs, both men going down under the impact of his.
He stumbled to his feet, lurching, feeling as though he would black out.
Rourke rammed both pistols, cocked and locked, into his wide trouser belt,
then snatched at the injection kit inside his shirt against his skin. His
hands shook, cold and nausea making his head reel. He dropped to his
knees. The Narcan injection was in his right hand.
He looked beyond his hand as he tested the syringe.
"Man with a gun—Russian," he rasped, telling himself to act, forcing his
body to respond. His left hand—he
could feel the slowness—found the butt of one of his pistols.
Automatically, he swept the left thumb around behind the tang of the
Detonics to reach for the safety on the left side of the frame. He worked
it down as the Russian soldier raised his assault rifle.
Rourke's right hand worked toward his left arm, the sleeve pulled up
already—he had planned ahead as he a/ways did.
He started raising his left arm, as if both sides of his brain were taking
separate control of him. He tried squinting at the sights a moment, seeing
the hypodermic come into his line of fire.
His right hand jabbed the hypo into his left forearm.
"Aagh," he shouted, feeling the change sweep over him, seeing the
slow-motion movement in his left hand as the thumb moved back around the
tang, out of the way of the slide.
He was suddenly back—cold and sweating, but back, his mind working. His
left first finger worked the trigger and the Detonics bucked hard in his
hand.
The Soviet trooper's assault rifle fired skyward as his body twisted,
almost as in a dance, then crumpled to the roadside.
Rourke pushed himself to his feet. That had been the last Narcan shot, but
the last he should need. He snatched at the other pistol in his belt,
worked down the safety and—he could not run again—he started into a loping
walk to the curb.
Rourke assessed his surroundings—head left. He started that way. It was at
least another block, maybe two. The B-complex shot would start working
soon after he administered it—after he got to it.
The nausea was passing, the coldness subsiding; his
head ached and his muscles ached.
As he increased his stride, more explosions rocked the ground beneath him.
Glass, in windows on both sides of the street he loped into, shattered;
fires erupted everywhere.
Another m
anhole cover sailed skyward on a column of flame and Rourke
jumped away, the explosion ringing in his ears, debris falling like rain
on him.
He rolled onto his back, protecting his face with his left forearm.
He had to run. He rolled onto his knees, then pushed himself up, starting
forward, lurching into a ragged, long-strided run.
More gunfire behind him. He wheeled, almost losing his balance. He pumped
a shot at hip level with the Detonics in his right fist, downing a Soviet
soldier at the end of the block.
He turned and kept running.
He could see the house—white frame with green vines growing up the round
columns on the front porch. Rourke could see the driveway; his bike would
be in the garage at the end of it.
Still running, he glanced behind him. No one. Perhaps the Russians were
getting out while they still could.
More explosions. Rourke glanced up, toward the rim of the valley; rock
slides were everywhere, the very faces of the peaks changing, seeming to
melt away.
Rourke turned up the driveway, running harder now, sweating. The garage
door—ten yards, five . . . He stopped. It would be locked. He raised both
pistols, firing the one in his right hand, then the one in his left. The
garage-door lock shattered as he loped and lurched forward. He fell
against the door.
Jamming the pistols into his belt, he wrenched the door handle, twisting
it, shoving it up, letting the door slide out of sight.
The jet black Harley—he saw it. Rourke stumbled toward it. His gear looked
untouched.
He snatched at the CAR- wrapped inside a blanket and a piece of ground
cloth.
He ripped the covering away, then searched the musette bag slung on the
handlebars, he found a thirty-round magazine, rammed it up the well, and
eared back the bolt handle.
He let the bolt slide forward.
"Come on," he rasped, staring out into the street. He could hear the
sounds of more explosions; the gas lines were still going, of their own
accord now.
Rourke slung the CAR- cross-body from his left shoulder, under his right
arm.
He started searching the Lowe pack and found his medical kit, the
injection kit inside it. Rourke opened that, taking the B-complex syringes
and jabbing one into his left forearm.
He dropped to his knees, trying to even his breath.
Her jaw hurt where the man, John, had hit her. On her knees, on the window
seat in the main room of the library overlooking the street and the post
office beyond, she wrang a handkerchief in her hands, red hearts
embroidered on it, a gift from her husband years ago.
There were fires all over the city; she was afraid of fire.
Everyone else was with someone, safe, ready to die. John was out there in
the streets, somewhere. He wouldn't make it; she knew that. She had nursed
for her husband often enough to know that in hib condition, he would be
too weak (o travel far. She had never even told him the secret paths
through the valley to reach beyond the mountains.
He would die alone; she would die alone.
She wondered what his last name was.
He hadn't hit her because he hated her. It was because he hadn't wanted to
die with her.
"I hope you live, John," she said, suddenly feeling a weight slip from
her.
The manhole cover in the street outside rocketed skyward, the flame under
it rising, spreading. The floor under her shook; the plate-glass window in
front of her shattered.
She had one more injection—one she had saved in her desk drawer.
It would make her sleep. She gave it to herself, letting the needle fall
from her hand, her hands bloody from the glass that had cut her as the
window shattered around her.
There was a cool wind and as she closed her eyes, she could see her dead
husband's stern face. He was scolding her for what she had tried to do,
but there was love in his eyes. &#; • .
Rourke settled himself on the seat of the Harley, the motor purring under
him, the tanks full, the Detonics stainless .s reloaded and holstered in
the Alessi rig across his shoulders. He was slightly cold—the exhaustion,
the drugs coursing through his veins. The collar of his Drown leather
jacket was snapped up.
Under the jacket he carried the musette bag on his left side, spare
magazines for the Detonics pistols and for the CAR- slung under his
right arm.
On his right hip was the Python, Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported; spare ammo
for the big Colt was in the musette bag, too, in Safariland Speedloaders.
There were Soviet troops on the ground, Soviet helicopters in the air
above. The ground beneath him trembled. Fire was everywhere—in the houses
on both sides of the street, a wind whipping it up as he looked out of the
garage.
He had been breathing, slowly, evenly, getting the house (hat was his body
in order, summoning up the reserves of strength he would need.
It was that or die.
His left fist worked in the clutch, his right throttled
out, and the Harley started ahead.
With his right thumb he worked the CAR-'s safety off, then moved his
left hand quickly, securing the dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses.
In an inside pocket of his leather jacket were some of his dark tobacco
cigars.
He took one and placed it between his teeth, rolling it into the left
corner of his mouth, unlit.
"Ready," he whispered to himself.
He throttled the Harley, working through the gears, lowering his frame
across that of the bike, reaching the end of the street, making a sharp
right, then accelerating again. In his mind's eye he could see the way
he'd entered the town and that was the only way he knew to leave it.
He passed the post office. As he cut another left, into the street angling
past the library, it was a sea of flames.
"Martha," he rasped, looking away as he gunned the jet black Harley ahead.
Despite it all, he felt a sadness for the woman.
Soviet troops on the right, two of them aflame from the gas fires, three
of them wheeling toward him, started to fire their assault rifles. Rourke
gave the Harley gas then shifted his grip to the CAR-. Firing rapid
two-round semiautomatic bursts, he nailed the nearest of the men, then the
one behind him.
Gunfire from the third man's assault rifle ripped into the street surface
beside him. Rourke throttled out, cutting a broad arc as he made a hard
right, then angled off the street and into the grassy shoulder paralleling
it, Fires still raged on the far side by the school building. Soviet
troops ran haphazardly about, an officer in their
midst; Rourke spotted him, a tall man, his hat gone, his face
dirt-smudged.
There was an overturned jeep, and though the officer called to his men,
they were scattering. The officer was tugging at something under the jeep.
Rourke sped past, glancing left, seeing a form half under the jeep, the
officer workin
g with a pry bar, trying to get someone out.
Rourke slowed the Harley, cutting a wide arc. The jeep was close to the
fires raging down the center of the street; the grass on the far side of
it was burning.
"Shit," Rourke rasped, gunning the Harley back toward the jeep.
The officer dropped the pry bar, snatching at a full-flap military holster
on his right hip.
Rourke slowed the bike, stopping, the CAR- pointed straight at the
Russian.
"Shoot me, then. But first help me get this man out; he's still alive!"
Rourke said nothing. His right thumb flicked the safety of the CAR- on,
and he let down the Harley's stand, the engine cut off.
He walked toward the Russian, saying, "I'm ill—not as strong as I usually
am. You work the pry bar; I'll pull him out."
"Agreed." The Soviet officer nodded.
The man—a major, Rourke noticed—ieaned against the pry bar. Rourke dropped
to his knees in the street beside the injured man pinned under the
overturned jeep.
An older man—a senior noncom of some kind. The face, unconscious, was
pleasant-looking.
Rourke grabbed the man's shoulders, "Now, Major," Rourke ordered, feeling
the jeep rising slightly beside
him, hearing the groaning as the Soviet officer strained on the pry bar.
Rourke put his own right shoulder to the end of the overturned jeep, then
threw his weight back, sprawling backward into the street with the older
man, getting him clear as the jeep fell.
"I could not hold it anymore!"
Rourke ignored the officer, looking to the older man. "He's gonna need a
hospital and quick."
"There are helicopters—cargo helicopters. They can be used for the
wounded."
"You get him outa here fast," Rourke rasped. "This whole town's gonna
blow."
"What are you doing?" The major's right hand went out to Rourke's right
forearm.
Rourke shook it away, then opened the leather case which had Martha
Bogen's shot kit.
"Morphine," Rourke rasped. "Relax. Vm a doctor. Put a compression bandage