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.
He squinted through them as he braked in the middle of the street.
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 working 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
on that right leg—not a tourniquet unless you want him to lose it.” Rourke
pulled his knife, then cut at the noncom’s sleeves, first the right, then
the left, using one sleeve folded over as a bandage, the second to secure
it to the leg. “Not too tight. Looks like you’ve got somebody to baby-sit
with, Major.” Rourke stood up.
The Soviet officer’s right hand moved and Rourke started for his rifle,
but the hand was extending toward him.
Rourke took it.
“I should arrest you—or have you shot.”
“That last part”—Rourke smiled—”I was kinda thinkin the same thing
myself. But I’ll pass on it.”
Rourke loosed the Soviet major’s hand and turned to walk away. There was a
chance the man would pull a gun
and shoot; Rourke decided he wasn’t going to count it a possibiiiiy.
He stepped aboard the Harley, gunning the engine to life, Setting up the
kick stand.
The major was looking to his injured sergeant.
Rourke gunned the Harley ahead. . . .
He was at the end of the town now. Only the road leading up into the
mountains and out of the valley was ahead.
Explosions rocked the ground under and around him, and behind him there
was a growing fire storm, already edging into the wooded area around the
town.
He looked at the town one more time—Bevington, Kentucky. “Sad,” he
murmured, then started the Harley up ahead.
The road was steep going; rock slides were starting to his right, his
attention focusing there as he steered the Harley around boulders that had
already strewn the road.
Overhead, above the thundering of the explosions and the hissing roar of
the fire storm behind him, he heard a sound—familiar. He glanced
skyward—helicopters.
“That’s what I get for being a good Samaritan,” he rasped, shaking his
head. But he didn’t blame the major, or the injured sergeant. Like most
things in life, he thought, gunning the Harley on, the exhaust ripping
under him and behind him, there was no one to blame.
The helicopters were clearly after him; he didn’t know why. Maybe the KGB,
he thought—but why had they been in Bevington, Kentucky, to begin with?
He swung the CAR- around, the safety off. There was a sharp bend in the
road and Rourke took it at speed, cutting a sharp left onto the shoulder
because half the
width of (he road was strewn with boulders. There was a rumbling sound to
his left and Rourke looked that way— a rock slide, shale and boulders
skidding down for as far as he could see, a rock slide paralleling the
roadway.
“Shit,” he rasped, glancing up at the helicopters. There was a chattering
sound; he didn’t have to look again. Machine-gun fire.
The road dipped, Rourke accelerating into the grade. The rock slide was
coming inexorably closer, closer. The area to his right was heavily
wooded; fire swept through it.
Rourke skidded the bike hard left, then right, avoiding a deer that ran
from the flaming forest on his right. He accelerated, the rock slide still
coming.
Machine-gun fire tore into the road beneath him, bullets ricocheting off
the rocks to his left.
The road took a fast cut left and Rourke arced the Harley into it. As he
hit the straightaway, he twisted in the Harley’s saddle, the CAR-—stock
retracted— pointing skyward at the nearest of the helicopters. He let off
a fast semiauto burst—six shots in all. The helicopter pilot pulled up.
Rourke let the rifle drop to his side on the sling, then throttled out the
Harley, the rim of the valley in sight, perhaps a mile ahead.
Gravel and smaller rocks were pelting at him, hammering against the road
surface, their effect almost indistinguishable from the machine-gun fire
from the choppers above. The fire on his right was up to the roadside,
and the trees flanking the road on his right were torches, columns of
fire; the heat from them scorched at his skin as he drove his machine
upward—toward the rim of the valley.
Massive boulders were falling now. Rourke steered the bike around them as
they impacted on the road before him. A tree, still a mass of flames,
fell; Rourke gunned the Harley full throttle, his body low over the
handlebars, as he passed under it, burning branches and chips of bark
spraying his hands, his face, his clothing.
Rourke squinted back, beyond the burning tree trunk and skyward. The
helicopters were still coming.
He cut the Harley sharp left, taking the grade that would take him to the
rim, boulders rolling across the road before him now, missing him by
inches, the Harley’s exhaust like a cannon, like a trumpet, strident,
tearing at his eardrums, the wind of the slipstream lashing at him, hot