free end. “Stand back from the edge up there—got a chunk of rock on the
end of this for weight.”
“Understand,” Paul Rubenstein’s voice called back through the snow. Rourke
still could not see sufficiently well through the heavily falling snow to
view the road surface above him. He started swinging the free end of the
rope, the end weighted with the rock, feeding out more and more of the
line. He made the toss, then heard the sound of the rock slamming against
something metallic—one of the supports for the guardrail? The rope slacked
and he started reeling it back in. He would have to try again. . . .
On the fourth try, the weighted end of the rope didn’t move. “Paul—look
for it!”
For a moment, there was no answer, then Rubenstein’s voice responded,
“I’ve got it, John.”
Rourke nodded to himself, then shouted, “Secure it to something really
sturdy—have Natalia help you!” He waited then. Telling Paul to get
Natalia’s help was the tactfu! way of handling the fact that Rourke had no
idea how well or how poorly the younger man could tie knots. And Rourke
very well understood the sort of training Natalia had undergone to become
a KGB field agent in the first place—rappelling would have been part of it
and she’d make the knot secure if Rubenstein didn’t.
“Jt’s set, John,” Natalia’s voice called down.
“Haul up on the rope—hurry up,” Rourke called up. On the near end of the
rope, Rourke had Natalia’s and Paul’s winter jackets secured. The rope
started snaking upward. . . .
As Rourke huddled by the fire a few yards from the aircraft fuselage, the
water nearly boiling, he considered Rubenstein; the younger man had made
it down the embankment quite well. Not as professionally as Natalia had
let herself down, but well nonetheless.
The water in the pot was boiling and Rourke picked it up hy the handle,
his left hand still gloved and insulating his fingers; then he stood up.
He hated to, but he had to—he kicked out the fire. The darkness around him
was more real now as he started toward the glowing light\pf the Coleman
lamp in the fuselage.
The Space Blanket was wrapped around Natalia now, her coat being rather
light for the extreme cold of the night. Rourke was chilled still, despite
the fact that he had added the leather bomber-style jacket over his
sweater. Rubenstein looked positively frozen to the bone, Rourke thought.
“Paul—why don’t you fish through the gear and find a bottle of whiskey? I
think we could all use a drink.” Rourke smiled, watching Rubenstein’s face
almost instantly brighten. The younger man was up and moving as Rourke
crouched down beside Natalia near the Coleman lamp.
“Here—I’ll do that,” she said, her gloved hands reaching for the pot of
no-longer-boiling water. “You hold the food packets.”
“All right,” Rourke murmured. There wasn’t much of
the Mountain House food left in his gear and he’d have to
&#;*+
resupply once he got back to the Retreat, he reminded himself.
“Hope you like beef stroganoff,” Rourke said, holding the first of the
opened packets up for her to add the water.
“Do you remember the camp we had that night before you scouted for the
Brigands and the Paramils—in Texas?”
“Yes,” Rourke told her.
“Should I get drunk again?” She smiled. “But it wouldn’t do me any good,
would it?”
Rourke, balancing one of the Mountain House packs, then opening another,
said nothing. He turned to call to Rubenstein, still searching for the
bottle. “Food’s on, Taul.”
“John,” Natalia’s alto insisted. “You remember that? I called you Mr.
Goodie-Goodie, didn’t I.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rourke told her, his voice a whisper.
“I think I loved you then, too,” she said matter-of-factly.
Rourke looked into her eyes a moment. “I think I loved you then, too.”
“I won’t see you after we get out of here, after this storm—will I?”
Rourke didn’t answer.
Rubenstein came up, an unopened quart bottle of Seagram’s Seven in his
hands. “This bottle’s cold—least we won’t need any ice, huh?” The younger
man laughed.
“Here, Paul.” Natalia handed Rubenstein the first of the three packs, the
one with the hottest water added. Rourke exchanged a glance with her and
she smiled.
Rubenstein took the pack of beef stroganoff and settled himself beside the
Coleman lamp. “Like old
times—out there on the desert in Texas,” Rubenstein remarked, giving the
food a final stir.
“John and I were just saying that,” Natalia told him.
“This is good.” Rubenstein’s garbled voice came back through a mouthful of
food.
Rourke broke the seal on the whiskey bottle, twisting open the cap and
handing the bottle to Natalia. “I’ll get a cup for you,” he started.
“No—like we did that other time.” She smiled, putting the bottle to her
lips and tilting her head back to let the liquid flow through the bottle’s
neck and into her mouth. Rourke watched her, intently.
She handed him the bottle and, not wiping it, he touched the mouth of the
bottle to his lips, taking a long swallow; then, as he passed the bottle
to Rubenstein, he said to her—Natalia—”Like we did the other time.”
He glanced at Rubenstein for a moment, but the younger man, having already
set the bottle down, was smiling and saying, “Not like I did the other
time. I can still remember the headache.” And he continued with his food.
. . ,
Natalia lay in Rourke’s arms, the Coleman lamp extinguished. Rubenstein
was taking a turn at watch just inside the open cargo hatch of the
fuselage. “You’ll pick up the search for Sarah and the children? I’d help
if I could.”
“I don’t suppose it matters; an intelligence operative of Reed’s in
Savannah, retired Army guy, reactivated for this—”
“The Resistance? I wonder if it has a prayer,” she mused.
“I don’t think that’s the point of it anyway,” Rourke whispered to her in
the darkness. “It’s the doing that
matters, the results are secondary. But he got word to Reed at U.S. II
headquarters that he’d made a positive identification of Sarah and Michael
and Annie—they were heading toward U.S. II headquarters.”
“But—”
Rourke cut her off. “U.S. II headquarters was moving out so your people
wouldn’t make a raid and catch Chambers. And Sarah and the children
couldn’t make it across the Mississippi valley anyway—the radiation. So
I’ve gotta stop them—before they get into the fallout zone.”
“If somehow we learn anything in Chicago, I will or my uncle will—we’ll
get word to you, somehow.”
“I know that,” Rourke answered.
“I hope you find them, John—and that they are well, and whole, and that
you can make a life for them. Somewhere.”
“The Retreat,” Rourke said emotionlessly. “The Retreat—only place safe.
It’s safe against anything except a direct hit, enough supplies to live
for years, growing lights for the plants to replenish the oxygen—and that
stream gives me electrical power. I can seal the place to make it
airtight. But Sarah was right in a way; it is a cave. I don’t know if I
can see raising two children in a cave—even a cave with all the
conveniences.”
“You don’t have any choice—you didn’t start the war,” she said, her voice
suddenly guilt-tinged he thought.
“Neither did you, Natalia—neither did you,” he murmured. She leaned
tighter against him and he held her tighter.
“If I close my eyes, I can imagine it.”
“What?” he asked, feeling dumb for saying it.
‘That things were different and we could he—” She didn’t finish the
thought.
Rourke touched his lips to her forehead as he leaned back, her head on his
shoulder. As he closed his eyes, he murmured the word that she hadn’t
said—”lovers.” He listened to the evenness of her breathing long past the
time he should have fallen asleep. …
Using the rope—all of it—Rourke and Natalia had engineered a pulley system
for getting the bikes up onto the highway. And he was committed now, he
knew: The storm showed no signs of abating, but the longer he delayed
taking up the search, the closer Sarah and the children might get to the
irradiated zone, the rnore chance there was that they would slip through
his fingers. He wanted to catch up with them in the Caro-linas—it was the
only chance now.
It was the only chance now, because without the plane, it would be
impossible to drop Natalia safely near Russian-dominated
territory—northern Indiana. Rourke’s original plan had been to leave
Natalia where she would be safe, then to drop Paul in Tennessee. He would
have flown then as close to Savannah as possible—he and Paul catching
Sarah and the children between them.
The very act of starting one motorcycle toward the road was a commitment
to abandon the shelter of the aircraft fuselage, for one man by himself
could not control the bike and get the bike elevated—even with Natalia
helping him. And now, as Rourke coiled the last of the ropes, hisownHarley