CHAPTER ONE
John Rourke opened his eyes but remained perfectly still. The sound he had heard —a footfall in the sitting room outside their bedroom? But more than that. As if something had bumped against a wall or piece of furniture. Instantly, but so slowly that if he were being watched it would be virtually imperceptible, his right hand started to drift from over his abdomen where it had lain as he awakened. A smile crossed his lips —”things that go bump in the night.” Sometimes pleasant, sometimes deadly.
His relationship with Sarah had sometimes been very pleasant and was so again. In the days before their marriage had started having the problems that had almost but not quite split them apart forever, Sarah had joked with him often about how waking him up in the morning could be so difficult; yet, if there were the slightest out-of-the-ordinary night sound, he would come instantly awake, instantly alert.
John Rourke told his wife that he didn’t know why his mind and body worked that way, but was glad that they did; that perhaps it was some primordial response in the human subconscious that was only triggered by potential danger. Predatory animals had it and man was a predator. Like the big cats that had once prowled the earth, man found himself a lair, a secure place to sleep, to nurture his young, to dial down but never turn off those instincts which kept him alive in the world outside.
Sarah slept beside him now, on her back, her head turned to the side, facing toward him, her eyelids moving once as he looked at her out of the far left edge of his peripheral vision. The light sheet which covered their bodies outlined the still comparatively slight engorgement of her breasts, the more noticeable enlargement of her abdomen. She was nearly through the first trimester of her pregnancy.
He had never slept with a gun under his pillow with any degree of regularity for the simple fact that guns, no matter how small or how flat, were hard and contributed to a restless sleep. But he had developed the habit years ago of sleeping with a gun in instant reach of his hand, whether on a nightstand beside his bed, inside his sleeping bag or tucked into a shoe or boot beside him. His hand was still drifting. Slowly now, John Rourke moved his right hand and arm over the edge of the bed toward the leather sandals he had worn earlier in the evening after removing his combat boots. One of the twin stainless Detonics .45s was resting just inside the right one and the distended fingers of his right hand touched at the worn surface of the black checkered rubber Pach-mayr grips.
Even though the Chinese were exceedingly friendly, were in fact allies against the Soviet forces, this suite of rooms in the Chairman’s formal residence was not The Retreat and so he had kept the little Detonics Combat Master chamber loaded as was its twin on the seat of the high fan-backed “Sidney Greenstreet” chair a few paces across the room. His right fist closed over the pistol and he kept his arm motionless for an instant longer.
Another sound —this a footfall certainly.
His right arm flexed and he drew the pistol up beside him, his right thumb over the short spur of the hammer, his fist closed tight around the butt. He coughed and rolled over slightly, manufacturing sound to mask the
telltale clicking as he drew the little .45’s hammer from rest to full cock. He moved his legs quickly now —out of the bed, onto his bare feet, the pistol in his right fist shifting into his left so he could keep the muzzle toward the open doorway connecting the bedroom to the sitting room just beyond.
In two strides he was to the chair, his right fist closing over the butt of the second Detonics, his thumb drawing the hammer to full stand as he brought the muzzle up. He glanced at Sarah on the bed. If he awakened her, she might be in greater danger. And if his ears were playing tricks on his survival instincts, all the better reason not to arouse her —yet.
He moved toward the door, naked still, no time to skin into his pants.
Logic in such a situation as this dictated letting the intruder come to you. But if there were indeed an intruder or intruders, he could not let them come so close that Sarah and the baby in her womb would be in jeopardy.
John Rourke stood at the doorway. He held his breath. He listened.
He heard nothing. But he felt something without physically feeling it, the sixth sense so often spoken of almost fearfully, as if it were a touch of the unknown.
He backed toward the bed in long, quick strides, realizing he must make logic fit the situation. Cocked and locked, he set the Detonics from his right fist beside his right knee as he slipped onto the bed, his right hand closing over Sarah’s mouth, her eyes opening instantly as she inhaled. He touched the trigger finger of his left hand to his lips and she blinked her eyes wide to indicate that she understood. Slowly, he moved his hand away from her mouth. She started to sit up, looking at him quizzically in the semi-darkness. He nodded and leaned back, both pistols in his fists again as Sarah rose slowly
and eased out from beneath the sheet. She moved normally, not yet restricted by the baby. Her right hand moved to the bedside table and he could make out the Detonics-like shape of her Trapper Scorpion .45.
Rourke eyed the doorway, then gestured toward the bathroom. His wife shook her head vigorously. He gestured toward the bathroom again and after an instant’s hesitation, she nodded and, barefoot, her ankle-length nightgown gathered up in her left hand, her pistol in her right, started for the bathroom.
John Rourke moved across the bedroom toward the chest of drawers. It was made of a type of metal that seemed reasonably heavy and cosmetically resembled wood. He crouched behind it, waiting. Before The Night of The War, when he had traveled considerably teaching survivalism and weapons training, he had spent many nights in hotel rooms across the world and continued the practice he had begun when he had gone on his first overseas assignment as what was euphemistically called a “case officer” for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Immediately upon entering a room, if for some reason he was forced to travel unarmed, find suitable objects within the room that could be utilized as impromptu weapons —a lamp cord gar-rote, a complimentary magazine or newspaper that could be rolled tightly and used as a thrusting implement, an easily removed flush tank lid that could be. used as an effective bludgeon, however unwieldy. It would only need to be used once. But when he was armed, which had been most of the time, the first order of business, after the usual thing of checking locks, fire and emergency escape routes and the like, was to select the best defensive position the room afforded. And it would usually devolve to a dresser or chest of drawers. Hotel dressers were most often long and low, giving considerable material through which an enemy bullet would have
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to travel before reaching him, slowing it down or deflecting it or, in the older hotels with the more solidly built furniture, perhaps stopping it entirely; and low enough to shoot over in order to return fire. There had been no such dresser in this bedroom, but the chest of drawers had seemed at least marginally adequate.
His eyes were wide open in the gray light and he realized a possible tactical flaw, setting one of the pistols on the floor tiles beside him and reaching up slowly to the top of the dresser. He found his dark-lensed aviator style sunglasses and put them on, then took up the second pistol again.
The luminosity of his black-faced Rolex Submariner glowed dully green.
John Rourke waited.
There was a loud thudding sound and in the same instant three men burst through the open doorway and into the room, dark clad, each of them armed with what looked like submachineguns or bullpup assault rifles, spotlights locked beneath them, flicking on, bathing the room in white light that would have momentarily blinded him if he hadn’t thought of the sunglasses. They fired, the bullets from the automatic weapons in their hands ripping through the bed where only seconds before Sarah had lain. The furthest away of the three men in the room—John Rourke stabbed both twin Detonics pistols toward the man and fired, one round from each, slapping the man against the doorframe beside which he had been firing a split second earlier, his assault rifle still on full auto, spraying into the ceiling, the light secured beneath the gun dancing wildly. The second and third men started to turn toward Rourke now, but Rourke was already firing again, both pistols simultaneously, chunks of the ceiling raining down around them, the center man staggering back, the third man’s body twisting right. Rourke had fired for the right side of the third