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nan’s body so the impact of the 185-grain jacketed hollow point would push man and muzzle in the opposite direction from him. The light from the third man’s weapon illuminated the first man’s face for an instant. Rourke fired each pistol again as the first man slumped on the floor, his weapon silent, the other two men still firing. Rourke’s shots impacted the second man in the upper portion of the chest or in the thorax. And the rolling beams from the flashes mounted beneath the weapons and the clouds of dust from the plaster-like substance which had made up the ceiling surface made visibility even worse, all movement as if in slow motion, jerky, like something out of an old silent film. Rourke’s hit hammered the third man through the doorway and into the room beyond.
John Rourke was up, moving, three shots left in each pistol as he kicked the weapon away from the second man, sidestepped and impacted the heel of his left foot against the base of the man’s nose. The first man was clearly dead, eyes wide as Rourke caught a glimpse of the face in the light from the second rifle as it skidded across the floor.
Rourke stood beside the doorframe, listening. The third man had only one slug in him and might still be able to fire. Rourke thrust the pistol in his left fist through the doorway, not firing, but counting on attracting fire if the man were still capable of shooting.
There was no response.
Rourke dropped to his knees, a sticky wetness of Blood against his bare skin. He caught up the man whose nose he had broken, then driven up into the brain, beneath the armpits, hauling him near, then pushing him erect along the doorframe as Rourke himself stood.
It was too dark to see faces clearly, even guess at the uniforms beyond the fact that they were dark-colored.
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Maybe too dark to tell a naked man from one who was clothed. Rourke threw the body through the doorway and there was gunfire, Rourke throwing himself through the doorway after the already dead man, his eyes finding the muzzle flashes and as he came out of the roll, both pistols firing. There was a scream, a blast of automatic weapons fire into the floor and the sound of a body falling.
Two rounds remained in each of John Rourke’s pistols.
He moved across the floor on knees and elbows, the tiles cold against his skin, his right elbow finding the wall beside the doorway.
Slowly, he raised to full height.
“John?” It was Sarah calling but he didn’t answer her.
His right elbow flicked against the light switch and he threw himself toward where he remembered the couch to be, his left shoulder impacting it, his eyes tight shut for the instant the light came on, then opening as he rolled, squinted despite the dark lensed glasses.
There was no gunfire.
Both pistols preceded him from behind the couch.
The third man lay dead on the floor, the second man dead a few feet away. Rourke looked toward the doorway, seeing the booted foot of the first man.
It was a Russian boot, the kind issued to the KGB Elite Corps.
“John!”
“Stay where you are for a second —do it!” He walked toward the door between the suite and corridor, kicking away the third man’s weapon. The door was part way open and he hit it with his right foot and it swung inward as he stepped back.
No enemy in the hallway.
A suicide assassination team. He could hear and as he removed his glasses now see Chinese guards running
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from beyond the bend of the corridor toward the suite. Han, the Chinese Secret Service agent who had proven so valuable a man to his son and to himself, ran half-dressed at their lead. Rourke sagged back against the doorframe. The Russians had sent a suicide team into the First Chinese City —he and Sarah had been the targets.
“It’s all right, Sarah!” Rourke shouted. But it wasn’t all right at all.
And in the next instant she was beside him and taking his pistols from him so he could slip into a robe. Michael. Annie. Paul. Natalia. “Here —stay with Han,” Rourke rasped, his left fist closing over Sarah’s pistol, almost ripping it from her hand, the web of his own hand interposed between the hammer and the frame in case the trigger should trip.
His robe as yet untied, flying open, Rourke dodged into the corridor and sprinted down its length, Sarah screaming after him. “John!”
“Michael and Annie!” And as he glanced back, Rourke saw her, barefoot, her nightgown bunched up to her knees. Sarah was running after him. But in his mind he saw the surreal blueness of another woman’s eyes . . .
The man was very tall and strongly built, the blond hair on his arms thick but little hair yet over his kidneys; but he was very young. Despite the fact of his youth, he might still prove an interesting match for the dogs.
The torches flickered. The Mongols fell silent. Mao’s face was impassive but the bright blackness in his deep-set eyes betrayed the mixture of emotions which flowed surely through him now: pain and pleasure intermingled with pleasure from pain.
The man had been found wandering, wounded, and his wounds had been dressed and he had been given over
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to Xaan-Chu. The man had revealed that he was a Russian ordinary soldier and that he had escaped following a terrible battle and wandered until the warriors had come upon him. The Russian had recounted his fright at the first sight of the martial Oriental visages and when Xaan-Chu had relayed that portion of the Russian soldier’s account it had precipitated much laughter, however subdued. The mercenary class were indeed, at times, appalling in their appearance, ferocity of look and demeanor, something they cultivated as assiduously as the Maidens of The Sun cultivated quietness and civility and obedience; and, of course, their reflected radiance.
The man had recounted many strange tales, wondrous if they were to be believed and amusing at the least. And the motivation for his garrulousness seemed transparently obvious: he had deemed it impossible to resist the will of Xaan-Chu, perhaps too desiring to make himself important and therefore of sufficient value to ensure that his miserable life would be prolonged.
He could never have made himself that important.
Among the soldier’s stories had been one which had sounded most intriguing, however, and at once the least likely to contain even a grain of truth.
It was the tale of two men who had been enemies for five centuries- Their battle, of heroic proportions as the Russian soldier had told it, had begun in the short era which spanned the period between the Great War of Nuclear Annihilation and The Firestorm. The two men had both survived. One had been Russian and the other, also a mongrel, had been American. They had fought many battles, these two, and finally they fought their last battle.
That someone could have survived from the earlier period was hardly to be believed, but it made for a strange story. And the two characters in it —there were
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other characters to be sure woven into the soldier’s tale, but of lesser importance —were interesting in the extreme. One had been named Vladmir Karamatsov and the Russian soldier had referred to him as “The Hero Marshal.” The name of the other one, who survived the final battle between them, had been John Rourke, called “Doctor”
The self-proclaimed Russian soldier stood now beside the pit, his muscles rippling above and below the covering he had been given for his genital’s. Mao’s eyes seemed unable to shift their gaze. The bandages were in place, still protecting the Russian’s wounds. Yet, despite his imposing physique and the fact that he was a soldier and presumably had the benefit of some training in proper conduct in the face of death and, added to that, recent battle experience, when Xaan-Chu approached him and invited him to jump into the pit, he puddled the ground between his legs and attempted to cling to Xaan-Chu, crying like a woman.
But the Mongols moved forward at Xaan-Chu’s subtle beckoning and with the butts of their rifles urged the Russian soldier to conduct himself in a more seemly fashion and hurtle his own body into the pit.
His initial fears apparently were swallowed within the universal instinct for survival and he fought well, using a tactic few would use although it was the best tactic to be sure. He took up an old human femur and utilized it as a weapon against the dogs. He injured one of the dogs and then the others brought him down; and, too quickly, it was over.
But such was increasingly often the case,
How would this Doctor, John Rourke, have fared? It would make interesting diversion for the bored or the idle to ponder . . .