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John Rourke’s right fist was balled tight on the butt of his wife’s pistol as he slowed his headlong lunge, nearing the bend in the corridor on the opposite end of the Chairman’s residence. The run had taken four minutes as he had judged it mentally, no time to look at his wristwatch, barely time to close the robe about his waist. The gunfire had aroused the various government functionaries who were occupying suites of offices throughout the building, the offices located at the massive building’s center, the residential suites on its edges. And there had been more Chinese guards as well, recognizing him, following him to assist in whatever it was the nearly naked, pistol-wielding foreigner was busily hastening toward. Rourke smiled at the thought. He wondered if a man in a robe, carrying a pistol, running through the corridors of the pre-War White House would have been so trustingly received?
He glanced behind him, signalling the guards to cease their running as well, a dozen of them under the leadership of a slightly built young officer drawing up behind him. Rourke held a finger to his lips in the universal signal for silence, then advanced the few paces to the bend in the corridor, beyond which the apartments respectively shared by Annie and her husband Paul and Michael and his mistress Marie Leaden were located. And the suite in which Natalia slept alone. Like the corridor on the far opposite end of the building, its mouth was set with a circular couch covered in blue brocade, ornamental flowering shrubs arranged sparsely and tastefully in hand painted, tight waisted vases of black and blue and red lacquer, each gold rimmed and bearing the image of a single flower or only a barren branch. The corridor was wide and high ceilinged and softly lit. And John Rourke stepped into it now, his wife’s pistol in his fist. There had been no sign of Sarah who had pursued him for the first minute or so
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of his run, Han and his guards behind her. He imagined Sarah would be coming but there was no time to wait for her and if he found something very ugly it would be better if he found it first.
Revenge. It was the motive, of course. Natalia Tiemerovna had wielded the knife, but in the next instant he — Rourke — would have thrown both Vladmir Karamatsov and himself over the edge of the cliff to their deaths. To rid the world of Vladmir Karamatsov, John Rourke would have counted his own death a bargain. Karamatsov’s forces there on the island had been killed or routed and his armies on the mainland had fled inland to regroup, perhaps under the leadership of one of his senior officers. And, though it would be likely that such an officer would welcome the ascent to power, such an officer would be bound by concerns for his image to attempt to avenge the Hero Marshal regardless of the cost in men or materiel. The Hero Marshal alive had been an unyielding enemy, a consummate evil. But dead, he was a holy martyr; and dead men were invincible.
The Chinese officer started to follow, with his lead element, into the corridor. John Rourke signaled the young man and his force back.
It was quiet. There was no sound. And it was possible that the sounds of gunfire had not pervaded here and that ail was well. Possible. Unlikely. And Rolvaag and his dog, Hrothgar. The slightest sound which might not have stirred the Icelandic policeman would have stirred the animal who was always at Rolvaag’s side.
John Rourke wiped his left palm against the side of his robe, along his thigh. He licked his lips. He started down the corridor, slowly, the Trapper Scorpion .45 cocked, safety downed, close at his right thigh.
Either everyone here was dead, or everyone here slept. Either there had been only one assassination
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squad, or there were two or more. And, if there were two or more and all here were not dead, then the additional team or teams had not yet struck, would be waiting, perhaps poised to kill at this very moment.
John Rourke stopped at the precise center of the corridor and stood, the gun still at his side. He raised his voice as loudly as he could and in Russian shouted, “John Rourke is alive. Your comrades in murder are dead. Which of you is hero enough to face me man against man? Or do you only lurk in cowardice to murder women in their beds? Three of your company fell to me. Because they were incompetent weaklings. Like you? Like the Hero Marshal who was so miserable a man that his own wife cut off his head? She should have cut off his testicles first, perhaps. Like yours are cut off.” And then a man in black battle fatigues stepped from the doorway leading in to Natalia’s rooms. He was tall, lean, in his left hand a submachinegun, his right hand sweeping the black BDU cap from his head, the hair blond beneath it but so close cut as to be hardly visible. He dropped the hat to the floor beside his feet, then bent his knees slightly and leaned the submachine-gun against the door. The Russian commando’s right hand moved slowly toward the pistol at his right hip.
Rourke shouted to the Chinese troops in what he realized was a poor rendition of their language but adequate to the task. “Do not interfere between this man and me!”
The Russian slowly moved the flap away from his holster, with his first finger— the trigger finger— and his thumb taking the weapon free of its confinement. He settled the pistol into a combat grip at his right thigh. He nodded curtly. John Rourke nodded back. The Russian’s pistol was double action and the safety would be off. Cocked and locked, the Trapper gun Rourke held was more than an even match for the Russian’s weapon.
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Rourke spoke again in Russian. “The advantage is mine. So you go first. But one question. Are they still alive?”
“Yes. But when the first shot is fired, they die.”
Rourke spoke so softly that his voice was almost a whisper. “You hold them prisoner?”
“A special gas was used. They are unconscious.”
“Why was no gas used during the attack on my wife and myself?”
“It was the decision of the leader of the men who were to kill you. The Hero Marshal meant much to him. The wife of the Hero Marshal would never have betrayed the Hero Marshal had it not been for your seduction.”
John Rourke felt the corners of his mouth downturn-ing. Then he spoke again. “There is no need for your men to die. They can walk out of here alive and unmolested. That is my pledge if you order them to withdraw before they take the lives of my family. You can join them or stay and fight me. Whatever you wish.”
“We all came, Doctor Rourke, knowing we would never leave.”
John Rourke only nodded. When the first shot was fired, the executions of his daughter, his son, his best friend Paul, Natalia and Doctor Maria Leuden would begin.
“John! You can’t—” It was Sarah, shrieking the words.
He kept his eyes on the Russian commando. In Chinese, he shouted, “Keep her back!” Then in Russian, he said, “Let us begin.”
The bone leading across the back of the hand to the Russian’s first knuckle —Rourke could see it vibrate slightly between the first and second dorsal interosseous as the trigger finger started to tense. John Rourke swept the Trapper Scorpion .45 up on a clean arc to just above waist level, his thumb wiping off the safety, his trigger
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finger flicking back once. Rourke was already racing toward the Russian commando as the Russian lurched backward along the corridor, his pistol discharging into the floor, his eyes wide open in death, blood gushing from his mouth.
Rourke shouted in Chinese, “Quickly! Into each room!” And subconsciously, he had already made his own choice. Michael was, after all, a man. And Natalia, the woman he loved like he had loved no other — but — He stepped into the open doorway of Annie and Paul’s apartment, the residual smell of gas vaguely nauseating, seeing three men with submachineguns, seeing Annie and Paul still in their bed as though asleep, seeing all of it as though it were some tableau frozen in time, the submachineguns rising, one of the men turning toward the doorway into the corridor, another of the men turning away. The distance across the sitting room was fifteen feet. Rourke’s right hand moved, the Trapper .45 bucking once in his fist as his right arm moved to maximum extension. He shot first at the man who was neither turning toward the doorway nor away, a chunk of flesh and bone beside the man’s left ear bursting away from the head. Rourke’s right arm arced right, toward the man turning away from the doorway. And Rourke fired, the bullet impacting the left eye. Rourke’s right arm swung ninety degrees left and he fired again, the third man bringing his submachinegun on line toward Rourke. There was no time to dodge or duck or take cover. Rourke just fired, into the gaping open mouth of the third man, the head snapping back and the body going limp as the submachinegun opened up and cut a swatch across the far wall. Clinically, Rourke knew he had severed the third man’s spinal column.