“I know,” she smiled. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about—it’s a normal reaction—you haven’t got any clothes on, that’s all—”
And Rubenstein laughed, “This is stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” she said, feeling the back of his head, parting his wet hair to see if he’d injured himself.
“I’m naked in the shower with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and what am I doing—wishing for an erection to go down because I’m embarrassed.”
She kissed his forehead quickly, stepping out of the shower, reaching out to help him to his feet.
“That didn’t help me,” he smiled….
She had stopped the bleeding, bandaging his arm after forcing him to let her finish washing him—men were babies, she thought. As if any woman could reach maturity and not know what a penis looked like.
And she put him to bed, giving him some of the painkiller John had prescribed for him, covering him, turning off the light, and going immediately back into the bathroom. It needed cleaning after the flood from the shower. She started working at that, getting up her bootprints, drying the floor.
She badly wanted a shower, but more badly wanted a cigarette, leaving the bathroom, walking down the three steps and into and across the Great Room to the couch. Her guns, still holstered, were on the coffee table. She found her cigarettes in the black canvas bag that doubled as purse and light-load backpack. She lit one, inhaling the smoke deep into her lungs, sitting back in the couch.
She stared up at the ceiling for a while—the stalactites there reminding her of something she didn’t wish to be reminded of, really, but making her laugh. “Paul,” she smiled.
She rolled onto her belly, supporting herself on her elbows.
On the end table beside the couch she saw the photograph—Rourke, Sarah, Michael, and Annie. Michael was his father—the perfect miniature, she thought. And someday, if they all survived that long, he would be the perfect duplicate rather than perfect miniature.
She looked at Sarah’s face. “What kind of woman are you, Sarah?”
She rolled onto her back then, closing her eyes, still smoking her cigarette. She was past falling asleep. If Rourke found his family, or if he found that they could not be found, it would forever change her life.
She could not sleep.
She thought about Sarah Rourke—how was it to be the wife of John Rourke? To cook for him, to keep his clothes clean? How was it to sleep with him?
She—Natalia—had slept beside him, in his arms. He had kissed her. But because of Sarah, he would not—
Natalia sat up, stubbing out her cigarette.
She decided to light another one.
Alone in the Great Room, through an exhaled cloud of gray smoke, she told herself, “I would be blindingly lucky at cards.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Rourke skidded the Harley to an arcing stop— “Shit,” he snarled. Coming around the bend of the two-lane highway they rode, Michael behind him on the Low Rider, Sarah driving the borrowed pickup truck, Annie with her, there was a Soviet motorized patrol.
The lead men on motorcycles slowed their bikes, stopped them, raising AKs, one of them shouting in poor English, “To halt—to halt! To raise the hands!”
Rourke raised his right hand, snatching at the Python in the hip holster, rasping to Michael, “Hang on tight, son!” He double-actioned the Metalifed six-inch .357 twice, the Mag-Na-Ported Colt rock steady in his balled right fist, the Russian who’d spoken, then taken both slugs, falling backward across his motorcycle, rolling to the roadway surface.
The second Russian biker was sweeping the muzzle of his AKM to fire—Rourke emptied the remaining four shots from the Python’s cylinder into the man’s center of mass, the AKM starting to fire, into the road surface, then up, Rourke passing the revolver back to Michael— “Here—hold this—barrel’s hot—” The Harley, Rourke wrenched it around, gunning the engine, shouting to the truck, “Sarah—get out of here!”
But the vehicle was already backing up, cutting a ragged, bumping, lurching arc in reverse, the light blue Ford pickup shuddering visibly, the engine roaring, a screech of tires as the pickup cut a sharp left down the highway, Rourke almost up even to it.
Sarah was shouting something as he came level with the cab—Rourke couldn’t hear over the engine noises, the slipstream, and the gunfire coming from behind them.
But he knew what she wanted—he nodded to her, raising his left hand, then slashing it down quickly. The Ford started into a skidding stop, Rourke slowing the Harley, stopping beside the truck cab. Sarah was leaning across the seat, the passenger side door opening fast, bouncing back on its hinges.
“Michael—into the truck—gimme my gun—you and your sister—down on the floor!”
He half threw the boy from behind him on the bike saddle to Sarah’s hands reaching across Annie, crushing her, it seemed, against the seat-back—but Annie was reaching for him, too— “Got him,” Sarah shouted, Rourke slamming the door as his son cleared it, gunning the Harley as he holstered the empty Python, the Ford peeling out, gravel bits and a cloud of dust in its wake.
The CAR-15—Rourke swung it forward on its sling, earing back the bolt, both hands on it tensioned against the sling, the stock collapsed. He started pumping the trigger—Russian soldiers, some running on foot, Russian bikers behind them—he fired into the lead elements, AK fire pouring back toward him.
He fired out the magazine, changing sticks, working the bolt release, then cutting the bike into a tight left and gunning the machine out— assault rifle fire tore into the road’s surface on both sides of him—he could hear ricocheting sounds as bullets hammered into the rocks on the right side of the road—or perhaps his machine.
He ripped one of the twin stainless Detonics pistols from the leather under his left armpit, reaching around behind him, jacking the hammer back, firing once, twice, a third time—it was useless.
Upping the safety, he rammed the cocked and locked pistol into his belt, lowering his body over the Harley, gunning the engine—faster.
The pickup was dead ahead—he was gaining on it—gunfire rained around him, the roaring of Soviet bikes making his ears ring.
His wife—his son—his daughter— “Damn!” He shouted the word—maybe heaven would hear him, he thought.
The wind of the slipstream tore at him, stinging at his ears, his forehead, Rourke feeling his lips drawing back from his teeth—he didn’t want to see his face.
The road angled sharply upward and into a curve, Sarah taking it fast, he saw—too fast? The Ford’s rear end seemed to fishtail, the truck lurching, rising up and down on its shocks, then vanished around the curve. Rourke took the curve in a wide arc, cutting into the oncoming lane, skidding off the far lane and into the loose dirt and gravel of the shoulder, his feet out, balancing him, dragging as he fought to control the machine. His hands worked—the machine was pulling ahead—Rourke gunned the engine, gravel spraying up around him, pelting at his exposed hands, making pinging sounds against the steel of the Harley—
The exhaust—he could hear it thunder under him, behind him.
Back on the road—low over the Harley, gunfire tearing into the pines beyond the road shoulder, ripping into the tarmac under him, gravel and bullet fragments spraying around him, sparks on the roadside as bullets impacted small stones.
His lips drawn back tight, his neck—the tendons something he could feel distending— He let out the Harley—to catch the truck.
He was out of the curve, still climbing, the blue Ford pickup about a city block’s length ahead as he leaned into his machine.
More gunfire, a stillness for an instant as the Soviet column must have taken the curve.
Rourke had the half-shot-out Detonics back in his right fist, thumbing down the safety, swinging left in the Harley’s saddle, keeping low over the machine, firing once, twice, a third time—the lead Soviet biker’s machine skidding from under him, spilling the man onto the highway, the biker nearest behind him, jumping his machine to clear his comrade, the machine out of control, the man and the machine separating in midair. The bike crashed down—a Soviet truck behind the bikers skidding, losing control—in an instant shooting across the oncoming lanes and over the shoulder, impacting against a stand of pines.
Rourke leaned into his machine again, ramming the spent pistol into his hip pocket—riding.
He glanced back again—he had stalled the column.
Ahead, Sarah’s truck was slowing. “Why?” He shrieked the word into the wind of the slipstream.
Michael—he could see the boy—Sarah’s M-16—he was firing it through the open passenger window—ahead of them.
The truck was doing a high-speed reverse, Michael’s head and the rifle tucked back inside, the pickup lurching onto the shoulder on Rourke’s side, the near shoulder, gravel and dirt spraying up as the truck’s rear wheels fought for traction, then the pickup bisecting the highway, crossing the oncoming lane, bouncing up and over the far shoulder, then disappearing below the rim of the highway.