Rourke removed his binoculars from the case, the lens caps already off, in the case bottom.
His hands were trembling.
It was near Mt. Eagle, it had apparently once been a horse farm. A sign, fallen down and broken in half, partially obscured by underbrush, had been at the end of the dried-mud-rutted ranch road, where the ranch road had met the blacktop.
The sign had read: Cunningham’s Folly—Friends Welcome, Others Planted.
Apparently, it hadn’t been planting season.
Both buildings, having been burned so completely, bore the marks of other than natural causes—Brigands.
Rourke raised the binoculars to his eyes, focusing them.
“Freeze!”
Rourke froze—whoever was behind him, whoever had spoken, was very good—very good.
Rourke held the binoculars at eye level, shifting his right hand slightly so the fingers of his left hand could reach under the storm sleeve of his bomber jacket. With all the Soviet activity, Rourke had hidden the little Freedom Arms .22 Magnum boot pistol he’d taken off the dead body of a Brigand, hidden it on a heavy rubber band butt downward on the inside of his right wrist. The four-round cylinder was one-round shy, the half-cocked hammer resting over an empty chamber.
“You must be an Indian to sneak up on me like that,” Rourke said, not turning around, palming the little Freedom Arms gun under his left hand, still peering through the binoculars. There was a woman moving about the yard near the white corral fence.
“I been called ‘nigger’ lots, but ain’t never been called no Indian, fella.”
“There’s a woman—young woman—down there by the corral fence—what’s her name?”
He heard movement behind him.
“I asked her name.”
He felt the muzzle of a gun at the back of his neck.
Rourke stepped back against it on his right foot, simultaneously snapping his left foot up and back, hearing a guttural sigh, feeling his heel connect with tissue and bone, his left arm moving as he half dodged, half fell right, sweeping up and against the muzzle of the gun—it was a Ruger Mini-14 stainless—knocking the rifle barrel hard left as the man holding it sagged forward, knees buckling.
Rourke half rolled, half wheeled, balanced on his right hand and left foot, his right leg snaking up and out, the toe of his combat boot impacting against the black rifleman’s abdomen just above the belt.
Then Rourke was up, the little Freedom Arms boot pistol’s hammer at full stand, the muzzle of the pistol against the black man’s right ear as the man sagged to the ground.
“Don’t move—you alone?”
“Fuck you—”
Rourke increased the pressure of the pistol against the man’s ear. “It’d be awful dumb for you to make me shoot you—I think we’re on the same side. Now—the name of the woman down by the corral fence—”
“Why the hell you wanna know—”
“Maybe she’s my wife—”
“You the guy’s who’s the doctor— “
Rourke eased the three-inch barreled pistol away from the man’s ear. He stood up, blocking the hammer with his thumb, his hands shaking too much to trust to lowering it at that instant.
“Her name is—”
The black man looked up—there was anger in his eyes, but surprise too— “Sarah Rourke—”
Rourke did something he rarely did.
His hands stopped shaking. He lowered the hammer on the little .22 Magnum and shifted it to his left hand.
With his right hand, John Thomas Rourke made the sign of the Cross.
Chapter Ten
The black Resistance fighter’s name was Tom—he said Annie was “the cutest little girl he’d ever seen,” and that Michael was more man than boy, pulling his weight, and that Sarah was a tough fighter, an angel of mercy—what held them together since the loss of David Balfry.
Rourke had said nothing about the Mulliner boy.
And he walked now, his Harley left behind him with the man named Tom—he had told the man he was the quietest man he had never heard. But Rourke put being surprised down more to himself than to Tom’s skills—his mind had been elsewhere, his reactions turned off. Had Tom been a Brigand, or a Russian—he would have been dead.
He walked on.
He could see Sarah’s figure growing in definition as he bridged the gap of distance between the depression’s overlook and the farmyard near the white corral fence.
Her dark brown hair was all but obscured by what looked like a bandanna handkerchief. She wore a light blue shirt of some kind—it looked like a T-shirt. She looked, from the distance at least, like she looked when she worked in her studio, or about the house.
He walked on.
A small child, near a man propped beside a tree—too small, the child was, to be Michael. It was Annie.
She looked like a miniature of her mother.
Where was Michael?
He walked on, a thin, dark tobacco cigar in the left corner of his mouth, clenched tight between his teeth.
He lit it with cupped hands around his Zippo against the cool wind blowing up from the direction of the burned-out farm.
The CAR-15 was across his back, slung diagonally cross-body from his left shoulder.
The musette bag on his right side whacked out and back against his body as he took long strides, even strides in his combat-booted feet. The binocular case swayed and thumped at his right side, against the Pachmayr gripped butt of his Python there in the flap holster.
In the small of his back, where he’d placed it when he’d seen the Russians, was the two-inch barreled Colt Lawman .357—the one he’d used to shoot the Brigand leader in that first confrontation after the massacre of the passengers from the airliner he had landed—less than perfectly—in the desert outside Albuquerque.
The black chrome Sting IA knife was tucked inside the waistband of his Levis on his left side.
He was barely conscious of the weight of the twin stainless Detonics pistols under his armpits beneath the battered brown leather bomber jacket.
He walked on.
The musette bag was heavy—he felt its weight. Spare magazines for the CAR-15.
On his gunbelt, he carried the holstered Python. Hanging from his trouser belt, was the Sparks Six-Pack with loaded Detonics magazines, the Six-Pack a gift from the submarine commander, Gunderson.
He inhaled the smoke into his lungs—memories.
Natalia’s face. Paul’s face—memories he could feel now.
The future was about to turn around, to notice him—he could feel it as it started at the growingly clear image of his wife, Sarah Rourke.
He walked on.
Chapter Eleven
“Momma?”
Half the women and a small percentage of the men in the world would react to the name, Sarah Rourke thought, turning around, seeing her son coming up from the bunker.
“Momma?”
“What is it, Michael?” and she felt herself smile.
But she saw past him, past his tall, straight little body, beyond the tousled brown hair that never stayed combed, beyond the brown eyes sometimes sparkling with curiosity, sometimes dull with weariness.
She saw a figure of a man, a man, tall, straight, dark hair like her son’s hair, the wind catching it. There was an assault rifle slung from his body under his right arm—she could barely detect the shape of the barrel—it was across his back.
“Your father always carried a rifle like that—it never looked comfortable to—”
She stopped, staring.
She said it again. “Your father—your—Michael—.” She was barely whispering.
He looked at her, then to where Annie was still pretending to read to the injured Resistance fighter, and then he looked behind him, beyond the gutted frame of the farmhouse.
“Daddy—”
Michael started to run.
Sarah looked—like a reaction—to Annie. Annie had dropped the book, was pulling the bandanna from her hair, her honey-colored hair caught in the wind as she ran. “Daddy!”
Sarah Rourke closed her eyes. “Please, Jesus—let it work—please,” she whispered.
Sarah Rourke ran, toward the tall, dark-haired man in the leather jacket, shouting across the field, “John!”
Chapter Twelve
John Rourke started to run, toward the woman outdistancing the two children—toward Sarah, Michael, Annie. Sarah wasn’t wearing a bra—he could tell that, because as she ran her fists were balled up and tucked up under her chest—she always ran like that if she just wore a shirt or blouse and no bra. Michael—he was taller, bigger-looking than he had been—fine-looking. Annie—her hair was longer, her smile something he had never forgotten.
As he ran, he stripped the CAR-15 from his shoulder, holding the rifle now by the pistol grip, almost like a balance pole for an acrobat. He could hear her—”John!” Rourke shouted the word: “Sarah!” He threw himself into the run, hearing the children screaming to him, his eyes riveting to Sarah’s face—one hundred yards now, ninety yards—”Sarah—” eighty yards, the tall grass in the field parting like an ocean wave in front of his feet, his mouth open gulping air, his hands out at his sides, the rifle weightless to him in his clenched right fist.