“Triangle,” he said in English.
In his mind he formed one leg of a triangle between Bevington, Kentucky and the crosshatched area where peninsular Florida had once been, to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.
He looked to the west across the map.
There was only one other place—and somehow Karamatsov must have known of it, the reason why a KGB base had been established at the overrun Air Force Base in Texas.
He drew the other leg of the triangle, Bevington, Kentucky and the factory there representing the triangle’s apex.
His eye drew the baseline—between the Kennedy Space Center and Houston, Texas.
“The Johnson Space Center,” he whispered.
After the Texas volunteer militia and U.S. II forces had retaken the base, Karamatsov and Major Tiemerovna barely escaping with their lives, Soviet freedom of action in Texas had been severely reduced.
“The Johnson Space Center—”
He turned to the telephone on his desk—waiting an instant. If he were wrong, there was really no other place to look and he would be dead. They would all be dead.
He lifted the receiver. “This is Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy—the Elite Corps strike force duty officer—I wish to speak with him immediately—”
The cigarette had burned down between his fingers and yellowed his flesh.
Chapter Twenty-one
She leaned against the fuselage of the plane, the prototype F-111. One more crate remained, M-16 rifles. She looked skyward—the horizon was pink-tinged, thunder rumbling in the east, streaks of lightning across the pink line between day and night.
She could hear Paul coming back from the camouflaged Ford pickup—and she turned to watch him. He moved like a man twice his age, his left arm stiff at his side.
Natalia turned quickly away from him, to the crate of rifles, reaching out for it, drawing it toward her—it was only twenty feet or so to the truck and perhaps—
“Hey— what the hell are you doin’?”
“I’m trying to move the crate—what’s it look like, Paul?”
She felt him shove past her, felt, heard the pain it caused his arm as they made contact. His right hand was beside hers on the crate’s rope handle, wrenching the crate away from her at an awkward angle.
“I take one end, you take the other—just like we’ve been doing,” he said, not looking at her.
“I can do it—your arm—”
“Bullshit—your abdomen, probably still weak from the surgery—all I need is for you to rupture that area where John operated—now get out—”
Her left hand went against his chest as she turned to face him, shoving him back. “All I need is for you to die—get your arm bleeding again. Bullshit to you, too, Paul!”
She was screaming at him.
She stopped.
Rubenstein leaned forward, against the fuselage. He was laughing.
Natalia, too, felt herself begin to laugh. “What do you say we just leave this crate of rifles, huh?” he smiled.
“What do you say we just carry it like the other ones—hmm? That’s a better idea.”
“Yeah—it is a good idea—and you’re a good lady,” and then he turned to face her fully, and as his right arm moved out to her, she leaned her head against his chest.
Without his strength—not the physical kind, despite her sex she was his equal in physical stamina and endurance, though he was better in agility—life would have been sadder for her.
Chapter Twenty-two
Mary Mulliner stood beside the entrance to the bunker, the children pressed against her as she hugged them, John Rourke stood next to Sarah Rourke, beside the dented light blue pickup truck Pete Critchfield had scrounged for them—like Rourke’s own pickup, which he imagined by now Natalia and Paul had used to empty the F-l 11 and ferry the supplies to the Retreat, this too was a Ford.
It was a “loan,” but both Rourke and Critchfield had known the likelihood of the truck’s being returned was remote to the point of nonexistence.
Rourke held his wife’s right hand in his left, his right hand holding the scoped CAR-15. The golden retriever belonging to Mary Mulliner ran between Sarah and where Mary and the children stood—it yelped.
It looked like a good dog, Rourke thought.
He let go of his wife’s hand, to glance at the black-faced Rolex Submariner he wore. It was nearly eight-thirty.
The Harley was packed, ready.
“I know,’” Sarah told him softly. “But she loves them—always acted like a grandmother to them, or an aunt. I can’t just say—”
But then Mary Mulliner’s voice, from across the yard, cut her off. “John Rourke—I don’t know if you know what you got here. These two children—and this boy of yours is more of a man than most men I’ve ever heard tell of. And your wife—she’s been pinin’ for you, John Rourke. Keep her good.”
“Yes, ma’am—I intend to,” Rourke nodded.
Then Mary Mulliner started across the yard. Michael and Annie hugged against her hips as she walked.
The dog was barking maddeningly.
“Hush,” she hissed to the dog, and the golden obeyed, stretching out at her feet as she stopped a yard away from Rourke and his wife. “The dog—misses Bill, I guess,” and she started to smile, then burst into tears. Sarah folded the older woman in her arms and hugged her tightly.
Rourke watched, felt his children tugging at him. Affection, he suddenly realized, had always been hard for him.
He closed his eyes as the golden retriever started barking again.
Chapter Twenty-three
She drove the truck, tears in her eyes, Annie sitting—quietly—beside her.
Ahead of her was John Rourke, riding behind him on the Harley-Davidson sat Michael, Michael’s hair blowing in the wind, as was her husband’s—Michael was his miniature—in almost all ways.
In the side-view West Coast mirror—cracked by a bullet—she could see them standing there, Pete Critchfield, Tom, Mary Mulliner—the others.
Sarah Rourke looked down at her T-shirt—she had changed back into her normal clothes after the gunfight, no time for sleep, for rest—only time to prepare for the trek to the Retreat.
Pinned to the front of her T-shirt—she felt at once stupid and proud—was a Silver Star. The medal had been given Pete Critchfield’s son who had died years earlier in the Viet Nam War.
Pete, pinning it to her T-shirt, startling her as he’d reached for her, had said, “Sarah—this war, well—we don’t have no medals, nothin’ for bravery. Like you’ve been ever since we met you. You hadn’t killed those first coupla Brigand bikers last night, no tellin’ if n they’d have got down into the bunker and maybe killed us all—or a lot of us, leastwise. So—my boy won it, then got blown up by one of them mortar attacks—near the DMZ. So—it’s your medal now—earned it just as much as he did, I reckon,” and he had kissed her.
She looked down at the medal again.
She didn’t need the Silver Star to remember Pete Critchfield, or Mary Mulliner’s husband’s pistol to remember young Bill who had given it to her.
She would remember David Balfry. The black man, Tom. Curley, the radio specialist. Mary Mulliner—remember them all, her family for a while.
Until her dying day.
She upshifted as she finished the turn out of the burned-down quarter horse farm.
The Cunningham place.
Chapter Twenty-four
The camouflaged Ford was parked, the cases of rifles and ammunition and medical gear and other supplies from the aircraft in the truck bed—Natalia too exhausted to bother moving them, Paul too weak.
She had insisted he go to bed—he had insisted on a shower. She had been too tired to argue it with him.
She sat, now, on the floor just outside the bathroom, listening for the sounds of him in the shower, afraid he was too weak to keep standing. She had offered to bathe him—and he had actually blushed. She smiled at the thought.
Love was a strange thing.
Her love for Paul was deep friendship, her love for Rourke something else entirely.
But Natalia wasn’t certain what.
There was a loud squeaking noise and she heard a gasped “Shit!”
She was on her feet, inside the bathroom, ripping open the shower.
She dropped to her knees beside the tub, bending into it, Rubenstein’s left arm dripping blood, Rubenstein collapsed in the back of the shower, the blood washing across his naked body, making a tiny stream of pinkish red toward the drain, his right leg drawn up, his left outstretched.
Natalia was up, stepping into the bathtub, careful of her footing, her left hand turning down the shower, her right hand reaching out for Paul.
His head raised, his eyes odd-seeming without his glasses on—she sometimes forgot they ever came off. His speech slurred a little, he whispered, “Slipped, I guess—ha,” and he forced a smile.
“Did you hit your head?” she said leaning over him. As her eyes glanced down, she saw him coming erect between his legs.
“Get out of here—”
Tm going to see if you’re all right—”
“I haven’t been this close to—”