There was another flash in the darkness and he fired twice, hearing a moaning sound then a heavy thud as there was another gunshot, the fireburst of the muzzle going off in the direction of the ceiling.
He stood in a crouch, his fists wrapped around the pistol butt, the first finger of his right hand poised against the revolverlike trigger of the auto-loading pistol.
He could hear the rustle of Natalia’s clothes as she moved through the darkness.
“There is no electric power here, Vladmir.”
“Lights—and on guard,” Karamatsov shouted. There was a clicking sound, followed immediately by a second similar sound and suddenly the room was bathed in light. He glanced obliquely at the powerful lanterns now in the middle of the floor, staying out of the circle of light to guard against still another defender being alive somewhere in the house.
“I don’t think Chambers is here—President Chambers,” Natalia added as an afterthought and walked toward Karamatsov, standing beside and a little behind him, the H-K in her hands, its muzzle moving like a wand through the darkness.
Karamatsov put his arm around her shoulders, whispering, “As always—you are my right arm, Natalia.”
Then Karamatsov moved away from her, issuing orders to the men standing on the edge of the wall of darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna moved through the darkness toward what she perceived as the outline of a staircase. “I’m searching upstairs,” she declared, then added, “Yuri—back me up,” glanced over her shoulder—her eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness—and saw the blonde-haired Yuri a few steps behind her, the dark mass of a pistol in his right hand. “Sure thing, little lady,” he said. She disliked the Texas-style accent Yuri had trained in recently. She turned, glaring at him, hoping somehow that even in the darkness she could signal her displeasure.
She witnessed his shrug, then she turned back toward the stairs and took them two at a time, the stock on her H-K collapsed, the .308 calibre selective fire assault rifle held at her hip like a submachine gun.
She reached the top of the stairs and stopped against the wall, flat, buttocks and shoulder blades against it, listening. She pulled the black silk bandanna from her hair and shook her head, stuffing the scarf in the front of her jumpsuit. Balling her fists around the rifle, she turned in one fluid motion into the hallway, the H-K’s muzzle sweeping the open space.
“Check the rooms on the left,” she commanded to Yuri, then without waiting for a response started to examine the first room on the right. The door was open halfway and she kicked it in, dodging inside and across the doorframe, going into a crouch, the H-K’s selector on auto, her finger poised against the trigger.
Nothing.
She left the room and went into the hallway. One other room remained on the right—the side facing the front yard. She was almost certain there had been someone there with a rifle as they had stormed the house. The door was closed.
She stopped in front of it, took a half-step back and kicked it in, firing the H-K in rapid three-shot bursts as she sidestepped away from the doorway and into the room. She could hear breathing there in the darkness to her left, heard a brief flurry of movement and opened fire, two three-shot bursts. There was a heavy groaning sound and the dull thud of a body hitting the floor.
She mentally flipped a coin, then, holding the H-K in her right hand by the pistol grip, took the small Tekna light from her waist and twisted it on awkwardly one-handed, flashing its beam in the direction of the noise. There was a man on the floor, eyes opened, a lever-action Winchester in his hands— he was dead. “Not Chambers,” she whispered to herself. The man was Latino—a Mexican ranch-worker, she theorized, one of many thousands she had been taught were exploited by the capitalists for long hours and short wages. She looked at the dead man once again, regretting his death and pitying him for having died defending his exploiters against those who would liberate him from his chains.
She turned and left the room, brushing a stray lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her still gloved left hand.
Chapter Thirteen
Very slowly, Sarah Rourke climbed back up the slope and out of the valley. At the back of her mind, she knew she couldn’t leave Ron Jenkins’ body on the street in the town below—there were packs of dogs running the hills and mountains now and his body might well be partially devoured by morning. She was tired, at the prospect of burying Ron Jenkins and from the added weight of his pistol and rifle. The pistol was a gun like the one she carried in the waistband of her Levis, a .45 Colt Automatic, but smaller than her husband’s gun and having a differently shaped hammer. She had no idea what kind of rifle Jenkins had carried, but it was heavy, she decided, as she reached the top of the rise and turned through the darkness toward their camp, her breath short.
It was as though she had never left, she thought. Michael was sitting up with Annie’s head on his lap. Carla Jenkins was sitting stock straight on the ground a few feet away from him, staring blankly into the darkness, her daughter Millie cradled in her arms. Sarah Rourke walked toward Carla Jenkins, dropped to her knees on the ground beside the woman and said nothing. Carla turned, even in the darkness the frightened set of her eyes unmistakable to Sarah Rourke.
“That’s Ron’s rifle—and you got his pistol belt there, too,” she said softly.
“Carla—I don’t. I, ah… I don’t know how to tell you—”
“He is dead,” Carla Jenkins said flatly.
“Yes,” Sarah murmured.
“I’d like to be alone for a few minutes, Sarah. Can you take care of Millie for me?”
Sarah nodded, then realized that in the darkness Carla Jenkins might not have understood and said, “Of course I will, Carla.” The Jenkins woman handed the ten-year-old girl into Sarah Rourke’s arms and Sarah, leaving Jenkins’ guns beside Carla, walked the few feet toward her own children. She dropped to her knees, trying to get into a sitting position.
She turned her head before she realized why—a gunshot, she realized. Putting Millie down on the ground, Sarah half crawled, half ran the few feet to Carla Jenkins. Sarah reached down to the Jenkins woman’s head there on the ground by her feet. Her hand came away wet and slightly sticky. “Can you take care of Millie for me?” Sarah had told Carla, “Of course I will.”
“Ohh, Jesus,” Sarah Rourke cried, dropping to her knees beside Carla Jenkins’ body, wanting to cover her own face with her hands but sitting on her haunches instead, perfectly erect, the bloody right hand held away from her body at arms’ length…
Sarah Rourke couldn’t load Carla Jenkins’ body across the saddle without getting her son, Michael, to help—and the thought of asking him had revolted her more than manhandling the body, but he had done it, simply asking her why Mrs. Jenkins had shot herself. Miraculously, Millie was sleeping still, as was Annie. Sitting with Michael a few feet away, not comprehending how the girls had slept through the gunshot, she began, “Well—sometimes death is awfully hard for people to accept. Do you understand?”
“Well,” he had said, knitting his brow, “maybe a little.”
“No—” Sarah said, looking down into the darkness and then back at her son’s face. “See, if all of a sudden on Saturday morning—before the war—I had told you that you couldn’t watch any cartoon shows at all and never explained why, told you you’d never see a cartoon show again, how would you have felt?”
“Mad.”
“Sad, too?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I would have been sad.”
“And probably the worst part of it making you mad and sad would have been that there wasn’t any reason why—huh?”
“Yeah—I’d want to know why I couldn’t watch TV.”
“Well, see when Mr. Jenkins died, I guess his wife—Mrs. Jenkins—just couldn’t understand why he had to die. And losing someone you love is more important than missing cartoon shows, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, see, once somebody is dead you never get him back.”
“But in church they said that after you die you live forever.”
“I hope so,” Sarah Rourke said quietly.
Chapter Fourteen
“I never ate something so bad in my life,” Rubenstein said, starting to turn away from Rourke to spit out the food in his mouth.
“I’d eat that if I were you,” Rourke said softly. “Protein, vitamins, sugar—all of that stuff, including the moisture—is something your body is craving right now. Just reading a book burns up calories, so riding that bike all day, especially in this heat, really draws a lot out of your body.”