Rourke had cut ahead then, the convoy several hours behind where he had left Paul Rubenstein and the girl who called herself Natalie. And now, as he watched the road below him, the tight bend the highway followed, he could see the brigands. There were more than two dozen long-haul eighteen-wheeler trucks at their center, traveling four abreast, consuming the entire highway space, squads of motorcycle riders in front and in back and on the shoulders, all heavily armed. Though he had no way of telling what or who might be inside the trucks, he judged the strength of the brigand force at better than four hundred men and women. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, they were heading back in the direction of Van Horn, speed approximately fifty miles per hour. A smile crossed Rourke’s lips, but then vanished quickly. As he watched the brigand column began turning off the road, moving into a long, single column and heading into the desert.
“Shit!” he muttered, dropping the field glasses and staring down into his hands. The change of direction into the desert would keep the brigands ahead of him, and the paramilitary force was still behind him. Rourke reslung the CAR-15 on his right shoulder and revved up his bike. The brigands’ turning had forced his hand, he realized, and any way he decided to go, the odds for staying alive were dropping.
Chapter Thirty
Rourke had left early in the morning, awakening the slightly hung-over Rubenstein to let him know his intentions, letting the girl continue to sleep. As Rourke slowed the Harley and drove it up the grade into the sheltered campsite where the truck was parked, he spotted Rubenstein sitting by the Coleman stove, a cup of coffee in both hands, his glasses off. Natalie was standing by the front of the truck and all Rourke could see of her as he eased the bike to a halt was her back.
“I didn’t recognize you without your glasses,” Rourke said to Rubenstein, smiling.
“Shut off the motor, huh? My head is—”
Rourke laughed, killing the Harley’s engine and dismounting, then walking over toward Rubenstein. Rourke set the CAR-15 against the bumper of the truck and dropped to a crouch beside the younger man, snatching a cup and pouring himself some coffee. “What’s with her?”
“What? Oh—I don’t know—she’s been that way ever since she woke up and found you were gone,” Rubenstein answered, his voice shaky.
“So what did you find out, Rourke?”
Rourke looked up. It was the girl, hands on her hips, feet a little apart, tiny chin jutted forward, her eyes fixed and staring at him. “You look cheerful this morning,” Rourke told her, then, “What I found out was that the paramilitary is a few hours behind us with a large force. The brigands are a few hours ahead of us with a large force. Even larger than the paramils. If we bump into the paramils, we’ve had it. Paul and I had a run-in with one of their patrols before we bumped into you. The officer who commanded the patrol is with the paramil force I saw. He’ll spot us, we’ll get shot—and probably you too since you’re with us. They’re southwest of us now, heading northeast along the road. The brigands were heading southwest, and for a while I thought they’d run into the paramils, but then they turned off into the desert. Probably going to be staying in this area for a while.”
“So what do we do?” the girl asked him.
“Can’t go southwest and run into the paramils. Just have to take our chances on butting up against the brigands.”
Rubenstein, rubbing his eyes with his hands, said, “But if we do run into the brigands, what then?”
“Well,” Rourke said slowly, staring into his coffee, “we sort of promised that woman with the refugees that we’d look for that blonde guy who killed her baby. I guess we can do that, then move on.”
“How many brigands are there?” Natalie asked, her voice tense.
“Better than four hundred, I make it. But we can’t just stay here—the paramils will find us. I make it that within the next few days both units should lock horns—looks unavoidable with their sizes—couldn’t miss one another. Then maybe we can get clear of the area.”
“But what do we do until that happens?” Rubenstein asked.
“Stay just shy of the brigands and try to pass around them—if we can. If we can’t, though, we only have one additional option. We join ’em.”
“What!” Rubenstein exclaimed.
Rourke lit a cigar and leaned back against the truck. “They’ve never seen us, must have picked up a lot of their force from bikers driftin’ in two or three at a time. If we have to, we’ll fake it.”
“And what if they don’t buy that?” the girl asked, her voice emotionless.
“Then we’ll buy it,” Rourke answered slowly, then sipped at his coffee.
Chapter Thirty-One
Samuel Chambers, necktie at half-mast, suitcoat gone, two empty packs of Pall Malls crumpled on the small table beside his chair, the standing glass ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, squinted against the yellow lamplight from the desk. He glanced at his watch. The conference had gone on longer than he had expected without breaking. The thought came to him that if this was what being the president of the United States was really like, he could see why the job had aged all the men who had gone before him. “Heavy lies the head,” he muttered to himself, lighting another cigarette and wishing he hadn’t from the bad taste in his mouth.
He looked at the notes he’d taken on the yellow legal pad on his lap, pondering silently if it would work, if the country could be sewn back together even temporarily. Parts of Louisiana and all of Texas had been consolidated into one martial law district, the paramilitary commander, Soames—Chambers didn’t like the man and trusted him less—taking charge of internal matters because of the sheer numbers of his force and the capability to recruit more. The air force colonel, Darlington, would use his troops and the navy forces to handle border defense, using the stores of National Guard supplies to help with this. The National Guard unit—small—would function as a traditional army unit, but outside the borders of this “kernel” of a nation. They would execute clandestine military operations against the Soviet invaders as required, but, more important, try to establish communications links with civil and military authorities in other parts of the country.
Chambers smiled bitterly—he was too much of a realist to assume there were not other men now calling themselves president of the United States, or at the least taking on the concurrent authority the title implied. He tried telling himself, convincing himself, that it would work. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered, then lit another cigarette.
When dawn came, he would be taking a military flight into Galveston to personally assess rumors of a Soviet presence there, as well as to wrap up his personal affairs. All his advisors had warned against the flight. Perhaps, he reflected, that was the first time he had actually felt like a president. He had listened carefully, asked questions, explained his reasoning and then—in the face of the irrefutable logic of his “advisors”—flatly stated he didn’t “give a damn.” He wanted to see Galveston one more time.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rourke hadn’t caught the name of the town as he, Natalie and Rubenstein had passed it. There was smoke trailing in a wide black line across the sky from where the town should have been, and Rourke thought silently that likely the town was no longer there. There was gunfire discernible in the distance and faint, almost ghostly sounds, Rourke mentally labeled them, that could either have been the wind or human screams. The brigands had turned back out of the desert early that morning, placing Rourke, Rubenstein and the girl sandwiched between the brigands and the paramils, now perhaps a day’s march or less apart. Rourke braked the light blue pickup truck on the top of a rise, out of years of driving habit pulling onto the shoulder and out of the main northeastern-bound lanes, despite the fact that there was no traffic.
Rourke cut the engine and stepped out, stretching after the long ride, watching the dark clouds moving in from the northwest. Already the breeze, which had been hot that morning, was turning cool, and he shivered slightly as he walked to the edge of the road shoulder and stared over the guard rail toward the remains of the town. Below the level of the smoke, there were large dust clouds from vehicles—many of them, Rourke reflected.
“Are they down there?”
Rourke turned around, bracing his right hand against the butt of the Python on his right hip, looking at Natalie. “Yeah—they’re down there, all right. And I make it the paramils aren’t far behind us—I think it’s now or never.”