“I’m just doing my damned job, John. It’s my job!”
“I had a job like that once. But you know what I did? I quit. That’s where you remembered me from— South America, a few years ago. I was down there a lot in those days. I didn’t quit because my philosophy changed or anything—I just quit because I wanted to and figured I’d done my time. You could do the same, couldn’t you?”
“I’ve got other reasons,” she said, staring into the cigarette in her right hand. “I believe in what I’m doing.”
“You didn’t see your face when you looked at those refugees, the woman with the dead baby. You’re on the wrong side.”
“Is that why you didn’t try and kill me when you recognized me?” she asked, looking up at Rourke.
“No—that isn’t why,” Rourke answered.
“How long have you known, John?” Rubenstein asked.
“Long enough—after the first couple of days I was sure.” Then turning to the girl, he said, “Is Karamatsov here too? You always worked with him down south.”
The girl said nothing for a long moment, then, “Yes.”
“Who the hell is Karamatsov?” Rubenstein said, leaning forward.
Rourke started to answer, but the girl cut him off, her voice suddenly lifeless-sounding, Rourke thought. “He’s the best agent in the KGB—at least he thinks so and everyone tells him that. He’s—I guess it doesn’t matter—he’s in charge of the newly formed American branch of the KGB—he’s the top man in your entire country. The only man who can overrule him here is General Varakov—he’s the military commander for the North American Army of Occupation.”
“This is like some kind of a nightmare,” Rubenstein started, taking off his glasses and staring out into the rain. “During World War II, my aunt was trapped over in Germany when the war broke out. They found out she was Jewish and they arrested her and we never heard from her again. I grew up hating the Nazis for what they’d done. What the hell do you think American kids are gonna grow up hating, Natalie? Huh? How many houses and apartment buildings and farms—schools, office buildings… how many places just stopped existing, how many children and women and little dogs and cats and everything else that matters in life did you people kill that night? Jees—you guys make Hitler look like some kinda bush leaguer!”
“This was a war, Paul,” the woman said. “We had no choice. The U.S. ultimatum in Afghanistan, there was no choice, Paul—no choice. We had to strike first! And then your own president held back U.S. retaliation until the last possible minute—we didn’t know!”
“Do you hear what you’re both saying?” Rourke asked quietly. “Things haven’t changed at all since the war, have they?” Rourke closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the edge of the pickup’s tailgate. No one spoke for a while and all he could hear was the unseasonably heavy rain.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Rubenstein had elected to sleep in the bed of the pickup truck and was snoring occasionally as Rourke and Natalie lay beside one another under the tarps, listening to the rain. An hour earlier, one of the brigands had passed by, sticking his head under the shelter flap, then seeing Rourke and the girl together, grunted, “Sorry, man—I didn’t know if— see ya,” then walked away. Rourke had had one of the Detonics pistols under the blanket, the hammer cocked and the safety down, his finger against the trigger.
After the man had gone and Rourke had lowered the hammer on the pistol, the girl started to cry. Rourke heard the strange sound from her before he turned and saw the tears. Then he asked her why.
“He’s right—what we did,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.
“Yes, Paul is,” Rourke said. “But if everybody who isn’t Russian winds up hating everybody who is Russian, what’s that gonna do, huh?”
“What kind of man are you—he was right, he was right, you know,” the girl said to him. “I did try everything I could to get you to come after me—I guess I still am. What? Was it because you knew who I was, thought I was Karamatsov’s woman or something?”
“That didn’t really have anything to do with it,” he said, then fell silent. The rain fell heavily and Rourke glanced at his Rolex—it was well after midnight. The girl spoke again.
“Why then?”
“Why then what?” Rourke said, not turning to look at her.
“What we were saying before—you didn’t care that I was a Russian agent, that I might be Karamatsov’s woman—then why?”
“Forget it,” Rourke whispered. “You’ll wake the kids,” and he pointed up toward the truck bed, listening to Rubenstein snore.
“I won’t forget it,” she said. “Is it that wife you have—the one who’s maybe still alive? What are you afraid of—you’ll stop trying to find her?”
“No—I won’t stop,” he said. “Give me one of your cigarettes—I don’t want to smell up the place.”
The girl turned away from him a moment, fumbled in the pocket of her jacket and handed Rourke the half-empty pack. Then she took it back, extracted one of the cigarettes and lit it—her hands steady, the match lighting the first time. She inhaled hard, then passed the cigarette over to Rourke. He stayed on his back, the cigarette in his lips, staring up at the top of the shelter and the darkness there.
“Is it that you’d be unfaithful to her?” Natalie said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Somethin’ like that,” Rourke said, snapping ashes from the tip of the cigarette out the partially open flap and into the rain.
“But—what if she isn’t—” and the girl left the question unfinished.
“Then it wouldn’t be somethin’ like that,” Rourke said quietly, dragging hard on the cigarette, then tossing it out into the rain.
He could feel the girl moving beside him under the blanket. “Are you human?” she whispered.
He turned his head and looked at her, then without getting up reached out his left hand and knotted his fingers into the dark hair at the nape of her neck, drawing her face down to him, looking for her eyes by the dim light there through the shelter flap. All he could see was shadow. He could feel her breath against his face, hear her breathing, feel the pulse in her neck as he held her.
Her lips felt moist and warm against his cheek as she moved against him, and Rourke took her face in his hands and found her mouth in the darkness and kissed her, her breath hot now and almost something he could taste, sweet, the release of her body against him something he could feel in her as well as himself, She lay in his arms and he could hear her whispering, “You are human.”
Rourke touched his lips to hers again, heard her say, “Nothing is going to happen, is it John?”
“I don’t know—go to sleep, huh? At least for now,” and he felt her head sink against his chest and heard her whisper something he couldn’t hear.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rourke opened his eyes, glancing down at the watch on his left wrist. It was three A.M. The girl was still sleeping in his arms, and to see the face of the Rolex he’d had to move her. He heard the sound again, a shot, then another and then a long series of shots—submachine gun fire, light like a 9mm should sound. “The damned fools,” Rourke said aloud, feeling the girl stirring in his arms, then feeling her sit up beside him.
“Shots?”
Then Rourke heard Rubenstein, sliding off the pickup truck bed, beside them suddenly under the shelter. The rain was still pouring down outside, and Rourke stared out from the shelter flap, then pulled his head back inside, his face and hair wet. Without looking at either Rubenstein or the girl, Rourke said, “The damned fool paramils—it’s a blasted night attack. Damn them!”
As Rourke pulled on his combat boots, whipped the laces tight and tied them, the sound of the gunfire became more general, shouts sounding as well from all sections of the brigand camp, the engines of some of the big eighteen-wheelers roaring to life and, as each did, the shots were drowned out for a moment. Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, over the din, “Paul, start getting this shelter taken down and get the truck ready to roll—Natalie, give him a hand! I’m going up by the road.” Rourke slipped into his leather jacket, got to his feet in a low crouch and started through the shelter flap, then dove back inside, shouting, “Mortars!”
He dove onto the girl and Rubenstein, knocking them to the shelter floor. The shelter trembled, the ground trembled, the blast of the mortar was deafening. Then came the sounds of rocks and dirt hitting the shelter, added now to the drumming of the rain. Rourke pushed himself up on his hands, rasped, “Hurry!” and started back toward the shelter flap, then into the rain. There was the whooshing sound of another mortar round, and though the pouring rain muffled the sound, he instinctively dove left, the mortar impacting behind him and to his right. Rourke pushed himself up out of the mud, the CAR-15 diagonally across his chest in a high port as he ran zigzag across the mud, avoiding the brigand men and women running everywhere around the camp in obvious confusion and panic. Some of the eighteen-wheelers were starting to move, inching forward, then backward, the very shape of the circle in which they’d parked prohibiting them from maneuvering. Some of them were entrenched deep in the mud of the plateau, and mud sprayed into the air as the wheels bit and slipped and dug themselves deeper.