Rourke sighed hard, then bent forward to look into an open box in front of him. He already knew what was inside the box, but he looked there anyway. “I guess he is, Paul.”
“Yeah,” Rubenstein said, his voice odd-sounding to Rourke. “I guess—” Rourke looked up and Rubenstein was already climbing out of the trailer. Rourke searched the remaining boxes quickly. He found some flashlight batteries, bar-type shaving soap prepacked in small mugs and safety razors and blades. He rubbed the stubble on his face, took a safety razor, as many packs of blades as he could cram in the breast pocket of his sweat-stained blue shirt and one of the mugs and several bars of soap. He found another consignment of ammunition—158 grain semijacketed soft point .357s and took eight boxes of fifty. With it were some .223 solids, and he took several hundred rounds of these as well. He carried what he wanted in two boxes back to the rear of the trailer and helped Rubenstein climb inside with the sack to carry it all. They crammed the sack full and Rourke jumped down to the road, boosting the sack onto his left shoulder and carrying it toward the bikes. Rourke, as Rubenstein climbed down from the truck, said, “We’re going to have to split up this load.” As Rourke turned toward his bike, he heard Rubenstein’s voice and over it the clicking of bolts— from assault rifles. Without moving he looked up, heard Rubenstein repeat, “John!”
Slowly, Rourke raised to his full height, squinting against the glare through his sunglasses. A dozen men—in some sort of uniform—were on the far side of the road. Slowly, Rourke turned around, and behind him, on Rubenstein’s side of the road beside the abandoned truck trailer, were at least a half-dozen more. All the men carried assault rifles of mixed heritages—and all the guns were trained on Rourke and Rubenstein.
“Caught you boys with your fingers in the pie, didn’t we?” a voice from Rubenstein’s side of the road shouted.
“That’s a damned stupid remark,” Rourke said, his voice very low.
“You men are under arrest,” the voice said, and this time Rourke matched it with a face in the center of the men by the trailer. Fatter than the others, the man’s uniform was more complete and military appearing. There was a patch on the man’s left shoulder, and as Rourke tried to decipher what it stood for he noticed the duplicate of the patch on most of the uniforms of the other men.
“Who’s arresting us?” Rourke asked softly.
“I am Captain Nelson Pincham of the Texas Independent Paramilitary Response Group,” the fat man said.
“Ohh,” Rourke started, pausing. “I see. The Texas Independent Paramilitary Response Group—the T-I-P-R-G—Tiprg. That sounds stupid.”
The self-proclaimed captain took a step forward, saying, “We’ll see how stupid it sounds when you boys get shot in just about a minute and a half. Official policy is to shoot looters on sight.”
“Is that a fact?” Rourke commented. “Whose official policy is it—yours?”
“It’s the official policy of the Paramilitary Provisional Government of Texas.”
“Try saying that sometime with a couple of beers under your belt,” Rourke said, staring at Pincham.
“Drop that sidearm,” Pincham said. “That big hogleg on the belt around your waist. Move, boy!” Pincham commanded.
Out of the corner of his eye Rourke could already see hands reaching out and taking Rubenstein’s High Power from the holster slung to his pants belt. The Schmeisser, as Rubenstein still called it, and Rourke’s CAR-15 and Steyr-Mannlicher SSG were still on the bikes. Rourke slowly reached to the buckle of the Ranger Leather belt at his waist and loosened it, holding the tongue of the belt in his right hand away from his body. One of the troopers stepped forward and grabbed it, then stepped back.
“Now the guns from the shoulder holsters— quick,” Pincham said, his voice sounding more confident.
Slowly, Rourke started to reach up to the harness, then Pincham shouted, “Hold it!” The captain turned to the trooper nearest him and barked, “Go get those pistols—move out!”
The trooper walked toward Rourke. “You sure you don’t want to talk about this—you’re just going to shoot us?” Rourke asked softly.
“I’m sure,” Pincham said, his face breaking into a grin.
Rourke just nodded his head, keeping his hands away from the twin stainless Detonics .45s in their double shoulder rig. The trooper was in front of him now, between Rourke and Pincham and the rest of the men on the trailer side of the road. The trooper rasped, “Now—take out both those shiny pistols, mister. Just reach under your armpits there nice and slow—the right hand gets the one under the right arm, the left hand the left one. Nice and easy, then stick ’em out in front of you with the pistol butts toward me.”
“Right,” Rourke said quietly. As he reached up for the guns, he said, “To get them out of the holsters, I’ve got to jerk them a little bit.”
“You just watch how you do it, mister. No funny stuff or I cut you in half where you stand.” Rourke eyed the H-K assault rifle in the man’s hands.
Rourke reached for his guns, his hands moving slowly. He curled the last three fingers of each hand on the Pachmayr gripped butts of the Detonics pistols and jerked them free of the leather. Rourke eyed the trooper, who was visibly tense as the guns cleared, and slowly brought them forward in his hands, the butts of the guns facing toward the “soldier.”
“That’s a good boy,” the trooper said, smiling. The trooper took his left hand from the front stock of his rifle and reached forward for the gun in Rourke’s right hand.
The corners of Rourke’s mouth raised in a smile. Rourke’s hands dropped to waist level, the twin stainless .45s spinning on his index fingers in the trigger guards, the pistol butts arcing into his fists, his thumbs snapping back the hammers and both pistols firing simultaneously, one slug pumping into the trooper’s throat, the second grazing his shoulder as it hammered past and into the chest of the soldier closest to Paul Rubenstein. Rourke pumped two shots into the men on the far side of the road and dove toward the trailer, rolling under it, firing both pistols into the men flanking Captain Pincham. Out of the corner of his eye, Rourke could see Rubenstein—almost as if in slow motion. The smaller man had done just what Rourke had hoped—he’d grabbed up an assault rifle from the man nearest him whom Rourke had shot down and now had the muzzle of the weapon flush against Pincham’s right cheekbone. Rourke stopped firing as he heard Rubenstein shouting, “Hold your fire or Pincham gets his!”
Rourke crawled the rest of the way along under the truck and got his feet on the other side, two rounds each still in the twin .45s. He leveled them both across the road, ignoring the men near him. “Your show, Paul,” Rourke almost whispered, catching Rubenstein’s eye.
He watched the younger man nod, then heard him shout, “Now everybody get out from cover and throw your rifles to the ground—move it or Pincham gets this. Move it!”
Rourke watched as Rubenstein shoved the muzzle of the assault rifle against Pincham’s cheek, heard Pincham shout, “Do as they say—hurry!”
Slowly, the men on the far side of the road climbed out of the ditch they’d dropped into as Rourke had opened up on them. Rourke watched as, one by one, they dropped their rifles, hearing the rifles from the man near Rubenstein and Pincham clattering to the ground beside him. “Gunbelts too,” Rubenstein shouted.
Rourke watched as the men started dropping their pistol belts to the ground. His eyes scanned the ground and he saw his own gunbelt there, then he stepped toward it and bent down, breaking the thumb snap on the flap over the Python. He shook the holster free and let it fall to the ground, the Detonics from his right hand already in his trouser belt, the long-tubed, vent-ribbed Python now in his right. Thumbing the hammer back, he walked slowly across the road, his long strides putting him beside the man in the center of the ten men still standing there. Glancing down to the ground, he spotted the two he’d killed. Sticking the muzzle of the Python against the temple of the closest man, Rourke almost whispered, “All right—you guys want to be military—get into the front leaning rest position. That’s like a pushup, but you don’t go down. Now!”
Rourke stepped back, guiding the man closest to him down to the ground. The ten got to their knees, arms outstretched, then balanced on their toes as they stretched their legs, supporting themselves on their hands. “First man moves dies,” Rourke said quietly, starting back across the road.
He could hear Rubenstein shouting similar commands to the men with Pincham on the trailer side of the road. Rourke looked at Rubenstein, hearing the younger man say, “What do we do now?”