Ahern, Jerry - The Web

He didn't.

Rourke opened the door, then stepped through. The stairs were dimly lit, a stronger light glowing from the top. He leaned heavily against the wall of the stairwell as he started up, tired still, his muscles aching.

"B complex," he murmured. If he could reach his bike, he could give himself an injection. Another injection. "Shit," he murmured.

He reached the top of the stairs, the library empty through the open door, a light under a green shade glowing from the glass-partitioned office.

He lurched toward it, knocking over a large dictionary stand. He glanced back at it, then stood up straight, catching his breath. He reached the glass partition, then turned the knob of her office door. There was a small closet at the back, behind her desk.

As he opened the door, he started to feel his strength returning. Inside, neatly folded on the top shelf, were his clothes. He looked below. On the floor were his boots. No guns.

He turned to the desk, opening the large side drawer on the left-hand pedestal bottom.

The double Alessi shoulder rig, the twin Detonics stainless ,s. His A.G.

Russell Sting IA knife.

He took up the shoulder rig, snapping one of the pistols out of the holster, then checked it—the chamber was still

loaded, five rounds still in the magazine. He looked up; Martha Bogen was coming toward him.

He pointed the gun at her face. She stopped, then dropped to her knees on the floor and began to cry. "I didn't want to die alone."

"Nobody'll have to die; I won't let it happen."

"You can't stop. it. You'll die, loo. But we'll both die alone."

Rourke heard a tiny explosion, then a whistling sound. He glanced at his Rolex, still running in the drawer; then he pulled open the curtain over the window to the street. Against the darkness, he could see a skyrocket bursting. It was exquisite.

" told you." He heard Martha Bogen s voice shout hysterically. "I told you so, John!"

The fireworks. Rourke remembered her saying they would come just before the explosions, just before the end.

The pickup truck had thrown a part from the engine— she wasn't sure what—and the radiator had burst and the pickup had stopped dead.

For the last three miles, as she judged it, she and the children had walked hugging the side of the farm road— &he had been too tired to cross country. With her, she carried the stolen M-rifle, her husband's .—the gun now covered with a light layer of brown that she considered to be rust—and among her few personal effects the photographs she had taken from the farmhouse on the Night of the War. Her wedding picture with John was among them.

She sat staring at it now, folded, creased, cracked. He wore a tuxedo and she a floor-length white gown and a veil. The children were resting. It was not far to theMul-liner farm now, but they had needed to rest. She felt as though she were entering a new stage of her life, and somehow staring at the wedding photo had seemed necessary before going to the farm.

She put it away, seeing the picture more clearly in her mind than in the photograph. She remembered their wedding night, John's body next to hers—

"Mamma?"

She turned and looked at Michael in the predawn gray-ness. "Yes, son?"

"Will Daddy find us here—at Mary's?"

"I think so—if anyone can find anyone, Daddy will find us. Come here, Annie." Annie came beside her and Sarah hugged both children to her body.

She heard the barking of a dog, released the children, and grabbed for the rifle. But the dog stopped on the rise of ground, a golden retriever—the one her children had run with, played with. The dog ran up to them.

Michael, and then Annie—always a little more afraid of dogs-hugged the animal, and were in turn licked in the face, Sarah stood up, slinging the rifle across her back—shf could rest now, at least until John found them. "Until/ she repeated aloud.

Natalia placed her hands on her waist, just above the Safariland holsters carrying the twin Smith & Wesson revolvers. She looked at Paul Rubenstein, saying, "I don't see anything, Paul."

"When John brought me up here the first time, he told me that was the whole idea." Rubenstein smiled in the gray predawn. "I can't really explain it as he does—but I guess he did a lot of research. He said it was the way Egyptian tombs were sealed, and things like that. He wanted the place tamper-proof. Watch this." Rubenstein approached a large boulder on his right. He pushed against it, and the boulder rolled away.

He walked to his left, pushing a similar but not identical boulder. It was more squared off. As Rubenstein pushed, the rock on which Natalia stood beside him began to drop down. As the rock beneath them dropped, a slab of rock—she compared it to a garage door—opened inward.

"John told me it's just a system of weights and counterbalances,"

Rubenstein told her. "Maybe you understand it better—didn't you have some training as an engineer?'

"Nothing like this," she said, feeling literally amazed.

Rubenstein shined a flashlight—she remembered it as one of the angleheads he and John had said they'd taken from the geological supply house in Albuquerque just after the Night of the War. In the shaft of yellow light, she could see Paul bending over, flicking a switch. The interior beyond the moved-aside slab of rock was bathed in red light now. "All ready for Christmas." Rubenstein laughed. "Red light? That was a joke."

"Yes, Paul," Natalia murmured.

"HI get the bike. Hold this." He handed her the flashlight.

She studied the rock, murmuring, "Granite," as she heard the sounds of Rubenstein's Harley Low Rider being brought inside.

"Now watch this," Rubenstein said, suddenly beside her.

"Yes, Paul." She nodded, giving him back the flashlight. He moved over beside a light switch, then shifted a red-handled lever downward, locking it under a notch. He left the small cave for an instant and she could both hear and see him rolling the rock counterbalances back in place outside.

Rubenstein returned to the red-handled lever, loosed it from the notch that had retained it, and raised il. The granite slab—the door—started shifting back into place, blocking the entrance.

"What are those steel doors for?" Natalia asked, | gesturing beyond the pale of red light.

"The entrance inside." Rubenstein moved toward the doors, then began working a combination dial, then another, all in the shaft of yellow light from the anglehead. "John installed ultrasonic equipment to keep insects and critters out—"

"And closed-circuit television," Natalia added, looking up toward the vaulted rock above her.

"Can you find that switch for the red light back there?" Rubenstein asked her.

"Yes, Paul," she nodded, in the dim light found the switch, then worked it off. There was near total darkness now. "Paul?"

"Right here—wait." She heard the sounds of the steel doors opening.

She stepped closer to the beam of the anglehead flashlight, staring into the darkness beyond it.

"Ya ready?" she heard Paul's voice ask.

"I don't know . . . for—" She heard the sound of a light switch clicking.

She closed her eyes against the light a moment, then opened them.

"I don't believe it." She heard her voice; she couldn't remember it having ever sounded quite so astonished to her.

"That's the Great Room." She looked at Paul, watched the pride and happiness in his face.

"Great—yes," she repeated.

She started to walk, down the three low steps in front of her, a ramp to her left, her eyes riveted on the waterfall and the pool it made at the far end of the cavern; then she drifted to the couch, the tables, the chairs, the video recording equipment, the books that lined the walls, the weapons cabinet.

And on the end table beside the sofa . . . She stopped, approaching the couch, picking up the picture frame there.