Ahern, Jerry - The Web

Still running, he glanced behind him. No one. Perhaps the Russians were getting out while they still could.

More explosions. Rourke glanced up, toward the rim of the valley; rock slides were everywhere, the very faces of the peaks changing, seeming to melt away.

Rourke turned up the driveway, running harder now, sweating. The garage door—ten yards, five . . . He stopped. It would be locked. He raised both pistols, firing the one in his right hand, then the one in his left. The garage-door lock shattered as he loped and lurched forward. He fell against the door.

Jamming the pistols into his belt, he wrenched the door handle, twisting it, shoving it up, letting the door slide out of sight.

The jet black Harley—he saw it. Rourke stumbled toward it. His gear looked untouched.

He snatched at the CAR-wrapped inside a blanket and a piece of ground cloth.

He ripped the covering away, then searched the musette bag slung on the handlebars, he found a thirty-round magazine, rammed it up the well, and eared back the bolt handle.

He let the bolt slide forward.

"Come on," he rasped, staring out into the street. He could hear the sounds of more explosions; the gas lines were still going, of their own accord now.

Rourke slung the CAR-cross-body from his left shoulder, under his right arm.

He started searching the Lowe pack and found his medical kit, the injection kit inside it. Rourke opened that, taking the B-complex syringes and jabbing one into his left forearm.

He dropped to his knees, trying to even his breath.

Her jaw hurt where the man, John, had hit her. On her knees, on the window seat in the main room of the library overlooking the street and the post office beyond, she wrang a handkerchief in her hands, red hearts embroidered on it, a gift from her husband years ago.

There were fires all over the city; she was afraid of fire.

Everyone else was with someone, safe, ready to die. John was out there in the streets, somewhere. He wouldn't make it; she knew that. She had nursed for her husband often enough to know that in hib condition, he would be too weak (o travel far. She had never even told him the secret paths through the valley to reach beyond the mountains.

He would die alone; she would die alone.

She wondered what his last name was.

He hadn't hit her because he hated her. It was because he hadn't wanted to die with her.

"I hope you live, John," she said, suddenly feeling a weight slip from her.

The manhole cover in the street outside rocketed skyward, the flame under it rising, spreading. The floor under her shook; the plate-glass window in front of her shattered.

She had one more injection—one she had saved in her desk drawer.

It would make her sleep. She gave it to herself, letting the needle fall from her hand, her hands bloody from the glass that had cut her as the window shattered around her.

There was a cool wind and as she closed her eyes, she could see her dead husband's stern face. He was scolding her for what she had tried to do, but there was love in his eyes. · .

Rourke settled himself on the seat of the Harley, the motor purring under him, the tanks full, the Detonics stainless .s reloaded and holstered in the Alessi rig across his shoulders. He was slightly cold—the exhaustion, the drugs coursing through his veins. The collar of his Drown leather jacket was snapped up.

Under the jacket he carried the musette bag on his left side, spare magazines for the Detonics pistols and for the CAR-slung under his right arm.

On his right hip was the Python, Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported; spare ammo for the big Colt was in the musette bag, too, in Safariland Speedloaders.

There were Soviet troops on the ground, Soviet helicopters in the air above. The ground beneath him trembled. Fire was everywhere—in the houses on both sides of the street, a wind whipping it up as he looked out of the garage.

He had been breathing, slowly, evenly, getting the house (hat was his body in order, summoning up the reserves of strength he would need.

It was that or die.

His left fist worked in the clutch, his right throttled

out, and the Harley started ahead.

With his right thumb he worked the CAR-'s safety off, then moved his left hand quickly, securing the dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses.

He squinted through them as he braked in the middle of the street.

In an inside pocket of his leather jacket were some of his dark tobacco cigars.

He took one and placed it between his teeth, rolling it into the left corner of his mouth, unlit.

"Ready," he whispered to himself.

He throttled the Harley, working through the gears, lowering his frame across that of the bike, reaching the end of the street, making a sharp right, then accelerating again. In his mind's eye he could see the way he'd entered the town and that was the only way he knew to leave it.

He passed the post office. As he cut another left, into the street angling past the library, it was a sea of flames.

"Martha," he rasped, looking away as he gunned the jet black Harley ahead.

Despite it all, he felt a sadness for the woman.

Soviet troops on the right, two of them aflame from the gas fires, three of them wheeling toward him, started to fire their assault rifles. Rourke gave the Harley gas then shifted his grip to the CAR-. Firing rapid two-round semiautomatic bursts, he nailed the nearest of the men, then the one behind him.

Gunfire from the third man's assault rifle ripped into the street surface beside him. Rourke throttled out, cutting a broad arc as he made a hard right, then angled off the street and into the grassy shoulder paralleling it, Fires still raged on the far side by the school building. Soviet troops ran haphazardly about, an officer in their

midst; Rourke spotted him, a tall man, his hat gone, his face dirt-smudged.

There was an overturned jeep, and though the officer called to his men, they were scattering. The officer was tugging at something under the jeep.

Rourke sped past, glancing left, seeing a form half under the jeep, the officer working with a pry bar, trying to get someone out.

Rourke slowed the Harley, cutting a wide arc. The jeep was close to the fires raging down the center of the street; the grass on the far side of it was burning.

"Shit," Rourke rasped, gunning the Harley back toward the jeep.

The officer dropped the pry bar, snatching at a full-flap military holster on his right hip.

Rourke slowed the bike, stopping, the CAR-pointed straight at the Russian.

"Shoot me, then. But first help me get this man out; he's still alive!"

Rourke said nothing. His right thumb flicked the safety of the CAR-on, and he let down the Harley's stand, the engine cut off.

He walked toward the Russian, saying, "I'm ill—not as strong as I usually am. You work the pry bar; I'll pull him out."

"Agreed." The Soviet officer nodded.

The man—a major, Rourke noticed—ieaned against the pry bar. Rourke dropped to his knees in the street beside the injured man pinned under the overturned jeep.

An older man—a senior noncom of some kind. The face, unconscious, was pleasant-looking.

Rourke grabbed the man's shoulders, "Now, Major," Rourke ordered, feeling the jeep rising slightly beside

him, hearing the groaning as the Soviet officer strained on the pry bar.

Rourke put his own right shoulder to the end of the overturned jeep, then threw his weight back, sprawling backward into the street with the older man, getting him clear as the jeep fell.

"I could not hold it anymore!"

Rourke ignored the officer, looking to the older man. "He's gonna need a hospital and quick."

"There are helicopters—cargo helicopters. They can be used for the wounded."