Ahern, Jerry - The Web

The Web

Jerry Ahern

Prologue

John Rourke stood in the rain. He'd landed the Beech-craft because the plane had been almost out of fuel. As best he'd been able to judge from the maps, the plane was about twenty-five miles from Chambers and U.S. II headquarters.

Paul was sitting in the plane, talking to his parents; the pilot had gone to find some kind of transportation. The radio wasn't working well, too much static.

Beside Rourke stood Maj. Natalia Tiemerovna. "The truce will be over soon, John; it is over now, I think."

"At least it showed we're still human beings, didn't it?" Rourke said quietly, his left hand cupped over his dark tobacco cigar, his right arm around Natalia.

"You will go on looking?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Where do you plan to go?"

"The Carolinas, maybe Georgia by Savannah. She was likely headed that way."

"I hope you find her—and the children."

Rourke looked at the Russian woman. Rain water streamed down her face—and his. ''Thank you, Natalia."

The woman smiled, then lowered her eyes. She stood beside Rourke in the pouring rain.

Chapter one

"I just damned well can't order my men to fire on Americans to save a Russian agent, Rourke—no matter how much she's helped us!"

Rourke glanced at Reed, then snatched aMossberg ATPP riot pump from one of Reed's men. "Nobody has to order me," he whispered, squinting hard against the sunshine as he tromboned the shotgun and shouldered it.

"Rourke!"

"Leave it!" Rourke ordered, not looking at Reed as the Army Intelligence captain spoke.

The crowd of men and women-—civilians, mostly— was advancing, rifles, shotguns, clubs, and knives of every description in their hands. A woman screamed from the crowd, "Give us that Commie bitch—now!"

Rourke snapped the muzzle of the riot shotgun down fast, firing, pumping, then firing again, skipping the pellets of double-buck across the tarred surface of the runway-access road, the pellets at most ricocheting upward against the shins of the lead ranks of the mob. The mob fell back a few yards. Rourke worked the tang-mounted safety after tromboning another round into the chamber, then handed the shotgun to Reed. "That's

called riot control—ever hear of it?"

Rourke didn't wait for an answer, extending his hand; Reed took it. "You didn't get weather from the tower."

"That's all right—couldn't be hotter up there than it is here." Rourke nodded toward the mob. They were advancing again. Reed shouldered the pump and worked the safety, then fired into the runway surface, the roughly thirty-caliber pellets skipping toward the rioters. "See—works just great.

About two more times, and the braver ones are gonna figure you're trying too hard not to kill 'em—then they're going to rush you. Let 'em past; we'll be airborne."

"Rourke?"

"Yeah—I know. Good luck." Rourke nodded fast, then took off in a dead run behind the dozen or so armed U.S. II troopers and toward the pickup truck.

"He's gonna make a break for it with the Russian girl!" an angry voice shouted from the crowd behind him. Rourke hoped the anonymous voice was right.

He reached the truck, jumping aboard, the door not closed as he worked the key. The ignition fired; his right fist locked on the floor-mounted gearshift. His left foot popped the clutch; the dark tobacco cigar moved across the clenched tight teeth and settled in the left corner of his mouth as the truck lurched ahead. The truck door slammed itself, the mirror vibrating as Rourke studied it. The mob had closed with Reed's men, closed with them sooner than Rourke had expected, and had passed them.

There was sporadic gunfire, and behind the truck now, Rourke could see the first ragged ranks of the mob— running after him toward the airfield.

Far ahead, through the cracked glass of the Ford's windshield, he could see the light cargo plane, the twin

props still not whirring. Rourke hammered his left fist down hard on the vintage truck's horn button, again and again.

He could see a figure—Rubenstein?—running from the starboard wing around the nose of the aircraft. Natalia would be at the controls. "Shit!"

Rourke stomped the clutch down hard, working the gas pedal as well, double-clutching as he upshifted, the truck's gears grinding. The vehicle bumped, then lurched ahead.

He glanced to his left—something, a sixth sense, making him do it. Hearing anything aver the roar of his truck's engine, the gunfire, and the shouts of the mob from behind was impossible. From his left were coming two pickup trucks, armed men in the hacks of each vehicle—rifles, shotguns, handguns, axes—and blood in their collective eye.

He shook his head, almost in disbelief. Three days earlier, Natalia had been rescuing their wives and babies, putting them aboard the planes of the evacuation fleet in Florida. But now—none of that mattered. She was Russian, and the Russians had started World War III, destroyed much of the United States, invaded American shores. Natalia was Russian. It didn't matter who she was, just what. Rourke felt the corners of his mouth downturning. "Ignorant bastards!" Rourke snarled as he glanced again at the two pickup trucks. They were closing fast, gunfire now being leveled at him from the beds of the trucks. The West Coast mirror on the right-hand side of the vintage Ford pickup he drove shattered under the impact of a slug.

Rourke reached under his left armpit, snatching at one of the twin Detonics stainless .s he carried in the

double Alessi shoulder rig. He aimed the pistol as his thumb cocked the hammer, then turned his face away from the passenger-side window, firing, as the shattering outward of the passenger-side glass and the roar of the -grain JHP in the confined space all came together to make his ears ring. He looked toward the passenger side; the nearest of the two trucks swung away. He fired the Detonics again; this time, the glass of his borrowed truck not partially deflecting the bullet, his bullet hammered into the front windshield of the nearest of the pursuers.

Rourke glanced to his left, seeing behind him through the driverVside window the pursuing mob. The mob split, a wing of it running diagonally from the access road toward the field, to cut him off or to reach the airplane ahead of him—he couldn't be sure which.

Rourke glanced to his right. A wooden fence was all that separated him from the grassy area leading toward the field. He cut the wheel hard right, the cocked and locked Detonics secured under his right thigh as he aimed the pickup truck toward the fence. One of the pursuing trucks, the one with the shot-out windshield, was coming for him broadside. Rourke grabbed up the Detonics again, firing. The pursuing truck swerved hard right through the wooden fence, almost in perfect simultaneity with the truck Rourke drove.

Behind him now, Rourke could see the second truck, coming up fast as it punched through the fence. Some of the fence slats, caught up in its front bumper, broke away as the truck, a Chevy, bounced and jarred across the uneven ground. Rourke upped the safety on his Detonics again, hammering down the gas pedal and shifting down into third, releasing the pedal and stomping the accelerator as he made the change. The Ford slowed, but took the

bumps better. There were perhaps a thousand yards to go toward the airfield tarmac itself.

The pickup with the shot-out windshield was coming—fast, too fast for control. The riflemen and shot-gunners, bouncing visibly in the bed as the truck slowed, fired. Rifle bullets and shotgun slugs pinged uselessly off the body of Rourke's truck.

Rourke fired the Detonics . again, really at nothing, since aimed fire was useless with the truck he drove bouncing and jarring as it did. But this time the pickup truck, a Dodge, didn't fall back.