Ahern, Jerry - Total War

As the other bikers started to react, Rourke speed-cocked the bolt and leveled the SteyrMannlicher again. A biker wearing a Nazi helmet was sitting on a three-wheeled bike. Rourke felt he didn't need as much finesse on this shot-he worked the forward trigger all the way through, without using the rear trigger. The helmeted biker threw his hands to his chest and fell back, his bike collapsing to the side as his body hurtled over.

Rourke worked the bolt again. There was a woman biker, her arms laden with belongings of the dead passengers. She was running across the camp. Rourke swung the scope along her path. A bald biker, riding a big, heavily chromed street machine, was waving frantically for her.

Rourke followed her with the scope as she crossed the camp, past the bodies of the murdered passengers. As she reached out to touch the hand of the bald biker, Rourke fired, killing the bald man with a round in the left temple. He speed-cocked the Steyr's bolt, and swung the scope to the woman. He couldn't hear her above the sounds of the motorcycles revving in the camp area now, but through the scope he could see her mouth opening and closing. He imagined she was screaming. She dropped to her knees, and he shifted the scope downward a few degrees and pulled through on the first trigger. The rifle's gilding metal-jacketed slug skated over the bridge of the woman's nose smashing a crimson red hole into her forehead. Her body snapped back, then her head lolled forward, as though in death she was somehow still praying not to die.

Rourke swapped magazines on the sniper rifle, worked the bolt action, and clipped a biker with bright hair in the right side of his neck. His bike half-climbed a small rise, then rolled over. Rourke worked the bolt again. He swung the scope onto another biker. Like one of his earlier kills, this man was wearing a Nazi helmet. Rourke fired. The Steyr's 165-grain boat-tail soft-point splattered against the right side of the helmet. The biker threw his hands up and fell from his motorcycle. He rolled over and then lay still.

Rourke worked the bolt, swinging the scope along the ground. He spotted another biker in a sleeveless denim jacket with a gang name across its back-the only thing, Rourke thought, that distinguished him. The biker crawled along the ground, then got to his feet and broke into a dead run for a group of bikers to Rourke's left. Rourke fired and hit the biker in the back. The impact threw the man's body forward on his face into the dirt.

Rourke swung the scope, working the bolt action fast and ripping the last three shots into the group of bikers whom the last man he'd killed had been running toward. Three bodies fell. The other three jumped onto their machines. Rourke swapped magazines on the Steyr and brought the rifle back to his shoulder, firing twice more, killing two more of the bikers as their machines moved out of the campsite.

He brought the rifle down from his shoulder and clicked the safety on.

Rubenstein, lying on the rocks beside him, said, "You just killed twelve men!"

"No," Rourke said. "Eleven men and one woman. Come on, let's see if any of the passengers are still alive down there."

Chapter Thirty-two

Rourke tossed the rifle to Rubenstein and started running along the rocks down toward the campsite. The wind started to whip up from the lower ground, catching the dark Stetson he wore and blowing it from his head. He ran the long fingers of his right hand through his hair, then reached under his coat and snatched out one of the Detonics pistols-in case any of the bikers had survived his fire and decided to return it. As he reached the flat space beneath the rocks, he broke into a crouching run toward the lifeless form of Sandy Benson.

He dropped to his knees beside her, rolled the body of the dead biker away, and leaned over the girl. He raised her head in his hands. She opened her eyes. Her blonde hair fell back from her face, as she looked up and smiled at him.

Rourke said, "Like I told you before-you got a pretty smile, Sandy."

"I knew you'd come-I knew it, Mr. Rourke." Her head fell back, and after a moment, Rourke bent over and kissed her forehead. He closed her eyelids with the tips of his fingers, then rested her head back down on the ground. He found his Python beside her in the dirt, picked it up, and opened the cylinder. All six rounds had been fired. Searching through her purse, he found the two speedloaders he'd left with her and emptied one into the gun, tossing the empty cases into his pocket.

He looked up. Rubenstein had come up behind him. Standing, Rourke blew the sand from the big Colt revolver, closed the cylinder, and stuffed the gun in his waistband.

"I found Quentin-the Canadian. He's dead. I started checking some of the others. I think they're all dead."

"Will you help me here?" Rourke asked, looking down at the dead girl by his feet. "I want to haul all the bodies up by the plane, then torch the plane. We can't possibly bury them."

"The bikers, too?" Rubenstein asked.

"I wouldn't spit on them," Rourke answered.

The grisly task of getting the bodies to the makeshift funeral pyre took more than an hour. Before they set the plane ablaze, Rourke sifted through the passengers' belongings and the things the dead bikers had with them or had left behind. With Rubenstein's help, he placed everything that might be of use to them in a pile in the center of what had been the camp. He told Rubenstein to wait for a few moments, and left. When he returned, he had his flight bag and gun cases. "I stashed these," he said, "back on the other side of the plane."

"You always plan ahead, don't you John?"

"Yeah, Paul," Rourke whispered. "I try to."

Rubenstein was half in shock. He could not get over the mass slaughter committed by the bikers. More than forty people had been murdered for no reason, no sense.

Rourke changed into his own clothes from the flight bag, packing the clothes he'd taken in Albuquerque inside it. He wore a pair of well-worn blue denims, black combat boots, a faded light blue shirt, and a wide leather belt. He squinted toward the rising sun through his dark glasses. About his waist was a camouflage-patterned Ranger leather gunbelt, the Python nestled in a half-flap holster on his right hip. The double Alessi shoulder rig was across his back and shoulders like a vest, magazine pouches for the twin .45's on his trouser belt. The Sting 1A boot knife was inside the waistband of his trousers on the left side.

He took his two-inch Lawman Paul had found-the Canadian, Quentin, dead with the little revolver locked in his right fist-and placed it inside his flight bag. He walked over to the bikes left behind by the killers, selected a big Harley, and strapped the flight bag to the back of it. Then he slid his SSG sniper rifle into a padded case and secured it to the side of the bike.

All the time, Rubenstein kept talking. Finally, Rourke turned to the smaller man and said, "Can you ride one of these things, or do you want the car?"

"I'm goin' with you. You're goin' after the rest of the bikers, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Rourke said, pulling the leather jacket on against the predawn cold that still clung to the desert.

"I was thinking about what you said earlier. My parents-in St. Petersburg. Maybe they're alive, maybe they could use my help. And I wasn't much good back there against the bikers. Maybe I could learn to be better. I want to get them, too." Rourke looked down to the ground. He checked his spare Rolex in the winking sunlight on the horizon. "Let's call it seven-fifteen," he said.

He walked over to the pile of weapons and accessories by the burnt-out fire. "One of 'ems got my CAR-15," he said absently. He picked up a World War Two-vintage MP-40 submachine gun from the pile, sifted through the debris, and came out with four thirty-round magazines. "Call this a Schmeisser. In the vernacular," he said.