Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

The farmhouse loomed ahead of her in a massive shadow, the yellow light brighter and clearly visible from a side window.

She stumbled once again, this time banging her elbows hard on the ground as she fought to keep her weight from crushing her four-year-old daughter. She got to her knees, leaned back on her heels, then one leg at a time, stood, then started forward, glancing behind her to the children, talking low and soft to the animals. The rain washed over her body and her body racked with chills.

The house was twenty yards ahead, she judged, and she quickened her pace. She saw the window clearly, a small porch and side door near it. She stopped at the base of the low steps, forced one leg, then the other, then again and again, and she was standing, swaying on the porch.

She kicked at the door and the door opened. A young man with a shotgun in his hands stood framed in the blinding yellow light from the kitchen beyond, a woman in a house dress standing behind him.

Sarah Rourke gasped, “Aunt Mary, I brought you Millie Jenkins.”

There was heat from the kitchen, and the warm dry air made her start to feel faint.

She heard a woman’s voice shout, “Get out of my way! Her baby!”

Sarah started to fall forward, felt a man’s rough hands catch at her and Annie swept from her arms as she sank to her knees.

Chapter 12

Rourke sat at the kitchen counter, staring into the empty great room, sipping at his own strong black coffee. He had arisen early, Rourke time of eleven a.m. He had cleaned the guns, including Rubenstein’s High Power and MP-40, then performed the necessary maintenance on the liberated Harley Low Rider, and checked his own machine.

He had showered and changed. Next he had gotten out the Lowe Alpine Systems Loco pack, the kind used by search and rescue teams—to Rourke’s thinking the perfect all-around pack with an integral frame. He had put off loading it, being hungry. He stared at the waterfall and the pool, wondering what Sarah and the children would say when they first saw the retreat—if they ever would see it. He scratched the last thought; he would find them and bring them back—bring them home. They would see it. He imagined the children playing in the shallow pool beneath the falls.

He poured another cup of coffee, working with pencil and paper to list what he would bring. He would leave soon to scout the area for Soviet and brigand activity and pick up the trail of Sarah and the children. He noted down items on the list: both of the Detonics pistols, the small Musette bag with spare magazines and ammo, the Bushnell 8 x 30 armored binoculars, the big, handmade Chris Miller Bowie knife. He stopped and looked up. Rubenstein entered the great room from the side bedroom where he’d been sleeping.

“Hello, Paul, you trying for an endurance record?” Rourke glanced at his Rolex. Rubenstein had retired fourteen hours earlier.

“The first time I figured somebody wasn’t going to shoot me in the middle of the night or something. Sorry.” “No need to be. Have some coffee.” Rourke answered. Rubenstein ascended the three stone steps into the kitchen. “There’s orange juice in the refrigerator. Just look around and fix yourself some breakfast.” “Orange juice?” Rubenstein asked, his eyes wide behind his glasses.

“Yeah—frozen from concentrate.” Rourke thought of something else to add to the list: one of the Harry Owens barrel inserts for the Detonics so he could fire .22 rimfires if he potted a rabbit or something.

“John?” Rubenstein began.

“I don’t know when I’m leaving—soon, though, but I won’t be out long this first trip, so you just take it easy.” “My parents—I want to go down to St. Petersburg, see if there still is a St. Petersburg, see if they’re alive.” “I know,” Rourke said, then smiled at the younger man standing across the counter from where Rourke sat. “I’ll miss you, Paul. I’ll always count you my best friend—” “Listen, if, ahh—” Rubenstein stammered.

“Take whatever you need to get there and stay alive. I’ve got plenty and I can get more.”

“No, I didn’t—I mean, if they’re dead, would you—”

“My home—” Rourke gestured to the cavern walls and ceiling—“is your home— mi casa es su casa, amigo. Yeah, I’d like it if .things work out that way. And for your sake I hope they don’t, but I’d like it if you came back. I could use your help finding Sarah and the children; the kids could use an uncle.” “John, I—”

“Don’t. You can’t leave for a while, remember, I’m a doctor? You need about a week of rest before those wounds will be healed enough for you to travel hard. I want to teach you a few things before you go anyway: couple of tricks that might help you stay alive. Give you a few things—a good knife, some maps, a good compass, show you how to use it—show you how to take care of your bike. You know some of that already anyway.” “John, do you think you’re going to find them—Sarah and the children, I mean?” Rubenstein asked, sipping a mug of coffee.

“Yeah, I’ve thought about it. And, yeah, I’ll find them, no matter what. See—” and Rourke stood up, poured himself another cup of coffee, then leaned against the counter, staring past Rubenstein toward the great room—“see, we never had much time to talk, you and I. I think Natalia always wondered about that, what makes me tick? I decided years ago, back in Latin America that time I had to stay alive on my own after the CIA team I was with got ambushed and I was wounded. The thing that makes one person stay alive no matter what and another person buy it—there’s some luck to it, sure. The toughest man or woman on earth can be at ground zero of a nuclear blast and he’s going to die. But under general conditions, what makes one person survive and another lose is—well, there’re a lot of names for it. Some people call it meanness, some call it tenaciousness—whatever. But it’s will—you will yourself not to die, not to give up. Nobody out there’s going to kill me,” Rourke said, gesturing toward the steel doors leading into the entrance hall and the outside world beyond. “Nobody out there’s going to kill me or stop me—unless I let them do it. Sure, somebody could be up in the rocks and blow the back of my head open with a sniper rifle, and you can’t control that—but in a situation, a conflict—” Rourke struggled for the right words—“it’s not that I’m any better or tougher or smarter. I just won’t quit. You know what I mean, Paul? It’s hard to explain, really.” “I know—I’ve seen that in you,” Rubenstein said. “Yeah, you want to teach me that?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to—and I don’t need to.

You just need to sharpen a few more of the skills that’ll let you stay alive. You’ve got will enough already. I don’t worry about you out there anymore than I worry about myself. You’re a good man. I haven’t said that to very many people,” Rourke concluded, then stared back at his list, sipping his coffee, aware of the sounds of Rubenstein making himself breakfast, aware of the sounds of the water from the falls, then the water crashing down into the pool.

He wrote something on the list—the one item that made his skin crawl because it represented something he couldn’t combat head-to-head: “Geiger counter.” He swallowed his coffee and almost burned his mouth.

Chapter 13

Varakov stared out from the balcony again, at the skeletons of the mastodons. Karamatsov said he had slipped when Varakov asked him earlier that morning about the bruises on the right side of his face. And Natalia, Karamatsov had said, was feeling ill and might not be in for several days. Varakov had dispatched Vladmir Karamatsov to the southeast, to aid Colonel Korcinski in setting up the new military district. There was a tough Resistance movement forming in the area, intelligence reports indicated.