Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

Chapter 16

“Comrade General!”

Varakov opened his eyes. He heard gunfire, the hum of the engine was louder than it should have been. He looked out the window, startled. The area he recognized from his initial tour of the city was the portion of the city that had been all but destroyed in racial riots many years back in the 1960s. And now there was gunfire all around him.

“What is it?” he asked, but he already knew: the freedom fighters, the people who had survived by being far enough away from the neutron bombs, the people who lived in basements and hidden bomb shelters, who carried guns, killed Russian soldiers, and threw crude gasoline bombs at Soviet vehicles; they called them—the nerve—Molotov cocktails.

No sooner had the thought left his mind than it returned, the shattering of a glass bottle in the street beside them and the roar of an explosion, a fireball, the car swerving to the side.

“Get out of here now, Leon, and you get two weeks leave in Moscow and a letter to a brothel a woman I know keeps.” He smiled. Leon was the best driver to be had and would get him out of there anyway—if it could be done. Varakov drew the pistol from his greatcoat pocket where he’d left it, pushed the button for his window to roll down, then fired into the street. He saw figures running, their shadows made larger than life by the flickering of the flames, a Soviet truck overturned and burning.

He almost lost the gun outside the window as Leon, his driver, wheeled the Lincoln around a corner and onto a highway feeder ramp. “We are going in the wrong direction, Comrade General Varakov.” “It does not matter, Leon,” he rasped across the seat back separating them.

“Get down!” the driver shouted and Varakov knew better than not to obey. Rocks and bricks pelted at them from a walking bridge over the expressway, the windshield shattering and the car careening toward a guard rail. Varakov dropped to the floor, felt the bounce and lurch, the jerkiness of the car’s movements, then the shudder as the car stopped.

With the pistol in his hands, he rose from his knees and pried open the door on the driver’s side. He could hear sirens in the distance. They were Russian, he knew. He saw a figure fleeing across the walking bridge, raised his pistol and lowered it without firing. Then Varakov looked down to Leon. The boy’s face was halfway through the windshield and one of the eyes was bulged out. It seemed that the head had almost exploded.

He closed his eyes and asked himself out loud, “If all those fools so believe in you, God—why this?” He realized as he walked from the car toward the advancing military police vehicles the mere fact the clouds had not parted and no voice had rumbled like thunder and answered him proved nothing—at least he secretly hoped that.

Chapter 17

Rourke revved the jet-black Harley-Davidson Low Rider and glided the machine onto the highway. Traveling on the road was dangerous, he knew, because the Russians might be patrolling it. The wind whipped at his face—cold wind because, again, the temperature had begun to change. He shivered slightly inside the waist-length leather jacket. He stopped the bike, easing over to the shoulder, years of driving habit still forcing him to automatically glance over his shoulder along the deserted road, to work his signal flasher.

He had seen the signs of a large vehicular force on some of the side roads since he had left the retreat at dawn that morning—brigands, he suspected. He lit a cigar, the blue yellow flame of his battered Zippo flickering in the wind.

Rourke had told Paul Rubenstein he would be back within four days or less, but experience had taught Rourke to prepare for three times that period. The Lowe Alpine Loco pack was strapped to the back of the Harley with food, medical supplies, clothing—all the necessities. Two straps crossed his chest: on his left side hung the musette bag with some of his spare ammo and a few packages of dehydrated fruit that he’d made himself with the Equi-Flow dehydrator he kept at the retreat. On the right hung the binoculars—the armored Bushnells. Beneath these in a Ranger leather camouflage holster similar to the one he used for the Python was his Colt Government MK IV series ‘70 .45, Metalifed with the Colt Medallion Pachmayr grips and the Detonics competition recoil system installed. The twin Detonics stainless pistols hung in the double Alessi rig under his arms.

The gunbelt around his waist carried spare Colt magazines for the government and these also doubled with the Detonics pistols. From the left side of the belt hung a bayonet for the M-16. It fit the CAR-15 slung across Rourke’s back, muzzle down, muzzle cap off, thirty-round magazine inserted.

He squinted against the sun despite the aviator sunglasses he wore. There was an expressway exit ramp ahead and he detected smoke, he thought, rising from the road near it. He mounted the Harley again and swung onto the road, leaning back and letting the machine out.

It took Rourke less than three minutes at eighty-five to reach the ramp and begin to slow for it, then turn up on the cross road and cut to the far side of the Interstate Highway toward the smoke—it was a gasoline station, burning, several abandoned cars in the lot—a disgruntled customer, Rourke thought, smiling. He doubted there had been any gasoline in the underground tanks for weeks or any electrical power to pump it. He stopped the bike, dismounting, sliding the Colt CAR-15 on its sling from his back to under his right arm, his left hand sweeping back the bolt and letting it fly forward, chambering a round. His right fist locked on the pistol grip, his trigger finger along the edge of the guard, the safety off.

He saw something in a smashed and battered four-door sedan near the flames of the burning gas station building. He walked slowly toward it, the cigar clamped in his teeth in the left corner of his mouth. He stopped. It was a partially decomposed, partially eaten human skeleton. He moved closer to it. The top of the skull was split wide in the back—a blow, he guessed, from a large, not-so-blunt instrument, maybe a jack handle. He wondered who the man had been, then wheeled, hearing a low growl.

He edged closer to the car. Six dogs, two of them slavering and foaming, all of them huge German Shepherd-size or larger, tongues hanging out, saliva dripping from their mouths. He’d encountered feral dogs before—and rabid dogs. These were. In a few days, the ones foaming at the mouth would be dead, the others would follow shortly. If he were even scratched by one of them, he would have perhaps a few days at most to find rabies vaccine or die like them—mad.

His jaw set, he licked his lower lip. He distrusted the light, fast, penetrating .223 solids on dogs. Even if he shot one of the dogs through, it could still come down on him, bite him, scratch him, knock him down so the other dogs could swarm over him.

He needed the .45—six dogs, only six rounds in each of the Detonics pistols, but there were seven in the Colt. He always fed the chambered round from the magazine, leaving the magazine one round down so the round would be edged forward for more reliable feeding.

Seven 185-grain JHPs in the Colt, six dogs. He gave a mental shrug as one of the dogs edged toward him. He loosed his right hand grip on the CAR-15 and snatched for the Colt on his hip, his thumb breaking the snap on the flap, the gun snaking up, his thumb wiping down the safety catch of the Colt, his first finger starting the squeeze as the muzzle lined up on the nearest of the wild dogs, its mouth spraying foam as it leaped toward him. Rourke fired. His bullet caught the animal in the throat and he jumped to the left, firing again at a second dog—he couldn’t tell what kind other than big. It was turning, starting to jump. His second round nailed the animal in the chest and it dropped.