Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

Rourke turned, faced the young man, glanced from side to side on the street, and smashed his right knee up, higher than for a groin shot, just smacking into the stomach in the soft part of the gut, and as the young man—Cliff, Rourke remembered the girl calling him—doubled over, Rourke flicked his right hand down across the left side of the boy’s neck, the knife edge chopping above the musculature and behind the ear. The young man collapsed. Rourke caught him under the armpits and got the boy—unconscious—to his feet.

“Here, you and you,” Rourke snapped swaying the unconscious Cliff toward two of the other young men in the crowd. They had been edging toward Rourke, but catching Cliff had forced them to move back.

Rourke drew his lips back over his teeth, inhaling hard on his cigar, then exhaling the gray smoke, watching it catch the wind as he scanned the street on both sides for evidence that he had been watched. It seemed clear. He looked at the girl. “Patty, now tell me what you mean—you think I’m spying for the Russians. What?” “I—I didn’t say that,” the girl stammered.

Rourke bent toward her, his face inches from hers, her eyes looking up into his. He removed the glasses, saying, “I’m not going to tell you why I want to see Darren Ball. That would only maybe get you in trouble. He and I are old friends and if you dislike the Russians as much as you seem to fear them, then you should tell me—now. Do you know where he is?” “I’m afraid,” she said, looking nervously from side to side. “You don’t have to do anything wrong. The Russians pay for informers and people have started informing on anyone whether he’s done something or not, and sometimes they let you go after it—sometimes they kill you. My sister—they let her go. She hadn’t done anything, but she hasn’t opened her mouth to say a single word since—” She drew in her breath hard and it made a sort of scream, Rourke thought. He glanced behind him: six Russians, armed, were rounding the corner.

Rourke looked at her. “Now—quick—where?”

“A tent down by the fire station—all I—”

“You—the cowboy hat!” The voice was hard, young, filled with authority. Over the years Rourke had come not only to distrust authority but to resent it.

Rourke turned around. Reed and Bradley had drifted off, and he could see them across the street. “Yeah?” “You’re supposed to say—” the girl started behind him.

“That is an improper form of address,” the young Russian lieutenant snapped.

“Well, what am I supposed to call you?”

Rourke knew the drill, he thought, and under normal circumstances, he realized, he would have played the game to get away quietly and do his business, but the fear in the girl’s eyes made him think differently. The Russian and his five men edged toward Rourke. Rourke put his sunglasses back on, rolled the cigar in his mouth to the left corner, the half-burnt cigar clamped in his teeth there.

“I asked you a question. What am I supposed to call you? How about wimp? That seems to fit you real good, boy.” “What is this wimp?” the young Russian officer asked.

Rourke heard laughter from behind him. Rourke looked down at the toes of his cowboy boots—they went with the hat—and then up into the young Soviet officer’s eyes. “Gee, that’s hard to explain, boy, sort of like a pussy-whip. Ever hear of that?” “Pussy what?”

“Here,” Rourke began. “I’ll show you.” And Rourke started to reach into his breast pocket as if for the stub of pencil sticking out there, then swung his right arm back in a broad arc, the knife edge of his hand smashing hard against the young Russian’s windpipe, smashing it, killing the boy. Rourke’s left hand flashed down to the brown leather flap holster on the officer’s belt, and grabbed at the pistol there as he shoved the already dead Russian back against his five men, Rourke’s left hand on the automatic, his right hand snapping back the slide—a Makarov PM 9mm—just in case there hadn’t been a chambered round, his left first finger pulling back on the trigger. The gun fired point blank in the face of a Russian sergeant standing immediately behind the dead officer.

Rourke started to run, into the street, across it. The other four Russians, shouting angrily, started into the street behind him. He caught Reed’s eye, shook his head. “No!” He kept running, then turned, snapped off two shots, the Soviet pistol in his right hand now. One more of the Russians went down.

He could see Bradley, the black American intelligence sergeant, starting into the street, bent down beside the dead Russian, then his hands came up, an AK-47 at his hip, the gun spitting fire. Rourke ducked behind a painted-over mailbox, fired two more rounds. A Soviet soldier fell less than six feet from him. Rourke lunged toward the dead man into the street, away from the mailbox, rolled as the pavement around him chewed up in fragments of tar and concrete, his hands on the AK-47 the Russian soldier had dropped, the pistol clattering to the pavement, his fingers searching out the safety on the Kalashnikov as he rolled. Suddenly there were more than a dozen Soviet soldiers in the street, guns firing everywhere around him. He stopped in mid-roll, got to one knee, fired, his first three-round burst catching the last of the original six Russians.

On his feet, Rourke ran toward the far sidewalk, Bradley beside him, his AK-47 firing. Rourke grabbed at the man, swinging him around roughly by his shoulder, shouting, “Hothead!” Then he ran down the sidewalk, better than a dozen Russian soldiers after them, the crowd of unemployed, listless citizens parting like waves before them—men and women with the life drained from their eyes ducking into abandoned storefronts to escape the Soviet gunfire and the two men, Rourke thought, the two madmen fighting the Russians.

Rourke glanced behind him, saw the pansy-eyed girl fleeing unmolested. Rourke had killed the men who could have caused her trouble. Then he saw Reed running after her. Rourke, firing a burst from the AK-47, ducked into a gangway between two buildings, Bradley beside him.

At the end of the gangway there was a concrete fence blocking his way. Rourke stopped, glanced behind him once, then at the nearest wall. He thought bitterly that if it had been a movie scenario there would have been a fire escape, but it wasn’t a movie. Instead there were staggered rows of wooden-framed windows in the concrete, the sills large enough, Rourke hoped. He reached up, the AK-47 slung across his back diagonally, his right foot purchased against the sill of the lowest window, then pushed himself up, bracing his foot against the center of the window where it opened, pushing himself, clawing the concrete to grasp the lowest portion of the next higher sill, his legs swinging free a moment, his hands tearing away from the rough and splintering wood under the weight of his body, then his right leg swinging up for a purchase, finding it, Rourke pulled himself upward, snatching at the center of the window frame.

Rourke glanced below him—gunfire. Bradley was spraying the far end of the gangway, the dozen or so Soviet soldiers temporarily stopped there. Rourke started up again, hearing the gunfire below him stop. He glanced down; Bradley was ripping the banana-shaped magazine from the AK-47, throwing it to the gangway surface. Rourke started to reach back to his own gun, to strip the magazine from it, then thought better of it.

Looking up, Rourke could see the roof line. He pushed himself up, both feet angled against the windowsill, his hands flat against the building sides, then he reached up, pushing up from the center of the window, his right hand grasping for the roofline edge, his mouth open, shouting, “Bradley! Come on, man—after me!” His fingertips could barely touch the roof line. Rourke looked down. The Russian troops were starting into the gangway, firing, Bradley pulling back.