Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

“Yeah, we know a secret way into the place, too, through a big storm drain. It’s still operational, but there hasn’t been no big storm lately so the drain should be pretty dry. I figure—” “That’s all?” Rourke asked Fulsom.

“Yeah, about it. Why?”

“Well ...” Rourke began slowly, then stopped, Darren Ball interrupting him.

“What he means is a commando type raid against a hardened military site like a supply depot isn’t somethin’ you whip up on the spur of the moment, Fulsom. Same thing I’ve been tryin’ to tell you for a long time. That’s why the last raid got you so many casualties.” “What last raid?” Rourke asked.

“These damned fools,” Ball began. “Aww—they decided to go and dynamite the guard posts in the center of town, blew up one part of the installation, killed maybe a half dozen Russian soldiers, and lost five of their own men.” “How many men you have?” Rourke asked Fulsom.

“Well, we got a—”

“You ever use women?”

“Well, we always figured the women wasn’t really good at—”

“Women do just as well in Resistance work as men—some of them are more savage fighters than a man could ever be,” Rourke told the assembled Committee of Resistance. “You’re cutting down your personnel pool by more than half that way. Women can get in places innocently where men can’t—the whole thing. What explosives are you using for this raid?” Rourke asked, changing the subject.

“Well, we got a little dynamite. Figure to steal our explosives on the spot and take some extras along.” Fulsom looked nervous for the first time.

Rourke shook his head, saying, “What if they’re fresh out of explosives, what if they don’t keep detonation devices anywhere nearby, what if—a whole bunch of what-ifs. This isn’t a raid, its mass suicide. Count me out,” Rourke said, unhooking his right thumb from the carry handle on the CAR-15 slung under his arm and wrapping his fist around the pistol grip. He turned to go back toward the tree line.

“Mr. Rourke?”

It was Fulsom’s voice, and Rourke turned around.

“What?”

“We need a raid like this. We need to show the Russians we can strike back and strike back hard. I got some dynamite. Maybe we can rig something. Maybe—” “Hell.” Rourke almost whispered, turning back toward the members of the Committee of Resistance. Like most committees generally, Rourke thought, it wasn’t doing too well in the logic department.

Chapter 28

“I’m goin’ with Pa to join up with the Resistance, and that’s the plain fact,” the red-haired boy said.

Sarah turned from watching the moon on the porch steps and looked at the boy, Thad, Mary’s son. Sixteen, she guessed, give or take a year. Sarah turned and stared back at the moon, hugging her knees up to her, swatting at a mosquito against her bare calf and pulling her dress down lower over her legs.

“Thad, don’t you think your mother needs a man around the house. Your father, your brothers— they’re all in the Resistance.” Inside, she could hear Michael and Annie running, playing, screaming with happiness.

“Sarah’s right, boy, we need a man ‘round here,” Mary Mulliner said softly.

Sarah Rourke watched the sky, trying to pick the constellations of stars on the clear night air.

“Them Russians is buildin’ a big fort or base near where Chattanooga used to be,” the boy began again, his voice sounding artificially deepened.

“Chattanooga’s still there, Thad,” Sarah commented. “But all the people are dead. I don’t think you’d want to see Chattanooga; there was death just everywhere.” The thought of the neutron-bombed city—she assumed that had been what had happened—made her shiver. No men, no women, no children. The dogs, the cats, the birds, the grass was all brown and yellow, the trees were just there—but all dead. She shivered again. “You wouldn’t want to see Chattanooga, Thad,” Sarah said again.

“That big base the Russians is got,” Thad insisted. “Gotta stop ‘em before they get so all set up and everythin’ they can’t get stopped, you know.” The boy wanted reassurance, Sarah thought. She laughed—almost out loud. Men so often—at least some men—insisted women were so alike. Men were sometimes alike, too, she thought now, and she almost envied it. If John, her husband, were still alive—she wanted him to be—whatever John was doing now, he was consumed with it, she was sure. He was searching for her, searching for the children, fighting Communist soldiers perhaps, brigands very likely. Men found “toys” for their minds even under the worst circumstances, just from their role of being men. There was always something to do, to go up against.

She leaned against the post beside the porch railing and stared out across the dark expanse of the fields. Thad and her husband, John—their thing to do now was go and fight. Mary and herself, too, if she found John (when, she reminded herself, or when he found her). She would wait, care for the children, keep the home, clean the wounds, and go quietly insane each time she thought of John going out and perhaps dying. She stared up at the peculiar haze around the moon, wishing John were there to tell her what it meant. Was the world ending—the heat, the cold, the torrential rains, the red sunsets?

“Mary,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Mary, I’m going to leave in a few days because if I don’t—” she stood up and walked into the darkness, wishing she had a sweater, cold suddenly.

“If I don’t,” she whispered to herself and the night, “I won’t have the strength to do anything, but stay here.”

Chapter 29

Col. Vassily Korcinski hung up the radio telephone. He walked from his desk to the small mirror inside the open closet door, smoothed his white hair with his hands, and studied his face. Classic, he thought, chiseled. He couldn’t help but smile. Other than his own image, he thought, he was pleased that Varakov trusted him so.

He walked back to his desk, lifted the red telephone to his day room and waited. It rang less than once. A voice answered with the formal identification of place, rank and last name, and the inevitable “Sir!” He cut the man off. “This is Colonel Korcinski. Alert the counter-terrorist force to move out within five minutes.” Korcinski hung up the telephone, walked back to the closeted mirror and took his cap, adjusting it at a slight angle over his left eye, smoothing back the white hair, smoothing his uniform jacket under the gunbelt, opening the flap holster, working the slide on the pistol and chambering the first round, then setting the Makarov’s safety, the hammer down. Reholstering the gun, glancing once more into the mirror, he closed the closet door and started across his office.

As he opened the door into the hall, the sirens began sounding. He strode purposefully—he was conscious of himself and had always been—down the hallway, the sounds of running feet in the hallway of the journalism building and now his staff headquarters reassuring to him.

Narcissism, some called it that. He called it pride and realization of his destiny. He turned the corner into the side corridor, the glassed wall on one side looking out into the central square where the counter-terrorist force was already forming. He walked along the hallway, staring into the glass, seeing his own image half-reflected and superimposed on the glass over the figures of running armed men, motorcycle units, and troop vehicles. He walked to the end of the hallway and through the glass doors, adjusting his hat to a bit more rakish angle in the reflection, then started down the steps, his boots gleaming in the reflected artificial lighting.