Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

Rourke stopped, taking one of the small cigars from his shirt pocket, lighting it in the blue-yellow flame of the battered Zippo lighter. He dropped the lighter in the pocket of his Levi’s, his combat boots clicking with hollow sounds on the pavement.

He stripped the sunglasses from his face and pocketed them, the glare of the fog making him change his mind and put them back on. He stopped in the middle of the street, then walked to the curb and onto the sidewalk.

He stopped again, two thin streams of gray smoke issuing from his nostrils as he exhaled. Karamatsov had finally seen him.

Chapter 38

Paul Rubenstein squatted on his haunches on the roof line of what had once been a restaurant, the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG in his hands, the 3 x 9 scope set to six power for the distance, a round chambered in the synthetic stocked Parkerized bolt action.

Rourke had anticipated that Varakov would perhaps have Karamatsov dogged by a sniper, to kill Rourke after he killed Karamatsov. Paul smiled, thinking that for once John Rourke had been wrong. He stopped smiling as he saw Rourke stop in the street, the distance separating Rourke from Karamatsov less than twenty-five yards. It was a gunfight—it was insanity, Rubenstein thought. He wished he could hear the words. He watched as both men looked from side to side to make sure, Rubenstein guessed, that no innocent bystanders were in the line of fire. He wished also that Rourke would have let him do it, just snap the trigger and let Karamatsov fall. He shifted the scope slightly and framed the crosshairs on Karamatsov’s head; it would be so easy.

His hands sweated—it wouldn’t be easy at all, he thought. And that wasn’t Rourke’s way of things. It always had to be fair. “Damn,” the young, slightly balding man muttered, his glasses steaming over his own perspiration. The perspiration was from fear that perhaps Rourke wasn’t invincible as he had always seemed to be ever since they had met after the plane crash in New Mexico on the night of the war.

“Damn,” he whispered to himself, quickly scanning again for snipers, then focusing on Rourke, then Karamatsov, then cutting the power so he could see both men as they faced each other.

Chapter 39

Rourke almost whispered, “Right here okay?”

“For what, Rourke, are you going to tell me how wonderful my wife was in bed?”

“We never saw a bed. I told you before, nothing happened.”

“Then why here, why now. Why?”

“A long story,” Rourke observed. “Go for your gun whenever you want—if you like, I’ll wait while you ditch your coat.” “All right,” Karamatsov snapped, stripping the coat from his shoulders, throwing it down on the sidewalk, pulling the baseball cap low over his eyes. “One gun, two. I have never been in a Western gunfight before.” “I don’t think you will be again. It’s not technique that counts, not so much. It’s not just speed. It’s accuracy. That’s why I figured twenty-five yards—makes it more even for you against me. I might be faster, but you’re probably just as accurate.” “I’m so touched, Rourke. I can see why Natalia thinks so highly of you. And you can have her—the slut. The moment my back was turned, after all my years of fidelity to her—even now I am still faithful to her. And she, you—you plot to murder me.” “If it matters,” Rourke said softly, his eyes riveted to Karamatsov’s eyes. “She doesn’t know a thing about this. I even promised her once I wouldn’t kill you. If I ever meet her again, she’ll probably hate me for killing you.” “You mean, if you kill me,” Karamatsov snapped, his voice sounding higher-pitched, the words clipped and nasal.

“Have it your way—if. Then—whenever you’re ready—just go for it. I’ll watch your eyes, and I’ll know when to make my move.” “Idiot! American fool!”

“I’ll admit two grown men standing in the street and shooting at each other isn’t too smart. It was just the fairest thing I could come up with on the spur of the moment,” Rourke said, rolling the cigar in the left corner of his mouth, clenching his teeth.

“Doesn’t someone drop a handkerchief?”

“That’s only in movies,” Rourke answered.

Karamatsov edged, sidestepping slowly to his left, off the curb and into the street.

Rourke edged left as well, his eyes watching Karamatsov’s eyes, the fog starting to lift and swirl as the wind picked up, sunlight breaking through. Rourke squinted, despite the glasses, against the glare of the sun on the gray fog.

It was misleading, he thought, to say you watched the eyes. Karamatsov had probably assumed as much. At twenty-five yards or so, the eyes themselves would be hard or impossible to see clearly. You watched instead the set of the eyes, he thought, the almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles around them, the little squint that—Rourke saw the eyes set.

Karamatsov’s right hand flashed up toward the Model 59 in the shoulder rig, the thumbsnap breaking with an almost audible click, the gun’s muzzle straightening out as Karamatsov took a half-step right and crouched, his left hand moving to help grasp the gun, the hat caught up by a gust of wind and sailing from his head.

Rourke’s right hand moved first, then his left, the right hand bringing the first Detonics on line, the safety swept off under his thumb as the gun had cleared the leather, the gun in the left hand moving on line as Rourke triggered the first shot.

Rourke saw the flash against the fog of Karamatsov’s pistol, the stainless Detonics bucking through recoil in Rourke’s right hand, then the left gun firing, then the right and the left simultaneously.

Karamatsov flew up off the ground almost a foot, Rourke judged, the gun in Karamatsov’s hands firing up into the air—a second round. The Russian’s body twitched in midair, then twitched and lurched twice more as it fell, the Russian’s gun firing again into the street. A window smashed on the other side. His body rolled over face down, the right arm and left leg twitching, shivering, then stopping. There was no more movement.

Rourke thumbed up the safety on the pistol in his right hand and jabbed it into his belt, shifted the gun in his left hand to his right, thumbed up the safety and held the gun limp at his side against his thigh, walking forward, slowly, then stopping and rolling over the Russian’s body with his combat-booted foot, his right thumb poised over the safety of his pistol.

There were four dark-red patches on Karamatsov’s trunk.

Rourke bent over and, with the thumb of his left hand, closed the eyelids.

“Done,” he whispered.

Chapter 40

The chill wind lashed at John Rourke’s face and hair as he bent low over the Harley-Davidson. The engine throbbed between his thighs, the sound of it combined with the wind roaring in his ears. He glanced to his right, Rubenstein beside and slightly behind him.

The escape from town had been surprisingly easy. Rourke decided Varakov was indeed a man of his word, but there was no way Rourke could imagine Korcinski keeping to his portion of the bargain and releasing the rest of the men from the Resistance. He could simply leave it out of his report to Varakov that they had been executed, but he would have waited for something to happen, some reason for Rourke’s release and once news of the death of Karamatsov reached him, Korcinski would know—it would all be clear. They would all be dead.

Rourke turned and glanced toward Rubenstein, trying to hear what the younger man was shouting over the slipstream and vibration of the engines. ‘ ‘Where—are—we—going?” Rourke smiled, his lips curled back against the pressure of the wind, the speedometer on the bike over seventy. “To a reunion,” he shouted, then seeing the puzzled look on Paul Rubenstein’s face, he repeated, only shouting louder, more slowly, ‘ ‘To—a—re—union!” Rourke turned and bent over the bike again. The fog was all but lifted and it was nearly nine A.M. as he glanced at the black face of the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner on his left wrist—executions, he thought, were usually an early morning affair. “Hurry,” he shouted to his side toward Rubenstein, then gave the bike more throttle.