Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

Rourke slowed the Harley dramatically, making his turn wide onto the gravel road, taking him off the main highway and into the woods and down toward the clearing far beyond where he determined the hostage Resistance fighters were still being kept. He had judged Korcinski as being competent yet vain. He would never expect Rourke to come back and try to rescue his “comrades.” Rourke counted heavily on that, for even with Paul Rubenstein at his side the odds were heavily stacked against him.

Rourke slowed his jet-black Harley even more, curving into a gentle arc and stopping. Rubenstein passed him, then cut back, and stopped beside him, facing him.

“Where, John?”

“Up there—maybe two miles through the woods—too many Russians on the highways,” Rourke rasped back, winded.

“We got a chance?”

Rourke smiled. “If we didn’t have a chance we wouldn’t be here.”

Rourke started the Harley again, slower this time because of the roughness of the dirt road he followed.

Rourke reviewed the details of his plan, the only way he thought he had a chance. If nothing were transpiring as he reached the clearing he would wait, wait for the Resistance fighters to be led from wherever they were being held to a spot where they would be shot. He remembered the Soviet massacre of the Polish officer corps during World War II—the Katyn Forest Massacre. They had used German weapons and tried to blame the Germans for the mass murder. Some clever investigator had discovered the real truth, examining the rope with which the victims had been bound—they were Russian made. Perhaps Korcinski would try to arrange things so that it appeared the Resistance people had fought among themselves and use the captured weapons from the fighters to execute them.

Rourke drove his bike as quickly as he dared through the woods, glancing every few minutes at the Rolex, watching the seconds tick away, wondering if the hostages were still alive.

After several more minutes, Rourke slowed his bike, signaling with one hand for Rubenstein—behind him—to do the same. Stopping, Rourke glanced back across his right shoulder. “Over there, maybe five hundred yards. Come on.” Rourke dismounted, hauling his bike into the trees, taking the bayonet from his belt, and hacking away at the brush to camouflage it. Rubenstein did the same a few yards from him.

“You want the SSG?” Rubenstein asked. Rourke shook his head no, unslinging the CAR-15 from his back and working the ears on the bolt, chambering a round, then slipping the safety on. The rifle, stock collapsed, slung under his right shoulder, his fist wrapped around the pistol grip, he started forward, Rubenstein moving behind him as Rourke glanced back.

The air was cold, damp, and foul-smelling from the patches of fog still clinging in the shadows of the trees low along the ground. Rourke walked slightly stooped over, threading his way under low branches around bushes laden with two-inch-long thorns, bright-green-leaved brush swatting at his hands and thighs as he pushed his way past.

Judging he’d gone half the distance, he signaled a stop with his left hand, held a finger to his lips for silence and drooping into a low crouch, moved ahead. After what Rourke judged as another fifty yards, he stopped again, hearing the faint sound of voices. He moved laterally, trying to line up the sound of the voices with the approximate position of the clearing, stopped, hearing the voices more clearly, but still unable to tell the words, then started forward again.

He moved what he judged as slightly more than a hundred yards, stopped, and listened. There were orders being shouted. He thought he faintly recognized Korcinski’s voice. Dropping to the ground, Rourke signaled Rubenstein to do the same. Both men moved ahead on their knees and elbows, crawling over the rough ground, cautious to avoid snapping a dried twig or some other casual noise that might betray them.

Again Rourke signaled a stop, seeing the outline of the upper half of a uniformed man above a low-rising natural hedgerow. Rourke motioned Rubenstein to stay back, handing him off the CAR-15 and palming out the Sting IA from inside his trousers, then on knees and elbows he inched forward.

Again Rourke stopped, the sentry clearly in view, an AK-47 at high port as the man stared over the hedgerow, Rourke beneath his line of sight. There was no chance of getting around behind the man, Rourke decided, pushing himself up slightly and scanning the woods as best he could for signs of other sentries. He picked one man on the far side of the clearing, opposite this man and turned back to the clearing, so far staying away from Rourke’s own position. Then Rourke spotted a third man, far to his left, standing beside the collection of Soviet vehicles. Korcinski’s staff car was there, Rourke doubted the man had spent the night in the open field in the woods. Perhaps he had returned to preside over the execution. There were more orders barked from the clearing, and now Rourke recognized Korcinski’s voice, in Russian, the colonel ordering the hostages be brought from the trucks where they were being held. Rourke spotted the fourth sentry far to his right by two large tents, these apparently set up to house the men who had guarded the hostages over night.

There was activity in the clearing, men grumbling in Russian as soldiers grumble in any tongue, the sounds of rifle actions being checked. The execution, Rourke realized, was imminent. He looked back to the sentry almost immediately ahead of him, still staring out blankly over the hedgerow.

Rourke edged forward, the Sting clamped in his teeth. It was risky, what he planned, but it was all he could do.

He was less than five feet from the sentry now, slightly to the soldier’s right.

Rourke got his knees up under him in a crouch, then scanning from right to left to see if he were being watched, he pushed himself to his feet, reaching out with his left hand, the arm extended fully, snatching his fist toward the right side of the Russian soldier’s face, his right arm lunging forward like a fencer, the black chrome Sting clenched in his right fist, his thumb braced against the grooved steel handle portion of the knife, the spear point tip of the blade punching in hard in the hollow behind the chin to cut the vocal chords and stifle any cry. The Russian’s eyes were wide with pain and horror as Rourke withdrew the knife, then raked it left to right across the man’s already bleeding throat, catching the soldier as he fell forward toward him, already dead, the look of puzzlement still in the eyes.

Rourke eased the body to the ground, wiping the blood from his hands on the soldier’s uniform shirt.

Rourke dragged the body under a bush, then stripped away the ammo from the man’s belt, and snatched up the AK-47, looking behind him, signaling Rubenstein to come ahead.

Rourke inched into the hedgerow, a full view now of the clearing showed perhaps a dozen Russian soldiers being formed up into a long single rank. The corners of Rourke’s mouth turned down as he squinted at the weapons the men held—the motley collection used by the Resistance people and Reed and his men.

Rourke looked to his left and saw Reed, the corporal, the other two men, Fulsom, and Darren Ball, and the twenty or so others who had survived the previous night’s fiasco being marched from the trucks parked at the far end of the clearing toward the center of the clearing. A tall stand of pines made a salient into the clearing.

The execution, Rourke realized.

Suddenly, Rubenstein was beside him. He started to speak and Rourke held up a finger to his lips, signaling silence and nodding to Paul that he too saw the preparations for the mass murder.

Rourke took back his CAR-15, passed over the spare magazines for the AK-47, then the gun itself to Rubenstein, pointing out to him the safety selector. Busily, Rubenstein stuffed the spare magazines into the belt cinched around his waist, nodding.