Ahern, Jerry - The Nightmare begins

"If the entrance doors are opened, they will be able to scramble some of the captured American fighter planes and pursue you—they'll shoot you down."

"I can't let you stay here," Rourke said. "What about what you've done?"

The girl looked at her husband, saying to Rourke, "I don't think Vladmir will admit to what I've done—he'll find a way to cover it up. Varakov doesn't want him dead, and Varakov would not kill me and leave Vladmir alive. Perhaps I'll just retire as an agent."

Karamatsov spoke, saying to Rourke, "I will not kill her."

Natalie cut in, saying, "No—he'll let me live. He'll remind me of it each time I look at him, with everything he doesn't say. Vladmir and I have been comrades together much longer than we have been husband and wife—I know his secrets, too."

"We've wound up in the middle of a soap opera, haven't we," Rourke said, smiling at the girl.

There was confusion in Karamatsov's eyes, and the girl laughed then, saying, "That was a class at the Chicago school you did not have to take Vladmir, darling. The female agents were briefed on the story lines of the dramatic programs shown on television here during the afternoons—so we could convince another American woman that we were just like they were." Then she turned to Rourke, saying, "Does your Sarah watch these soap operas, John—or did she?"

"No," Rourke said, smiling at the girl.

"I didn't think she would," Natalie laughed.

Rourke reached into his hip pocket and handed her husband's revolver, the Chief's Special he'd pocketed earlier. He wanted to say that he hoped he'd see her again, he wanted to kiss her good-bye, but he stuck out his right hand, saying, "Good-bye?"

The woman smiled, the corners of her mouth raised slightly, her lips parted, and she leaned toward him and kissed him on his lips, almost whispering, "Dasvidanya."

"Yeah," Rourke said, stepping into the plane. "Hit the button for the elevator then and dasvidanya." Rourke started forward to the cockpit, and as he strapped himself into the pilot's seat and put on the headphones he thought of the woman—dasvidanya was like the German auf wiedersehen, he recalled. '"Til we meet again.' "

The elevator was rising, the doors above them parting, and through the open cockpit wing window Rourke could smell the night air. Rourke glanced over his shoulder at the sedated Rubenstein, sleeping a few feet behind them.

"Mr. President," Rourke began. "I may have to pull up quick, so be ready to help me on the controls." Rourke reached over his head, checked the switches, and as the elevator stopped, hit the throttle, the plane starting forward into the darkness and across the runway. Rourke turned into the wind and throttled up, the runway fence coming up as they cut across the tarmac.

The president was shouting, "What are you doing?"

"I'm avoiding the trap they've probably got at the end of the runway—pull up now!"

And Rourke hauled back on the controls, the nose coming up, the plane bouncing against the runway surface, then lifting off, the fence clearing just below the landing gear.

Rourke left his running lights off, banking steeply, his right hand twirling the radio frequency dial. Chambers said, "Who are you calling on the radio, Mr.

Rourke?"

"I made a promise, Mr. President—I figure if you get on that frequency they'll call off the attack for you."

"Why should I?" the voice asked out of the darkness.

Quietly, Rourke said, "Mr. President—with all due respect, this plane flies two ways—away from the Russians back there and right back toward them— don't think I wouldn't!"

There was silence, then Rourke found the frequency, hearing the ground chatter in English. "You're on, sir," Rourke whispered in the darkness.

He let out his breath when he heard the president begin to speak into the headset microphone.

Chapter Forty-Four

Rourke knelt on the ground, listening, the CAR-15 in his hands, the leather jacket zipped high against the night cold. He could hear dogs howling in the night, and throughout the late afternoon and early evening before dusk he had seen signs of trucks and motorcycles and men on foot in the woods and the dirt roads cutting through the forested areas. "Brigands here, too?" he wondered. He knew the ground he was covering—he had owned it before the night of the war and supposed he still did if anyone owned anything anymore.

He listened to the night for a moment.

After the flight out of the KGB stronghold, Chambers, by radio, had cancelled the night attack, but the attack had merely been postponed. There were several hundred airmen held prisoner at the base, the ground commander, an army National Guard captain named Reed had explained. Rourke wondered if by now, a week later, the attack had taken place. It was hard getting used to a world without news, without information. He had landed the aircraft in east Texas, where Rubenstein had been given additional medical aid and pronounced fit enough for limited travel less than twenty-four hours ago—Rourke checked the luminous face of the Rolex on his wrist. It was past eight o'clock, if eight o'clock indeed existed, he reminded himself.

Chambers, the air force colonel, Darlington, and some of the others had asked him to stay and fight with them, or work as their spy. They'd told Rourke that he would now be a hunted man, followed by the KGB, his name and face known. He'd told them he knew that already and that he had business of his own. And he was here now, at the farm. In the distance beyond the stand of trees, he would see the house, he knew, but he sat on his haunches by a dogwood tree—it hadn't bloomed for a long time, or at least when he had been there to see it. But he remembered it.

Intelligence reports had come in that Karamatsov had left the KGB base, and there had been a dark-haired, beautiful woman with him. Another report had indicated that Karamatsov had possibly been spotted by one of the growing network of U.S. operatives outside of the area immediately surrounding Texas and western Louisiana. There weren't enough reports yet to provide a continuous flow of accurate or even reasonably accurate information, but there were enough to provide interesting bits and pieces of information—and perhaps it was valid.

Rourke had left Rubenstein with one of the bikes and the bulk of the supplies about fifty miles southeast of the retreat. To have traveled on with the rough going of the last miles would have lost Rourke another twelve hours, perhaps, and the younger man had insisted he'd be all right until Rourke returned. Rourke had left him the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, in a secure position in a high rock outcropping from which to shoot if necessary. Then Rourke had started toward the farm.

He had argued with himself silently all the long walk after he'd left his Harley hidden two miles or so back. He had tried to imagine a scenario for all the possibilities of what might have happened at the farm. In each case, he had determined that Sarah, Michael and Ann would no longer be there. But perhaps there would be a clue to where they had gone. There had been one scenario that he had rejected since the night of the war—that he would find their bodies there.

He was armed to find them, if they lived. The retreat contained more than enough supplies for several years, enough ammunition for his needs, and there was hydroelectric power, which he had engineered himself, using the natural underground stream as the source. The one thing he had lacked was gasoline and now he had that—by way of repayment, President Chambers had shown him a map, which afterwards Rourke had memorized and burned but was still able to reproduce from memory. It showed strategic reserves of gasoline cached throughout the southeast. For Rourke's comparatively meager needs, the supply was infinite.