The End is Coming

Chapter Twenty-nine

His weapons were laid out, his gear ready. They would ride double on his Low Rider to the place where they had left the prototype F-111, using that to get them to Chicago—it was the fastest way. Sarah stood behind him—he could feel her hands on his shoulders. He bent over to kiss Annie— “I love you, honey—honest,” he whispered to her. She rolled over, not awakening, but a smile cross-ing her lips. They left Natalia’s room, Annie sleeping there, and moved on to Paul’s room—Michael. Rourke sat again on the edge of the bed. He looked at his son. He spoke to his wife. “If I die, Paul will care for you and the children. And pretty soon Michael will help him. Maybe he’s too much like me—”

“He is,” Sarah’s voice murmured in the dark-ness.

“I tried,” Rourke whispered, sighing loudly. “Honest to God, I tried. To be a father, a hus-band. If General Varakov is right—hell—” and he bent his head over his son, crying. Sarah held his head—and in the darkness, she whispered, “I’ll always love you—I hate your guts, but I’ll always love you. I’ll be with you if we all live or if we all die.”

He swallowed hard, hugging his wife to him—and he let himself cry because he might never come home again....

His sinuses ached as he strapped on the old hol-ster rig for the Python. The belt was heavier, a spare magazine pouch with two extra-length eight-shot magazines for his .45s, the magazines made by Detonics. On the belt as well was a black-sheathed, black-handled Gerber MkII fighting knife with double-edged stainless blade with saw-teeth near the double-quillon guard on each side. He had the little Metalifed Colt Lawman in a spe-cial holster made by Thad Rybka for him years be-fore The Night of The War—it carried the gun in the small of his back at a sharp angle. He picked up the Government Model .45—a Mk IV Series ‘70, not the newer series ‘80 gun that had come out before The Night of The War. It, like the other two Colts he carried, was Metalifed. Chamber empty, the magazine loaded with 185-grain JHPs, he rammed the Colt into his trouser band. The twin stainless Detonics .45s were already on him in the shoulder rig from Alessi, and the little Russell black Chrome Sting IA was in his belt.

The CAR-15 lay on the kitchen countertop. Be-side it an M-16, one he had taken the time to hand-pick from the stores of weapons brought from the plane. Between the two assault rifles was an olive-drab ammo box, eight hundred rounds of 5.56mm Ball.

Beside him, as Rourke lit a cigar, was Paul Rubenstein, the younger man leaning against the counter. Rourke glanced at his friend—tired, worn from loss of blood. Rourke had inspected the wound—there had been little progress, almost none—but it was healing, and with the reduced level of activity would heal completely, he felt.

“I still say—”

Rourke looked at Rubenstein again. “No. With that wound—well, you know. But even if you didn’t have the wound, I’d leave you here. Who the hell is gonna take care of Sarah and Michael and Annie for me? There’s no one else I’d trust if there were somebody else around.”

“So it’s you and Natalia against whatever the hell her uncle’s throwing you at?”

Rourke chewed down on his cigar. “Yeah—I guess that’s the way of it.”

“If you—”

“Don’t come back—I can’t tell you what to do. You’re the best friend I ever had—in some ways, I guess, maybe the only one. You do what you think is best and it’ll be the best—it sounds stupid to say it, but I have faith in you—I really do,” and Rourke looked at his friend and smiled. . . . It had taken Natalia long to change, he realized. She appeared from the bathroom wearing what John Rourke had come, subconsciously, to con-sider her battle gear—a tight-fitting black jump-suit, nearly knee-high medium-heeled boots, the double-flap holster rig on her belt with the L Frame Smiths bearing the American Eagles en-graved on the barrel flats. He could see the guns as she opened each holster in turn and checked the cylinders, then reholstered the revolvers and resecured the holster flaps.

As she walked across the Great Room, he saw that she too wore additional armament—the COP

Derringer was not to be seen, but the little four-barreled .357 Magnum would be in her purse—the massive black canvas bag she almost invariably carried. But on her belt was a Gerber Mk II, the sheath apparently specially made, black, efficient-looking, the knife’s handle material and the brass double-quillon guard betraying it as the Presenta-tion series variation—just as efficient as the more subdued-looking Gerber Rourke now wore, but prettier.

She wore a shoulder rig he had never seen be-fore—not something designed for concealment, but a field rig. Under her right armpit was a small black-handled knife, hanging upside down in a black leather sheath—he guessed a Gerber Guard-ian, the tiny boot knife similar in size to his Sting I A. Under her left armpit, balancing the rig, was what he recognized as a stainless steel Walther PPK/S, hanging upside down like the knife, pro-truding through the upside of the holster a stain-less steel-looking—it could have been some type of aluminum—silencer, perhaps six inches long and the approximate diameter of a silver dollar. She saw him looking at it— “I had the silencer specially built—aircraft aluminum but very strong. The baffles need changing after every five hundred rounds or so—there’s no slide lock, but I had the recoil spring altered so it functions perfectly with subsonic ammunition. It’s very quiet that way—almost like a whisper. But with the regular recoil spring, like I have in it now, it handles 95-grain Hollow Points and it sounds about like a belch. I tested it a lot, but never used it in the field. In case we need a relatively silent shot, this should do it.”

He saw Sarah looking at him—she stood beside Natalia.

He walked over to the two women, his right arm around Sarah, his left around Natalia. He drew both women close. There was no need to say what he felt.