The End is Coming

Chapter Forty-eight

They had left the metal ammo box behind, the remaining cardboard boxes of twenty 5.56mm Ball divided between Rourke’s pack and Natalia’s—equally.

They moved at a fast commando walk, through the middle of the park. A bright moon, Rourke could see the trees—dead and leafless. The grass beneath their feet, he knew, was dead too.

The neutron bombing.

They walked on.

“Any idea how we’ll get to your uncle—once we get to the museum?”

“The museum guards are army—or at least they were—and they are loyal to my uncle and to me—my uncle would assume, I think, that we can get inside—”

“I hope you’re right,” Rourke told her softly, walking.

Dead trees flanked them now as briefly they stepped into a paved walkway—the most direct route across the park, if he remembered it correctly. On business in Chicago, he had frequently stayed in Michigan Avenue hotels and walked the park to unwind, to relax. He tried making the memories surface, to guide him.

The noise of a whistle stopped him.

“The Brigands,” Natalia whispered.

“No guns unless we have to,” Rourke cautioned. They were too close to the hub of Soviet activity and gunfire might bring the whole KGB down on them.

Rourke’s right hand went to the big Gerber knife, his left snatching out the black chrome AG Russell Sting IA.

He heard the clicking sound of Natalia opening and closing the Bali-Song—it was advertising— “Don’t tread on me,”—and also on her nerves, he thought.

A man shape stepped out of the dead trees into the gray gloom.

“Nice night for a walk in the old park, ain’t it?”

Rourke answered him—the voice more New York-sounding than mid-western, Rourke thought.

“Yeah—nice and romantic—listening to the whistle of the punks in the trees, the moon-light—whole nine yards.”

“You Russians?”

Natalia answered him, “I am Russian—”

“Hey—sexy voice, lady—real sexy—what you look like without your clothes?”

“Yeah—me—I wanna see—right now—” An-other figure stepped from the trees. Then another and another and another, finally perhaps eighteen of the urban Brigands flanking them on both sides, as the trees flanked them.

“You forced this, didn’t you,” Natalia whis-pered.

“Better than havin’ them stalk us in the park,” Rourke smiled.

“If I fire a gun,” Natalia shouted, “the entire Russian military will be down on you—I am Ma-jor Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna—the KGB!”

“No shit, woman,” one of the figures laughed. “KGB women fuck as good as other women, huh?”

Rourke looked at the figure belonging to the voice. “You open your goddamn mouth one more time, I’ll kill you—period.”

The figure stepped back a little, silently.

Rourke turned his attention to the figure at the center of the walkway, saying, “We’re going past you or over you—your choice, asshole.”

“Man—you can’t come here into my goddamn park and talk shit to me, man!”

“I just did—asshole.”

“You gonna die, sucker!”

Rourke nodded his head, “You bet,” and he rasped to Natalia, “cover me, but don’t interfere unless you have to—watch yourself.”

The two knives in his hands, Rourke started for-ward—Natalia called softly behind him, “Let me do it—”

She was better with a knife than he was—he knew that. He ignored what she said. The little Sting IA was palmed in his left hand, invisible in the darkness he hoped—he moved the Gerber—to draw attention to it, make it the focal point.

Rourke stopped, two yards or so from the man in the center of the walkway.

“Past you or over you?” Rourke asked. “Ques-tion still stands.” The man wore a gun—some kind of revolver in a shoulder holster over his sweater.

“I oughta shoot you, man,” the man challenged.

Rourke shrugged his shoulders. “You’re better off with a knife—I’m very good with a knife, so maybe you have a little bit of a chance. With guns, you’d be outclassed. Stick to the knife.”

And now the man shouted to his friends, “This sucker thinks he’s so good—shit—” he drawled.

“What’s your strategy—you gonna bore me to death talkin’ or start fighting?”

The man lunged, a switchblade flicking audibly open, the blade catching a glint of moonlight, Rourke feigning with the big Gerber, the man side-stepping, Rourke’s left hand punching out, the Sting IA clenched tight in his left fist, the spear-point blade stabbing into the carotid artery on the right side of the neck.

There was a scream, Rourke feeling blood squirt onto his hand as he backstepped, the man going down in a heap.

Rourke stepped back, making the big Gerber disappear into its sheath, his right fist now swing-ing the M-16 forward, the thumb flicking off the safety.

The men from the trees on both sides were edg-ing in, Rourke stooping to wipe clean his little knife on the dead man’s sweater.

Rourke stood up, sheathing the knife.

He took his cigar in his left hand, studying the glowing tip a minute, then replaced it between his teeth.

“This has gotten awful tedious,” Rourke called in a loud whisper. “I mean, a real drag. Now fight and die or run and hide—doesn’t matter shit to me.”

Searchlights lit the ground—from above, Rourke thought, but he wasn’t certain.

“Commies,” one of the figures shouted, all of them breaking and running, Rourke starting to move.

“Major Tiemerovna!”

The voice, English but Russian-accented, from beyond the edge of the light, down the walkway. “Major!

Please—I beg of you, stop—”

Natalia was running, swinging her M-16 toward the lights to fire, Rourke wheeling, in a crouch, the muzzle of his M-16 coming up—

“It is Captain Vladov—major!”

Natalia’s voice—

“John—it is all right, I think—he is my uncle’s friend—“

Rourke didn’t move the rifle’s muzzle for an in-stant, the searchlight going out—its origin was ahead of them, not from above—

The Russian voice again. “I have come to find you—we travel the park here each night in hopes you are coming, major—and this man is Rourke?”

Rourke didn’t move his weapon.

“John—” It was Natalia.

Rourke lowered the M-16—thinking it might be the last stupid thing he would ever do.