The End is Coming

Chapter Five

Rourke slowed the jet-black Harley Low Rider. He eased the bike into a stop, letting down the stand, dismounting, sliding the CAR-15 forward on its sling.

He stood beside the Harley, listening. He could hear faint clicking sounds as the Harley’s engine cooled, but, above these, he heard the sounds that had precipitated the Night of The War—the sounds of advancing Soviet tanks.

The CAR-15’s pistol grip clenched tight in his right fist, he walked ahead, leaving the Harley by the side of the road—a dirt track leading from one main highway to another through farms and woods. He entered the woods now, moving slowly, pushing aside overhanging branches, not break-ing them, ducking the larger ones, squinting against the cool sunlight through his dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses. He moved the short, dark tobacco cigar with his tongue from the right side of his mouth across his teeth to the left, clenching it there, still unlit.

The sound of the tanks was louder. He kept walking, the ground rising suddenly, dramati-cally ahead of him.

He slipped the rifle slightly further forward, its muzzle plug already pocketed, the lens caps for the Colt three-power scope already removed, pocketed in his brown leather bomber jacket like the muzzle cap. His right thumb played against the Colt rifle’s safety lever, the ball of his thumb rubbing against it, the safety off because there was no round in the CAR-15’s chamber. Aboard a bike in rough country, it was safer to travel that way.

The tree cover thinned as the ground rose, Rourke stopping near its edge, listening. Tanks—many tanks.

“Tanks a lot,” he almost whispered, smiling at his own joke. He eared back the CAR-15’s bolt, chambering the top round out of the thirty-round stick.

He chewed down harder on the cigar, flicking the safety to “on” and finding the Zippo in his Levis pocket. He flicked back the cowling, roll-ing the striking wheel under his thumb, poking the tip of the cigar into the blue-yellow flame. He eyed the initials on the old Zippo—J.T.R. He pocketed the lighter.

Inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, he walked from the tree line, glancing right and left and ahead, searching for anything that didn’t be-long as his ears focused the bulk of his attention on the sound of the tanks.

The ground was rising sharply now, and he judged that he’d be able to view the tanks from the lip of the rise.

Rourke walked ahead, dropping into a crouch as he approached the height of the rise. Chewing down on the cigar as he inhaled, he dropped onto his knees and elbows, raising his ri-fle into his fists as he moved on, then stopped. There was no need for binoculars, or even the scope on the CAR-15—at the distance of perhaps a quarter-mile, the ten tanks traveling in column along what had once been an interstate highway were visible enough. The tanks were thirty-nine plus ton T-72s, fitted with 125mm smooth-bore turret guns—more powerful than anything U.S. II might possibly have to throw against them.

The confidence of the tankers upset him most of all—they traveled with hatches up and open, heads and shoulders protruding above the hatches, men sitting on the tank bodies, hitching rides—Soviet soldiers. As he watched, the tank column slowed, then stopped.

Rourke set down his rifle, snatching up his bin-oculars from the case at his side. He focused the armored Bushnell 8x30s on the head of the column. He could see no reason for the tanks to have stopped. He swept the binoculars forward, along the roadway.

An overpass bridge. In the shelter of the center pylons he saw something moving. He focused the binoculars more sharply for the increased range.

A dog—a stray dog, like hundreds he had seen since the Night of The War. Homeless, dirty, wild—ready to rip your throat to eat rather than starve. It looked part collie, perhaps part golden retriever—it was the right color for that. She was—as the dog began to stand up, he could make out beside it on the ground two puppies, barely visible. What the world desperately needed, he thought, were more stray dogs.

He swept his binoculars back to the lead tank, nearer to him than the dogs themselves, the road angling away from him in the direction in which the tanks moved.

The hatch open like the others, a man was clambering up and out of the hatch. There was an argument going on—between the man from the tank and one of the outside riders. The focal point of the argument seemed to be an AKM.

Rourke squinted, returned his gaze to the dogs. The female, the mother, was attempting to carry one pup by the scruff of the neck in her mouth, nudging the other pup with her forelegs, with her muzzle. She dropped the puppy from her mouth as she nudged at the other one. It rolled, unable to fully stand. She picked it up again, nudging at the other puppy once more.

Rourke heard the sound—automatic weapons fire.

The mother dog fell—a broad splotch of red suddenly visible on her neck behind her right ear. The puppy in her mouth was also shot—its body cut in half. Another burst of automatic weapons fire—the little puppy on the ground. Its body seemed almost to disintegrate. Rourke swept the binoculars back to the lead tank—the man from inside the tank held the So-viet assault rifle to his shoulder, fired another burst, then handed the weapon back to the out-side rider. The man from the tank was laughing. Rourke could see him—laughing. Rourke chewed down harder on his cigar, feel-ing the smoke in his lungs. He replaced the Bushnells in the pouch, zippered it shut.

He raised the CAR-15, extending the tele-scoped buttstock.

He judged the range at just under four hundred and fifty yards—stretching the CAR-15 beyond common sense and reason.

If he’d had the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, twice the range would have been possible and easily so. He settled the three-power scope’s reticle—be-tween the shoulder blades of the man from the lead tank, the man who had fired the AK.

Rourke closed his right eye a moment—he had killed wild dogs, many of them since the Night of The War.

What the tanker—the commander likely—had done was something altogether different, he real-ized. And besides, Rourke thought—riding with the hatch open seemed to assume no American would fight back against the tanks, would resist the So-viet invaders.

Rourke moved the safety. He started the trig-ger squeeze.

He felt the recoil, heard the crack, saw the scope shift slightly, blurred, then saw the man at the hatch of the lead tank, the man who had killed the dog and her two puppies—saw both hands move suddenly to the small of the back just above the belt, dead center over the spine. The body toppled forward, sliding across the front edge of the tank, slipping to the ground. The arms flapped once, twice—then no movement. Rourke made a mental note to experiment with bullet drop figures in excess of four hundred yards—he had aimed substantially higher.

As soon as he got the opportunity.

The Russians around the lead tank were mov-ing, the second tank already starting laterally across the road—some of the Russians who had ridden on the outside of the tanks, now hidden beside the treads, returned fire. The rocks below Rourke and a hundred yards or so ahead of him took the impact of the automatic weapons fire.

Rourke felt a smile cross his lips. “So long, ass-hole,” and he was up, moving, the CAR-15’s safety coming on under his right thumb, raising his body up from its crouch, breaking into a long-strided run toward the Harley. There was a roar, a high-pitched loud whistling sound—the 125mm smooth-bore turret gun. He moved fast into a right angle, breaking through the tree line, run-ning, feeling the ground tremble as he was slapped forward by a rush of air—the HEAT round had impacted to the left of his original line of movement. If he hadn’t broken right, he real-ized, looking back through the cloud of smoke and dirt and foliage raining down, he would have been dead. Rourke pushed himself up, running again—if he could make the Harley, maximum speed on the T-72 series was fifty miles per hour—the Harley could do better than that—and effortlessly.

He kept running, but at an oblique angle now, to his left—the tank gunner would try to saturate the area. The gunner had fired left, now he would fire right—the whistling sound again, the roar of a blast dying on the air.

Rourke threw himself into the run, the whis-tling louder, higher pitched. He hurtled himself forward through an open-ing in the tree cover, shielding his head with his hands. He felt the ground shake—but feeling at all meant he was still alive. Before the explosion died, he was up, running, a cloudburst of dust and broken bits of foliage engulfing the woods around him. Fire—he looked behind him, the trees burning near the two impact sites. He broke through the tree line—his bike, So-viet soldiers, six of them—they surrounded the machine, their own motorcycles parked on the opposite side of the dirt track. The nearest of the men was turning, toward him.

No time for the CAR-15, Rourke’s right hand flashed under his brown leather bomber jacket, snatching at the Pachmayr gripped butt of the stainless Detonics there. As the Soviet soldier raised his AKM, Rourke fired, the pistol bucking in his hand.

The soldier’s face took the 185-grain JHP—the center of the face collapsing in the redness of blood as the man fell back.

A second soldier—Rourke shot him twice in the chest, Rourke’s left arm going out, his left fist straight-arming a third soldier in the chest, knocking the man back and down. Rourke jumped, his left leg snaking over the seat of the Harley Low Rider. He got the stand up, firing the Harley’s engine, pumping the trig-ger of the Detonics into the chest and abdomen of a fourth Soviet soldier. The little Detonics was empty, the slide locked back. He thumbed down the stop, letting the slide run forward, ramming the pistol into his belt. A fifth Soviet soldier— Rourke’s left leg snapped up and out, the toe of his combat-booted foot catching the man in the groin as the soldier tried to bring his rifle to bear. Rourke gunned the Harley, almost losing his bal-ance, dragging his feet, keeping upright and tak-ing off along the dirt road.

The Low Rider was best suited to highway driv-ing, and making high speed on the bumpy, rutted dirt road was difficult, keeping it up harder—he let the machine out as much as he dared, keeping low over the handlebars as he looked back—one of the Soviet bikers was already coming, two more were mounting up.

Rourke’s right hand slipped down to the CAR-15, his thumb working the safety off—he twisted the muzzle behind him, firing once, twice, a third time, the Soviet biker nearest him skidding off into the trees to avoid Rourke’s fire. Rourke worked the safety again, letting the CAR-15 drop on its sling at his side, his attention wholly fo-cused now on riding.

Behind him, he could hear the sounds of bikes—the remaining two Soviets. He bent lower over the Harley—he made it there was at least an-other mile of the dirt track before he reached paved highway. A deep rut—Rourke skirted the machine around it, balancing out with his feet, then gun-ning the engine, jumping a huge bump, wrench-ing the machine up with his arms, gunfire from behind him now. He looked back again—two bikers close, a third fifty yards or so behind them. He couldn’t risk firing, the road too rutted for him to shift a hand from the handlebars. His body low across the jet black Harley, he kept rid-ing. There was a sharp bend right, Rourke’s ma-chine skidding through the curve, his right leg out, balancing the Harley, his right foot dragging through the mud as the road dipped, the Harley grinding, Rourke wrenching at the machine. Moving again—he kept the machine moving, through the curve and up the grade, the mud hard and rutted again, Rourke jumping the bike later-ally over a deep rut, the machine skidding, Rourke balancing it out. Still moving. A shouted curse from behind him—Rourke looked back, seeing one of the Soviet bikers down. He gunned the Harley, taking the grade, jump-ing a hummock of ground, the dirt road evening out, Rourke letting out the machine—ahead he could see paved road.

A ridge of packed hard mud and gravel—he jumped the Harley over it, nearly losing it, recov-ering, letting the bike skid almost out from under him as he angled the machine right—he was on the road. Balancing out, his feet up, he revved the Har-ley, the crackle of his exhaust loud, gunfire be-hind him as the coolness of the day turned into a chill slipstream around him, Rourke molding his body over the machine.

The road was a straight ribbon, black, recently paved, he guessed, before the Night of The War, the yellow double lines bright, fresh-painted.

Gunfire—the road surface behind him sparked with it as he looked back. Two of the Soviet bik-ers still pursued.

His exhaust rumbled, sputtered, made a sound that seemed to split the fabric of the air as he let the machine full out, the front wheel rising slightly, Rourke balancing as he fought the fork—and then the slipstream around him was harder, louder, colder, punching at his face, tear-ing at his hair—the gunfire was suddenly more distant.

He risked a look back once—the military bikes of the Soviet soldiers were fading in the distance. He chewed down once, hard, on his cigar butt, then spit it into the slipstream.