The Nightmare begins

Chapter Seventeen

Natalia pulled the straw cowboy hat down low over her eyes, squinting into the sun as she stood beside the jeep, waving to the departing cargo pilot. She turned her head as the dust became too intense and saw Yuri, his hair blowing in the wind the plane was generating. She held her hands to her mouth like a megaphone, shouting, "Let's get out of here!" but there was no answer, no recognition that he had even heard her. Shrugging her shoulders under the short leather jacket she wore, she climbed into the passenger seat and checked her pistol while she waited for Yuri. She had left the H-K assault rifle behind as being out of character. Yuri was supposed to be her brother and he was supposed to be a geologist. They had been out in the field—"What war?" she would say. "We were in the desert. Our radio stopped working, but we thought it was just sunspot activity or something." She looked at the gun in her hand. "Oh, this?"

she would say. "Just in case of snakes. My brother showed me how it works and just insisted that I carry it but I really don't know anything about guns." She turned the gun over in her hand. Like all the American-and Western European-origin conventional guns she and the rest of Karamatsov's team used, they had been acquired technically illegally according to American law. This was a particularly nice one and she liked it, despite its limited capacity—a four-barreled stainless steel .357 Magnum COP pistol, derringerlike with a rotating firing pin and an overall size approximating a .380 automatic. It was pattern loaded, the first round intended for snakes—a .38-.357 shot shell, the last three chambers loaded with 125-grain jacketed hollow point .357s. With the gun she had a set of .22 Long Rifle insert barrels, which even more greatly expanded its versatility.

She put the gun back in the inside pocket of her leather jacket and leaned back on the seat, pulling the hat lower over her eyes, the bandanna knotted around her throat already wet with perspiration, her dark glasses doing little to reduce the harsh glare of the sun.

She turned her head, closing her eyes, when Yuri said, "Well, little lady—ya'll ready to get on with this here safari?"

She opened her eyes. "Yuri—you are a fine agent. But if you do not stop talking like that tome, you will find cyanide in your tea, or a curare-tipped straight pin inside your trouser leg. I don't like being called 'little lady.' You are not to call me Captain Tiemerovna in the field. You are to call me Natalie, the American way of saying my first name. I should not call you Yuri—why are you not correcting me? Your name for this operation is Grady Burns. I will call you that."

Yuri looked at her, running his fingers through his hair, pulling his hat down low over his nearly squinted-shut eyes. "Yes ma'am," he said, choking a laugh, then cranking the key and throwing the jeep into gear.

She turned toward him, started to say something, then eased back into her seat, laughing out loud in spite of herself. "Yuri—my God."

"Now that's American—little lady!" he said, laughing, his right hand moving from the gear shift and slapping her left knee. She sat bolt upright, looked at him a moment and started laughing again. They drove, talking, joking, through the sand dunes and in the general direction of Van Horn, where they hoped to find some information regarding Chambers. At one o'clock she called a halt, telling Yuri, "I've got to stretch my legs."

He pulled the jeep to a halt, shutting off the motor. "Do you want me to get it out of the back of the jeep?"

She glared at him. "Whose idea was that chemical toilet?"

"Karamatsov's idea—I think he was looking out for your comfort."

"He needn't have bothered," she stated flatly, getting out of the jeep and walking toward a low-rising dune fifteen yards to their right.

When she finished, she buried the tissue in the sand under her heel as she zipped her fly. Automatically, she started to feel for her pistol as she started back toward the jeep, remembering then that she had left it in the pocket of her jacket still on the seat. As she turned back toward the jeep, she screamed, in spite of herself. Almost instantly regaining her composure, she shouted, "Who are you?" Two men, wearing T-shirts and faded jeans, were standing on the top of the small dune, their faces leering. "I said, who are you?"

"I heard what ya' said, girl," the taller of the two men shouted back.

She started walking again, slowly. She stopped when she saw the jeep. Two men dressed like the first two were standing beside it, and a short distance behind them were four motorcycles. She couldn't see Yuri.

She turned to the two men on the top of the dune, one of whom was already sliding down toward her. "Where is he—the man on the jeep, the man I was with?"

"Well, you don't have to worry yourself 'bout him no more—he's dead. Slit his throat just as nice as you please, we did," the nearer man told her.

She found herself shaking her head. Yuri was too good to have let himself be surprised like that. "I don't believe you," she said.

"See," the taller man began, sliding to the ground and getting to his feet less than a yard from her. "He never noticed this," and he reached into his hip pocket and flicked open a long-bladed switchblade, " 'cause he was too busy lookin' at that," and the tall man gestured back toward the top of the dune. The second man swung his right hand from behind him now, a shotgun in it, the barrels impossibly short, she thought, the stock of the shotgun all but gone.

She noticed a leather strap from the butt of the shotgun stretched across the man's body like a sling.

"While your boyfriend was a lookin', I was a cuttin'," the tall man said, grinning.

Natalia stared at him, assessing his build, the way he stood, searching him with her eyes for additional weapons. There was a pistol crammed between the wide black belt he wore and the sagging beerpot under the sweat-stained T-shirt. As near as she could make out, the gun was a German luger.

"What do you want?" she asked, lowering her voice.

"What do you think I want, girl?" the man laughed, starting to step toward her.

The knife was still in his right hand and as he took his second step, Natalia moved, both hands going toward him, her right hand flashing upwards, the middle knuckles locked outward, impacting under his nose and smashing the bone upward into his brain. Her left hand had already found the nerve on the right side of his neck and pinched it, momentarily numbing the right arm, causing the knife to fall from his grasp. She knew he was dead and let him fall, dismissing the inferior switchblade knife and snatching the Luger from his belt as he went down. Her right thumb found the safety, her left hand slamming back the toggle in case the gun had been carried chamber empty, the trigger finger on her right hand poised for a fast squeeze as the toggle slammed forward, two rounds—9mms, she thought—slamming up at a sharp angle into the man with the sawed-off shotgun standing on top of the dune. She wheeled, a shot already echoing from behind her, a second shot—the sound registering somewhere at the back of her mind, creasing heavily into her left forearm, pitching her back into the sand on her rear end, her first shot toward the two men standing near the jeep going wild.

She rolled across the sand, bullets kicking it up into her face. She fired, two rounds in a fast burst at the nearest man—he had a pistol. The last man was working a bolt action rifle, swinging the muzzle toward her. She fired once, shooting out the left eye. She automatically glanced down to the Luger's sights—the rear sight looked banged up and she attributed the eyeball shot to that. She had aimed between the eyes.

She started to her feet, took a step forward and fell into the sand. She rolled onto her back, the sun, still almost directly overhead, momentarily blinding her despite the sunglasses. But then she remembered she'd lost them rolling through the sand. She tried standing, felt her head—it hurt badly. Forcing herself to her feet, she staggered toward the jeep and fell against it, burning her fingers on the hot metal, the Luger slipping from her right hand. Pulling herself into the jeep and across the passenger seat, her blue eyes glanced downward—Yuri, his throat slit ear-to-ear—in a clumsy fashion, she thought—lay in the sand, his eyes wide open and staring into the sun. She started the jeep, heard a high-pitched whistle and saw steam rising from in front of the hood.

"Shot the radiator—stupid," she murmured to herself, then fumbled off the emergency brake and threw the car into gear. The thought that drove her was that the four men were probably not alone. The sketchy intelligence from the area indicated a large and heavily armed gang of looters and killers moving across the state, "Outriders," she said dully as she started the jeep up a low dune.

"Got to hurry…"