The Nightmare begins

Chapter Thirty-Three

Rourke stood by the cab of the pickup truck, Rubenstein trying to look casual with the MP-40 subgun in his hands, the bolt still locked open, just waiting for a touch of the trigger. As Rourke splashed canteen water on his face, he could feel Natalie's hands on his back, a handkerchief or something in her one hand and cool water being rubbed across him. He splashed water on his chest as well, then took his shirt and started to dry himself with it. He started to pull the shirt on, but heard the girl murmur, "Wait, John," and in a moment she was back with a fresh shirt for him from his pack.

As Rourke buttoned the shirt, stuffing the shirt-tails into his jeans, the girl came up beside him, the wet handkerchief in her hand, daubing at the right side of his mouth where he'd been cut. "I'm fine," Rourke whispered.

The girl—Natalie—stepped back. "You're not really going to do this—I mean you're good with guns and all, but this is like apples and oranges."

"She's right, John," Rubenstein commented, not looking at Rourke but watching the brigands. They had gone back to the trucks again, like natives in a death ritual, starting to drive them once more in a huge circle. But this time there was little dust; the rain was starting to fall more heavily now.

Rourke said, "You mean can I outdraw Deke? I don't think so, but there's a difference between drawing down on a timer and drawing down on a man—we'll see what happens."

"I've seen that kind of shooting before," the girl said.

"So have I," Rourke said softly, looking into her blue eyes. "He holds his hand on the gun butt, his left hand edged in front of the holster, and on the signal he rocks the gun out of the leather, the hand with the glove slaps the hammer back, fans it and the gun goes off. I couldn't see whether he's got the trigger tied back or not so he doesn't even have to bother touching it."

"He probably does," the girl said. "You want this?" she asked, gesturing toward the Python still slung diagonally across her body.

"No—I'll use these," he said, reaching into the cab of the truck and taking the Alessi double shoulder rig and the Detonics .45s. He put his arms into the shoulder harness and raised the harness up over his head and let it drop to his shoulders, then settled the holsters comfortably in place. He snatched the gun from the holster under his left armpit and buttoned out the magazine, then jacked back the slide, catching the chambered round. He reinserted the sixth round in the magazine and then slapped the spine of the magazine into his left palm, to seat the cartridges all the way back. He worked the stainless Detonics'

slide several times, then locked the slide back, reinserted the magazine and let the slide stop down. The slide hammered forward. He raised the thumb safety, leaving the pistol cocked and locked, then settled it back into the holster, closing the snaps for the trigger guard speed break.

As he began the same ritual on the gun under his right arm, the girl looked up at him, her eyes hard, her jaw set. "You're crazy—you can't match that kind of speed with a conventional gun."

"These aren't conventional guns," Rourke told her. "Faster lock time than a standard .45, less felt recoil, good trigger pulls—the whole bit. Grip safeties are deactivated."

He left the second gun cocked and locked and replaced it in the holster under his right arm. "That doesn't have an ambidextrous safety," the girl said, insistent. "How will it do you any good to have a cocked and locked gun in your left hand?"

"Well," and Rourke withdrew the gun again. "Advantage of big hands." He craned his left thumb behind the backstrap of the pistol in his left hand and whiped off the safety, adding, "If I have to use it, I can this way. Probably one will be enough."

"You are crazy—you're going to get us all killed, all of them killed!" the girl said, her voice uncharacteristically shrill.

"You know," Rourke almost whispered to her, "you're a funny girl—you use a gun better than most men, you're pro all the way—know your stuff. Like I said, I remember you. Different hair, contacts for different eye color. I know who you are, why you were out there in the desert, and I know you and I are going to bump heads sooner or later. And you know it too. But you seem to genuinely care about those people over there, like you did with the refugees back down the road. And even though I know you know we're on opposite sides really, I honestly think you care what happens to me. Maybe I got problems going out there and facing Deke," Rourke said, gesturing toward the center of the circle of trucks, the trucks slowing now as the time approached for the gunfight, "but I think you've got problems in there," and Rourke gently tapped his right index finger against her left breast where her heart would be. "And you know just what I mean, lady."

She took a half-step back from him and said, "Remember that dumb line from all the old western movies? A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do? Well, that goes for women, too."

"I don't want us to wind up doin' a number with guns—you know."

The girl bither lower lip, her voice barely audible, saying, "I didn't mean what I said the other night when I was drunk—about Mr. Goody-goody. Well, I meant it, but—"

Rourke sighed hard, then reached out and touched her face gently with his left hand. "You were right, anyway," he said and bent over and kissed her cheek.

The trucks had completely stopped now and as Rourke walked away from Rubenstein and Natalie, he thought how insane the whole thing was—the last quarter of the twentieth century and yet he was facing off in a nineteenth-century gunfight, with a gang of ritualistic murderers and renegades as the spectators, in a world that—for all Rourke knew—could itself have been in the last throes of death.

He could see Deke emerging from the crowd of brigands, the crowd itself splitting into two flanks with a clear space behind Rourke and space clearing behind Deke as well. The blonde-haired man—the baby-killer, Rourke reminded himself—had the Aussie hat dangling down his back now from a cord around his neck. The rain was falling more heavily, and already Rourke's fresh shirt was soaked through. The blonde man's hair hung in limp curls plastered against his forehead, the pansy-blue eyes riveted on Rourke as the two men moved slowly into position. From the corner of his right eye, Rourke could see Natalie, standing close beside Rubenstein, their eyes staring toward him. Rourke shot a glance toward Deke's right hip, then let his eyes drift upward to Deke's eyes. The two men were perhaps seven yards apart, Rourke gauged; it was the classic shootout distance—neither man could likely miss on the first shot. The single action Deke had strapped to his thigh with a heavy leather band at the base of the holster would be a .45 Long Colt calibre, the bullets themselves weightier than even a hardball .45 ACP load, the round an inherent man-stopper like the .45 ACP was.

The rain was heavy now, falling in sheets, blowing across the muddy surface of the field. Rourke's hair and face were wet, and he blinked the rain away from his eyelashes, knowing what would happen.

Deke's pansy-blue eyes set hard; the left hand with the glove for fanning was twitching. Rourke dove right, into the mud, his right hand streaking toward the Detonics .45 under his left armpit, his first wrapping around the checkered rubber Pachmayr grips, the stainless pistol ripping from the leather. Deke's sixgun was out, his left hand streaking back faster than Rourke could see clearly, the big revolver belching fire and roaring like a grenade going off near his ears. Rourke hit the mud and rolled, the Detonics in his right hand firing once, then once again, the first round thudding into Deke's midsection, splitting through the left forearm as the gun fanned its third shot, punching through the arm and into the blonde-haired man's gut. The blonde-haired man wheeled, dropping to one knee in the mud, a trickle of blood from the left corner of his mouth as he heaved forward, Rourke's second shot impacting into Deke's chest as the single action in Deke's hand—thumb cocked—fired, the bullet spitting into the mud less than three feet in front of him.

Rourke fired the Detonics a third time, the 185-grain jacketed hollow point punching into Deke's head, almost dead square between the eyes. The head snapped back, the body lurched forward and sagged into the mud.

Rourke got to his feet, mud dripping from his shirt and Levis, the heavy rain now washing around him in a torrent. Natalie was beside him—he could feel her hands on his left arm. He walked forward, toward the body in the mud.

Deke—Rourke edged the body over with the toe of his boot. The body rolled, the gunhand slapped into the mud, the revolver fell from it. The pansy-blue eyes were wide open, the head cracked up the forehead—the eyes were just staring though as the rain fell against them, and for a moment Rourke could do nothing but stare down into them himself. He had kept his promise to the woman with the dead infant.