The Nightmare begins

Chapter Three

"I've been meaning to ask you," Rubenstein began, wiping his red bandana handkerchief across his high, sweat-dripping forehead. "Out of all those bikes back there at the crash site, why did you take that particular one?"

Rourke leaned forward on the handlebars of his motorcycle, squinting down at the road below them, the intense desert sun rising in waves, visible despite the dark-lensed aviator-framed glasses he wore. "Couple of reasons," Rourke answered, his voice low. "I like Harley Davidsons, I already have a Low Rider like this," and, almost affectionately, Rourke patted the fuel tank between his legs, "back at the survival retreat. It's about the best combination going for off-road and road use—good enough on gas, fast, handles well, lets you ride comfortably. I like it, I guess," he concluded.

"You've got reasons for everything, haven't you, John?"

"Yeah," Rourke said, his tone thoughtful, "I usually do. And I've got a very good reason why we should check out that truck trailer down there—see?" and Rourke pointed down the sloping hillside and along the road.

"Where?" Rubenstein said, leaning forward on his bike.

"That dark shape on the side of the road; I'll show you when we get there,"

Rourke said quietly, revving the Harley under him and starting off down the slope, Rubenstein settling himself on the motorcycle he rode and starting after, as Rourke glanced back over his shoulder at the smaller man.

Perspiration dripped from Rourke's face as well as he hauled the Harley up short and waited at the base of the slope for Rubenstein. Lower down, the air was even hotter. He glanced at the fuel gauge on the bike—just a little over half. As he automatically began calculating approximate mileage, Rubenstein skidded to a halt beside him. "You've gotta watch those hills, pal," Rourke said, the corners of his mouth raising in one of his rare smiles.

"Yeah—tell me about it. But I'm gettin' to control it better."

"All right—you are," Rourke said, then cranked his bike into gear and started across the narrow expanse of ground still separating them from the road. Rourke halted a moment as they reached the highway, stared down the road toward the west and started his motorcycle in the direction of his gaze. The sun was just below its zenith, and as far as Rourke was able to tell they were already into Texas and perhaps seventy-five miles or less from El Paso. The wind in his face and hair and across his body from the slipstream of the bike as it cruised along the highway was hot, but it still had some cooling effect on his skin—already he could feel his shirt, sticking to his back with sweat, starting to dry. He glanced into his rearview mirror and could see Paul Rubenstein trying to catch up.

Rourke smiled.

As he zeroed toward the ever-growing dark spot ahead of them on the highway, his mind flashed back to the beginning of the curious partnership between himself and the younger man. Though trained as a physician, Rourke had never practiced.

After several years with the CIA in Latin American Covert Operations, his interests in weapons and survival skills had qualified him as an "expert"—he wrote and taught on the subject around the world. Rubenstein had been a junior editor with a trade magazine publisher in New York City—he was an "expert" on pipe fittings and punctuation marks. But they had two important things in common. They had both survived the crash of the rerouted 747 which Rourke had been taking to Atlanta in order to rejoin his wife and children in northeastern Georgia. That night of the thermonuclear war with Russia had seemingly gone on forever. And now Rourke and Rubenstein shared another bond here in the west Texas desert. Both men had to reach the Atlantic southeast. For Paul Rubenstein, there was the chance that his aged parents might still be alive, that St.

Petersburg, Florida, had not been a Soviet target and that the violence after the war had not claimed them. For Rourke—in his mind he could see the three faces before him—there was the hope that his wife and two children were alive.

The farm where they had lived in northeast Georgia would have survived the bombs that had fallen on Atlanta. But there were the chances of radiation, food shortages, murderous brigands— all of these to contend with. Rourke swallowed hard as he wished again that his wife, Sarah, would have allowed him to teach her some of the skills that now might enable her to stay alive.

Rourke skidded the Harley into a tight left, realizing he was almost past the abandoned truck trailer. He took the bike in a tight circle around it as Rubenstein approached. As he completed the 360 degrees he stopped alongside the younger man's machine. "Common carrier," Rourke said softly. "Abandoned. After we run the Geiger counter over it we can check what's inside—might be something useful. Shut off your bike. I don't think we're gonna find any gas here."

Rourke gave the Geiger counter strapped to the back of his Harley to Rubenstein and watched as the smaller man carefully checked the truck trailer. The radiation level proved normal. Rourke walked up to the double doors at the rear of the trailer and visually inspected the lock.

"You gonna shoot it off?" Rubenstein was asking, suddenly beside him.

Rourke turned and looked at him. "You've gotten awful violent lately, haven't you? We got a prybar?"

"Nothin' big," the other man said.

"Well," Rourke said, drawing the Metalifed Colt Python from the holster on his right hip, "then I guess I'm going to shoot it off. Stand over there," and Rourke gestured back toward the motorcycles. Once Rubenstein was clear, Rourke took a few steps back, and on angle to the lock, raised the Magn-Na-Ported six-inch barrel on line with the lock and thumbed back the hammer. He touched the first finger of his right hand to the trigger, his fist locked on the Colt Medallion Pachmayr grips, and the .357 Magnum 158-grain semijacketed soft point round slammed into the lock, visibly shattering the mechanism. Rourke holstered the revolver. As Rubenstein started for the lock, Rourke cautioned, "It might be hot," but Rubenstein was already reaching for it, pulling his hand away as his fingers contacted the metal.

"I said it might be hot," Rourke whispered. "Friction." Rourke walked to the edge of the shoulder, bent down and picked up a medium-sized rock, then walked back to the trailer door and knocked the shattered lock off the hasp with the rock. "Now open it," Rourke said slowly.

Rubenstein fumbled the hasp for a moment, then cleared it and tugged on the doors. "You've got to work that bar lock," Rourke advised.

Rubenstein started trying to pivot the bar and Rourke stepped beside him.

"Here—watch," and Rourke swung the bar clear, then opened the right-hand door, reached inside and worked the closure on the left-hand door, then opened it as well.

"Just boxes," Rubenstein said, staring inside the truck.

"It's what's in them that counts. We could stand to resupply."

"But isn't that stealing, John?"

"A few days ago, before the war, it was stealing. Now it's foraging. There's a difference," Rourke said quietly, boosting himself onto the rear of the truck trailer.

"What do you want to forage?" Rubenstein said, throwing himself onto the truck then dragging his legs after him.

Rourke, using the Sting IA from its inside-the-pants sheath, cut open the tape on a small box and said, "Well—what do I want to forage? This might be nice."

Reaching into the box, he extracted a long rectangular box about as thick as a pack of cigarettes. "Forty-five ACP ammo—it's even my brand and bullet weight—185-grain JHPs."

"Ammunition?"

"Yeah—jobbers or wholesalers use certain common carriers to ship firearms and ammunition to dealers. I'd hoped we'd find some of this. Find yourself some 9 mm Parabellum—may as well stick to solids so you can use it in that MP-40 as well as the Browning High Power you're carrying. If you come across any guns, let me know."

Rourke started working his way through the truck, opening each box in turn unless the label clearly indicated something useless to him. There were no guns, but he found another consignment of ammunition—.357 Magnum, 125-grain semijacketed hollow points. He put several boxes aside in case he didn't find the bullet weight he wanted.

"Hey, John? Why don't we take all of this stuff—all the ammo, I mean?"

Rourke glanced back to Rubenstein. "How are we going to carry it? I can use .308, .223, .45 ACP and .357—and that's too much. I've got ample supplies of ammunition back at the retreat once we get there."

"That's still close to fifteen hundred miles, isn't it?" Rubenstein's voice had suddenly lost all its enthusiasm. Rourke looked at him, saying nothing.

"Hey, John—you want some spare clips—I mean mgazines—for your rifle?"

Rourke looked up. Rubenstein held thirty-round AR-15 magazines in his hands—a half-dozen. "Are they actual Colt?"

Rubenstein stared at the magazines a moment, Rourke saying, "Look on the bottom—on the floor-plate."

"Yeah—they are."

"Take 'em along then," Rourke said.

"You sure this isn't dishonest—I mean that we're not stealing?"

Rourke, opening a box of baby food in small glass jars, said, "This is a war, Paul. A few nights ago, the United States and the Soviet Union had a major nuclear exchange. The United States apparently didn't fare so well. Every place we flew over before the 747 crashed looked hit—the whole Mississippi River area seems to have been saturated. According to that Arizona kid I got on the radio before we crashed, the San Andreas fault line slipped and everything north of San Diego washed into the sea and the tidal waves flooded as far in as Arizona, and there were quakes there. Albuquerque was abandoned after the firestorm—except for the injured and dying and the wild dogs—you remember them.

We shot it out with that gang of renegade bikers who butchered the people we'd left back at the plane while we went to try and get help. Now how would you evaluate all that?"

"No civil authority, no government—every man himself. No law at all."

"You're wrong there," Rourke said quietly. "There is law. There's always moral law—but we're not violating that by taking things here that we need in order to survive out there. And the obligation we have is to stay alive—you want to see if your parents made it, I want to find Sarah and the children. So we owe it to ourselves and to them to stay alive. Now go and see if you can find something to use as a sack to carry all this stuff. I'm going to take some of this baby food—it's full of protein and sugar and vitamins."

"I have a little—I mean had—a little nephew back in New York—that," and Rubenstein's voice began noticeably tightening, "that stuff tastes terrible."

"But it can keep us alive," Rourke said, with a note of finality.

Rubenstein started to turn and go out of the trailer, then looked back to Rourke, saying, "John—New York is gone, isn't it? My nephew—his parents. I had a girl. We weren't serious but we might have gotten serious. But it's gone, isn't it?"

Rourke leaned against the wall of the trailer, his hands flat against the wood there, closing his eyes a moment. "I don't know. You want an educated guess, I'd say, yeah, New York is gone. I'm sorry, Paul. But it was probably quick—they couldn't have even tried to evacuate."

"I know—I've been thinking about that. I used to buy a paper from a little guy down on the corner—he was a Russian immigrant. Came here to escape the mess after the Russian revolution—he was just a little boy then. He was always so concerned with his manliness. I remember in the wintertime he never pulled his hat down over his ears and they were red and peeling. His cheeks were that way.

I used to say to him, 'Max—why don't you protect your face and ears—you're gonna get frostbite.' But he'd just smile and not say anything. But he spoke English.

I guess he's dead too, huh?"

Rourke sighed hard, then bent forward to look into an open box in front of him.

He already knew what was inside the box, but he looked there anyway. "I guess he is, Paul."

"Yeah," Rubenstein said, his voice odd-sounding to Rourke. "I guess—" Rourke looked up and Rubenstein was already climbing out of the trailer. Rourke searched the remaining boxes quickly. He found some flashlight batteries, bar-type shaving soap prepacked in small mugs and safety razors and blades. He rubbed the stubble on his face, took a safety razor, as many packs of blades as he could cram in the breast pocket of his sweat-stained blue shirt and one of the mugs and several bars of soap. He found another consignment of ammunition—158 grain semijacketed soft point .357s and took eight boxes of fifty. With it were some .223 solids, and he took several hundred rounds of these as well. He carried what he wanted in two boxes back to the rear of the trailer and helped Rubenstein climb inside with the sack to carry it all. They crammed the sack full and Rourke jumped down to the road, boosting the sack onto his left shoulder and carrying it toward the bikes. Rourke, as Rubenstein climbed down from the truck, said, "We're going to have to split up this load."

As Rourke turned toward his bike, he heard Rubenstein's voice and over it the clicking of bolts— from assault rifles. Without moving he looked up, heard Rubenstein repeat, "John!"

Slowly, Rourke raised to his full height, squinting against the glare through his sunglasses. A dozen men—in some sort of uniform—were on the far side of the road. Slowly, Rourke turned around, and behind him, on Rubenstein's side of the road beside the abandoned truck trailer, were at least a half-dozen more. All the men carried assault rifles of mixed heritages—and all the guns were trained on Rourke and Rubenstein.

"Caught you boys with your fingers in the pie, didn't we?" a voice from Rubenstein's side of the road shouted.

"That's a damned stupid remark," Rourke said, his voice very low.

"You men are under arrest," the voice said, and this time Rourke matched it with a face in the center of the men by the trailer. Fatter than the others, the man's uniform was more complete and military appearing. There was a patch on the man's left shoulder, and as Rourke tried to decipher what it stood for he noticed the duplicate of the patch on most of the uniforms of the other men.

"Who's arresting us?" Rourke asked softly.

"I am Captain Nelson Pincham of the Texas Independent Paramilitary Response Group," the fat man said.

"Ohh," Rourke started, pausing. "I see. The Texas Independent Paramilitary Response Group—the T-I-P-R-G—Tiprg. That sounds stupid."

The self-proclaimed captain took a step forward, saying, "We'll see how stupid it sounds when you boys get shot in just about a minute and a half. Official policy is to shoot looters on sight."

"Is that a fact?" Rourke commented. "Whose official policy is it—yours?"

"It's the official policy of the Paramilitary Provisional Government of Texas."

"Try saying that sometime with a couple of beers under your belt," Rourke said, staring at Pincham.

"Drop that sidearm," Pincham said. "That big hogleg on the belt around your waist. Move, boy!" Pincham commanded.

Out of the corner of his eye Rourke could already see hands reaching out and taking Rubenstein's High Power from the holster slung to his pants belt. The Schmeisser, as Rubenstein still called it, and Rourke's CAR-15 and Steyr-Mannlicher SSG were still on the bikes. Rourke slowly reached to the buckle of the Ranger Leather belt at his waist and loosened it, holding the tongue of the belt in his right hand away from his body. One of the troopers stepped forward and grabbed it, then stepped back.

"Now the guns from the shoulder holsters— quick," Pincham said, his voice sounding more confident.

Slowly, Rourke started to reach up to the harness, then Pincham shouted, "Hold it!" The captain turned to the trooper nearest him and barked, "Go get those pistols—move out!"

The trooper walked toward Rourke. "You sure you don't want to talk about this—you're just going to shoot us?" Rourke asked softly.

"I'm sure," Pincham said, his face breaking into a grin.

Rourke just nodded his head, keeping his hands away from the twin stainless Detonics .45s in their double shoulder rig. The trooper was in front of him now, between Rourke and Pincham and the rest of the men on the trailer side of the road. The trooper rasped, "Now—take out both those shiny pistols, mister. Just reach under your armpits there nice and slow—the right hand gets the one under the right arm, the left hand the left one. Nice and easy, then stick 'em out in front of you with the pistol butts toward me."

"Right," Rourke said quietly. As he reached up for the guns, he said, "To get them out of the holsters, I've got to jerk them a little bit."

"You just watch how you do it, mister. No funny stuff or I cut you in half where you stand." Rourke eyed the H-K assault rifle in the man's hands.

Rourke reached for his guns, his hands moving slowly. He curled the last three fingers of each hand on the Pachmayr gripped butts of the Detonics pistols and jerked them free of the leather. Rourke eyed the trooper, who was visibly tense as the guns cleared, and slowly brought them forward in his hands, the butts of the guns facing toward the "soldier."

"That's a good boy," the trooper said, smiling. The trooper took his left hand from the front stock of his rifle and reached forward for the gun in Rourke's right hand.

The corners of Rourke's mouth raised in a smile. Rourke's hands dropped to waist level, the twin stainless .45s spinning on his index fingers in the trigger guards, the pistol butts arcing into his fists, his thumbs snapping back the hammers and both pistols firing simultaneously, one slug pumping into the trooper's throat, the second grazing his shoulder as it hammered past and into the chest of the soldier closest to Paul Rubenstein. Rourke pumped two shots into the men on the far side of the road and dove toward the trailer, rolling under it, firing both pistols into the men flanking Captain Pincham. Out of the corner of his eye, Rourke could see Rubenstein—almost as if in slow motion. The smaller man had done just what Rourke had hoped—he'd grabbed up an assault rifle from the man nearest him whom Rourke had shot down and now had the muzzle of the weapon flush against Pincham's right cheekbone. Rourke stopped firing as he heard Rubenstein shouting, "Hold your fire or Pincham gets his!"

Rourke crawled the rest of the way along under the truck and got his feet on the other side, two rounds each still in the twin .45s. He leveled them both across the road, ignoring the men near him. "Your show, Paul," Rourke almost whispered, catching Rubenstein's eye.

He watched the younger man nod, then heard him shout, "Now everybody get out from cover and throw your rifles to the ground—move it or Pincham gets this.

Move it!"

Rourke watched as Rubenstein shoved the muzzle of the assault rifle against Pincham's cheek, heard Pincham shout, "Do as they say—hurry!"

Slowly, the men on the far side of the road climbed out of the ditch they'd dropped into as Rourke had opened up on them. Rourke watched as, one by one, they dropped their rifles, hearing the rifles from the man near Rubenstein and Pincham clattering to the ground beside him. "Gunbelts too," Rubenstein shouted.

Rourke watched as the men started dropping their pistol belts to the ground. His eyes scanned the ground and he saw his own gunbelt there, then he stepped toward it and bent down, breaking the thumb snap on the flap over the Python. He shook the holster free and let it fall to the ground, the Detonics from his right hand already in his trouser belt, the long-tubed, vent-ribbed Python now in his right. Thumbing the hammer back, he walked slowly across the road, his long strides putting him beside the man in the center of the ten men still standing there. Glancing down to the ground, he spotted the two he'd killed. Sticking the muzzle of the Python against the temple of the closest man, Rourke almost whispered, "All right—you guys want to be military—get into the front leaning rest position. That's like a pushup, but you don't go down. Now!"

Rourke stepped back, guiding the man closest to him down to the ground. The ten got to their knees, arms outstretched, then balanced on their toes as they stretched their legs, supporting themselves on their hands. "First man moves dies," Rourke said quietly, starting back across the road.

He could hear Rubenstein shouting similar commands to the men with Pincham on the trailer side of the road. Rourke looked at Rubenstein, hearing the younger man say, "What do we do now?"

"You want to kill them?"

"What?"

"Neither do I, especially. Why don't you get the bikes straight in a minute here and we can take these fellas for a walk a few miles down the road, then let 'em go. Let me reload first—keep them covered." Rourke jammed the Python in his belt, changed magazines on both of the .45s and reholstered them. He caught up his pistol belt from the dirt and slung it over his shoulder, the Python back in his right fist. Already, Rubenstein had begun dividing the loads for the bikes.

"You guys got any vehicles around here?" Rourke asked Pincham. The captain said nothing. Rourke put the muzzle of the Python under his nose.

"Yes—on both sides of the road."

"Any gas cans?"

"Yes—yes," Pincham snapped.

"Much obliged," Rourke said, then, shouting, "Paul—go over there and get some gas for the bikes. Take that thing you call a Schmeisser in case they left someone on guard. Did you leave anyone on guard?" Rourke asked, lowering his voice and eyeing Pincham.

"No—no-nobody on guard!"

"Good—if anything happens to my friend, you get an extra nostril."

"Nobody on guard!" Pincham said again, his voice sounding higher each time he spoke.

After a few moments, Rubenstein returned with the gas cans, filled the bikes and mounted up. Rourke walked Pincham toward his own bike. Already, some of the troopers were starting to fall, unable to support themselves on their hands.

"Barbarian," Pincham growled.

"No," Rourke said quietly. "I just want them good and tired so they can't get back here fast enough to follow us. It's either that or we disable your vehicles. And I don't think you'd like being stranded out here in the desert on foot. Right?"

Pincham, biting his lower lip, only nodded.

"All right—captain," Rourke said. "Order your men onto their feet and get 'em walking ahead of us—you bring up the rear. Anyone tries anything, it's your problem." Rourke started his bike as Pincham got his men up, formed them in a ragged column of twos and started them down the road toward El Paso.

As Rourke and Rubenstein followed along behind them, Rourke glancing at the Harley's odometer coming up on the second mile, Pincham—walking laboriously, close in front of him—said, "Mister— you killed three of my men."

"Four," Rourke corrected.

"If I ever catch sight of you, you're a dead man."

"There's some great baby food back there in the truck in case you fellas get hungry," Rourke responded, then to Rubenstein, "Let's go Paul!" Rourke gunned the Harley between his legs and shot past Pincham and his column, Rubenstein on the other side close behind him. Past the paramilitary troops now, Rourke glanced over his shoulder—some of Pincham's men were already sitting along the side of the road. Pincham was standing there, shaking his fist down the road after Rourke.

Rubenstein, beside Rourke, was shouting over the rush of air. "I saw that trick in a western movie once—with the pistols, I mean."

Rourke just nodded.

"What do they call it, John, where you roll the guns like that when someone tries taking them?"

Rourke glanced across at Rubenstein, then bent over his bike a little to get a more comfortable position. "The road-agent spin," Rourke said.

"Road-agent spin," Rubenstein echoed. "Wow!"