The Web

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"We can come," Michael insisted.

"AH right—but stay well behind me—no sense wearing out Sam more than you have to."

She rode toward a tall stand of pines, the modified AR-across her saddle, cold against her thighs. If a Brigand conclave was on, then there would be Brigands traveling through the area, toward it.

Urging Tildie up the rise with her knees, her left hand holding the reins, she clutched the AR-pistol grip in her gloved right fist. "Come on, Tildie—just a little while longer," she cooed. Sarah glanced behind her once— Michael and Annie were coming, slowly, as she wanted them to.

Michael, like his father, stubborn, arrogant, but reliable—a man she could count on more than he knew.

She was tempted to call out to the children, telling Michael to save Sam the haul up the rise, but she didn't, lest there be Brigands nearby she couldn't see.

Her eyelashes were encrusted with ice, the sleet and snow blowing against her face. She reached the top of the

rise, reining Tildie back. "Whoa—easy," she cooed again.

Beyond the rise was the Savannah River and suddenly, she knew where she was. Lake Hart well would be nearby—in the distance, she could see the Hartwell dam. John had taken her there once with the children for a tour of the dam structure, and several times she had gone to the lake itself with John and the children—swimming.

The thought of plunging her body into water now chilled her. She trembled, then trembled again, remembering John's hands on her once as they'd lain by the lake, their bodies wet and mostly naked, the children splashing in the water at its edge.

She turned to call out to Michael that everything was all right. Tildie reared; Sarah was thrown back in the stock saddle, a gunshot punching into the snow by the animal's front hoofs.

Sarah glanced to her right. Out of the pines were coming men and women, ragged, running, snow-covered, rifles and handguns in their hands, curses coming from their lips—and threats.

"Shit!" she screamed, wheeling Tildie, fighting -tc control the animal, and swinging the rifle up as she reined the horse under her. Her stiff-with-the-cold righl thumb worked the selector to full auto position; her first finger twitched against the trigger. A short burst fired across her saddle; flowers of red blotched the ice-encrusted chest of the lead man. The man lunged toward her and the horse, an ax in his hands. They weren't Brigands; they were starving men and women, people who—she fired again, at another man starting to fire a shotgun. Sarah shot him in the face and neck, then

screamed, "Michael—get Sam going. Get Annie out of here!"

Sarah dug her heels into the frightened horse she rode; Tildie leaped ahead, back down the rise. A woman was lunging for her, out of the trees, a knife in bony hands held like a stake that was to be driven into someone's heart. Sarah pumped the AR-'s trigger again. The woman's body rocked back, spinning, then falling, a ragged line of red across the threadbare clothes covering her body.

She knew what they wanted now—the horse for food, the weapons for defense, her life and the children's lives/ "Michael—get out of here," she shouted again, kneeing Tildie onward.

The pine boughs to her left shuddered, and in the darkness against the whiteness of the snow, she could see a man coming out of the trees, running toward her. She recognized what he had in his right hand—a machete.

He threw himself toward Tildie, into the animal's path. Tildie rearing under her, Sarah reined up, as the machete sliced toward Tildie's neck.

The reins came away in Sarah's hands. She reeled back as the man sliced his blade again. Her left hand, still clutching at the useless reins, reached downward, snatching at Tildie's bridle. Sarah kneed the animal.

"Come on, girl!"

Tildie leaped forward. The man hacked with his machete, but fell aside at the impact of the animal. Then he was on his feet and running after her as Sarah glanced back. She loosed the bridle, snatching at a generous handful of flowing ice-encrusted mane, and digging her heels into the bay mare's sides, coaching her. "Up, Tildie—up, girl.' The animal responded, charging ahead

and down the rise.

Ahead of her now, she could see Michael's horse, Michael and Annie aboard it. The thought suddenly startled her—Michael's horse. It was John's horse. Two figures wrestled against the front of the animal, reaching for the reins. Michael edged the animal back from them. She saw something flash against the snow, heard a scream; Michael had a knife. Where had he gotten it?

One of the two figures fell away, the second dove toward the two children in the saddle.

Sarah hauled back on Tildie's mane, the animal slowing, skidding along the snow on its haunches. Sarah's right hand brought the rifle up to her shoulder, her finger reached for the trigger. "Help my aim, God," she breathed, twitching the trigger as Tildie settled; the man, reaching for Michael and Annie, spun, fell.

"Get going, Michael!" Sarah screamed. Sam spurred ahead as she saw Michael kicking at him with his heels. Sarah dug in her knees, and Tildje started after him.

There was a burst of gunfire from behind her now, and Tildie started to slip on a patch of ice beneath her. Sarah felt the animal going down, perhaps wounded; she threw herself free of the animal's bulk, into the snow. Her back ached as she impacted, the rifle skittering across the ice, back toward Tildie.

Sarah rolled onto her belly and screamed, "No!" She pushed herself up to her knees. The burly man with the machete who'd tried for her back in the pines was coming.

Sarah glanced toward Tildie; the mare was up, apparently unhurt. Sarah started to her feet, running toward her rifle, then for the horse. She slipped, falling

forward, the rifle still several feet from her. She rolled onto her side, fumbling under the shaggy woolen coat she wore, under her sweater and her T-shirt, for John's Government Model .. She had it out, in her right hand, her right thumb cocking the hammer as the man with the machete shrieked and threw himself toward her.

Her first finger pumped the trigger. The . rocked in her right hand, and the massive body rolled toward her.

Her mind flashed—why did all the others look half-starved when this man was fat?

As his body rolled toward her, she knew why. Around his neck was a necklace; the teeth were human. /

"You bastard!" she screamed as his head lolled toward her and he started pushing himself off the ice, the left hand, blood dripping from the arm, reaching for her. She fired the ., into his face, once, twice, then a third time.

She edged back across the ice, the gun held out ahead of her, toward the pulp of face, as if coming in contact with his flesh would disease her.

"Bastard," she screamed.

She heard Tildie's whinnie, then rolled onto her belly, reaching out for the AR-, pulling it toward her, firing it out at the others as they charged toward her. The rifle empty, she stopped firing and slung it across her back, as she reached up for Tildie's stirrup. Then she pulled herself to her feet, snatched at the mane and the saddle horn, and swung up, Tildie wheeling under her, rearing, then coming down. Sarah leveled the ., firing once, twice, a third time, into her attackers; the slide locked open, empty.

"Gyaagh!" she shouted. Tildie spurred ahead as Sarah tugged at her mane.

The animal reared again, wheeled, then streaked off. In the distance, Sarah could see

Michael and Annie, Sam's black mane swatting at Michael's face as he leaned low over the animal's neck, Annie hanging on to his back.

Sarah leaned against Tildie. "Take me out of here," she cooed, feeling tears streaming down her face. "Take me out of here," she said again.

This was not for the greater glory of mother Russia, he decided. As Major Borozeni stepped inside the abandoned farmhouse, he thought he heard the scurrying sounds of rats. He turned to his sergeant, saying, "Krasny, get a detail in here to clean this place; I do not sleep with rats."

"Yes, Comrade Major." The sergeant saluted.

Borozeni merely nodded, then stepped back outside into the cold. His men were retreating, ponsolidating their position. The eastern coastal regions of the United States were being buffeted by freak storms. Rebellion was starting everywhere along the southeast coast since the escape, in Savannah, of the Resistance fighters, led by the woman who had bluffed her way through, with him. He felt a smile cross his cracked lips as he dusted snow from the front of his greatcoat; then he pulled away his gloves and felt under the coat for his cigarettes.

"All is being prepared, Comrade Major," Sergeant Krasny told him, saluting as a squad of men with hand torches went past Borozeni into the farmhouse.

"She was quite a woman, Krasny."

"Comrade Major?"

"The woman who effected that escape. I would like to meet her again, see what she looks like without a submachine gun or a pistol in her hands. Or when she isn't all wet, for that matter."

"Yes, Comrade Major."

"Yes." He nodded, walking to keep his feet from freezing. Despite the cold he liked the prospects of the farmhouse even less than the storm. He was to take his contingent of men to Knoxville, Tennessee. He wondered precisely what was in Knoxville; there had been a . World's Fair there once, he seemed to recall. He had been on detached duty then, training guerrilla fighters in the Middle East.

He decided he should have been somewhere else. He nad never like the Middle East, though he could have used some of its heat now.

The other woman in the truck had used her name. "Sarah," he said, roiling the name on his tongue, tasting it. She was probably someone's wife, perhaps one of the prisoners, who had been released, but he didn't think so. Perhaps someone's widow—one of the men who had been executed.

But then, he asked himself, inhaling deeply on the cigarette, wouldn't she have killed him—a Russian who was an officer, one of the ones responsible for the war?

He threw the cigarette into the snow. She was probably safe in her husband's arms by now ... or perhaps not.

He felt himself smiling. The trek across the snow, the stalling vehicles, the ice, the freezing temperatures . . . They were somewhere in South Carolina; he didn't remember the name of the town that would be ahead.

He lit another cigarette. He watched the flame of his lighter dancing against the blue whiteness of the ground. "Sarah," he murmured again. The sort of woman he had always wanted to meet—and never would again /. .

He shook his head, smiled, and turned, starting toward the farmhouse.

"Krasny! How goes the detail?"

Natalia studied the map—another half-day if the weather were to ease and they would be in central ,Indiana. She could convince Paul to leave her there. She looked more intently at the map; she had heard the sound again, beyond the ground-cloth windbreak.

Reaching up to the bootlaces that secured the sleeping bag about her like a coat, she undid them. Finding the flap of the right holster on her belt, she opened it slowly to reduce the noise of the snap in the stillness that was only punctuated by the howling of the wind.

The wood grips felt cold against her bare hand. She glanced at Rubenstein, sleeping, debating whether to awaken him. But if the sound were nothing it would only further convince him he had to take her all the way into northern Indiana. She wanted him back with John Rourke, helping Rourke in the search for his wife and children, helping to keep Rourke alive—for herself?

She shook her head; then extracted the revolver from the holster. It and the one like it on her left hip were curious guns. On the right faces of their slab-sided barrels were engraved American Eagles. The guns were

originally four-inch stainless steel Smith & Wesson Model s, the .

Magnum L-frame. On the left flats of the barrels were duplicate inscriptions: METALIFE

Industries, Reno, Pa—by Ron Mahovsky. The actions were the smoothest she had ever felt on a gun; the revolvers were round butted, polished, tuned, perfect. Rourke, when they had been given to her, told her he had known the maker of the guns well before the Night of the War. They would be the best guns she would ever own.

The American Eagles. Mahovsky had made them for President Sam Chambers before the war, and Chambers, for her part in the evacuation of Florida, had insisted she take them. She smiled at the memory, recalling his words.

fT can't very well give a Russian spy an American medal, can I? And anyway, we're fresh out of medals. Take these and use 'em to stay alive with, miss."

She had taken them, and the holsters Chambers had had for them; Rourke had found her a belt that better matched her waist size.

She heard the noise again; it snapped her out of her thoughts. She extracted the second revolver now, gloves off, edging up to her feet. She prodded Rubenstein with her left foot; the man rolled over, looking up at her. She raised a finger to her lips, then pointed to her ear.

Rubenstein blinked his eyes, then nodded, suppressing a yawn. He edged back from the fire, the battered Browning High Power he carried coming into his right hand, the hammer slowly cocking back. In the stillness against the wind, it sounded loud—too loud.

She gestured to Paul with one of the guns—that she would cross around behind the bridge support and look. He nodded; he was sensible, she thought. He wore no boots, but she did, and there wasn't time for an alternate

plan. The sleeping bag fell from her shoulders and she held the pistol in her left hand against her abdomen, flat, to keep her coat closed more tightly about her.

She shook her head; the wind caught her hair as she stepped out of (he crude lean-to into the night. Brigands were her worry—Russian soldiers she could take care of. She had her identification, spoke Russian, could prove who she was and lie about who Paul was.

But Brigands . . . that had been the risk they had run lighting a fire; but otherwise, Paul's feet might have been gone. Frostbite, left untreated, could so quickly turn gangrenous. She didn't want that for Paul—death or being crippled. A friend was too hard a thing to find.

Whatever happened, the fire had been worth it, necessary.

She froze, her back flattening against the concrete bridge support as she heard the sound again, this lime more clearly—a voice, whispering, meaning there was a second person—at least—in the darkness of the storm.

She stayed against the bridge support, cold, both pistols in her_hands, waiting.

They were shiny for night work, but she liked them, the polished stainless steel, the permanence of it— "Permanence," she whispered to herself. What was permanent these days? She had just said good-by to a man whom she had told she loved, a man she would never see again, never forget. And soon, it would be good-by to Paul as well, her friend.

She tried to remember who her friends had been.

Tatiana from her ballet class—they had traded secrets. Tatiana had been Jewish, like Paul; and Tatiana's father had done something—Natalia had never known what— and Tatiana had never returned to ballet class again.

Natalia tried to remember her own parents, but it was impossible. She was only able to remember what her uncle who had raised her nad told her about them. Her father had been a doctor, as John was a doctor. Her mother had been a ballerina—they had died. Her Uncle Ishmael had never really fully explained how.

She wondered, silently, whether, when she died, those who cared would know at all.

She didn't think so.

She beard noise again; this time, not the noise of speech, but the bolt of a weapon—assault rifle or submachine gun, she couldn't tell which—being opened.

Perhaps it was Paul with the gun he insisted on calling a Schmeisser, his MP-.

But the sound had been from the wrong direction.

She bunched her fists around the finger-grooved Goncalo Alves wood grips of the matched Smith & Wessons, then stepped away from the bridge support.

She walked, slowly but evenly, toward the edge of the support. She looked around it—she could see the glow of the fire from beyond the far side of the ground-cloth windbreak.

And she could see four men—men or women she wasn't really sure. She had shot both in her lifetime.

They were closing in on the windbreak, in a narrowing circle, assault rifles in their hands. She imagined there were others, behind her, coming up on Paul from the rear. He would have to look out for them—his instincts were good. She would be otherwise engaged.

She stepped away from the bridge support, the glow of the fire glinting off the polished stainless-steel revolvers in her fists.

"What do you want?" $he shouted.

One of the nearer assault rifle-armed figures turned toward her.

"Ever'thin' you got, li'l gal." He laughed.

"You shouldn't laugh," she said calmly. The man wheeled the muzzle of his rifle toward her, and both pistols bucked at once in her hands. The man's body hammered backward into the snow. The assault rifle discharged, its muzzle flashes lighting up the night, as the second nearer man started to turn, to fire. She caught the sight of hair; it wasn't a man, but a woman.

Natalia fired the pistol in her left hand, then the one in her right. The body of the woman twisted and contorted as it fell, her assault rifle impacting into the snow beside her.

Gunfire was coming from the other two and Natalia dove for cover behind a pile of discarded sewer pipes to her left. Bullets whined in the frigid air as they ricocheted off the concrete. Natalia's right hand flashed up, snapping off one shot, then another.

Dumping the empties and the two unfired rounds from the right-hand revolver into her right palm as she stroked the ejector rod, she huddled behind the pipes; the gunfire coming more steadily now. In a pocket of her coat she had a half-dozen Safariland Speed Loaders. She snatched them, ramming the bullets into the charging holes, the center of the loader actuating against the ejector star, the cases freed and spilling into the charging holes. She slammed the cylinder shut, fired the gun in her left hand—four shots, a scream.

There was more gunfire.

Then from her far right, she heard the small-caliber, high-pitched belching of the Schmeisser. "Paul," she said.

She speed-loaded the revolver for her left hand, then holstered it, the gun in her right hand firing as she

pushed herself up, running from the concrete sewer pipes toward the bridge support, firing at the nearer of the two assault rifle-armed figures. The body went down, its gun still firing. "Wounded," she murmured. Whoever Paul had been shooting at was on the far side of the bridge support. And Paul's gun had stopped firing.

She reached the lean-to. Rubenstein was locked in combat with three men.

She heard Paul's subgun discharge though" she couldn't see it; one of the men fell back, stumbling into the fire, his body and clothes now aflame.

Natalia fired her revolver once into the man's head to put him out of his agony. Then having taken two steps closer to Paul, she half-turned, balancing in the snow on her right foot. Her left foot snaked out, giving a double savate kick to th# head of the nearest of the two remaining men.

The man fell back against the bridge support, and she could see Paul now, his right arm bound up in the sling for his subgun, his left hand holding back the knife of his opponent, clutched around the man's right wrist.

The subgun fell away; Paul's right fist hammered up, into the midsection of the vastly larger man.

Natalia's instincts told her something.

She wheeled, emptying the revolver in her right hand into two men charging for her. She wheeled again. No time for the revolver in her left hand, she dropped the Metalife Custom L-Frame from her right fist, snatching in the same motion for the Bali-Song knife in the right side hip pocket of her jump suit.

Her thumb flicked open the lock as her right arm hauled back. The closed knife sailed from her grip as she threw her arm forward. From beyond the windbreak, a man advanced against her with an assault rifle. The

stainless-steel Bali-Song glinted in the firelight as it rotated in the air, the handle halves splitting open.

The man with the assault rifle stopped in his tracks, both hands out at his sides, the rifle falling from his grip. The handle slabs of her knife were flat against the front of his coat, making a horizontal line. The body sagged, then fell forward, into the fire, and Natalia, as she snatched the revolver from her left holster, could smell his flesh burning on the wind.

Rubenstein! She could see him, his left hand still locked on the knife wrist of the man he fought. Suddenly his right arm hauled back, then flashed forward, his bunched-together right fist smashing into the nose of the larger man. The man's knife hand went limp; the knife fell.

As the man fell.back, Rubenstein snatched at the pistol from his belt, firing the High Power almost point-blank into the man's midsection as the body stumbled, then collapsed.

"Two outside, maybe," she snapped, the revolver sailing from her left hand into her right as she rounded the edge of the bridge support.

She ran hard, reaching the far side, making the corner. An assault rifle at the shoulder of one of the two men there started opening up, its flashes blinding against the snowy darkness. She stabbed the revolver forward in her hands and double-actioned it twice. The man's head shuddered under the impact of the slugs, his body falling, as the assault rifle fired uselessly up into the night sky.

She wheeled. Firing the L-Frame again at the last of the two, she heard the chattering of Paul's submachine gun as well. The body of the last of the attackers rolled, twisted, lurched under the impact of the slugs hammer

ing at it; then it was still. "Too bad," she said.

She heard Paul's voice. "Yeah—what a waste of human life."

"That, too," she told him. "But with all the bullet holes, none of their coats will do us much good for added warmth." She started back toward the windbreak, saying, "Check that they're all dead while I get my other gun and the knife." She felt very cold, and realized Paul probably thought her colder. "If any of them aren't dead—tell me," she added.

She sat down, picking up her gun, not yet ready mentally to retrieve the Bali-Song knife. The gun was undamaged. Automatically, she emptied the revolver of the spent cases, then reloaded it with one of the remaining Speedloaders. She loaded the second revolver as well, holstering both guns; then, her hands trembling, she lit a cigarette.

"Tired!" she screamed.

John Rourke looked at the Rolex; the exterior of the crystal was steamed so he smudged it away with his right Јlove, then studied the time. It was eight-thirty. A good time for a party, he thought—the shank of the evening.

He leaned against the pine trunk, staring down into the valley, the wind behind him now) the sweater pulled down from covering his head, his leather jacket unzipped and wide open. The Bushnell Armored Xs focused under his hands as he swept them across the valley floor. A town—a perfect town, nothing changed. A blue-grass band was playing in the town square, strains of the music barely audible in the distance; children played behind a crowd of spectators surrounding the band; a car moved along the far side of the town, its lights setting a pattern of zigzags in the shadows where the streetlights didn't hit.

For an instant only, Rourke questioned his own sanity, then dismissed the idea.

He was sane; it was what he saw that wasn't sane.

He took out one of his dark tobacco cigars, rolling it across his mouth between his teeth to the left corner, then letting the Bushnell binoculars dangle down from the strap around his neck. He found his lighter, and

flicking the Zippo, touched the tip of the cigar nearly into the flame.

Drawing, he felt the smoke in his lungs as he inhaled.

He and Natalia and Paul had often talked about it—a world gone mad; but beneath him now, on the valley floor, was a world that hadn't changed. Was that madness? He closed his eyes, listening to the music. . . .

Comfortable with his leather jacket open^-he would have worn it now if he had been hot because it concealed the twin stainless Detonics .s—he rode the Harley into the town, his Python and the hip holster hidden in his pack, the CAR-still wrapped in the blanket. At least it would take a reasonably knowledgeable curious person to determine that it was a gun.

He could hear the music more clearly now as he passed a small school; the facility would handle perhaps three hundred students, he decided. From the high ground inside the lip of the valley, he had seen most of the town in relief against the valley floor, but the details had been lost. Now he could see it more clearly. No evidence of looting, bombing, fire,s—nothing that showed there had ever been a war. The Night of the War hadn't touched this place.

He felt like Hilton's very British hero, entering Shangri-La and leaving the storm behind him.

"The storm," he whispered to himself. Both literally and figuratively, a storm.

He stopped his Harley-Davidson Low Rider for a stop sign; a police car was across from him at the other side of the four-way stop.

Rourke ran his fingers through his hair, then gave the cop a wave and a nod as he started. The police prowl car moved slowly, the policeman lighting his dome light,

looking but saying nothing as Rourke passed the vehicle.

Rourke chewed down on the burned out stub of his cigar now. Reaching the end of a storybook residential street, he turned left after slowing for a yield sign, a public library on his right as he started toward the lights of the square. A young girl wearing a dress sat on the steps of the library building, with a boy of the same age sitting beside her, the two talking.

The boy looked up, and Rourke gave him a nod, driving on. He passed the post office; the street angled slightly toward the town square.

He stopped the Harley beside the curb, staring at what he saw. It was just as he'd seen it from above—a band flaying, some younger people dancing, clogging or step-dancing, children running and playing, some tugging on their mothers—perhaps two hundred people in all around the square.

He turned off the key for the Harley. He couldn't help himself as he sat there, listening to the music, but hearing different music—a song he and Sarah had always called their own song, danced to so many times. In the faces of the strange children, Rourke saw the faces of his own. What he couldn't stop, what he felt—tears—a world gone.

Had Sarah seen him, he smiled, she would have thought he was almost human.

. . .

The blue-grass band had stopped, and a record player was humming through the loudspeakers; there was the scratching sound of a needle against plastic, then a country song, and through a momentary niche in the wall of humanity surrounding the center of the square he saw more children—girls in green-and-white plaid dresses with short skirts and petticoats that made the skirts stand

away from their legs, the oldest of the girls perhaps twelve, the youngest looking to be Annie's age—five or so.

Boys in green slacks and white shirts and green bow ties—only a few boys (hough—stood beside them, all in a rank. They started dancing; clogging, it was called.

Rourke srnelled something, then turned and looked to his right. A gleaming truck, the kind that would come to factories to bring coffee and doughnuts and hamburgers, was parked at the edge of the square.

He saw a sign above the open side that formed a counter—the sign read, COKE.

Rourke walked toward the truck. A little girl passed him, coming from the truck, a half-eaten hot dog in her right hand, yellow mustard around her mouth and dribbling down her chin.

Rourke automatically felt his pockets. He still carried his money clip—but was there anything in it? "Yes," he murmured. Something just hadn't made him give away or throw away money. He pulled out a ten and walked over to the truck.

"What]] ya have, mister?''''

"Ahh—two hot dogs and a Coke. Make it three hot dogs."

"You new in town, ain't ya? Related to anyone 'round here?"

"What's the occasion?" Rourke asked, something making him evade the question. He jerked his thumb toward the town square behind him.

"It's the Fourth of July, mister. Ain't you got no calendar?"

"I—I've been camping—up in the mountains. Kind of lost track of time."

"I reckon you have." The man smiled, handing Rourke the three hot dogs in a small white cardboard box. Rourke handed him the ten-dollar bill and took the Coke, then started away.

"Hey!"

Rourke turned around.

"You forgot your change!"

"Keep it," Rourke told him. "Maybe I'll wan! another hot dog later."

Rourke turned and spat his cigar butt into a trash can near him. He walked across the square a short way, finding a tree and leaning against it, listening to the music, seeing the children clog. He took a bite from the hot dog nearest him in the box, the Coke set down beside Jiim on the ground. It wasn't near the Fourth of July.

The man who had sold him the hot dogs wasn't from here, either—he had said "you" not "y'all" and that went with the territory. Rourke had made the speech pattern as midwest em.

Maybe it was the Russians—something that would be a trap. But for whom?

The town, the dancing, the Fourth of July. If he wasn't crazy, all of them were.

He wasn't crazy, he reminded himself, feeling the comfort of his guns under his jacket as he nudged his upper arms against his body. "I'm not crazy," he verbalized. The hot dog had tasted good and he started to eat the second one, dismissing any worry it was drugged. The little girl was dancing around, helping the doggers; the only thing apparently wrong with her being terminal mustard stains. . . .

Rourke sipped at his Coke—it was real Coca-Cola. He hadn't had any since—He worked along the perimeter of the crowd, watching the faces, the genuine smiles. He nudged against a man and the man turned, smiled,

and said, "Hey!"

It was the universal southern greeting that Rourke had learned long ago as a transplanted northerner.

"Hi." Rourke smiled, as the man turned away to watch the clogging. This was a second group of doggers, dressed the same but in red and white rather than green and white. The green-and white-clad girls and boys stood at the edge of the crowd now, watching the others.

Rourke saw a face; it was the only face not smiling. It looked promising, he thought, and gravitated toward the woman belonging to it. \par As he neared the woman," the clogging stopped— abruptly—and an announcer, a fat man wearing a red-and white-checkered cowboy shirt and a straw cowboy hat, said through the microphone, "Let's give these little folks a big, big hand!" Rourke held his cup in his teeth a moment and applauded, then kept moving toward the woman with the unsmiling face.

Slower country music started to play and the crowd started splitting up.

Rourke cut easily through the wave of people now, some of them gravitating toward the edge of the square, some pairing off and dancing to the music.

The woman with the unsmiling face apparently wasn't with anyone; she turned and started away. Rourke downed the rest of his Coke and tossed the cup into a trash can nearby, then called out to her. "Hey—ahh." The woman turned around.

Rourke stopped, a few feet from her, saying, "I, ahh—"

"Y'all want to dance?" she smiled.

"All right." Rourke nodded, stepping closer to her.

She slung her handbag in the crook of her left arm on its straps. Rourke took her right hand in his left, his right

arm encircling her wais*- She was about forty, pretty enough, but not a woman who seemed to try to be pretty at all.

Her face was smiling, but not her eyes.

"Who are you?" She smiled, coming into his arms.

"John—my name's John," he told her.

"You're carrying a gun, John," she whispered, her head close to his chest.

"I read a lot of detective stories. I'm the librarian. I know."

"You oughta read more," he told her softly. "I'm carrying two."

"Ohh—all right, John."

"Hasn't anyone heard about World War III here?" he asked her, smiling as they danced their way nearer the blue-grass band.

"If anyone else heard you mention the war, John, the same thing would happen to you that happened to all the rest of them. We'll talk later, at my place."

"Ohh." Rourke nodded. He wondered who the rest of them had been. As he held the woman's hand when they danced, he automatically feit her pulse; it was rapid and strong. . . .

Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy stepped down from the aircraft to the sodden tarmac of the runway surface. "The weather—it is insane," he shouted to the KGB man with him.

"Yes, Comrade Colonel." THe man nodded, offering an umbrella, but the rain—chillingly cold—had already soaked him, and Rozhdestvenskiy watched, almost amused, as a strong gust of wind caught up the umbrella and turned it inside out.

He shook his head, and ran through the puddles toward the waiting au tomobile. He read the name on it as he entered. "Suburban." He ran the name through his head—it was a type of Chevrolet. . . .

The ride had taken longer than Rozhdestvenskiy had anticipated because he had been unable to use a helicopter. But as the large Chevy wagon stopped, he felt himself smiling—it had been worth the wait.

There was already a searchlight trained on the massive bombproof doors—they had been bombproof at least. They were wide apart now, gaping into darkness beyond.

"Mt. Lincoln," Rozhdestvenskiy murmured. The presidential retreat.

He stepped out and down, into the mud.

"Comrade Colonel," the solicitous officer, who had tried the umbrella, said as he joined Rozhdestvenskiy in the mud.

"It is all right, Voskavich—do not trouble over the mud. The facility is secured?"

"Yes, Comrade Colonel—there were no prisoners." The KGB officer smiled.

"I wanted prisoners."

"They were all dead when we arrived, Comrade. A fault in the air-circulation system. The bodies, were, ahh . . ." The younger man let the sentence hang.

"Very well—they were all dead, then." Rozhdestvenskiy dismissed the idea.

"We will enter—it is safe to do so then?"

"Yes, Comrade Colonel." He extracted from under his raincoat two gas masks.

"This is for—"

"The bodies, Comrade Colonel—they have not all been removed as yet and—"

"I understand." Rozhdestvenskiy nodded. He ran his fingers through his soaking hair as he started toward the entrance, nodding only at salutes—he was dressed in civilian clothes—and stopping before the steel doors. "You were able to penetrate these?"

"One of the particle-beam weapons ordered here by the late Colonel Karamatsov, Comrade. It was brought here for this purpose I presume?"

"Partly. It is sensitive material that we cannot discuss here in the open.

It was efficient," Rozhdestvenskiy said, looking at the doors and feeling genuinely impressed. The entire central section of both doors looked to have been vaporized.

He ran his fingers through his hair again, pulled on the gas mask, and popped the cheeks, blowij^out to seal it; then he started forward with a hand torch given him by the younger KGB officer. Through the gas mask, hearing the odd sound of his own voice, he said, "You will lead the way for me, Voskavich."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel." The younger man was a captain and Rozhdestvenskiy decided that the man had no intention of remaining one.

"You have done well, Voskavich. Rest assured, your superiors are aware of your efficiency."

"Thank you, Comrade," the younger man enthused. "Be careful here, Comrade—a wet spot and you might slip."

Rozhdestvenskiy nodded, staring ahead of them. There was a lagoon; or at least there appeared to be one in the darkness of the massive cave inside the mountain.

"We have boats, Comrade Colonel. The Americans used them I believe to inspect the lagoon and we must use them to cross it. This was a service entrance and the most direct route to the presidential suite is—"

"I know, Voskavich; I, too, have read these plans until they were something I dreamed about. We shall take one of the boats—Charon."

Rozhdestvenskiy laughed at his own joke—the boatman to take him across the river Styx.

But Voskavich was not the boatman; another KGB man, a sergeant, was running the small outboard. Rozhdestvenskiy climbed aboard from the lagoon shoreline, reassessing his nomenclature in terms of the American language. This would not be a lagoon, but rather a lake because of its progressively greater depth. A man-made lake? he wondered. None of his readings of intelligence reports dealing with Mt. Lincoln had ever

indicated the origin of the waters there.

There was a small spotlight jury-rigged to (he helm of the large rowboat; and between that and the flashlights both Rozhdestvenskiy and Voskavich held, there was ample light to see the even surface of the waters. At its widest, Rozhdestvenskiy judged the lake to be perhaps three-quarters of a mile across. He leaned back as best he could; he liked boat rides, despite wearing the gas mask, despite the lighting. When he someday returned a hero to the Soviet Union, he had decided, he would get a boat and a house on the Black Sea. There were many beautiful women there, and somehow beautiful women seemed especially fond of influential KGB officers.

And influential he would be if he were able to solidify all the speculations regarding the Eden Project, and thereby eliminate this last potential U.S. threat. He favored the most popular theory—that the Eden Project was a doomsday device. The Americans had always been kind and careful people so if they had a doomsday device encircling the globe now, there would be some way of deactivating it in the event it had been launched by mistake. He would find that way of deactivating it, then be the hero.

It was simple.

He even knew where to look for the plans for the device. Part of Mt.

Lincoln held a filing room containing duplicates of the most highly classified war-related documents, for the reference of the president. It was there that this most classified of documents would be kept— there that he would find his answer.

Rozhdestvenskiy felt the motorized rowboat bump

against the far shore of the lake. The ride was over. . . .

Rozhdestvenskiy felt like a graverobber, like an unscrupulous archeologist invading the tomb of a once-great Pharaoh—and perhaps it was a Pharaoh's tomb, the tomb of the last real president of the United States. He discounted this Chambers; he had taken the power, but by all reports from the late quisling Randan Soames, Chambers had taken the power reluctantly.

The power had not been given him as it was to other American presidents—such a strange custom, Rozhdestvenskiy thought as he shone the light of the torch across the gaping mouth of a partially decomposed U.S.

Marine. To hold free elections and trust the mass of the people to select a leader who was accountable to them.

"No wonder they didn't prevail," Rozhdestvenskiy murmured.

Voskavich asked, "Comrade Colonel?"

"The Americans—their absurd ideas of doing things— it accounts handily for their failure." The thought crossed his mind, though, that Soviet troops were now retreading to regroup for the fight against American Resistance on the eastern seaboard. Their failure had not yet been completely recognized.

Voskavich stepped across the body of the dead Marine, saying, "These men were trapped here—perhaps locked inside."

"That is not the American way. They were probably happy to have died in the service of their country. Give the devihhis due, Voskavich."

Rozhdestvenskiy picked his way over the bodies, seeing ahead of him at the end of a long corridor what he thought was the room.

It recalled the Egyptian tomb analogy to his mind— fhese Marines, priests of the order, guardians of the Pharaoh, who was their high priest. The priests of De

mocracy—an outmoded religion, Rozhdestvenskiy thought. But he did not smile. Despite himself, he was saddened to see the death masks o[ these priests, the anguish, the sorrow, the shock. He wondered what loved ones they had left behind, what dreams they had held dear. They were young, all of them, these priests.

He stopped before the "temple." There was a combination lock on the vault like doors, "I shall need experts in this sort of thing—immediately,"

Rozhdestvenskiy ordered.

"Yes, Comrade Colonel," Voskavich answered, starting to leave. The younger man paused, turning to Rozhdestvenskiy. "Should I leave you here, Comrade?"

"The dead cannot hurt me," Rozhdestvenskiy told him. Voskavich left then and Rozhdestvenskiy stood amid the bodies, by the sealed doors, studying the faces.

In not one of them could he find disillusionment. They had died for something important—what was it? Rozhdestvenskiy wondered. . . .

A sergeant, a corporal and two lieutenants had labored over the locking system ofthedoors,formorelhanahalf hour, and now Voskavich turned to him, saying, "Comrade Colonel—they are ready."

Rozhdestvenskiy only nodded, then touched his black-gloved right hand to the door handle, twisting it. Pulling it open toward him, he shone his light inside. He felt like Carter at the discovery of Tutankhamen. No golden idols were here, but file cabinets, unopened, unlike the ones in other parts of the complex. There was no pile of charred papers and microfilm rolls in the center of the floor.

"No tomb robbers have beaten us»" he remarked,

then stepped inside. He walked quickly through thedark-ness, the light of his torch showing across the yellow indexes on the file drawers.

He found the one he wanted—the ones. There were six file drawers marked "Project ,-C/RS." He opened the top drawer to pull out the abstract sheets at the front of the file. He read them, then closed his eyes, suddenly very tired.

"Voskavich, these drawers are not to be looked in. I will need carts for removing the contents after they have been boxed. Bring the cartons here and I will do that personally."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy,' Voskavich answered.

"Leave me here—alone." And Rozhdestvenskiy, when the last one of them had left, switched off his torch and stood in the darkness beside the file drawers. He knew now what the Eden Project was. The Americans never ceased to amaze him.

"I wasn't born here. Most of the rest of them were, and their parents were born here, too, and before that," the woman told him.

"What the hell does that mean, lady?" Rourke asked her, exasperated, smiling as he spoke through tightly clenched teeth while the men and women and children of the town who had made up the knot of humanity in the town square were now breaking up, going home.

"My name's Martha Bogen." She smiled.

"My question wasn't about your name. Don't these people—"

'That's right, Abe." She smiled, saying the last words loudly, a knot of people coining up to them, stopping. She looked at a pretty older woman at the center of a group of people roughly in their sixties, Rourke judged.

She said, "Marion—this is my brother, Abe Collins. He finally made it here to join me!"

"Ohh," the older woman cooed. "Martha, we're so happy for you—to have your brother with you. Ohh— Abe," she said, extending a hand Rourke took. The hand was clammy and cold. "It's so wonderful to meet you after all this time. Martha's younger brother. I hope we'll

see you in church tomorrow."

"Well, I had a hard ride____I'll try though." Rourke smiled.

"Good! I know you and Martha have so much to talk about." The older woman smiled again.

Rourke was busy shaking hands with the others, and as they left, he smiled broadly at Martha Bogen, his right hand clamping on her upper left arm, the fingers boring tightly into her flesh. "You give me some answers—now."

"Walk me home, Abe, and I'll try." She smiled, the smile genuine, Rourke thought.

"I'll get my bike; it's at the corner." He gestured toward it, half-expect ing that in the instant since he'd last looked for it someone had taken it. But it was there, untouched. "I suppose you've got a fully operational gas station, too?"

"Yes. You can fill up tomorrow. You should stay here tonight—at my house.

Everyone will expect it."

"Why?" Rourke rasped.

"I told them you were my brother—of course." She smiled again, taking his arm and starting with him through the ever-thinning crowd.

"Why did you tell them that?"

"If they knew you were a stranger, then they'd have to do something." She smiled, nodding to another old lady as they passed her.

Rourke smiled and nodded, too, then rasped, "Do what?"

"The strangers—most of them didn't want to stay."

"Nobody's going to think I'm your brother. That was so damned transparent—"

"My brother was coming. He's probably dead out there

like everybody else. God knows how you survived."

"A lot of us survived—not everyone's dead."

"I know that, but it must be terrible out there—a world like that."

"They know Fm not your brother."

"I know they do," Martha Bogen said, "but it won't matter—so long as you pretend."

Rourke shook his head, looking at her, saying, his voice low, "Pretend—what the hell is going on here?"

"I can't -explain it well enough for you to understand, Abe—"

"It's John. I told you that."

"John. Walk me home, then just sleep on the couch; it looks like there's bad weather outside the valley tonight. Then tomorrow with a good meal in you—not just those terrible hot dogs—well, you can decide what you want to do."

Rourke stopped beside his bike. "I won't stay—not now," he told her, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, telling him something more than he could imagine was wrong.

"Did you see the police on the way into town—John?"

"So what?" He looked at her.

ffThey let anyone in, but they won't Jet you out. And at night you won't stand a chance unless you know the valley. I know the valley. Before he died, my husband used to take me for long walks. He hunted the valley a lot—white-tailed deer. I know every path there is."

Rourke felt the corners of his mouth downturning. "How long ago did your husband die?"

"He was a doctor. You have hands like a doctor, John. Good hands. He died five years ago. There was an influenza outbreak in the valley and he worked himself

half to death; children, pregnant women—all of them had it. And he caught it and he died."

"I'm sorry, Martha," Rourke told her genuinely. "But J cant stay."

"We have twelve policemen and they work twelve-hour shifts lately—six men on and six off. Can you fight twelve policemen to get out of town—into a storm?" She stroked his face with her right hand. "You need a shave. I'll bet a hot shower would be good, and a warm bed."

Her face flushed, then she added, "In the guest room, I meant."

Rourke nodded. There was no strategic reserve site for more than a hundred miles, and Rourke knew that he needed gasoline. The slow going in the storm had depleted his tanks. "That gas station really has gas?" he asked her.

"You can even use my credit card, John, if you don't have any money."

Rourke looked at her, speechless. "Credit card?" The gasoline—without it he couldn't press the search for Sarah and the children. "All right, Martha, I'll accept your generous invitation. Thank you." His skin crawled when he said it.

Tildie's breath came in clouds of heavy steam. On a rise overlooking Lake Hartwell, Sarah reined the sweating animal in. Beneath her horse's hoofs was South Carolina and on the far shore, Georgia. In the distance, to her left, she could make out the giant outline of the dam through the swirling snow. And below her, on the lake, was a large flat-bottomed houseboat.

Smoke drifted from a small chimney in the center of the houseboat's roof.

She looked behind her at Michael and Annie, freezing with the cold; at Sam, John's horse before the war and now she supposed more realistically Michael's horse. The animal was shuddering as large clouds of steam, like those Tildie exhaled, gushed from its nostrils. "Michael, where'd you get that knife?" "One of the children on the island—he gave it to me." Sarah didn't know what to say. Her son had just stabbed at a man trying to hurt him, trying to hurt his sister. "You did the right thing, using it—but be careful with it." She couldn't quite bring herself to tell him that she wanted to take it away from him. tfJust be careful with it. We'll talk about it later."

"All right," he said—slightly defensively, she thought.

beneath it slick and wet and like polished ice.

When she reached the base of the rise, the houseboat was less than thirty feet away.

There were no mooring lines, but there were trees nearby that woulddo, she calculated. The houseboat rose and fell with the meager tide, edgingin toward the shore and away. Sarah visually searched the hank. At one place the houseboat's gunwales were three feet away from the edge when the Hat-bottomed craft drifted in. Sarah skidded down, along the red clay toward this spot, secured her rifle, then waited, wiping imaginary sweat from her palms as she rubbed her gloved hands along her thighs.

The houseboat was easing in. Sarah jumped, her hand reaching out for the line of rope that formed the rail, grabbing at it. The rope, ice-coated, slipped from her fingers.

She twisted her body, arching her back, throwing her weight forward, crashing her arms down across the rope, falling, heaving over the raiJ and sprawling across the ice-coated deck.

She lay there a moment, catching her breath, her belly aching where the butt of the Government Model Colt had slammed against it as she fell. She rolled onto her side, giving a brave wave toward the children, still watching her from atop the rise. But she didn't call out because of the smoke in the houseboat chimney—there had to be people aboard.

Sarah tried standing up, but the deck was too slippery for her and she fell, catching herself on her hands, the butt of the AR-slamming into the deckboards. She crawled on hands and knees toward the door leading inside.

Sarah looked at the houseboat again. "I'm going to see. if there's anyone aboard that houseboat—if maybe wecan find shelter with them. Michael, you and Annie stay here. Don't come after me. If it looks like I'm in trouble . . . then . . ." She didn't know what to tell him. Finally she said, "Use your ownjWgment. But wait until I come for you or you see Vm in trouble.

Understood?" rtYe$, I understand," he told her. She knew he understood; whether he would do as she asked was another question. "And watch out behind you—for those people." She didn't know what else to call the wild men and women who had attacked them.

She stepped down from Tildie, her rear end suddenly cold from leaving the built-up warmth of the saddle. She handed Michael Tildie's reins. "Hold her. I'm going down there to look."

Sarah settled the AR-across her back, on its sling, then thought better of it. She took the rifle off and held it in her right hand, a fresh thirty-round magazine in place, the chamber loaded already. Her pistol, John's pistol, was freshly reloaded and back against her abdomen under her clothes. It was starting to rust a great deal; she didn't know what to do to stop it except to oil the gun.

With her gloved left hand she tugged at the blue-and-white bandanna on her hair, pulling it down where it had slipped up from covering her left ear.

She smiled at the children. "I love you both. Michael. Take care of Annie." She started down from the rise, toward the houseboat. It appeared as though there were no moorings, that something like a tide was forcing the boat toward shore.

She hurried as best she could, slipping several times where the iced-over gravel was still loose, the red clay

She stopped beside the closed door and reaching around behind her, got the AR-and worked the selector to full auto. Reaching up to it, she tried the door handle. It opened under her hand, swinging outside to her left.

Not entering, she looked inside. A man and a woman lay on the bed at the far corner of the large room, the sheets around them stained; the smell assailed her nose. They were locked in each other's arms, their bodies blue-veined and dead.

"They killed themselves," she murmured, resting her head against the doorjamb.

Sarah Rourke wept for them—and for herself.

Settling his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, Paul Rubenstein pulled down the bandanna covering his face as he slowed the Harley, the snow under it slushy and wet. He looked up, and for a brief instant could see a patch of blue beyond the fast scudding gray clouds.

"It is breaking up," Natalia said from behind him.

'"Bout time." He smiled. He suddenly had the realization of the air temperature on his face. rtMust be twenty degrees warmer than it was when we broke camp," he told her, looking over his right shoulder at her.

"We should be getting into my territory soon, Paul— there may not be time," she began.

"I know; give John your love, right?"

He felt the Russian woman punch him in the back. "Yes." He heard her laugh. "And this is for you." And he felt her hands roughly twisting his head around, her face bumped his glasses as she kissed him full on the lips. "I won't ask you to give that to John—that was for you." She smiled.

"Look, you don't have to—"

"To go back to my people? John and I went over that. I have to. I'm a Russian—no matter how good my English

is, no matter how much I can sound or look like an American. I'm a Russian. What I feel for John, what I feel for you as my friend—that will never change. But being what I am won't change either."

"You know you're fighting on the wrong side," Rubenstein told her, suddenly feeling himself not smiling.

"If I said the same thing to you, would you believe me? I don't mean believe that I believed it, but believe it inside yourself?"

"No," Rubenstein said flatly.

'Then the same answer ior you, Paul. No. My people have done a great deal of harm, but so have yours. With good men like my uncle, perhaps I can do something—* to-"

"Make the world safe for Communism?" He laughed.

She laughed, too, saying through her laughter, "You're not the same barefoot boy from the Big Apple that I met long ago, Paul."

He was deadly serious when he said to her, "And you're not the same person you pretended to be then. I'll tell you what your problem is. You grew up believing in one set of ideals and you've been realizing what you believed in all that time was wrong. Karamatsov was the Communist, the embodiment of—"

"I won't listen anymore, Paul." She smiled,*touching her fingers to his lips.

"All right." He smiled, kissing her forehead as she leaned against his chest for a moment. "Just think what a team you and John would make," he told her then.

She looked up at him, her eyes wet. "Fighting? Always fighting? Brigands or some other enemies?"

"That's not what I meant. You can find other ways to

be invincible together." He laughed because he'd sounded so serious, so philosophical.

"He—he can't. And I can't."

"What if he never finds Sarah?"

"He will," she told him flatly.

Paul said again, "What if he never finds Sarah? Would you marry him?"

"That's none of your business, Paul," she said, then smiled.

"I know it isn't—but would you?"

"Yes," she said softly, then started to fumble in her bag. She took out a cigarette and a lighter, then plunged the tip of the cigarette into the flame with what looked to Rubenstein like a vengeance.

"Stay where you are. Raise your hands and you will not be harmed!"

Rubenstein looked ahead of them—a half-dozen Russian soldiers, greatcoats stained with snow, and at their head a man he guessed was an officer. "You are under arrest. Lay down your arms!"

She said it in English—he guessed so he could understand. "I am Major Natalia Tiemerovna,"—Rubenstein thought he detected her voice catch for an instant before she added, "of the Committee for State Security of the Soviet."