it was the name he recalled from the memorized list originally given Paul Rubenstein by Captain Reed. The captain of Stargazer II was supposed to be Cal Summers, the local Army Intelligence contact. Rourke hoped that hadn't changed. He tossed down the match and started walking along the dock, the cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes.
There was a man working on the deck. It was early enough that the fishermen of the area hadn't all left yet, and Rourke understood the fuel situation was such that not all boats were allowed out of port each day. Fishing in the surviving coastal towns, Rourke had been told by Reed and confirmed through casual conversation with others he had met, was a vital industry—
given another year, the average American survivor of the Night of the War would be starving to death. When the Russians had bombed the center of the country into a nuclear desert, they had also destroyed much of America's prime growing areas. The loss of California and the Imperial Valley's fruit and vegetable crops had been an added disaster. Florida had been so heavily bombed that very little could be grown there. Rourke shook his head. With famine would come even more violence.
He stopped on the pier just behind the aft section of Stargazer II. There was a man standing under the canopy, working near the controls. "Excuse me," Rourke shouted over to him.
"What'd you do?" the man answered without looking around.
Rourke smiled, hunching his shoulders against the gathering wind. Without his leather coat, the cowboy shirt he wore suddenly felt inadequate. "I'm coming aboard. You Captain Cal Summers?" Rourke asked, stepping down from the pier and into the boat.
The man turned around, and as he did Rourke's eyes drifted to the man's belt line. There was no bulge, but the sweater had pulled up slightly as the man moved.
"Git off my boat, fella," the man in the sweater stated flatly.
"If you're Cal Summers, we've got business," Rourke went on, his voice low, even.
"I'm Cal Summers, but I ain't got no business with you, fella. Now go on— git!"
Rourke took a step forward, glancing over his shoulder, leading with his right hand, certain no one was watching. As the man in the sweater started to move, Rourke's left hand reached out, scooping at the butt of the gun under the sweater.
The gun was in his hand as Cal Summers started to react, but Rourke had already dodged, moving back toward the stern of the boat.
Rourke held the gun close in front of him, saying half to himself, "Smith & Wesson 66
21/2, with a Barami Hip Grip— not bad."
Cal Summers took a step toward him and Rourke raised the muzzle of the stubby-barreled stainless steel revolver. Summers stopped. Rourke glanced over his shoulder, making certain again that no one was watching, then over-ended the gun in his left hand, not really making a full spin. He reached the gun out for Summers to take the black butt.
Summers, his eyes shifting from right to left, snatched the gun and rammed it into his waistband, under his sweater. "What the hell you want? Who are you?"
"Let's go inside," Rourke told him. "Not out here."
"Below deck then," the man said, his eyes wary.
Cal Summers started below first, and Rourke, glancing left, then right, followed him down.
Chapter 12
Sarah Rourke stopped, a gust of wind catching at her skirt, her body cold in the sudden chill. She looked down along the pier. At the far end she could see the name Kleinschmidt had told her to look for— the Ave Maria. It looked awfully big to her, but she walked along the pier, determined to see it up close anyway. There were many boats, looking to belong to fishermen, ranked one beside the other; only a few of the slots along the pier were empty. Few of the craft showed anyone near them.
She stopped again, staring— a shiver coursing up her spine, but not from the cold. It had been the cowboy hat she decided. John had worn one just like that sometimes. She wondered what a man wearing a tannish-gray Stetson was doing going down into a fishing boat. There was something about the set of the shoulders as the man had moved his head quickly after glancing over his right shoulder, a familiarity as he had stood there a moment peering down into the cabin.
"Eerie," she muttered, then walked on, past the boat. She glanced at the name, the tall man with the cowboy hat below deck now. The boat was called Stargazer II. As she walked on, toward the huge craft at the end of the pier, Ave Maria, she glanced over her shoulder toward the Stargazer II. But the man who'd reminded her for an instant of John Rourke was nowhere in sight.
Chapter 13
Rourke searched for a butt can or ashtray, found neither and flicked the ashes from the small cigar into his left palm.
"Now, who the hell are you?" Cal Summers leaned against the far bulkhead by the forward section of the below-deck cabin, his right hand close to the front of his pants— close to the stainless .357 Magnum under his sweater.
"My name's John Rourke. Army Intelligence gave me your name, name of the boat."
"Which army?" Summers snapped.
"Ours— or what's left of it," Rourke answered softly. "Captain Reed— know him?"
"Yeah. How do I know you do?"
"Well," Rourke said thoughtfully, "if I were a Russian, you'd have already hanged yourself."
"Bullshit— you'd be wantin' to get next to me to find out where the rest of the Resistance people are holed up."
"How close you keep in touch with U.S. II?" Rourke queried.
"None of your damned business."
Rourke smiled. "You hear about the deal when Chambers got nabbed by the Russians?"
"Maybe," Summers grunted.
"Well, hear about a guy who busted him out?"
"There was another fella with him," Summers admitted.
"Yeah, but Paul Rubenstein's down in Florida, trying to see if his parents made it through the War or not."
"Anybody can learn names," Summers snapped.
"What do you want, then?" Rourke asked.
"There was somethin' peculiar about the guy's gun," Summers began. "At least that's what I heard."
Rourke smiled. "Well, I don't know who you heard it from, but I imagine you mean 'guns'
rather than gun." Summers's expression began to soften. "I usually carry a matched pair of Stainless Detonics .45s—
left 'em back with the rest of my gear, just outside of town. That what you're lookin' for?" Rourke smiled again.
"Sorry," Summers said, taking a few steps forward across the cabin and stretching out his right hand. Rourke shook it, then Summers stepped back. "Here— I got an old butt can around here somewhere." He disappeared into what Rourke guessed was the galley, then reappeared a moment later. There was a small, round plastic ashtray in his left hand and he reached it onto the flat railing beside Rourke.