only a fool was eager to die.
He swung the rifle back at his side, thumbing the safety on, throttling out his bike. The brown-haired girl was less than ten yards ahead of him now, the Japanese bike she rode seemingly at full throttle. There was a burst of gunfire— an automatic weapon, Rourke determined— and he swerved his bike far left toward the edge of the road and the river bank. The girl ahead of him lurched— he could see the impact of the weapons-fire in the road, against the seat of the bike she rode, against her body. She slumped low over the machine, the bike weaving.
The road twisted ahead of him, Rourke keeping his Harley at full throttle in spite of it, closing the gap between himself and the wounded girl. Five yards, four, six feet, five. Three feet— he was beside her now.
Rourke swung his rifle back out of the way on the sling, then reached out with his right arm. The girl's face turned up toward him, her lips drawn back, her teeth bared against the wind, her eyes filled with fear. Rourke hooked his right arm toward her, catching her under the right armpit, his hand squeezing around her, brushing against the fullness of her breast. He cut the bike he rode left, pulling the girl from her motorcycle, shouting to her across the wind, "Get on!
Hurry!"
He could feel her moving as he fought to balance the Harley. He edged forward to give her added room, felt her suddenly behind him, her arms encircling his waist and her hands pressed against his chest. Rourke throttled out the Harley as the Japanese bike the girl had ridden zoomed toward him. It missed him and spun out over the edge of the road and past the river bank, rocketing into the water.
Both hands on the bars, Rourke cut back on his speed, making a wide right angle into the bend of the road and starting the Harley to climb. The gunfire behind him picked up in intensity. The sound of the girl's labored breathing in his left ear was somehow audible to him despite the roar of the Harley's engine. He could feel her head lolling against him and rasped, "Hold on, damn it!"
He scanned the road ahead of them— it climbed steeply and sharply out of the gorge, potholed and uneven and twisting. Rourke set his jaw and squinted against the sunlight as he gunned the bike ahead.
Chapter 2
Rourke gunned his Harley glancing over his shoulder as the Brigand gunfire crackled from behind him. Then he turned his eyes back to the sharp shoulder of the gorge straight ahead of him. The girl's breathing was hard in his ear now, the moaning of pain from her gunshot wounds unmistakable to him. His black-booted feet balancing the big bike, he hauled it up, over a hummock of ground and onto the narrow ridge. Rourke wrestled the Harley to his left and started along the shoulder of ground— the grating of truck and motorcycle gears, the belching of exhausts, the Brigand gunfire was all too near, he realized.
Rourke guided his bike along the ridge for a quarter mile, the pickups along the embankment, the Brigand motorcycles behind him. Spotting a particularly steep channel of red clay and gravel leading back down to the road, Rourke throttled back on the Harley and wheeled the machine left. He crossed less than a yard from the lead Brigand pickup truck, snatching one of the Detonics .45s into his left hand and snapping off two shots fast into the truck's windshield. As Rourke headed the bike down toward the road, ramming the cocked and locked Detonics into his belt under his jacket, he glanced to his left— the pickup truck was out of control, rolling over and careening down the embankment. Rourke gunned the Harley as the pickup truck exploded. The heat of the fireball scorched his face as he glanced back. Then he jumped the Harley onto the road.
Rourke heard the girl, her voice weak as she tried to shout: "Who are you?" Shaking his head, Rourke throttled out the bike, then glanced behind him. The Brigand bikers had already reached the road, and a second pickup crashed into the first. There was another explosion. Rourke leaned forward over his bike. The river road veered sharply upward ahead and Rourke took it, throttling down as he started into the grade. Then he increased his speed as he kept the Harley just to the right of the black top road's fading yellow line. Over seventy as he hauled the bike toward the top of the grade, Rourke let the machine out as the road leveled. Glancing behind him, he saw nearly a dozen Brigand bikers. They were coming up over the rise in pursuit, behind them a half-dozen trucks.
Rourke looked ahead, then behind again as automatic weapons fire chipped into the pavement all around him. There were men and women standing in the pickup trucks, firing assault rifles over the cab roofs. Rourke retrieved the Detonics from his belt, wiping down the safety with his right thumb, turning awkwardly in the bike saddle with the woman behind him. His right arm stretched to maximum extension; he fired the stainless .45 once, then again. One of the lead bikers swerved. Rourke fired twice more, emptying the shiny pistol. The biker spun out, up the lip of concrete on the right side of the road, the man's body soaring high into the trees. There was a scream, resonating over the crackle of gunfire as Rourke rammed the slide-opened pistol awkwardly into his belt and bent low again over his bike, taking it into a sharp, almost hairpinning curve.
The road dropped off now to the right, and at the bottom of a long-running, nearly overgrown grade was a stream. Rourke cut the bike into a hard right, dropping his speed, his feet skidding along the road surface as he pulled the bike up and over the runoff gutter, then onto the dirt of the grade. The Harley skidded under him, his right leg going out, bracing the machine as his arms strained to right the black bike between his legs. His lips drawn back, his teeth bared, Rourke shouted to the wounded girl still holding on behind him, "Hang on!"
The gunfire from behind him abruptly stopped for a moment as Rourke angled the bike diagonally across the grade. Then he looked up. Two of the pickup trucks were already starting down, trailing six of the bikers. The remaining pickups were parked along the edge of the road, and in an instant there was gunfire again from the Brigands.
Rourke turned the bike hard right to miss a deadfall tree trunk. The machine started to skid away from him, but his fists knotted on the handlebars, pulling the machine upright as he braced against its weight with his left leg, his boots dragging the ground. The bike under control again, Rourke throttled out, jumping over another deadfall and away from the grade and onto the bank of the fast-running but shallow stream. Some of the Brigand bikers had already made it down, Rourke saw now, glancing behind him. Then he throttled out and headed toward the stream. It was shallow, rocky— perfect he thought, as he cut the handlebars to his right and the bike half-jumped, half-wheeled into the water. His feet bracing the machine, he upped his speed. Icy water splashed up past his calves, spraying against his face as the front tire of the Harley sliced through the stream.
More gunfire sent bullets ricocheting off the water around him. Rourke glanced back. There were still five bikers and two trucks. Wrenching the front of the bike up hard, the machine almost wholly supported on his legs as he reached the far bank, Rourke gunned up and out of the water. Flipping off the CAR-15's safety, he swung the rifle up, his right fist wrapped on the pistol grip. He fired a two-round burst, then another and another. The lead biker's machine slammed hard against a large rock in the center of the stream, the biker soaring upward, hands clasped to his face. Rourke turned away, starting the Harley up the incline of red clay and gravel, back toward the river road.