Rourke stepped beside Natalia. “My name’s John Rourke—if you’re Resistance like you say you are, you must know Colonel Reed—get in touch with him at U.S. II headquarters—he can vouch for us both.”
“Why?”
Rourke turned to face the voice—it was the woman from the corrugated building—she was walking toward them, holding a pistol, some kind of double-action revolver with a barrel that looked too long to be comfortably carried. She kept talking. “So you can get your Commie friends to get a fix on our radio, or maybe get a fix on U.S. II? Fuckin’ rot in hell, mister—”
“It’s not mister,” Natalia said, Rourke shocked by the calm suddenly in her voice. “It’s Doctor—he’s a doctor of medicine, and I’m a major in the KGB—but if the KGB were to find me, they’d likely kill me. General Varakov—he is my uncle, and we go to see him—he is helping to fight the KGB.”
“You’re crazy, lady—and if he’s a doctor, then he’s your psychiatrist,” the woman with the long-barrel revolver from the corrugated build-ing laughed, the laugh almost a cackle.
“Then I will kill you,” Natalia said. “It is not Natalie, my name—it is Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, major, Committee for State Secu-rity of the Soviet. I have told the truth.” Natalia raised her M-16, the rifle in both hands, her legs spread wide apart, the muzzle of the rifle aimed at the woman with the long-barreled revolver.
Rourke rasped, “Contact Colonel Reed—and take a look at this—I’ll move slow.” Rourke reached to Natalia’s right holster, opening the flap there, the M-16 swinging free on its sling, the CAR-15 across his back. He set down the ammo box, taking the second revolver from the holster on Natalia’s left hip. He heard someone cock a weapon in the crowd of Resistance fighters. Rourke rolled both revolvers in his hands, butts forward, walking toward the woman with the long-barreled revolver, walking slowly.
The woman looked down at his hands.
Rourke could feel Natalia’s eyes boring into him.
Rourke stopped less than two feet from the woman with the long-barreled revolver—she was evidently one of the leaders, but not the first in command, he guessed.
Rourke held the perfectly matched .357s butts forward, showing the woman the twin revolvers. “The American Eagle on the barrel flat here of the revolver in my left hand. They were made for Sam Chambers by a guy named Ron Mahovsky, a company called Metalife Industries. Ma-hovsky—before The Night of The War—he was one of the top revolver smiths in the country. Sam Chambers gave these revolvers to her—to Natalia, Major Tiemerovna, because he didn’t have a medal to give her. When the quakes hit Florida—you heard about that?”
The woman nodded.
“If it hadn’t been for Major Tiemerovna, thousands more of American lives would have been lost—and President Chambers knew that. Take a look at these yourself,” Rourke said, holding the revolvers out toward the woman, butts presented toward her. “And be careful, ma’am—they’re loaded.”
His eyes watched the woman’s eyes. She looked at the guns Rourke offered her, at her own revolver—Rourke knew what it was now, a Smith & Wesson Model 10 M&P with six-inch barrel, just a .38 Special. The woman dropped the gun into a too small holster on her right thigh, the bottom of the holster cut out, two inches of barrel protruding through it.
She reached for both revolvers at once.
He’d seen his cowboy heroes do it in countless movies when he had been a boy. He did it now—the road agent spin, edging his trigger fingers into the guards, letting the revolv-ers roll inward, away from his palms, snapping his hands up as the guns moved, the revolvers twirling on their trigger guards, both gun butts dropping into his fists, his thumbs working back the hammers instinctively—he had practiced the trick with single-action semi-autos, used it a time or two—and both pistols moving, Rourke himself moving.
He was beside the woman, slightly behind her, the pistol in his left hand, its muzzle finding the underside of her chin, ramming up against the flesh, the gun in his right hand at the side of her body, pointed at the man with the Mini-14, Mor-ris Dumbrowski—Natalia had wheeled, her M-16 pointed toward the Resistance fighters who had come from the far side of the field.
It had taken perhaps a second, and Rourke, his voice loud, shouted, “She gets it first, and then you Dumbrowski—I’m telling the truth, so’s the major—take us to Resistance headquar-ters and a radio and Reed will back us up, or Chambers himself.”
“You telling us—” Dumbrowski began. “You tellin’ us, that you’ve got some kinda mission—that U.S. II—”
“U.S. II didn’t send us—my uncle sent for us,” Natalia called out. “But he’s a decent man. There is something gone wrong—something wrong for all of us—and he thinks that Doctor Rourke and I can do something to stop it—that is why we come here.”
“And we could use your help—the Resist-ance’s help—getting into the city—to get to him.”
The woman Rourke held in his arms, the woman he held a gun to, coughed, saying, “You want us to help you reach General Varakov?”
“It’s the only way—maybe. What’s it going to be—we all shoot each other here and now for nothing, or you check out our story?”
“Throw your guns down then,” Dumbrowski shouted.
“We keep our guns—no other way,” Rourke shouted back.
It was the woman—Rourke had been wrong—who was the leader. She raised her voice, shout-ing across the field, “Put your guns away—but keep an eye on both of them—we’re going to the base,” and her hands came up, touched at the barrel of the revolver under her chin and gently, slowly, moved it aside.
Rourke let go of her, the woman turning to face him. “I’m Emily Bronkiewicz—our leader was killed three weeks ago—I was his wife. I’m the leader now. Stay with us, close, or we’ll open fire.”
And her eyes drifted to the revolver in Rourke’s left hand, the gun held diagonally away from him. “You were right about the American Eagle—but now let’s see if the guns were really a gift—and if you’re telling the truth, we’ll help if we can. If you’re not, then go ahead and shoot me when you want to—but there’re enough of us to get both of you.”
Rourke lowered the hammers on both revolv-ers—slowly.
He walked past the woman, to give Natalia her guns back. He whispered to the Resistance leader,
“Don’t bet on that last part.”
Chapter Thirty-five
The base to which Emily Bronkiewicz had re-ferred was at first look a cave dug out of a slop-ing hillside, Rourke and Natalia in the middle of the Resistance group, walking stooped over through the cave by flashlight beam, a brighter light ahead, noise as well.
The tunnel abruptly stopped, Rourke sud-denly realizing he could stand to his full height, Natalia rubbing the small of her back with her hands as she did likewise.
The tunnel had ended in a building, a struc-ture largely concrete with heavily shuttered high windows—or at least Rourke assumed them to be windows—and double steel doors at the far end. The building seemed nearly a perfect square, drill presses—dust covered—and lathes and other machinery in evidence, as though pushed aside into corners of the building, the floor oil-stained in spots, large patches of it, gummy-looking as Rourke and Natalia fol-lowed Emily Bronkiewicz across the floor, diag-onally toward a cubicle-style office at the height of a dozen or so stairs that overlooked the main floor. Rourke surmised that it had once been a plant manager’s office, the place apparently at one time a machine shop. Its exact nature was hard to determine.
Others of the Resistance broke off before reaching the stairs, Rourke and Natalia continu-ing to follow Emily Bronkiewicz.