unit.”
“You think they’ll recognize you.” It was a state-ment, not a question.
“I could only do so much—putting my hair up under this,” and Rourke looked at her as she ges-tured to the scarf covering her hair, “and these glasses—” Maus had given her the glasses of a dead woman who had expired at the hospital—the woman had been farsighted and Natalia had had trouble walking when she wore them to the car. It was the reason Rourke drove and had not shared the long run with her.
“And your face—it is known to many of the KGB.”
Rourke wore a hat borrowed from the supply of old clothing kept at the Resistance headquarters, an old fedora, gray, stained. It matched the over-coat he wore.
“What are you getting at?” Rourke finally asked her, beginning to worry the car might overheat—the engine was already stalling a little as he ad-vanced another car length toward the checkpoint. He had spent a good amount of time in Chicago before The Night of The War, learned the streets. The checkpoint was at the near side of the tunnel near Hubbard Street.
“I don’t know—but maybe we should make a break for it.”
Rourke looked around them, not answering Na-talia’s question. A troop truck flanked them on the left, an M-72 motorcycle/sidecar combination on the right. “Where do you suggest we go—up?”
“I wish that we could,” she answered, lighting a cigarette—she was nervous, he realized. Perhaps it was, in part, just the very fact of be-ing in Chicago, Soviet headquarters so near. KGB
everywhere. He said to her, “If they spot us at all, it won’t be until we reach the checkpoint gate—and if it happens there, we can make a break for it then. If we do, ditch those glasses so you can see and rip out the back seat so you can get to that panel inside the truck and get at the weapons.” And then Rourke smiled, looking at her with the scarf covering her hair and the tattered raincoat that all but obscured her figure. “And if we do make a break for it, get rid of that scarf and that coat—if we wind up dying, I wanna at least have something pretty to look at while I can still look.”
She smiled, then very quickly, as if someone might see, leaned across the front seat, across the space separating them, kissing him on the cheek.
Chapter Forty-two
The checkpoint was at what, before the war, had sometimes been called Hubbard’s Cave. Rourke eased the old LTD to the gate that blocked his lane.
A green-shouldered, bearded KGB noncom ap-proached the car, Rourke rolling down his win-dow. In poor English, the man stated, “Civilian traffic is expressly forbidden after sunset—”
Rourke smiled his warmest smile, interrupting the man, “Except for medical emergencies, right?” Rourke passed the man his papers.
The man unfolded the letter Maus had signed as director of the civilian hospital in the converted gunshop and shooting range. “Hippoder mineed—”
“Hypodermic needles,” Rourke corrected. “Can’t give shots with dirty needles—hepatitis, stuff like that.”
The man unfolded Rourke’s identity papers, looking at Rourke—apparently trying to match the physical description with the face—it should match, Rourke thought. The forger had been looking at his face while counterfeiting the iden-tity papers.
“And her?” the man said.
Rourke turned to look at Natalia—fear was written across her face so that a blind man could have almost known it, he thought. She handed him her papers from the battered brown vinyl purse that had come with the old raincoat.
Rourke passed them over to the KGB noncom. “Here you go,” he smiled. “Say look—we got a lot of sick people up there—need those needles. The hypodermics.”
There had been one other risk for Maus—that if they were discovered and traced back to the hospi-tal, there would be a raid, and the Resistance headquarters destroyed. Rourke considered that now as he watched the man, studying Natalia’s forged documents, peering into the car, a flash-light in his right hand, the beam high, trained on Natalia’s face.
Rourke made a decision.
“Major Tiemerovna!”
As the man gasped her name, Rourke wrenched the LTD’s door handle—he had prepared to do it, and he slammed the door hard outward, against the abdomen of the KGB noncom, hammering the man back. Rourke reached out of the car, stepping half out of the driver’s seat, his left hand grabbing for the military flap holster on the man’s belt, his right grabbing for the papers—he had them all. The pistol—Rourke stuffed the papers into the pocket of his borrowed overcoat, worked the slide of the pistol in case a round hadn’t been cham-bered—none had. He pointed the pistol at the KGB
noncom’s face—the mouth was open to shout for aid. Rourke emptied the pistol into the man’s mouth, then threw it down to the pavement, the door not closed as he stomped the accelerator, the door slamming as it whacked against the side of the barricade, Rourke throwing the hat out the window as he ducked, shouting to Natalia, “Down!”
Gunfire shattered the rear window, bullet holes spiderwebbing the windshield in front of him, the accelerator already flat to the floor, the speedome-ter needle passing fifty and climbing fast—he’d al-ways liked eight cylinder Fords.
Chapter Forty-three
“I’m going for the guns,” Natalia shouted, Rourke shooting a glance toward her—he smiled. She had ripped away the scarf that had covered her hair, shaking her head now, freeing her hair like a wild animal, something untamed, might shake itself at the first taste of freedom. She smiled at him—they both understood what she had done. Death might be imminent.
Behind them, motorcycle/sidecar combinations were rolling, headlights bouncing as the vehicles accelerated, their noise loud in the cold night air through Rourke’s open window.
“Before you get the guns—burn these—” and Rourke fisted the papers in his overcoat pocket, making sure he had them all, handing them across to Natalia.
“Right—” She bent to the floor as he looked at her, lighting them with her cigarette lighter—the papers were on fire.
He turned his attention to the road—an auto-mobile—with Chicago Police markings obliter-ated by a red star. It was moving diagonally across the highway, cutting them off. He could hear Na-talia stamping her feet— “Nothing but ashes.”
“Now get us some guns—we got friends comin’ up on the left.”
Rourke started steering right, the police car cut-ting them off. Natalia—at the edge of his periph-eral vision he could see her going over into the back seat to start getting the weapons. The blue and white car was too close— Rourke cut the wheel hard left, shouting over the wind of the slipstream, “Hang on—collision!”
The right front fender—he could see it, hear it, feel it as it smashed against the right rear fender of the police car, the sounds of metal twisting, tear-ing, the bumper of the police car twisting up to where it was visible over the LTD’s hood, the Ford straining, dragging at the police car, Rourke accel-erating, another tearing sound, louder than be-fore—the LTD shot ahead.
In the rearview mirror he could see the police car, making a high-speed reverse, flick turning, the twisted bumper breaking off, the blue light flash-ing from the roof. There was the rattle of assault rifle fire, Rourke shouting to Natalia, “AKMs—keep low!”
The rear windshield shattered out, Rourke swerving as more gunfire poured toward them, Rourke hearing it pinging against the body of the Ford. He cut sharp right, onto a ramp—he didn’t know where he was heading, no time to look and Chicago streets and expressways not that recent a memory. He fought the wheel, shouting, “Natalia—are you all right?”