“Her name is—”
The black man looked up—there was anger in his eyes, but surprise too— “Sarah Rourke—”
Rourke did something he rarely did.
His hands stopped shaking. He lowered the hammer on the little .22 Magnum and shifted it to his left hand.
With his right hand, John Thomas Rourke made the sign of the Cross.
Chapter Ten
The black Resistance fighter’s name was Tom—he said Annie was “the cutest little girl he’d ever seen,”
and that Michael was more man than boy, pulling his weight, and that Sarah was a tough fighter, an angel of mercy—what held them to-gether since the loss of David Balfry.
Rourke had said nothing about the Mulliner boy.
And he walked now, his Harley left behind him with the man named Tom—he had told the man he was the quietest man he had never heard. But Rourke put being surprised down more to himself than to Tom’s skills—his mind had been else-where, his reactions turned off. Had Tom been a Brigand, or a Russian—he would have been dead.
He walked on.
He could see Sarah’s figure growing in defini-tion as he bridged the gap of distance between the depression’s overlook and the farmyard near the white corral fence. Her dark brown hair was all but obscured by what looked like a bandanna handkerchief. She wore a light blue shirt of some kind—it looked like a T-shirt. She looked, from the distance at least, like she looked when she worked in her studio, or about the house.
He walked on.
A small child, near a man propped beside a tree—too small, the child was, to be Michael. It was Annie. She looked like a miniature of her mother.
Where was Michael?
He walked on, a thin, dark tobacco cigar in the left corner of his mouth, clenched tight between his teeth. He lit it with cupped hands around his Zippo against the cool wind blowing up from the direc-tion of the burned-out farm.
The CAR-15 was across his back, slung diago-nally cross-body from his left shoulder. The musette bag on his right side whacked out and back against his body as he took long strides, even strides in his combat-booted feet. The binoc-ular case swayed and thumped at his right side, against the Pachmayr gripped butt of his Python there in the flap holster.
In the small of his back, where he’d placed it when he’d seen the Russians, was the two-inch barreled Colt Lawman .357—the one he’d used to shoot the Brigand leader in that first confronta-tion after the massacre of the passengers from the airliner he had landed—less than perfectly—in the desert outside Albuquerque.
The black chrome Sting IA knife was tucked inside the waistband of his Levis on his left side. He was barely conscious of the weight of the twin stainless Detonics pistols under his armpits beneath the battered brown leather bomber jacket.
He walked on.
The musette bag was heavy—he felt its weight. Spare magazines for the CAR-15. On his gunbelt, he carried the holstered Python. Hanging from his trouser belt, was the Sparks Six-Pack with loaded Detonics magazines, the Six-Pack a gift from the submarine commander, Gunderson. He inhaled the smoke into his lungs—memo-ries.
Natalia’s face. Paul’s face—memories he could feel now.
The future was about to turn around, to notice him—he could feel it as it started at the growingly clear image of his wife, Sarah Rourke.
He walked on.
Chapter Eleven
“Momma?”
Half the women and a small percentage of the men in the world would react to the name, Sarah Rourke thought, turning around, seeing her son coming up from the bunker.
“Momma?”
“What is it, Michael?” and she felt herself smile.
But she saw past him, past his tall, straight little body, beyond the tousled brown hair that never stayed combed, beyond the brown eyes sometimes sparkling with curiosity, sometimes dull with wea-riness. She saw a figure of a man, a man, tall, straight, dark hair like her son’s hair, the wind catching it. There was an assault rifle slung from his body under his right arm—she could barely detect the shape of the barrel—it was across his back.
“Your father always carried a rifle like that—it never looked comfortable to—”
She stopped, staring.
She said it again. “Your father—your—Mi-chael—.” She was barely whispering. He looked at her, then to where Annie was still pretending to read to the injured Resistance fighter, and then he looked behind him, beyond the gutted frame of the farmhouse.
“Daddy—”
Michael started to run.
Sarah looked—like a reaction—to Annie. An-nie had dropped the book, was pulling the ban-danna from her hair, her honey-colored hair caught in the wind as she ran. “Daddy!”
Sarah Rourke closed her eyes. “Please, Jesus—let it work—please,” she whispered. Sarah Rourke ran, toward the tall, dark-haired man in the leather jacket, shouting across the field,
“John!”
Chapter Twelve
John Rourke started to run, toward the woman outdistancing the two children—toward Sarah, Michael, Annie. Sarah wasn’t wearing a bra—he could tell that, because as she ran her fists were balled up and tucked up under her chest—she al-ways ran like that if she just wore a shirt or blouse and no bra. Michael—he was taller, bigger-look-ing than he had been—fine-looking. Annie—her hair was longer, her smile something he had never forgotten.
As he ran, he stripped the CAR-15 from his shoulder, holding the rifle now by the pistol grip, almost like a balance pole for an acrobat. He could hear her—”John!” Rourke shouted the word: “Sarah!” He threw himself into the run, hearing the chil-dren screaming to him, his eyes riveting to Sarah’s face—one hundred yards now, ninety yards—”Sarah—” eighty yards, the tall grass in the field parting like an ocean wave in front of his feet, his mouth open gulping air, his hands out at his sides, the rifle weightless to him in his clenched right fist.
Twenty-five yards—he ran, Sarah’s face clear to him, her right hand reaching up and tugging away the bandanna covering her head, her hair falling into the wind longer than he had seen it for years—ten yards. Five—
John Rourke swept his wife into his arms, their mouths finding each other, Rourke crushing her against him, feeling her body mold to his.
He buried his face in her neck for a moment, kissing her, inhaling her—
He kissed her hair as she pressed her head against his chest.
He looked down—Michael and Annie— “Daddy!” It was Annie, the smile. John Rourke dropped to his knees, losing the CAR-15 in the high grass, folding his son and his daughter into his body—Sarah fell to her knees, her arms about his neck, holding him tight as he held the children.
“Daddy—” It was Michael—
John Rourke cried.
Chapter Thirteen
She was exhausted, but she was careful—not to show it. Because Paul Rubenstein seemed even more exhausted and the seriousness of his wound sustained at the hands of the Wildmen was some-thing that worried her. It would heal well, but there had been much blood loss—the Wildman’s spear had impaled Rubenstein’s arm, and it had been some time before medical treatment had been available. She killed the red light switch and stepped in be-hind Paul, into the Retreat.
“No need to close the inside door,” Paul told her, leaning heavily against the natural rock beside the interior entrance door, the lights on in the Great Room now, his hand beside the switch. “Welcome home,” he told her, looking at her, smiling.
“Paul—why don’t I change your bandages—and make you comfortable—there’s nothing that heavy that I can’t load it into the truck— “