"You look at yourself in a mirror lately?" Rourke turned and walked to the partially open back door of the truck. The rain was streaming in, the floor boards were wet. Rourke had jumped down to the mud and snapped his coat collar up, then started back to the truck.
The drive had gone on then, and now as they slowly pulled into a circle for the evening camp, the rain heavier even than during the day, Rourke stared out into the darkness beyond his headlights. It had been hard to judge the height of the plateau, but the crude road leading up to it had been steep and narrow, and if Mike's woman had been right, the brigand leader's estimate of the defensive posture he would now have hadn't been off. All that needed defending was the narrow road itself, and a half-dozen well-armed men could have held the road against twenty times that number of equally well-armed attackers.
Soon, lights could be seen burning in some of the eighteen-wheelers' trailers, while others from the brigand group were erecting a variety of lean-tos and shelters on the lee side of the trailers to get as much protection as possible from the rain.
"What do we do now?" Rubenstein asked.
"Well, we can't sleep and cook and everything inside the cab here," Rourke said.
"You and I take some of those ground clothes we've been using and run a canopy out from the rear bed of the truck—we can sleep maybe in the truck bed. After we cover the bikes and everything it should be pretty dry back there." Then turning to the girl, Rourke said, "And you can keep an eye peeled while Rubenstein and I get the shelter up—huh? And stay dry."
"I can do my share of the work," she said angrily.
"I know you can," Rourke said softly. "But you're not going to." He piled out of the truck cab then and closed his leather jacket against the rain, his CAR-15
and Python still in the cab with the girl. The mud had washed off his clothes and boots from his previous sorties throughout the day into the driving rainstorm, and as he moved through the mud now beside the truck bed, he could feel his feet sinking into it, feel the rain soaking through his damp Levis and running down inside his collar.
Rubenstein was already freeing the extra tarps and ground clothes from the truck. Fighting the wind it took Rourke and the younger man several minutes to set up the covered portion of the shelter, sticking out perhaps seven feet beyond the rear of the truck and on a level as high as the sides of the truck bed itself. Days earlier when Rourke had cut wood for their first fire after finding the truck and the provisions, he'd cut small saplings and trimmed them to use as tent poles if need be, and once the "roof" of the shelter was secured and one of the sides dropped against the driving rain, it was relatively simple for him and Rubenstein to complete the ground covering and then secure the opposite sides of the shelter.
Over the roar of the rain and the rumbling of the truck engines around them, Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, "Paul—get the stuff from the truck so we can get some food going. I'll get Natalie out." Then Rourke took one of the spare ground cloths and walked around through the rain to the front of the pickup, hammered on the window with his fist and signaled to the girl to open up. Using the ground cloth like an umbrella against the rain, he helped the girl from the truck, secured his weapons and made sure the truck was locked, then, with her huddled beside him, started back toward the impromptu tent.
Rubenstein had already broken out the small Coleman stove and the Coleman lantern and was sorting through the Mountain House meal packets. Natalie found some of the fresh water and put some on to warm up, then started making some order out of the chaos of the shelter.
They ate later in relative silence, all three exhausted from the ordeal of the day. At Rourke's suggestion, they broke out another bottle of the whiskey and each drank, but only moderately. Finally, the shelter flap partially open for ventilation, as they sat beside its edge staring out into the rain, Rubenstein asked, "John—what are we gonna do now? It looks like they'll be setting up for a battle as soon as the rain slacks up."
Rourke sighed heavily, lighting one of his cigars and holding the flame of the Zippo for Natalie's cigarette. "The paramils won't be moving far in this weather—they looked less prepared for rough weather than the brigands did. I don't think we're gonna see much before this lets up, probably not for several hours afterwards. I could be wrong. I'd imagine if Mike's awake, he's putting out guards by that road, just in case. Depends on how tough the paramils are."
"We gonna try and get out?" Rubenstein asked.
"We can't," the girl said. "Not until the battle starts and if we're still up here, I don't see us getting out then."
"She's right," Rourke said. "Once the battle starts, depending on whether or not we're here, then we get out. But if we are still up here, that's going to be next to impossible. Just have to do our duty as good brigand troopers and hope the bad guys win instead of the good guys."
"The paramils are good guys?" Rubenstein asked, laughing.
"Well, I admit we had a kind of bad experience with them. But somebody's gotta go up against the brigands and it doesn't look like there's any kind of government left."
"What do you think is left?" Rubenstein queried, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.
"Probably more of Russia than there is of us," Rourke said, glancing toward the girl. "But I don't know for certain. Looks like a good deal of the country is going to be uninhabitable for a long time. Look at this weather we're having, too. It's supposed to be hot out there, but I bet the temperature is pushing down to forty or so. You notice the sunsets? Each night they've been a little redder. All that crap from the bomb blasts is getting up into the atmosphere and staying there."
"You mean we're all gonna die?"
As Rourke started to answer the younger man, the girl cut in, saying, "No—listen. Just trust me, because I know something about this. The radiation couldn't have done that much damage. The world is going to survive—I just know it."
Rourke looked at her, saying, "I know you know it—and it's not Natalie, is it?
At least not in the language you grew up with. Right?"
Rubenstein started getting up, saying, "What do you mean—not in the language she grew up with? You mean she's…"
"Sit down and relax, Paul," Rourke commanded, his voice low.
The girl sighed heavily, snapping the butt of her cigarette through the opening in the shelter flap and into the mud outside. "He means I'm Russian."
"Russian!"
"She's one of the top women in the KGB—the Committee for State Security—the Russian version of the CIA and FBI rolled into one," Rourke said, exhaling a cloud of the gray cigar smoke.
"What—you!" and Rubenstein started toward her, but Rourke's left hand shot out, pushing against Rubenstein's chest and knocking the younger man back. Rourke glanced down. The medium-frame automatic size four-barreled COP derringer pistol was in her right hand.
Her voice was trembling as she rasped, "Please Paul—I don't want to use this, please?"
"What do you mean?" the younger man said. "You mean after all we've been through together, after the way you lied to us? We saved your life, lady!"
"I didn't ask you to come along and find me. I don't mean any harm to either of you—I almost love you both—please, Paul!"
Rubenstein was starting to get to his feet. Rourke— almost in one motion—pushed Rubenstein back and twisted the COP pistol out of the girl's hand, saying, "Now both of you—knock it off!"
"Knock it off?" Rubenstein demanded, his lips drawn back in a strange mixture of incredulity and anger. He pushed the glasses off the bridge of his nose, saying, "It's not enough that the Russians have destroyed the world practically, they killed millions of Americans—yeah, knock it off! What about you, John? You gonna knock it off? Just 'cause you miss your wife and you think maybe she's dead and this one comes along and she's a knockout and she's got the hots for you to get into her pants? What—you think I'm blind? She's a goddamned communist agent, John!" and Rubenstein was shouting.