"And what about you?" Natalia asked him suddenly.
Rourke swung the CAR-15 forward on its cross-bodied sling, the scope covers removed already, the stock extended.
He unzipped the front of his bomber jacket so he could get at his pistols. He reached into his pocket and took out the little Freedom Arms .22 Magnum Boot pistol with the three-inch barrel, the one he'd taken off the dead Brigand back in Georgia before they had met Cole, before Natalia had been wounded and they had been forced to take to the nuclear submarine, then transported under the icepack to the new west coast— before he had ever heard of wildmen.
He slipped the pistol up his left sleeve, just inside the storm-sleeved cuff.
"I'll go see what Cole wants— try to get something going with Paul and O'Neal— I'll be there."
He reached into his jeans pocket, found his Zippo lighter, turned it over in his hands a moment and flicked back the cowling, rolling the striking wheel under his thumb, making the blue-yellow flame appear, the flame flickering in the breeze as he lit the cigar clamped between his teeth.
"I'll be okay," he said. Her eyes didn't look like she believed it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rourke walked slowly ahead, having stopped for a moment at the top of the rise, looked down toward the missile bunker— a half-dozen wildmen were posted there as sentries— and then stared at the crosses. Rubenstein was still unmoving, his left arm red-stained along the entire length of the sleeve of his jacket. O'Neal had stopped moving, and Rourke saw the man's eyes at the distance— pain and fear. He kept walking.
He reached the height of the rise, beside the twin crude crosses, and stopped. He reached out with his right hand, feeling Paul's ankles for a pulse— there was one.
"Give me your guns." A wildman, large, armed with an AK-47— where he'd gotten it Rourke didn't know— stepped from the far side of the crosses and reached out his left hand.
Rourke, the cigar in the left corner of his mouth, reached up his left hand and took the cigar. He stared at the wildman's hand for a moment, cleared his throat and spit, the glob of spittle hitting the wildman's palm.
"You son of a bitch," the man snarled, Rourke sidestepping half-left and wheeling, his left foot snapping up, feigning a kick at the head, the wildman dodging to his left, Rourke's right, leaning forward, Rourke wheeling right, both fists knotted on the CAR-15, his right fist pumping forward with the butt of the rifle, the rifle butt snapping into the wildman's chest, Rourke arcing the flash-deflectored muzzle down diagonally left to right across the man's nose, breaking it at the bridge.
Rourke stepped back, short of killing him, his right foot stomping on the barrel of the AK-47 as the wildman— huge— seeming even in collapse— tumbled forward and sprawled across the ground.
The wildmen were starting to move, Rourke's rifle's muzzle on line with Cole. "Call em off, asshole!"
"They'll rip you apart," Cole shouted back.
"Let's see what the man wants first, shall we?" Rourke shifted his eyes left— to the man in the bearskin, the squat man he had seen beside Cole from the air. "Cut 'em both down— now!"
"No!"
Rourke's eyes met Cole's eyes. "You're a dead man already— on borrowed time."
"Cut them down," the squat man in the bearskin commanded.
Rourke stepped back, his eyes flickering from Cole to the wildmen starting toward the two crosses.
A burly, tall man started up the cross where Rubenstein hung, hacking at the ropes, Rourke snarling to him, "Let him down easy or you get a gut full of this," and he gestured with the CAR15.
The man climbing the cross looked at him, nodding almost imperceptibly.
Others of the wildmen started forward, catching Rubenstein as the ropes were released, helping him down, setting him on the ground. Rourke shot a glance to his friend's face. The eyelids fluttered, opened, the lips— parched-seeming— parted and— the voice weak— Rubenstein murmured, "John?"
"Yeah, Paul," Rourke almost whispered. "It's okay."
"I'm— I'm gettin'—"
"Take it easy," Rourke told him, watching Cole and shifting his eyes to O'Neal as they brought him down from the cross.
"I'm dyin' on my feet, damnit!"
Rourke looked at his friend, edging toward him, gesturing the wildmen away with the muzzle of the CAR-15, then snapping, "Get ready," reaching down, helping Rubenstein's right arm across his shoulders, getting the younger man up, slumping against his left side. "All right?"
"Yeah," Rubenstein sighed. "Yeah— all right." Rourke said nothing, looking at O'Neal, lying there— O'Neal seemed somehow more subdued, more ill than when he had been on the cross—
his eyelids closed and his head slumped. Rourke caught the movement of a pulse— strongseeming— in the missile officer's neck.
O'Neal was playing out something— Rourke let the young navy lieutenant play it out.
"Okay, Paul— we start forward— right?"
"Right," Rubenstein nodded, his breath coming in short gasps, but regular.
Rourke started to walk, half dragging his friend on his left side, the CAR-15's muzzle leveled now toward Cole and the squat man in the bearskin and Levis.
He kept the muzzle in the airspace between them, already decided that if either one moved, he'd shoot the man in the bearskin first.
The wildmen— a knot of them— closed around Rourke and Rubenstein as they moved forward.
"You'll never get outa here alive, you Jew-lovin'—"
"Shove it, Cole," Rourke snarled.
Then Rourke stopped, less than two yards of airspace separating him and Paul from Cole and the man in the bearskin.
"I'm called Otis," the man in the bearskin smiled.
"No shit," Rourke nodded.
"You are— ah?"
"He's John Rourke— Dr. Rourke," Cole said through his teeth.
"Ohh— the John Rourke who wrote those excellent texts on wilderness survival— how marvelous. To meet you after reading your work— I literally devoured them. And the books on weapons as well—"
"Marvelous," Rourke told him.
"Since I know so much about you— I suppose— well, that you'd like to know something about me— and about my little band of followers here."
Rourke said nothing.
"He's looney, John," Rubenstein coughed.
Rourke still said nothing.
"We actually call ourselves the Brotherhood of The Pure Fire. I'm the high priest, the spiritual leader— the mentor to these lost souls, one might say."
"One might," Rourke whispered.
"Yes— well, as you can imagine, after all this war business, well— the time was ripe for someone—"
"To appoint himself leader of the crazies," Rourke interrupted.
Otis— the wildman leader— smiled. "In a manner of speaking— I suppose so. But of course our mutual friend here— I think he makes me seem mild. After all— blowing up Chicago with five eighty-megaton warheads is a bit extreme, isn't it?"
Rourke's eyes shifted to Cole's eyes— Cole's eyes like pinpoints of black light burning into him.
"Now's the time you're supposed to say, 'You'll never get away with this,' " and Cole laughed.
"But I'm more of a patriot than you— hangin' around with Jews and Commies. I'm gonna rid the United States of the Soviet High Command."
"President Chambers never sent you, did he— neither did Reed."
"Reed? Hell— I almost hadda shoot Reed when I killed the real Cole and took his orders—
bullshit with Reed. Him and Chambers— they'd never have the nerve to push a button— but me—"
Rourke said nothing. He looked at Paul once, murmuring, "Good-bye old friend," then pumped the trigger of the CAR-15, in and out and in and out and in and out, three fast rounds in a burst to Cole's chest, Cole— or whoever he really was— falling back, screaming, his hands flaying out at his sides.