Rourke added, 'But maybe the others'll learn by it. You and I both know that the stuff that's hardest to remember is the stuff than'll usually keep you alive or get you killed.'
'You're right, John Thomas. But I think these men you trained will do well in this opium war we fight.' The Pakistani captain, shorter than Rourke and with a bushy black moustache, lit a cigarette for himself, then offered one to Rourke.
'No, thanks, Muhammed,' Rourke muttered, then reached into his shirt pocket and plucked a tiny cigar and put it between his teeth. 'I'll take a light though,' he said, leaning toward the Pakistani's cupped hands, sucking in the flame of the match, then leaning back and exhaling the gray smoke slowly. He watched it catch on the wind and blow down along the road to vanish where two of the trucks still smoldered.
Rourke ran the fingers of his left hand through his dark brown hair, pushing it back from his high forehead. 'You still planning a mop-up operation here?'
Hunching his shoulders against the raw wind, the Pakistani nodded. 'I think then that it is good-bye for you to your men.'
'Yeah, I guess you're right,' Rourke said, glancing over his shoulder as he finished loading six fresh rounds into the cylinder of the Python, then putting it back into its holster on his right hip. 'Hang on a minute,' Rourke told the Pakistani, then turned and walked back up the road toward the ten men remaining from his force.
The young military policemen came to attention as Rourke approached, but he gestured for them to remain at ease. 'You guys did good,' he said. 'That's why you're still alive. Muli and Achmed-they didn't remember what I taught you guys, and that's why they're dead. They were good men, no worse, no better than any of you here. I want you to understand that. Surviving-whether it's a fight like this or just gettin' home at night in traffic means keeping your head, remembering what you're supposed to do, learning to react the way you know you should-then just doing it. I won't be seeing you guys again. I told you, I've gotta get back to the States. Maybe someday we'll all get together again. And if you guys remember that the first rule-in this or anything in life-is to keep your head, you'll all be alive so that we can get together.'
Rourke shook hands with each of the men, a longer handshake for the corporal, Ahmed. At first, Rourke had confused the man with Achmed because of the similarities of their names. 'Good luck, pal,' Rourke whispered, clasping his shoulder and returning the warm smile in his eyes. 'Here,' he added impulsively, handing the man the Heckler & Koch flare pistol from his pocket. 'You're the team leader now. You'll be needing this.'
Rourke turned and walked back toward Muhammed. The helicopter coming for them was already looming large on the horizon, the distant whirring of its rotor blades like the drone of an insect.
They waited together, Rourke and Muhammed, without speaking. The helicopter hovered over the mountain road a moment, then angled down and landed-uncomfortably close, Rourke thought, to the embankment.
He ran around to the starboard side of the machine and slid in beside the pilot. Muhammed got into the back. Rourke turned and shot a final wave to the men he'd trained.
They didn't see it. Already, they were clambering back up the embankment, toward the mountains, to attempt to intercept the men who had been destined to receive and transfer the shipment of raw opium.
The pilot swung the helicopter out over the gorge and flew parallel to the mountain road for several kilometers, then started climbing. Rourke turned to look behind him, feeling at the same moment, Muhammed's hand on his shoulder. 'We are flying toward the Khyber Pass-it is not far. One of our border outposts was making its regular transmission, then suddenly the radio went silent. We want to be sure it is only some sort of equipment failure.'
'Fine,' Rourke said, nodding, but disinterested. He stared out the bubble dome and down to the valley floor thousands of feet below. After another moment, Muhammed said, 'Tell me-I have read your file-but how does a man become a weapons expert, a survival expert, making a living out of teaching counterterrorist techniques?'
'You read the file,' Rourke said, chewing the stump of cigar between his teeth. 'Like it says, I did counterterrorist work for the CIA.' His eyes crinkled into a smile-he'd actually been a field case officer in the Covert Operations Section. 'Weapons,' he went on, 'were just a natural part of than-I've always been good with guns, ever since I was a kid. Hunted a lot, liked the woods, backcountry camping. Sort of led me into survivalism. And I read the newspapers-scared hell out of me, too. So I learned everything I could about survival. I was on a job like this once, in Latin America,' he said, finding himself shouting over the whir of the chopper blades. 'Anyway,' he went on, holding the cigar butt in his fingers and staring at it as he spoke, 'those were my wilder days-back with the Company. With a bunch of anti-Communist partisans, I got ambushed. My right leg got shot up. Everybody else was killed. I was left for dead. I had a .45, an M-16 and a bayonet-no food, nothing in the way of medical supplies except some antibiotics. I couldn't get out of the jungle for six weeks. Then, when I did, the Communists had already taken over the country and I had to steal a boat-spent ten days in open water before I hit the Florida keys. I was dehydrated, infected, sunburned and had about everything wrong with me except athlete's foot.'
'Athlete's foot?' Muhammed asked, 'This is a-'
'You know-between your toes.'
Rourke laughed.
'Ah, yes, we call it by another name.'
'Yeah, well,' Rourke continued, 'but in spite of it all, I survived. Pretty proud of myself, I was. I'd learned a whole hell of a lot-particularly how much I didn't know. Went back to reading everything I could, going to every lecture I could, sorting through all the gimmickry and gadgets. There's more stuff to learn every day.'
'But what is the purpose to it all?' Muhammed said. 'Learning for itself is a noble purpose, to be sure, but-'
'Naw-it's a lot more practical than that,' Rourke said, lighting the cigar again and getting an angry glare from the tomb-silent pilot sitting beside him. 'There are enough loonies loose in the world today to screw up the planet so bad that survivalism training is going to be the only thing than'll keep people alive-maybe. What do you need-a runaway laboratory virus, a global economic collapse, a world crop failure?'
Below them now, Rourke saw the familiar craggy geography of the Khyber Pass, the historic gateway from Afghanistan to Pakistan. These days, he thought bitterly, Afghanistan was a Soviet satellite or the next best thing to one. Muhammed leaned forward, speaking to the pilot, 'Take the machine down-I want to see our border outpost from the air before we land.'
Rourke reached into his borrowed jacket and took the tinted aviator sunglasses from their case and put them on, peering down toward the summit of the mountain.
