'Forget it,' Rourke whispered. 'You'll wake the kids,' and he pointed up toward the truck bed, listening to Rubenstein snore.
'I won't forget it,' she said. 'Is it that wife you have—the one who's maybe still alive? What are you afraid of—you'll stop trying to find her?'
'No—I won't stop,' he said. 'Give me one of your cigarettes—I don't want to smell up the place.'
The girl turned away from him a moment, fumbled in the pocket of her jacket and handed Rourke the half-empty pack. Then she took it back, extracted one of the cigarettes and lit it—her hands steady, the match lighting the first time. She inhaled hard, then passed the cigarette over to Rourke. He stayed on his back, the cigarette in his lips, staring up at the top of the shelter and the darkness there.
'Is it that you'd be unfaithful to her?' Natalie said, her voice barely above a whisper.
'Somethin' like that,' Rourke said, snapping ashes from the tip of the cigarette out the partially open flap and into the rain.
'But—what if she isn't—' and the girl left the question unfinished.
'Then it wouldn't be somethin' like that,' Rourke said quietly, dragging hard on the cigarette, then tossing it out into the rain.
He could feel the girl moving beside him under the blanket. 'Are you human?' she whispered.
He turned his head and looked at her, then without getting up reached out his left hand and knotted his fingers into the dark hair at the nape of her neck, drawing her face down to him, looking for her eyes by the dim light there through the shelter flap. All he could see was shadow. He could feel her breath against his face, hear her breathing, feel the pulse in her neck as he held her.
Her lips felt moist and warm against his cheek as she moved against him, and Rourke took her face in his hands and found her mouth in the darkness and kissed her, her breath hot now and almost something he could taste, sweet, the release of her body against him something he could feel in her as well as himself, She lay in his arms and he could hear her whispering, 'You are human.'
Rourke touched his lips to hers again, heard her say, 'Nothing is going to happen, is it John?'
'I don't know—go to sleep, huh? At least for now,' and he felt her head sink against his chest and heard her whisper something he couldn't hear.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rourke opened his eyes, glancing down at the watch on his left wrist. It was three A.M. The girl was still sleeping in his arms, and to see the face of the Rolex he'd had to move her. He heard the sound again, a shot, then another and then a long series of shots—submachine gun fire, light like a 9mm should sound.
'The damned fools,' Rourke said aloud, feeling the girl stirring in his arms, then feeling her sit up beside him.
'Shots?'
Then Rourke heard Rubenstein, sliding off the pickup truck bed, beside them suddenly under the shelter. The rain was still pouring down outside, and Rourke stared out from the shelter flap, then pulled his head back inside, his face and hair wet. Without looking at either Rubenstein or the girl, Rourke said, 'The damned fool paramils—it's a blasted night attack. Damn them!'
As Rourke pulled on his combat boots, whipped the laces tight and tied them, the sound of the gunfire became more general, shouts sounding as well from all sections of the brigand camp, the engines of some of the big eighteen-wheelers roaring to life and, as each did, the shots were drowned out for a moment.
Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, over the din, 'Paul, start getting this shelter taken down and get the truck ready to roll—Natalie, give him a hand! I'm going up by the road.' Rourke slipped into his leather jacket, got to his feet in a low crouch and started through the shelter flap, then dove back inside, shouting, 'Mortars!'
He dove onto the girl and Rubenstein, knocking them to the shelter floor. The shelter trembled, the ground trembled, the blast of the mortar was deafening.
Then came the sounds of rocks and dirt hitting the shelter, added now to the drumming of the rain. Rourke pushed himself up on his hands, rasped, 'Hurry!'
and started back toward the shelter flap, then into the rain. There was the whooshing sound of another mortar round, and though the pouring rain muffled the sound, he instinctively dove left, the mortar impacting behind him and to his right. Rourke pushed himself up out of the mud, the CAR-15 diagonally across his chest in a high port as he ran zigzag across the mud, avoiding the brigand men and women running everywhere around the camp in obvious confusion and panic.
Some of the eighteen-wheelers were starting to move, inching forward, then backward, the very shape of the circle in which they'd parked prohibiting them from maneuvering. Some of them were entrenched deep in the mud of the plateau, and mud sprayed into the air as the wheels bit and slipped and dug themselves deeper.
Ahead of him, from the glare of the truck headlights and the few lanterns, Rourke could see a knot of several dozen men by the head of the single road leading up to the top of the plateau, and he could see the flashes of gunfire and hear more small calibre automatic weapons fire.
Rourke spotted Mike, the brigand leader, without a shirt, his body visibly trembling in the cold, the riot shotgun in his hands. As Rourke ran up to the men around Mike, the brigand leader stopped talking and glared at him a moment, then nodded slightly, and went on. The words were hard to make out with the missing teeth and the stitched, swollen lip. '… ey can't get up here after us. I figure maybe we got fifty or a hundred of 'em trapped halfway up the road down there in the dark—we keep shootin' into 'em, we're, ahh—we're gonna pin 'em down all night— first light we get we can finish 'em.'
'What about the mortar rounds—all you need is one hittin' a fuel tanker and this whole spot is a huge fireball. I don't think that can wait till morning.' Rourke heard some of the brigands grunting agreement, one from the rear of the knot of men around Mike shouting out, 'One of them mortar rounds almost hit my truck—I was parked right next door to one of the diesel tankers. The new guy's right!'
