“A long story,” Rourke observed. “Go for your gun whenever you want—if you like, I’ll wait while you ditch your coat.” “All right,” Karamatsov snapped, stripping the coat from his shoulders, throwing it down on the sidewalk, pulling the baseball cap low over his eyes. “One gun, two. I have never been in a Western gunfight before.” “I don’t think you will be again. It’s not technique that counts, not so much. It’s not just speed. It’s accuracy. That’s why I figured twenty-five yards—makes it more even for you against me. I might be faster, but you’re probably just as accurate.” “I’m so touched, Rourke. I can see why Natalia thinks so highly of you. And you can have her—the slut. The moment my back was turned, after all my years of fidelity to her—even now I am still faithful to her. And she, you—you plot to murder me.” “If it matters,” Rourke said softly, his eyes riveted to Karamatsov’s eyes. “She doesn’t know a thing about this. I even promised her once I wouldn’t kill you. If I ever meet her again, she’ll probably hate me for killing you.” “You mean, if you kill me,” Karamatsov snapped, his voice sounding higher-pitched, the words clipped and nasal.
“Have it your way—if. Then—whenever you’re ready—just go for it. I’ll watch your eyes, and I’ll know when to make my move.” “Idiot! American fool!”
“I’ll admit two grown men standing in the street and shooting at each other isn’t too smart. It was just the fairest thing I could come up with on the spur of the moment,” Rourke said, rolling the cigar in the left corner of his mouth, clenching his teeth.
“Doesn’t someone drop a handkerchief?”
“That’s only in movies,” Rourke answered.
Karamatsov edged, sidestepping slowly to his left, off the curb and into the street.
Rourke edged left as well, his eyes watching Karamatsov’s eyes, the fog starting to lift and swirl as the wind picked up, sunlight breaking through. Rourke squinted, despite the glasses, against the glare of the sun on the gray fog.
It was misleading, he thought, to say you watched the eyes. Karamatsov had probably assumed as much. At twenty-five yards or so, the eyes themselves would be hard or impossible to see clearly. You watched instead the set of the eyes, he thought, the almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles around them, the little squint that —Rourke saw the eyes set.
Karamatsov’s right hand flashed up toward the Model 59 in the shoulder rig, the thumbsnap breaking with an almost audible click, the gun’s muzzle straightening out as Karamatsov took a half-step right and crouched, his left hand moving to help grasp the gun, the hat caught up by a gust of wind and sailing from his head.
Rourke’s right hand moved first, then his left, the right hand bringing the first Detonics on line, the safety swept off under his thumb as the gun had cleared the leather, the gun in the left hand moving on line as Rourke triggered the first shot.
Rourke saw the flash against the fog of Karamatsov’s pistol, the stainless Detonics bucking through recoil in Rourke’s right hand, then the left gun firing, then the right and the left simultaneously.
Karamatsov flew up off the ground almost a foot, Rourke judged, the gun in Karamatsov’s hands firing up into the air—a second round. The Russian’s body twitched in midair, then twitched and lurched twice more as it fell, the Russian’s gun firing again into the street. A window smashed on the other side. His body rolled over face down, the right arm and left leg twitching, shivering, then stopping. There was no more movement.
Rourke thumbed up the safety on the pistol in his right hand and jabbed it into his belt, shifted the gun in his left hand to his right, thumbed up the safety and held the gun limp at his side against his thigh, walking forward, slowly, then stopping and rolling over the Russian’s body with his combat-booted foot, his right thumb poised over the safety of his pistol.
There were four dark-red patches on Karamatsov’s trunk.
Rourke bent over and, with the thumb of his left hand, closed the eyelids.
“Done,” he whispered.
Chapter 40
The chill wind lashed at John Rourke’s face and hair as he bent low over the Harley-Davidson. The engine throbbed between his thighs, the sound of it combined with the wind roaring in his ears. He glanced to his right, Rubenstein beside and slightly behind him.
The escape from town had been surprisingly easy. Rourke decided Varakov was indeed a man of his word, but there was no way Rourke could imagine Korcinski keeping to his portion of the bargain and releasing the rest of the men from the Resistance. He could simply leave it out of his report to Varakov that they had been executed, but he would have waited for something to happen, some reason for Rourke’s release and once news of the death of Karamatsov reached him, Korcinski would know—it would all be clear. They would all be dead.
Rourke turned and glanced toward Rubenstein, trying to hear what the younger man was shouting over the slipstream and vibration of the engines. ‘ ‘Where—are—we—going?” Rourke smiled, his lips curled back against the pressure of the wind, the speedometer on the bike over seventy. “To a reunion,” he shouted, then seeing the puzzled look on Paul Rubenstein’s face, he repeated, only shouting louder, more slowly, ‘ ‘To—a—re—union!” Rourke turned and bent over the bike again. The fog was all but lifted and it was nearly nine A.M. as he glanced at the black face of the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner on his left wrist—executions, he thought, were usually an early morning affair. “Hurry,” he shouted to his side toward Rubenstein, then gave the bike more throttle.
Rourke slowed the Harley dramatically, making his turn wide onto the gravel road, taking him off the main highway and into the woods and down toward the clearing far beyond where he determined the hostage Resistance fighters were still being kept. He had judged Korcinski as being competent yet vain. He would never expect Rourke to come back and try to rescue his “comrades.” Rourke counted heavily on that, for even with Paul Rubenstein at his side the odds were heavily stacked against him.
Rourke slowed his jet-black Harley even more, curving into a gentle arc and stopping. Rubenstein passed him, then cut back, and stopped beside him, facing him.
“Where, John?”
“Up there—maybe two miles through the woods—too many Russians on the highways,” Rourke rasped back, winded.
“We got a chance?”
