'I think I'm the last— Jeez! That hurts!'
Sarah Rourke bent over the blond-haired man's left thigh, her face close to it. The wound didn't smell and she surmised that was a good sign. She wished she'd taken her hospital volunteer work more seriously, or watched John more closely the few times she'd seen him work. She remembered once shortly after they'd married they had met a doctor Rourke had worked with during his internship, before he'd essentially abandoned medicine and gone to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. The man—
she tried to remember his name... Feinstein? Feinburg? It was something like that, she'd decided. The man, whatever his name, had told her something while John had stepped away for a few moments. John still smoked cigarettes in those days, and he might have gone to get a fresh pack. It was years ago, she thought. The doctor had told her, though, that John had been the most promising man he'd ever worked with in medicine— with hands skilled enough to make him a top surgeon, had he chosen to become one, and a mind quick enough to make important life-and-death decisions and then act. The latter quality—
the doctor's name had been Feinmann, she finally remembered— was the rare thing, the thing that made greatness in a doctor.
Sarah Rourke looked at the Resistance fighter on the cot beside her. 'What's your name?' she remembered to ask.
'Harmon Kleinschmidt,' he told her, the voice strained.
'Well, Mr. Klein—' She stopped and started again. 'Harmon— my husband, the children's' father, is a doctor. I'm not. I had some first-aid courses, rolled bandages as a volunteer, and watched my husband operate a few times in emergencies. I know what to do to get your wounds cleaned up, maybe I can even take out a bullet if it isn't too close to something vital. But since I'm the best you've got right now and since we've got Russians all around us, why don't you just shut up and bite on a towel or something and let me do what I can. Okay?'
Kleinschmidt fell back against the rolled blanket he used as a pillow. 'Can I talk?' he rasped. She didn't look up at him, but it sounded as though he'd spoken through clenched teeth.
'Sure— if it helps,' she whispered. She glanced over her shoulder. Michael and Annie were rubbing down the horses, not watching. She was happy for that because the leg wound wasn't pretty, and after that there was still the shoulder wound.
'They got all of us— all but me. Most of the women and kids pulled out after the men all got themselves nailed. Me, I tried making it somewhere, anywhere— I wound up here.'
Sarah didn't think the man was making too much sense, 'What happened?' she asked, not really caring, but trying to keep his mind occupied. There was a big, deformed chunk of metal very close to the bone in his upper thigh and she knew that removing it would hurt.
'Well... hmmm,' he groaned. 'Well, they— the Reds— we figured to git 'em. Figured they needed Savannah as a seaport. Rumors seem to be the Ruskies gave Florida over to Castro's army. If they couldn't use Florida, Savannah would have to have been mighty important as a seaport. So, we figured we could screw 'em good— sorry ma'am,' he rasped, 'if we made their lives miserable. We were doin'
okay 'til we started coordinating everythin' with that U.S. II.'
'What's U.S. II?' Sarah asked. She was using a small pair of forceps from the first-aid kit John had made up before the Night of the War and she had carried it from the house. 'The house,' she groaned under her breath.
'What ma'am?' Kleinschmidt asked.
'Nothing, Harmon. Tell me what U.S. II is? Go on.' She started probing with the forceps for the bullet. Any minute now, he'd scream, she told herself.
'Well, I don't completely understand it myself. Seems some fella named Sam Chambers was the last man to survive from the President's cabinet. Makes him the new President. There was a letter goin'
'round— some guys had it. My friend Jock Whitman read a copy of it— the President, the real one, he killed himself so the Commies couldn't make him surrender.'
'I didn't know that. Are you sure?' she asked him.
'Yeah— well, the letter said that, Jock told me. There was supposed to be copies of it all over what's left of the country. Story was the Secret Service got it out for him. When we started working with U.S. II, they said the same thing. But there's gotta be some kind of problem with them. After we started coordinating everythin' with them, the Russians almost seemed to know what we was up to before we did. Some of us figured they had themselves— in U.S. II, that is—
some kind of a— aagh!'
She looked up. His body twitched violently and now his eyes were closed, his mouth contorted in pain. But his chest was still rising and falling. As she started to grasp the bullet— at least she assumed it was that— in the forceps, the body twitched again.
'Michael!' she called. 'Come hold Mr. Kleinschmidt so he doesn't move when I do this. Annie, stay with the horses.'
Michael was beside her in a moment. 'Don't look, son,' she told him.
'It's all right, Momma,' the boy said quietly. Even the voice, his way of speaking, reminded her more and more of John.
'Traitor,' she said, pulling the bullet from where it was lodged. She thought it had been imbedded in a muscle but wasn't sure.
'What?'
She looked up at Michael, forcing a smile. 'No— not you, never you,' she whispered.
'Mr. Kleinschmidt had been talking before he passed out. He was telling me he thought someone was telling the Russians what he and the rest of the Resistance people were doing. You know— like Mary Mulliner's husband and son. They were in the Resistance. Well,' she went on, probing the wound to check if the bullet had left any fragments, 'he thought there was a traitor.'
There weren't any fragments, and she studied the bloody chunk of metal in the forceps for a moment. It was obviously deformed, but it looked to be in one piece. 'Such a little thing,' she said, turning it so it would better catch the light.
Sarah Rourke looked at Harmon Kleinschmidt's face. It seemed more peaceful now. She imagined that when he was all cleaned up he probably looked handsome. He'd told her earlier that if she helped him, he knew of a boat
