crossed Rourke's lips. Quickly, he dug into the Lowe pack on the back of the Harley, dismounting the bike then and gathering together some twigs and branches. Using the Zippo after skinning shavings off several of the twigs with his knife, Rourke started the twigs burning, setting out a pack of Mountain House food from the back pack on the ground. He crouched beside the small fire, waiting. If the Russians came over the ridge, they would see the campfire— and Rourke would hopefully convince them he had stopped for a meal. If he gave them a reason why he was there to begin with, then there might be no reason for the Russians to search further. He stared at the ridgeline, ripping open the Mountain House food pack. It was Turkey Tetrazini, and he scooped a handful of the dehydrated food into his hand, nibbling at it, letting the moisture of his mouth react with it to get the taste.
'No sense wasting all of it,' he muttered to himself. Finally Rourke heard a second voice— he'd begun to think the Russian on the other side of the ridge was neurotic, talking to himself. He could hear the conversation reasonably well now— the two voices were saying the tracks led up over the ridge.
Shaking his head, Rourke slung the CAR-15 across his back, muzzle down, safety on. He took the Metalifed six-inch Colt Python from the flap holster on his belt and pulled back on the cylinder release catch, spinning the cylinder once, checking that the ejector rod was tight. He closed the cylinder, his right fist wrapped around the black rubber Colt Medallion Pachmayr Grips, the long vent-ribbed barrel resting across his left thigh. And he munched at more of the Turkey Tetrazini, waiting for what he knew now was inevitable.
He squinted against the sunlight, feeling the heat of the small fire near his hands, hoping the Russians would hurry. A smile crossed his lips. Over the ridge-line he could see the crown of a Soviet foraging cap, then the head under it.
He stared at the face; the Russian stared back. There was a cry of alarm, and the Russian started to swing his AK-47 into position. Rourke, still squatting beside the fire, swung the Python up on line, the butt of the pistol in both his hands, the silvery front sight lining up dead center in the white outline Omega square notch. He pulled the trigger through, double action, the muzzle rising slightly as the revolver discharged. 'Love that Mag-Na-Porting,' he muttered to himself, the recoil from the full house .357
158-grain semi-jacketed soft point almost negligible. Rourke was on his feet then, running.
As he reached the Harley Davidson, jumping into the saddle, knocking away the stand, he saw a second Russian coming over the ridgeline, an AK-47 in the man's hands. As the Russian started to fire, Rourke wingshot the Python, once, then again. The Soviet soldier fell back. Rourke replaced the Python in the holster, gunning the motorcycle. Gunfire started up behind him, chewing into the dirt around him as he bent low over the machine. The engine was running well again, he decided, as he hit the opposite ridgeline and jumped the bike over it, coming down in the dirt, gunning the machine and starting down toward a road perhaps two hundred yards ahead. He could hear vehicles behind him, shouts, gunfire—
he still had no idea of the size of the Soviet patrol, but hoped they'd bought the campfire routine. As Rourke reached the road, he looked back along the river. There was a Soviet truck, small, camouflage-painted, coming toward him. He skidded the bike into a tight turn, stopping it, drawing the Python, thumbing back the hammer. The Russian vehicle was over the ridge. Rourke fired the Python, once, then twice more in rapid succession. There was a cloud of steam from the front of the truck, the vehicle stopped dead halfway over the ridge. Rourke dropped the Python back into the holster and gunned the Harley down the road. It was tree-lined, the branches almost touching over the road as he passed under them. He reached his left hand into his shirt pocket and found one of his small cigars. Biting down on it in the left corner of his mouth as he sped along the road, Rourke decided to light it later.
Chapter 6
General Varakov stood looking out from the mezzanine onto the main hall. Over the time he had used the lakeside Museum as his headquarters, since his arrival from Moscow shortly after the Night of the War, he had studied the skeletons of the mastodons, fighting and dominating the main hall of the Museum. Varakov smiled— it was either here or down by the lakeside where he did most of his thinking these days. He tried to remember where he had done most of his thinking in Moscow, then realized that perhaps he had not done as much as he could there. Shaking his head, he walked back from the railing and sat on one of the low benches, still overlooking the great hall. He had practically memorized the reports which littered his desk. The Cubans, always the Cubans.
After the War, Florida had been ceded to them to appease the Communist leader of their island nation. He decided that had been a policy mistake on the part of the Premier and the Politburo. Reports indicated the Communist Cubans had made several incursions into southernmost Georgia— Soviet territory. There were reports of concentration camps, mass executions of Cuban Americans. It was that sort of thing, Varakov knew, that undermined anything positive he could do to relieve the pressure from American Resistance groups. His own command had prisons established to hold captured Resistance personnel and other suspected undesirables; but the camps were humanely run— he checked on them personally. There were few executions, and only those of Resistance people caught in the act of taking a Soviet life. It was, after all, war. The Cubans, he thought.... What they reportedly did was not war. There had been two dangerous confrontations between Soviet patrols and Cuban forces in southern Georgia already. Doubtlessly there would be more, he knew.
'Castro,' Varakov muttered.
It was clear, he felt, that something had to be done with the Cubans— and quickly. He had no desire for
'border' conflicts over something he considered as useless as Florida. And his assessments over the years of the Communist Cuban regime had always led to what he felt was an inescapable conclusion— it was immature. With persons who behaved as irresponsible juvenile delinquents, he decided, one could never be too cautious.
After sifting through the reports, he had spent an almost equal amount of time perusing personnel files. He rubbed his hands together, standing on his sore feet and walking back toward the railing, his uniform jacket unbuttoned. Varakov wiggled his toes inside his shoes, staring down into the main hall. Col. Constantine Miklov was the perfect man— a senior officer and a prudent individual, experienced in dealing with the Cubans after three years as a military adviser there. Miklov's Spanish, Varakov understood from the file, was faultless.
A smile crossed Varakov's lips. In the one area where Miklov was slightly lacking—
intelligence background— Varakov could compensate and at the same time achieve an ancillary goal. Natalia Tiemerovna. He had recently promoted her to major. Almost fully recovered from the beating Vladmir Karamatsov— her now-dead husband thanks to the American Rourke— had administered to her, she was wanting an assignment. She spoke Spanish well, Varakov knew, and her natural frankness— the quality that so much endeared her to him— made her more important and more valuable than her relationship to him as his niece. All this would make it easier for her to discover what rationale were behind the Cuban incursions into Soviet occupied territory.
He leaned against the railing, amused at his own thinking. Was he really sending her because of his needs, or because he saw a need in her that this would fulfill?
He shrugged the problem away, thinking that perhaps of late he had become more of an uncle and less of a general in matters concerning Natalia. He should have engineered things to have Rourke killed, he knew, following the assassination of Karamatsov. But Rourke had not really assassinated the man—
afterwards it had appeared there had been a 'fair' fight between them, Rourke winning. Varakov shrugged again— he liked Rourke. A good man was a good man, Varakov thought, despite his politics. He smiled, then— whether Natalia admitted it to herself or not, and despite her vow to kill Rourke after learning he had killed her
