Thumb-cocking both pistols, he started to run, the ground shaking beneath him still more violently.
Gunfire. Soviet AK series assault rifles, firing toward
him, glass shattering in the louvered classroom windows beside him as he jumped a hedgerow, running.
Rourke wheeled beside a concrete vertical support for a portico rooi. He fired the pistol in his right hand, then the pistol in his left, bringing down an assault rifle-armed soldier. The man's body spun, his assault rifle firing wildly, into his own men.
Rourke started to run again. Past a flagpole. During the day there would have been an American flag there and a Kentucky state flag as well.
He was nearly to the street beyond the school front lot. The ground trembled again.
He tried envisioning what the men and women of the town would have done to ensure their mass suicide. The ground trembled again and he saw a black disk sail skyward out of the street. There had been a large natural- gas storage area. . . .
'Natural gas,' he rasped, throwing himself to the grassy ground beneath him.
The gunfire, the shouts, the commands in Russian and in English to halt—all were drowned out. Rourke dropped his pistols, covering his ears with his hands.
The street a hundred yards ahead of him was a sea of flame, chunks of paving hurtling skyward. They had mined the gas system.
Rourke grabbed for his pistols, pushing himself to his feet, running, stumbling, running again. A line of explosions—smaller ones—ripped through the road ahead of him in series. He had to cross the road to reach Martha Bogen's house on the other side.
He ran, bending into the run, arms distended at his sides. The gunfire resumed from behind him; he couldn't hear it, but could see the grass and dirt near his feet
chewing up under it.
He hit the pavement, still running, the explosions gutting the road drawing closer. Debris—bits of tarmac and cement and gravel—rained down on him. His hands, the pistols still in them, were over his head to protect it.
The road was now twenty-five yards away; his body ached; the waves of nausea and cold were starting to take hold.
'Narcan,' he rasped. He needed the Narcan shot. He tripped, sprawling, pushed himself up, then ran on.
Ten yards. He was feeling faint, sick, the morphine was taking hold of him again.
Five yards. He jumped, the street ripping as a manhole cover less than a dozen yards to his right sailed skyward, roaring up on a tongue of flame.
The street behind him exploded and he was thrown forward.
Rourke rolled, still clutching his pistols.
He started to his knees, hearing—not hearing but feeling—something behind him.
He wheeled, hitting the road surface, firing both pistols simultaneously.
Two Soviet troopers fired at him; the ground beside him erupted under the impact of their slugs, both men going down under the impact of his.
He stumbled to his feet, lurching, feeling as though he would black out.
Rourke rammed both pistols, cocked and locked, into his wide trouser belt, then snatched at the injection kit inside his shirt against his skin. His hands shook, cold and nausea making his head reel. He dropped to his knees. The Narcan injection was in his right hand.
He looked beyond his hand as he tested the syringe.
'Man with a gun—Russian,' he rasped, telling himself to act, forcing his body to respond. His left hand— he
could feel the slowness—found the butt of one of his pistols.
Automatically, he swept the left thumb around behind the tang of the Detonics to reach for the safety on the left side of the frame. He worked it down as the Russian soldier raised his assault rifle.
Rourke's right hand worked toward his left arm, the sleeve pulled up already—he had planned ahead as he a/ways did.
He started raising his left arm, as if both sides of his brain were taking separate control of him. He tried squinting at the sights a moment, seeing the hypodermic come into his line of fire.
His right hand jabbed the hypo into his left forearm.
'Aagh,' he shouted, feeling the change sweep over him, seeing the slow-motion movement in his left hand as the thumb moved back around the tang, out of the way of the slide.
He was suddenly back—cold and sweating, but back, his mind working. His left first finger worked the trigger and the Detonics bucked hard in his hand.
The Soviet trooper's assault rifle fired skyward as his body twisted, almost as in a dance, then crumpled to the roadside.
Rourke pushed himself to his feet. That had been the last Narcan shot, but the last he should need. He snatched at the other pistol in his belt, worked down the safety and—he could not run again—he started into a loping walk to the curb.
