'Come in, Colonel! Borozeni calling Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy. Come in.
Ground to air ... come in!'
There was no answer, then, 'Major Borozeni . . . Lieutenant Tiflis calling Major Borozeni!'
'Come in, Tiflis, over.'
'Comrade Major, we cannot contact Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy. . . . What are the orders? Over.'
'Tiflis, bring your helicopters back.' Tiflis had commanded the helicopter force, not the special gunship fleet that had brought in Rozhdestvenskiy's commando team for seizing the factory, but the medivac and cargo helicopters. 'Tiflis, listen carefully. . . . Use your radio. . . . It's stronger. Contact the entire helicopter fleet. ... I am assuming command in the apparent absence of Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy. Over.'
'Yes, Comrade Major. Over.'
'Tiflis.' Borozeni remembered to work the push-to-talk button on his radio. 'Tiflis, contact me on how many ships. . . . We have hundreds of wounded. . . . Hurry. Out.'
'Tiflis out, Comrade Major.'
There was only static. Borozeni glanced down to the
unconscious sergeant beside him. Borozeni's knee ached. He shifted position, but could not move his bloodstained right hand lest the bleeding increase. He assumed the man on the motorcycle really had been a doctor—or at least had known what heM talked about. The shot of morphine had helped the sergeant.
'Tiflis to ground. Tiflis to ground command.' 'Borozeni here. . . . What is it, Tiflis?' 'Tiflis to ground ... All but four—repeat four, Comrade Major—all but four of the helicopters returning. . . . Landing will begin in two minutes. Tiflis over.' 'We need them all. . . . What are they doing? Over.' 'In pursuit of man riding motorcycle out of valley, Comrade Major . . . May be the American agent Rourke, wanted by KGB. Over.'
Borozeni smiled. A man on a motorcycle. So his name was Rourke. 'Tiflis, tell the commanders of those four ships to—' 'Tiflis out.'
Borozeni worked the push-to-talk button, then stared skyward at the chopper. What had happened? 'Tiflis to ground . . . Tiflis to ground . . .
Over.'
'What was the meaning of that? Borozeni over.' 'Tiflis to ground . - - The suspected American agent just shot at the helicopters, Comrade Major.
Over.'
'Tell them to pull back ... or I will personally have them on report to General Varakov. Borozeni out.' Borozeni smiled, murmuring in English, 'Even.'
Rourke squeezed a single shot toward the dome of the nearest helicopter, the ground around him now erupting with the impact of the machine-gun fire from the four gunships.
Squinting through the three-power Colt scope, he could see the glass dome take the impact of the slug. Rourke fired again, the recoil hammering at his right shoulder, his arms almost too tired to hold up the gun. The glass spiderwebbed again.
The four ships were circling him now. Rourke concentrated on the one he could hring down, taking aim for a third shot at the same area where the Plexiglass would be weakest.
Sarah. Michael. Annie. Paul would find them, care for them.
'Die,' Rourke shouted at the helicopter. The machine swerved and his shot went wild, all four machines rising rapidly, hovering, and turning into a ragged formation, then disappearing back toward the valley.
Rourke let the rifle sink down.
He didn't believe in luck—but he didn't argue with it either. He worked the safety on for the Colt assault rifle, then gunned the Hariey over the lip of the valley and down toward the highway. . . .
He had washed his body in an icy stream, and now— tired and changed into fresh clothes—he sat by his motorcycle, stirring cold water into a pack of his freeze-dried food. He tasted a spoonful of it. It would have been better hot, but the nutritional value was the same. He had added a hundred miles since leaving Bevington and was well inside Tennessee. Paul had probably passed him. Perhaps Paul had found them.
Rourke leaned back, eating his cold food, his muscles still aching, his stomach still uneasy. He planned ahead-^always. He hadn't planned on Martha Bogen, or on the suicide of an entire town. Or on the Russians being there. The sun was setting—red on the horizon, too red, the weather warm now.
He had seen signs of Brigands in the last twenty-five miles—their habitually careless camps, litter and broken bottles everywhere.
To the east, he could see the faint glimmering of some early stars on the horizon.
Tomorrow, he would renew the search, to find Sarah, Michael, and Annie.
And perhaps Paul really had found them.
He would stop at the Retreat, he decided.
He finished the food, then set the empty package aside. Finding a cigar in his shirt pocket, he lit it in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo.
John Rourke made a last check of the twin Detonics
.s, then of the CAR-. He had cleaned all three guns, and reloaded the spare magazines for them.
As he watched the last wash of red in the sky where the bun was fast vanishing, he closed his eyes. Sarah, Michael, Annie. Paul Rubenstein.
