body hurtling back, the head seeming to explode, blood—almost like a cloud—momentarily filling the air around it.
The military personnel from the valley were closing now, the brigands who remained alive trapped—and because of that, Rourke realized, more dangerous than before.
Two brigands came at him in a rush, the nearer of the two making to fire an M-, the one behind him already discharging a revolver. Rourke threw himself down, firing at an upward angle toward the man with the assault rifle, the body doubling over, toppling forward, the . mms spraying a steady stream into the ground at the already dead, still falling man's feet. Rourke rolled, trying to acquire the target with the revolver. He heard a burst of automatic weapons fire, the man's body spinning, the revolver roaring fire and the body falling, the gun sagging from the limp hand and into the dirt.
Rourke glanced to his right—Paul Rubenstein with the Schmeisser,
Rourke shouted, 'Paul—thanks!'
But Rubenstein didn't hear him, Rourke realized, the younger man's subgun already firing again.
Rourke was up now, reaching down for the M-locked in the dead man's fist.
Rourke tugged at the rifle, the fingers locked on it. Rourke stepped on the hand, crushing the bones, then ripped the rifle from the fingers. Loaded magazines for the assault rifle were stuffed behind the man's belt, Rourke reaching down, grabbing up the three that he saw, buttoning out the empty and ramming a loaded twenty up the well. He preferred thirty-rounders himself, the twenty-round magazines not enough firepower and the forties he had always suspected of putting too much weight into the magazine well.
The M-'s selector was still on auto and Rourke shifted the muzzle toward the brigands, now locked in gunfire with Rubenstein, Natalia and the advancing military. Rourke shouldered the rifle, firing three-round bursts across the sights, shifting the muzzle from target to target, gunfire starting toward him again as bodies fell and the few still surviving brigands turned their fire against him.
The M-emptied on a short burst—only two rounds—and Rourke dumped the magazine, ramming the second twenty up the well, then with the rifle at his hip, started to advance, cutting short bursts of two or three rounds into the still remaining brigands. Natalia's gleaming custom revolvers belched bright bursts of fire, men falling before her, Paul with the Schmeisser in his right hand and the battered blue Browning High Power in his left.
Rourke stopped shooting, the last of the brigand bodies twitching on the ground less than five yards from his feet. Natalia stood, her arms sagged along her thighs, the matched Smiths limp in her hands.
Rourke noticed Paul Rubenstein, the slide locked back,
on the emptied Browning, his right hand emptied of the subgun, the Schmeisser dangling at his side. His right hand held his glasses, and his eyes were closed.
Rourke let out a long, hard breath—a sigh. There was a cigar in his pocket and he took it out, setting down the M-. He lit the thin, dark tobacco in the blue-yellow flame of the Zippo which bore his initials. For some reason, he momentarily studied the initials—J.T.R. The thought—ridiculous—occurred to him.
What if he had been someone else, besides John Thomas Rourke? He smiled as he inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs—had he been a man unskilled at fighting he would have been dead, perhaps even since the Night of The War.
Methodically, automatically, he began moving about the field, examining the bodies, ignoring the U.S. II troopers shuffling with seeming unease nearby. A man of peace—sometimes the price of survival was very high.
Chapter 5
'So, Dr. Rourke—-we came looking for you—that's why we 're here. President Chambers and Colonel Reed—'
Rourke looked up from loading the six-round Detonics magazine. 'Colonel Reed?'
'President Chambers personally promoted him, sir.'
Rourke nodded, then looked back to the magazine, double checking through the witness holes that the magazine was fully charged, the lower hole empty as it should be. He took the Detonics and jacked back the slide, locking it with the slide stop. 'So you're Captain Cole—'
'That's right, sir—Regis Cole, recently promoted myself,' and the young, green-eyed man smiled.
'Hmmm,' Rourke nodded, estimating the man's age at perhaps twenty-five, the five enlisted men with him younger seeming still. Rourke inserted the magazine up the Detonics' well and gave it a reassuring pat on the butt—reassuring to himself that it was seated, then worked the slide stop downward, the slide running forward, stripping the first round. Rourke started to lower the hammer.
'I always carry my . with the magazine completely full and a round in the chamber,' Cole noted.
'A lot of people do,' Rourke almost whispered, inhaling on the cigar in the left corner of his mouth. 'But
a lot of professional gunmen advocate—or advocated I guess these days—stripping the round for the chamber off the top of the magazine.'
'To relieve spring pressure?'
'It helps—but not for that,' and Rourke thumbed out the magazine with the release button. 'Here,' and he pointed to the top round in the magazine. 'Notice how it's edged forward just a little—makes for more positive feeding than starting with a magazine where the top round has the case head all the way back against the spine of
