magazines, both from the musette bag at his left side, buttoning out the spent magazine, letting it be lost, ramming one of the two fresh sticks up the well of the assault rifle, working the bolt release—
He was rolling again, Natalia’s rifle empty—
The Gerber in his left fist along with the spare thirty-round stick for the M-16, Rourke was up, pumping the M-16’s trigger, cutting down men in waves as they ran from the still burning barricade. And then Rourke started to run, firing out the stick, dropping the empty to the pavement, ram-ming the fresh one home, hands reaching for him—he hacked out with the knife, hearing a shriek of pain. He wheeled, firing point blank into four men, cutting them down.
The nearest of the pursuers was ten yards back—but there were dozens behind this nearest man. Rourke ran, Natalia running just ahead of him, her M-16 spitting three-round bursts—bright tongues of yellow light in the night—
Rourke’s breath was coming in gasps—his M-16 firing behind him, he ran. Michigan Avenue—Natalia turned right—in-stinctively, he thought, heading for the lake, for her uncle, despite the KGB, despite the fact that she was wanted—dead. Rourke was after her, firing out the M-16, drop-ping out the empty to the sidewalk, Natalia run-ning diagonally across Michigan Avenue, toward the park between Michigan Avenue and the lake, Rourke after, a fresh magazine going up the well of the M-16.
Behind him as he reached the opposite curb—the pursuers had stopped.
“John!”
Natalia’s hoarse whisper from the darkness be-side a statue.
Rourke ran to her, his stomach aching with the exertion, his breath in short gasps—he coughed, fresh loading the CAR-15 - he had lost three M-16 magazines—but he had plenty more. He had lost one .45
ACP magazine, standard Colt—but it had been an ordinary magazine and was not irreplace-able. They had burned he didn’t know how many hundred rounds of ammo.
“Get that—that—that—the eight hundred-round box—bottom of my pack—strapped there—reload magazines.”
He heard Natalia— “Yes.” He felt her working at his back to remove the ammo box. He dropped to his knees beside the statue, both Detonics pistols reloaded, the Colts—all three re-loaded as Natalia loaded thirty-round magazines from the box.
He started reloading his .45 magazines—the eight-round Detonics extension magazine, the smaller magazines for the little Detonics pistols— “What the hell stopped those crazy people?”
“We’re in Grant Park,” she answered. “The ur-ban Brigands I spoke of—these ones are armed, perhaps as well as we are. And they cut the heads off their victims to show they don’t like intruders. I don’t know where they live—but between here and the band shell—a no man’s land—not even our patrols will go into the park at night unless they have infrared equipment.”
Rourke looked at her, feeling sweat drip off his face. He found one of his cigars, chewed down on it, lit it— coughed as the smoke entered his lungs. “So between us and your uncle—more loonies?”
Natalia nodded, lighting a cigarette. “Yes—more—more of them.”
He wondered what they could be like—if the crazy men from the underground were afraid. “Let’s go—right up the middle,” he told her.
Chapter Forty-eight
They had left the metal ammo box behind, the remaining cardboard boxes of twenty 5.56mm Ball divided between Rourke’s pack and Natalia’s—equally.
They moved at a fast commando walk, through the middle of the park. A bright moon, Rourke could see the trees—dead and leafless. The grass beneath their feet, he knew, was dead too.
The neutron bombing.
They walked on.
“Any idea how we’ll get to your uncle—once we get to the museum?”
“The museum guards are army—or at least they were—and they are loyal to my uncle and to me—my uncle would assume, I think, that we can get inside—”
“I hope you’re right,” Rourke told her softly, walking.
Dead trees flanked them now as briefly they stepped into a paved walkway—the most direct route across the park, if he remembered it correctly. On business in Chicago, he had frequently stayed in Michigan Avenue hotels and walked the park to unwind, to relax. He tried making the memories surface, to guide him.
The noise of a whistle stopped him.
“The Brigands,” Natalia whispered.
“No guns unless we have to,” Rourke cautioned. They were too close to the hub of Soviet activity and gunfire might bring the whole KGB down on them.
Rourke’s right hand went to the big Gerber knife, his left snatching out the black chrome AG Russell Sting IA.
He heard the clicking sound of Natalia opening and closing the Bali-Song—it was advertising— “Don’t tread on me,”—and also on her nerves, he thought.
A man shape stepped out of the dead trees into the gray gloom.
“Nice night for a walk in the old park, ain’t it?”
Rourke answered him—the voice more New York-sounding than mid-western, Rourke thought.
“Yeah—nice and romantic—listening to the whistle of the punks in the trees, the moon-light—whole nine yards.”
“You Russians?”
Natalia answered him, “I am Russian—”
“Hey—sexy voice, lady—real sexy—what you look like without your clothes?”
“Yeah—me—I wanna see—right now—” An-other figure stepped from the trees. Then another and another and another, finally perhaps eighteen of the urban Brigands flanking them on both sides, as the trees flanked them.
“You forced this, didn’t you,” Natalia whis-pered.
“Better than havin’ them stalk us in the park,” Rourke smiled.
“If I fire a gun,” Natalia shouted, “the entire Russian military will be down on you—I am Ma-jor Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna—the KGB!”
“No shit, woman,” one of the figures laughed. “KGB women fuck as good as other women, huh?”
Rourke looked at the figure belonging to the voice. “You open your goddamn mouth one more time, I’ll kill you—period.”
The figure stepped back a little, silently.
Rourke turned his attention to the figure at the center of the walkway, saying, “We’re going past you or over you—your choice, asshole.”
“Man—you can’t come here into my goddamn park and talk shit to me, man!”
“I just did—asshole.”
“You gonna die, sucker!”
Rourke nodded his head, “You bet,” and he rasped to Natalia, “cover me, but don’t interfere unless you have to—watch yourself.”
The two knives in his hands, Rourke started for-ward—Natalia called softly behind him, “Let me do it—”
She was better with a knife than he was—he knew that. He ignored what she said. The little Sting IA was palmed in his left hand, invisible in the darkness he hoped—he moved the Gerber—to draw attention to it, make it the focal point.
Rourke stopped, two yards or so from the man in the center of the walkway.
“Past you or over you?” Rourke asked. “Ques-tion still stands.” The man wore a gun—some kind of revolver in a shoulder holster over his sweater.
“I oughta shoot you, man,” the man challenged.
Rourke shrugged his shoulders. “You’re better off with a knife—I’m very good with a knife, so maybe you
