—”
Rourke looked at her and smiled.
“What the heck is going on here?” Maus asked
“One last mission, to maybe save some of humanity. And we need your help.”
Rourke watched Maus’s face. The darkness was growing. Maus nodded, then. “All right, inside with you both —”
“Our twelve friends?”
“God knows why,” Maus murmured, shaking his head. “This is stupid—but yeah — but don’t mind it if some of my people keep their guns drawn—”
It was Natalia’s voice. “Don’t mind if some of my people keep their guns drawn, too.”
Rourke made a single, long, low whistle, and as he started through the doorway after Natalia, he could faintly hear the shuffling sounds of twelve pairs of combat boots hitting pavement in a dead run.
Chapter Fifteen
Emily, the Polish American Resistance captain they had first met when landing in Illinois, sat at the far edge of the room, her ungainly six-inch barreled revolver on the table beside her. Vladov sat a few feet from her, perched on the edge of a heavy worktable. Emily’s eyes constantly flickered toward him. A young man, very young looking, thin, a pleasant grin on his face, sat at the radio set, tuning the fre-quency. Maus had identified him—the young man working the radio—as his top field operative against the Russians despite the man’s youth. A six-inch blue Colt Python was on the radio table beside him as he worked. And as he worked, he spoke. “We almost never use this radio—can’t afford to. If the Russians picked up a transmission from around here, well, they’d know where to look.”
“This is important, Mr. Stanonik,” Natalia told him.
“Marty—everybody calls me Marty, Major—”
“I am Natalia.”
“Natalia—right. Russian or not, you’re awful pretty to be a major. Take Tommy there,” and he jerked his thumb toward Maus. “Before The Night of The War he was in the Reserves— he’s a major. And I’d sure as hell rather look at you, ma’am, than look at Tommy there.”
“If this were still a gunshop and you still worked for me—”
“I know,” Stanonik laughed. “You’d fire me—here—I’ve got it, I think,” and he flicked a switch on the radio set in the store-room near Maus’s office. “This is Shooter calling Eagle Two—come in. Shooter calling Eagle Two—” There was no answer, only static over the speaker. This is Shooter calling Eagle Two—do you read me— acknowledge. Over.”
Static—then, “Eagle Two—code sequence verify. Over.”
Marty Stanonik looked at his watch, then began flipping through a Rolodex file beside him—Rourke noticed it because it had been painted and was no longer black with a metallic framework. It was painted gold. “A gold Rolodex,” Rourke said under his breath, shrugging it off. Stanonik was apparently reading off a series of cards in the file, “Series twenty zero eight—Tango—reading now. Bob, Jack, Willie, Mary Jane, Harold. Awaiting verification.”
Rourke smiled to himself—the code was ingenious and sim-ple. And the oddly painted gold Rolodex was its key. Series twenty zero eight translated to the time—eight twenty. Tango was the standard phonetic alphabet correspondent to the letter T—T was the twentieth letter in the alphabet and the first names Stanonik had read over the radio were from the T section of the gold Rolodex, apparently arranged randomly and read in a cer-tain pre-arranged order.
The radio crackled with static. “Shooter, this is Eagle Two— verifying. Series twenty zero eight plus twenty- seven—” Twenty-seven would mean plus one since there were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet. “Uniform— repeat. Uniform. Mabel, Alice, Fred, Pablo, Maurice, Joe. Awaiting verification.”
Stanonik flipped through the Rolodex—into the U section. Then he looked to his microphone.
“Got a man here to talk with Eagle Two Leader—gotta make it quick. Shooter Over.”
“Eagle Two is real busy, Shooter—give it to me—”
“Tell him it’s John Rourke, Marty—and tell him to tell Presi-dent Chambers I have confirmation of a worst case post holo-caust scenario—six day countdown.”
“A what?” Stanonik looked over his shoulder at Rourke.
Rourke started to speak, but Maus said it, “The man here tells me the world is going to end, Marty.”
“Ohh, shit—”
Rourke thought the remark summed it up rather succinctly.
Chapter Sixteen
The radio was designed to automatically change frequen-cies and despite the fact that Soviet monitoring equipment existed which could still pick up such a set-up easily enough, it was a far better arrangement than a single frequency sys-tem.
“I cannot summon a large force, Dr. Rourke. But Varakov is right. I of course knew the post holocaust scenario possibilities and I was never certain the Eden Project got away in time before Kennedy Space Center was destroyed. I don’t doubt that he has the data to support the scenario. I can send you a dozen volunteers. No others to be spared. KGB forces and Army units under KGB command have our backs to the wall here—boxing us in. Our only chance is volunteers from Texas. Reed here is telling me I’m stupid to be saying this
Chambers’ radio procedure left a great deal to be desired, Rourke thought. “I saw Reed with a western novel once. I recall reading the author was particularly interested in a cer-tain location. For four reasons. See if he understands — Rourke over.”
It was Reed’s voice, half laughing. “Rourke—I’d love to meet you there—love it.”
Rourke nodded unnecessarily to the voice so far away, then said, “As quick as you can and bring whatever you can carry. Rourke over.”
“Reed—over.”
Rourke handed the table microphone to Marty Stanonik whom he stood beside.
He walked away from the radio set as Marty closed the transmission.
“I do not understand,” Natalia began, looking puzzled.
“The most famous western writer in history. I’ve got a lot of his books at the Retreat—you should read them. His name is French for love. The Four Corners—where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico’s state boundaries all meet. I read about his interest in the area some years back. Reed— I figured he’d know, too. Lucky for me he did. And lucky for me you didn’t—”
“Why?”
“A Russian wasn’t supposed to be able to understand it,” and he winked at her.
Chapter Seventeen
Reed stood in the darkness on the steps of the church, looking out across the wooded area beyond the parking lot. “The men are ready, sir,” Sergeant Dressler’s voice came from behind him.
“Very good, Sergeant,” and he turned and started through the open doorway, Dressier stepping aside to let him pass.
Military courtesy sometimes amused Reed, sometimes affronted him. Sergeant Dressier had seen active duty dur-ing the closing days of World War II as a tanker, served the country during the Korean conflict, been retired during the Viet Nam conflict and now — in his sixties — was once again in uniform. That a man of Dressler’s age and experience should step aside for him —
