of the cave, a gleaming Detonics .45 automatic in each fist.
The voice—a voice he had not heard for fifteen years, a voice almost identical to his own, a voice. “If you understand English, let them pass. Let them come to us.”
There was no answer from the two waves of the cannibals which flanked him, flanked Madison. Michael waited.
His father’s voice again. “Michael, come ahead —slowly. Keep the girl beside you, not behind you. Slow— don’t do anything sudden.” He answered his father. “All right, Dad.”
“They don’t speak English—I’m sure of that by now. But they remember enough to understand. When you’re close enough, I’ll toss you a gun— loaded and ready to go. They won’t let you out of here.”
Michael looked behind him, to Madison. She whispered, “He is your father—you are in his image.”
Michael felt himself smile. “Stay beside me— and if we get out of here alive, still stay beside me.”
“Always,” she whispered.
He leaned toward her, touching his lips to her forehead. Then he looked back toward the mouth of the cave. The black jumpsuited woman holding the M-16 was Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Major, KGB—he knew her face well, like he knew the face of the man at the other side of the cave—the high forehead and thinning hair, but no glasses. He smiled—Annie had been right. Paul Rubenstein wouldn’t need them.
“Major Tiemerovna,” Michael called. “Good to see you after all these years.”
“Michael, you are your father’s mirror image.”
“I know that.” Michael nodded, holding Madi-son’s body against him, his left arm around her slender shoulders, the knife in his left fist still. He walked forward, calling, “Mr. Rubenstein— or is it Uncle Paul?”
“Paul’s fine. Chronologically you’re older than I am now.” “This is Madison—she doesn’t have any other name. But she will—I’m going to marry her. Or whatever it is you do when the people outside are cannibals and the people inside are religious fanatics who use genocide for population con-trol.”
John Rourke, from the mouth of the cave, his voice so low Michael could barely hear it, whispered, “Madison—daughter.”
“We can’t leave here. The people inside—we have to stop them,” Michael called, walking slowly, cannibals on each side of them now, closing behind them as he looked into Madison’s eyes.
“All right, son—if you feel we should,” his father answered. “Just keep coming.
Steady. Even.”
“What are you gonna toss me?”
“My CAR-15—remember, it’s not an M-16. One of these days maybe I’ll change it around.”
“All right. Thirty-round stick?”
“Thirty-round stick,” his father answered, the cannibals closing tighter around them.
“If it’s a choice, Dad—“
“I know. Madison—I promise,” his father answered. “There will be no choice,” Natalia’s voice echoed through the cave. He liked the sound of it—firm yet feminine, warm yet with something his father had told him was once termed “cool” to it. “We will all get out of here alive.” “You’re lovely. I see why my father feels like he does for you. He told me once, before he took the Sleep, so I’d care for you if something went wrong and you awakened and he didn’t. He loves you.”
“You have a big mouth,” his father laughed from the front of the cave. “I’m your son,” Michael called back, ready with the cattle prod—to thrust it into his first atiacker to free his right hand for the CAR-15. He saw his father move, slowly, stabbing one of the pistols into his beit, all but his father’s face clearly visible now in the growing light inside the cave. A silhouette—a scoped assault rifle, the stock a different shape from that of an M-16, the barrel seeming shorter.
“What happened to your guns?”
“Inside. They have an arsenal in there and they don’t do anything but clean it—don’t even know how to use guns.”
The cannibals were tightening around them.
“Michael, you and Madison stop moving. I’m coming to you.”
“John!”
His father didn’t answer Natalia. He began to walk, the CAR-15 in his right hand, almost casually it seemed, his arm hanging down at his right side. In his left hand, one of the Detonics pistols.
Michael stopped, holding Madison tighter against him, some of the cannibals starting to reach out to touch at her or at him. “She can go between us—Madison can,” his father said, his voice low, like a whisper.
He could see his father’s face in greater resolu-tion now—the dark-lensed aviator-style sun-glasses, the cigar clamped tight in his teeth, the teeth perfectly even, perfectly white. “Can she use weapons, son?” “I will try,” Madison stammered from beside him. “Good girl.” His father nodded, the right corner of his mouth raising in what looked like a half smile.
The cigar wasn’t lit.
John Rourke stopped walking, less than a yard separating them. Slowly, he reached out his right arm, extending it to nearly full length, the CAR] 5 inches from Michael’s chest. “Give Madison that stick—don’t drop it. Make your play when I do. Natalia and Paul’ll back us up.”
Michael pushed the cattle prod into Madison’s right hand. Her hand was trembling.
Michael raised his right hand to the rifle, closing his fist onto the pistol grip, inserting his trigger finger through the guard, his thumb finding the selector, verifying that it was set to fire.
He lowered the rifle to his right side.
He watched his father.
John Rourke reached slowly into a side pocket of his Levi’s, his right hand reappearing, the Zippo lighter in it.
John Rourke flicked back the cowling.
Michael Rourke could hear the sound of the striking wheel being rolled under his father’s right thumb.
Flame—blue-yellow, steady.
The cannibals shrank back, grunts, sounds, hisses. “You didn’t tell me you were a specialist in mob psychology.” Michael smiled. “You pick things up, son.” His father stabbed the tip of the cigar into the blue-yellow flame and the flame flickered now, smoke exiting his father’s nostrils as his father drew his head back.
The lighter—the cowling flicked closed.
The right hand moved to the right side pocket, the thumb hooking in the pocket for an instant, then the lighter disappearing. “Count to three.” “One,” Michael almost whispered.
“Two,” his father murmured.
Michael’s father’s right hand flashed to the Detonics pistol at his belt.
Together, father and son. “Three.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Natalia repeated the word under her breath in the instant it was said. “Three.” The muzzle of the M-16 raised as the thought passed through her, the assault rifle responding as though it were one with her will, firing, short three-round bursts, high, over the heads of John Rourke and Michael Rourke and the girl named Madison, into the cannibals behind them.
Father and son stood back to back, the girl between them, the CAR-15 making fire from Michael’s hands, in John’s clenched fists in the twin Detonics stainless pistols, the heavy thud-ding sounds they made, bodies falling. The rattle of Paul Rubenstein’s MP-40, the shrieking sounds oi ricochets, the reverberating oi the gunfire and the screams of the dying in the confines of the cave mouth.
Rourke’s .45s were empty, she realized, not seeing him shift guns, but hearing as the dull thudding sounds were replaced with the sharper, explosive cracks of the Python. Her own M-16
empty—as it fell to her side on its sling, both her hands found the butts of the Metalife Custom L-Frames, Rourke’s .357 Magnum still firing as her own ,357s began to discharge. A cannibal fell as he lunged for her, then another and another. Her revolvers were empty and there was no more gunfire except for the light cracks of Paul’s Browning High Power.
The Bali-Song—from her hip pocket into her hand, the lock working off under her thumb’s pressure, the handle half flicking out, back, out, the knife open, the Wee-Hawk blade slicing cannibal flesh, a carotid artery spraying blood as the body fell.
