Rourke didn’t know what to say to her.
Chapter Thirty-six
The concrete barricades were just ahead.
Vladov had read the orders, then given them to Natalia— the trucks carried plastique, C-4
explosives. Rourke watched Vladov through the windshield, aboard the right flanking M-72
motorcycle combination.
In the second truck, Lieutenant Daszrozinski was wear-ing the uniform of the dead KGB major. In the third truck, Corporal Ravitski wore the uniform of the slain lieutenant of the KGB. The Americans were hidden in the trucks, be-hind the cases of C-4—not a convenient place to be in the event of a gunfight, Rourke thought. C-4 was quite stable as an explosive, but there was always the chance—
Natalia beside him, in male drag, the uniform of a corpo-ral, said, “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Will we make it inside, I mean?”
Rourke shrugged. “Tell you one thing, keep your mouth shut beyond a yes or no, you’ve got girl all over your voice. And watch your eyes — squint or something. They see those they’ll figure something’s wrong.”
“Why don’t I just hide in the back of the truck,” she said sarcastically. “These clothes are uncomfortable anyway.”
“Because if there is a fight, you’re better than anybody else.”
“Except you, maybe.”
“Maybe,” said Rourke glanced at her and laughed. “My ego will be bruised.”
“Your ego is too big to bruise,” she laughed.
“Touche,” he nodded.
There was another convoy in front of them and Rourke slowed the truck, then stopped, the two M-72 motorcycle combinations stopping as well. Already, in the sideview mirrors, he could see Daszrozinski and Ravitski climbing out—to do the impatient officer routine while the convoy was forced to wait. Rourke felt Natalia’s left hand against his right thigh, groping for his hand—her palm sweated.
“That’s another thing that’ll blow your disguise,” he mur-mured. “Holding my hand.” And she started to take her hand away, but Rourke held it tight. “But I’ll tell you when it gets dangerous and you have to stop.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
“We’ve gotta assume that Lieutenant Feltcher never made it through to contact the TVM, so we’re in this thing against the KGB and the Army units under their control all alone.”
Sam Chambers studied the faces of his officers and his senior non-coms. He looked away from them, up into the barn rafters for a moment, trying to search for the right words. He turned his face back to his men. “I—I don’t know what to say. I was never a politician—I was a scientist basically—I guess that was all I ever wanted to be. As your president, I should be able to say something consoling, something inspirational to you at this time. The Russians are closing in from both flanks, we have enough aircraft to evacuate some key personnel, but there isn’t any point to it. A dawn today, I considered the fact that God had given us another day of life. By dawn tomorrow or the next day or within a few days after that, the world will be ending. As a scientist, I had no means at my disposal to confirm or deny any of the hypotheses formed for post-war scenarios. But the Supreme Soviet Commander, General Varakov, had ac-cess to scientific data. High altitude test flights were still available options to the Soviets, as a means of confirming the level of ionization and the rate of buildup. As a scien-tist, it might be a pat answer for me to say that I blame my-self and other scientists for developing weapons systems and delivery systems which were capable of bringing about the destruction of our planet. Or I could shift the blame to the military for weapons build-ups. Or to the citizens of the various nuclear powers for letting their governments go on a headlong path to destruction.
“But the truth is,” Chambers continued, “that I don’t know who to blame. I blame myself as an individual matter of conscience. And maybe each of us should do that. And you can’t say that the anti-nuclear people were right and somebody else was wrong. Because they never gave us an alternative to nuclear defense as a deterrent to warfare. But of course we never gave them an alternative to warfare as a way of solving problems. But I don’t think we were put here—
however we were put here—to lie down and die. And I don’t think we were put here to compromise our beliefs and principles in order just to cling to life for a little while longer.
“So,” he nodded, “God gave us this extra day. It’s clear our Soviet adversaries don’t know of the coming holocaust. I think it’s up to us to use this day—in the defense of an ideal that somehow, even after all mankind is dead—some-where there is a spark that won’t die. I’m talking about lib-erty. That’s all I have to say besides God bless us all.”
It started with one man, then another and then still an-other—hands clapped to applause, but Samuel Chambers, first and last president of United States II, realized the ap-plause were not for the words he had uttered, but for the feelings the words echoed from the hearts of the Americans he stood before.
Unashamed, as he stood there beneath the rafters, Sam Chambers wept.
Chapter Thirty-eight
The convoy ahead of them was moving up, the traffic officer near the concrete barricades waving them ahead. Rourke duti-fully waited for Daszrozinski, disguised as the KGB major with the convoy, to gesture for him to move out. Rourke double clutched to get the old transmission into gear, easing up on the clutch, letting the truck barely more than idle forward, toward the barricades, the M-72 motorcycle combinations falling in at the front of the convoy, just ahead of Rourke—he could see a dark stain near the small of the back on the uniform Vladov wore—blood. He hoped no one else could see it. It wasn’t the sort of spot one cut oneself shaving.
Natalia whispered, “Like they say in your American mov-ies—dark of the moon.”
“Yeah,” Rourke nodded, letting out a long sigh, letting the vehicle roll ahead without feeding it much gas.
He knew where Natalia had her Bali-Song knife—inside the right front trouser pocket. Her hand rested over it. She had laughed when she had placed it there, saying that by moving the pocket lining to the side, with the knife there she might convince a casual observer she had something between her legs that really wasn’t there.
Rourke hadn’t found the remark amusing.
The M-72 combinations were flagged to a halt just past the sentry box, between the first and second fence.
Rourke braked the deuce and a half.
In the sideview mirror, he could see Daszrozinski walking up toward the head of the column, Ravitski, still disguised as a KGB lieutenant, walking beside him and slightly behind at his left side.
The guard sergeant from the sentry box snapped to and sa-luted Daszrozinski. Smartly, but not too smartly, Daszrozinski returned the salute. Through Natalia’s open passenger side win-dow, Rourke could hear as Daszrozinski and the guard sergeant spoke. “Comrade Major—your papers, please.”
Daszrozinski was playing it to the hilt, removing one glove very casually yet very definitely, gesturing with a nod of the head to Ravitski to produce the papers.
Inside himself, Rourke waited for Ravitski to make some sort of mistake, show some sort of deference to the guard sergeant who in real life outranked him, Ravitski only a corporal.
But Ravitski, a studied air of surliness about him, handed the papers to the sergeant.
The sergeant saluted and moved off with the papers.
Daszrozinski lit a cigarette, offering one to Ravitski. Ravitski lit up as well.
Rourke eyed Natalia, shifting his focus from the two men just beyond her, outside the cab—she was licking her lips. He didn’t know if in need of a cigarette herself or simply from ner-vousness.