We shot it out with that gang of renegade bikers who butchered the people we'd left back at the plane while we went to try and get help. Now how would you evaluate all that?"
"No civil authority, no government—every man himself. No law at all."
"You're wrong there," Rourke said quietly. "There is law. There's always moral law—but we're not violating that by taking things here that we need in order to survive out there. And the obligation we have is to stay alive—you want to see if your parents made it, I want to find Sarah and the children. So we owe it to ourselves and to them to stay alive. Now go and see if you can find something to use as a sack to carry all this stuff. I'm going to take some of this baby food—it's full of protein and sugar and vitamins."
"I have a little—I mean had—a little nephew back in New York—that," and Rubenstein's voice began noticeably tightening, "that stuff tastes terrible."
"But it can keep us alive," Rourke said, with a note of finality.
Rubenstein started to turn and go out of the trailer, then looked back to Rourke, saying, "John—New York is gone, isn't it? My nephew—his parents. I had a girl. We weren't serious but we might have gotten serious. But it's gone, isn't it?"
Rourke leaned against the wall of the trailer, his hands flat against the wood there, closing his eyes a moment. "I don't know. You want an educated guess, I'd say, yeah, New York is gone. I'm sorry, Paul. But it was probably quick—they couldn't have even tried to evacuate."
"I know—I've been thinking about that. I used to buy a paper from a little guy down on the corner—he was a Russian immigrant. Came here to escape the mess after the Russian revolution—he was just a little boy then. He was always so concerned with his manliness. I remember in the wintertime he never pulled his hat down over his ears and they were red and peeling. His cheeks were that way.
I used to say to him, 'Max—why don't you protect your face and ears—you're gonna get frostbite.' But he'd just smile and not say anything. But he spoke English.
I guess he's dead too, huh?"
Rourke sighed hard, then bent forward to look into an open box in front of him.
He already knew what was inside the box, but he looked there anyway. "I guess he is, Paul."
"Yeah," Rubenstein said, his voice odd-sounding to Rourke. "I guess—" Rourke looked up and Rubenstein was already climbing out of the trailer. Rourke searched the remaining boxes quickly. He found some flashlight batteries, bar-type shaving soap prepacked in small mugs and safety razors and blades. He rubbed the stubble on his face, took a safety razor, as many packs of blades as he could cram in the breast pocket of his sweat-stained blue shirt and one of the mugs and several bars of soap. He found another consignment of ammunition—158 grain semijacketed soft point .357s and took eight boxes of fifty. With it were some .223 solids, and he took several hundred rounds of these as well. He carried what he wanted in two boxes back to the rear of the trailer and helped Rubenstein climb inside with the sack to carry it all. They crammed the sack full and Rourke jumped down to the road, boosting the sack onto his left shoulder and carrying it toward the bikes. Rourke, as Rubenstein climbed down from the truck, said, "We're going to have to split up this load."
As Rourke turned toward his bike, he heard Rubenstein's voice and over it the clicking of bolts— from assault rifles. Without moving he looked up, heard Rubenstein repeat, "John!"
Slowly, Rourke raised to his full height, squinting against the glare through his sunglasses. A dozen men—in some sort of uniform—were on the far side of the road. Slowly, Rourke turned around, and behind him, on Rubenstein's side of the road beside the abandoned truck trailer, were at least a half-dozen more. All the men carried assault rifles of mixed heritages—and all the guns were trained on Rourke and Rubenstein.
"Caught you boys with your fingers in the pie, didn't we?" a voice from Rubenstein's side of the road shouted.
"That's a damned stupid remark," Rourke said, his voice very low.
"You men are under arrest," the voice said, and this time Rourke matched it with a face in the center of the men by the trailer. Fatter than the others, the man's uniform was more complete and military appearing. There was a patch on the man's left shoulder, and as Rourke tried to decipher what it stood for he noticed the duplicate of the patch on most of the uniforms of the other men.
"Who's arresting us?" Rourke asked softly.
"I am Captain Nelson Pincham of the Texas Independent Paramilitary Response Group," the fat man said.
"Ohh," Rourke started, pausing. "I see. The Texas Independent Paramilitary Response Group—the T-I-P-R-G—Tiprg. That sounds stupid."
The self-proclaimed captain took a step forward, saying, "We'll see how stupid it sounds when you boys get shot in just about a minute and a half. Official policy is to shoot looters on sight."
"Is that a fact?" Rourke commented. "Whose official policy is it—yours?"
"It's the official policy of the Paramilitary Provisional Government of Texas."
"Try saying that sometime with a couple of beers under your belt," Rourke said, staring at Pincham.
"Drop that sidearm," Pincham said. "That big hogleg on the belt around your waist. Move, boy!" Pincham commanded.
Out of the corner of his eye Rourke could already see hands reaching out and taking Rubenstein's High Power from the holster slung to his pants belt. The Schmeisser, as Rubenstein still called it, and Rourke's CAR-15 and Steyr-Mannlicher SSG were still on the bikes. Rourke slowly reached to the buckle of the Ranger Leather belt at his waist and loosened it, holding the tongue of the belt in his right hand away from his body. One of the troopers stepped forward and grabbed it, then stepped back.
"Now the guns from the shoulder holsters— quick," Pincham said, his voice sounding more confident.
Slowly, Rourke started to reach up to the harness, then Pincham shouted, "Hold it!" The captain turned to the trooper nearest him and barked, "Go get those pistols—move out!"
The trooper walked toward Rourke. "You sure you don't want to talk about this—you're just going to shoot us?" Rourke asked softly.
"I'm sure," Pincham said, his face breaking into a grin.
Rourke just nodded his head, keeping his hands away from the twin stainless Detonics .45s in their double shoulder rig. The trooper was in front of him now, between Rourke and Pincham and the rest of the men on the trailer side of the road. The trooper rasped, "Now—take out both those shiny pistols, mister. Just reach under your armpits there nice and slow—the right hand gets the one under the right arm, the left hand the left one. Nice and easy, then stick 'em out in front of you with the pistol butts toward me."
"Right," Rourke said quietly. As he reached up for the guns, he said, "To get them out of the holsters, I've got to jerk them a little bit."
"You just watch how you do it, mister. No funny stuff or I cut you in half where you stand." Rourke eyed the H-K assault rifle in the man's hands.
Rourke reached for his guns, his hands moving slowly. He curled the last three fingers of each hand on the Pachmayr gripped butts of the Detonics pistols and jerked them free of the leather. Rourke eyed the trooper, who was visibly tense as the guns cleared, and slowly brought them forward in his hands, the butts of the guns facing toward the "soldier."