He let out a long sigh— he wondered if, by the time he did eventually get back to the new headquarters, Mrs. Rourke would already be gone as they had thought. He hoped someday to see her again, to meet a woman like her.
He walked on, his right fist on the pistol grip of his M-16. She would remember him, he knew—
if for no other reason than his father's pistol, the Trapper .45, which he had given her. But he hoped for other reasons, too...
Rourke stepped back from the plane— it was, once again, well camouflaged. But from the air only. To land the craft he had selected the only spot available, and there was little peripheral wooded area nearby to which he could "snuggle" the plane to obscure it at least partially on the ground. He had made the plane tamperproof— unless someone happened by with a parts replacement kit for an F-111 and a machine shop to alter parts, for this was a prototype model based on the F-111 only— it would be impossible to get it off the ground.
He turned, walking toward Natalia and Rubenstein, Rubenstein already straddling his Harley, Natalia standing beside hers, her motor not yet started either.
"Not much more than an hour to the Retreat from here," Rourke called out.
"And then rest for Paul—"
"And for you," Rourke told her. "I will help you—"
"Paul will need those dressings changed at least once a day— he can't do it himself," Rourke told Natalia. "Besides— I have to get moving fast. You're still a little weak from the operation— you know that yourself."
"I am not," she insisted.
"All right— you're not," he smiled. He straddled the Low Rider. "Ready?" he asked both of them.
Rubenstein nodded, starting his engine, Natalia mounting her machine. "Ready," she said, glaring at him.
Rourke gunned the Harley ahead— there was a shortcut he thought he could use, taking him through the park that surrounded Anna Ruby Falls outside Helen, Georgia.
He aimed the Harley's fork toward it...
The body was a fresh kill, or so it seemed, Bill Mulliner thought, peering through the field glasses, down onto the bridge that crossed the rocky stream at the base of the falls.
He scanned the binoculars up toward the falls themselves, estimating the drop at well more than a hundred feet— and he had always been a poor judge of exact distances.
He scanned the area to the far side of the falls, high rocks and a muddy path leading up into woods.
He looked back to the bridge— the man was an American, not looking like a Brigand— too clean, Bill Mulliner thought.
Then he saw the movement, almost dropping his binoculars, refocusing them. On a flat rock about fifty feet further downstream beyond the bridge and the falls was another body—
American-seeming, too. And the body still had life in it.
"We've gotta go down there," Bill Mulliner whispered hoarsely to his three men.
"Bullshit— probably Brigands or somethin'," one man, taller than Bill by a head or more, bearded, rasped.
"The man on the rock is alive." Bill Mulliner peered through his binoculars— as the body moved again, he saw the face. He had seen it once before, in passing, during a Resistance attack. The man would not remember him— but he remembered the face, the man who owned it—
Koenigsberg, the Resistance leader he had come to find.
"That's Koenigsberg."
"Then we go home," the bearded man murmured. Bill Mulliner put down his glasses and looked at the older, taller man.
"We can go around and circle to the other side to our left, or we can go around to our right and come up the gorge, or we can head straight down— either way of the first two will take at least a half-hour. He'll be dead by then, maybe, and all three ways we're wide in the open for anybody lookin' down at us from the other side of them rocks. There's a human being— a fellow Resistance fighter, down there. We go get him. And any man who's too cowardly to go and help— well, damn well stay here and cover me— or just run."
Bill Mulliner swept the far side of the gorge behind the falls with the binoculars again. He saw no movement except for a squirrel moving almost lazily up a tree trunk. It was like the deerwoods on a smoky afternoon.
"Let's go— those that are goin'," and Bill Mulliner pushed himself up, the binoculars swinging from his neck, the M-16 in his hands. He started out of the rocks and toward the long, steep, dirt— and rock side of the gorge. It would be a hard climb down, he thought.
"Wait up," one of the men called in a loud stage whisper, and Bill Mulliner turned around.
Rifle shots— the bearded man who had complained fell flat backwards and never moved. Bill wheeled, his M-16 coming up, something hammering into his chest as there was another burst of gunfire. There was a scream from behind him as he heard more of the gunfire.
Bill fell backward, hitting his head on a rock, shaking his head to clear it. He looked down— his chest was bleeding, bubbles of blood pumping from over his right lung. "Jesus— I'm shot," he said to himself.
He pushed himself to his feet, stumbling. There was more gunfire, but this time from behind him.
"Come on, Billy— come on," the voice of Thad Fricks came to him.
Thad was alive, Bill thought. He turned, trying to move away from the edge of the rocks. Another burst of gunfire— Thad Fricke's rifle went off and he fell, disappearing into the trees.
Bill Mulliner gasped, a pain gripping his chest.
A single rifle shot, and already he was falling, his left leg burning, his face and his hands skidding along the rocks as he fell downward, his rifle gone, his head bumping against a pine tree stump, a clump of brush— a handhold, but he slipped from it and fell, sliding again, rolling, rolling, rolling.
"Sweet Jesus!" he screamed...
"Those shots were from the falls," Rourke almost whispered, his bike stopped near the top of a hilly rise.
"What do you think, John?" Rubenstein asked.
"Whatever you want to do," Natalia murmured.
"Can't be too many— not too many shots— sound like assault rifles— but too high-pitched for AK-47s— not your people," Rourke said, looking at Natalia.
"Agreed—.223s— all of them."
Rourke gunned the Harley—"Let's go," and let out the machine, starting ahead, up a gully and alongside a row of yearling Georgia pines and then into a sparse woods, hearing the roar of Rubenstein's and Natalia's bikes behind him, feeling the throb of the Harley's engine between his legs.
He hit the top of the rise and bounced a hummock of dirt, seeing the drop off into the gorge ahead, slowing the bike, braking, kicking down the stand, dismounting, the CAR-15 in his hands. He saw three bodies on the ground as he ran toward the edge, hearing Paul's and Natalia's bikes stopping behind him.
At the bottom of the steep side of the gorge there were bodies— one on a bridge across the stream at the base of the falls, still another on rocks there beneath the bridge and fifty feet or so beyond. And a third— the third body and the second body still moved. And there were men—
Brigands— moving down from the far side of the gorge, what looked from the distance like M16s in their hands— five of them.
They had not heard the motorcycles coming, Rourke realized— the steady, drowning roar of the falls itself obscuring the noise.
They were Brigands— Brigands— the cut of the men, the dirt, the faces, the way they moved. He saw the lead man raise his M-16 and fire into the man on the rocks who had still moved— the man moved no more. They were Brigands— cold blooded murderers.