The Quest

Chapter 18

Rourke skidded the Harley to a stop. In the half-light as darkness was laying long shadows from the tall pines across the ground he had almost missed them, six men, armed, wearing camouflage clothing and moving in rapid dog trot across the clearing.

Rourke started for the Detonics .45 under his left arm, his nearest gun, wrestling the bike to the left with his left hand, the stainless Detonics coming into his hand, his thumb drawing back the semi-spurless hammer, the muzzle snaking forward to fire, his left hand free of the bike already reaching for the second of the two pistols under his right armpit.

“Rourke! Is that you?”

Rourke stopped his left hand, his right arm fully extended, his finger against the trigger. “Rourke? John Rourke?” Rourke lowered the Detonics in his right fist, but only slightly, not quite recognizing the voice, but knowing it sounded familiar. “John Rourke!” the voice repeated.

Rourke stepped off the Harley, balancing it on the stand, the gun hanging at his right side, the hammer still cocked, his finger beside the trigger guard. He started toward the tallest of the six camouflaged figures, the man speaking. He recognized the voice now.

“Reed? Captain Reed?”

“Yes. John Rourke! God, what a sight for sore eyes, man!”

Rourke hated that expression: “a sight for sore eyes.” If it made your eyes sore, he’d always thought then why want to see it? And if your eyes were sore to begin with, seeing something however welcome would do little to make them less sore. He realized as he walked toward Reed, that among his many credits before the war had not been a famous sense of humor.

“Captain Reed,” Rourke said softly, realizing he still had the gun in his right hand. He upped the safety and switched it to his left hand, and took Reed’s offered hand.

“Rourke, we got airdropped in here last night. I kept hoping somehow we’d bump into you, man.”

“Well,” Rourke said, glancing over his shoulder around the clearing, “if we keep standing around out here in the open, we won’t be air dropped, we’ll be dropped. Come on.” And without waiting for Reed, Rourke turned, walked across the clearing in broad strides, lowering the safety then lowering the hammer on the Detonics, reholstering it under his jacket as he approached the Harley. He climbed on the bike, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll meet you over in those trees there.” He lighted a cigar, sheltering the lighter from both the wind and anyone who might be watching, and started the bike off slowly across the clearing and into the trees.

He sat straddling the bike, waiting for Reed and the other five men, hearing them approach a moment later at a run, Reed barking commands, “Bradley, get over there and keep a lookout. Michaelson, same for you but over there. Jackson, Cooley, Monro, take up positions along the tree line on that side about twenty or thirty yards apart. Move out! Alert is a long whistle, then two short.” As the men started off, Reed called after them, “Everybody whistle?” Then he waved for them to go on, turned to Rourke, and fished out a cigarette. Rourke pulled out his lighter and flicked the wheel of the Zippo. Reed bent down to the flame cupped in Rourke’s hands. “It’s gettin’ cold. You know, you miss that, no weather forecast, and then the weather has been changing so much.” “Yeah, I know,” Rourke offered.

“So what are you doin’ here?”

“Haven’t seen a dark-haired woman and two children, maybe with another man and a woman and a child—little girl, I think—probably on horseback?” “No,” Reed said staring at the Harley. “Nothin’ even close to that. Why?”

“My wife and children—saw some sign of them back about thirty miles, but it’s from several weeks ago.” “But at least they’re alive,” Reed said, slapping

Rourke on the shoulder.

“Question is to find them though,” Rourke said. Rourke opened up with few people he realized, and Reed—a nice enough guy, Rourke thought—wasn’t one of them, “Hey, listen,” Reed said. “I could use a guy like you—ex-CIA, weapons specialist—you’re from around here—could even give me the lay of the land.” “I’m otherwise occupied,” Rourke said flatly.

“Yeah, but it’s important.”

“So’s finding my wife and children, Reed,” Rourke responded.

“I know that, but this is for the good of all of us.”

“I don’t really give a damn about the good of all of us. Organized government screwed things up the first time, it’ll screw things up again. I’m finding my wife and children, and then I’ll figure what kind of game I’m playing.” Rourke started to ease up on his bike. Reed reached out and put his hand on Rourke’s left arm. Rourke glared at him in the gathering shadow. “Don’t!” “Wait—maybe I can help you if you help me.”

“I’m listening,” Rourke told him.

“All right. Let me explain what we’re doing.”

“I don’t care what you’re doing, Reed. No offense, but I don’t give a damn.”

“Yeah, but I can help you find your woman and kids.”

“How?” Rourke asked.

“We’ve got an intelligence network getting together, all sorts of places, use couriers, low-frequency radio—lots of ways of keeping in touch. If I put out the word that’s dozens more pairs of eyes looking for them. How fast is one man going to find them? Huh?” “What do you want?” Rourke almost whispered.

“Some cooperation—maybe an extra hand with a gun if it comes to that. You in?”

“Just how good,” Rourke rasped, “is that organization of yours, Reed, good enough, big enough to find Sarah?” “We won’t know unless we try. This’ll maybe cost you a few days, maybe save you weeks or months, maybe make the difference for you in finding them or not.” “I’ll find them,” Rourke stated. “Tell me what you’re here for.”

“All right,” Reed said, stomping out his cigarette butt on the ground.

“That’s got a filter,” Rourke said. “They take years to disintegrate; some kinds can take decades. Dead giveaway someone’s been here, too.” Reed looked at Rourke, then bent over, and picked up the cigarette butt, stripped away the paper and tobacco and pocketed the filter in the breast pocket of his camouflaged fatigue blouse. “Satisfied?” Reed snapped.

Rourke nodded.

“Okay, then,” Reed began again. “We’re here for two reasons; We want a low down on the Soviet posture in Georgia—Karamatsov just got transferred in here on assignment—you should be interested in that.” “Natalia,” Rourke murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Rourke said, trying to mean it.

“All right, but the main reason we’re here, and probably Karamatsov too, is we’re looking for a guy—you might even know him—he has a place somewhere around here, vacation home. Name is Jim Colfax. He’s an ex-astronaut, big shot in NASA public relations before the war.” “Why would anyone want him?”

“Ever hear of something called the Eden Project when you were with the company?”

Rourke thought for a moment. There were so many coded files, so many top-secret projects. But the Eden Project wasn’t one he recalled.

“I haven’t heard of it,” Rourke told Reed.

“Well, neither had anybody else. We were sifting through the ruins of the Houston space center— found a charred file folder, and inside all we could make out was Eden Project, but nobody’s left from NASA that we can find, except Colfax if he’s still alive that is—and he should be right here in Georgia.” “Why, just because he had a vacation home here?”

“And he was speaking at the University in Athens the night before the bombing. It was the last engagement on a speaking tour, then he had a few weeks off.” “Hell of a way to spend a vacation—with a nuclear war,” Rourke observed.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Reed said.

“So you want to find him to find out what the Eden Project was.”

“We think it has to do with some launches at Cape Canaveral, just before the place got a direct hit—and we think the Russians are interested in it too.” Rourke looked up at the darkening sky. Was there someone up there, he wondered, or something that was a new horror. “I’ll give you a description of my wife, my son, my daughter, the horses they were probably riding—then some poop on the Jenkins couple they might have been with—get it out as fast as you can. Got a radio?” “Yeah, if I only use it a few minutes at a time so they can’t peg us.”

“You want my help,” Rourke said, “then you get the description out—now. I’ll write the details for you, and I’ll listen while you send.” Rourke fished a zippered notebook from his backpack on the back of the Harley, then began to write. He stopped. Was beautiful a valid description for Sarah, and how about Michael and Annie—handsome for him, cute for her? He decided on something more exact in nature.

An hour later, the message was sent and Rourke had committed to meet Reed and the others outside Athens at noon the following day. Two hours from the retreat, Rourke rode hard through the night.