The Savage Horde s-6

  The Savage Horde

  ( Survivalist - 6 )

  Ahern, Jerry

  The Savage Horde

  Jerry Ahern

  Chapter 1

  John Rourke pulled up the zipper on the fly of his Levis with his right hand, his left moving across his body plane to the Detonics stainless under his right armpit in the double Alessi rig, his fingers knotting around the black checkered rubber Pachmayr grips, his left thumb poised to cock the . as soon as it cleared the leather. He gave the pistol a short, firm tug, hearing the speed break through the trigger guard unsnap. His thumb jerked back the hammer.

  Rourke wheeled, the . in his left hand snaking out from inside the brown leather bomber jacket, moving forward, his right hand reaching for the gun's twin under his left arm. He already had the target—a man about six-foot four, unshaven, his black leather jacket mud-stained, a riot shotgun in his hands, the pump tromboning as the twelve-gauge, roughly . caliber muzzle swung on line.

  Rourke's trigger finger twitched once, the second Detonics already out, in his right fist, the hammer jacking back. Rourke fired the second pistol as well, the discharge like an echo of the first punctuating the riot shotgun as it fired.

  Rourke threw himself down and right, the shotgunner right handed and the impact of Rourke's first slug pounding the man in the right side of the chest, twisting the body right, pulling the shot column right as well. The ground three feet from Rourke seemed to erupt, the .

  caliber-sized pellets raising a spray of loose dirt and dead leaves, the dirt showering down as the shotgunner spun, twisted and lurched toward the lank Georgia pine beside which he'd stood. The body slipped along the length of the pine's trunk, then stopped, almost sagged down to the knees, the shotgun falling as the hands went limp.

  Rourke pushed himself to his feet, muttering, "Can't even urinate without somebody tryin' to kill ya—hell." His pistols held close to his sides at hip level, Rourke moved toward the man, Rourke's eyes behind the dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses scanning from side to side. Where there was one brigand there were usually a dozen or more nearby.

  But he saw no one else.

  He stopped beside the body—the front of the leather jacket the dead man wore was caught up on a stump of branch. Blood oozed from the right center of the chest over the lung and from the left side of the neck near the hinge of the jaw, the eyes wide open in death, still clear.

  Rourke shoved the body down to the ground, letting it flop into the rotted leaves and the brown and brittle pine needles there. The shotgun was a cheapie—Rourke had no interest in it. Rourke unzipped his bomber jacket, shoving one of his Detonics pistols into his belt, the safety upped. His left hand free now, the right fist clenched tight on the other Detonics, Rourke began—methodically—to search the dead man.

  A poor-quality lockbiade folding knife—Rourke didn't need it. A disposable cigarette lighter—Rourke tried it under his thumb and it lit. He had no use for disposable anythings, but extra fire was always useful—Rourke pocketed the lighter. Cigarettes—Rourke didn't smoke them and he stuffed them back in the dead man's pocket. A Freedom Arms . Magnum Boot Pistol. "Hmm," Rourke murmured. He inspected the little gun; it seemed in perfect working order. He searched the pockets, finding

  a plastic box of fifty rounds, only four holes in the plastic grid for the missing rounds. He stuffed the box of ammo in his bomber jacket patch pocket and put the boot pistol's hammer to half cock, twisted the cylinder base pin and withdrew it, then removed the cylinder. Four rounds, all unfired. He had used the little Freedom Arms guns a few times as last ditch back up ordnance. They worked well and were accurate, despite their size. But he carried no single action revolver ever with a round under the hammer. He pushed out one of the four loaded rounds, using the base pin to urge it out of the charging hole in the cylinder, then reassembled the gun, pocketing the loose fourth round. Rourke tucked the three-inch tubed gun in another pocket, then quickly resumed the search. A wallet; inside it a Pennsylvania driver's license— expired—and the folded up picture of a naked blonde-haired woman. It looked clipped from a magazine, and there was twenty dollars. The money was really useless, more suitable for fire starting than a means of exchange since the Night of The War.

  Rourke took the twenty and pocketed it anyway, then thumbed closed the eyes.

  Looking around the wooded area past the body, he upped the safety on the second Detonics, dropped the pistol in his hip pocket and picked up the shotgun, mechanically emptying the magazine tube. He unscrewed the nut at its front, tossing the nut into the trees, then pulling the magazine spring. He bent and twisted this, then threw it away, letting the emptied and nearly useless smooth bore fall to the ground. It could be fired awkwardly single shot, but there was no time to remove any less obvious parts.

  He started back across the clearing now and away from the dead man. More brigands would be coming soon, having heard the gunfire. He was mildly surprised none had come yet. To have left an operable weapon behind him for someone else perhaps to use against him would have been foolish.

  As he started to mount the Harley, he thought better of it, turned and pulled down the zipper of his fly, finishing what he'd started to do before the interruption . . .

  "I tell ya those was shots—shots, Marty—maybe he's in trouble or something Crip!" His hands shook as he lit a cigarette, the lighter not working for him.

  The taller, thinner man crouched beside him in the pines took a Zippo from his pocket and worked it. "Here—and if Marty's in trouble, then that's too fuckin'

  bad, Jed—too fuckin' bad,"

  The first man, Jed, poked the tip of the cigarette into the lighter's flame, nodding through a mouthful of smoke, coughing as he said, "But if he bumped into somebody—maybe—'

  "Somebody comes this way lookin' for us, we take care .a them too—there's plenty of us and only six of them Army guys comin' and if we could hardly hear them shots, a cinch them Army guys didn't." Jed's eyes followed Crip as the taller man turned and glanced down along the defile and toward the valley below.

  Spotted behind rocks and boulders and trees were more than two dozen men—armed with everything from riot shotguns to automatic weapons. And past these, at the far side of the valley, more visible from the wake of trodden down grass and wild oats tracking their line of march, were six figures in olive drab.

  Crip was peering through binoculars now, "Those guys gotta have maybe a coupla hundred rounds of ammo apiece on 'em—and the six M-s. Maybe got other shit we can use."

  "We could use gas better," Jed murmured.

  "Yeah—well—with more ammo and better guns, maybe we can get us some gas, too.

  been plannin'—"

  "But killin' Army guys—maybe they're fightin' the Commies or somethin'—maybe—"

  "Maybe shit," Crip laughed. "You wanna go fight Commies, go on and do it. Me—I wanna stay alive, stay cookin'—like the guys down there want. I take 'em to war with the fuckin' Russians and they'd run like hell. I take 'em to war to get some neat shit, to have some fun—they stick, they fight. Them Army guys down there's like ever'body else—fair game. They'd plug us soon as shit—but we'll ice 'em first."

  Crip went back to looking through the binoculars. Jed puffed anxiously on the cigarette—and his hands still shook . . .

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna brushed the dark lock of hair back from her face, dismounting the bike, walking across the clearing. The fingers of her left hand swept back through the hair again, tiny knots in it from riding the bike against the wind. She made a mental note to put her hair up after she brushed it, either that or tie a scarf over it. The fingers of her right hand were half hidden under the full flap of the bla
ck leather holster on her right hip, the fingers—all but the first finger—wrapped around the smooth finger-grooved Goncala Alves stocks of the round butted Smith L-Frame, the firsf finger poised and slightly outstretched, to reach into the revolver's trigger guard as soon as she cleared leather.

  She heard a rustling in the trees, but didn't react to it and draw the .—it was Paul, her eyes having caught sight of his movement in the instant prior to the snapping of the twig. What Paul Rubenstein still lacked in expertise, she felt he more than compensated for by ingenuity and tenacity—and she liked him anyway. She saw a form on the ground at the edge of the trees—but it was unmoving.

  Her left hand unsnapped the flap of the Safariland holster on her other hip, both of the customized, slab-side barreled stainless L-Frames coming into her hands and their muzzles leveling toward the treeline's edge. She kept walking, lengthening her stride, glancing down once at her black booted feet beneath the black whipcord slacks.

  The leaves—multi-colored the way autumn had always been near Moscow when a little girl on her way to ballet—were beautiful.

  She stopped, five yards from the form of the man on the ground—dead. She glanced from side to side, then walked forward, knowing Paul was still in the tree cover, watching for signs of a trap.

  Natalia stopped beside the body, kicking it fast once in the exposed rib cage just to be sure, then stepping back quickly. There was no betraying movement—however slight. She bolstered the revolver in her left hand, then dropped to her knees.

  Her skin touched its skin—still warm. The eyes were closed—unnaturally, by whoever had put the twin holes in the body, she deduced. "Not heartless," she murmured to herself, then more closely inspected the wound in the neck and in the chest. "But very good."

  She stood up, walking in the direction from which she judged the shots to have been fired. She stooped to the ground—a piece of brass, still shiny and bright, freshly fired. . ACP—Natalia glanced at the headstamp, recognizing the ammo brand. It was what Rourke carried, as did she herself. "Hmm," she murmured.

  There was a second cartridge case and she picked it up, noticing a disturbance in the leaves a few feet further on. She walked toward that, already noting the imprint of motorcycle tracks.

  "John?" She studied the tracks. For the last seven days, she and Paul Rubenstein had been searching for him. There was the urgent message from her uncle. There was the fear that somehow Rourke had not survived the storms which had swept the coast and central section of the country. There was the loneliness she felt—and the confusion of purpose, identity. She was Russian—she was helping Americans.

  America and Russia were technically still at war, despite the fact Soviet forces occupied much of the land. She was KGB—a major.

  She shook her head to clear it.

  There would be time later to wrestle with herself—wrestle with herself as she had done already.

  Natalia walked past the motorcycle tracks, seeing something glistening on the leaves. She bent over, taking a dry leaf and touching it to the moist leaves that had shown the glistening effect. Without bringing it too close to her nose, the smell confirmed her initial suspicion—urine. Probably human. There was another, similar wet spot a few feet to the left.

  "Natalia!"

  "She glanced behind her. Paul was running toward her, his Schmeisser submachinegun dangling from its sling under his right arm, a riot shotgun—or at least the major pieces of it—in his right hand.

  "I found this—somebody deliberately made it inoperable."

  "It could still function single-shot—hand chambering. I noticed it, too. I think John was here, Paul—and just a few minutes ago."

  "That louder shot was from this—"

  "And the two lighter ones from these that we heard," she nodded, showing him the spent cartridge cases.

  Rubenstein took them from her, inspecting them. "That's John's brand all right—"

  "But also one of the largest ammunition manufacturers in the world—the cases could have been from a thousand other people—ten thousand. But I found this,"

  and she gestured toward the motorcycle tracks. "And signs of

  someone urinating here about the time we heard the shots. That dead man's flesh is still warm. I think it was John—stopped to—to—"

  "To piss," Paul nodded, smiling embarrassedly.

  Natalia felt herself smile, "Yes," she nodded. "And somebody came up on him—that man over there. John shot him, then disassembled the shotgun so no one could use it afterward. Then he finished—pissing. Then he drove off."

  "But when there's one brigand, there's usually a bunch of 'em—"

  "There aren't any signs of them—did you find any?"

  "Nothing—no," and Rubenstein shook his head, his left hand pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up off the bridge of his nose, then sweeping across his high forehead through his thinning dark hair.

  ''And neither did I—if you were John—"

  Rubenstein laughed. "Ha—if I were John—if anybody is closer to John in the way they think—you are. What would you do—kill one brigand and figure there are more around?"

  "John urinated twice—as if he'd been doing it when he heard the man, then there was the gunfight, then John checked the man's pockets—I noticed that when I checked the body. Then John finished what he'd been doing."

  "That's John for you," Rubenstein smiled.

  ' 'He would have been here long enough to tell if others were coming—and none did. Which would mean this dead man could have been a straggler—"

  "There wasn't any bike—no signs of a truck or anything—"

  "Or he could have been alone and on foot."

  Paul shook his head. "I don't think so."

  "Neither do I—his boots were marked from riding a bike, and the soles were polished almost smooth—but they weren't worn down as if he'd walked a great deal."

  "John would have figured there were brigands in the' area and whatever they were doing, hearing what maybe would have been gunshots wasn't important enough to pull them away—"

  Natalia nodded. "Laying a trap—ambuscade—"

  "What?" Rubenstein asked, his face quizzical looking to her.

  . She felt herself laugh—"That's only English, Paul—ambuscade—it means ambush."

  "Ohh," and he nodded. "Yeah—I knew that," and Rubenstein laughed.

  She touched her left hand gently to his right forearm. "John is probably looking for the other brigands—the rest of the dead man's gang."

  "Can't be more than a couple miles—guy wouldn't have left his wheels—"

  "He could have been a scout—maybe from a base camp. But you're right, Paul—not more than a few miles."

  "If we can backtrack him through the woods—"

  "We'll know soon enough if John did the same thing," she interrupted. "And we can find him—"

  "Before he runs into a dozen or two brigands I hope," Rubenstein added soberly.

  "Before—yes—come on," and she started running back toward her bike, glancing over her shoulder as Rubenstein threw the useless shotgun into the trees, then started running in the opposite direction—for his bike, she knew.

  She reached her own machine, the Harley-Davidson Low Rider Rourke had used in the trek across the West Texas desert, the machine he'd taken from the brigands after they had murdered the survivors of the airliner crash. Paul had told her about it.

  "How long ago?" she murmured, thinking of the times they had spent—times of danger, death—but in a strange way, happier times than she had ever known.

  She snapped closed the flaps of the Safariland Holsters for the stainless Smith & Wessons on her hips, then straddled the machine.

  She brought the engine to life . . .

  John Thomas Rourke studied the panorama before him, focusing the armored Bushnell xs on the group of six men moving through the field which covered the valley floor. Camoufla
ge fatigues, crusher hats, M-s—either Marines or Army—but forces of U.S. II. Likely an intelligence patrol, he surmised.

  He swept the binoculars back, along the defile—poorly concealed men and a few women perhaps—though the long hair and distance made it difficult for him to tell. He counted twenty-five brigands at least, and two more further up by the tree line.

  Evading a medium-sized brigand band working the territory would be time consuming, time he could utilize in making headway to the Retreat to resupply and link with Paul, time he could use searching for his wife and son and daughter.

  He glanced back through the tubes at the six military personnel. They moved too openly, as if inviting attack. That thought had crossed Rourke's mind when first spotting them, but there were no indications there was any large military force operating in the area, using these six as bait. Rourke had to assume ignorance the sole motivation of the six men—or possibly just the ignorance of their commander.

  He put down the glasses.

  He had replaced the spent cartridges in the twin stainless Detonics pistols, still had ample ammunition for the CAR-—several loaded magazines full. The Metalified Python, of course.

  He pushed himself to his feet—he would leave the jet

  black Harley he rode hidden as it already was, then cross behind the ambushers.

  He looked back once, judging the distance between the six troopers and the waiting brigands.

  Two hundred yards—he would have to hurry.

  He swung the CAR-forward, his right fist locking on the pistol grip, his left hand earing back the bolt, letting it fly forward and chamber the first round from the magazine. His right thumb found the safety, working it on—he was already running.

  Chapter 2

  Rourke edged along the rise through the tree line. The two brigands who sat above the rest in the shelter of a pile of rocks were within fifty yards of him now. There were two alternatives—attempting to take out the brigands one at a time through stealth, or sniper fire. The first possibility—because of the sheer weight of numbers and the immediacy of the brigands' opening fire on the six military personnel moving through the valley—was something he decided to rule out.