Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm by Jerry Ahern Read Free Book Online Page A

would.”
    Sarah cleared her throat, the sound barely audible. Rourke looked at bis wife. “Did it ever occur to you that Fd rather have you live for me, John?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Fm tired of war. Sometimes - and understand how I mean this -maybe the ones who died were the lucky ones, the ones who died instantly during the Night of the War.”
    Rourke took a cigar from his shirt pocket.
    Sarah began to speak again. “It’s not a death wish. After all we’ve been through, Fd be an idiot to give it up now. It’s not that. Just, I, ahh-I just wish things could be different. I don’t want our baby to grow up in a world like this.”
    John Rourke took out his Zippo.
    “I mean, I know we’ve got great expectations from this new alliance with Mid-Wake, but the Russians aren’t just going to lie down and die, either. This thing could go on for decades. Ifs already been going on for five centuries, John.”
    Rourke leaned forward and set his cigar and lighter down on the coffee table, then put his left arm around his wife’s shoulders. “But it won’t. The Russians under the sea have full nuclear capabilities. If we don’t stop this war soon, there won’t be a planet left to live on. So, it’ll all be over, one way or the other, rather soon. Trust me on that. And, if we don’t win, at least well die knowing we tried. But I think we are going to win. Because we can’t let them win. So don’t worry, Sarah.”
    Her body shivered. She leaned her head against his chest. “If there is peace?”
    “There’s a whole world that’s going to need people in it, a world that isn’t polluted anymore, isn’t overcrowded, doesn’t have a drug problem. It could be a good world if we make it that. And, we
    will. Ifd be easy to be a pessimist, but in a strange way the world was given a second chance. And ifU be up to Michael’s children and Annie’s and Paul’s children and the child you’re carrying to
    I make that second chance last forever. And they can do it. We just
    * have to keep trying.”
    “I love you, John Thomas Rourke,” Sarah Rourke whispered.
    I John Rourke touched his hps to his wife’s forehead …
    Dinner smelled good, Sarah always a fine cook. He wouldn’t be eating it. Rourke told himself there would be other dinners, other I times. He smiled as he reflected that he had just summarized the bulk of his married life with Sarah. Paul stood beside him at the gun cabinets. John Rourke slid back | one of the glass doors over the handgun section and took down | from a set of wall pegs a gun he’d sent to New Germany with very f specific instructions.
    ] “I never had any particular fondness for suppressors, when I was s with Central Intelligence or otherwise,” Rourke told his friend. “But recently, Tve been noticing an occasional need for a more silent shot. Especially with Natalia’s Walther being unavailable to us now. And, as much as Fm not the world’s greatest admirer of the 9mm Parabellum, there’s something to be said for having a large capacity pistol available at times.”
    “That’s a Smith and Wesson, isn’t it? But one of the Third Generation guns.”
    “Yes,” Rourke nodded. “Ifs a 6906.” The pistol was about the size of one of Rourke’s Detonics mini-guns, brushed stainless steel with the black factory grips.
    “The barrel protrudes past the slide for attachment of a silencer, right?”
    Rourke smiled. He suddenly remembered the Paul Rubenstein f of that day at the wrecked aircraft, not knowing one gun from an-j other as they’d picked through the pile of arms taken from the dead I Brigand bikers, arming Paul with the battered old Browning High j Power and the German MP-40 submachine gun Paul still regularly { carried. Rourke took the suppressor out of a drawer beneath the j glassed-in portion of the case. It was black and eight inches long. “You thread it on just like an ordinary barrel extension. Then you lock it into place with an Allen head wrench. The