He tried pushing against the floor to get his feet under him, but fell flat onto the concrete.

He couldn't stand.

He looked up. There was a paper cutter in the far end of (he library bas.e.m.e.nt. Using his hands to pull himself, and his knees to push, he crawled toward it.

It seemed too far; he wanted to close his eyes. "Narcan,' he murmured again. The morphine was taking hold.

She would have the Narcan to counteract it. "Antagonist," he murmured.

Narcan was the antagonist for morphine.

"Paper cutter." He looked up. It was on thesmall table above him. He rolled the full weight of his body against it; the table turned over, the paper cutter clanging to the floor, the blade partially opened. He dragged himself toward it. Rourke reached out his wrists toward the blade and began to saw at the ropes. . . .

Naked, he sat on the floor; his body smelled of soap. She had apparently bathed him, he realized. He tried standing, getting to his feet, falling forward but catching himself on the end of the cot. Martha Bogen was murmuring something now, starting to come around. The bas.e.m.e.nt door was unlocked; he remembered that it should be.

Where was the key? He could lock her inside.

He dropped to his knees, picking up the small leather case in his thick-feeling fingers. "Narcan," he murmured seeing the hypodermic needle.

He hoped it was Narcan- not something else.

He took the syringe; he wanted a vein for the fastest action possible. He plunged the needle into his flesh. He started counting the seconds. It should take-how many? He tried to remember. Thirty-thirty seconds or so before he felt it.

Rourke dropped the needle and slumped back on the cot, nausea and cold flooding over him as he closed his eyes. . . .

Rourke opened his eyes to see Martha Bogen, her hair mussed, her face bruised, standing over him, a needle in her right hand held like a dagger.

"No!" Rourke punched his right fist upward into her jaw. He sat up, his back aching, but his hands reaching out to catch the unconscious woman before she hit the concrete floor.

He swept her up into his arms, staggering for a moment under the added weight.

He walked the step toward the cot and, heavily, set her down.

"Martha," he murmured. He still had to urinate. He looked around the bas.e.m.e.nt. There was a small door and he walked toward it, opened it-a bathroom. He stepped inside and relieved himself.

He felt the cold and the nausea coming. "Narcan- more Narcan," he murmured, already staggering. He reached the cot, found the package of syringes, opened the small leather case and took a fresh syringe.

He squatted on the floor, controlling his breathing so the Narcan wouldn't make him pa.s.s out. It shouldn't have been that way, he realized. It wasn^t theNarcan, hut the build-up of morphine in his system. He carefully found a spot and gave himself the injection, watching as the liquid dropped along the scale markings beneath the finger f.l.a.n.g.e. Removing the needle, he sat quietly fora moment, feeling the dizziness start to subside.

He waited what he judged to be a full five minutes, then tried getting to his feet.

Unsteady-but he could stand. He walked over to the small kit. There was one more syringe of Narcan. He closed the kit and took it with him as he started- shakily-toward the bas.e.m.e.nt door. The thought occurred to him-break the blade off the paper cutter, in case more crazies were outside, waiting.

He didn't.

Rourke opened the door, then stepped through. The stairs were dimly lit, a stronger light glowing from the top. He leaned heavily against the wall of the stairwell as he started up, tired still, his muscles aching.

"B complex," he murmured. If he could reach his bike, he could give himself an injection. Another injection. "s.h.i.t," he murmured.

He reached the top of the stairs, the library empty through the open door, a light under a green shade glowing from the gla.s.s-part.i.tioned office.

He lurched toward it, knocking over a large dictionary stand. He glanced back at it, then stood up straight, catching his breath. He reached the gla.s.s part.i.tion, then turned the k.n.o.b of her office door. There was a small closet at the back, behind her desk.

As he opened the door, he started to feel his strength returning. Inside, neatly folded on the top shelf, were his clothes. He looked below. On the floor were his boots. No guns.

He turned to the desk, opening the large side drawer on the left-hand pedestal bottom.

The double Alessi shoulder rig, the twin Detonics stainless ,s. His A.G.

Russell Sting IA knife.

He took up the shoulder rig, snapping one of the pistols out of the holster, then checked it-the chamber was still loaded, five rounds still in the magazine. He looked up; Martha Bogen was coming toward him.

He pointed the gun at her face. She stopped, then dropped to her knees on the floor and began to cry. "I didn't want to die alone."

"n.o.body'll have to die; I won't let it happen."

"You can't stop. it. You'll die, loo. But we'll both die alone."

Rourke heard a tiny explosion, then a whistling sound. He glanced at his Rolex, still running in the drawer; then he pulled open the curtain over the window to the street. Against the darkness, he could see a skyrocket bursting. It was exquisite.

" told you." He heard Martha Bogen s voice shout hysterically. "I told you so, John!"

The fireworks. Rourke remembered her saying they would come just before the explosions, just before the end.

The pickup truck had thrown a part from the engine- she wasn't sure what-and the radiator had burst and the pickup had stopped dead.

For the last three miles, as she judged it, she and the children had walked hugging the side of the farm road- &he had been too tired to cross country. With her, she carried the stolen M- rifle, her husband's .-the gun now covered with a light layer of brown that she considered to be rust-and among her few personal effects the photographs she had taken from the farmhouse on the Night of the War. Her wedding picture with John was among them.

She sat staring at it now, folded, creased, cracked. He wore a tuxedo and she a floor-length white gown and a veil. The children were resting. It was not far to theMul-liner farm now, but they had needed to rest. She felt as though she were entering a new stage of her life, and somehow staring at the wedding photo had seemed necessary before going to the farm.

She put it away, seeing the picture more clearly in her mind than in the photograph. She remembered their wedding night, John's body next to hers- "Mamma?"

She turned and looked at Michael in the predawn gray-ness. "Yes, son?"

"Will Daddy find us here-at Mary's?"

"I think so-if anyone can find anyone, Daddy will find us. Come here, Annie." Annie came beside her and Sarah hugged both children to her body.

She heard the barking of a dog, released the children, and grabbed for the rifle. But the dog stopped on the rise of ground, a golden retriever-the one her children had run with, played with. The dog ran up to them.

Michael, and then Annie-always a little more afraid of dogs-hugged the animal, and were in turn licked in the face, Sarah stood up, slinging the rifle across her back-shf could rest now, at least until John found them. "Until/ she repeated aloud.

Natalia placed her hands on her waist, just above the Safariland holsters carrying the twin Smith & Wesson revolvers. She looked at Paul Rubenstein, saying, "I don't see anything, Paul."

"When John brought me up here the first time, he told me that was the whole idea." Rubenstein smiled in the gray predawn. "I can't really explain it as he does-but I guess he did a lot of research. He said it was the way Egyptian tombs were sealed, and things like that. He wanted the place tamper-proof. Watch this." Rubenstein approached a large boulder on his right. He pushed against it, and the boulder rolled away.

He walked to his left, pushing a similar but not identical boulder. It was more squared off. As Rubenstein pushed, the rock on which Natalia stood beside him began to drop down. As the rock beneath them dropped, a slab of rock-she compared it to a garage door-opened inward.

"John told me it's just a system of weights and counterbalances,"

Rubenstein told her. "Maybe you understand it better-didn't you have some training as an engineer?'

"Nothing like this," she said, feeling literally amazed.

Rubenstein shined a flashlight-she remembered it as one of the angleheads he and John had said they'd taken from the geological supply house in Albuquerque just after the Night of the War. In the shaft of yellow light, she could see Paul bending over, flicking a switch. The interior beyond the moved-aside slab of rock was bathed in red light now. "All ready for Christmas." Rubenstein laughed. "Red light? That was a joke."

"Yes, Paul," Natalia murmured.

"HI get the bike. Hold this." He handed her the flashlight.

She studied the rock, murmuring, "Granite," as she heard the sounds of Rubenstein's Harley Low Rider being brought inside.

"Now watch this," Rubenstein said, suddenly beside her.

"Yes, Paul." She nodded, giving him back the flashlight. He moved over beside a light switch, then shifted a red-handled lever downward, locking it under a notch. He left the small cave for an instant and she could both hear and see him rolling the rock counterbalances back in place outside.

Rubenstein returned to the red-handled lever, loosed it from the notch that had retained it, and raised il. The granite slab-the door-started shifting back into place, blocking the entrance.

"What are those steel doors for?" Natalia asked,

gesturing beyond the pale of red light.

"The entrance inside." Rubenstein moved toward the doors, then began working a combination dial, then another, all in the shaft of yellow light from the anglehead. "John installed ultrasonic equipment to keep insects and critters out-"

"And closed-circuit television," Natalia added, looking up toward the vaulted rock above her.

"Can you find that switch for the red light back there?" Rubenstein asked her.

"Yes, Paul," she nodded, in the dim light found the switch, then worked it off. There was near total darkness now. "Paul?"

"Right here-wait." She heard the sounds of the steel doors opening.

She stepped closer to the beam of the anglehead flashlight, staring into the darkness beyond it.

"Ya ready?" she heard Paul's voice ask.

"I don't know . . . for-" She heard the sound of a light switch clicking.

She closed her eyes against the light a moment, then opened them.

"I don't believe it." She heard her voice; she couldn't remember it having ever sounded quite so astonished to her.

"That's the Great Room." She looked at Paul, watched the pride and happiness in his face.

"Great-yes," she repeated.

She started to walk, down the three low steps in front of her, a ramp to her left, her eyes riveted on the waterfall and the pool it made at the far end of the cavern; then she drifted to the couch, the tables, the chairs, the video recording equipment, the books that lined the walls, the weapons cabinet.

And on the end table beside the sofa . . . She stopped, approaching the couch, picking up the picture frame there.

"Would you like a drink, Natalia?" Rubenstein's voice came to her from across the Great Room. "I can show the rest to you after a while,"

"What? A drink-yes," she called back.

The little boy in the photo-he was a miniature twin of John Rourke.

"Michael," Natalia murmured, feeling herself smile. So fine, so beautiful, so strong. And the little girl-the face of an imp, a smile that- Natalia felt herself smiling more broadly.

And John, his arm around a woman who looked abou! Natalia's age, perhaps older by a few years. She was pretty, with dark hair and green eyes, or so it seemed in the picture.

"Sarah Rourke," Natalia murmured.

'That's them," Rubenstein said, suddenly beside her. "I didn't ask what you wanted. Figured Seagram's Seven would be all-"

"Perfect. That's perfect, Paul."

"That's Sarah and Michael and Annie. I feel almost as though I know them."

Rubenstein laughed.

"Yes, Paul-so do I," Natalia said, putting the picture down on the end table. "So do I." She stopped talking then, because she felt she was going to cry and didn'! want to.

Rozhdestvenskiy looked at the Army major, Ivan Borozeni. "Major-it is immaterial to me if the population is unarmed essentially."

"But, Colonel, I see little need for going in firing- we-"

"Major, I will remind you of your rank-and also of one salient point you may not have considered. The Morris Industries plant was a highly secret Defense Department installation and manufacturing facility. If it still stands, it would seem obvious that the civilian government of the town is aware of its strategic importance to one degree or another. Hence, if we do not put down any thought of resistance as we enter the valley, they will likely use demolitions to destroy the plant.'

"But, Comrade Colonel-"

Rozhdestvenskiy dragged heavily on his cigarette. "Your objections shall be noted in my official report. Now-lead your men into the a.s.sault."

The Army major stiffened visibly, then saluted, Rozhdestvenskiy, still dressed in civilian clothes, nodding only.

Rozhdestvenskiy turned and started back toward his command helicopter. In the far distance, he had been seeing fireworks illuminating the dawn sky.

Peculiar, he had thought, surprised that Major Borozeni hadn't mentioned it. ...

Below him now, he could see the helicopter gunships shadows hovering like huge black wasps over the lip of the dish-shaped mountain valley, and beyond the rirn, the first of Borozeni's attack forces were moving up. It was like a gigantic board game, he thought-this thing of being a field commander. He rather liked it.

Rozhdestvenskiy spoke into the small microphone in front of his lips.

"This is Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy; the attack has begun!"

His jaw tightened, his neck tensed, and he nodded to his pilot, watching the man's hands as he worked the controls, feeling the emotion already in the pit of his stomach. They were starting down.

The mists on the ground rolled under the downdrafts of the helicopter rotors-he watched them swir! beneath the long shadow of his machine as they came from the sun. Surprise-there would be surprise, he thought.

Already, he could see the factory looming ahead and below them, the only large industrial building in the town, at its far edge.