Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins by Jerry Ahern Page B

involving them in a bloodbath there which had nearly turned into a nuclear incident.
    Either the full-sized or abbreviated magazines would work in the miniguns under his arms. The shorter magazines only worked in the CombatMasters, but not in the full-sized Scoremasters that he would carry holsterless in his waistband once they were on the ground in Canada.
    He had been asked once why he carried so many handguns in preference to all other arms. Indeed, he had a rifle, the HK-91 in 7.62mm/ .308 (a better bet for him these days than his old CAR-15), and three knives, the twelve-inch blade Crain Life Support System X that he wore at his left side, the AG Russell Sting IA Black Chrome that he wore inside his trouser band near his right kidney, and a little Executive Edge Grande pen-shaped folding knife concealed in his jacket pocket. This was one of the items he recovered when he and Paul raided the museum exhibits at the Retreat.
    But he liked handguns.
    Before the Night of the War, one of John Rourke’s closest friends and a frequent shooting buddy was Steve Fishman of Augusta, Georgia. Steve, ex-Special Forces, was a fine martial artist, both practitioner and teacher, and more than proficient with any gun or knife one cared to put in his hand. On one of many pleasant shooting sessions with Steve—this time when Rourke was driving back to Northeast Georgia from a conference in Charleston, South Carolina—a mutual friend of Rourke’s and Fishman’s had been in the area as well. The friend, Hank, was a professional soldier and occasionally over a drink or a cup of coffee would tell a wild story or two about his adventures, invariably involving some insane joke supposedly accounting for the loss of his left eye, the socket covered with a black patch or by sunglasses when appropriate.
    Whether Hank’s stories were true or not, John Rourke and Steve Fishman enjoyed them. And one thing Hank could do as marvelously well as his eyepatch jokes and the recounting of his adventures was shoot.
    This one day, then, Rourke had been shooting his twin stainless Detonics .45s, Steve Fishman his much-engraved, ivory-gripped Beretta 92SB Compact 9mm and Hank a Metalifed Browning High Power with worn-smooth black rubber Pachmayr grips. Rourke was returning from teaching a security course when he made the stop-off in Charleston, then the subsequent trip to Augusta and consequently had all his working handguns with him. Hank remarked, “Now Steve there has his Beretta and I’ve got my Browning and my TEC-9, but you’ve got enough handguns to fill Steve’s store.”
    Steve owned an Augusta gunshop which was literally a Mecca for police, federal agents and security professionals from all over the Southeast. Rourke smiled at Hank’s remark, saying, “I doubt I’ve got enough handguns to fill even one shelf in one of
    Steve’s display cases.”
    Steve laughed, adding, “But I wouldn’t mind if he tried.”
    Hank persisted. “You know my background. I get along on this Browning and the TEC-9 and an M-161 get in country, if that.”
    John Rourke lit one of his thin, dark tobacco cigars. “I’ve always realized the importance of long guns, and made myself satisfactory with them.”
    “Satisfactory?” Steve Fishman exclaimed, laughing again. “I’ve seen you with that Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, remember? You could shoot the whiskers off a gnat with that 7.62.”
    “Gnats have whiskers? What do they shave with?” Hank asked, lighting a Camel with a Zippo windlighter nearly as battered as John Rourke’s own. Hank removed his eyepatch so quickly and deftly, substituting a pair of dark lensed sunglasses that, even had Rourke been trying, he could not have seen the one-eyed man’s disfigurement.
    Rourke laughed, forcing it a little. “I’m being serious, guys. Both you guys were Special Forces, all that. Me, well—”
    “Spook stuff,” Hank said, nodding, alluding to Rourke’s background as a case officer in the Central Intelligence