Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm Read Online Free PDF Page A

Darkwood’s inner thighs. Again, he held up the pillow case. Again, Paul said, “I don’t smell it.”
    Rourke brought the pillow case once more under Darkwood’s body, this time along the shaft of the perns and into the area on either side of the testicles.
    Even with the cigar, the semen smell was easily detectable. “Smell it now?”
    “Yeah,” Paul nodded, his eyes darting right and left.
    “Give me the plastic inflatable pillow you took this off.”
    The younger man handed him the pillow. Rourke carefully folded the pillow case to keep the material with the semen sample inside. Now he placed the pillow between Darkwood’s genitalia and the edge of the cot, moving the pillow across the perns. When he withdrew the transparent plastic pillow there were small whitish streaks on its surface. “Keep an eye on that.”
    “All right.”
    Rourke took up his flashlight again. He searched along the floor. Beside Darkwood’s right hand-the fingertips were blood-smeared-was a Mid-Wake issue bayonet. It was blood smeared, too, very likely the murder weapon, regardless of who wielded it. Also on the floor, as if it had fallen from her partially open hand just above it, was a three D-Cell re-chargeable flashlight, of the type in the strategic stores tapped into by the Eden Project personnel. Rourke wasn’t concerned about fingerprints.
    “Get me another pillow case. Rip this one in half or something so it’s easily identifiable.”
    “Right.” In a moment, Paul was back with another pillow case, ripped in half. “What are you going to do?”
    “What I have to do,” Rourke said hoarsely. Wrapping the pillow case around his hand, he used it to take a semen specimen from the dead woman’s genitalia. “Keep an eye on this one, too. Well get the two specimens typed. Odds are, they match. Then we check that against Darkwood after he provides us with a sample. If Darkwood’s sample doesn’t match-“
    Dodd stammered, “Just a damn minute, Rourke! Just because this man is a friend of yours, you’re denying obvious evidence of a rape and murder?”
    John Rourke looked over his shoulder at Commander Dodd. Tm having a hard day. Don’t push.”

Chapter Six
    It was like giving a urine specimen, only worse; and his head ached and his neck ached and when he moved his head his entire body was seized with pain and stiffness. In the end, Jason Darkwood mentally reconstructed an evening more than a year before that he’d spent with Maggie Barrow. Unlike a great many of the officers at Mid-Wake, she had an apartment of her own which she shared with another woman, a Marine Corps officer whose duty schedule was such that she and Maggie rarely even saw one another, one ashore while the other was at sea. Most unmarried Mid-Wake officers, constantly at sea, stayed in available officers quarters when they were ashore.
    Maggie had baked lasagna-she was a terrific cook-and there was a bottle of wine and a videotape of some romantic movie from before the war. But they’d only made it about a half-hour into the movie before they’d spontaneously decided to make a romantic tape of their own, but no cameras running.
    Making love with Maggie was like nothing he’d ever experienced. She responded to him as if she were a part of him, their hands knowing what to do to each other as if-And then what Darkwood needed to do was done and he felt drained for a moment and there was no sensation of the pain for at least fifteen seconds, but when the pain returned it was more violent than before.
    He leaned back in the hospital bed, his face feeling hot, but he took care of the thing.
    It wasn’t that he hadn’t been very tempted with Maritza Zeiss and, maybe, had she lived-He didn’t know. Now, he never would.
    He rang the nurse call button aid, after a moment, the tent of curtain around his bed parted and a German medtech, a young man of about twenty, entered the cubicle. He spoke excellent if somewhat stilted English. “You are finished, Herr