by David Beers
Now, he had to deal with Veronica calling his office constantly.
Christian had changed his cell phone number, so she didn’t have that. He’d changed his mother’s too. Veronica hadn’t been the reason for it—in fact, she never came to mind the entire time. Yet, since she couldn’t get in touch with him through her normal routes, she was annoying the hell out of Simone instead.
“She said she’s heading to D.C. if you don’t call her back. I’m not sure the Director will like her showing up at his door, ya know?” Simone asked.
Christian sighed.
“You don’t let up, do you?”
“When I get my way I do.”
“And what is your way this time?”
“That you call the woman, Christian,” she said. “Didn’t you love her once? So why are you ignoring her?”
“She has an armed guard around her, Simone. It’s not like I’m leaving her to the wolves.”
Are you sure? Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? An armed guard. That’s funny. Do you think that will keep Luke from getting to her if he wants?
“We’re not talking about an armed guard. We’re talking about a phone call. You need to do it. I don’t know everything that happened between you two, obviously, but I know that she deserves more than talking to your assistant, and having me tell her I’ll relay a message. Don’t you think?”
“Why has every woman to ever enter my life consistently told me how wrong I am? Can I not have one who just agrees with me?”
“Maybe. When you start acting right.”
Christian said goodbye and got off the phone, though he kept staring at it. He was tired and it was nearing 10:00 at night. He wanted sleep more than anything right now, and yet, Simone was right. Veronica deserved more than that. A lot more.
“Then give it to her,” his mother said.
She was suddenly on the bed, sitting right next to Christian. She reached over and put her hand on his leg.
“You used to treat people with the love they deserved, that they earned, even. You stopped, though, because you thought it was better for them if you didn’t show that love. Are you seeing now that it doesn’t matter what you do? That you don’t control the world no matter how much you like to think you do?”
Christian stared at his feet while the figment of his imagination continued speaking.
“She’s still in danger and you haven’t spoken with her in years. Maybe it isn’t your love that puts her in danger. Maybe it’s Luke Titan.”
Christian said nothing back. He instead looked at the text Simone had sent earlier containing Veronica’s number.
He dialed it.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” Christian said, his eyes squinting and a grimace rolling across his face … preparing for the beating that would surely come.
He heard only silence, though—so long that Christian wondered if she’d hung up.
“Are you there?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s just been a while since I’ve heard your voice. Was kind of taking it in.”
Christian’s face relaxed and he sighed. “What are you doing, Veronica? Why did you get on that goddamn television show and say all of that? You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Not with the ten people you have outside my house at all times.”
“It’s not ten,” Christian said.
“You get my point.”
Christian smirked. “If it’s any solace, I have about the same outside my own door.”
“Why?”
“Well, mainly because Luke has declared war on the United States, and so far he’s winning.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Veronica said, her voice snapping off his sarcasm. “Did something happen besides what was on TV?”
Christian briefly wondered if Waverly was monitoring his cell phone, or Veronica’s. Maybe the entire conversation would be recorded and listened to later. Through his exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, he decided he didn’t care.
“Yeah. Luke came to visit Tommy and I.”
“You’re kidding,” Veronica said.
“No. He tuned me up a little bit, but that was my own fault, I suppose. So now we have 24 hour surveillance around us both. It feels a little bit like having the Secret Service, doesn’t it?”
Veronica laughed, though only briefly. “Yes, I guess it does.”
A few seconds went by and then Christian said, “Why did you want me to call?”
“Isn’t that obvious? I want to come out there with you. If he’s going to kill us, Christian, we might as well be together.”
Christian lay back on the hotel bed, his feet dangling off the end. He kept the phone to his ear and closed his eyes, listening to the silence between the two of them.
She didn’t question if he was still there and he said nothing. Both knew what she was asking of him, and she had to know an answer wouldn’t be immediate. Regardless how fast his brain worked, she wanted him to change everything he instilled in his life. A wall that ran so deep into the ground, and so high into the air, it couldn’t be scaled or tunneled under.
He was insulated, and that meant others were insulated from him.
And yet, the wall wouldn’t stop Luke from getting to Veronica. Luke was beyond it.
No, a thought spoke, you can stop Luke from getting to her, by killing her yourself. That’s the option he’s given you.
Christian shoved the diseased idea away.
“I’ll talk to Waverly tomorrow. We’ll get you an escort out here,” he said.
CHAPTER 12
C harles had left his house and gone into hiding. He didn’t want to do it, but knew he had to. The riverbeds of information were drying up for him, and quickly. He had expected a response from the FBI, certainly everyone involved in the operation had—but this swift of one? No, Charles hadn’t anticipated that.
Perhaps it was his own arrogance, thinking he could somehow defeat the goddamn FBI.
Charles was in the North Georgia mountains. The place all the abortion bombers went after blowing up unborn babies. He was in a small cabin; it had a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen attached to a living room. He’d arranged to stay there, and then told Titan where he was heading … who sounded as if he couldn’t care less whether Charles was hiding out in hell.
The cabin was fully equipped with everything he needed to command operations. He had radio communications, burner phones, a top speed Internet connection. The place might look like a piece of shit, but in reality, he could operate just as easily here as he could at home.
Which was all that mattered.
“Just a few more weeks of this,” he said as he stared at the map on the wall. “A few more weeks and you’ll be rich and Titan will be dead.”
He was looking at a state map of Alabama, focusing on Birmingham. A small, red circle encapsulated a single building. Using, black, red, and green markers, Charles had traced different routes to the building—the reds wouldn’t work, blacks were better, green was best.
A week had passed since the attacks on the four FBI buildings, with Titan giving him the task of figuring out what the next one would look like.
Charles gave it some thought, and then decided, why try to reinvent the wheel? Hadn’t Timothy McVeigh done a good bit of damage with a moving truck?
Titan gave his okay, and they were just about ready to move.
Charles took the red marker from between his lips and then circled one of the green paths already on the map. “That’s the one.”
The road contained the least amount of traffic, the least traffic lights, and had a direct route right to the FBI building’s entrance.
The FBI response would grow harsher, but Charles was safe up here. The noose might be tightening, but there was still plenty of room between it and Charles’s neck. The FBI was traveling up the lines of communication, trying to find the man at the top, but they were still a good way off. By the time they knew of Charles, this would be over.
&nb
sp; He’d be rich.
Titan dead.
And the world right again.
First, though, a lot of other people needed to die.
LUKE WAS a half mile away from the Birmingham, Alabama FBI building. He stood on top of another building, the wind blowing hard so high up. He was at the roof’s edge, a pair of powerful binoculars in hand. He could see only the top half of the FBI structure, but it would have to do. Any closer and he’d risk danger to himself.
A few things were on Luke’s mind as he waited for the building to fall. The first, and least important, was when he could rid himself of Charles Twaller. He held no doubt that the man was thinking the same thing about him. They would tolerate each other for the time being, but sooner or later, Charles would come for Luke. It was a bit strange when he thought about it, how Charles felt himself the predator in this relationship.
Luke didn’t care what the man thought, at least not outside of knowing what he thought. Twaller could think he was an astronaut and it wouldn’t matter. He would get no closer to killing Luke than anyone else had.
But when Charles Twaller died depended greatly on Christian. Twaller was magnificent at what he did, and Luke planned on increasing the pressure until Christian snapped—which meant the fat man was necessary for now.
“Will you snap, though?” Luke asked the empty rooftop. His eyes peered through the binoculars, watching the still standing building.
Luke didn’t know the answer to the question. It was the first answer he hadn’t known since he was a boy in a small Mexican classroom. Christian hadn’t broken yet, and certainly it wasn’t for Luke’s lack of trying, but this attack would be different. The FBI building Luke now stared at was in a heavily populated area. Massive casualties would result, and all of them would be laid at Christian’s feet.
He would know it, because Luke had told him how to stop this.
Luke would keep laying the dead there, right in front of Christian, until he did what Luke commanded. The bodies would pile so high and so wide, that Christian would see nothing else. No friends, no family, only the dead with their open eyes staring right back at him. Their torn apart bodies decorating his vision like Christmas ornaments on a tree.
But would he break?
Or was he too strong?
If so, that was fine. Luke’s purpose would still be served, the affront to God growing greater with each death.
And, yet, he wanted Christian to break. God had put Christian in Luke’s way, even if Christian didn’t believe it. God didn’t need Christian to believe, and neither did Luke. To break Christian would be the greatest affront—to see the good bend at the knees and accept what they are, what they’ve become. Then God would watch Luke’s creation.
The wind blew harshly against Luke’s cheek.
It was time to stop his wool gathering. It was time to begin stacking more bodies in front of Christian.
STEVEN POE WAS nervous as hell, and it wasn’t easy to make such a man nervous. He had seen war, terrorism, and all kinds of private security ranging from diplomat escorting to out-and-out assassination.
Still, Steven Poe knew what he was doing as he drove the van through the Birmingham streets. He’d known since he received the call two days prior: he was participating in a new kind of war. Steven had been watching the television over the past week (as, he imagined, was the rest of the country), and most people were saying this type of war couldn’t be defined. It wasn’t terrorism; there were no political means to be gained here. It wasn’t warfare with another nation. This was a private war, one dictated by the whims of one man and the end goal unspecified.
The talking heads on the television said the world had entered a new era. Though they were all careful not to define it, Steven knew its definition: they had entered the Luke Titan era.
And, apparently, Steven had signed up for the man’s army.
The pay was right, which was all that mattered. The covert wars in the eighties let Steven understand that flags weren’t worth dying for, but money might be. Plus, when one saw the hell he and his colleagues created by killing dictators and creating a power vacuum—Steven decided he’d get paid good money to ruin lives.
Fifty thousand dollars to create hell on Earth simply wasn’t worth it.
Steven had been contacted three days ago and the price was fair. Now, he only had to drop this van off at the building three blocks away, and he would be about ten years closer to retirement.
The plan, as had been laid out, was simple. Security had been increased across the country, but Birmingham, Alabama—despite what they might portray to the outside world—was still behind in most areas of life. That included FBI security, apparently. Steven had received credentials yesterday, and he was to show them to the security guard, then pull the van right up to the front door. The front of the building was shaped like an arrow, and Steven would park at the crux of it.
He’d get out and then walk off.
Simple.
Once he was three or four blocks away, he would press the clicker in his pocket, sending a radio signal to the van and detonating the equivalent of four tons of dynamite.
Steven felt nervous though, regardless how simple the plan was. If something went wrong—the credentials didn’t work, someone asked to look in the back of the van—he would either end up dead or in jail. Neither of which sounded great. Still, he kept a calm appearance as the vehicle rolled past the last stoplight and up to the security checkpoint.
“How are you doing?” one of the security guards asked. Security might be lighter than the rest of the country, but Steven still didn’t like what he saw. The guard house had three people inside it, including the person who’d stepped outside. He didn’t see any automatic weapons, but everyone was packing.
“Not bad. Monday, though, ya know?” Steven said.
“Believe me, I know. Can I take a look at your identification?”
Steven pulled the two cards he’d been given from his wallet. One was a fake driver’s license, the other a fake employment ID.
“One second,” the man said, stepping back into the security post.
Steven placed both hands on the steering wheel and looked out the front window. The moment of truth, whether or not things would go as simply as he hoped, or whether he would have to shoot this man in the face, speed the van to the front, and then take off running down the street. Steven would do all those things, if necessary. The money was that great.
The security guard returned from the post, credentials in hand.
“Here you go, sir. If you’ll pull around back, someone will be there waiting for you. If they’re not, there’s a doorbell for shipments.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Not a problem.”
Steven pulled the van through the gate, knowing that the security guard would be dead in about five minutes, most likely unidentifiable. His family would only know he died because he was at work. They wouldn’t find his body, and if they did, it would be in pieces and the place he was laid to rest would contain an empty coffin.
Steven took a right instead of a left, hoping that the security guard wasn’t paying attention. He wouldn’t pull the van to the back; the structural weakness rested in the front of the building, and the building had to collapse in full.
The money was contingent on it.
He parked the vehicle, and took the keys with him as he stepped out. If they did find what was in the back of this van, they wouldn’t be able to move the damned thing before Steven pressed the clicker in his pocket.
There was only one entrance and exit to the premises, so Steven started walking back the way he came.
“Sir, you can’t park that there,” the security guard said, exiting the dugout.
“Sorry, I needed to ask you one thing. The back, it’s—” Steven whipped the gun from the holster hidden by his jacket, and fired a silenced bullet into the guard’s head.
The man stared forward for a second, and then collapsed in a heap.
Steven didn’t even pause. He walked forward, entered the dugout, and killed the other two guards.
Four blocks down the road, he pressed the button in his jacket pocket.
THE WIND HAD BEEN BLOWING from the east, but the blast wave surged forward from the north.
Despite only being able to see the top half of the building, Luke watched the first flames rise upward as if hell itself erupted.
He held the binoculars to his face, refusing to take them down for anything. He would watch from this vantage point, just as God watched from his.
It all happened in mere seconds, but Luke’s mind slowed it down, taking it apart piece by piece.
The blast moved up, windows breaking as the outside pressure grew too great for their structural integrity. Internal metal rods snapped, forcing thousands of pounds of pressure on the outside bricks, causing them to fling into the parking lot. A roaring fire rose from below, spreading out in all directions (though Luke knew it would have been more effective to focus it only in the building’s direction, but some things couldn’t be helped). It blazed through the building’s front doors, and though Luke couldn’t see them, human bodies were now burning. Screams echoed inside the building as flesh melted from bones.
And, finally, Luke saw the building begin its collapse. The heat and pressure working their lethal magic.
It came down in seconds, killing everyone inside, and sending a plume of shattered stone and brick into the air.
Luke watched for a second longer before forcing himself to put the binoculars down. Sirens rose into the sky as the world came to know another attack had taken place.
CHAPTER 13
T he room was in shock. Even Waverly stared at the television screen with an absence of focus that Tommy hadn’t seen before.
