Soon

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  An earsplitting cracking sound made the earth rumble. Low booms, growing in intensity, knocked Paul to his knees. It’s a bomb factory!

  “Coker!” Paul bellowed. “Get out!”

  He caught a lurching flash of white at the side of the house—the white uniform he had last seen drooping from under a coat. The middle-aged couple had slipped out and were staggering away as fast as the man could limp. Paul fired and saw the white form sink, dragging the man down. Rocking forward on his knees, Paul fired again and the man was still.

  The wood house twisted on its foundation, shrieking and splintering. A man burst through a front window, stumbling on the porch and staggering to the rail. As Paul took aim, the ground surged, knocking him onto his belly as he fired off a shot. He thought the ray caught the man in the chest as he vaulted off the porch.

  Paul struggled to rise but the ground buckled again. It pounded against his belly like a huge heart beating at the earth’s core. A crevasse burst open in front of him. He buried his head in his arms and rolled over the pitching ground into the street, down the hill—sliding, scrambling to his hands and knees when he could get purchase. He was more than halfway down the hill before he managed to stand and coax his battered limbs into a run, heaving and stumbling toward the bottom, now ringed with the gleaming blue lights of the San Francisco police Suburbans.

  Two helmeted cops ran to help him, and he collapsed into their arms. Another deafening blast and a great underground heave knocked the three of them into a heap. As they disentangled, a final tremor and concussion sent debris raining from the top of the hill. They lay covering their faces until it settled. When at last they could stand, the top of the hill was invisible, clouded with smoke and dust in the foggy morning light.

  As the cops helped Paul into an ambulance, he read their lips asking him what had happened. “Bomb,” he choked out through puffy, bleeding lips, his ears too battered to tell whether he was making sounds. His eyes were swelling shut, and he could hardly bear to settle his bruised body onto the gurney. As medics hooked him to machines, one thought looped through the ache and ringing in his head: What bomb could do that kind of damage?

  It was a miracle. That’s what the doctors said about Paul’s injuries—or the lack of them. “Nothing but cuts and bruises,” one of them said. “You look a lot worse than you are.”

  Paul tried to remember that when he examined the purple mottling on his arms, legs, and torso through a pair of teacup-sized shiners. The coat and hat and gloves that saved him were in shreds before the doctors cut them off at the hospital. Paul insisted on saving the scraps.

  His eardrums had ruptured, but with modern technology that required only a simple repair, done in the emergency room. He would need to be shielded from noise for about a week. That was a relief, because he was too banged up to endure more questions.

  Jae’s father had been enthusiastic about Paul’s new job. “Exactly what he needs. Young guy like him, trained for the military—he’s bound to get frustrated after a couple of years as a desk jockey. I wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t. I used to see it all the time in the agency. Jae, it will be the best thing for him.”

  So when Paul came home bruised and battered, Jae was dismayed but vowed to keep it to herself. It would be hard enough for the children to cope with an injured father—especially one as frightening to look at as Paul—without having to hear their parents fight about it. And what if her father was right? What if part of Paul’s disaffection was the need for a new challenge, a chance to prove himself? He’d certainly shown his mettle. He was a hero. At this point their marriage was so rocky she was willing to accept almost anything that might revitalize it.

  “A miracle,” Koontz said, slamming the printout onto his desk. “That’s what the subversives are claiming about the San Francisco explosion.”

  He and Paul sat in the safe room reviewing Operation Polly Carr after Paul’s two weeks of sick leave. It had culminated in a kind of earthquake scientists had never seen, one that caused a panic even in a quake-protected city because it looked so much like a terrorist attack. The top of the hill had split, forming a crater into which the widow’s house and a few abandoned ones nearby had disappeared. The strong wavelike tremors had uprooted trees and left cracks in the roadways, but had only minimally damaged other earthquake-fortified homes farther down the hill. Nonetheless these houses had to be evacuated until geological studies determined the hill was stable and, if possible, what had triggered the bizarre predawn convulsion of the earth.

  “It was a bomb,” Koontz said. “We just don’t know what kind, and with the whole hilltop collapsed in on top of the house, I wonder if we’ll ever find out. But it’s obvious these people are more sophisticated and dangerous than we thought.”

  “What about all those NPO special weapons and tactics people?”

  “All gone.”

  Paul shook his head. “That poor kid Coker. He was a real go-getter.”

  “We think the subversives all bought it too.”

  Paul leaned in closer. “There’s something I want to tell you about that, Bob.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Coker and the team busted into the house—no announcement, no identification. They swarmed the place, attacked with flamethrowers, tear gas, Bayous with laser bayonets, and pulsar handguns—”

  “That must have been something.”

  “It was! I heard shooting—friendly or not, I couldn’t tell. As I ran to assist, the old lady came spinning out of the house. They had set her on fire. That was before I knew anything about a bomb.”

  Bob let out a big breath. “What are you saying?”

  “Did we even know that they were armed? It was like those kids walked into a booby trap. So I shot the old lady.”

  “Sounds like you put her out of her misery.”

  “Then the bomb went off. Did we know it was there?”

  “We had our suspicions.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  Koontz hesitated. “The commander of an operation like this needs broad discretionary powers. Maybe the situation was too dicey for him to communicate much with you or the others. You just don’t know.”

  “Well, I just kept shooting. I didn’t even think about taking prisoners. I got three more of them—a nurse, maybe, and two guys trying to escape.”

  “Kill ’em?”

  “Think so.”

  “Your first kills?”

  “Yes.”

  Koontz smiled. “Rough. But don’t let it bother you. You did what you were trained to do, and under fire. Listen, they would have died in the explosion anyway. You’re the only survivor. In this day and age, few of us ever kill anyone. Look at it this way—the bomb went off. That’s as close to proof as we’ll ever get that there were terrorists in that house.”

  “Bob, I don’t have regrets. It’s about those kids, Coker and the rest. They didn’t know, and they went up in smoke. They never had a chance.”

  Koontz nodded. “Guerrilla warfare. That’s what we’re up against.”

  7

  THE MONDAY AFTER PAUL’S DEBRIEFING by Koontz was his first official day back at work. He arrived early to find Trina Thomas perched on Felicia’s desk, legs crossed and a high-heeled pump dangling from one toe.

  “Hey, good lookin’,” she said. “I was just writing you a note. You look like you tangled with a cactus.”

  “Last week I looked like I tangled with a grizzly.”

  “Well, I’m sure you could lick a bear any day. But seriously, how do you feel?”

  “Surprisingly good. Not even sore anymore, even if I am black and blue.”

  “It’s very macho, I assure you. I came by to tell you I ran that sample a couple different ways while you were gone.”

  Paul unlocked his office door. “Come on in.” When she was seated, he shut the door. “And so?”

  “It’s old paper of very high quality. Today what little paper we use is made of reconstituted fibers from the plasti
cs that used to be considered indestructible. But at the turn of the century, paper had a high organic content—wood pulp, even cloth fibers. Cheaper papers were made of ground wood and tended to the acidic, so they yellowed and decayed quickly. Your sample is top grade, with a high rag or cotton content, which is why it’s in such good shape.”

  “Is it possible to buy today?”

  “Not that I know of. It hasn’t been commercially available since the war. There’s so much surplus plastic around, which is cheaper and easier to work with, and the final product is so much more stable. There may be craftspeople who produce organic paper in small batches for artwork or something. But spectroscopic analysis shows the fibers in your paper have started to break down to an extent that suggests that it’s between thirty-five and fifty years old. The sample is gummed, too, treated with an adhesive activated by moisture. It’s part of an envelope, right? They used to seal them by licking the gum.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Not as sanitary as our snap-dot seals and not as secure. Once you snap shut a modern security envelope, you can’t open and reseal it without detection because the dots can never be exactly realigned. But back then, to be sure no one but the intended recipient opened it, they might also seal the envelope with a blob of wax. There are some traces on your sample.”

  “Interesting.”

  “So where does Jae think it came from?”

  “Oh, ah, the genealogy project. Some relative during the war.”

  “Makes sense. Was a letter with it? Something important, I’d guess from the quality, and probably not electronically printed. Handwritten? Calligraphy?”

  “I’ll ask.”

  “You’d expect something that formal to be signed. And thirty-five years isn’t that long ago. I’m surprised Jae’s relatives can’t identify the document.”

  “Listen, I really appreciate your taking the time to run all those tests.”

  “Let me know if Jae wants the ink tested. That would establish the age with more certainty. ’Course, you’d owe me a second lunch.”

  Paul half expected Trina to push on and guess who penned the letter. Forensics people were used to spinning whole scenarios out of small shards of evidence.

  But if what she said was true, the letter could be real, a prospect that horrified Paul. It was hard to know which was worse—to discover he was the target of an agency sting operation or that the father he lionized had become the dupe of an evil cult.

  But he had to know for sure—now more than ever, after his own near death. The ink was the key, Trina said, and handwriting analysis would add certainty. But Trina’s intuition and curiosity could be a problem. The last thing Paul wanted was speculation about the letter all over the office.

  But what about Angela Pass? According to her business card, she worked for the Library of Congress, which surely had the means to test the letter. He could write via the secure e-mail he used for dealing with informants, and she would have no way of knowing he was with the NPO. Now that the truth was out about Andy, the letter had no value to Ranold as a test of Paul’s loyalty, but the old spymaster would probably still view him with suspicion. If Ranold had planted the letter, approaching Angela would be a good way to flush him out.

  He dashed off a note to Angela, reiterating his pleasure at meeting her. Trading on the fact that they both had military fathers, he claimed to be working on a commemorative project for his father’s platoon. Might she have a colleague who could identify the soldier who had written a certain letter by comparing two handwriting images he could scan and send her—and perhaps also help him get an age fix on the letter from an ink specimen?

  Two can play the spy game.

  And, Paul thought with a smile, asking Angela for help could fan a spark between them.

  Jae had been surprised at how unwilling Paul was to talk to his father-in-law during his two weeks of recuperating at home. He claimed he was in too much pain. But now that he had been back to work a few days, he seemed to welcome Ranold’s calls. Jae took that as a good omen—that Paul’s new satisfaction on the job was promoting better relations with her father, which might also herald greater contentment for him at home.

  Koontz urged Paul to ease back into his duties, but by the end of the week he was demanding a new assignment. “I want to keep my momentum,” he said. “I can’t do that hanging around the office. Put me back in the field.”

  Paul didn’t confess his rage over Andy Pass—or his father—getting sucked in by the promise of “springs of life-giving water” or the threat that Jesus was coming soon. He couldn’t purge his mind of the young, overzealous Coker grinning and giving him the thumbs-up before jogging into a bomb shop, or of the earth pitching and bucking as he tumbled down the hill. He relived shooting the burning woman, the white uniform, and the limping man; and he kept flashing back to that moment when his heat ray intersected the arc of the man diving off the porch. Paul’s bruises were healing but his anger remained. How he wished he’d killed more, that he’d killed them all.

  For a few days he had been distracted. First, there had been his thank-you-for-the-paper-analysis lunch with Trina Thomas, a languorous, wine-soaked afternoon culminating in a kiss that had left Paul relieved he’d had the sense not to place himself any further in her debt.

  Angela had responded with delight in having heard from Paul and expressed her eagerness to help out his father’s old platoon. He had immediately transmitted images of a few lines his father had written his mother and a sentence from the letter—“One day you will hold your own child and understand the profound depth and breadth of a father’s love”—along with a snippet of the date at the top of the page for ink testing.

  Then he’d given over a few evenings to cat-and-mouse discussions with Ranold, trying to determine whether the old man knew about the letter and his approaching Angela.

  But now Paul was stir-crazy.

  “Well,” Koontz said finally, “we’ve got a situation in Gulfland. It’s strictly fact-finding, but I’ll send you with all the authority you need to question anybody at any level. You don’t even have to take a weapon.”

  “I appreciate it, Bob, but don’t baby me.”

  “Fair enough. But this one should be easy.” Koontz handed him a folder. “Oil country. A gusher there suddenly stopped pumping and caught fire.”

  “I’m not an oilman, Bob. Is that unusual?”

  “Must not be, other than being a nuisance for the investors, but what’s happening now is without precedent. It’s not some underground flare-up but a pillar of fire a couple hundred feet high.”

  “Sounds dangerous. Why can’t they put it out?”

  Koontz raised both hands. “Foam isn’t working, and they can’t figure a way to cap it. It’s another ‘inexplicable occurrence’ the crazies will have a field day with. People who see these things talk, and then rumors spread like wildfire. Personally, I think it’s got to be some sort of industrial sabotage.”

  “This I gotta see.”

  “How does first thing tomorrow morning sound?”

  8

  PAUL HAD ALWAYS BEEN privately amused by the Gulfland NPO bureau chief. Most of the chiefs Paul had met were fairly buttoned-down bureaucratic types. Lester “Tick” Harrelson was about five-foot-six and 140 pounds. He had a shock of dry hair through which he was constantly—and ineffectively—running a hand. His tie was loose, and he had trouble keeping his shirt tucked in. But he was a pro, and his people worshiped him.

  Tick and Donny Johnson, president of Sardis Oil and Tick’s polar opposite, met Paul at the gate at Bush International in Houston. All Tick and Donny had in common were cowboy boots and hats and a commitment to the problem at hand. Johnson was a big man with a long gait, and while it appeared he would be more comfortable in a workingman’s clothes, his suit was clearly custom-made.

  “Good to see you again, Doctor,” Tick said, introducing him to the oil magnate. “Welcome back. Glad you’re back in the saddle. This boy’s a hero, Donny.”<
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  Donny Johnson looked approvingly at the bruises on Paul’s face. He all but crushed Paul’s hand when they shook. “Sure could use a hero ’bout now.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Used to call that well my Spindletop. Now it’s nothin’ but cash money burnin’ up.”

  Tick interpreted. “Spindletop was the original Texas gusher, the one that put us on the map way back when. Pumped a hundred thousand barrels a day, or so they say.”

  Johnson shook his head. “We do double that now with geomagnetics, but in the old days that was somethin’. Biggest gusher the world ever saw. A miracle, they say—which is what they’re callin’ my well fire now and gettin’ folks all worked up.”

  “Who’s calling it a miracle?”

  “That’s for you to tell us, mister. Not even forty-eight hours and it’s already out over the Internet. And when you find ’em—”he clenched huge fists—“I’m fixin’ to beat their brains out.”

  “Figuratively, of course,” Tick said. “Religious activity alone is punishable by law. Sabotage—”

  “By law?” Johnson said. “We have our own ideas about law in Texas.”

  Tick looked as if he’d heard this before. “Let’s show Paul what’s going on.”

  The three climbed into a stretch limo at the curb. Though it was only March, Paul was sweating in his wool suit, even in the airconditioned car. He took off his jacket. “Loosen your tie,” Tick said, but Paul declined.

  Houston had long been one of the most populated cities in the country and had recently passed Chicago for third place behind Los Angeles and New York. In the distance Paul saw some of the tallest buildings in the world, giving the port city a dramatic skyline. The windows of most of the skyscrapers were reflective, countering the relentless sun, and the glare gave the city an ethereal golden glow.