Ethan heard the metallic crunch as the door lock was mangled under the blasts amid splintering wood. Lopez pulled back as Ethan dropped the cushions and pushed on the door handle. The heavy door opened partially, enough for Ethan to see the shattered locking mechanism.
Ethan leaned out, and then barged his shoulder into the door.
The door flew open, Lopez rushing past him into the office with her pistol held before her. Ethan looked at the broad windows and the huge chrome crucifix on the wall.
“He’s not here.”
“You didn’t tell me you were a genius,” Lopez muttered, looking around her. “He’s got to be around somewhere.”
“You sure he came in here?”
“I look like a moron?”
“No, but he could have sneaked off somewhere else.”
“He didn’t,” Lopez said. “He came in here, I saw him, and there’s no other exit from the corridor.”
A flash of light caught Ethan’s eyes as it traveled across the wall in front of him, and he turned to look back out into the corridor. Through a window on the opposite wall, he saw pulsing strobes and car headlights flash past as they entered the parking lot outside.
“Wherever he is, we’d better find him fast,” Lopez said. “The FBI’s here.”
Ethan looked around the huge office in desperation as Lopez grabbed one of the chairs from Patterson’s desk, using it to wedge the office door closed.
“You said that Patterson had this place built to his own specifications,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, about fifteen years ago.”
“So he wouldn’t have used his charitable institutions like the hospitals for his experiments for fear of whistleblowers among his employees.”
Lopez glanced over her shoulder at him as she pushed the chair into place.
“You think he’s got a secret chamber here or something?”
“Either that or he just spontaneously combusted into thin air. Maybe God really is looking out for him.”
Lopez snorted as she began experimentally tapping the walls of the office with the butt of her pistol.
“The only reason God would be looking out for a slimeball like Patterson is to send him to roast in hell.”
Ethan walked to the middle of the office and slowly turned 360 degrees, observing his surroundings and stopping as he looked directly at the vast crucifix dominating the wall above the altar.
He strode across to it, looking closely at the chromed surface.
The crucifix was made of three tightly fitting pieces: the central vertical pillar, the upper tip, and the horizontal crossbeam. The vertical pillar was just over six feet tall and a foot wide, and as Ethan looked at the surface he could just make out a translucency to the metal. He looked down at the carpet beneath his feet and saw a mild thinning of the fibers, as though someone had walked or stood on the same spot many times.
“Here,” he motioned for Lopez to join him.
Lopez examined the surface of the crucifix for a moment, then the carpet.
“He went through here somehow. There must be a release mechanism,” she said.
“It’s got to be something mechanical,” Ethan agreed, turning.
His eye caught instantly on the large bronze eagle on Patterson’s desk, beside a small monitor. Lopez followed his gaze even as they both heard muffled voices approaching down the corridor outside. Ethan grabbed the eagle’s head and twisted it sideways.
Silently, the vertical pillar of the crucifix revolved into the wall, revealing a narrow passage that opened into a wider descending tunnel beyond. Lopez slipped through the opening, Ethan following a moment later before the crucifix silently closed behind him. He realized that he could faintly see through the crucifix back into the office, the chrome surface some sort of two-way mirror that Patterson must have used to enter and exit the office unobserved. Figures burst into the office, torch beams sweeping this way and that.
“The FBI’s here,” he whispered. “It won’t take them long to figure out where we’ve gone.”
“We won’t need much time,” Lopez said.
The passage opened out ahead, Ethan guessing it to be about twelve meters long and descending two meters in total, enough to put it below the auditorium of the megachurch. As they descended, Ethan could make out a door with a heavy handle, and before it a gap of some six inches. Lopez stopped in front of the door, and as Ethan came alongside her he could see that the gap extended to either side of them, above and below, the door the entrance to a large boxlike structure suspended in midair within an underground chamber.
“An anechoic chamber,” Lopez said loudly. “Don’t worry, they can’t hear us and we can’t hear them until we open this door.”
Ethan shook his head in wonder, having heard only rumors about such chambers. An anechoic chamber was a form of room that was isolated from exterior sound or electromagnetic radiation sources, preventing the reflection of wave phenomena. The chamber was supported slightly above the actual floor using tensile springs, and surrounded on all sides by soundproofing layers of anechoic tiles, a concrete shield and a full six inches of near vacuum-pressure air.
“Shall we?” Ethan suggested, grabbing the door handle.
Nicola raised her pistol, and on a count of three Ethan yanked the door open and they burst into the chamber together to hear the voice of a man shouting.
“You’re insane!”
The voice sounded dead, monotone, its vocal resonance lost within the room as though Ethan were listening to it underwater. He blinked in surprise as he saw that the steel-walled room was an operating theater, replete with a heart-bypass machine, refrigerator banks, computer monitors, and a single, large light suspended over a gurney in the center of the theater. Upon the gurney, lying restrained on his back, was Senator Isaiah Black. The senator stared in terror at Ethan and Lopez.
“Get this bastard off me!”
Pastor Kelvin Patterson stood on one side of the theater. In one hand he held a syringe filled with a deep-scarlet fluid, the other hand on the door of a refrigerator filled with mysterious-looking vials. Before Ethan or Lopez could speak, Patterson lurched sideways, reaching out for the senator with the syringe.
“Freeze!” Lopez shouted, aiming at the pastor. “Don’t you dare move!”
Patterson hesitated, the needle twelve inches from the senator’s neck.
Senator Black’s face was contorted with a volatile mixture of outrage and fear.
“What the hell is in that?” he shouted, staring fanatically at the syringe.
Ethan spoke quietly, his gaze leveled at Patterson and radiating hatred.
“It’s the blood of an unknown alien species.”
Senator Black’s skin paled visibly, but Patterson snarled back at Ethan.
“This is the blood of an angel, a Nephilim.” He looked down at the senator. “Fear not, Isaiah, for you are about to be invigorated. Imagine, the blood of angels running through your veins. You will become invincible.”
Senator Black balked, his skin sheened with sweat.
“I don’t want to be invincible!”
Ethan spoke up as he took a pace closer to Patterson.
“If you’re so sure it’s the blood of angels, then why not invigorate yourself and save Senator Black the trouble.”
A cruel smile twisted Patterson’s features.
“Better to be safe than sorry.”
Senator Black gritted his teeth.
“Don’t do it,” he said to Patterson. “It’s not worth it.”
Lopez gestured with her pistol to the syringe in Patterson’s hand.
“You put that shit in him he’ll be dead within minutes. You might as well jack him full of diesel.”
Patterson’s gruesome smile crumbled into a look of pure disgust.
“How little faith you have,” he spat. “This is the first chance in history for man to reach out and touch the hand of God, and you filthy liberalist secularists would snatch it away from humanity. You would
deny even the blood of God in your fear of the truth. Do you even know what ‘covenant’ means? It is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered by God.”
Ethan glanced around the theater at the transfusion lines and oxygen bottles, searching for a way to hinder the pastor for just long enough to get hold of him. Patterson was standing only ten feet away, but he was closer to the senator than Ethan was.
“Go ahead,” Patterson dared him, as though reading his thoughts. “One step and I’ll put this through his heart and finish him for good.”
“The FBI is here,” Lopez said. “It’s only a matter of time before they find this chamber.”
“Yes, it is,” Patterson agreed, “by which time this will all be over.”
“You’ll kill him,” Lopez said, her pistol fixed on the pastor. “What the hell makes you think you’ll achieve anything else?”
“This is the purest human blood in existence,” Patterson said, his eyes ablaze with the furor of the righteous, “an unbroken line that goes back to Adam’s presence in the Garden of Eden, six thousand years ago. The rest of our blood has long since been contaminated, soiled by the filth and depravity of mankind’s soulless existence, but our true bloodline came from the Levant, from Israel, from the time of the patriarchs. This blood will bring God’s children back to this Earth and with them the dawning of a new age.”
“No, it won’t,” Lopez uttered. “You’re nothing more than a murderer.”
“I am the savior!” Patterson cried out. “We have waited two thousand years for this moment, but why should we have waited at all? If we cannot find God here on Earth, then I shall bring God to us!”
Ethan glanced at Lopez before he spoke to Patterson, putting his gun on the floor and moving toward him.
“You think that by doing this you’ll find some kind of illumination. I think that you’ll plunge us all into darkness.”
“You’re already in darkness,” Patterson sneered.
Ethan judged the distance. Six feet, maybe seven.
“Are we? You know, it’s always bugged me how people like you claim to be the light, the truth, the saviors of mankind, yet you threaten to kill anyone who doesn’t believe the same things. To me, you’re the one who’s in darkness.”
Patterson edged closer to the senator as Ethan took another pace. Five feet.
“When God’s will comes to pass you and all other heathen will see the light, but it will be forever beyond your reach.”
Ethan nodded.
“Then let’s bring God’s will to pass, right now.”
In that instant Lopez fired her pistol at the light above the gurney, the shot deafeningly loud in the confines of the theater, and the entire chamber was plunged into darkness as Ethan hurled himself at the pastor.
Ethan rushed forward, intercepting Kelvin Patterson as he lunged for the gurney and smashing him aside with his body weight. He heard a crash as Patterson spun away into the refrigerator door, and faintly saw the syringe needle glinting in the light.
Behind him, he heard rather than saw Lopez scramble across to the gurney and begin unstrapping the senator.
Patterson screamed in outrage and rushed toward Ethan, who swung a wild left hook that connected with the pastor’s cheek. Ethan heard Patterson slam sideways into a bank of steel cupboards at the back of the chamber and he plunged into him, desperately searching for the syringe that Patterson still held.
“Get the senator out of here!” Ethan shouted at Lopez.
Ethan leaned away desperately as Patterson tried to sink his teeth into Ethan’s neck. The world tilted crazily in the darkness as Ethan toppled over backward and smashed onto his back on the unforgiving tiles. In the scarce light from the open doorway to the chamber he saw the syringe plunge down toward him.
Ethan grabbed the pastor’s wrists and stopped the tip of the needle two inches from his own chest as Patterson tumbled down on top of him, teeth gritted with effort as he pushed his entire body weight down on the syringe.
Ethan gasped beneath the pastor’s furious attack, sucking in air as he struggled to hold Patterson’s body inches above his own, the pastor grimacing and starting to laugh maniacally as he drove the syringe another inch toward Ethan’s chest.
Ethan felt the tip of the needle pierce his shirt and skin, a tiny prick of pain. He felt his muscles bursting with effort, his eyes bulging as he heard his own labored pulse rushing through his ears. Spots sparkled before his eyes as he felt the last of his strength deserting him.
He heard the pastor’s voice above the rushing in his ears.
“Prepare to meet thy Maker.”
Patterson shoved his body higher up on Ethan’s, bringing his full weight to bear on the syringe. Ethan sucked in a lungful of air and twisted the pastor’s wrists downward, turning the needle away from his own chest.
Patterson grunted as he fought this new and unexpected counterattack. Ethan let the pastor’s body weight help him, placing all of the strain on Patterson’s wrists. The pastor gagged as he struggled to control his balance.
The syringe turned between them, facing down toward their feet, and Ethan changed his grip on the pastor’s hands, ready to push the syringe upward. Patterson panicked, scrambling up and away from the needle. Ethan hooked one leg over the pastor’s and kicked it out from beneath him, twisting him by his hands and wrists as his body flipped sideways and over onto his back. Ethan scrambled on top of Patterson, the needle now pointing down at the pastor’s chest.
In the faint light, he saw Patterson’s eyes swimming with panic.
“Joanna Defoe,” Ethan hissed, glowering down at the pastor.
A tremor of recognition flickered across Patterson’s features.
“Let me go,” he gasped, “or I’ll tell you nothing.”
“I know she’s alive.” Ethan grinned coldly. “I know MACE took her.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” the pastor croaked, straining to hold the syringe away from his skin. “I don’t know what happened to her, I swear.”
“Then what use are you?” Ethan growled.
“No, please, don’t—”
Ethan slammed his entire body weight down on the syringe. Patterson screamed as the needle plunged deep into his chest and the fluid flooded into his body.
Ethan hauled himself off the pastor, yanking the syringe free and tossing it to one side. Behind him, he heard a clatter of footsteps as flashlight beams sliced into the darkness and a handful of FBI agents burst into the chamber, Axel Cain at their head.
“Hands up, don’t move!”
Ethan complied, not resisting the FBI agents as they cuffed him. He saw Lopez being cuffed alongside him.
“Illuminated?” she said. “Darkness? You’re a riot, Warner, you really are.”
“You got it, didn’t you?”
He watched as they lifted Patterson to his feet, the pastor holding his chest where the needle had pierced him. Slowly he straightened, and began to chuckle as he looked at Ethan. For a terrible instant, Ethan wondered if the insane old man had been right as he stood four-square and looked Ethan in the eye.
“The Word has been spoken, and this is God’s judgment upon us all for …”
Patterson’s voice trailed off, and the fevered delight vanished as his face folded in upon itself in agony. Ethan took a step back as, bowing over at the waist, Patterson looked up and wailed a scream that sounded as though his innards were being doused in flames.
Patterson lurched to one side, the FBI agents leaping out of his way as the pastor slammed into the side of the gurney and sprawled onto his back, his eyes bulging and his mouth wide open as a foamy mess of bloodied mucus bubbled out to spill onto the tiles beneath him. Ethan winced as the pastor gargled and thrashed, dark blood spilling from his cavities as his internal organs turned to mush inside him.
Patterson gave a last anguished cry of despair, his limbs contorting at impossible angles as his spine arched over to the sound of cracking bones, his head twisted back to almost touch t
he back of his legs before he froze in position, his eyes staring wide and empty toward the exit of the chamber.
Ethan stared at his body for a moment, and then looked at the FBI agents.
“You might want to seal this room off. It could be contaminated.”
“You think?” Axel Cain shot him a look of mock surprise. “Get out of here.”
Ethan gave the dead pastor one last glance, and then let himself be led out of the chamber and into the light once more.
J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC
AUGUST 28, 1 P.M.
I’ve told you everything.”
Ethan sat in a hard metal chair with his wrists cuffed to the legs. A camera in one corner of the cell recorded the conversation, an FBI agent guarding the door as Ethan sat staring at the pockmarked face of Special Agent Axel Cain.
“Everything,” Cain repeated cynically, smiling with his lips only. “Mr. Warner, you’ve been embroiled in an international conspiracy that has resulted in several deaths, one of which was at your own hands and witnessed by a half-dozen FBI agents, myself included.”
“It was self-defense.” Ethan shrugged, beyond caring by now.
“You injected him with something that caused his innards to melt and pour out of his eyes, ears, and ass!” Cain shouted. “Overkill, don’t you think?”
“Not for a man who committed the crimes he has.”
Cain looked down at his notes, shaking his head.
“The district attorney won’t see it like that. You left Israel without passport or papers, entered the United States as an illegal immigrant, and then proceeded to injure several men, acquire a firearm for which you were not licensed, and commit the homicide of a respected local pastor.” Cain grinned coldly. “And that’s the way I’ll be presenting it.”
“Bullshit baffles brains,” Ethan muttered.
Cain’s grin didn’t slip as he stood.
“Sticks and stones, Mr. Warner. You’re going away for a very long time, make no mistake about that.”
The cell door opened as Cain made his way out, only to be pushed back in by two men in smart suits. Before Cain was even able to protest, the two men flashed badges at him.
Covenant Page 39
