by Jon Land
“Then leave me now,” Rule said, easing himself back into position of prayer before the altar, “so I may pray my eyes are ready for what they are to behold.”
Rule waited until he was sure Turwell was gone before rising and moving toward his private office placed at the church’s rear. “You can come out now,” he called. “It’s safe.”
CHAPTER 25
Blountstown, Florida
The young woman who’d come to him at the Tampa service that very day emerged from his office, trembling with arms wrapped about herself.
“Come, child, let God warm you.”
Rule took her hand and led her up onto the altar with him. The dim overhead bulbs cast her face in a mixture of shadows and light that only added to her beauty. Her unwashed hair had turned stringy, smelling of must and oil, but still framed her face in a way that made her look sad and hopeful at the same time.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Reverend,” she said, lips quivering. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“God’s house is home to all.”
“I converted to Islam to marry my husband, Reverend. I’m a traitor.”
“There are no traitors here, only those who seek His love.”
“Can you help me?”
“Only He can. I’m merely His vessel.”
“I could never leave the house without my head covered, like I was hiding myself, my true faith. How could I not see it, Reverend?”
Rule wrapped a tender arm around her shoulder. “Because you were deceived, my child. I shall call you Rachel, she too a victim of deception, as the Bible tells us, when she was supposed to marry Jacob. They are born deceivers, these people who welcomed you only to trick you into betraying your faith and God.”
She fell against him, hugging Rule tightly through her sobs, her tears dampening his shirt. “I did betray Him, I know I did!”
“You can still be saved, Rachel.”
She eased herself away from him, still clutching Rule by the elbows. “How, Reverend? I’ll do anything.”
“Your sin lies in your tongue, in the words you spoke against the Lord and your true faith. Salvation comes with a price.”
“I told you, anything! I’ll pay the price. Just tell me!”
“The object of your sin must be excised, sliced away so it can betray you no more.”
Rachel opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words emerged.
Rule extracted a knife from a sheath clipped to his belt and extended it out to her.
“Cut it out.”
Rachel took the knife, turned it around from one side to the other, watching the blade struggling to glint in the naked light of the church.
“Cut it out, my child.”
She looked back at Rule.
“Slice the tongue from your mouth, so it may never betray you again and find yourself welcomed back to the house of the Lord.”
He watched Rachel start the knife up slowly in a trembling hand.
“In pain there is salvation. In sacrifice there is hope.”
The knife stopped, then started again. She opened her mouth.
“I’m with you, Rachel. God is with you. Prove yourself to Him. Return to His graces.”
The tip of the blade disappeared between her lips, then the rest of it, the young woman’s eyes never leaving Rule’s.
He nodded placidly. Closed his eyes, then opened them. Nodded again. Giving her as much time as she needed, as much as time as it took.
The woman he’d named Rachel jerked the knife up and to the side.
The screaming began.
CHAPTER 26
Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey
“Right on time, Hank,” McCracken said, coming up alongside the man from Homeland Security, the wind blowing harder off the nearby water in the chilly early morning air.
Folsom shivered and took his gloved hands from the pockets of his topcoat. “Why here, McCracken? Why not just meet at the North Pole?”
“Because I didn’t want to bother Santa Claus. See, this used to be a nice town with good people, until Superstorm Sandy hit. Whole area’s been condemned now. Even the former residents are still prohibited from returning after all this time. Fitting, don’t you think?”
“Why?”
“Because they knew a storm was coming. It was inevitable. They just didn’t know when. Like what happened to me yesterday, getting set up to take the fall for trying to kill the Reverend Rule and gunning down four of his guards instead. I’m wondering if you were a part of that.”
“Is that the real reason why we’re here?”
“I’m still wondering, Hank.”
“I’m the least of your problems, McCracken. Even local law-enforcement agencies have access to sophisticated facial recognition software these days. And your face showed up in some places even I didn’t know about. Disney World, for example. And San Antonio just after what they still call the Second Battle of the Alamo. Colonial Williamsburg where you fought it out with those Omicron soldiers.”
“Right, the good old days …”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing. Andrew Ericson still hasn’t been found.”
McCracken started walking along what had been a beachfront promenade but was now a seldom-traveled, sand-covered path. Closer to the water, at what had been the shoreline, foundations and pilings were all that remained of buildings that had stood strong for decades. No one was about nearby and no one would be until the rebuilding effort reached this far down, if that ever came. The ravaged houses that still stood in varying forms were awaiting demolition and the burnt-out shells of several further down the shore had perished to gas fires that had burned out of control when impassable roads kept firefighters from responding.
“This Rule thing’s been your baby from the beginning, right, Hank? That was your man I found dead in the bus station.”
Folsom swallowed hard. “Chase Samuels. He had a wife and young son. He was thirty-three, a top undercover, who came over to Homeland from ATF.”
“Andrew Ericson, age fifteen. As close to real family as I’ve got. You want to continue swapping stories?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“I only met the kid once. If it wasn’t for Christmas cards, I wouldn’t even know what he looks like. Good thing I won’t have to identify the body, Hank, because he’s still alive. You hear me? He’s still alive.”
“I hear you,” Folsom said softly. “Just tell me what the next step is.”
“Word Croatoan mean anything to you?”
“Outside of the fact Chase Samuels left it as some kind of message for us, no.”
“A British relief party found it carved into a tree at the Roanoke Colony in the late sixteenth century,” McCracken told him, as the wind picked up again, whipping the sand into a funnel cloud.
“The one where all the settlers vanished?”
“The very same.”
“Sorry,” Folsom said, looking as flustered as he did anxious and frustrated. “I’ve never heard the word before today.”
“How about the other note in the crossword puzzle? Four-two-seven-one-F-H-one-two-one.”
“We’re still running it.”
“We?”
“Analysts. Bottom of the food chain, but the best Homeland’s got.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“This is already hard enough, McCracken.”
“I’m the one who’s the object of a manhunt, Hank, not you.”
Folsom stopped, eyes suddenly sweeping about the beach. “We’re not alone, are we?”
“What do you think?”
“I think maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
“Johnny and Sal are here for your own protection, Hank.”
“My protection?”
“In case somebody followed you here from Washington.”
“You were hoping that would be the case, weren’t you? You used me as bait.”
“I wanted someone to have a little chat with. Sal Belamo was an interrogator with the CIA for a stretch. Very old school. Likes to use pliers and power outlets. I was hoping to get the chance to see him work.”
“You think someone in Homeland is dirty?”
“I think that just begins to describe what we’re facing here. What went down in Mobile yesterday wasn’t the work of a backwoods preacher and neither was the security he had around him. Somebody’s backing the Reverend Rule, somebody who’s got him doing their bidding whether he realizes it or not. And since Homeland was the agency that sent me down there, you do the math.”
“So you’re blaming me.”
“Only for being stupid and running a lousy operation on Rule. My guess is they made your undercover sometime ago and were just stringing the two of you along. That’s why it’s been so long since he provided any actionable intelligence.”
Folsom looked suddenly wary, suspicious. “I never told you that.”
“You didn’t have to.” McCracken hesitated to let his point sink in. “You’re right, Rule’s a dangerous man, but he’s not acting alone, and I need to figure out who’s pulling his strings.”
Blaine heard Folsom’s smartphone buzz and watched him lift it from his pocket, the look on his face saying it all.
“What is it, Hank?”
Folsom’s face was blank, no expression or emotion whatsoever. “Looks like the people on that bridge in Missouri just got some more company.”
CHAPTER 27
O’Hare Airport, Chicago: Twenty minutes earlier
“One of those days,” air traffic controller Jane Plezak said, chewing on a straw.
“When is it not one of those days here?” her shift supervisor, Gus Kincannon, grinned from behind her.
“I don’t know, today seems especially …”
“Especially what?” Kincannon asked when Plezak let her remark drift off.
“I don’t know.”
“Last time you said that, the baggage handlers walked out.”
“That’s right.”
“And the time before, a 747 clipped a commuter plane during taxi.”
“I remember.”
“So what’s it going to be today, Jane?”
Her hourly five-minute break over, Plezak returned all her attention to her screen filled with countless blips over a dark circular depiction of the skies above O’Hare. A maddening assemblage of icons with associated flight numbers that was mind-boggling in its congestion and complexity. Plezak had learned to get past that by disciplining herself to focus on her grid and her grid only, and the ability to segment the screen before her was all that kept her sane through her shift on difficult days like this.
“Jesus Christ,” Kincannon mumbled.
“What?”
“Down on the tarmac, looks like a fuel truck racing an Airbus.”
“Must be Bob Semple,” Plezak said, mouthpiece covered but eyes still locked on her screen. “Man’s committed to breaking the record for most planes refueled in a day.”
“I’m glad I fly out of Midway,” Kincannon told her, referring to the smaller airport on the other side of the city.
Down on the tarmac, Bob Semple had just topped off a United Dreamliner and was rushing to do the same for one of the airline’s commuter fleet. Traffic backup, bad even by O’Hare standards, had left dozens of fully loaded planes stuck at their gates, with engines still running to keep the passengers inside warm on the frigid January day. His dashboard-mounted gauges indicated he still had three-quarters of his tank.
Semple was just starting to turn toward the line of planes parked at their gates, angling for the ninety-seater, when he heard, more like felt, a gurgle. At first, he thought it might be his own stomach rumbling, then passed it off as too much air gathered in his pump line. Nothing of concern.
Until the flash came.
Gus Kincannon saw it from the O’Hare tower, but Jane Plezak noticed nothing amiss until the air burst accompanying the explosion that hit the glass with the power of a hurricane-force wind. The whole tower seemed to buckle, its occupants too far away from the explosion to hear its fury, although all could feel it and see the flames blowing outward into the air, swallowing everything in their path.
Bob Semple’s truck ruptured into a thousand flaming projectiles rocketing everywhere, badly damaging the planes farthest out and catching the nearer ones on fire. The fuel tanks of the two parked at the nearest gates exploded in secondary blasts, flames seeming to spread forward from the tails until each was totally consumed.
As his controllers frantically rerouted their planes circling in anticipation of landing, Gus Kincannon couldn’t take his eyes off what looked like a jagged trench dug across the tarmac, spreading outward from a cylindrical crater carved by the initial explosion and disabling three major runways. The scene, awash in black smoke that clung to the air like tar, was catastrophic, impossible to imagine, much less witness. Surreal, unreal. The product of a nightmare.
One of those days, he remembered Jane Plezak saying just a few moments before.
CHAPTER 28
London
Zarrin wasn’t surprised when the big man took the stool next to her in the Heathrow bar, because she’d spotted him watching for her as soon as she entered the airport’s international terminal.
“Tell me something,” she greeted, not bothering to turn the big man’s way, “are all Israelis named David?”
“You know the routine,” the man smirked, his experience showing in coarse hair that was as much salt as pepper.
She had spent the minutes waiting for his expected appearance studying herself in the bar’s mirror behind the shelves of bar and high-end brands. Her long, wavy black hair looked more limp than she was accustomed, sprinkled with strands of gray near the temples that the dim lighting of the bar concealed. So too it disguised the fatigue present in her eyes. Still bright and vital, but droopy, as if she was always ready for a nap. The concert the night before had taken a lot of energy and, nearing forty now, Zarrin needed more time to fully recover. Her other chosen avocation, one she excelled in just as much, was a young person’s game. Even this particular David was growing too old for it, but the Israelis stayed active in the field longer. Life treated hunters easier.
Zarrin finally glanced at him, up toward his face looming over her. “Except you look more like Goliath.”
“That’s why they sent me. So we could have this discussion in an airport terminal free of weapons.”
“But I’m never free of weapons, David, am I?”
The Israeli smirked again. “As long as I can see your hands …”
“I can see yours too,” she told him. “And I know how good you are with them.”
“Another reason why they sent me. Figured that might even out the odds a bit.” David checked her drink, watery with melted ice now in a tall glass.
Squeezing an icy glass alternately with her left hand and right had become a ritual for her as of late, because it helped control her symptoms. She would do it on the plane every hour, or at least every other, as well.
“We can’t let you go to the United States.”
“Maybe I have a concert to perform, or a personal appearance to keep.”
“We checked. You don’t. McCracken’s been a great friend to Israel. He’s off-limits.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“When you think about it, I’m actually doing you a favor.”
“How’s that?”
“Saving your life. Something to thank me for. You think you’re the first to go after Blaine McCracken? He’s left behind a trail of bodies longer than the road to Damascus.”
“He
’s a relic, a dinosaur. Old now, past his prime.”
David turned on his stool all the way to face her. “You need to go home. I can’t let you get on that plane. Go back to your piano. Live out your life to standing ovations and rave reviews. Take your bows and early retirement as someone who has something to retire to. Live to play another day, Zarrin.”
Zarrin shrugged and reached for her glass, ended up knocking it over to the floor where it smashed, spraying chips of ice and glass shards across the floor.
“See what I mean,” David smirked.
Zarrin eased herself off the stool with napkin in hand, stooping to collect the fragments. Her hands rebelled at first. But, as she had when playing Tchaikovsky the night before, she pushed her very will into them, controlling her fingers along some jerry-rigged neuro-network of her own making.
She looked up at David. “I’m going to ask you to simply leave and forget we had this conversation.”
“I can’t do that.”
Zarrin rose from her crouch, retaking her stool. “I suppose I couldn’t either.”
Before David could respond, she jerked her hand out sideways, burying a dagger-sharp shard of glass she’d broken off into his windpipe. There was very little blood, no spray at all, and Zarrin twisted the shard around a bit to make sure the job was done, clamping a hand on the big man’s shoulder to hold him in place as he wheezed, quickly bleeding out internally.
But then her hand locked up, wouldn’t let go. Seemed to hold there for an eternal moment before her mind regained control and willed the fingers to open, enabling her to slide her hand away and ease David downward so his face was resting on the bar’s wooden surface. His chest moved in shallow jerks, lungs stealing what little air they could grab, the time between motions already lengthening.
She slid away, careful to keep her face angled downward so the bartender wouldn’t notice. It had been too close this time, much too close to suit her psyche or make her fit for such conditions to engage a man as deadly proficient as Blaine McCracken.
David had known that just as much as she did. But he didn’t know everything, not even close, Zarrin thought, not realizing her cell phone was ringing.
