If Angels Fall

by Rick Mofina

  The van was unlocked. Frantically, George scoured inside. Nothing. He jotted down the tag, struggled to get through the brush again, finding a manufacturer’s plate for the trailer, jotting down its number. This was it. He knew it. Nettles snagged him as he fought his way back to his Jeep, snapped through the pages on his clipboard, and checked the trailer. This was it! This was the trailer! George looked up and down the shore. “Where’s the boat?”

  No trace of a boat. He stared at the ocean. Keller put to sea here. He launched here. George pounded the wheel. That was right, everyone would be sitting on Half Moon Bay. From here, around the westernmost point at the lighthouse, it was only twenty miles to the Farallon Islands. Was he too late? Didn’t Lou see the headlights last night? George snatched the radio mike.

  “Dell, it’s George! I’ve got something here! You’re going to have to make some fast phone calls!”

  The radio hissed with silence.

  “Goddammit, Dell! Are you there? For Christ’s sake!”

  SEVENTY-SIX

  A great blue heron glided in the sunlight a few feet above, head extended forward, neck folded back on its shoulders, soft plumage drooping as it stalked prey along the beach.

  Lady of the waters. Keller smiled, looking up from his worn Bible, eyes brimming with tears. He gazed at the afternoon sea: water made holy by the suffering of Christ, you who are washed in this water, have hope of Heaven’s kingdom.

  I am the resurrection, the way, and the light.

  The light, the light...under cover of the night. The Lord was with him, guiding him, thwarting Lucifer’s every attempt to interfere. Yes. After he had intercepted Michael’s phone call, Keller gathered the Angels and took the back routes of the East Bay, driving here in a Taurus station wagon he had prepared weeks earlier. It had Nevada plates and each rear window was curtained in black with a small silver cross affixed to its center. Keller had magnetic signs custom made for the driver and front passenger doors, reading: A & B MORTUARY SERVICES, CARSON CITY, NEVADA. The children, who were sedated, slept in a large, oblong cardboard box in the wagon’s rear. Along the way, Keller stopped to pick up the trailered boat and switched the station wagon to another rental van, which he hid in one of the double-sized garages of a self-help storage facility in Novato. He drove to the park, launched the boat in darkness, concealing the van and the trailer in thick brush.

  Keller knew Point Reyes from his pilgrimages. Years ago, he had submitted a bid to rebuild the old mission church. “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven.” Three days after he put in his estimate, he lost his children. Out there, near the Farallons. “But Satan shall not prevail, for God had given him the keys to the kingdom.” Divine Destiny.

  Navigating by moonlight with the running lights off, Keller inched the boat safely around the Point Reyes Lighthouse, Overlook, Chimney Rock, and along some twelve miles of shore to this hidden cove near Drakes Estero, where he had taken sanctuary for the night, anchored and tethered to the nook’s jagged rocks. Bitter, cold winds fingered into the cove, knocking the boat against the rocks. Keller did not risk a fire. Again, he sedated the children, leaving them to sleep aboard under blankets and tarps. He cloaked the entire craft with camouflage netting. Keller did not sleep. He huddled nearby under a blanket, as the wind rocked the boat, reading Scripture by penlight, keeping a vigil, counting down the hours, talking with God.

  Now, afternoon had come. He could hear the children under the blankets, waking groggily. Keller could not stand it any longer. It was time. For twenty years he had waited, suffered, repented, and prepared for this day, this day of celestial glory and light.

  Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus. Dominus Deus sabaoth.

  Keller checked his watch. From their location, it would take over an hour to reach the islands at the right moment. He had memorized the charts. Everything he needed was in the boat. He was ready. Why was he waiting? It was time. But as he moved to the boat, his adrenaline-driven euphoria had given way to exhaustion, fear.

  It should have been you, you bastard!

  Accept that you cannot change reality. You must forgive yourself and move on.

  The children are innocents.

  The entire world knows your pain. Do not extend it to others who never harmed you.

  Whoever committed this desecration shall be damned all the days of his life!

  It’s time, Edward. Your children are waiting.

  Are you doubting Divine Will?

  I am the resurrection and the life.

  Your children are waiting.

  Through his tears, Keller saw his son Pierce.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Keller was in the boat, holding his hand, his small warm hand.

  Pierce was alive! Here, talking to him.

  The resurrection and the life.

  “Please, don’t hurt us.”

  Oh, Pierce. Keller stretched out his hand, caressed the boy’s shivering head, his young hair. Enraptured, Keller wept, his heart rising and falling with the boat...the black waves rolling. His children screaming: Joshua, Alisha, Pierce. Like lambs in the night. The cold darkness swallowing them, devouring them.

  Joan’s body twisting in the attic.

  Keller squeezed the child’s hand and scanned the cove.

  Something humming, growling in the air. A search plane, far off, over the sea near the horizon.

  Satan would challenge him to the end.

  “You won’t win this time! It is destined,” Keller shouted at the sky. He glared at Zach. “Get back under the tarp! Now!”

  Keller raced to the console, started the twin Mercury engines, pulled a machete from under the seat, and sliced the tether lines. The coastal waters were heavy with afternoon traffic, pleasure crafts, charters, fishing boats, and commercial ships. He raked the back of his hand over his parched lips.

  Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus. Dominus Deus sabaoth.

  Easing the throttle forward, Keller set off for the islands.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  The spires of the Bay Bridge, then the Golden Gate, passed below the FBI’s Huey helicopter after it lifted off from Hamilton Navy Air Force base in Alameda near Oakland. It headed west over the Pacific.

  Mid-afternoon. Visibility, excellent.

  Langford Shaw, the San Francisco FBI’s SWAT team leader, felt the tension aboard. He glanced from his notes to his men, while listening over his headset to the play-by-play of the bureau, the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the task force in Wintergreen. It was a massive rescue operation and he was in charge.

  Four years to retirement and fate drops this assignment in your lap. A mistake here and you were done. Well, he was a veteran agent of many wars and he’d be damned if he would allow that to happen. Shaw’s face betrayed nothing, although his gut hardened when he got the call to activate: the kidnapping case again. The FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team was en route on a Lear from Quantico, but they were hours away. Until then, it was all on Shaw’s shoulders and those of his team.

  Intelligence put Keller in a twenty-one-foot, twin-engine open craft with three child hostages somewhere in the Gulf of the Farallons, between Point Reyes and the islands. Each SWAT member was handed photos of Keller, his boat, the children. The top theory said Keller would kill them at sea between four and six P.M., if he hadn’t already done so. What they had here was a life-and-death hot pursuit and Shaw expected to execute the final option.

  The Coast Guard’s C-130 Hercules out of Sacramento and two Twin Otter auxiliaries were flying track crawl search patterns over the area. The guard also had its HH-65 chopper with the rescue hoist and divers scouring the islands. The Point Brower, a 110-foot cutter, armed with a three-millimeter cannon, had long since put out from Yerba Buena, making for the islands at twenty-five knots. Two high-speed, aluminum, diesel-powered “loaders” were searching the region. A second cutter, the Point Olivo, was coming down from Bod
ega Bay. The guard offered to scramble two Falcon jets from L.A. Shaw accepted. He then requested a U.S. Navy chopper pick up four additional SWAT team members at Hamilton, drop them at sea on the Point Brower. That would give him two sniper teams at sea level and another angle on the target, should they find him.

  Shaw’s bird was the command post where everything was being coordinated. Once more, he checked assignments, setting up the Huey’s sniper points. “Mitch, you’ll take starboard, and Ronnie, you set up on aft for a clear shot.” Shaw indicated Fred Wheeler, his negotiator, on the satellite phone to Professor Kate Martin, learning about Keller’s background and stress points. “Fred will try to talk him out of it, if he gets the chance. The rest of you are assault, depending on how we unwrap this one.” Shaw switched from the chopper’s intercom to his team radio. “Roy, Doc! Call when you put down on the cutter.”

  As they passed over San Francisco’s shoreline, Shaw was called from the FBI’s office on Golden Gate Avenue with word that another bureau Huey, just in from L.A. on a maintenance run, was empty and available. Good, he wanted two more sniper teams picked up for a third angle. And he had another idea. “After getting my guys at Hamilton, pick up some task force members from the house at Wintergreen. We could use them up here. Put a rush on it.”

  FBI Agent Merle Rust took the relay call from Shaw to the mobile command center at Keller’s house in Wintergreen, then requested the SFPD clear the park a block west of the house for a helicopter landing.

  “Walt,” Rust told Sydowski, “they want us in the air as observers. A chopper will be here in fifteen minutes. You and me.”

  “They spot anything out there yet?” Sydowski followed Rust out of the bus after they informed the others.

  “No.” Rust shielded his eyes. “Chopper’s landing in the park west of here.”

  Tom Reed appeared before Rust and Sydowski, looking like hell.

  “Take me with you.”

  “What? How did you--?” Sydowski said.

  “I was coming to the bus and I overheard. I want to go.”

  “Impossible, Tom. I’m sorry,” Rust said. “It’s against policy.”

  “I have to know.” He was determined.

  “Tom”--Sydowski softened his voice--“stay here with Ann. She needs you. You can help the others. You should be together.”

  “Ann overheard you, too. She wants me to go. We have to know. Whatever happens. I have to know.”

  “We’re sorry, Tom,” Rust said, walking quickly with Sydowski to his car. “You will be told the minute we know anything.”

  Reed walked with them. He was unrelenting. “I’m the only one here who has seen Keller, talked with him. Please. I know this man. You could regret not having me there.”

  The FBI’s Huey was in sight.

  At the car, Rust and Sydowski looked at each other, saying nothing. The helicopter approached, blades whipping, slicing, descending to the park as the news choppers reluctantly backed off. The press was going to be out there anyway, Rust figured.

  The ground plummeted beneath them and in minutes, Reed was thundering over the Pacific, sitting knee to knee with FBI SWAT Team snipers. Seeing their weapons, their icy faces, and hearing their muted radio chatter, nearly smothered him. Someone passed him a radio with an earpiece so he could listen, hear clearly the voices of unseen forces. Saviors. Planning a rescue from the immaculate blue sky. If it wasn’t too late.

  From the chopper, the Pacific seemed a universe of changing hues and eternally deceptive whitecaps that were, or were not, boats. How could they ever find anyone down there? His stomach lurched. It was futile. He was peering into an abyss.

  Forgive me, Zach. Please forgive me.

  Reed’s hands were clasped together as the chopper banked hard for an immediate northwest heading.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Zach’s eyes adjusted to the dimness under the tarp.

  The rumbling hum of the twin Mercuries pushing the boat, which leaped and skipped over the water’s surface, was deafening, rattling him alert.

  That rotten taste was in his mouth again. His head hurt, his leg was throbbing, and he was hungry. Danny and Gabrielle were lying on the deck with him, stirring, as the vibrations shook their bodies.

  The boat was moving fast.

  Ouch--something was sticking him in the groin--what? He reached into his underpants, remembering his pocketknife. He still had it. He tightened his fingers around it. Okay, he sniffed, don’t sit up, just take a look around, see what’s going on. What’s that? He looked down at what was causing the painful pressure on his lower leg.

  Heavy, yellow plastic rope was tied around his ankle and encased in a cast of silver duct tape. Zach followed the rope. It was coiled in a nearby bundle, knotted and heavily taped to four cement cinder blocks. Danny and Gabrielle? It was the same with them; rope and tape around their ankles, tied to the blocks. Another line ran from the bundle away from the tarp. Holding his breath, Zach lifted the tarp slightly, following the line along the deck to the front of the boat where it ended in a taped knot around the creep’s ankle.

  They were all connected. What was it for? Zach struggled to understand. Suddenly, it hit him, harder than anything in his life: The creep was going to kill them all!

  Zach wanted his dad. Where was he? Don’t scream! Where were the police? Didn’t anyone care? Don’t move! Aren’t they looking for us? Think! Just think! Where are we going? Think! C’mon! He rubbed tears from his eyes and felt--the knife! Yes! He felt the knife in his hand. Okay. He could do something.

  He shifted closer to the rope and opened the blade. It shrank next to the diameter of the heavy rope, like a steak knife against an oak tree. He sniffled and began sawing away. The tiny blade was sharp and cut into the rope, but it was going to take forever. He might not have time to cut Danny and Gabrielle free. He concentrated. He could stab the creep. No. The blade was too small. Panic washed over him. Think, Zach! Think!

  Cut the rope and jump out? He could swim. For how long? What about sharks? What about Danny and Gabrielle? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything, only that he had to do something quick. If he tried hard enough, he could cut through one piece of rope. Which one? He moved closer to the bundle, examining the coils. One line connected the cement blocks to the lines wrapped around the children’s ankles. Which one? He double-checked the web of rope. Okay. Here goes.

  He gestured to Danny and Gabrielle to keep still and quiet, then he gripped his knife and began slicing through the yellow rope.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  From a thousand feet up, through the Coast Guard spotter’s bubble, it looked like a meteor speeding across the heavens, cutting a southwest path across the sparkling sea, leaving a fading trail of white water. Another check through the binoculars to be certain. Twin outboards. Mercs. Northcraft. Affirmative.

  “Air C-351, sighted the craft! Copy?”

  “Roger, C-351. Coordinates? Over?”

  “Got him running hard at...standby...”

  The guard’s C-130 Hercules had locked on to Keller’s boat in the gulf about seven miles off Point Reyes, bearing southwest to the islands at forty-three knots.

  Within six minutes, the guard’s rescue chopper, at five hundred feet, moved in behind the boat, hanging back about a quarter mile while the cutter Point Brower, with two FBI sniper teams aboard, now within a mile, was coming from the south to intercept.

  “We’ve got a visual,” Langford Shaw acknowledged as the bureau’s Huey, pounding at maximum speed, came up fast taking the lead. It held at two hundred yards behind Keller’s boat, stern portside. Altitude: three hundred feet.

  Through binoculars, Shaw and his chief observer checked the suspect and the boat against enhanced photos from the hobby store security camera and the buy and trade magazine.

  “Move up another hundred yards,” Shaw told the pilot as he and the observer continued comparing pictures. “It’s Keller,” Shaw concluded. “And that’s the boat. Pull back a hundred.”

/>   “No hostages,” the observer said, “Wait, I see--”

  “Sir,” blurted one of the snipers looking through his scope, “edge of the tarp at eight o’clock!”

  Part of a child’s sneaker was sticking out from under it.

  The second FBI helicopter arrived, taking a mirror point to Shaw’s chopper at Keller’s starboard stern. Listening to the radio dispatches, Reed requested and was given a pair of high-powered binoculars. Focusing on the tarp, he glimpsed Zach’s shoe!

  His shoe moved. Didn’t it?

  “That’s my son’s foot. That’s Zach!”

  The sniper team in Reed’s chopper also locked on to Keller, his head bouncing in the scope’s cross-hairs.

  Why was a rope tied to Keller’s ankle?

  A Navy ship? No. Keller saw the markings. U.S. Coast Guard. The cutter appeared out of nowhere a few hundred yards ahead. Turning broadside. To block him!

  “Edward Keller!” His name boomed out--a bullhorn?

  He eased up on the throttle.

  “FBI, Mr. Keller. Stop your craft now! I repeat, this is...”

  “Movement under the tarp, sir,” a sniper reported to Shaw.

  “Drop him a line, Fred,” Shaw ordered the negotiator.

  The chopper tracked directly above Keller, matching his speed.

  “Mr. Keller, we’re dropping a phone to you now.”

  A line with a padded bag at the end of it was paid out from the chopper, landing safely on Keller’s deck. The rope slackened, collapsing on him like netting. Keller shrugged it off, then tossed the bag into the ocean.

  The noise was frightening, hurting his ears, but Zach realized police were trying to save them, and worked even harder at the rope. Gabrielle and Danny watched frozen in fear, hands over their ears.