by Tim LaHaye
Talon’s natural instinct was to slam Chuck’s body against the wall to focus his thick-skulled brain on the task at hand. But he had a use for Chuck tonight and not a lot of time. He could not afford to have this slug of a human being curl up and sulk. So he tried a more moderate action. He slapped Chuck’s face hard, twice in succession.
“Hey! Ow, what—!”
“Shut up and pay attention. We’ve dumped your sister’s boyfriend here in the church basement, we’ve spread out all the pamphlets I brought, what’s left to do?”
Chuck was breathing hard and rubbing his cheek, paying no attention. Just aching from that head slam, Talon thought. “The backpack, remember? Take it off so I can load it up.”
“Okay, okay. It’s a little tight over my jacket.” Chuck struggled to get the straps of the backpack off but could not get them over his Preston High jacket.
“Then unzip your jacket.” Talon rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“I can’t. It’s stuck. The zipper gets caught a lot.”
“How did you ever get out of kindergarten?” Talon grabbed the jacket in both hands and pulled with no success at the zipper. He tried to tear the zipper from its setting. In total exasperation, Talon’s right arm flashed up and across the front of Chuck’s jacket, cutting it neatly in two halves. He pulled the backpack from Chuck’s shoulders.
“Hey, that was the only jacket I have. It’s cold tonight.”
Talon slashed his sharpened index finger once more, this time across Chuck’s throat, nimbly stepping aside to allow the heavy body to fall to the basement floor.
“Not to worry, Chucky It’s warm where you’re going.”
THIRTY-NINE
THIS WAS A good night for the Preston Community Church, Reverend Wagoner thought as he stood surveying the faces in the pews. The crowd could be described as hushed and expectant, but what made this such a gratifying event was that almost all of these people could be called a community. He grasped the pulpit firmly and cleared his throat.
“Welcome, friends. It’s truly wonderful to see so many of you here this evening. I’d like to give thanks to God for bringing us all together on a day that isn’t Sunday. Many of you will have heard about the amazing archaeological find our dear friends Michael and Laura Murphy have brought back from the Holy Land.
“And if you haven’t, let me tell you the good news. They’ve found a piece of Moses’ Brazen Serpent. The one King Hezekiah destroyed in Second Kings, Chapter Eighteen, Verse Twenty-three.” There were a few gasps. Clearly some people hadn’t heard the news. “Now, I’m not going to talk about the archaeological significance of this discovery. I’ll leave that to the professionals.
“However, this week, when so much puzzling and disturbing news has been reported at the United Nations and so many shameful things are being said in the media about Christianity, it does make me want to talk a little tonight about some of the significance I think we can still draw from what the Bible tells us about the Brazen Serpent.”
Reverend Wagoner paused, and his gaze seemed to fall on each person sitting in the hall.
“You’ll recall that the Hebrews who fled out of Egypt in search of the Promised Land didn’t have an easy time of it. Sometimes when the going got tough, they began to question, began to doubt God’s plan for them. In short, they lost their faith—”
There was a flash, and Murphy had time to wonder why Reverend Wagoner was flying through the air toward them before the thunder of the explosion hit, and then Murphy himself was lifted out of his pew by the blast-wave, his arm instinctively reaching out for Laura as he was flung sideways into the aisle.
After that, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
The stained-glass windows imploded in a shower of red and gold, and the floor seemed to heave upward, toppling pews and spilling their occupants into the rubble. The chandeliers began swinging violently, the lights flickered once and went out, and then there was just smoke and darkness and the moans of the injured, a faint undertone behind the buzzing in his ears.
Murphy was on his feet and without thinking staggered toward the flames beginning to shoot up from the gaping hole behind the shattered pulpit. For a moment, he felt as if he were looking directly into the depths of hell itself. Then he stopped, and it seemed to take him forever to turn his head back toward the spot where he’d landed. Lungs seared by the acrid smoke pouring into the interior of the church, he felt his way through the debris until he found Laura. He grasped her arm, and he felt her fingers clinging to him and he knew she was alive.
Out. We have to get out, he thought, slipping his arms around Laura and hauling her to her feet. Murphy wasn’t sure he had the strength to carry her in a fireman’s lift, but then he felt her take a step and together they staggered through the haze, over broken pews and huge chunks of plaster, toward the door.
Air, he thought. Air and light. As they stepped through the doorway, the night air hit them in a wash of blessed relief and they both drew in huge lungfuls. Murphy placed Laura on the ground as gently as he could.
Murphy knelt beside her, blowing bits of wood from around her closed eyes and brushing blackened particles from her cheeks and hair. Laura coughed and opened her eyes, which showed fright and were rimmed by smoky tears.
“I’m okay, Murphy,” she said between gasps. “Was it an explosion?”
“It must have been, but I don’t think it was the boiler blowing up. Does anything feel broken?”
“My knees are grazed and my elbow hurts a little…. Are you okay?”
“I must look worse than I feel. If you promise to lie still here and get your breath, I can get back in there and see if I can help.”
“Murph, I’ll be fine here, but do you think you should? We don’t know what caused all this. It looks like there’s real damage to the church. You don’t know what could happen still. Please.”
“We don’t know what happened already, and if anybody’s hurt in there I’ve got to find a way in.” He turned back to the church. Black smoke was billowing out of the doors. A dozen other people had walked out unscathed and were sitting or lying on the grass. That left how many?
He watched as a petite figure covered in plaster dust walked unsteadily toward them. Shari.
Murphy went to her, ready to catch her if she fell, but she shook her head and pushed him away. “Paul,” she said in a croaky voice. “We have to find Paul.”
She’s in shock, Murphy thought. “It’s okay, Shari. Paul isn’t here. He wasn’t in the church.”
She took his arm in a fierce grip. “His car. It’s in the lot. He must have gotten here early. He’s here.”
“But where? We would have seen him.”
Her eyes went wide. “The basement!”
Murphy gently took her hands and squeezed them between his. “Okay. Stay here with Laura. Don’t worry, I’ll find him.”
He pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose and mouth as he stepped back into the inferno. The smoke was thinning now, and in the dim glow of the emergency lights he could see people stumbling toward the doors while others tended to the injured. Over the crackle of the flames and the sound of wooden beams splintering like rapid gunshots, he could hear someone moaning.
He saw Wagoner bent over a prostrate figure and clambered over an upturned pew to reach him.
“Bob. Thank God. Are you okay?”
“I think my arm’s broken, and my head feels like it’s been knocked around a little, but I’m in one piece. I’m not so sure about Jenny,” he said, looking down at a middle-aged woman in a tattered white dress streaked with black. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. Murphy put his ear to her mouth while he felt for a pulse.
“I think she’s dead.”
Wagoner closed his eyes. “Dear God.”
Murphy clutched his shoulder. “We need to get help here, Bob.”
“I called. They’re on their way.”
“Good. Can you make it to the door?”
“
I’m not going anywhere. There may be other people—”
“The emergency guys will be here any minute. It’s not safe. The roof beams could start coming down.”
Wagoner got to his feet and started reluctantly for the front of the church. He turned. “What are you doing, Michael?”
Murphy was already heading toward the ruined pulpit. “I’ll be right there. Something I’ve got to do first.” And then Wagoner lost him in the smoke.
The explosion had ripped a huge hole in the floor behind the altar, and through the flames Murphy could see shreds of clothing floating amid a jumble of twisted metal and broken timber. He had no idea how hot it was down there or whether there was any air to breathe, but he could see a spot on the concrete floor that seemed to be clear of debris, so he took a deep breath and jumped.
He landed in a crouch, his hands sinking into a pile of clothing that hadn’t yet caught fire, and then he was up, handkerchief to his face, shouting above the roar of collapsing timbers. “Paul! Can you hear me? Paul!”
He thought he heard a noise—something faint but human—coming from the back of the basement, the farthest point from the seat of the blast. Skirting piles of blackened paint tins and upturned filing cabinets, he made his way along the wall until he could see a hand sticking out from under a pile of boxes. He hefted them aside, and there was Paul, curled up with one hand under his chin as if he were asleep. There was no time to examine him properly, to see if any major bones were broken, and he just had to hope there was no damage to his neck or spine. He went down on one knee, got both arms under him, and staggered upright. Through there, he thought, turning toward the narrow archway. Let’s just hope there’s a way out.
There was a loud crash behind him, and he felt a rush of heat against the back of his neck. He lurched forward and his knee struck something hard. He almost went down, but he was in the main part of the basement now and he could see the concrete steps. Grimacing with the effort, he shifted his grip to get a better position under Paul’s shoulder and put one foot on the bottom step.
“Just one…” He put a foot on the next step and pushed upward, straining like a weight lifter. “And…uh…another,” he grunted.
He had his eyes closed and realized he was at the top only when his foot hit the bottom of the door with a clang. Maneuvering around so he could grasp the handle while still keeping hold of Paul, he gave it a firm tug. Nothing. He paused to get a good lungful of air and gave it everything he had. It wouldn’t budge. Either it was locked or the explosion had somehow jammed it shut.
He pulled back, mind racing. No point in wasting his last reserves of energy pounding on the door. He’d have to go back the way he’d come and hope the fire hadn’t cut them off and they could somehow get through the hole in the floor before the whole structure collapsed on top of them.
He turned to go back down the steps, and suddenly there was a roar of screaming metal, and then a rush of cool air as the door was torn off its hinges and he found he was looking into the face of a young firefighter.
“All right, Mr. Murphy,” he said, arms outstretched toward Paul. “Let’s get you the heck out of there.”
Two paramedics took Paul’s weight and carefully laid him down on a stretcher. Murphy’s arms suddenly felt as if they were floating upward and all his muscles seemed to relax at once. He sank to his knees, closed his eyes, and was about to give thanks that he’d managed to get Paul out, when the thought struck him like a sudden blow to the temple.
Paul looked like he was dead.
FORTY
BY THE TIME dawn broke over Preston, the fire trucks and the paramedic vans had gone, leaving only a cluster of police cruisers at the front of the church.
FBI Agent Burton Welsh pulled up the collar of his raincoat against the morning chill and breathed in the sickly smell of wet ashes. The wood-frame structure was still intact, the spire standing proud against the rose-tinted sky, but he guessed it would be a while before the sound of hymns came from the blackened husk.
Because of the unknown nature of the explosion, a bomb was suspected, which led to the FBI’s being called in. Hank Baines had been the first agent sent to the scene, making the return trip from Charlotte to Preston. Then, when his preliminary search of the church basement yielded some suspicious material, Welsh got an emergency summons from his U.N. investigation.
Chief Rawley of the Preston police force was waiting when Welsh arrived. “Your man’s down in the basement.”
“Body count change in the last hour?”
“Yeah, one more. Don’t know who yet, he must have been practically right on top of the blast. Then two more downstairs and two upstairs. Those are the dead. By some miracle, even though there was a pretty good crowd attending church tonight, there were not too many others really badly wounded. Except for the kid they pulled out of the basement, Paul Wallach.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Last I heard, he still hadn’t regained consciousness.”
“Well, let’s get to it.” Welsh followed Rawley down the steps into the basement. They had pumped most of the water out, but the retreating tide had left a scum of sodden ashes under their feet as they made their way to the site of the explosion.
They stopped by the scorched and twisted remains of a steel table that had been blown off its legs. Folding chairs that had fused together in the blast like modernistic sculptures lay around it, along with a scattering of broken power tools.
Welsh leaned closer until his face was just inches from the tabletop. The scorch marks etched deeply into its surface were unmistakable. Baines was studying the marks as well. “Baines. Good work on your phone report.”
“Agent Welsh. It’s good to see you again, sir. Quantico seems like a lot of cases ago. What do you think? Was I right?”
The chief wrinkled his brow. “Right about what? Explosive?”
Welsh snorted. “Chief, you don’t get these from a gas leak.”
Rawley was keen to show he was no hick. “You mean C-four?”
“Ten. Makes these green striations.” Welsh started to examine the floor around the table. “Let’s see what else we’ve got here.”
He bent down by a paper supermarket bag in the corner and pulled a wire that was hanging over its top. “My, my.” He sifted through spools of telephone wire, then held up a pair of detonators. He mimicked pushing the spiked probes into a block of plastic explosive.
Rawley stood with his mouth open as Welsh rummaged some more and came up with a charred circuit board and the half-melted cases of two high-tech cell phones.
He took a plastic evidence bag out of his jacket pocket and slipped the remains of the phones inside. “Baines, get the lab working on these right away. I’m not a technician, but either folks around here leave some very strange items in the pockets of their old suits or this is no ordinary clothing drive.”
Rawley looked sickened. “I know what I’m looking at, but I’m telling you, it just can’t be.”
“Chief, so far every sign I’m seeing down here is pointing one way. Somebody was using the church as a bomb factory. At least for tonight.”
“Welsh, that’s impossible. These people are my neighbors. They’re no more bombers than I am.”
Agent Welsh eyed the chief as if to say that was a less than convincing argument. “This was not some penny-ante operation either. They weren’t making cherry bombs.”
“So, what, you think this C-ten stuff went off accidentally?”
“Sure. Terrorists are always blowing themselves up. Comes with the territory.”
“Terrorists. I can’t believe I’m even saying the word. Not in this place.”
“Rawley, terrorists can be anywhere these days. From just a quick look down here, you got yourself a flea market of stuff that can go boom. With a few different kinds of ways to blow people up, it doesn’t look like a terrorist bombed this place. Or maybe I should say that some of the neighbors you’re swearing by were playing the terrorist home game and ble
w up the basement by mistake. Happens often enough, especially when you have rank amateurs messing with this stuff.”
Agent Welsh picked up a charred flyer from the floor and read out loud. “‘Will you be left behind?!?!’”
“For what it’s worth, the reverend of the church says he never saw that flyer before, nor any of these others.” Baines pointed to some bundles of now-drenched flyers and brochures on the floor.
“Yeah? I was beginning to think I was the only man in America not on the subscription list for this religious hooey. But it looks like the reverend needed to check down in his basement a little more frequently. Were the dead and wounded all locals?”
“As far as I know. Except for the kid, Paul Wallach. He was from the university, but I don’t know where he comes from.”
“Chief, does a small-town college like this get a lot of weirdos, freaks, and troublemakers hanging around campus? I mean, you don’t know this kid Wallach, I bet. What’s to say he’s not some out-of-towner down here to shake things up?”
“Well, all I know about him is he’s a friend of Nelson, a coed who works for Michael Murphy. She’s a great kid, and I couldn’t imagine her getting caught up with anything fringe.”
“Fringe. That’s a quaint term. She a good member of this good church?”
“Yeah. Welsh, you can’t be serious that somebody like Nelson or any of these people could actually have been making bombs down here.”
“Chief, until we can trace every step of every bit of this stuff and solve this bombing, the only person who’s not a suspect is me—and that’s only because this is the first church I’ve set foot in since I was fifteen.”
FORTY-ONE
TALON PREFERRED BEING close in, looking at his victims face-to-face. It was neater, riskier, and always more memorable to look at their fear just before he slashed them. Of course, he also derived extreme pleasure from the deadly precision of the falcons he had trained for so many years.
