Blasphemy (38 page)

Bia began backing up, slow and easy, toward his vehicle.

The gun came up. The man pointed it at Bia.

“Sir, I’m not here to fight anyone,” said Bia. “There’s absolutely no reason for you to point a gun at me. Put it down.”

An older woman in work boots and a straw stockman’s hat, her face as cured as old leather, put her hand on the man’s arm. “Jess, save your bullets. That man’s not the Antichrist. He’s just a cop.”

The word “Antichrist” rumbled through the crowd. People squeezed in even closer to Bia.

“Sir,
I said put the gun down
.”

The man lowered it, uncertain.

“Okay, Wyatt Earp, give me the gun.” The woman reached over and took it from his slack hand, shook out the rounds, and slipped the gun and bullets into her shoulder bag.

“There’s no Antichrist up here,” said Bia, disguising his relief. “This is Navajo Nation land and you’re trespassing. Now, if you’ve got a leader, I’d like to speak to him.” As soon as he got back to his squad car, he’d radio for backup. National Guard–level backup.

A voice rang out, “We’re here as God’s army—to
fight
and
die
for the Lord!”

Fight. Fight. Fight
. The crowd repeated the word like a chant.

A man with a long forked beard pushed forward, a rock in his fist, and shouted, “Are you born again in the water of life?”

Angered at the man’s inquisitorial tone, Bia said, “My religion is none of your business. Lay down that rock, mister, or I’ll charge you with assault.” He placed a hand on his baton.

The man spoke to the crowd. “We can’t let him go. He’s a cop. He’s got a radio. He’ll warn the others.” The man raised the rock high. “Answer!”

Bia released his riot baton. Spinning it up, he swung the stick against the man’s arm, backhanded, as hard as he could. With a sickening crack the forearm shattered and the rock dropped to the ground.

“He broke my arm!” the man shrieked, falling to his knees.

“Disperse now and no one else will get hurt!” Bia called loudly. He took a step back, up against the fender of his car, his baton raised. If he could just get into the car, he’d have some protection—and he could radio for help.

“The cop broke his arm!” a man shouted, kneeling.

The crowd surged forward with a roar. A rock came flying and Bia dodged it. It smacked into the windshield with a dull, cracking thud.

Bia yanked open the door and ducked in, and tried to shut the door behind him, but it was held open by a surge of people. He grabbed the radio, hit the TRANSMIT button.

“He’s radioing out!” someone yelled.

A dozen hands grabbed him, pulling him back, ripping his shirt.

“The son of a bitch ists radioing out! He’s calling in the enemy!”

The mike was wrested from his hand and torn from its mount. Bia tried gripping the steering wheel, but the many-armed mob dragged him back out with relentless force. He tumbled to the ground, tried to stand, but was kicked down to his knees.

He went for his gun, yanked it out. He rolled on his side, pointing it into the crowd. “Stand back!” he screamed.

A rock slammed him in the chest, cracking his ribs. Bia fired point-blank into the crowd.

A chorus of screams rose up.

“My husband,” shrieked a voice. “Oh my God!”

A baseball bat swung out, struck his leg. He fired twice again, before the bat smashed his arm and the gun went flying.

The screaming mob piled on him, cursing, kicking, beating.

He fell to his face, scrabbling for the gun, but a boot came down hard on his hand, crushing it. He screamed, rolled, tried to crawl under his squad car.

“Stone him! Murderer! Stone him!”

He could feel the pummeling of rocks and sticks against him, the smack of them into bone and muscle, the rain of stones on the metal and glass of the police car. Choking with pain, he managed to crawl partway under the car, but they seized his leg and hauled him back into a maelstrom of blows and kicks. Screaming in pain and terror, he curled up into a fetal position, trying to protect himself from the rain of violence. The roar of the crowd began to fade, replaced by a dull roar in his own head. The blows came, but now they were happening to someone else, someone else was taking this journey, going farther and farther away. The roar subsided into a distant murmur, and then welcoming darkness gratefully came.

AS EDDY WATCHED, THE CROWD MOILED like dogs over the place where the cop had stood only a moment before. He saw him struggle to rise, then he was gone, dragged down by the undertow of the surging, stone-throwing crowd.

The chanting died down and the crowd seemed to go slack, then drift backward. The only thing left was the policeman’s cap and a lumpy, trampled uniform.

As the mob slowly dispersed, only a kneeling woman remained, wailing, holding a bleeding man in her arms. Eddy felt a surge of panic. Why was everything so different from how he had imagined it? Why did it seem so sordid?

“This is Armageddon,” came the deep, reassuring voice of Doke. “It had to start sometime.”

Doke was right. They’d passed the point of no return. The battle was joined. God was directing their hand, and there was no second-guessing Him. Eddy felt a surge of confidence.

“Pastor?” murmured Doke. “The people need you.”

“Of course.” Eddy stepped forward, raised his hands. “My Friends in Christ! Listen!
My friends in Christ
!”

A restless silence fell.

“I am Pastor Russell Eddy!” he cried. “I am the man who exposed the Antichrist!”

The crowd, electrified by the violence, surged toward him in waves, like the ocean reaching for the shore.

Eddy grasped Doke’s hand and raised it. “The kings, the politicians, the liberal secularists, and the humanists of this corrupt world will hide in the caves and the mountain’s rocks. They will call to the mountains and rocks, ‘
Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come, and who shall be able to stand
?’ ”

A roar filled the night and the swelling crowd surged.

Eddy turned, pointed, and thundered: “There, three miles to the east, is a fence. Beyond that fence is a cliff. Down the cliff lies Isabella. And inside Isabella is the Antichrist. He goes by the name of Gregory North Hazelius.”

The roar reverberated as shots rang out into the sky.

“Go!” Eddy cried, shaking his pointing hand. “Go as one people led by the flaming sword of Zion! Go, and find the Antichrist! Destroy him and the Beast! The battle of the great God Almighty is joined! ‘
The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven
!’ ”

He stepped back and the teeming throng turned and undulated eastward across the moonlit mesa, the flashlights and torches bobbing in the darkness like a thousand glowing eyes.

“Well done,” said Doke. “You really fired ‘em up.”

Still grasping Doke’s powerful arm, Eddy turned to go with them. He glanced back and glimpsed Bia, a crumpled rag in the dust—and the woman, weeping and cradling her dead husband.

The first casualties of Armageddon.

A FRESH-FACED BOY IN HIS EARLY twenties, Agent Miller drove Bern Wolf from the airstrip to the fenced security area in a Humvee. They passed through a series of smashed gates and pulled up in the center of the parking lot, amid a scattering of civilian cars. Everything was bathed in the harsh glow of powerful lights.

Wolf looked around. Soldiers converged at the edge of the mesa, fixing ropes to rappel down the cliffs to Isabella.

“We wait in the vehicle until called, sir,” said Miller.

“Terrific.” Wolf was sweating. He was a computer scientist, he wasn’t cut out for this kind of shit. The knot in his stomach was taut and heavy. Wolf figured to stay close to Agent Miller and his twenty-two-inch arms that could bench-press Buicks. His back and shoulders were so massive, they made the 7.62 NATO assault rifle slung under his armpit look like a kid’s plastic gun.

He watched the men working at the edge of the mesa. One by one, they roped up and jumped backward off the lip, carrying bulky packs. Even though Wolf hadn’t visited Isabella, he knew it like the back of his hand, he’d planned some of the layouts and he’d pored over the construction diagrams. He also knew the software, and the DOE had given him an envelope with all the shutdown and security codes. Turning off Isabella would not be a problem.

The problem, for him, would be getting down the three hundred feet of cliff face.

“I gotta take a piss,” he said.

“Do it next to the vehicle and hurry up, sir.”

Wolf did his business and returned.

Miller was just getting off the radio.

“Our turn, sir.”

“They’re already in?”

“No. They want you down there before they effect penetration.”

Effect penetration
? Did these guys know how ridiculous they sounded?

Miller nodded. “After you.”

Feeling as if every muscle in his body were resisting, Wolf hefted his pack. Despite the harsh lights, he could see an amazing number of stars overhead. The air was crisp and smelled of woodsmoke. As he walked away from the idling Humvee, he realized just how quiet the night was. The loudest sound came from the crackling power lines—clearly, Isabella was running at full power. He doubted anything was seriously wrong underground. Probably a computer glitch had crashed the communications system. Some bureaucratic hack had gone nuts and called in commandos. Maybe the scientists in the Bunker didn’t even know they were causing a furor.

Then, at the edge of audibility, he heard a couple of faint noises, like shots, then two more.

“You hear that?” he asked Miller.

“Yeah.” He paused, his head cocked. “About three miles off.”

They listened a moment longer, but there was nothing.

“Probably just an Indian shooting a coyote,” said Miller.

Wolf’s legs felt wobbly as he followed Miller to the edge of the cliffs. He’d been expecting them to lower him in a cage or something, but there was no cage to be seen.

“Sir? I’ll take your pack. We’ll lower it down after you.”

Wolf shrugged out of his pack and handed it over. “Careful, there’s a laptop in there.”

“We’ll be careful, sir. And now, could you step this way?”

“Hold on here,” Wolf said. “You don’t really expect me to . . . go down one of those ropes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How?”

“We’ll show you in a minute. Please stand there.”

Wolf waited. The other soldiers had gone down, leaving them alone at the edge. The power lines hummed and crackled. The soldier’s radio hissed, and he spoke into it. Wolf half listened. State troopers were reporting some kind of problem on the road leading to the mesa. Wolf tuned it out. He was thinking of the cliff.

More conversation, then Miller said, “Step this way, sir. We’re going to put you in this sling. Ever rappelled?”

“No.”

“It’s perfectly safe. Just lean back a little, plant your feet on the rock face, and give gentle hops. You can’t fall, even if you let go of the rope.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s perfectly safe, sir.”

They rigged him into the sling, which went around his legs, seat, and lower back, locking the rope in a system of carabiners and brake bars. Then they positioned him at the edge of the cliff with his back facing out. He could feel the wind coming up from below.

“Lean out and step over backward.”

Are they crazy?

“Lean back, sir. Take a step. Keep the tension on the rope. We’ll lower you, sir.”

Wolf stared at Miller, incredulous. The agent’s voice was so studiously polite that it seemed tinged with contempt.

“I just can’t do this,” he said.

The rope slackened, and he felt a sudden rush of panic.

“Lean back.” Miller said firmly.

“Get me a cage or something to lower me in.”

Miller leaned him back, almost cradling him in his arms.

“That’s it. Just like that. Very good, Dr. Wolf.”

Wolf’s heart hammered. Again he could feel, on his back, a cool movement of air from below. The soldier released him, and his feet slipped and he banged sideways into the cliff face.

“Lean back and plant your feet on the rock.”

His heart pounding like mad, he scrabbled his feet on the rock, looking for a purchase. He found it, forced himself to lean back. It seemed to work. As he took little light steps, always leaning out, the rope slipped through the brake bar, lowering him. Once he was below the ledge, darkness descended, but he could still see the rim overhead, limned in light. As he continued, the rim grew more and more distant. He didn’t dare look down.

Unbelievably he was doing it, bouncing and hopping down the cliff, his whole being swallowed in darkness. At last, soldiers grasped his legs and lowered him to a stone floor. When he stood up, his legs trembled. The soldiers helped him out of the sling. His pack swung down on a rope a moment later, and the soldiers snagged it. Miller arrived next.

“Well done, sir.” he said.

“Thank you.”

A large area had been carved into the side of the mountain. At the far end, a massive titanium door was set into the rock. The area was already strung out with harsh lights, looking like the entrance to the island of Dr. No. Wolf felt Isabella’s deep humming vibrating out of the mountain. It was very strange that they had lost all communication with the inside. There were too many backup systems. And the SIO would see them on the security screens—unless those, too, were down.

Very strange.

The soldiers were setting up three conical metal dishes on tripods and pointing them toward the door, like stubby mortars. One man started packing the cones with what looked like C-4.

Doerfler stood to one side, giving orders.

“What are those?” Wolf asked.

“Rapid wall-breaching demolition devices,” said Miller. “Ganged charges, there, converge at a single point and blow a hole big enough to crawl through.”

“And then?”