Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones (44 page)

Three feet from the trapped elk, Jericho stops, the frightened animal watching him through eyes the size of half-dollars. "Hoo boy," Jericho coos. "You are a beauty."

Blood oozing from its wounds, the animal bucks and stomps, lifting its head until it can no longer see Jericho. With startling quickness, Jericho leaps forward, grasps its antlers, and raises his knife to the elk's neck.

"Jeez, Jack, we coulda shot him!" Sayers calls out.

But Jericho doesn't cut the animal. Instead, he swiftly slices away the fence wire, then gently pulls it from the elk's hide. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of tiny red berries.

"Yo, Jack!" Sayers sounds alarmed. "That ain't Bambi."

"Mountain ash," Jericho says. "For pain and healing." He crushes the berries in his fist and lets the red syrup flow into the animal's wound. The elk stiffens but doesn't bolt, and Jericho gently strokes the tufted hide behind its ear.

"You learn that Tarzan shit back in Stinkhole, West Virginny?" Sayers asks.

"
Sinkhole
. Asshole."

The elk, which had been paralyzed with fear, seems to relax as Jericho strokes its back.

"Hey Sayers," Reynolds calls out. "You know what a West Virginian calls a deer caught in a fence?"

"What, man?"

"His first fuck."

The two airmen laugh.

"He's an elk," Jericho says.

Reynolds shrugs. "Elk, moose, Rotarian, whatever."

"Yo, Jack," Sayers says. "How come you didn't stay home and marry a coal miner's daughter?"

Jericho steps back, and the elk bounds away, heading for the woods.

"Or your sister?" Reynolds chimes in.

It happens with electric speed.

Jericho whirls, and the knife flies from his hand toward Reynolds' head. With a solid
thwomp,
it sticks in the fence post just inches above Reynolds' crew cut.

Speechless, Reynolds reaches up to feel his scalp as the knife, buried deep in the wood, vibrates like a tuning fork.

"Shit man!" Sayers yells. "You're crazier than the boys in the 'hood."

Jericho walks to the fence post and pulls out the knife. "My sister's the only family I've got left."

Then he walks away, watching the elk disappear into the woods, admiring its majesty, envying its freedom.

Sayers and Reynolds exchange baffled looks. From their hours of endless banter, they know Jericho is a loner. Until now, he had never said a word about his family or his life before the Air Force. Then the same thought occurs to each of them. They really don't know Jack Jericho at all.

Ballistic
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A few miles from the ranch where Brother David's warriors of God live and train is the town of Coyote Creek. A tavern, a general store, a gas station, a rod and gun shop, a few dozen weathered wooden houses. Little to do, other than the annual rodeo.

Inside the Old Wrangler Tavern, an elk's head is mounted on the knotty pine wall above a scarred mahogany bar, the antlers serving as a rack for cowboy hats, hunting caps, and even a jock strap. A bartender with a walrus mustache and an enormous stomach draws beer from a tap whose handle is the plastic form of a naked woman.

Half a dozen ranch hands and loggers stand at the bar, hands wrapped around mugs of beer. They are a scruffy, bearded lot, in soiled jeans and red plaid shirts, a few of the younger guys with bandannas on their heads instead of cowboy hats.

Above the bar, a TV is tuned to CNN where a blond female reporter stands in front of a gutted building breathlessly jabbering into a microphone. "The FBI reports no leads in the latest porn shop bombing. Tuesday's explosion in New York killed five and injured thirteen. Like the earlier blasts, no group has claimed credit for the attacks."

The bartender wipes the bar with a wet towel and shakes his head. "Why blow up a jerk-off joint?"

"A political statement," says one of the bandanna guys. "A protest."

The bartender barks a laugh. "Protesting pussy? You want a political statement, blow up the I.R.S."

The others murmur their agreement. "The I.R.S. can listen to your phone calls," says one of the grizzled men.

"Not only that," another says. "Every car manufactured after 1979 has a computer chip built in. A bureaucrat in Washington hits a switch, and your engine will stop dead."

"That why you still drive a '78 Chevy pickup, Will?" another guy says, laughing.

"Yeah, and it's why I keep my thirty-ought-six in the gun rack with five thousand rounds of ammo and provisions for six months under the barn. When the revolution comes, I'll be ready."

"Me too," the bartender says. "I got two dozen kegs of Coors in the shed out back."

Which sets the others to laughing. Will turns toward a long-haired man standing alone at the end of the bar. The man is lean and muscular and wears a blue chambray shirt and khaki pants. "What about you, fellow? You think there's going to be a second revolution?"

"A Second Coming," Brother David says. "The angel poured out his bowl on the sun, which scorched people with fire. They cursed the name of God and refused to repent."

"What the hell?"

"Revelations, chapter sixteen, verse eight. It is the Word."

Will studies the man, decides there's no use going down that road. His ex-wife was a Bible-thumper, used to drive him crazy. "Well, the Word's making me thirsty." He motions to the bartender for a refill.

No one moves to join Brother David at the end of the bar. He sips a cup of coffee and resumes watching television. On the screen, an anchorman with gray hair and a somber tone begins to speak, and the screen goes to a videotape of the President shaking hands with several men in the Rose Garden. "At the White House," the anchorman says, "the President welcomed the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Commission, which today begins a tour of U.S. missile bases scheduled to be shut down under the START II Treaty."

The bartender tosses his towel in the direction of the sink. "What bullshit! Business ain't bad enough, they gotta pull out the Air Force."

"See, I told you so!" Will puts down his freshly poured beer. "First the missiles, then our rifles. The U.N. and the Trilateral Commission are gonna confiscate our guns and give them to the Zulus and the Zionists."

Brother David walks to a nearby table and sits, joining a younger man who nurses a bottle of beer and a woman who holds a cup of coffee, gone cold. There is an air of peacefulness, of knowing calm, about Brother David, who smiles placidly. "Hello, Billy. Rachel. May the glory of God be with you."

"Thank you for coming, Brother David," Billy says. Neatly dressed in jeans and an open-collar shirt, he is a baby-faced, twenty-four year-old with rimless glasses and pale blond hair. "I've looked to the Lord for answers, just like you said. But…" Tears form in his eyes. "There aren't any answers. Not for me, anyway. Kathy said she'd wait for me, and now she's going to marry my best friend, and…" His voice takes on a pathetic whine. "I'm stuck out here in the woods for another six months. What can I do?"

Rachel leans across the table and gathers Billy's hands in her own. In her late twenties, she wears no makeup and hides her figure under a shapeless granny dress. "Brother David understands, Billy. He loves you. He'll take care of you. And so will I."

Brother David stares hard at Billy, then squeezes his eyes shut, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. When he speaks, his voice is a whisper, "I see a quiet house. In the Midwest, I believe. There is a child, just one, a little boy, but no man there. Still, the house has the feel of a man. In the closet, there is a uniform, as if he might come back." He pauses a moment, takes several deep breaths, and continues, "There is the sense of loss. Was your father killed in the service?"

Billy's lower lip trembles. "No, but he was in the Army. He left my mother. And me. He never came back."

David's gaze seems to trace an outline around Billy. "Your auric fields are weak. There is purple and gold, and that's good, but the colors are muddy, not vibrant. You are unsure, misunderstood, still in the process of awakening, and are not appreciated for what you have to offer."

"Yes," Billy says excitedly. "Yes, it's all true, but can you help me?"

Suddenly, Brother David grabs Billy's beer bottle and slams it on the table. Foam erupts and streams down the long neck. David dips an index finger into the pool of suds that surrounds the bottle. He reaches across the table and draws the sign of the cross on Billy's forehead, then touches the tip of his finger to Billy's lips. "Drink of my blood."

Billy takes Brother David's finger into his mouth as an infant would his mother's nipple. He stares, wide-eyed at the man he considers the Savior. David rewards him with a beatific smile, then withdraws his finger. He grabs Billy's head, cupping his hands around the base of his skull. "Do you seek everlasting life?"

It isn't a question so much as a demand. Billy can't say a word, but he nods against the pressure of David's hands.

"Good, William, good. Because you, Lieutenant William Riordan of the United States Air Force. You hold the key. And only I can turn it."

Ballistic
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Newly appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Sam Truitt takes the bench with high ideals, lofty intentions...and a troubled marriage. Lisa Fremont, his stunning and brilliant law clerk, has a dark secret in her past. If Lisa doesn't get Truitt's vote in multi-million dollar case involving a catastrophic airplane crash, she'll be killed. "Impact" is a tale of seduction and betrayal, of passion and greed. Truitt, who has always followed the rules, and Lisa, who never has, join together to battle those who live by no law at all.

"Impact" was the inspiration for "First Monday," the CBS television drama co-created by Paul Levine, starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. (Note: "Impact" was originally published in hardcover as "9 Scorpions.")

WHAT'S THE VERDICT ON PAUL LEVINE'S "IMPACT?"

"A relentlessly entertaining summer read." —New York Daily News

"A breakout book, highly readable and fun." —USA Today

"A big brash blend of violence, sex, and the Supreme Court." —The Miami Herald

"Impact"
and all of Paul Levine's novels are available on
Amazon Kindle
,
Nook
, and
Smashwords
.

THE SILKEN SKY WAS ENDLESS, the stars infinite, the breeze sweet with a thousand promises. On a night like this, the past is forgotten and the future is forever.

Tony Kingston loved flying at night, the huge aircraft slicing through the tar black sky like some tri-masted sailing vessel on a great adventure. Which is what Kingston thought when feeling poetic, when he let the drone of the three massive engines wash over him, playing their serene song.

Other times, burdened with the reality of a discount air carrier in the era of deregulation, he thought he was flying a bus, an over-crowded, undermaintained, ancient clunker of a bus. Now, as he acknowledged instructions from Miami Center and descended to eleven thousand feet he felt the big jet's power under his hands. It was still a remarkable beast, four hundred thousand pounds of muscle, one million separate parts in all. Looking as if it shouldn't be able to get off the ground at all, this huge aircraft was a testament to man's genius, he thought, just as surely as man was a testament to God's genius.

Tony Kingston looked through the V-shaped windshield and into the night. To the left was the vast darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. Below and to the right were the twinkling lights of Florida's Gold Coast, Palm Beach merging with Ft. Lauderdale and farther south, Miami Beach. In less than twenty minutes, they should be pulling up at the gate at MIA. Listening to the soothing white noise of the slipstream, he took the measure of his own life, calculating credits and debits, figuring he was solidly in the plus column.

A former combat pilot, Kingston sometimes missed the action, the camaraderie of the flight squadron. But he overly romanticized it, he knew, and flying a fighter was a young man's game. What he had now was a career: chief pilot for Atlantica Airlines. The title almost sounded military. So why did the job often leave him wanting more?

But what had he expected? Surely not the same rush he got from his beloved A-6 Intruder rocketing off the deck of a carrier, a load of HARM missiles slung under its wings.