NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (10 page)

The reporter said, “Our sources in Washington, who wish to remain anonymous, report that President Whitfield was livid when he heard the commander’s remarks and plans to replace him with someone who doesn’t share his qualms about firing on fellow Americans.”

As the report was concluding, the director finished his call and watched the last few seconds with Brother Billy before greeting him.

“How are you, old friend?” he said.

“I’m great, DeShaun. It looks like the foundation directing business suits you to a T,” Brother Billy said.

“I guess Josh knew what he was doing,” DeShaun said.

“Always,” Brother Billy added.

DeShaun Moore looked back at the TV for a second. “I don’t suppose your being here has anything to do with the siege at Shiloh, does it?”

“Funny you should ask. Have you ever been to southwest Tennessee? I hear the bass fishing is good this time of year.”

“All right. What’s up?” DeShaun asked.

For the next few minutes, Brother Billy explained his assignment to DeShaun who sat listening without saying a word.

DeShaun got up from his chair, leaned over his desk and scribbled a few notes on a legal pad. He tore the sheet off, walked it into his secretary’s office and dropped it in her inbox.

“She will need to know where I went,” he said to Brother Billy.

“Where did you say you were going?” Billy asked.

“On an adventure,” DeShaun said. “Let me pack a few things and I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

“Oh, and by the way, can you pack that Colt .45 while you’re at it?” Brother Billy said.

“I never leave home without it,” DeShaun said.

Ten minutes later, DeShaun emerged from the building and looked back for a second giving it the sort of look a person reserves for a place, or a person, he loves when he doesn’t know if he will ever see it, or him, or her again. He hesitated for just an instant before setting his face towards Brother Billy’s government-issue sedan. Brother Billy already had the trunk popped open, so he threw his suitcase in and closed it. He placed a duffle bag on the back floor board, plopped down in the front seat and nodded at Brother Billy, who checked the north bound traffic on the highway before pulling out on the road to Tennessee.

A mile or so behind them, another car waited at a truck stop, its driver monitoring a tracking device on a computer screen mounted on the dashboard. He elbowed his partner who was snoring in the passenger seat.

“Looks like they’re moving,” he said.

“Head ’em up,” his partner said as they rolled across the parking lot and merged into the northbound traffic, tailing Brother Billy and DeShaun Moore.

AT THE ESTATE
where J. Franklin Westmoreland addressed the ministerial group two weeks after the assassinations, in a secluded guest house nestled on the wooded slope on the east side of the Smoky Mountains, Ithurial Finis struggled with God from dawn to dusk.

During the daylight hours, he remained inside and out of sight. He read the Bible hours at a stretch, underlining passages that seemed to come to life for him as never before. Near the window that looked out on the mountains, he constructed a makeshift altar, where he knelt in incessant prayer, pausing occasionally to glory in the beauty of creation as the sun’s light grew dim in the late afternoon and shade swept over the house, cooling the hillside, making him feel like a squirrel peering out of a hole high up in a tree trunk.

Since 4/11, he had left his sanctuary rarely, only when duty demanded it. At the Parthenon, he had agreed to stand next to J. Franklin Westmoreland when the great man himself had pleaded with him and assured him God had approved it. Another time, he met with some CM paramilitary personnel at a training camp near the Tennessee River. While he patrolled the perimeter of their compound to identify security lapses, he fired on an intruder, a professional like him, who managed to elude capture because he had planned a way out, just as Finis would have.

At night, he came out of the cabin and wandered the hills, sometimes wearing his night vision binoculars to get a good view of nocturnal game. The owls, deer, and feral hogs became his companions in the darkness. He felt his secrets safe with them.

When he wasn’t meditating, Finis worked on contingency plans for CM as he tried to anticipate the actions the U.S. would take to quell the coming rebellion. Several times a week, he would print these out and mail them to a post office box in Memphis, where a CM loyalist would pick them up and distribute them to the proper people in the chain of command.

He followed the Shiloh Siege every day on the news. He had counseled against it as premature and not well thought out, but the higher-ups vetoed his protests while relying on his expertise to put together the invasion plan at Shiloh. He knew the men on the ground could never hope to hold out more than a few days. He didn’t like the notion of fighting any battle he couldn’t win.

His host kept his distance throughout Finis’ stay, but earlier in the day had knocked on his door.

“Agent Finis?” he asked. “Can I disturb you for just a minute?”

Finis checked the windows all around the house before he unlatched the deadbolt and opened the door far enough so that he could talk to his benefactor while looking him in the eye.

“Probably the less we talk, the better it will be for you, if things ever go south,” Finis said.

“I know, Agent Finis,” he said. “However, I wanted you to know that my family, by virtue of its long-standing relationship with the federal government, has many contacts within that bureaucracy.”

“Go on, sir,” Finis said still not allowing the man inside his own guest house.

“The buzz on the street is that they are starting to comb all the places where J. Franklin Westmoreland was invited to speak within the three years prior to his arrest, beginning with the most recent. That puts my place near the top of the list,” he said.

Finis thought about this news for a minute.

“Thanks for letting me know. I won’t wear out my welcome,” he said as he shut the door in the man’s face.

The host stood on the porch and started to knock again, but thought better of it and walked up the winding gravel path the fifty yards to the big house, enjoying the cool late afternoon breeze, smelling the fresh mountain air as he wondered why God would have allowed him so many blessings, why he had seen fit to let him play a small part in the greatest historical drama of all time, a drama that would usher in the kingdom of God. Before he walked up the five steps into the big house, he paused and looked out over the mountain vista. He closed his eyes and raised his hands in praise.

At two o’clock in the darkness of early morning, Ithurial Finis loaded his car trunk with his gear and closed the lid quietly. He walked the same path where his host had trod a few hours before, screwing a silencer on the barrel of his pistol. He took a tool from his pocket and jimmied the lock on the back door of the main house. He shut off the security system using the code his host had provided him.

In the great room, where the timber scion had entertained the stars in the CM firmament, he climbed a dozen steps to the second floor sleeping quarters. With his gun in his right hand, he opened the door to the master bedroom where slept his host and his young wife. Without waking either of them, he walked to the foot of the bed where he had a good view of them both and fired two shots, killing them in their sleep.

As he walked down the staircase on the way out, he thanked the Lord that the timber baron had married late in life, never having any children.

He shut the outside door behind him and stood on the porch for a second. He looked up at the moonless sky, the stars as bright as fireflies. He bowed his head. He walked to his car in no hurry, slowly drove out the driveway for the last time, and ventured out into the night, wondering where he would next lay his head.

ON THE SIXTH
day of the Shiloh siege, Flash Greenwald’s mobile broadcast unit rolled into Savannah, Tennessee, a few miles from the front lines of the Shiloh standoff, and his reporting crew started asking questions. Flash’s private jet arrived five hours later, in time for him to get a briefing on the lay of the land and sign on for his evening broadcast.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Flash Greenwald. You are on the air with America’s Voice of Truth at the siege of Shiloh, the place where the U.S. military has brought the full brunt of its power against a handful of citizens staging a peaceful demonstration at one of our country’s most venerated memorials, a place where god-fearing people from the north and south clashed in a tragic battle.”

Flash took a deep breath and threw back a shot of tequila.

“We’re here to find out the truth about what is really happening here. Why has Bass Whitfield picked this spot to bully his political enemies?”

The calls started. The first was from one of his crew members who lobbed a homerun pitch to Flash just as he had scripted it right before the broadcast began.

“I think Bass Whitfield knows the guys at Shiloh are the good guys. If he didn’t think so, he would have moved them out by now. The federal government should divide the park down the middle between the feds and the Christian Militants and let the people choose where they pay their tributes to their fallen heroes,” the first caller said.

“Amen,” Flash said. “If the government chose that route, we could all live in peace together, while holding to our Christian values without compromise. Any other approach will require us to bow down to pagan gods. It’s time the American people said ‘enough is enough’ to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Caller two, also pre-scripted.

“Flash, since the guys holding the park can’t hope to make a stand forever, what should they do if the feds won’t meet their demands?”

“I believe these are well-meaning guys who shouldn’t be branded criminals. They haven’t harmed anyone and they are making their point dramatically before the whole nation. I think the best course of action would be for the President to seek advice from leading members of his government, both those who support him and his loyal opposition, including many of this country’s leading ministers. If Bass Whitfield means what he said at Gettysburg about beating our swords into plowshares, then such a conference should produce an option that will allow these men at Shiloh to stand down without having to go to prison or fight their way out against overwhelming odds.”

•  •  •

Leadoff was on the phone to Ert.

“Are you listening to Flash Greenwald?” he asked.

“I am,” Ert said.

“He’s on the inside of this deal. He is trying to broker a deal on the air,” Leadoff said.

“There’s only one explanation for it,” Ert said.

“Yeah. Someone is paying him a ton of money to weigh in on the side of the Christian Militants,” Leadoff said.

“It’s either J. Franklin Westmoreland or someone close to him,” Ert said.

“What’s Bass saying about it?”

“He’s trying to ignore Flash, but I think after tonight’s performance that will be impossible.”

“When is Brother Billy supposed to storm their battlements?” Leadoff asked.

“He’s in route to Shiloh with DeShaun as we speak,” Ert said. “We’ll have to see what happens when and if he gets an audience with the CM raiders.”

“If we get through this deal, I would like to put my name in the pot of the people who would like to whip Flash Greenwald’s ass,” Leadoff said.

“I have you down as number one on my list,” Ert said as they ended their call.

In southwest Tennessee, Flash Greenwald took fake calls for another hour before calling it a day. His driver chauffeured him back to the air strip where his private jet awaited him. As the plane rose to altitude, he looked out the window on the left side of the cabin and saw the lights of Nashville below him.

“Here’s to you, J. Franklin Westmoreland or Leon Martinez, or whoever lands on his feet in this mess,” he said, as he lifted a gin martini to his lips and used it to wash down a couple of valiums. As he drifted into a drug-induced stupor, he received a call from Leon Martinez.

“Good job, Flash,” he said.

“Thanks, Leon,” Flash said just starting to slur his speech.

“If Whitfield takes the bait, you may go down in history as the author of a bloodless coup that brought the Christian Militants to power,” Leon said.

“I don’t think it’s over yet,” Flash said as he let the phone drop from his hand and drifted off to sleep and his troubled dreams.

BROTHER BILLY TOOK
Interstate 20 from Kilgore, Texas, east towards Monroe, Louisiana. In Shreveport, DeShaun and he saw casinos that lined both sides of I-20 at the Red River.

“When you were in the ministry, did you ever preach against gambling, DeShaun?” Brother Billy asked.

“Since I was the only gay Black preacher in the region, I tried to keep a low profile on social issues,” DeShaun said. “I already had plenty of folks who didn’t care for me. I couldn’t see the need to go out looking for trouble. I never condoned the practice myself, but I generally took a ‘live and let live,’ ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ attitude about that sort of stuff.”

“What made you come out of the closet anyway?” Billy said.

“I think it was when the chairman of deacons and I got caught in the choir room,” DeShaun said. “I suppose it is more accurate to say that I came out of the choir loft, not the closet.”

They rode through the night swapping stories, two used-to-be preachers who couldn’t shake a Galilean carpenter out of their souls even if they had wanted to.

When they crossed the Ouachita River at Monroe, DeShaun spoke up.

“Get off here. We’re going to see some real America, not just the stuff you see from the Interstate.”

“We’ll have to see it tomorrow,” Billy said. “I’m about beat.”

Billy exited on Highway 165 North and soon left the Interstate behind him to the south. Before long, he came to a Motel Six.