“It wasn’t me who gave the boy a chance, Nick. God gave him the chance to turn from being a son of death and darkness to being a son of life,” Coffman said. The leader extended his hand, palm upward, toward the priest.
“Oh, I see it now,” Sera said. “You didn’t find Sister Anna and Victor. They found you, asked to be murdered, and you simply agreed.”
“You mock me, Lieutenant, but there’s more truth in what you say than you know. Both the boy and the nun did, in fact, find me. That’s what the Bible calls providence, right, Nick? I explained to both of them their choice, and they chose. You two will also choose.”
“Choose life. Isn’t that what Moses told the Israelites?” Father Fortis murmured.
The sound of Coffman’s hands clapping echoed through the room. “Excellent, Nick! Two paths—the path of life and the path of death. You’re a man of the Bible, though Paul says the devil also knows the Scriptures. Yet I’m an optimist. It’s one of my flaws, you could say. It’s clear that you understand me better than she does,” he said, nodding toward the policewoman. “Who knows, perhaps you understand me better than Eladio.” Coffman nodded to himself, fingering his mustache, as if the thought were worth considering.
“But I don’t understand you, Mr. Coffman,” Father Fortis protested. “I don’t understand anything. Not these explosives, or why we’re bound, or why you built this bunker under an old morada. And I certainly don’t understand how you can believe God approved of your killing an innocent nun and a young boy.”
The leader leaned forward, his hand massaging his knee. “Here’s your mistake, Nick. You’re looking at everything as separate pieces. The nun, the boy, you two coming here, not to mention what’s about to happen …. It’s all a whole, Nick, all a whole. If you knew your Bible, you’d see it.”
Father Fortis glanced over and saw that Sera’s face was flushed. She’s too angry, he thought, and a danger to us both.
“But how did it all start?” he asked, trying to keep Coffman distracted. “How can you expect me to understand you if you don’t tell me how it all started?”
Coffman rose and stood over Father Fortis, the captor’s jaw clenched. In trying to protect Sera, have I inadvertently pushed the man too far? he wondered.
The leader paced the room, his body bobbing slightly on his left leg as if he were walking the deck of a ship.
“Did either of you notice two crosses about two miles back up the road as you came in?” he asked.
“No, I didn’t,” Father Fortis admitted.
“I did,” Sera said. “I assumed it was an auto accident.”
“That’s what the police want everyone to believe. It wasn’t an accident. It was the beginning of a war. No, it was the beginning of the war, though I didn’t know it at the time.”
“Who died?” Father Fortis asked.
“I don’t say she died. No, I say Death stole her that night.”
“Your wife? I’m truly sorry,” Father Fortis said. “It’s never easy—”
“No point to pity, Nick,” Coffman said. “Not in Vietnam, and not in this war.”
“Accept it as sympathy, then, not pity. To lose a spouse is always—”
“Stop twisting my words!” Coffman broke in again. “I told you, I didn’t lose her. After the resurrection, we’ll be together.”
Father Fortis shot Sera a look. Just let him talk.
“Very soon, very soon,” Coffman muttered, looking at the books on the far wall. “Christ will open her eyes, and we’ll be together for a thousand years, then eternity above.”
“So who are you blaming for killing her? Sister Anna or Victor? Or maybe it’s both,” Sera said.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a very grating voice, ma’am? The boy was guilty, more than he knew. Once I learned who his father was, I realized God’s mysterious purposes.”
“Oh my God, you blame the Brotherhood …,” Sera said, her voice trailing off.
Before Coffman could answer, the door opened. Eladio peeked in, a look of alarm on his face. In his hand, he held the assault rifle. “Someone’s snooping around outside,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
Worthy turned off on the bumpy road and checked his odometer. According to the accident report, the crash site would be six and two-tenths miles up the way. He switched on his high beams and steered from one side of the road to the other to avoid the potholes. With each mile, he was forced to go slower. At times, his tires came dangerously close to the road’s edge, from where it dropped off sharply to the canyon below.
As he neared the six-mile mark, he momentarily saw something shiny ahead, like reflector strips. But the road curved away at that moment; it was not until he rounded another bend that he saw the two crosses, side by side. Plain, with shiny letters covering both spines, the crosses were encircled with plastic flowers. On one he read the name Oscar Silva; on the other, Leonardo Corrales.
Worthy got out of the car and studied the place where the two walkers had been killed in the accident. He used his flashlight to peer down the steep embankment for the third cross, the one commemorating where the woman died. He saw none.
He beat back the fatigue coursing through his body by trying to mentally recreate the accident. From one direction, perhaps the same way he’d approached the site, the Coffman car had come around the blind curve. Rounding the bend from the opposite direction must have been the Penitente procession, Oscar Silva and Leonardo Corrales leading the death cart.
He returned to the car and let the darkness settle in around him. His eyes slowly adjusted to the starlit sky. If it had been a night like this, neither the walkers, chanting as they marched, nor the Coffman vehicle would have seen the other until it was too late. He could almost hear the screams of the Penitentes as they were struck by the car, then the screams of the Coffmans as their car plunged over the edge. The tragedy would have taken only seconds.
Worthy pulled back onto the road. The voice of logic told him he’d found what he’d been looking for, and he might as well head back into town. But something in the back of his mind drew him forward. Then it came to him. The procession must have had some beginning point—a morada. Perhaps he’d already passed it without noticing, but he sensed it was still up ahead.
He stopped every several hundred yards to scan the roadsides with his flashlight. Nearly a mile and a half farther on, as the road leveled off slightly, his narrow beam spotted something that sent his heart racing. In front of him was a cemetery filled with crooked crosses. Behind it stood an old building.
Buckling the holstered gun to his belt, he jumped from the car. He trained the flashlight on the ground, looking for any clue that Sera and the other two had been there. If they had, he reasoned, it would have been within the last twenty-four to thirty-six hours—too short a time for the wind or weather to obliterate their tracks. His heart sank as he saw nothing more than the markings of a rabbit and another animal. Pine needles and dust had settled in powdery layers; it appeared that the place had been vacant for months. A gentle breeze fluttered the silver leaves of the aspens that ringed the site.
As the flashlight illuminated the crosses in the cemetery, he looked for something linking the place to Victor. Could the boy’s father have been from this morada? The weathered condition of the crosses defeated the narrow beam of the flashlight. Some mounded graves held no markers at all, and only a few had the plastic flowers he’d seen back at the accident site.
Last of all, he trained the beam on the building and saw the door hanging crazily from the hinges. If the procession had started from this spot that night, then the accident had apparently destroyed the group’s spirit as well as the two leaders. Judging by the evidence, no one had stood where he was standing for a long time.
He walked to the door of the morada and aimed the light into the darkness within. Except for a bare altar and a few benches lying on their sides, the room was empty. To his surprise, the walls were weather-beaten but unmarked, apparently unmo
lested by vandals. Maybe the place was too far from town.
His light found the mound of leaves in a back corner. The work of an animal, he concluded. The pile of leaves reminded him of happier days with Allyson when she’d been young. She always begged to dive into the leaves and cover herself. He felt an urge to lie down in them himself, to drift off to sleep. But wouldn’t snakes be curled up in such a sheltered place? And he had no time for napping.
He could hear the wind whistling through the aspens outside the morada. Leaning back against the wall, he felt the day’s heat still trapped in the adobe.
“Where are you?” he whispered to himself. “This is where you should have come.” That was assuming, of course, that Sera and Father Fortis had even learned about the accident. Was it possible that there were other leads, other needles in the haystack, as tantalizing as this one? Every bone in his body, especially his aching shoulder, wanted this old building to mean something. Yet it clearly didn’t. He’d wasted precious hours on a hunch. The beam flickered as it remained on the leaves, lying deathly still in the corner.
He must have jumped six inches when the phone rang in his shirt pocket. His shoulder radiated with pain as the surprise sent him crashing into the wall, but his mind was already racing past the pain to the only question that mattered. Had Sera and Father Fortis been found?
“That you, Sergeant?” he asked. Static buzzed from the dreaded cell phone, and he had to step out of the old building before the sergeant’s voice could be heard.
“Sure is, Lieutenant. Where in the world are you?”
“Out at some old morada up the road from the accident site. I thought I might find something here, but it’s totally empty. What’ve you got?”
“Two things. The van you asked about was spotted this morning in Alamosa.”
Worthy’s heart jumped in step with his feet as he headed for the car. “Where’s that?”
“About forty miles east of where you are. Get on Route 285. Then go north into town.”
“Where do I go once I get there?”
“To Souls’ Harbor Rescue Mission.”
A memory from his childhood floated back to him, of waiting in a locked car while his father dropped off a box of Gideon Bibles to a skid-row mission in Louisville.
“Fine. I’m on my way. There’s nothing here.”
“When do you plan to sleep, Lieutenant?”
“Soon. After I check things out at the mission. What did you say the name was?”
“You see? That’s what I mean. Hell, you looked beat when you were at the station. And now you’re going to drive down that road in the dark? I think you’re in more danger than your friends.”
As he started the engine, Worthy turned to take a final look at the morada. Odd, he thought, that there’s no static from the phone in the car but there was in the building.
“More danger than my friends?” he repeated. “I sure hope so, Sergeant. Just tell me where I’m supposed to go, and then tell me what else you got.”
“Souls’ Harbor Rescue Mission,” he repeated. “The other bit of info is about Porter Coffman. It turns out he used to work over at the National Science facility in Los Alamos. He was there about twenty years before he retired. You heard of it?”
“Sure. One of those top-secret places, right? Where’s Coffman now?”
“He hasn’t been seen for a month or two. That’s not that unusual, apparently.”
“Okay. Well, do we know what he did at Los Alamos?”
Rakich could be heard munching something. “He was what they call a structural engineer.”
Worthy turned on his high beams as he again approached the accident site. “And that means what?”
“I asked the same thing of a buddy of mine who used to work over there. He didn’t know Coffman, but said that they’re the guys who specialize in the underground bunkers. Radiation-proof, that sort of thing.”
“Great, just great,” Worthy replied, as he looked out over the expanse of mountains and canyons. As if it wasn’t hard enough finding something above ground … now Coffman might be hiding beneath it.
“Really?” the sergeant asked. “You think it might be important?”
Worthy didn’t bother to answer. “Call me if you get anything else, even if it’s in the middle of the night.”
“It is almost the middle of the night.”
Worthy drove back toward the highway, groping for the gun on his belt and the flashlight in the passenger seat. Why did he have the feeling that he’d left something in the morada?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Father Fortis could feel his heartbeat in his ears as Eladio was directed to stand guard at the base of the stairs. Showing no panic, Coffman walked to the desk and swiveled the monitor so that the two of them could see.
Father Fortis watched the solitary figure walk into the cemetery. The sling on the visitor’s arm could only mean one thing—Worthy had found them. He saw Sera’s eyes transform into open circles, her tongue moistening her lips as she also stared at the screen.
“By the way, you can shout all you want,” Coffman said. “We’re completely cut off down here. But that won’t keep us from watching our visitor’s every move. Infrared night vision, state of the art.”
Despite Coffman’s confidence, Father Fortis felt for the first time since they’d been taken prisoner that they held the advantage. It seemed Coffman didn’t recognize Worthy, so he couldn’t know that his two prisoners were friends with the man above ground.
Outside, Worthy could be seen studying the graves. Suddenly, his flashlight beam panned toward the camera as Worthy approached the morada. Coffman hit several keys and a new camera angle, obviously from somewhere inside the dark building, showed Worthy approaching the door, then entering the room. Worthy was right above them, and yet there was nothing they could do.
Father Fortis quickly checked to make sure that Sera wasn’t preparing to test Coffman’s word. But he could see that her lips, although moving, were doing nothing more than whispering. Was she praying, or trying to magically communicate with Christopher?
He said a prayer himself for his friend’s safety. The last thing they needed was for their last hope to be tied up with them in this bunker. In the morada above, Father Fortis could see Worthy’s flashlight play across the walls before coming to rest on the fake pile of leaves. What would happen if Worthy came over to investigate? He pictured Eladio waiting with the assault rifle trained on the door, ready to shoot. “Be careful, be careful,” Father Fortis pleaded under his breath.
“Everything is happening according to plan,” Coffman commented. “This place is like a magnet pulling all of you to it. Can you see that, Nick?” he asked, turning from the screen toward his two captives.
Father Fortis didn’t dare look at Sera.
“Be ready, Eladio,” Coffman ordered. “Just a few more steps and—”
But something caused Worthy to jump. The figure stepped abruptly outside the morada. Father Fortis didn’t know whether to cry or breathe a sigh of relief.
Coffman played with the keyboard, and yet a third camera angle showed Worthy talking on a cell phone. A cell phone? Since when did Christopher have a cell phone? Tears came to his eyes as he watched Worthy jog toward a car.
He risked a glance at Sera, her hands red from straining against the chains. He saw her lips move and read her message. Goodbye, Chris. Goodbye.
No, no, no! Father Fortis thought. It can’t end this way. Yet to know that Worthy had stood right above them, only to leave, seemed to destroy his last bit of hope. He felt his hands relax as if they too had already accepted their fate.
Just as Worthy could be seen reentering the car, he turned to shine the flashlight one last time at the morada. Like a wave crashing on a shore, hope rose within Father Fortis. Christopher suspects something, he thought. He suspects something! He looked over and saw from Sera’s tightly pursed lips that she knew it, too. Christopher would come back. But would it be in time?
> Worthy parked in front of Souls’ Harbor Rescue Mission in Alamosa, draining the cup of coffee purchased at a mom-and-pop store on the edge of town. The mission’s neon-lit cross, blinking on, blinking off, sent rods of pain shooting into his dry eyes. Everything except his brain wanted to sleep. He squinted again as he walked into the brightly lit reception area.
It took a moment for him to recognize the man standing in his way.
“Sergeant Rakich, what are you doing here?”
The policeman from Antonito held out his hand, a tight frown on his face. “I thought I should be doing my job a little bit better. God knows, you must be worried about your friends.”
Worthy shook the offered hand. What had happened to bring the man out at four in the morning? “You got something, Sergeant?”
“Not much. I got ahold of this photo of Coffman. I thought you might need it.”
Worthy studied the face in the photo, a mug shot from some ID. The face was chiseled, the mouth dead, but the eyes seemed to hold contempt for the camera.
“No word on the van?” Worthy asked.
“No. Sorry. We’re pretty sure it was here, but by now that was … yesterday.”
Worthy adjusted the strap of the sling. The weight of his dead arm had caused his other shoulder to ache. He looked across the reception desk to where an old man was working a crossword puzzle. From another room, he heard the twang of a guitar and recognized a gospel tune from his childhood. “He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today.” One of his Dad’s favorites.
“Have you talked to our friend over there yet?” Worthy asked.
Sergeant Rakich pulled a small notebook out from behind a candy bar in his shirt pocket. “He thinks he might have seen Coffman around here about a month ago, but he said the guy was going by another name. But he’s not sure. And he said your friends were here the night before last, looking for some guy named Eladio Moldonado.”
“Where is that guy now?”
“Gone. One of the other guys here said he saw Eladio leaving with your friends yesterday morning, but the guy at the desk says not to trust him.”
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