He was too far gone. She had to try another tack. Braydon, in her peripheral vision, was flanking the altar. “God saved you,” she said, “and me. We need to work together on this, Daniel.” Whatever this was. “Let me go. I won’t leave you.”
He bent down to the right to reach something from the shelf below the top of the altar. He pulled it out, pointed it at her forehead. It was a frigging P-90, that automatic machine gun that Braydon had tried to coerce from that National Guardsman with the Humvee. Daniel smiled wryly. “It belonged to that killer crushed by the oak,” he said. “Fox!” he yelled now. “I know you’re out there. Show yourself. Hands up. Or Christa will help me save mankind from Heaven.” He kept the gun pointed at her, but turned bodily towards the altar. With his right hand, he typed frantically on the keyboard.
God help her. Those words took on new meaning. The barrel of the machine gun loomed in her vision. She could see the damn bullet, poised to kill. “Daniel, Baltasar Contreras is dead,” she said. “It’s over.”
“Contreras is dead,” he said, “but the Prophet lives, in me. You think I’m insane, but I’ve never seen anything more clearly. Contreras set up a worldwide network of followers, but they’ve never seen him. They are waiting, praying for the Prophet to speak to them. I will be that voice. You and me, Christa. We can bring world peace. We can use our power to create the ultimate empire, one that saves the people, one that will not fall.”
“The Breastplate of Aaron is destroyed, buried.” She tugged at the chain, tried to move away from the gun. He was focused on the computer screen, not her.
“You must believe, Christa.” He tapped awkwardly, covering the whole keyboard with one hand. “This computer is my Breastplate. After God saved me, he led me to it, bade me to take it from Contreras’s library. God showed me the password. In one keystroke, my followers will release their poison in the water supplies of the major cities of the world. All will know God’s power, manifested through me. I only need to press Send to cross the threshold into the genesis of a new world.”
“Give it up, Dubler,” Braydon said. He had circled back to the nave end of the Lady Chapel. Just as she first saw him in the Arizona desert, he emerged from the shadows, the dim light glinting on his gun. Rather than a cottonwood tree, he braced himself against a marble column, across a river of pews. He stood pistol first, right arm straight out in front of him, his forearm steadied with his left hand. He was positioning himself to get Daniel to shift his target from her, to him. “Donohue’s spooks hacked into Contreras’s network,” he said. “They’ve already launched a covert operation to neutralize his followers.”
“You’re lying,” Daniel yelled. He swung the machine gun toward Braydon. With a bloody scream, he pulled the trigger. Bullets spat out of the barrel in a fury of noise and smoke.
Christa kicked at Daniel’s legs as the deafening bangs exploded around her. Spent shells rained down, hot and hard. Braydon didn’t stand a chance. And he could have been bluffing. Donohue might not have succeeded in hacking into the Prophet’s network. If Daniel pressed Send, thousands more would die. They’d never be able to create and distribute the antidote in time to save them all. She yanked at the chains. The Mary statue shifted. She yanked again, bullet casings gouging Mary’s marble feet with metallic clangs. Her wrists hurt like hell. Warm trickles of blood seeped down her forearms. She twisted her hands to wrap the chain around them and gripped the links in her fists. In one mighty pull, she heaved with every bit of strength from within, and without.
As if in slow motion, Mary toppled forward, her expression placid, accepting. Daniel turned, raising his arm to shield himself. She ducked towards the side. The statue fell upon Daniel, smashing onto his forearm and temple. He dropped the machine gun at her feet. Now free from the statue, she snatched up the gun, pointed it at him. He staggered, one hand to his head, blood flowing down his cheek. He poised the other hand above the keyboard, his finger above the Send key. Christa pulled the trigger.
DAY 7
CHAPTER 70
Christa awoke to the muted, staccato voice of Braydon’s boss in the FBI, a petite Korean woman who made up in spunk what she lacked in physical stature. The woman’s heels clicked down the length of the nave, fading into the dark. Christa raised her head from the wooden pew. O’Malley had given her a velveteen kneeler as a pillow, and did a bang-up job bandaging her wrists. The both of them had refused to call the paramedics. Plenty of people were hurt worse than they were.
Her back stiffened as she pushed upwards. She had aged years in these past few days. Braydon sat next to O’Malley on the steps leading up to the main altar. The Bureau had spirited away Daniel’s body in the night. A crime scene investigation was deemed unfeasible and unnecessary in this state of emergency. Like her own guilt and self-psychoanalysis of her part in Daniel’s death.
She pushed up her aching body, walked stiffly towards Braydon and sat next to him. “Gabriella called me,” she said, “before I conked out on the pew last night. They took Liam home. He’s going to be okay. Percival, too.”
Braydon nodded. The first light of dawn filtered into the nave through the stained glass windows. “They’ve lifted the curfew in the city. Got a lot of mopping up to do.”
The door from the Fifth Avenue side of the nave opened. The three of them stiffened. Hesitantly, they stood to see beyond the rows of pews. Braydon’s hand went to the butt of his gun. An old lady tottered in, feathered hat, hunched shoulders, leading a flock dressed like her, in dark, wool coats, warm hats, and the occasional cane.
O’Malley placed his hand on Braydon’s arm. “It’s Mrs. Pennington,” he said. “She comes to morning mass every day.”
“Sunrise is a tad early for mass,” he said, “even for old ladies.”
“Braydon,” O’Malley adjusted his cassock to hide the rip and smoothed back his mop of red hair, “it’s Christmas.”
The three of them watched as the old birds tottered down the center aisle to their perches in the front pews. Then something more remarkable. Others followed them into the nave. A group of teens decked out in black leather. Three women, in platform heels and hot pants, who were decidedly not nuns. Parents with young children, their eyes full of wonder and latent fear.
A ringtone chirped Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. O’Malley fished his phone from his pocket. “It’s my rabbi friend, Ezekial Feinstein,” he said.
Christa and Braydon watched as the people poured in, silent, shell-shocked, filling the pews, helping those who needed help, the injured, the infirm.
“Ezekial says he has opened his temple doors. The crowds are jamming in, people he has never seen before,” said O’Malley. “He says it’s happening all over the city.”
O’Malley started down the center aisle, greeting the people, welcoming them, quietly, with understanding, not celebration.
“I wish Dad was here to see this,” she said. She could tell him that the Breastplate had connected her with Mom. That she knew Mom was loved, happy, and in a place where to forgive was a given. If you believed in that sort of thing. But that was a prayer that wouldn’t be answered. She had called, texted, emailed, and received no reply. Helen had told her to accept his death.
“Makes you want to believe,” Braydon said, “one last time.”
“O’Malley is with his family,” she said. “All I want is to be with mine.” She clasped his hand in hers. “Come with me.”
He smiled. “I believe I will.”
They walked down the side aisle towards the exit. A man ambled toward them, relying heavily on a cane. He was dressed in worn, baggy pants, a scruffy leather jacket, and a wide-brimmed fedora, a man who’d been through hell. The man raised his face to hers. It was Dad.
CHAPTER 71
“Merry Christmas,” Donohue said, raising his stainless steel cup filled with aguardiente, the local sugarcane alcohol.
The strike force, except for the two perimeter guards, welcomed the break, sweating and puffing as they rested their old bo
nes on the jumble of boulders. “Merry Christmas,” they toasted.
One swig downed the drink, and they were back at it. Picks and shovels, they didn’t dare use dynamite and risk destroying the Breastplate of Aaron.
“Got another one,” Leader called out. He stepped back and grimaced at the stench. He had seen his share of corpses as a Navy Seal, but it was worse here, in the heat and humidity. He made a sign of the cross and dragged the crushed body of the savage to the others awaiting burial.
The volcano rumbled and spewed out more of its sulfuric stink. They were running out of time. The Joint Chiefs had been alerted to the situation. Donohue’s orders were clear. He had completed the first part of his mission. He had collected every last leaf of the antidote plant they could find. He was to return to Washington immediately with the plants, before the spreading ash of the volcano completely closed the airspace and any hope of air travel out of the region. The Joint Chiefs were taking a page from the Prophet’s playbook. Soon, they hoped to wield the power of a bio-weapon for which they had the only defense. They placed their faith in the hands of scientists working to synthesize an antidote that God had hidden away in this unique microcosm since the birth of creation. Arrogant fools.
As far as the Breastplate of Aaron, the Joint Chiefs were determined to keep it the best guarded secret in history. They were marshaling an elite team from a nearby base to extract it, no doubt to squirrel it away in some ultra-secret research facility. They believed in its power, not to open a portal to Heaven, but to explode into an international incident.
Like Salvatierra defying the Vatican, Donohue had to defy the order of his commander. He had to achieve his own mission to right a wrong, even if it risked his life, even if it risked his immortal soul.
He fingered the dog tags hanging around his neck, Clive’s dog tags, not his. You have to find the Breastplate, Eleanor had begged before he left for Colombia, for Clive. The Breastplate will prove that life exists beyond death. If I know that our son can live beyond his death, then I can live again beyond his death. He needs to know our love for him has no end.
Soon, they would unearth the Breastplate of Aaron. This wasn’t the end of his mission, but the beginning.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pamela Hegarty has adventured in more than thirty-five countries on six continents. She has summited Mount Kilimanjaro, backpacked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and camped with lions in the Serengeti. She is the author of San Francisco & Beyond: 101 Affordable Excursions, Best Places to Kiss in New England and Best Places to Kiss in Northern California (Second Edition) and a contributor to seven Fodor’s guidebooks. She has published more than three hundred articles in Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, Diversion, Country Inns, San Francisco Focus, The Peak (Hong Kong), Explore (Canada) and other magazines and newspapers. She welcomes readers to contact her through her website at pamelahegarty.com or at [email protected]. Follow her on twitter at @pamelahegarty.
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