by Jon Land
The other gunmen swung desperately around now, enabling Johnny to lunge to his feet and take three of the remaining assailants out, while Denbo put a bullet into the skull of the final one. The highway patrolman turned his sight on Wareagle to make sure he was all right.
The big Indian gave a little wave and a nod, then hurried on to meet Blaine McCracken, who was waiting warily at the edge of the field. In all, the three of them had cleared an escape route for upward of fifty people.
“Let’s get to the mansion, Indian,” McCracken said when Johnny reached him.
Hidden within the garden, Sister Barbara could hear the bursts of gunfire coming from inside her house. It made no sense. Who could possibly be in there that the enemy was shooting at? There were screams, too, a woman’s screams.
Could a few of her followers have managed to take refuge within the mansion? The enemy must have thought so; over a dozen black-clad gunmen had surged by her in the past few minutes. Sister Barbara had just begun to slide out from her position of cover when she saw another figure emerge from another section of the garden, keeping low. She pushed herself back into the thick shrubbery and caught a glimpse of a teenage boy as he passed by her. He wasn’t dressed like the other attackers, nor did he look like one. Sister Barbara watched him stop and bring a strange, thick-barreled weapon down from his shoulder. Then he started on again, closing the gap to the house.
Jacob noted the bursts of gunfire coming from inside the mansion and settled himself between a pair of bushes over a hundred feet away. Rachel’s shotgun blasts were easily discernible from the rest, and the intervals between them indicated her winding journey through the mansion was proceeding just as they’d planned. Jacob would have preferred to draw closer, but the 40mm grenades he was about to fire took thirty-five meters to arm themselves by their rotation through the air.
He broke the M79 launcher’s breech and inserted the first of his shells, then snapped it closed and brought it to his shoulder. Steadying it before him, Jacob aimed and fired. The grenade thumped out and he had breeched the launcher and reloaded before the explosion sounded.
Sister Barbara heard the ear-rattling blast and instinctively covered her ears. Even so, a second thumping, almost like a pop of air, reached her an instant before the second explosion.
In the next few moments, she counted three more thumps. An explosion followed each one by a few seconds, the sound of exploding glass clear to her now as well. Between the next thump and its accompanying explosion, she slid to a thin enough part of the garden to gain clear view of what was happening.
The mansion was a shambles. Flames flicked out from generous layers of black smoke. Entire windows, along with the areas of walls containing them, were gone, none of the mansion’s three floors spared. After another two explosions rocketed wood and glass into the air, the entire house looked as though it were ready to crumble in concession.
Viewing the destruction of her home only brought Sister Barbara additional confusion. She watched a number of black-jacketed killers stagger from the house and tumble down the front steps. A few crashed through the remnants of windows, their bodies in flames. Others emerged reasonably unscathed and tried to drag their fellows to safety. But the next explosion blew their refuge on the steps apart, turning the meager front lawn into a blood-soaked graveyard.
Sister Barbara couldn’t believe her eyes. Her entire being was besieged by a welter of emotions. Her house, her home, was being destroyed. And yet the teenage boy she felt sure was responsible was obviously acting against the force that had invaded the Oasis. Did that make him her ally? Should she approach him?
She moved farther on through the garden’s thinner reaches until the boy was directly before her, his eyes riveted on the ruined mansion. Sister Barbara watched as a final figure emerged from within it: a girl, her clothes and face soiled by soot, a hand pressed against her mouth. She reached the boy coughing, nearly gagging. The boy cupped an arm around the girl’s shoulder for support, and when they finally turned away from the mansion, Sister Barbara stepped out before them.
“Hello, Sister,” the boy said after a brief pause, still bearing the girl’s weight.
The clatter of rapid footsteps made Sister Barbara swing round to see a tall, bearded man hurrying toward her with a large rifle shouldered behind him and a smaller one in hand. Behind him, half watching the rear, advanced a huge Indian who towered over the highest of her plantings.
“Sorry about the mess,” said Blaine McCracken.
Feeling confident now, Wayne Denbo of the Arizona Highway Patrol protectively followed the progress of Wareagle and McCracken across the Oasis complex toward the huge flower garden and mansion beyond it. He was rotating his rifle routinely when the magnified sight caught something wedged against the rear of the dormitory-style building. The rectangular mound’s cream color made it stand out from the red brick. Denbo had never seen this kind of stuff before, not for real anyway, but where pictures left off, his imagination had no trouble picking up.
Plastic explosives!
The enemy force must have wired the entire complex, he thought, realizing his role had just changed abruptly. He had to get word to McCracken about what he had seen.
Denbo shouldered his rifle and rushed across the rooftop for the ladder. He descended it quickly, ignoring the resulting clamor and reached the ground to find none of the enemy in sight. He started off, bringing his M16 back around, when he heard the brief flutter of footsteps to his rear. Denbo swung his M16 around but wasn’t quick enough. A burst fired by one of the men in the black jackets burned into him just before he found the trigger. The M16’s bullets chewed up the black-jacketed man’s midsection and dropped him where he stood. Denbo staggered sideways and leaned against the nearest building, not far from what he recognized as another of the deadly mounds of plastic explosives. Sight of it reminded him that he had to get moving, had to reach McCracken and the others before it was too late.
His breathing came in rapid, shallow heaves. He stumbled the first stretch forward, slowed by the M16 clacking against his body. He shed it from his shoulder and pushed himself on, keeping both hands pressed tightly against the fire-hot wounds in his side and chest.
Jacob kept an arm wrapped around Rachel’s shoulder for support as he dragged her toward Blaine McCracken. She was still coughing, her throat burning dry, and tears were pouring from her eyes. But her spirits lifted when she saw Sister Barbara heading their way between McCracken and his giant Indian friend.
The twins’ part in the plan had gone off perfectly. After Rachel had successfully drawn the enemy force clustered in this area into the mansion with gunshots, Jacob had opened fire with his grenades. They had worked out the placement and order of his shots in advance, allowing her to shift her position through the mansion to steer clear of the blasts.
“Hello, Sister Barbara,” Rachel greeted, separating herself from Jacob.
“I know who you are!” she snapped, while looking at both of them. “Turgewell’s children, his famous twins!”
Rachel nodded. “We have much to tell you. And now that—”
She stopped when the sound of heavy footsteps pounded their way. McCracken and Wareagle spun an instant ahead of her, guns leveled and ready.
Wayne Denbo stumbled forward and collapsed, his hands drenched in the blood that had soaked through his jacket all the way down to his thighs. Wareagle got to him first, lifted him carefully and propped up his shoulders, as the highway patrolman fought to speak through quivering lips.
“Got … got to get out of … here …”
“Indian?” Blaine raised.
Wareagle looked at him long enough to shake his head slowly.
“Get out of … here now …” Denbo’s dying eyes burned with fear. He swallowed hard, couldn’t complete the motion. “Whole place wired … wired to explode …”
“Of course, of course,” Sister Barbara muttered, as if the enemy’s plan suddenly made perfect sense to her.
She joined the others in looking down at Denbo in the hope that he would elaborate further. But Johnny had already closed his eyelids and eased him to the ground.
Blaine swung toward Sister Barbara. “What’s the fastest way out of here?”
“Over the fence at the rear of my mansion, or what used to be my mansion.” Referring to it brought Sister Barbara’s eyes back upon her ravaged house. It didn’t look real to her, more like a toy; a young girl’s ravaged dollhouse. The remnants continued to char and burn. The explosions themselves had left jagged, blackening punctures that gushed smoke and flames.
McCracken turned that way. “Let’s go!” he urged them all. “Move!”
The Reverend Harlan Frye watched the series of explosions on television, courtesy of the closed-circuit monitors spread throughout the Oasis theme park. Those monitors had been broadcasting their pictures digitally back to him for months now, one of several means he used to keep track of the traitorous Sister Barbara. Unfortunately their reach did not extend all the way back to her mansion, stealing his chance to see it vanish into oblivion along with the rest of the compound.
The explosions had been rigged to provide the impression that the invading team of his soldiers, dressed as federal marshals, had triggered the Oasis residents’ last desperate line of defense. They would die before allowing themselves to be taken, the story would go. The madness of David Koresh and Waco from years before enacted on a much larger scale.
Minutes before, Harlan Frye had looked up and thanked God when one of the monitors clearly showed Blaine McCracken and his Indian friend. That undoubtedly meant Turgewell’s cursed twins were on the premises as well, perhaps even Karen Raymond. He took the presence of all his enemies at once in the place of their undoing as a sign that he had passed the final challenge God had set before him. The next stage of his plan could go forth unencumbered.
No more distractions. No more tests. Judgment Day would go forward without incident come Sunday morning, just forty-eight hours from now.
The blasts had been planted to off at staggered intervals over the course of fifteen wonderful seconds. The Reverend Harlan Frye thanked God again for the gift of being able to watch Sister Barbara’s famed Oasis rupture one part—and one monitor—at a time. The last thing he saw before the final monitors went dark was a wall of freed water from the park’s slide and pool attractions being engulfed by a massive sweep of relentless orange flames. A cloud of black filled the screen briefly, but then the inferno flared anew, glowing off the monitor toward Frye in the last moments before the transmission broke off.
The Reverend rose, hands clasped in the position of prayer, and again looked to the sky, envisioned it beyond the ceiling of his theater in the Kingdom of the Seven.
“I can begin Your true work now,” he promised. “Your faith in me will be rewarded.”
CHAPTER 31
Karen Raymond had felt the power of the blasts from her position by the van parked well off the road. This vantage point precluded view of the Oasis itself, though not of the flames and smoke that rose in billowing waves over it. The shock of seeing them terrified her.
She walked the brief distance to the road. From there the flames were clearly visible and strengthening. The smoke formed vast clouds that swallowed everything they could reach. She could smell the smoke now, all sharp and acrid and full of death.
Karen shivered. There was no sign of McCracken or the others. Had they been inside the Oasis at the time of the explosion? Had the blast consumed them?
She started back for the van. If any of her party managed to survive, it was to the van they would return. Karen even let herself hope McCracken would be there when she got back, wondering where she had been.
No such luck. The van was just as she had left it. The air felt hotter, but Karen wrapped her arms about herself to stem the shivers that would not abate. Seconds passed, crawled into minutes. No one emerged from the woods. No one came in from the road. There was only the wail of sirens drawing closer. The dark smoke was starting to thicken at the tops of the tallest trees, obscuring them from view. She backpedaled toward the van; whatever refuge it would provide was more than she had now.
Karen heard a rustling sound in the woods and turned to see Blaine McCracken emerge ahead of the others.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen,” the Reverend Harlan Frye apologized as he entered the chamber where the Seven traditionally held their meetings. His voice echoed slightly in the hall’s spacious confines. He moved down the center aisle past rows and rows of empty pews. The chamber had been laid out in the form of a cathedral, complete with ornate paintings and sculptures, as well as stained-glass windows lit from behind with artificial illumination. “It couldn’t be helped,” he continued, “and the news I bring is well worth it.”
Frye had reached the dais by that point and mounted the five steps leading onto it. Though the many seats in this chamber had never once been occupied, Harlan Frye envisioned a day when they would be. As. it was now, the four men waiting for him atop the dais were the only ones to share the chamber with him. Seven chairs were still set around the hand-carved mahogany table that rested upon the dais, though never more than five of them had been filled for two years now.
“‘Bout time you had somethin’ good to tell us,” snapped Tommy Lee Curtisan, thumbs wedged in the vest of his trademark white linen suit. Tommy Lee was founder of the Right Way, a five-million-strong group of fundamentalist Christians, one of whose major aims was to influence elections from coast to coast. At fifty, his hair as white as his suits, Tommy Lee had become a popular attraction on the political stump circuit, a role he relished since it provided him with public forums by which to expand his audience.
“I would hope that you can provide an end to the problems confronting us,” said a rail-thin, pale man with a thin mustache named Arthur Burgeuron. Burgeuron published a monthly newsletter appropriately called Apocalypse Now. His subscribers were made up exclusively of the most radical religious elements for whom the end of the world was a foregone conclusion. The only question, in addition to when, was how those chosen to be saved should prepare for civilization’s rebirth. They had a survivalist mentality and had gathered on at least a dozen separate occasions to await the world’s end.
“McCracken is dead,” Frye reported to them, barely able to restrain his glee. “The woman, too.”
“Praise the Lord!” screeched Louis W. Kellog. Kellog had invented the concept of the satellite Sunday service. Nearly three hundred churches nationwide now carried his video service in lieu of their own. For those communities lacking the resources to support all the professional and lay personnel needed to run a complete church, the satellite services made perfect sense. For a parish priest or minister too lazy to organize his service and write his sermon, it was made to order.
But Kellog’s system wasn’t just downlinked pictures. The system was interactive, allowing Kellog to be able to hear any participating congregation he chose at the touch of a button. A different one was featured on live television every Sunday morning. The only constant remained the magical satellite in the sky that allowed him to do God’s work. His program would have made keen competition for Frye’s “Sunday Morning Service” had they not run at separate hours.
“Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,” recited the Reverend Jessie Will, with little emotion. Will was a baptist minister who had become the radical right’s prime spokesman on the issues of abortion, homosexuality, and family values. Jessie Will’s views made Pat Buchanan’s seem liberal by comparison, and as a result, he had become a most sought after speakers for the caucuses the extremist members of the Republican party had already begun to hold. There was talk that if one of the so-called moderate Republicans seemed on the verge of getting the presidential nomination of 1996, the true conservatives would hold their own convention and put forth their own candidate and platforms. And none other than Jessie Will would be the keynote speaker when the convention opened, waving hi
s arms dramatically as he ranted, his thick brown, wiglike hair frozen magically in place.
The thing these five men, including Harlan Frye, had in common above all else was the undying and unrivaled faith of huge segments of the nation’s populace. Beyond that, they all also had active organizations in place, the resources of which would be put to full and good use once the Seven’s control was achieved and their power absolute.
These were the men the Reverend Harlan Frye had chosen to secure and rebuild the world following Judgment Day. Frye had never replaced the two who had betrayed the work of the Seven, because there seemed something wrong with disturbing his original vision. Even though Sister Barbara and Preston Turgewell were gone, their contributions—the lessons they had taught the other truly devoted members—remained. In that respect they were still present, while at the same time removed as threats to the attainment of the Seven’s final goal. So seven chairs remained at the mahogany conference table, two of which would never be used again.
“We should not let our rejoicing distract us from the other matters at hand,” cautioned Tommy Lee Curtisan.
“Indeed,” agreed Louis W. Kellog.
“The complications caused by McCracken and the woman may be gone,” said Jessie Will to Frye. “But we still have the equally pressing concerns raised by the occurrences in Beaver Falls.”
“That is the main reason why I summoned you here, my brothers,” Harlan Frye told them. “You see, we don’t. Not anymore.”
They waited for the bulk of the police and rescue vehicles to scream past en route to the burning remnants of the Oasis before pulling the van back on the road. During this time the twins used a small first-aid kit to tend to Sister Barbara, who had been carried from the woods by Johnny Wareagle. The force of the initial explosion had come just as she reached the top of the wall enclosing the complex. She had fallen off and struck the ground hard, cutting her head. Unconscious when Blaine reached her, she had begun to show signs of coming around during the last stretch through the woods.