by Jon Land
“What about all those old friends of yours?”
“I could use some new ones, Zarrin.”
“Tall order right now.”
“Maybe not. Call our mutual friend Colonel al-Asi,” McCracken told her. “Remind him that he owes me a favor.”
CHAPTER 86
Washington, DC
“You call this a motorcycle gang?” Captain Seven said, speaking into his computer through which he’d answered McCracken’s call. “More like Anarchists Anonymous. Man, this bunch could use the calming influence of some medical weed in one big way.”
“How bad, Captain?”
“Well, sixteen of the original twenty-eight went to federal prison on domestic terrorism and treason charges. Ended up getting released because the Feds messed up the test that connected them to the explosives. Your tax dollars at work, MacNuts.”
“Did you say twenty-eight?”
“More than five times that number are active in their drug enterprises on the East Coast so you can throw them into the mix too. But it’s the composition of the original twenty-eight that’ll really make your day. Six marines, five light infantry, seven special ops, and five former army reservists. All with active service and almost all well known among militia, separatist, or insurrection-based movements. Oh, and throw in some white supremacists just for good measure.”
“The crazies have been recruiting heavily from ex-military for years now.”
“By all accounts, nobody needed to recruit these guys. They are the crazies, MacNuts.”
“Comforting thought. Where can we find them?”
“With a psychic or maybe a Ouija board. As of maybe twenty-four hours ago, all of them dropped off the grid. I’m checking into the additional members in their ranks now, but you can look forward to having these two dozen or so to deal with for starters.”
“Thanks, Captain,” McCracken told him, “you made my day.”
“I haven’t even finished my first bowl yet you’ve kept me so busy. I’m gonna take a bud break and get back at it.”
“I want to hear as soon as you find anything else that may help the cause.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“These guys have the means to drive a wrecking ball through the heart of this country, and there’s not a damn person left in Washington we can call for help. Find me something actionable, Captain, something I can use to stop them before the president steps up to the podium to give his State of the Union speech tonight.”
“Anything else, MacNuts?”
“Yeah. Jeremiah Rule’s phone number.”
CHAPTER 87
Washington, DC
Jeremiah Rule stood on the shore of the McMillan Reservoir, smelling the air and enjoying the quiet. He kept to the shadows cast by the nearby trees just a block away from the Bryant Street Pumping Station that was responsible for feeding Washington with a vast portion of its water supply. The reservoir bordered the campus of Howard University to the west and the rolling fields adjacent to McMillan Drive to the east, casting it as a pseudo-oasis amid the more cluttered swatch of government buildings a mere mile or so away.
A great calm had fallen over him since he’d arrived in Washington less than an hour before, growing greater with each passing moment as time ticked down to the remaking of a nation that needed to learn from death and hopelessness as he had learned. It was a blessed mission for which he’d been chosen, Rule realizing with vast satisfaction his entire life, the good and the bad, had been leading up to this moment.
I have never lost faith in you, Rule said in his head. Through all the trials and tribulations, I have persevered waiting for my true purpose to be revealed. I thank you, oh Lord, for casting those who served that purpose before me. I see your hand in that message, oh Lord, and know now that I take your word as my own and will strive to see the mission you have bequeathed to me succeed. It’s all so clear at last, all the signs you have sent me, and I look forward to your next message with all my heart and soul.
Rule’s phone rang, startling him.
CHAPTER 88
Washington, DC
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Blaine McCracken greeted. “It’s been a really long time, really long, since my last confession.”
“How’d you get this number, friend?”
“Don’t you want to hear my confession, Father?”
“It’s Reverend and you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’ve killed a lot of men in my time, but I have nothing to confess in that regard because they were all bad men and many of them were trying to do likewise to me. But I’d like to confess I’m about to kill again.”
“Who is the unfortunate victim?”
“You, Reverend. Unless you come clean and do some confessing to me.”
Rule wanted to end the call but something stopped him. The voice wasn’t familiar at all, yet he felt he knew this man, that they were somehow acquainted.
“Do I know you, friend?”
“Not personally. But I know you well enough to know you intend to carry out the rest of Colonel Turwell’s plan. You’ve got the barrels and your own private army now in the form of that motorcycle gang.”
“Who are you?”
“The man who took Turwell and Robert Carroll off the map. And now I’m coming for you, unless you have a change of heart.”
“I am doing the work of the Lord, friend. Only He can stop me.”
“That what you call trying to destroy a country, getting millions and millions of innocent Muslims killed in the retaliatory strike that’ll undoubtedly follow? But I’m guessing it wouldn’t bother you one bit if the whole Muslim world got nuked.”
“My entire purpose.”
“Yours now instead of God’s?”
“I do this to serve Him and His word. We are one in the same, a unified voice against sin.”
“A true pillar of faith, aren’t you?”
“I try, friend.”
“Then what about the bones of those two boys you’ve got displayed in your basement, Reverend, not to mention the six women? You made them mutilate themselves, didn’t you? The one who was missing a hand, what’d she do exactly to deserve that? Or the one who sliced off her own nipple? My guess is they’d done nothing to merit what you did to them, but it allowed you to keep them prisoners, didn’t it? Made them too terrified and dependent to even think of escaping. That’s why you didn’t need to chain them. You chose victims who had nowhere else to go, who were desperate to belong to anything. Then you beat and raped them into submission.”
“That is between me and God, friend,” Rule said stiffly. “And you will be punished for your transgressions by powers far higher than me.”
“One of the women’s starting to show, Reverend,” Blaine told him, revealing the last sight he’d glimpsed in Rule’s basement. “Did you impregnate all of them, or just rape the others for fun?”
“Your words hold no meaning to me.”
“But what do you think all your faithful, your flock, would think of you being a child murderer and a rapist?”
“We all have our choices. The women made theirs and I made mine.”
“Now it’s my turn and I choose to stop you in your tracks. Treat you with the same compassion you treated those women. So tell me, Reverend, was fathering their children your way of bringing children into the world to replace those boys you murdered?”
“Those deaths were part of His plan,” Rule stammered, suddenly defensive.
“And was molesting them part of that plan too? Did you have divine permission to partake in that particular practice?”
“I did nothing of the kind,” Rule said, without raising his voice.
“So no matter how all this turns out, you won’t care if I let the world in on your little secret. Let them judge the obvious f
or themselves. That this tenth circle of hell you’re opening is for rapists and child molesters. How’s that for an epitaph?”
“Except there’s no grave to put it on, is there?”
“Not yet, anyway.”
And McCracken heard a click as Jeremiah Rule terminated the call.
CHAPTER 89
Washington, DC
McCracken pocketed the phone and looked toward Wareagle. “My powers of persuasion must be lacking.”
“Do you recall the legend of the renegade Sioux warrior undone by his blind ambition and delusion?”
“Not off the top of my head, Indian.”
“He ravaged the countryside, killing as many from neighboring tribesmen as he could because he believed he was absorbing the soul of each victim, growing that much stronger with every kill. He believed this would eventually render him invincible and immortal. Until one day, he caught his own reflection in a pool of still water. Unable to accept the fact the earth had birthed another as powerful as he was, the warrior attacked his own reflection and ended up killing himself. Reverend Rule is no different.”
“But unlikely to kill himself before the president’s speech tonight, leaving the heavy lifting to us.”
“You’re surprised?”
“Not for one second.”
“You knew it would end that way, just as I did.”
“Because it always does, Indian. Doesn’t mean I welcome it, though.”
Wareagle stood straighter, seeming to rise even taller than normal. “Go back to the day you came to get me in South Dakota so we could return to the Hellfire.”
“Okay.”
“I was working on a statue I knew I’d never see finished, Blainey. Pounding away one day, only to return to the next with nothing looking any different. The progress was there, but I couldn’t see it and so it wasn’t.”
McCracken shook his head and sighed. “I really wish the spirits could learn to speak simple English. Just once.”
“It’s why we welcome these opportunities,” Wareagle told him, “long for them even. Because we’re able to see the result, and don’t have to see what would’ve happened without our intervention. We don’t just do it because we’re the only ones who care; we do it because we’re the only ones who can.”
“Can we this time?” McCracken posed tentatively.
“Even the spirits don’t have that answer, Blainey.”
“Then we better hope we find it somewhere else before the State of the Union goes to hell, Indian.”
CHAPTER 90
Washington, DC
“Reverend?”
For an instant, just an instant, Rule thought it was the voice of God speaking to him, reassuring him, lending reason to the moment. The man on the other end of the line had found his hideaway, the spiritual retreat to which he banished his dark places. To an actual pit instead of a metaphorical one. The women would never bear his children now, but he realized it didn’t matter, because that gift he’d intended to bestow upon the world had been replaced by another much greater one.
To be unleashed here. Tonight.
“Reverend?” the voice repeated.
Rule realized a fresh shadow had fallen over him and turned to find Boyd Fowler standing just to his side, dressed all in black above his army boots, flak jacket worn under his shirt making his torso look even more huge.
“Who were you talking to?” the big man asked him.
Rule realized he was still holding his phone. “A man without faith who will fall with all the others.”
“I need to ask you something, Reverend, and I need you to promise me you’ll say yes.”
“You were delivered onto me for a purpose that leaves me in your debt, Boyd. So you have my solemn promise. Take it as the word of the Almighty.”
“This thing we’re about to do …”
“God’s work, Boyd. We’re about to fulfill His divine plan.”
“That’s the point. I’ve never been much when it came to religion or church, was never even baptized. And such things tend to plague a man at a time like this.”
“What can I do to relieve your pain?”
“Can you baptize me here and now, before it’s time for us to do the deed?”
Rule looked toward the waters of the reservoir, frigid in the chill January wind with waves of cold seeming to ripple on the surface.
“It would be my greatest pleasure to do so, Boyd.”
The big man stripped off his shirt and shed his flak jacket right after it. He was down to his skivvies in seconds, revealing a strangely symmetrical mix of tattoos and heavy muscle. Rule left his clothes on, believing somehow it would keep him warmer when he stepped into the frigid water, still cloaked by the shadows cast by the tree cover. He welcomed this blessing as a distraction and another moment bringing him closer to God even as the time of his greatest service approached.
A steep bank led down into the reservoir, not much footing between the end of the drop and the start of the water. The pumping station, contained in a stately brick shell, rose a block to the south and was mostly automated these days, maintaining only a skeletal staff that had been told by their supervisor not to come in today for security reasons related to the State of the Union. And, likewise, its location and relatively innocuous purpose rendered it immune from Secret Service scrutiny as well. Nothing that would deter Jeremiah Rule from completing his holy mission with the help of Boyd Fowler and the Rock Machine.
“You ready, Reverend?” Fowler asked, his massive form looming over him on the rise overlooking the McMillan Reservoir.
“I am, Boyd. I am indeed.”
CHAPTER 91
Washington, DC
“It’s five o’clock, Captain. State of the Union speech is four hours away,” McCracken said into his phone. “I hope you’ve got some answers.”
“I do indeed, my man. But you’re not gonna like them, not at all. I have gone through an entire quarter ounce of primo weed since last we spoke, and I still get numb to what I think I’ve figured out.”
“Stop toking and start talking.”
“Sorry about that, MacNuts,” Captain Seven said between coughs. “Like I told you before, nobody ever figured out what the Rock Machine’s plan was for attacking the Capitol Building, but I think I’ve got on a notion. On a clear day, you can see the answers. Must’ve been cloudy up until now because I’ve been focusing on the Rock Machine members that stood trial, not the ones who didn’t.”
“Why bother?”
“My thinking exactly, but that doesn’t make it right. See, when I widened my searched a bit, I came up with the fact that a Rock Machine member who was never charged has built himself a career as a city worker with Washington’s Department of Public Works—specifically, supervisor of the pumping station on Bryant Street down by the McMillan Reservoir.”
“Don’t tell me—the facility that supplies the Capitol Building its water.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“This doesn’t sound good, Captain.”
“It gets worse, lots worse. How much you know about the manufacture of methamphetamines, MacNuts?”
“It’s on my to-do list.”
“Then let me spare you part of the trouble. Care to hazard a guess as to the prime solvent used in the cleanup process?”
“I thought you were sparing me the trouble.”
“Liquid Freon.”
“Oh shit …”
“Yup, it makes a great cleaning agent, but it’s also what powers air-conditioning units. You see where I’m going with this?”
“I’d rather just listen to the expert.”
“How do pipes burst, MacNuts?”
“They freeze.”
“And voilà! Rule’s motorcycle gang stooges first pump liquid Freon into the line. Freon doesn’t work its magic
until it reaches the end of the line in the pipes that supply water to the Capitol through piping that runs exposed along the length of the tunnel that connects the House of Representatives to the building. The Freon freezes the pipes pretty much on contact but they won’t burst until pressure is brought back up again.”
“Which will happen as soon as they flood the pipes with the White Death,” McCracken surmised.
“Mixed with water refilling the line. The pipes burst and release the already formed gas and everyone within a square mile of the Capitol, and maybe a whole lot more than that, is exposed—meaning dead, asphyxiated—within minutes. Colonel Turwell’s original plan made infiltrating the Capitol itself a necessity, but now the Reverend Rule can wipe out virtually the entire United States government from around three miles away.”
“Maybe he’s doing us a favor. No way we could have found a way into the Capitol, but that pumping station is something else entirely.”
“Might be just what we need, MacNuts.”
“What we really need is the cavalry,” McCracken said, checking his phone to see if there was a message from Zarrin yet.
CHAPTER 92
Washington, DC
Jeremiah Rule’s feet were already chilled when he dropped into the waist-deep water of the McMillan Reservoir before it deepened just a few more yards out. The sky had shed the sun, the night moonless, which made the descent a dreadful experience done in fits and starts down the slick bank.
“Easy there, Reverend,” he heard Boyd Fowler say, “I’ve got you.”
The giant did indeed, hand braced over Rule’s shoulder to guide him every step of the way and keep him from falling, while showing no ill effects from entering the frigid water himself. He beamed with a child’s excitement and expectation, his slight trembling that of a man about to truly meet the Lord for the first time. To distract himself from the cold’s utter seizure of his mind and senses, even his breath locking in his chest, Rule focused on the wondrous matter at hand, the miracle he was about to bestow on the world in keeping with the word of the Lord.