by Jon Land
But the woman wouldn’t die. In the next instant, she had regained her feet, jerking him backward and forcing the reverend up against the opposite side of the catwalk. He felt the steel rail slam his kidneys, nearly stripping him of breath. Still, Rule wouldn’t let go, content to hold on for as long as it took him to kill this whore who had come amid the opposition. Her gun was gone. He’d heard it rattle to the catwalk and believed his own foot had kicked it down to the floor in the struggle. That left them equals.
Briefly.
Because she lurched forward, the motion much too fast for the lumbering Rule to compensate for with a shift of his weight. His next conscious thought was that he was airborne, staring at the heavens, which in this case was a ridged, heavily insulated ceiling. Then he realized he was falling, his time in the air strangely slow and drawn out until the floor came up and caught him.
Zarrin knew it was the reverend, the maker of all this madness. The constant echoing din of gunfire kept her from hearing the thud of his body’s impact with the floor below. She wondered if an even worse fate had befallen him, perhaps impaled or badly gored by one of the many steel assemblages that sprouted everywhere through the building.
She glanced downward and saw the reverend’s body canted on an empty stretch of floor, shoulders and head having dropped into a sunken pit housing a series of auxiliary pumps. Zarrin couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Just pulled herself back to her feet to find the biggest man she’d ever seen, bald with ink seeming to leak down his face and scalp, standing there.
The giant leveled a submachine gun toward her, an instant away from firing when the equally large shape of McCracken’s longtime Native American protector, Johnny Wareagle, pounced on him from behind.
Rule regained enough of his senses to realize where he was in the pumping station, his fall having left him just a few feet away from the lever that, once thrown, would mean the end of a nation bred by weakness and concession to be replaced by one blessed by a God who was no stranger to blood. Blood had been so much His method, so often His means to a desired end. This, here and now, tonight, was no different than the many battles fought at God’s hand and in His name with His blessing. The blood of some needed to be spilled, the lives of others snuffed out, so that His word could be heard in a country that had too often turned a deaf ear.
In that moment of clarity and realization for Jeremiah Rule, all pain vanished. All thoughts of death and failure vanished too, because the Lord had seen fit to bestow upon him one last gift before He took Rule home to His kingdom and much-deserved salvation. The women who would have brought his likeness into the world were gone. The bones of the boys they would’ve replaced, lives he’d taken by lives he’d bequeathed, were gone.
But none of that mattered anymore. Only one thing did:
The tenth circle … His to unleash, his own fate to bring to fruition.
The reverend knew his body was broken, even as he felt the final miracle he needed building inside him. A searing heat that chased away his pain and held his shattered bones together. Maybe he was already dead, his final act to take place in the midst of his own resurrection. Rule felt himself climbing back to his feet, warm blood soaking through his clothes, its slow oozing turning his vision blurry and world wobbly before him.
But he was moving.
Walking. Past the remains of the boys he’d killed and women he’d turned to his service from their own sins.
To bring the tenth circle of Hell upon the world.
Reaching for the lever suddenly and miraculously within his grasp, having appeared magically before him, as something hotter still stitched up his spine and stole the rest of his pain away.
McCracken fired on full auto, watching Jeremiah Rule’s body arch, twist, and spasm as his magazine clicked empty.
But Rule didn’t die. He somehow righted himself, walked on, and reached out for a lever mounted at eye level with the controls for the one of the facility’s pumps. He yanked it downward while McCracken snapped a fresh magazine home, sighting forward again to find the reverend sliding down the steel and the White Death now jetting toward the Capitol Building.
The sight of the reverend falling stole Boyd Fowler’s attention away. The man who had baptized him, restored purpose to his life, had fallen in the battle, but, incredibly, not before he managed to throw the switch that Fowler himself couldn’t reach.
Doing God’s work, completing the mission the Lord had given him. The mere thought of that gave Fowler the chills.
He looked back toward the woman, his finger finding the trigger just as hands draped from behind him jerked the barrel upward and forced his fire harmlessly into the ceiling. He twisted, finding himself face-to-face and eye-to-eye with a man every bit as big as he was, a fucking Indian with coal-black hair tinted with gray and pulled back in a ponytail.
“Boss!” an out-of-breath Sal Belamo called out from near the door when McCracken reached it.
“I know, Sal. Captain, can you hear me?” Blaine said into the Bluetooth device somehow still clipped to his ear.
“Yup, along with the third World War raging there. MacNuts, you are a walking commercial for gun control.”
“The White Death’s been released into the system.”
“Fuck …”
“How do we stop it?”
“You can’t. It’s a gravity-fed system. Once in the pipes, you can kiss it good-bye. Game over.”
CHAPTER 100
Washington, DC
“Not what I wanted to hear,” McCracken told Captain Seven over the lessening sounds of gunfire.
“Sorry.”
“Give me a time.”
“Five and a half minutes before it reaches the frozen pipes and they blow under the pressure, six if you’re lucky.”
“I’m not.”
“Then say five until the secretary of agriculture is running the government. You better come up with something fast.”
McCracken’s eyes strayed across the floor. “I think I just did.”
Wareagle and Boyd Fowler locked hands on the assault rifle, struggling for control of it as they twisted and turned about the narrow catwalk, slamming up against the safety rail from one side to the other and back again and exchanging positions in the process.
Fowler tried to bend Johnny backward over it, tried to position the rifle’s stock so he could press it into Wareagle’s throat and choke him there and then. But Johnny reversed position again, driving the butt of the weapon up on an angle that smacked it under Fowler’s chin.
The bald man’s head shot backward enough for Wareagle to jam the rifle stock into his windpipe, choking off his air. The man’s eyes bulged and his face reddened, then purpled. It should have been over there, and would have been with any other man Johnny had ever faced. But Fowler maintained the presence of mind to clamp both hands on either side of the rifle and push up while Johnny continued to put pressure downward.
And the rifle began to move, slowly until Fowler mounted a powerful surge upward, Wareagle countering with the last thing the biker would ever think he’d do in response.
He let the gun go, so it flew from both their grasps and clattered along the catwalk before coming to a skidding halt. The momentum carried Fowler slightly past Wareagle, leaving Johnny with an advantage he seized by slamming the biker with a series of powerful blows to the ribs and skull. So muscular he seemed to be infused with steel, his bald head with the consistency of a boulder. Fowler lashed blows back at him that Wareagle deftly avoided or blocked until the biker came in fast, and bit into his cheek when Johnny’s boot caught in the catwalk grating.
“We are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future gene
rations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story.”
Sal Belamo thrust open the front doors, allowing McCracken to jet out them atop an Athena ProStreet chopper, painted with orange flames over black with a seat so low it seemed to be touching the street. He’d already witnessed the last of the Palestinian commandos shot down, keenly aware that both Zarrin and Wareagle were currently continuing the battle from atop the catwalk, with Sal about to play one final card.
Having memorized the twisting route the water system followed from here to the Capitol, Blaine knew there was no chance he could reach the building ahead of the White Death.
But he could come close, close enough.
Maybe.
Zarrin watched McCracken roar out of the building atop the chopper, finding herself amazed even in these circumstances and conditions by the man’s grit, by his refusal to quit or concede under any circumstances.
No wonder he’d survived so long.
She’d been watching the battle between Boyd Fowler and Johnny Wareagle from the catwalk floor, had actually flinched when Fowler bit into Wareagle’s cheek and refused to let the bite go.
She focused on the assault rifle that had come to a rest a mere ten feet from her and pushed herself toward it, her legs heavy and slow, as if both were asleep. She managed to get the rifle into her hands, was raising it to her shoulder to sight in on the big biker, when her fingers stiffened and locked, and the weapon dropped from her grasp.
McCracken took all the Athena ProStreet would give him as he swung off Second Street Northwest onto North Capitol Street heading in the same direction atop a machine putting out almost a 125 pounds of torque and capable of speeds well in excess of a hundred miles per hour. His plan was to ride the chopper straight to the Capitol, tracing the underground route of the pipes that fed water to the building, pipes that currently pulsed with a deadly toxin that would kill everyone attending the State of the Union address within moments of exposure. His trek was about to become a treacherous path around buildings as well as along sidewalks and down one-way streets, in line with the piping beneath him.
“You there, Captain?” he said into his Bluetooth earpiece.
“Ready and waiting. What’s that noise, MacNuts?”
“Chopper I’m riding.”
“I won’t even ask.”
“Don’t. There’s no time. Let me do the talking.” McCracken risked a glance upward for no good reason at all. “There are drones in the sky here, Captain. Good old Predators. Any chance you can hack into the network controlling them so we can fire a couple of missiles?”
“Sure, if you give me an hour.”
“Since we’ve got less than five minutes, just answer me this: How fast are the contents of those pipes moving?”
“Depends on the metric weight of the liquid death but forty, maybe forty-five miles per hour would be a fair estimate.”
McCracken glanced down at the chopper’s speedometer, which read sixty-five. “Good enough. All right, Captain, here’s what I need you to do—”
Before Blaine could continue, though, another voice broke into the line.
“Jesus Christ, McCracken,” barked H. J. Belgrade, “please tell me you’re there.”
“H. J., you are a sound for sore ears. Literally.”
“Well, I wake up expecting to see Elmer Fudd on the television and there’s the president instead. Then I remembered our little talk. Took me a while to put things into context.”
“You need to make a phone call,” McCracken told him, “and you need to make it fast.”
Johnny felt the blast more than heard it, he and Boyd Fowler still locked up and exchanging hammer-like blows when the explosives Sal Belamo had wired around the exterior of the building erupted in a frenzy of ruptured glass, brick, slate, and plaster.
The surviving bikers had just trained their attention upward when the waves of glass and debris slammed into them, turning flesh and bone into pincushions, the force of the blast substantial enough to actually tear off limbs and heads. The shock wave also separated a section of the catwalk from its brackets, sending it swinging in a semicircle northward over a tank containing the sludge filtered from the McMillan Reservoir water before it entered Washington’s system.
Wareagle and Boyd Fowler literally dangled over that tank as they continued their dance of death.
“All right,” Belgrade’s voice returned less than a minute after breaking to move to another call, “we got Predators on your bubble but they need a fire point. Wouldn’t happen to have a laser designator in your pocket, would you, son?”
“No,” McCracken said, thinking fast, “but maybe something just as good.”
McCracken veered onto the sidewalk at Louisiana Avenue and then hurdled back into stalled traffic with the police now giving chase as he approached New Jersey Avenue. He snatched a road flare from the emergency kit beneath the rear of his seat and twisted the top off with his teeth, the bright chemical flame firing to life.
“Tell Predator Control to fire on a road flare.”
“Son, did you say—”
“Yes, just tell them to aim for the flame. That’s my twenty and the White Death’s twenty inside the pipes I’m running even with. Captain, tell me I’ve got this right.”
“As rain, MacNuts. Carbonic acid needs oxygen to spread. But the blast, if it comes, will suck that oxygen out of the air so all the city’s gonna be left with is one massive sanitation problem for a while.”
“I think they can live with that. H. J.?”
“Right here, Elmer.”
“Make the call,” McCracken said, with the National Mall, Reflecting Pool, and Grotto just ahead of him, the majestic Capitol Dome coming into sight.
“No way you can both escape the blast radius and light up the target, son,” Belgrade warned, “no way.”
CHAPTER 101
Washington, DC
The catwalk bounced over the tank of collected sludge, vibrating madly. The two giants ignored the precarious balance, their blows thrown even harder, incredible in their force and their intensity. Fowler had the advantage as far as pure strength, thanks to his layers of muscle. But that muscle had the dual effect of slowing him ever so slightly in comparison to Wareagle’s gliding, lithe moves. So far the narrow confines hadn’t allowed him to take advantage of his quickness, though he could tell the mere volume of blows thrown by the biker was exhausting him.
But Fowler fought with the conviction that God was on his side. He and the Reverend Rule had found each other for a reason, his baptism earlier today in no way a coincidence.
Because he had been saved.
And now, no matter what, God would save him, extend the helping hand he needed to prevail and see this fight to its finish.
The sludge beneath them atop the wobbly catwalk smelled like the refuse from clogged drain taps, wafting through the air even as its surface frothed and bubbled. Frustrated by the diminishing effects of his blows, Fowler bellowed and launched himself forward, intending to topple the big man off the catwalk. He’d fought plenty of men in his time, but never one who could match him in size and strength. The ponytailed Indian before him seemed more ghost than man, a test to see if Boyd was worthy of His good graces. All well and good because he knew in his heart he would.
Problem was the Indian had anticipated his attack perfectly and had positioned himself with the separated end of the catwalk at his back to ready himself for it. Their collective weight so close to the edge bent the catwalk downward at a sharp angle toward the bubbling sludge tank. Fowler grabbed the handrail to keep from sliding into it, realizing too late that Wareagle had grabbed nothing at all.
Johnny crashed into him, extending his
hands at the last possible instant and using Fowler’s own momentum to topple him over the handrail while all his attention was turned to the precarious lean of the catwalk’s far end.
Fowler managed to grab hold with a single arm, his huge eyes full of defeat and resignation.
Wareagle extended a hand downward, expecting the biker to reach up and take it.
Fowler looked up, but continued to let himself dangle. Because the hand of God would find him instead. The hand of God would save him. He had never been more certain of anything in his life, even as his other hand began to slip off the steel.
Even as he fell, believing himself saved as the sludge swallowed him.
“Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on his own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get one another’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great, no mission too hard. As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.”
“President’s still talking,” McCracken heard Belgrade say in his ear.
“I can hear the applause off your television.”
“Then hear this: We got Predators on station, zeroed on your twenty. Just say the word.”
McCracken yanked the pull string of the emergency flare off with his teeth, feeling the flame burst singe him before he got the flare extended overhead.
“Word.”
“Fire and forget, son. Get ready to get your ass out of there. I’m giving you a standing O just like you’re the president. Listen to me clapping.”
McCracken didn’t veer the chopper off until he heard the sizzle of the Predator-fired missiles streaking downward on his location, zeroing on the flare he has holding. Then he tossed it straight up in the air and banked the chopper sharply left, coughing divots of grass and dirt behind him.