Green File Crime Thrillers Box Set

by James Kipling

Far away, in a different land, Russia and China were preparing their nukes; only China wasn't going to play by Russia's rules anymore. China had different plans for America. Complete annihilation.

  Book 4: End Game

  Chapter 1

  America in Chaos

  Wendy Cratterson slipped back into Hope Springs Baptist Church like a venomous snake searching to devour a weak, helpless field rat. The sight of neighbors and friends joining together in one unit rather than screaming in fear, panic and disorder sickened her. An EMP attack had crippled America by destroying the electrical grid, technology, and transportation.

  The precision attack hit over New York, Des Moines, and Los Angeles and turned the once great nation into a third-world country. It had also shut down the lower southern regions of Canada and upper northern regions of Mexico. Wendy had been educated on the repercussions and understood the full devastation that would follow. She was also aware that, at the time of the EMP attack, America was no longer a united country.

  America had been turned into a divided country, separated through political divisions that had been deliberately created by sinister forces designed to rip apart the very fabric of a free nation. People had been reduced to controlled puppets; their moral compasses altered and their human decency transformed to make them enemies against each other.

  Surely, Wendy thought, spotting Lionel sitting in a back pew, the people inside the church will soon become chaotic and disorderly.

  Wendy didn’t understand that, while a high percentage of America was currently in a state of chaos, those who trusted in Jesus Christ were able to remain calm and united.

  Lionel raised his head and saw Wendy with a sour expression aimed at the people standing inside the church. He knew Jessica Mayes was hiding somewhere inside. Maybe Wendy knew this, too. However, instead of calling Wendy over and admitting that Tom had spoken to him, Lionel sat in silence and struggled with a strange voice that tugged at his heart.

  Lionel was a cold-blooded killer, a man who had ruthlessly eliminated numerous men and women in his past. Yet, deep down inside of his heart, the voice of Jesus called him to repent and turn from evil…to seek God.

  “I’m no good,” he whispered in a thick British accent. “I’m no good. My heart is as dark as hers.” Lionel watched Wendy for a few more seconds before bowing his head. “I’m no good.”

  Fiona Whitfield, a sixty-eight-year-old woman of powerful faith, heard Lionel whispering to himself. With a kind, gentle, but concerned face, she turned from sitting in the pew in front of Lionel to look at the broken man.

  “Jesus is calling you, son,” she spoke in a warm but stern tone. “Don’t resist his voice.”

  Lionel raised his eyes to see a woman wearing a dark blue head scarf over her gray hair. She appeared almost angelic. “Depart from the darkness that you are attached to and repent of your sins. We’re all no good, dead in our sins, but the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross—His death—was made so that we may be forgiven and have life.”

  “I...” Lionel began to speak, but no other words would leave his mouth.

  Fiona kept her eyes on Lionel’s troubled face. “I’ve been watching you and the woman you‘re with,” she said, and nodded over at Wendy. “The woman has a dead soul. Your soul is almost as dead.” Fiona locked her eyes on Lionel. “You are being given a chance tonight,” she explained. “You must make the right choice or end up in eternal darkness.”

  Instead of feeling like he was being preached at, Lionel felt the merciful warning he was being given. “I‘ve committed too much evil.”

  “The Blood of Jesus is more powerful than your sins,” Fiona promised Lionel and then, to Lionel’s shock, she stood up to move next to him. Sitting down, she took his right hand and then bowed her head. “We must pray.”

  “I... don’t know how to pray.” Lionel confessed, seeing Wendy throwing him a cautious look. Lionel held up his hand. “Stay where you are,” he signaled to Wendy. Wendy scowled and resumed studying the interior of the church.

  “The woman is dead,” Fiona assured Lionel. “You are attached to a grave stone. You must separate from such evil and repent. Seek Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Our entire country has been changed in the course of one single night. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? But no matter if you die or live to see tomorrow,” Fiona promised, “you have one chance to make sure your very soul will spend eternity—”

  “Where?” Lionel pleaded in a painful moan.

  “With Jesus,” Fiona answered with a warm smile that touched Lionel’s heart. “You tried to live according to the flesh and failed. Your failure should teach you that the flesh is not as powerful as you once believed. The only great power that we can depend on is the power of Jesus. Jesus defeated the cross. He defeated death. He holds the keys to Hell and death, and He alone can give life to all those who call on His holy and eternal name.”

  Fiona patted Lionel’s right hand. “Tonight, you have a choice. Turn from evil and seek God, who loves you so much that He gave His son to die on the cross in your place or continue doing evil and be destroyed by the same God who is offering you life. For God is love, but God is also a God of absolute justice.”

  Lionel stared into Fiona’s eyes as a paralyzing fear gripped his heart, a fear he couldn’t control. Panic struck him like a bolt of lightning.

  “But I’ve killed without mercy…without conscience...”

  “We will all stand in judgment for what we have done on this earth,” Fiona promised. “God is not mocked. We reap what we sow. But God is also a God of mercy which He extends this very night.” Fiona released Lionel’s hand and gently placed her arm around his trembling shoulders. “Pray with me, son.”

  Lionel suddenly felt like he was living back in London as a very frightened ten year-old boy who was bullied and terrorized by an abusive man who was supposed to be his dad. He didn’t understand religion or even how to pray. His heart told him that Jesus had nothing to do with religion. No, Jesus was concerned with the heart, not man-made religions that tried to place Him in a box.

  “Teach me how to pray. Tell me the words.” he whispered in a shaky voice. “I’m dead, but I do want to live. I feel a strangeness in my heart, a voice whispering to me.”

  “Let us pray. Just repeat the words you hear me pray,” Fiona whispered, and then began leading Lionel in a deep, powerful prayer of repentance and salvation.

  “Please come into my heart, Lord Jesus, and save me from my sins. Put Your heart and life into this dead man. Teach me to do what is right in the eyes of God the Father and help me to stop doing evil. Please, make me your own, Jesus. I love you.”

  Lionel burst into tears, as a powerful wave of love and forgiveness struck his heart; a love and forgiveness that he had never known could exist. Wendy heard Lionel burst into tears and lowered her soulless eyes to watch Fiona take him into her arms.

  “What now?” she hissed, moving toward Lionel while demanding, “What is happening?”

  “Your friend has been born into a new life,” Fiona informed Wendy. “Now, leave us alone.”

  Lionel couldn’t raise his head. His tears, cleansing and pure, seemed to flow straight from his heart. “Get out of here, Wendy. I’m through with you. We are finished. Go crawl back into your empty grave. I’m never going to hurt anyone again. I wanted to help you, to love you, but you’re a dead corpse, not a woman. I never saw that until tonight.”

  If Wendy had her gun, she would have shot Lionel dead on the spot. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and wondered, Is Lionel putting up some type of front in order to get in with the locals? Does he know something I’m unaware of? Surely that’s it.

  Lionel couldn’t possibly have turned into a Christian within a matter of minutes. The man was just as rotten and dead inside as she was.

  “I’ll go wait for you outside,” she snapped. “Meet me at the SUV in ten minutes.”

  Tom watched Wendy storm out of the church. He stepp
ed out of a shadowy spot and rushed over to Lionel. He had watched Fiona lead Lionel to Jesus, and sincerely believed the man had been delivered from sin.

  “You must get that woman away from here,” he begged Lionel and pointed to a woman who was holding a door, located behind the baptismal pool, open just enough to survey the people congregating inside of the church. “We must have time to escape.”

  Looking up, Lionel saw Tom’s face staring down at him. Warmth and love rested on Tom’s face. In the past, that would have meant absolutely nothing. Now, Tom Braston’s face was filled with a light which Lionel had never witnessed before. He wiped at his tears and reached for Tom’s hand.

  “I’m so sorry.” he cried, shocked at the tears pouring from his eyes. “I’m so sorry for hating you, all of you.”

  “Son,” he whispered, placing a gentle hand on Lionel’s shoulder, “we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Without Jesus, no one standing here tonight would have hope; not me, you, or anyone. We are all sinners, saved by grace. There isn’t one that is righteous, except the living son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Lionel was surprised to hear humility instead of self-righteousness in Tom’s voice. It had been Lionel’s experience that some pastors were nothing but self-righteous public speakers, rather than humble servants of God.

  “What can I do, Pastor Braston?” he asked in a low voice. “I’m connected to a very powerful man who will surely kill me, now that I’ve...now that...Jesus is my...boss.”

  Tom glanced back at the shadowy doorway and spotted Jessica and Jacob watching him. That’s when an idea struck him. It was a strange and dangerous idea that seemed impossible, but he said it anyway.

  “Son, maybe you can help us.”

  “Help you?” Lionel asked.

  “Fiona,” Tom whispered in an urgent voice, “go stand next to the doors. If you see that woman…”

  “I understand,” Fiona assured Tom without asking any questions. “I’ll find you immediately.”

  Tom nodded his head, grabbed Lionel’s hand, and hurried him toward the front of the church. “Follow me,” he whispered, walking past small groups of people. When he reached the door which Jessica and Jacob were standing behind, Tom glanced over his shoulder and drew in a shaky breath before pushing through the door. Jacob was waiting with his gun drawn.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered Lionel and pushed him down a hallway lit with emergency candles. Jacob knew exactly what type of man Lionel was.

  “Don’t kill him,” Tom begged. “Jacob, the man has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior tonight. We need him. The Lord has brought this man to us.”

  Jacob grabbed Lionel and slammed the man up against a closed door, nearly knocking over a group of candles that were sitting on a wooden table.

  “I know who this—”

  Before Jacob could speak another word, Lionel attacked. Jessica watched in horror as Lionel, with the quickest hands she had ever seen, punched Jacob in his throat and then took possession of his gun. Taken off guard, Jacob stumbled backward, crashed into the hallway wall, and began coughing.

  “I could kill you right now,” Lionel snapped at Jacob, and then aimed the gun in his hand directly at Jessica. “I could kill all of you. I came here to carry out that mission. Except for you,” he told Jessica. “You are needed alive.”

  “Please—” Tom began to plead.

  “No,” he whispered in a desperate voice, studying Tom’s face, “you don’t understand.” Lionel locked his eyes on Jacob’s gun. “Jesus did enter my heart tonight.” he whispered and then threw the gun at Jacob who managed to catch it at the last second. “I can’t explain what is happening to me. I should want you all dead, but I can’t harm you. Instead, I feel an urgency to help you; to protect you.” Lionel’s knees caved in, and he hit the floor, as he reached out for Tom’s hands. Then he pointed at Jacob. “I should kill you.”

  Tom carefully took Lionel’s hand. “Jessica, Jacob,” he spoke in a low voice, “Jesus has shown us mercy. We, too, will show the man mercy. The Lord may have brought him ten-fold.”

  Jacob stood in shock. A man like Lionel Brown...actually letting him live? No. Impossible. Lionel Brown was feared among the intelligence community. The man was known to kill without hesitation. It was impossible that the sobbing man, clutching onto Tom, was the same Lionel Brown that Jacob had studied.

  “What is going on here?” Jacob asked, as he rubbed his throat. “You’re supposed to be a killer. Why didn’t you kill me?”

  “Why did Jesus die for sinners instead of destroying us?” Tom asked Jacob.

  Lionel looked at Jessica and Jacob’s shadowy faces and said, “Boris Petrov will mark me for death soon enough. Let me help you while I can.”

  “Why?” Jacob demanded. “This has to be some kind of trap.”

  “I think the man is being sincere,” Jessica spoke in an uneasy voice while hugging her arms and looking at Tom. “I trust you, Pastor Braston. We will do as you ask.”

  “An EMP attack has occurred,” Lionel stated, still holding onto Tom’s hands. “More attacks will follow.”

  “I know,” Jacob scolded Lionel, convinced that the man was deceiving Tom. Jacob’s exhausted mind could not understand why Lionel had not killed him. Lionel had clearly expressed a superior strength over Jacob, yet Jacob was alive. “America has fallen.”

  “Perhaps only temporarily,” Lionel stated. He pointed at Jessica and continued. “The AI virus your husband created is the key to victory.”

  “So that’s it,” Jacob said in a sour voice. “You want the virus.”

  “I did,” Lionel nodded his head and asked Tom to help him stand up, “Not any longer. I won’t try to explain what mercy has been extended to me this night, but I will make an agreement with you that I will not betray the Savior who saved my life. I will not betray Jesus.”

  Lionel looked at Tom, and then focused back on Jessica and Jacob. He had work to do before being killed.

  ((((((((((*))))))))))

  Los Angeles, California

  There were no lights. Highways were jammed full of dead vehicles. Their drivers screamed, yelled and resorted to violence. Emergency services were crippled and useless. Law enforcement was reduced to use bikes, horses or to travel by foot. They patrolled with battery powered flashlights and were forced to shoot on sight.

  Hospitals were down. Nurses and doctors abandoned their duties in droves, as people dragged in hundreds of wounded. Mobs sat cars, stores, and houses on fire. Looters were out in droves. Banks were attacked and overrun. Families hunkered down in their homes. Fights broke out all across the city, and the murder rate soared. There was no escape from the dark nightmare, except on foot. That option was not acceptable to those who were terrified to leave their homes.

  Harry Mafford, a twenty-five-year-old college student, felt brave behind a keyboard. He was a coward when it came to reality. He hugged a gray backpack, as he sat in a fancy coffee shop with a bunch of so-called friends who acted like terrorized victims.

  “When is my cell phone going to work?” Harry whined, as a group of thugs ran past the coffee shop door. They had barricaded the coffee shop door with chairs and tables. Harry assumed they would keep the dangers of the outside world out. “I have to check my social media account and find out what’s going on!” Harry looked at a single candle that Melanie Overton, a snotty brat who thought she was a gift to the world, had managed to locate in the back storage room. “The Mayor is certainly going to hear from me,” he continued in a pouty voice.

  Sitting across from Harry, Melanie checked a purple and silver cell phone which was supposed to be socially progressive. The stupid phone was still dead. She threw the worthless hunk of junk down onto the wooden table where she sat. Society had been reduced to coffee grounds.

  The whiny and privileged, social-justice warriors who had once been protected by corrupt politicians and college professors, were now forced to
face reality. Poison had been spewed into their young minds by those who despised the very freedoms of America.

  “This is so stupid!” Melanie screamed, and grabbed her green and pink hair. “How am I supposed to check my text messages?”

  Steve Hastmore, at twenty-four years old, used social media to advocate violence against pro-life groups. Yet, he never had the courage to go toe-to-toe with a granny holding a pro-life sign unless he was with a mob of murderers. He pretended to care about Melanie’s trauma.

  “We’re going to get through this,” he promised, as if Melanie’s dead cell phone was the worst trauma a person could face. “Right, Harry?”

  “Right,” Harry nodded his head and began to speak but stopped when a brick plowed through the glass door of the fancy coffee shop.

  Harry let out a girlish scream and scrambled under the wooden table. A group of ten or more thugs broke through the glass door, kicked the barricade down, and attacked the three privileged people hiding in the coffee shop. Harry was grabbed first and beaten to death by baseball bats, while Melanie and Steve were forced to watch. Next, Steve was stabbed over twenty times. Melanie came last. The group of murderous thugs hung her with some rope and placed a sign with their name—Red Vipers—on her body.

  The Red Vipers, a group of illegal immigrants, were the same group that Melanie had once advocated to protect. One of the illegal immigrants in the group was a man who had killed three people and had been sent back to Mexico. Due to California’s immigration laws, he had slipped back across the border and hid out in San Francisco, the sanctuary city. He had driven to Los Angeles only a week before the EMP attack to start hauling drugs.

  As Harry, Steve and Melanie were being killed, the local state politicians were all cowering down, protected by private body guards and Secret Service Agents. Senator Keaton Boward was trapped inside his office in Sacramento. Senator Boward, a corrupt Democrat, had written bills allowing abortion up to birth, protection of illegal aliens, assisted suicide, and destruction of moral objections pertaining to doctors who refused to carry out abortions. He was also known for restriction of rights against conservative Christians, among other liberal and criminal bills that attacked the very moral code on which America had been founded.