Covenant (45 page)

            The bishop tumbled backward.  An exotic-looking teenage girl at his side released a shrill scream. 

            Getting to his feet on wobbly legs, Anthony drew his gun. 

            The bishop crawled backward, gasping for air, a .357 in his grasp.  His eyes were stunned, as if he’d witnessed Anthony climbing out of a grave.

            “Body armor, man.”  Anthony tapped his chest.  “You think I’m crazy?”

            The bishop sneered.  He hugged the girl to his side.

            Then, he put the gun’s muzzle against her head.  She let out a thin mewl of terror.

            “Take . . . care,” the bishop said, words slurred by his injured jaw.  “You wouldn’t want me to . . . harm this sweet . . . angel.”

            “You wouldn’t hurt her.  She’s one of your prized girls.”

            “What do I . . . care?”  Bishop Prince grinned smugly.  “I have hundreds . . . like . . . her.”     

            Anthony did not lower his gun.  “You’re sick.”

            “Great men . . . of God have . . . great appetites.  But . . . what would you know of that?  Little men like you, weak in faith . . . nursing foolish vendettas.” Bishop Prince spat blood at Anthony’s feet.  “You envy the rewards . . . bestowed on the anointed.”

            “If you’re the anointed, I wouldn’t want anything to do with God.”

            “God doesn’t want you, either, Thorne.  Neither did he want your father.  Your father . . . he’s burning in the hottest furnace of hell.”

            Anthony shot the man in the shoulder.  The round knocked Bishop Prince flat onto the floor.  Shrieking, the girl scrambled out of his arms.

            “Leave,” Anthony said to her, and nodded toward the doorway.  “My friend is outside, and help is on the way.  They’ll take care of you.  Go.”

            Hugging herself, sniveling, she fled out of the room.  Bishop Prince called after her in a blood-choked gurgle that was a hollow imitation of his normally resonant voice, but the girl didn’t look back. 

            Bishop Prince turned his glare on Anthony.  Although his shoulder bled from the gunshot wound, defiance seethed in his eyes.

            “Strike me down, Thorne,” he said.  “Dare to touch God’s prophet, and see—“

            Anthony kicked him in the ribs, cutting off his lunatic rant.  The bishop winced and curled into fetal position.  He coughed up blood.      

            Anthony placed his boot at the base of the bishop’s long neck and pressed down.  Wheezing for air, the bishop squirmed like an insect nailed to a board. 

            Millions followed this vile man.  He would not have been fit to serve as the spiritual leader for a congregation of cold-blooded killers.  Anthony would have taken pure pleasure from placing a bullet in his brain.

            But there was something he had to know.

            “Who killed my father?” Anthony asked.  “You were behind it, but I want to know who pulled the trigger.  I want to know who I saw at the lake.”

            In spite of his agony, Bishop Prince managed a cruel smile.  “You . . . don’t know?”

            “Tell me who did it, asshole.” 

            Malicious pleasure brightened the bishop’s eyes.

            “A loyal . . . servant of the kingdom.”

            “Tell me!”

            “It could have been any . . . of my faithful servants.  I command . . . legions.”

            “You
know
who did it.”  Hot tears streamed down Anthony’s cheeks.  “You know!”

            Bishop Prince grinned, though half his face was red and swollen and blood wetted his lips.

            Anthony dropped to his knees and drove the muzzle of the gun into the bishop’s mouth, jammed it in so deep the bishop gagged on the steel, hands batting futilely at Anthony. 

           
Anthony screamed at him:
“Talk, motherfucker, tell me who killed my dad, you fuckin’ tell me, I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, you sick fuck!” 

            The bishop’s skin had begun to turn blue.  Yet his eyes, full of secret knowledge, were mocking.

            Anthony curled his finger around the trigger.  Although the bishop’s face was beneath him, he saw the shadowy figure darting away from the banks of the lake, and felt a rifle, not a pistol, in his own hands, felt his finger around the trigger, saw the mystery man in his sights, and all he had to do was pull the trigger and avenge his father, avenge him, do it for his family, kill him now . . .

            A stern command broke through the haze:  “Back off, Thorne.  Hands in the air.”

            Anthony blinked through his tears, sucked in a hitching breath.  His vision swam into focus. 

            Valdez was at the threshold of the suite.  She was backed by several armed FBI agents.  All of them aimed guns at him. 

            “Back off,” Valdez said in a softer, yet authoritative tone.  “It’s over, Thorne.”

            Mike edged around the agents.  “We did it, AT.  Right?”

            Anthony let go of the gun, the pistol still lodged in the bishop’s throat, and raised his hands. 

            Face bluish, Bishop Prince snatched the gun out of his mouth.  He clawed at his neck, choking and gagging, his suit jacket soggy with blood.

            Anthony rose and backed away a few steps.  He was aware of the balcony doors behind him.

            “Arrest . . . this . . . trespasser,” Bishop Prince said, spluttering.  “Assaulted  . . . me . . .”

            Valdez glanced at the bishop as if he were pure slime.  “We’re arresting
you
.  We’ve got paramedics outside who’ll attend to your injuries.”

            “It’s only a flesh wound,” Anthony said.  “He deserved a lot worse.”

            Valdez barked out a command to her team, and two square-jawed agents came forward, grabbed the bishop under the arms, and hauled him to his feet.  They began to recite his Miranda rights.  

            “What?  You can’t . . . arrest
me
,” Bishop Prince said.  “You have no . . . evidence of anything.”

            “There’s a white room down the hall,” Anthony said.  “That’s where he kept ‘his angels.’  You guys can start searching in there—one of the victims ran out of here a few minutes ago.”

            “We found her downstairs,” Valdez said.  “We’ll take good care of her and sweep every inch of this hellhole, see what else we can find.”

            “God will protect me from the snares of the wicked,” Bishop Prince said, on the verge of babbling as agents escorted him out of the room.  “He will deliver me from the hand of my oppressor.  I am his anointed prophet!”

            “Shut your snot-catcher,” Valdez said. 

            “When I speak to God, I’ll ask him to go easy on you unrepentant sinners,” Bishop Prince said with a leer, before they led him out.  

            “What a freak,” Mike said.

            “All right, Thorne.”  Valdez scrutinized Anthony.  “You get the goods?”

            He nodded.  “It was taped underneath the bed frame.  A flash drive.”

            “Of all the freakin’ places.”  Valdez rolled her eyes.  “Well, great work.  Hand it over.  We’ll take care of things from here.”

            Anthony looked from her, to Mike.  Mike glanced at the balcony doors, and inclined his head almost imperceptibly.

            Anthony took off running.  The other agents raised their guns.

            “Hold your fire!” Valdez yelled at her team.  “We’ll nab him at home.”

            Anthony kicked open the doors and raced to the edge of the covered balcony. 

            Outside, the clouds were breaking up, and the sun was coming out again.

85

            Anthony climbed over the balcony and dropped to the ground below.   

            Ahead, FBI agents and an ambulance crowded the mansion’s driveway.  Although the agents looked at Anthony curiously as he approached, none attempted to stop him. 

            Valdez had granted him leave, but it would not be long before she would come calling.     

            Beyond the driveway, around the stone pillar, Lisa waited in the Explorer.  He got inside and kissed her lustily.

            “Nice to see you, too,” she said.  “All in one piece.”

            “Let’s get out of here, sweetheart.”

            She started to twist the key in the ignition, paused.  “Did you get it?”

            “We’ll see in a minute.”

            “What about Mike?”

            “I’m sure he’ll be hitching a ride with Valdez.” 

            As she made a U-turn and sped away from the estate, he grabbed his notebook computer out of the duffel and powered it on.  He plugged the flash drive into the USB port. 

            The drive contained over thirty PDF files, each titled by year; another group of files was named, “Revelation Phase 1,” Revelation Phase 2” and so forth, seven phases in total. 

            He selected a file at random.  The document was over a hundred pages long.  He read the first page.

Missions Executed by the Armor of God in the Year of Our Lord, 2009

Summary:  2009 saw a broad range of threats to the Kingdom, most related to our interests in new Kingdom territories across the United States.  In total, 47 threats were identified, and eliminated . . .

            “Well?” Lisa asked.

            He skimmed a bit more.  A pleasant chill skipped down his spine.

            “We’ve got it,” he said.  “My God, we’ve got it all.”

86

            Back at the family home, they found Danielle on the sofa in the living room, smoking a Newport and watching television.  A box of Kleenex sat on the coffee table, wads of tissue scattered around.

            At their arrival, she mashed out her cigarette and stood.  “What happened?  You end it?”

            “Lisa will tell you everything,” Anthony said.  He looked to the staircase.  “Reuben upstairs?”

            “In his room.”

            “Did you tell him, Danny?”

            “I said I would.”  Sighing, she eased onto the sofa again, and lit another cigarette.

            Anthony went upstairs and knocked on Reuben’s door.  Unlike every other time that Anthony had visited his nephew, no music pounded from inside.

            “It’s open,” Reuben said.

            Reuben lay on his back on the bed, gazing at the shadowed ceiling, hands crossed behind his head.  The only light in the room issued from the computer monitor.  The web browser displayed the New Kingdom Church Web site; Bishop Prince’s bio filled the screen.

            Anthony felt so sorry for the kid that he didn’t know what to say.  He pulled the desk chair over near the bed, and sat.

            For a couple of minutes, neither of them spoke. 

            “Your mother told you about your father,” Anthony finally said.

            Reuben didn’t look at him.  “He ain’t my father, man.  He’s just some dude who got her pregnant.”

            Count on a youth to get straight to the point, no chaser.

            “How do you feel about it?” Anthony asked.

            “The guy’s a twisted motherfucker.  Getting with girls younger than me?  That’s sick, man.”

            “Your mom loves you, Reuben, in spite of what happened.  I love you, too.  I love you like a son.”

            Reuben shifted to face him.  He looked so much like his father that it was disconcerting, their eyes the same shade of gray.  But the souls reflected within those eyes were vastly different—Reuben was a kid, and he had a good heart. 

            “It’s kinda weird that you called that dude my father,” Reuben said.  “ ‘Cause you know, I’ve always sorta looked at you like you were my father, know what I mean?”

            “You have?”

            “Yeah, man,” he said, as if the truth were obvious.  “Who else I got?  You’ve always been there for me and Mom.”

            “Thanks, Reuben.  I needed to hear that.”  Anthony clapped his nephew’s shoulder. 

            “Yo, you wanna sleep here?”  Reuben sat up, examining Anthony’s face.  “You look like you need to crash, for real.”

            “In a while.  I’ve still got some work to do.  Did you finish that press release blaster?”

            “Man, I was putting the finishing touches on it when that crazy dude jacked me this morning.  But we could use it now, for sure.  You got something you need to send out?”

            Anthony held up the flash drive.

            “There’re some files on here that I’m going to upload to my author web site,” he said.  “I drafted a press release on my way here.  I want to direct the media to a page on my site where they can find all the files.”

            “Aw, that’s easy.”  Reuben grabbed another chair from the corner of the room and dragged it in front of the computer.  “Let’s do this.”

87

            Using the program Reuben created, Anthony sent a one-page press release to over ten thousand news and media outlets across the Internet, from CNN.com to MSNBC.com, from Reuters to The Associated Press, from
The New York Times
and
The Huffington Post
to
The Times
in London. 

            Although New Kingdom dispatched web crawlers that canvassed the Internet and identified damaging content, the breadth and sheer number of media sources that Anthony contacted ensured maximum damage, in minimal time.  By the time the church shut down his server—if the crush of media-generated traffic didn’t manage to do so—it would be too late.

            “Now we need to get out of town.” Anthony pushed away from the computer.  “I don’t think we want to be around when the reporters come.  It’ll be a zoo.”