Hell's Fortress (16 page)

“The Blister Creek Legion has two hundred men at arms. The Women’s Council offers four hundred more. I’d hold them in reserve, but those ladies know how to shoot if we need them.”

“Assuming they agree to the plan,” Jacob said.

“You are the prophet. Their priesthood leader. They have covenanted with the Lord to obey.”

Smoot had come a long way since last fall, when he’d balked at arming the women and subverted Eliza when Jacob left her in charge of Blister Creek. But he still spoke with absolute certainty of the rights and privileges any male priesthood leader held over any woman. Jacob did not intend to command the women, any more than he had come into this body of men and made demands. But he guessed Smoot was right and they would back him.

Jacob made his decision. He turned to his brother. “Six hundred saints. Is that enough?”

“More than enough,” David said. “It’s an unorganized mob. Fifty would be enough to drive them into the hills.”

“No,” Jacob said. “If we’re going to do it, this time we don’t mess around. They had a warning. This is different. This time we hit them with everything we’ve got.” He raised his voice. “And we don’t stop until they are dead or driven from our lands.”

Smoot banged his cane to the ground. “Yes!”

And with that, the room erupted in shouts and cries.

Men yelled their frustrations, exclaimed their gratitude. Shouted their joy that the Lord had sent them a prophet. That He would smite their enemies. Elder Heaps raised his arms and babbled in tongues. Tears streamed down his cheeks. David and Stephen Paul clenched their fists and joined in the roar.

Jacob left the room, unable to listen to them carrying on. He shut the door to the Holy of Holies behind him and walked down the hallway, his footsteps heavy and his stomach filled with sand.

It was time to tell his wife of their murderous purpose. The Women’s Council would look for peaceful solutions, but in the end what choice would they have? All of Blister Creek must unite or be destroyed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kemp had found a receptive audience in Cedar City with Andrew La Salle’s body slung over his saddle and a story about polygamists in the mountains. The polygamists were wanted horse thieves. A posse had already chased the four into the western desert before giving up. They were too afraid of bandits, of the army, of the desert itself. The thought of more polygamists in the mountains left them terrified. Cedar City moved to fortify the canyon.

And when Kemp offered to go after the four who’d escaped into the desert, Hank Gibson, the self-proclaimed mayor, police chief, and governor, was eager to help. Gibson swapped him fresh horses in exchange for his tired pair, restocked him with food and ammo, and provided him with an excellent set of maps.

And that’s when Kemp got a break. Following his enemies’ escape route on the map, he realized that the polygamists had traveled too far north. If Kemp hurried, he had an opportunity to cut them off. So he raced across the western desert, entered Nevada at the Clover Mountains, then took position on a volcanic hillock to wait. It was the perfect spot for an ambush.

The next day the polygamists came down the road, just as expected. Kemp held his fire, waiting for them to enter a flat stretch without cover. Take his time and he could pick them off one by one, in the open.

Suddenly, one of the women shouted and the four threw themselves from their horses. He fired, hit one of the animals. His enemies reached the safety of the ditch on the far side of the highway.

Dammit. How had he been spotted?

Kemp expected the polygamists to wait for nightfall, then slip away. Instead, they came after him. One person shot from behind a blind of rocks on the edge of the highway, while two others cleverly crossed through a culvert and took refuge behind a boulder at the base of Kemp’s hill. He’d spotted the two women running from the culvert, but had resisted the bait. Instead, he’d waited patiently, aiming always at the rifleman, and was rewarded with a glimpse of sandy-gray hair. By then one of the women was charging up the hill with a pistol in hand. He fired a single shot at the rifleman, scooped up his gun, and ran for the horses. By the time the woman reached his position and fired her pistol down the highway after him, he was too far away to hit.

Kemp’s horses were already tired and he didn’t think he could outrun his enemies, who had been traveling at a slower pace. So he waited for the first opportunity to jump off the road and set up a second ambush. Take advantage of their aggression. But they never showed. He thought about doubling back to search for them, but instead decided to ride on and look for another likely ambush spot.

After consulting the maps, he found one. A ranch road. If the enemies had a map, they might use it to try to loop around him. If not, they’d have to come down the highway itself. So he set up at the junction of the ranch road and the highway. There had been a battle at the spot, and among the wreckage of burned-out, bullet-riddled cars, he found a sedan half-buried in the sand on the shoulder, with its trunk facing up the highway. He hid his horses some distance off. Then he cracked the car trunk, yanked out the backseat so he could stretch out in its interior, and waited with his rifle aimed up the highway. The inside of the burned-out vehicle baked with the heat.

The polygamists never appeared.

Kemp waited until evening before giving up. He packed his gun, retrieved his horses, and set off warily down the highway. A continuous low rumble came from the southwest. He knew that sound from Iran. It was a distant artillery bombardment. A reddish glow stained the horizon—Vegas, burning. When the wind blew from the north, it carried clean desert air. When it stopped, the smell of ash and burning plastic stung his nose and mouth.

For a time he was at a loss. All he knew was that his enemies traveled toward California, probably via Las Vegas, which lay directly to the south. His only hope was to skirt the city and trap them on the other side.

He was exhausted and looking for a secure spot to bed down for the night when he caught a glimpse of reflected firelight maybe a quarter of a mile from the highway. He crept through the darkness until he gained the hillside above what turned out to be a small camp. Three figures stood around a fire, hands out to warm themselves. They had hunkered in a sheltered spot between the hillside and some boulders. There was tall grass for their animals, maybe even a spring.

It would have been a good spot to hide from prying eyes, except the camp was too close to the highway and they hadn’t properly shielded their firelight. And now Kemp was in perfect position to kill them all. Easy.

So easy, in fact, that it made him suspicious.

It had taken two days of hard riding to reach
Cedar City, followed by six days and a hundred and fifty miles across the deserts of Utah and Nevada in pursuit of his quarry. Kemp was hopeful that he’d killed the older man with his sniper rifle, but the other three had evaded his attempted ambushes since then. Could they really be sitting here in front of him, ready to die?

He set up his sniper rifle on its tripod. Quietly, he fixed the scope, squatted, and took a closer look. Three figures, all right. A rabbit or other small animal roasted on a stick over the fire, and they stared at it as if eagerly anticipating their meal. It was too dark to pick out features.

But were these three the travelers from Blister Creek? Why would they stand around the fire without setting up a defensive perimeter?

He fixed one of the figures in the scope and drew his finger against the trigger.

What if you’re killing the wrong people?

He was too far down the path to worry about that now. He’d abandoned the refugees he’d led east from Las Vegas. His mother was dead at the hands of Jacob Christianson. Shepherd and Alacrán had given him the chance to take his revenge. There might be collateral damage. God knows he’d seen enough of that in Iran.

He fired. The gun thumped. One of the figures fell into the fire.

Instead of diving for the shadows, the other two grabbed for their fallen companion to yank the body out of the fire. They let out confused shouts. Kemp chambered another round and fired a second time. Another figure fell. At last the third member of the party seemed to recognize what was happening and turned to run. Too late. Kemp fired again. The last person fell.

No. Wrong.

They hadn’t fled. They’d stumbled about and died. The reaction was so different from the hair-trigger flight of the polygamists from the highway yesterday that he knew with absolute certainty he’d killed three innocents.

Dammit.

But just in case, he kept his gun trained on the camp for several long seconds, waiting. If there were others lurking in the shadows, he had to take them down too. He couldn’t leave fresh enemies.

“Move and I splatter your brains,” a woman’s voice said behind him.

Kemp froze.

“Good, now lift your hands from the gun and turn slowly. If you drop your hands, I will shoot you. Stay on your knees. Now kick the rifle toward me.”

He obeyed. A single figure stood behind him on the hill, about ten feet away, aiming a pistol steadily at his chest. A half-moon hung overhead, providing enough light to see a thick braid hanging over one shoulder. Her face remained in shadows, but there was no doubt who he faced. It was the former FBI agent.

“Who were they?” he asked. “Who did I kill?”

“Refugees, maybe. A family. I didn’t get close enough to see. Hands up!”

His hands had been drooping, but now he raised them high again. “Then why—? How—?”

“I spotted three people with a campfire, not far from the road. I knew you’d find them irresistible, think they were us. I didn’t think you’d murder them without verifying their identities.”

“You killed them as much as I did.”

“Nice try, but no.”

“You could have warned them. Told them a sniper would be gunning for them. Instead, you used them as bait.”

“Who supplied you?” she asked. “When you threw us from the bus you didn’t have horses.”

“Cedar City.”

“I was there. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. I came in the day after you ran off with their horses. They were pissed, looking for revenge, and I promised to track you down if they gave me mounts and fresh supplies. They were more than happy to help. Even offered to pay me.”

“I see.”

“I thought you’d be easy quarry. Look, I see I made a mistake. I’ll turn around and go back and you can—”

She shot him in the thigh. He fell over, screaming in pain, his hands digging at the fiery hole several inches above his knee. She came over to him and frisked him, took away his pistol, then put the sniper rifle behind her, well out of his reach.

She checked the magazine of his Beretta, then holstered her own weapon and used his to keep him covered. “Ready to talk?”

“Is that what they teach you in the FBI?” he said between clenched teeth. “To shoot a man when he’s not resisting?”

“I’m not an FBI agent anymore. You can call me Sister Miriam.”

“Please let me go. I’m sorry about the old man.”

“After you threw us onto the highway you drove south in the school bus. Then what?”

“I followed you. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Yes, but you didn’t drive. If you had, you’d have passed us on the road. But you couldn’t have walked either, if you came into town the day after our escape. Somehow, you ditched your refugee friends, picked up horses, and followed us to Cedar City. Who gave you the horses?”

“Army irregulars. Fighting bush wars in the back country while the army puts down the California rebellion.”

“Who leads them?”

“Two guys. One named Shepherd—a buddy of mine from the army. The other is named Alacrán.”

“Alacrán is not in the army, and never has been. He’s a bandit and a criminal. And so are you.” Miriam lifted the pistol. “May the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

Kemp pitched around for something that would save him from this religious fanatic. He clawed up memories from his childhood Sunday school. “The Bible says blessed are the merciful. It says turn the other cheek.”

“The scriptures also say that it’s better for one man to die than for a nation to dwindle in unbelief. You are an enemy of my prophet, and therefore an enemy of God.”

“Let me talk to the other girl. Christianson’s sister. Please. Have mercy.”

“Like the mercy you showed Brother Trost?”

Trost? Was that the man Kemp shot?

“I’m your prisoner. Don’t do this.”

Miriam hadn’t killed him yet. She’d been about to; her posture had tightened, the gun had come up not to guard him, but to fire. He was sure of it.

But now she hesitated. It was one thing to shoot a man in battle, and another to execute him while he lay before you bleeding from a gunshot wound.

“Let your God decide,” he said. “You wounded me. You took my guns. Just leave me my food and horses. If God wants me to survive, I’ll live. If not, I’ll die of this gunshot. And if I live I swear to God I will never bother you again.”

He’d spoken this last part out of pure desperation, not expecting it to work. But something changed in her face—she was actually considering it.

“I won’t make a wager with the Lord,” Miriam said at last. “But very well. His will, not mine, be done. If you survive the bullet and the desert, if you soften your heart against the Lord’s anointed, then maybe He will spare your life.”

“Thank you!” Kemp gasped.

“Where are your horses?”

He hesitated. She lifted the gun again.

“Down the road a half mile. There’s a dry wash. I tied them to a Joshua tree.”

“Good. I’m taking your weapons, the horses, and anything else useful. I’ll leave you water and enough food for twenty-four hours.”

“That’s all I had left anyway,” he said, bitterly. “How about a knife?”

“No.”

“That’s not much of a chance.”

“Don’t push me, Mr. Kemp.”

He fell silent.

“You have a choice,” she added. “Given not by me, but by God. But I swear to you, if you come after us, you will die.”

She gathered his rifle and tripod and slipped into the darkness. He thought briefly about staggering to his feet and hurling himself after her, but quickly gave up that thought. His fingers probed at the gunshot wound. It hurt like hell, and there was a lot of blood. But she hadn’t hit the femoral artery, and if the bullet had hit the bone, it had only cracked it, not shattered it. He might have a chance.

What about the campfire below him? There was a rabbit on a stick. And whatever supplies the dead people had been carrying. He waited until he was sure Miriam would be long gone, then scooted painfully down the hill to the campfire.

When he arrived, the rabbit was missing, and if the three travelers had carried any supplies, Miriam had already looted them. They now had nothing of value.

Kemp stared at the empty campsite in growing fury. If there had been any doubt before, it fled now. The hell with letting the polygamists escape into the desert. He would track them down if it cost him his life.

Starting with Miriam. He swore she would die a horrible death.