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Authors: Jon Land

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BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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“But she hasn’t told you before because she doesn’t approve of your methods, right?”
The twins looked at each other. It was Rachel who spoke. “We tried to satisfy her. She has never proved very cooperative. She never believed Frye was actually capable of bringing on Judgment Day.”
“Of course not. Otherwise you wouldn’t have had to send Ratansky to steal the list of the Key Society from her. Bottom line is that you took from her the very thing that insured her safety, and now you want me to convince her to tell me what she’s never shared with your father.”
“Things have changed,” said Rachel.
“Everything
has changed,” added Jacob.
“Without the list as insurance, Frye will kill her. She will be desperate. She will need us.”
“All we need to do is convince her that Judgment Day is about to dawn.”
“So she can tell us the location of the Kingdom of the Seven.”
“That’s the hope,” said Jacob.
“The fear, too, kid.”
“You’ve seen our work.”
“Impressive to say the least, but carried out with the element of surprise on your side. That’s gone now. We make it into this kingdom, they’ll be ready for us.”
“There is no choice.”
“Let’s see what Sister Barbara has to say, son, before we pass judgment on that,” advised McCracken.
 
Wareagle took the pilot’s seat from Blaine minutes later to complete their flight to the airfield where the jet was waiting. The twins stayed in the cockpit with him, Jacob in the passenger seat. He had grown committed to his father’s effort to destroy what Preston Turgewell had once been part of. No other concerns had entered in. The boy had been born into a purpose, and that purpose now dominated his very being. Blaine wondered if there was a life for Jacob and Rachel beyond the Seven, no matter how all this turned out. There was so much he could tell them if they were willing to listen; he’d been there himself, after all, and had lived long enough to learn the lessons on his own. But Jacob and Rachel weren’t ready to accept any more than what lay before them right now, the only world they knew.
McCracken retired to the Chinook’s passenger hold and sat down next to Karen Raymond.
She looked at him with a calm he hadn’t expected. “I’m not scared anymore.”
“Congratulations,” Blaine said, without any trace of celebration in his voice. “You’ve crossed over. Welcome to my world, Doctor.”
“I wouldn’t have entered, wouldn’t have been able to do all this, if it weren’t for my kids. Frye’s animals would have killed them.” She shivered, as much from emotion as the chill of the hold. “They still might.”
Blaine wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her closer to him. “Not if I can help it.”
Karen trembled in his grasp. Her eyes drifted toward the cockpit. “That boy and girl, their father sent them into this. He
trained
them for it. I think of how I feel about my kids and I find that repulsive.”
“He did what he felt he had to, same thing you’re doing now. Different perspective.” Blaine paused. “Different world.”
“Yours?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“No,” Karen said, and looked up at him. “I heard what you said to Jacob about killing that man in Atlanta. He didn’t have to, yet he still did. But that didn’t bother you as much as the fact that it didn’t bother him.”
Blaine smiled ruefully. “Very good, Dr. Raymond.”
“He emulates you, wants to be like you.”
“I suppose.”
“He never will, though, because he doesn’t feel; he just believes and acts accordingly. But he’d be a difficult man to face for that same reason.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“I’m learning.”
“Then let’s try another lesson. My contacts may not be able to help us with Frye and the Seven, but there’s an ugly little man back east who can be of immediate service to you and your kids.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“You trust me.”
Karen let her face brush his shoulder and stay there. “Of course. Did you have to ask?”
“I didn’t ask; I said. And when we reach this airfield, I’m saying now you shouldn’t go on. Let me make a call.
Get you and your kids someplace where even Frye won’t be able to reach you.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
She shook her head and pulled away from him. “No.”
“You won’t do it?”
“Because you
can’t.”
“I’m offering you a ticket out of my world, Dr. Raymond.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she told him. “I don’t doubt you can keep me safe from Frye’s killers, but can you keep me safe from what he’s about to unleash on the world? Beyond that,” Karen continued, before Blaine had a chance to respond, “you
need
me. Judgment Day’s got something to do with Van Dyne’s AIDS vaccine, with whatever went wrong in Beaver Falls. I’m the only one in this group who’ll be able to explain how, if the chance ever comes. Tell me I’m wrong, Blaine McCracken, I dare you.”
Blaine tried. Briefly. “Sorry. I can’t.”
“Of course not. What I was after and what you were after led us both to Van Dyne for a reason. Now the trick is to find out exactly where the connection is.”
McCracken glanced at Patrolman Wayne Denbo, who seemed to be sleeping, his head against the hold’s near wall. “Along with what happened to the real residents of Beaver Falls.”
Sister Barbara came awake early Friday morning to the unexpected murmur of voices outside her open window. She rose from the chair where she had taken what little sleep the night would give her, stiff and cold.
More voices reached her, dozens of them.
She moved to the window and threw back the sheer curtain blown inward by the breeze. Below, her followers who called the Oasis home for as long as they desired were at work in the sprawling, lavish flower garden that separated her mansion from the rest of the theme park.
But she had issued orders for them to leave! Roland Bagnell was to have made sure those orders were carried out by this very time!
As if on cue, a knock rapped on her door.
“Come,” Sister Barbara called.
Bagnell entered, his cane tapping the floor with each step.
“What’s going on, Roland?” she demanded. “I was very clear in my—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “and our residents were equally clear in their refusal to leave.”
One of Bagnell’s principal duties was to coordinate the Oasis’s residential services. The people who came seeking spiritual fulfillment or recharging needed to be boarded, fed, and given work assignments throughout the park. Roland Bagnell himself had been one of the first residents of the Oasis, walking in as a crippled alcoholic who never walked out after shedding his crutches and the bottle. He had supported Sister Barbara through all the various stages and swings of her ministry, including her never-explained decision to forsake the huge television revenues and return to the road. In her upper echelon of trusted directors, Bagnell was the most loyal of all. And yet she had never shared even with him her dealings with the Seven.
“You don’t understand, Roland,” Sister Barbara scolded. “I ordered them to leave
for their own good.”
“But I do understand, Sister, and so do they. They know you’re scared. They know there’s something wrong. They want to help.
I
want to help.
Talk
to me.”
She looked at him with as much anger as she could summon. “I want the Oasis evacuated, Roland. Leave a skeleton staff in place if you wish, but I want them in a position to flee at the first sign of …”
“Sign of what, Sister?”
“Get them out of here, Roland. Get them out of here now.”
 
If anyone had bothered to ask Warren Thurlow what he thought of all this, he would have told them it was nuts. Chief federal marshal for the state of North Carolina, Thurlow had been awakened in the midst of a deep sleep just hours before with instructions to serve Sister Barbara with arrest warrants at her Oasis complex as soon as possible. The warrants arrived by courier while he was dressing, alleging that a huge drug ring was operating out of the theme park. Thurlow didn’t know what bullshit the allegations
were based on, but he did know there was little he could do to brush them aside at this end.
He also knew Sister Barbara; not personally, but he’d seen her enough times on television and knew enough about her work to be certain she could not be capable of such a thing. Nor could she be capable of letting it go undetected right under her nose. The problem was that Thurlow was nothing more than a messenger boy. Bring a few deputy marshals with him and serve the warrant, and then get the fuck away with his tail tucked between his legs. Leave Sister Barbara to chew up her accusers and spit them out.
Thurlow roused the top three deputies from the on-call list and told them to pick him up at 6:30 A.M. sharp. He wanted to be done with this as quickly as possible.
The car picked him up right on schedule, and he sat in the backseat through the duration of the ninety-minute drive, doing his best to doze. He couldn’t even keep his eyes closed, and his head began pounding up a storm by the time the car reached Asheville, a town he’d always dreamed of living in. Set in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, Asheville was green and beautiful. Even the smaller homes boasted picturesque and elegantly manicured settings, with views of rolling hills. Plentiful trees dappled the yards and streets with shade, and the lawns were a uniform dark green. Thurlow thought of his own browning grass and chewed his teeth.
His mood had grown even more foul by the time the car pulled up before the main entrance of the Oasis. He ordered his deputy marshals to hang back and started for the gate before they had all climbed out. Halfway there, Thurlow saw an informally dressed man appear from within the guardhouse that was set inside the high, white stone wall that enclosed the entire complex.
“Warren Thurlow, federal marshal,” he announced, fishing for the warrant in his jacket pocket. “’Fraid I need to see Sister Barbara. Course, if she isn’t presently on the premises …”
The man didn’t take the hint. “No, she’s here,” the guard said, feeling for the phone inside the guardhouse. “What’d you say your name was?”
“Warren Thurlow.”
“And you’ve come here to …”
Before Thurlow could respond, the guard’s face vanished in an explosion of blood and bone that sprayed up against the federal marshal’s best suit. He heard his deputies screaming and swung in time to see a fusillade of bullets rip into them and drop their bodies to the ground. Before he could take cover himself, one bullet hammered his shoulder and another struck him like a swift kick to the ribs.
“Fuck,” Thurlow muttered as he collapsed, feeling warm life spilling out of him, thinking with absurd calm,
I’m shot!
There should have been pain, but there wasn’t. Thurlow managed to pull himself behind the cover of some thick azalea bushes and tried to steady his breathing.
What had happened? What was going on?
Crawl back to the car, he told himself, get on the radio.
Before he could do anything of the sort, though, he heard the sound of heavy vehicles screeching to a halt nearby. Peering out from his cover, he saw three large, olive green trucks dwarfing the department’s Crown Victoria. Warren Thurlow had enough presence of mind left to pull himself into the deeper cover of the thick bushes rimming the front of the Oasis as the men began to spill out from the rear ends of the trucks.
Thurlow saw their rifles first, shiny black in the morning sun. Mind slowing now, he realized that he recognized them, that they were
familiar
to him. Then he saw why: The black windbreakers some wore over their flak jackets and matching black caps were labeled STRIKE.
They were dressed in the standard garb of the Federal Marshals Strike Force.
 
The residents of the Oasis had ignored Roland Bagnell’s halfhearted instructions, going about their daily chores as
if the park would be up and running in a few hours’ time. Sister Barbara strode through the magnificent gardens fronting her house in search of Bagnell, finding him finally leaning on his golf cart in the center of Hope Avenue, which ran the park’s entire length.
Bagnell had a half smile on his face, looking almost pleased. “I did the best I could.”
“They’re still here.”
“They aren’t leaving, Sister. They wish to stand by your side, just as you stood by theirs.”
“You don’t understand, Roland.
They
don’t understand.”
He limped closer to her, cane left inside the cart. “They understand obligation, loyalty. They understand what you have taught them.”
“No!
Listen
to me. Please!”
Bagnell’s smile stretched a little wider. “I have, Sister, and I—
Sister!”
With that he threw himself at her, twisting her around, his eyes bulging in fear and disbelief. Sister Barbara felt her ribs contract on impact and then tumbled over with Bagnell’s weight pinned atop her.
“Roland,” she said, trying to get her wind back. “Ro—”
Her hands came away bloody from his back. She looked at his face and saw more blood dribbling from his mouth and nose.
“Roland!”
He’d been shot! Sister Barbara had no sooner realized that than she heard the din of staccato bursts echoing through the park. She rose into a crouch and dragged Roland with her behind the meager cover of the golf cart.
“No,” he rasped, blood frothing from his mouth, “leave …”
His eyes locked open and sightless, dead. Horrified, Sister Barbara pulled away from him. The bursts of gunfire continued to blare around her, and now her clearing senses recorded another, much worse sound:
Screams.
Her people were being massacred!
A group sped down Hope Avenue directly before her, and Sister Barbara watched three of them being cut down when bullets fired by unseen gunmen stitched up their spines. One who was still alive tried to claw her way for the grass, as if to flee harm’s way, and Sister Barbara lunged to her aid.
“Why, Sister, why?” the woman muttered fearfully when Sister Barbara reached her. “Why? …”
Because of me
, Sister Barbara thought as she yanked the woman toward the cover between a pair of refreshment booths.
It’s my fault … .
Sister Barbara was smoothing the woman’s hair when her eyes closed. She was still breathing, but clearly there was nothing else Sister Barbara could do for her. But there were others, so many others … .
The gunfire was constant and widespread, evidence of an inordinately large group of gunmen on the premises. The Reverend Harlan Frye’s gunmen, here to end the threat she posed to him once and for all.
As Sister Barbara made her way through the park, pressed as close as possible to an assortment of buildings for cover, she caught glimpses of figures in black moving in commando fashion behind their erupting muzzles. They fired at anything that moved. A longer look at the water slide attraction showed the bodies of more of her followers floating in the huge lagoon-shaped pool, the crystal blue water dirtied with stringy beads of red.
Sister Barbara could hear herself moaning, crying deep inside. Her sorrow was so vast that every step was becoming an effort, her feet slowed by having to carry the weight of all that was happening around her. She felt rage building within her, a fury that burned at the surface of her skin replacing the chill of her sorrow.
She would destroy Frye and the Seven. If her followers were to be sacrificed, then let there be some worth in their deaths, something salvaged. But she had to survive herself first, and that task at present seemed daunting, if not impossible.
She crept behind the cover of an empty kiosk and waited for an approaching complement of the enemy to pass before pressing on.
 
“Gunfire,” Blaine said as their crowded van approached the isolated hilltop setting for Sister Barbara’s Oasis.
“We’re too late,” muttered Rachel. “Frye’s people have beaten us here!”
“Faster!” her twin, Jacob, ordered Johnny Wareagle, who was behind the wheel. The Indian merely glanced at him before he eased the van to the side of the road out of sight from the complex’s entrance.
They had arrived in North Carolina after their near cross-country flight landed in Knoxville, Tennessee, just two hours before, leaving no time for rest. They had rushed to pack their gear into the van and drove swiftly to reach Sister Barbara’s complex in the hills of Asheville.
“You told me you were good, kid,” Blaine said to Jacob.
“I am.” Then, as he gazed at his sister,
“We
are.”
“I hope so, because with the numbers we’re about to go up against, you’re gonna have to be.” He looked toward Johnny Wareagle, whose ear was tuned out the driver’s-side window. “Indian?”
“Between thirty-five and forty men, Blainey.”
“Christ … And four of us, not counting Dr. Raymond here …”
Patrolman Wayne Denbo, curled up in the van’s rear seat, spoke from his prone position.
“You got five, mister.”
Blaine looked at him, but didn’t speak.
Denbo sat up. “Look, I went a little nuts, thanks to Beaver Falls and all the shit they pumped me full of in the hospital. But I think I got my senses back now.”
“You good with a gun?”
“District target champ three years running with a nine and a rifle.”
“Ever shoot a man, Officer?”
Denbo lowered his eyes. “No.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
 
They drove off the road into the line of thick brush buffering the woods less than a quarter mile away, the van sufficiently camouflaged. McCracken, Wareagle, Denbo, and the twins geared up as Blaine laid out the plan for them. Not surprisingly, Jacob hung on his every word.
The twins’ cache of weapons allowed a pair of automatic weapons for all of them except Denbo, who would make do with one. Blaine and Johnny each carried an M16 along with a smaller nine-millimeter Mac-10 submachine gun. The twins had M16s as well, but in Jacob’s case the arsenal was complemented by an M79 grenade launcher, which fired 40mm grenades out a thick, shotgunlike barrel. Rachel, meanwhile, carried a semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun known as a Street Sweeper, equipped with a twelve-shot cylindrical magazine.
BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
7.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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