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Authors: Jon Land

Kingdom of the Seven (36 page)

BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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“Why bother with this whole charade at the treatment plant, anyway?” Blaine wondered. “Why not just dump his poison into the water system in San Antonio itself?”
Karen Raymond looked up from a guidebook she’d purchased in a store on the way here. “Because there isn’t one. San Antonio has no centralized water treatment facility per se. Instead it relies on dozens of individual wells to pull the water up from the Edwards Aquifer.”
“Which is what the Reverend plans on contaminating.”
She nodded. “Almost as simple as draining the contents of his test tube into the purified water at the Boerne treatment center before it’s discharged into Civolo Falls, which drains into the aquifer.”
“You said ‘almost.’”
“Because Frye needs a catalyst to saturate the entire system in a relatively rapid time frame.”
“What do you mean by catalyst?”
“Something his toxin can bond to in order to spread.” Karen sighed. “It could be anything, or some combination of things.”
“But it would have to be connected somehow to water, something he knows is already present in the supply.”
“The possibilities are endless.”
“Narrow them down for us, Doctor.”
“Well, that test tube I found in the kingdom’s lab was made of gelatin-plastic compound made to dissolve slowly in water.”
“So?”
“So that indicates Frye doesn’t want his toxin to actually be released until it’s inside the system. It means the toxin must be light- or even heat-sensitive, and that means he can’t risk releasing it into the treatment process before the final stage.”
“Which is …”
Karen Raymond’s eyes widened. “Chlorination! Of course!
Of course!”
Excited now, barely able to keep her words up with her racing thoughts. “Frye’s scientists were limited by time, as well as what was going to be available to them.”
“Like chlorine,” Blaine realized.
“They must have programmed his toxin to require exposure to it in order to become active. And once that exposure takes place, the toxin will expand a millionfold, easily enough to infest the entire system.”
“But chlorine dissipates. Otherwise we’d taste it in every glass.”
“Microscopic, virtually immeasurable levels remain present in every glass. Safe under ordinary circumstances.”
“But under these circumstances, assuring that everyone who takes a drink will become infected.”
Karen was still thinking. “If Frye is able to somehow introduce his toxin into the stage of the treatment process in which chlorine gets injected, he’d be able to saturate the
system as soon as the poisoned discharge reaches the aquifer.”
“What do you mean by ‘stage’?”
“There are three basic stages in the treatment of wastewater. You start with sludge and extract the water, which is filtered and then treated. Chlorination is part of the last stage before the final product is released back into the system.”
“But Frye needed this dissolvable test tube because exposure to heat or light would likely destroy the toxin if he simply poured it into the tank.”
“Yes,” Karen acknowledged. “You’re learning. He has to make sure the toxin isn’t released until the treatment water has already begun its journey underground.”
Blaine smiled faintly. “I think you just gave me an idea of how to stop him.”
 
“Sal’s on his way,” Blaine reported. “Couldn’t sound happier. Guess he likes to be needed.” He looked at Karen. “Trouble is, we may need a lot more to pull this off. The Reverend Frye isn’t likely to be fooled for very long, maybe not even long enough for us to get out of the parking lot.”
“Then we need more help,” Karen concluded.
“Tough to come by these days.”
Karen started for the phone. “Maybe not.”
 
“What the hell?”
David Martinez shined his flashlight at the huge clumps of asphalt resting atop the stone floor of the Alamo. When he had made his last pass through the shrine twenty minutes before, they hadn’t been there. His first thought was that the unusually wet spring had soaked into the ancient walls to the point where one had cracked. Martinez had seen the magic the Alamo maintenance staff could work. By noon tomorrow it would be as good as new.
But a pass with his flashlight along the walls showed all
in the vicinity to be intact. Martinez then followed a plopping sound with his flashlight to a puddle of water rippling with fresh droplets. But how—
Martinez turned his beam upward.
“Uh-oh.”
David Martinez had been an Alamo ranger for only six months. Being low man on the totem poll, he pulled a great number of late night duty rotations. He much preferred the day shifts when a small measure of the three million tourists who visit the Alamo pass through. He liked to watch them as they strolled leisurely around the exhibits, hovering about the various memorabilia and lingering near the painting of Davy Crockett making his last stand.
In the quiet, dark, air-conditioned cool of what had been built as a Spanish mission, history came to life in the minds of the tourists, and in Martinez’s. The chapel had been built in 1744 only to be abandoned in 1762 after its roof collapsed. The mission remained vacant until Spanish and then Mexican troops occupied it. Rebellious Texans seized it from Mexican hands in 1835 and a year later made their fateful stand against Santa Ana that ended in a fierce twenty-minute battle just after dawn on the thirteenth day.
Few realized, Martinez reckoned, that this chapel shrine the rangers patrolled twenty-four hours a day was one of only two original structures that remained from those years, the other being the long barrack. The bulk of the famed thirteen-day stand, in which 189 held back nearly 4,000, was fought behind long-vanished walls in a plaza now occupied by Pizza Hut and K-Mart, among others, stretching all the way to the Hyatt Hotel.
The restored chapel, though, was more than enough to bring the feeling of those days back. Martinez never tired of listening to the standard recital of the famous tale, was still learning something new almost every day.
Not when he was pulling the graveyard shift, of course. Nothing much happened. Ever.
Until tonight.
Martinez’s flashlight had illuminated a large, jagged chasm in the Alamo’s ceiling. The rain that had just started up again found easy passage through it, as more layers peeled away right before his eyes.
“Jesus,” he muttered, feeling for the black walkie-talkie that linked him up to the maintenance office. “Jesus.”
For the second time in its storied history, the roof of the Alamo was about to collapse.
 
Guns and Ammo claimed to be not only the largest retail seller of weapons in the Southwest, but also the entire country. Open twenty-four hours a day, it had supermarket-style rows that contained every handgun, rifle, and semiautomatic rifle imaginable. Special display counters featured whatever was hot, and huge bins carried cheap, bag-it-yourself target ammunition sold by weight.
A buzzer went off when T.J. Fields entered the store flanked by a Skull on either side. The proprietor had done business with the Hells Angels themselves for a time, so he knew the kind of men who were approaching the front counter and sensed a big sale.
“Morning,” greeted the proprietor, a balding man with a massive belly extending well over his belt.
“Morning,” returned T.J.
“Name’s Carson, boys. Friends call me Car. You come to the right place. I got the best sawed-offs you ever did see, damn good buys on semiautos, and I’m running a special on the Desert Commando, biggest handgun currently available.”
“I was thinking more of your private stock.”
Carson’s smile vanished. “Huh?”
T.J. pulled a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and read it off like a shopping list. “Five LAW rockets, a dozen M16s, an M79 grenade launcher and ammo, two dozen hand grenades. Oh, and did I forget to mention an M60 machine gun?”
Carson’s eyes shifted frantically to make sure no one else was nearby to overhear. “Are you out of your fucking mind, man? You want that kind of hardware, I got to check references. Cash or not, I never move the big stuff without knowing who I’m moving it to.”
T.J.’s .45 was out of his pants and against the proprietor’s forehead before he could blink. “We’re friends now, Car. Make an exception.”
The Future Faith network’s number one program, “Sunday Morning Service,” was scheduled to be broadcast this week from the wastewater treatment facility in Boerne, thirty miles northwest of San Antonio. Since the day the cameras had caught his sermon atop the rubble of that school in Dixonville, Virginia, the Reverend Harlan Frye had made a practice of holding his service live in places least expected. The commercials advertising the fact that Boerne was next on the list had begun running throughout Texas Saturday afternoon, and Harlan Frye knew, as always, he’d be turning away more people than he could seat. By the time the Reverend got there thirty minutes prior to the 11:00 A.M. live broadcast, several thousand unfortunate but placid faithful who’d arrived too late to be seated were waiting outside the complex’s chain-link fence. The crowd cheered Frye and parted respectfully to allow his limousine to snail through them up to the front gate.
The Reverend shook a few of their outstretched hands
on the way in and tousled the hair of children near his path. A touch on the shoulder soothed those who were crying, hands clasped in pleading prayer before him. They all wanted something, and Harlan Frye today was fully prepared to give them what they needed.
“Praise the Lord!” someone shouted.
“You’re the greatest, Reverend!”
“Love you, Reverend!”
Before entering the complex, Frye turned and spread his arms before them triumphantly. A swell of applause and cheers rose from his followers.
His director, Stu Allison, was waiting just inside the gate alongside a short man wearing a name tag and a white hard hat.
“Everything is all set, I trust,” Frye greeted, after he had stepped through the gate.
Allison shrugged. “As much as can be expected under the circumstances.”
“Circumstances?” Frye raised.
The short man slid in between them. “This place wasn’t exactly built with Sunday school in mind.”
“Sunday
service,
Mr., er …” Frye read the name off the tag. “Randall.”
“Nice to meet ya. I’m the plant manager, case you didn’t figure that out.”
The Reverend noticed Randall’s nose was mashed in the center and bent to one side, like a boxer’s. He seemed to be favoring his right shoulder.
“You ask me, Father, the city park ’cross the street’d be a better place to hold your service.”
“It’s
Reverend,”
Frye corrected. “And I have my reasons.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” said Sal Belamo. “I guess we better get to it.”
 
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas have been custodians of the Alamo since 1905, responsible for the shrine’s maintenance, upkeep, and day-to-day operations.
The four-and-a-half-acre plat lies between two major San Antonio streets, much of it enclosed by a combination of fully restored walls and black wrought-iron fences. The chapel shrine and the long barrack share the grounds with a combination museum and souvenir shop and a library that have been constructed to blend perfectly with their neighboring structures.
The chief of Alamo maintenance, Lantz Lecolt, was on the premises fifteen minutes after Bob Martinez’s call had come in the night before. The repair job was under way half an hour later, but by dawn it was obvious the Alamo would not be able to open today, much to Lecolt’s dismay. Christmas and Christmas Eve were the only days it was traditionally closed, and Lecolt had long prided himself on keeping the Alamo open through flood conditions, air-conditioning failures that ballooned the temperature in the chapel to a sweltering 110 degrees, and other crises.
This, though, was different.
“How bad?” asked Clara Marshall, head of the Daughters, upon returning just after ten-thirty Sunday morning.
Lecolt looked down from his perch on the recently erected scaffolding thirty feet above her. The chasm in the roof started a yard back from the chapel’s front facade and ran in jagged fashion virtually its entire length.
“Bad,” Lecolt shouted back, his reply drowned out by the sudden swirling of a circular saw. “But we can handle it.”
In the scant few hours since he had been called, the head of maintenance and his men had already begun the process of erecting a wooden restraining structure, essentially a truss placed under the imperiled section of the roof for support. One of his crews had put the scaffolding together, while another set about constructing the individual components of the truss under bright floodlights trucked in to permit work in the dark chapel. From where he was standing, Lecolt could reach up through the chasm. He crept along, his hand exploring the jagged remnants of the ceiling. They’d have to be neatly filed
down before the patching process could begin. Lecolt had already obtained the specialized equipment he was going to need before the day was out, including a sandblaster, a portable cement mixer, and commercial-strength heat lamps to quicken the drying process.
“What caused it?” Clara yelled up to him, walking at his pace to keep up.
“Can’t be sure.” Lecolt stopped and leaned over. “Could be the weight of those damn air-conditioning compressors.”
“Structural engineers assured us the roof could hold them.”
“Hold them, sure. But the vibrations they make mighta damaged its structural integrity enough for the heavy rains to finally split it.”
“You check the rest?”
Lecolt nodded. “Sound for now.”
“When can we reopen?” Clara asked, dreading the answer.
“Tomorrow, if you don’t mind my people livening up the place and …”
Another whirling saw drowned out the rest of his words. Clara Marshall waited until the sound had ceased before responding.
“Awful lot of noise to put up with.”
“In two days I can have the hole patched.”
Clara breathed easier. “I guess the tourists can live with it.”
“Sure,” Lantz Lecolt agreed. “Just tell them the hole was made by cannon fire.”
 
As in the case of all “Sunday Morning Service” broadcasts, the logistics for today’s program had been worked out by Stu Allison in advance, based on the parameters Harlan Frye gave him. This morning that meant broadcasting from inside the plant where the third and final treatment stage took place, which disinfected the aerated water with chlorine. From there the resulting purified water
would be discharged into the underground casements of Civolo Falls, which drained directly into the Edwards Aquifer.
“Where have we got the congregation set up?” Frye asked, ignoring the plant manager.
“A field around to the side,” Allison told him. He gestured in the field’s direction, and the Reverend glimpsed the rows and rows of his faithful waiting patiently before a platform that held tower speakers in lieu of his personal presence.
“Hey,” the plant manager interrupted, “you really need this many people on the grounds?”
Frye followed his gaze to the dozens of casually dressed Fifth Generation soldiers who had taken posts around and within the entire complex, according to Major Osborne Vandal’s specifications. Though none of their weapons were in evidence, their presence was nonetheless noticeable and intimidating.
“We’ve had problems crop up at some of our other services,” Frye explained. “Those men are a deterrent against anything unpleasant happening on these grounds, Mr. Randall.”
“Hey, Father, I’m all for that.”
Frye’s face reddened as he fumed silently. “I think we can go inside now.”
“Whatever you say.”
 
The inside of the plant was more open than Frye had been expecting, a labyrinth of pipes running in all directions connecting tanks of varying sizes to each other. A glassed-in control room that looked like something more fit for NASA lay in the center of it all. Since it was Sunday, a crew of only three was at work inside, monitoring gauges and adjusting knobs and buttons. Along with the pug-nosed Bob Randall, these were the only men who seemed to be here other than his own. This surprised Harlan Frye. After all, he had the county and city of Boerne’s permission in writing for this shoot and had been
expecting the usual bevy of local officials desiring to partake in the festivities.
“Over here,” Harlan Frye heard the plant manager say, as he led the way to the plant’s largest tank, located close to the right-hand wall.
The tank rose three of the four-story height of the building, rimmed at the top and across the center by dual catwalks accessible by a steel ladder. The only place Frye could conduct his service was high atop a semicircular platform at the tank’s south end where the ladder was positioned. Allison had done the best he could with the dim lighting by setting up some powerful floods upon the platform.
“Reverend.”
Frye turned away from the ladder and watched Major Osborne Vandal approach him. Vandal had had the premises thoroughly searched prior to his arrival to insure that McCracken and his cohorts were not lying in wait.
“The grounds are clear, sir,” he reported confidently.
“Keep the men on their guard, Major,” Frye cautioned. “McCracken
will
be here—I know it. I know his tricks, how he’s overcome comparable challenges before. The men posted are all in visual contact?”
“Of course, sir.”
“They are required to check in at regular intervals?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll need men in the surrounding fields, woods, and buildings—
atop
the buildings as well.”
“Already taken care of, sir.”
Frye looked away from Osborne Vandal and spoke to his director.
“Let’s get up there, Stu.”
 
The Reverend Harlan Frye completed his sound check at three minutes to eleven. He stood uneasily atop the grated steel platform adjacent to the chlorine-rich disinfection tank, barely able to gaze over into the clear water churning within it. The Reverend had been advised to
wear goggles to prevent his eyes from being burned by the chlorine, but had discarded them because they made him look foolish and played hell with the lighting. People wanted to see his eyes, people
needed
to see his eyes. Otherwise, how could he expect them to believe? Every week the live broadcast of “Sunday Morning Service” was watched by eight million Americans, and Harlan Frye wanted them all to believe.
“On my mark,” said Stu Allison, eyes on his watch. “Ten, nine, eight, seven …”
 
“ … six, five, four, three …”
Outside, the assistant director cued the congregation seated in the makeshift pews set in the plant’s field that they were about to go on, just as Allison was cuing Harlan Frye. There would be no applause at the eleven-o’clock mark when the six cameras set up around the audience began their sweep. The participants had been told to simply do what came naturally; and since all were devoted followers of the Reverend Harlan Frye, this meant looking intently reverent and worshipful.
Allison pointed to Frye.
The assistant director pointed to the audience.
At the signal a sober, well-modulated voice filled the airwaves of America, emanating at the same time from the tower speakers set before the congregation in the field.
“Welcome to the ‘Sunday Morning Service,’ a presentation of the Future Faith television network. Today’s service is being broadcast live from Boerne, Texas. And now, speaking for the Lord, the Reverend Harlan Frye.”
Stu Allison cued Frye again, while his surrogate in the truck chose the proper close-up of the Reverend upon the platform, using the disinfection tank as a backdrop.
“Good morning, brothers and sisters, and I hope this as all Sundays finds you reflecting with family and loved ones on the successes and failures of the past week as we begin the next one. Each week is its own journey, friends, and we must strive not to submerge ourselves in regret
over ground lost or become complacent over ground gained. A fresh start must be made with the coming of every Sunday, and fresh starts is what today’s service is all about.”
Frye started deliberately forward, Stu Allison ordering his surrogate in the truck to use the pause for a series of crowd shots. As planned, the sequence would finish with a full view of the treatment center itself that slowly pulled in on the single sign posted just outside the fence announcing what this site was. He cued the Reverend again when the sequence was complete.
“Every Sunday, brothers and sisters, the Church of the Redeemer takes its service and its message outside the walls of a traditional chapel into the world of people like yourselves. Today I speak to you from a place that symbolizes renewal; the renewal of hope out of hopelessness, of something from nothing.”
Television screens across America filled with various angles and shots of the treatment center’s interior, as the Reverend Harlan Frye continued.
“This facility, brothers and sisters, exists to salvage water from waste—the very essence of life from what has been discarded as refuse.” He smiled slightly, confidently. “What no one wants anymore, what no one sees any need for. How symbolic, friends, for does not this describe so many of our lives? …”
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