Saint (37 page)

Kelly wrapped both arms around him and spoke into his ear. “I'm afraid, Johnny.”

He smoothed her hair, at a loss for words. He didn't even know what he was supposed to do up here on the hill. They'd developed no real plan other than for Johnny to do something if Englishman showed up.

Samuel held a pair of sunglasses out to him, the mirrored kind that pilots wore. “Wear these.”

He didn't know why Samuel thought he should wear them, but maybe they would help his eyesight. Maybe it was the sunlight that distorted his vision. He took the glasses and put them on.

Was he going blind?

“The truth, Johnny. Show them truth.” Samuel nodded, as if this should mean something to him. “The truth will set us all free.”

Johnny returned the nod.

Kelly released him and he jumped from the skid, landed on a patch of hard sand, and ran toward the four soldiers who waited in the out-post. The helicopter blades lifted the bird up, then toward the ranch house with a blast of hot air.

The ten-by-ten post was built of half walls and sandbags that gave the soldiers inside a 360-degree view of the valley. Four large machine guns were mounted to cover all four sides. Johnny ducked his head under the eaves and faced a Special Forces lieutenant and three guards-men. He knew this by the insignias they wore.

It occurred to him that he could remember these details. And now that he thought about it, he could remember more.

The lieutenant eyed him. “Pardon my ignorance, but remind me what it is you're supposed to do here?”

Good question.

“We don't have a place for you to sit.”

Johnny stuck out his hand. “I'm Johnny. They want me to watch over . . . things.”

The commander took his hand without enthusiasm. “Watch what, the weeds grow?”

The radio under one of the grinning guardsmen squawked. “We have a situation at the front gate. Black sedan's headed our way at high speed. Unresponsive. Do we shoot?”

A crackle of static.

“Blow his tires out.”

“Copy. Disabling veh—”

The radio went abruptly silent.

The guard manning the radio keyed the transmitter to no avail. “What was that?”

“I don't know.”

But Johnny knew, and the knowledge immobilized him. Englishman had come. So soon?

He looked past the gun on his right to the ranch below, where the helicopter was just now landing safely. The horizon offered only a gray morning sky above distant cliffs. Or were his eyes making the sky gray? He removed the sunglasses, but the sky was no less gray, so he replaced them.

He was going blind, wasn't he?

“What happened?” one of the guardsmen asked.

The lieutenant hesitated, scanning the forward perimeter. “We may have some trouble.” He jabbed a finger at Johnny. “Sit.”

Instead, Johnny walked out of the post.

One of them yelled something at him—his heart was pounding so loud that he couldn't hear the words. He walked twenty paces and faced the south. No sign of Englishman. That was something to be thankful for. But he knew his gratitude would be short-lived.

A chorus of frantic calls barked over the radio in the post. The lieutenant leaned out of the post and shouted angrily at him,

Barking orders about getting his butt back inside, punctuated with obscenities.

Johnny faced the man and floated a dozen sandbags from the ground. He held them suspended in front of the man.

“Holy—”

All four soldiers stepped back, silenced and slack-jawed.

Johnny let the bags fall. “Please,” he said, pausing to catch his breath over the panic that was gripping him. “Let me do my job.”

ENGLISHMAN WAITED until he was absolutely sure they were about to fire before making his first move.

It was a thought more than a move, but it did move some things. Three things to be precise. The guardhouse, the Bradley fighting vehicle, and the tank. He moved them up and out of the way. Fifty very quick feet straight up. The underground electrical wires that fed the guardhouse separated in a spray of sparks as the shack flew up before coming to a sudden stop next to the tank and the Bradley high above the gate.

The guards lucky enough to be left on the ground seemed disturbed by the sudden skyward display. Englishman made their guns hot, instantly hot enough to fry their hands.

He couldn't hear their cries because the car was roaring and the windows were down, but he could see their faces. They dropped the guns. Johnny wouldn't have. Even in Hungary he would have controlled his reaction to the heat long enough to get off at least one shot, and one shot from Johnny was enough to kill even Englishman's flesh-and- blood body.

“Ha!” He couldn't resist the cry of delight. In the space of five seconds he'd neutralized the front gate.

Englishman slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the sedan skidded sideways before coming to a dusty stop. The sharpshooters would be climbing out of their holes at any moment. Guns from the sky would begin blazing. Missiles even. They would unleash all hell without the foggiest idea of what hell really was.

He stared up at the floating guardhouse and saw that someone had thrown open a window and was bringing out a rifle. On each side, the hatches to the tank and the Bradley were flopping open, and crew members were poking their heads out.

Englishman let the guardhouse, the tank, and the Bradley fighting vehicle fall to the ground together.

The earth shook. Amazingly, the tank bounced a good five feet before slamming to rest on broken tracks. Its suspension had survived the fall, which was certainly more than could be said for those inside. The Bradley's undercarriage shattered upon landing. And the guard-house became a pile of kindling.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. You are
dismissed
.

Englishman floored the Accord. He sent the metal gate flying into the sky, not just fifty feet or even a hundred feet this time. He launched it far into the valley as a warning to the forces hunkered down to meet him.

The Englishman cometh.

41

W
hat Johnny first mistook for a bird flying through the sky grew as it hurtled toward them and became a pair of metal gates. They flew in an arc like debris lobbed from a catapult and crashed into the ground several hundred yards from the ranch house.

One of the guards voiced his shock. “What the . . . ? Did you . . . ?” Johnny did the only thing he knew to do in that moment. He pictured the gates flying back.

They flew. Like gangly missiles propelled from a silent canon, in precisely the same trajectory in which they'd come.

A huge line of boulders ran across the desert floor two miles away, effectively blocking Johnny's line of sight to the front lines, but with any luck Englishman would see his shot returned.

Or had that been a mistake? He'd just announced himself to Englishman!

A strong voice cut through the radio chatter. “The gates are down! I repeat, the gates are down and we have an intruder. Black sedan coming in like a bat out of hell. Blasted through the front guard, tank and all. Get the drones over here and take him out!”

The earth began to rumble. A long line of dust rose from the valley floor in front of the boulders nearly three miles out.

“What . . . ?”

The line of boulders was moving. Hundreds of ten-, twenty-, and thirty-foot rocks rolled across the ground toward them. Englishman had turned the barrier into an army of rock!

Johnny watched in horror as a flight of smaller rocks broke off from the boulders and streaked forward. Toward the ranch house.

Johnny quickly envisioned the rocks flying back, but they came on, faster now. He couldn't affect the flight of objects in Englishman's control?

The rocks were going to crash into the ranch house. Johnny's blood turned cold. Could he move the house? No, that would as easily kill them!

His vision fogged over.

The rocks gathered into six groupings, turned sharply in differing directions, and blasted toward the hills. The rocks were going for the outposts, including the one twenty feet from where Johnny now stood.

Before he fully knew what was happening, one of the groupings streaked out of the sky like a comet and slammed into the hill on his left, driving the outpost and everything inside it below the ground. The earth shook.

Dust rose.

Johnny's legs were rooted to the ground. Englishman had seen the gates flying back over his head, concluded they had come from Johnny, and fired the first salvo. Men lay crushed and broken under tons of rock where only a moment ago the four-sided post had topped the hill. Not only here, but at the other five outposts as well.

He jerked his head back to the valley. The line of boulders was picking up speed as it rumbled across the flat ground, barreling down on the ranch house where Kelly had taken shelter with the president.

Kelly . . . He was here to save the president, but his mind was now on Kelly, whom he loved for her own sake. He didn't know how to stop the boulders! He tried in vain to stop them by focusing on them, but they were impervious to his power.

Fear and uncertainty overcame him. Johnny ripped his legs free and sprinted down the hill toward the house. He didn't know why he was running; he was only running.

“WE HAVE to get you out now, sir!” Bruce Wyatt was the president's most trusted Secret Service agent. He grabbed Robert's arm. “The chopper's ready.”

“What's that noise?” Robert demanded.

David Abraham ran from the window, motioning to the first family, Samuel, and Kelly. “No, you can't leave. He'll destroy the helicopter as soon as it takes off. You have a shelter?”

“The basement.”

“In the basement! Now!” David spun to the other three Secret Servicemen who stood with sidearms drawn. “Everyone! The house is going to be hit. Let's go!”

“Hit? By what?” Robert asked.

He still couldn't wrap his mind around what David's son, Samuel, had suggested to him moments earlier. The notion that two men with supernatural powers were duking it out in his front yard wasn't making it through his reality grid.

Elijah had fought the prophets of Baal—an event recorded by an ancient writer. Samson had pushed over some pillars, another story written down by another ancient writer. Johnny had saved his life by affecting the flight of a bullet, an event that was recorded by an X-ray. But here in the backyard of the president's ranch, stories of soaring gates and flying tanks were in an entirely different category.

They were real. Happening now.

This stuff wasn't supposed to be real. Not unless you were David Abraham and had broken into the supernatural plane with Project Showdown.

Robert repeated his question. “Hit by what?”

“Boulders,” Samuel said.

ENGLISHMAN DIDN'T know how many soldiers had been hidden in the broad line of boulders, but they were all dead now, crushed under the great stones before the sharpshooters got off a single shot. Englishman owed this fortuitous turn of events to Johnny. It could even be said that Johnny had saved him, although he knew that this was an overstatement. Still, it could be said, would be said, had been said, and it excited Englishman.

He'd sent the gates flying into the valley, roared past the crumpled tank, and piloted the dust-spewing Honda Accord a third of the way down the straight road toward the huge line of boulders when the gates had suddenly come flying back, over the rocks, across the dull blue sky, over his head like a giant twisted metal bird.

Johnny! Johnny was here! Englishman nearly drove off the road in his exuberance.

He had intended to use his power to accelerate the Honda Accord to a speed far beyond its limits. He would have blasted through the narrow gap in the defenses like an unstoppable roadrunner from hell.
Beep-beep
.

Then the gates had come flying back and Englishman changed his mind. He sent the boulders rolling. He couldn't see the ranch house yet, but he could just make out the outposts on the distant hills, exactly where the documents had put them. He decided to take them out now, ahead of schedule.

Englishman did not laugh. Laughing at a time like this would be far too cliché. If it was just the president up there waiting to die, he might have allowed himself a cliché or two. But now that Johnny had inserted himself into the mix and demonstrated that he knew a thing or two about gate-flinging, Englishman would avoid cliché.

He parted the boulders like a Red Sea in motion and increased the Honda's speed. The car shook with hammering vibrations, the sky boiled with dust, the air thundered with the sound of a million tons of rock rolling, rolling, crushing, crushing, pounding, pounding.

The small Honda Accord followed directly behind, splitting the dust with an unseen shield. He pushed the car even faster, drew abreast the boulders that were less than twenty yards away on each side. Tumbling, tumbling, crashing, crashing, roaring, roaring. He couldn't see any body parts in there. Englishman might have allowed himself a laugh then. He couldn't be sure, because the sound was so deafening he couldn't hear himself.

He leaned back, looked directly ahead, and blasted through, easily pulling ahead of his massive rear guard. They would be able to see the lone, small Honda Accord leading the charge now, assuming they had the presence of mind to take their eyes off the big show to realize that
he
was the big show.

The air was crystal clear this morning. With the dust behind him, he could see all the way to the large grouping of trees and scattered boulders that presumably surrounded the ranch house.

If Johnny had a rifle, he might be able to take out Englishman now.

The thought sent a chill down his back.

Am I ready to die?

No.

Was Johnny ready to die?

Yes.

Do I want to kill Johnny?

Yes.

Have I destroyed Johnny?