The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (23 page)

He had to keep going.

The train’s diesel engine, half a mile farther down the tracks now, finally wheezed out long and hard as it drew to a stop. The freight cars jangled and rattled as they pressed up against each other.

Milton heard the shouts and exclamations. Lundquist, Callow, Chandler, the cop, and whoever else they had drawn into their conspiracy were out of their vehicles and after him. He concentrated on his footing, his eyes scanning the ground ahead of him, occasionally looking up to measure his progress to the trees. There came the report of a long gun, the whistle of a bullet and the wet thud as it scored a trench in the mud to his left. Another gunshot and another splash of mud, this time to his right, and Milton knew that he wasn’t going to make it.

HE JAGGED sharply to the right, ploughing into the corn. The crop was tall and healthy, the stalks reaching up to well above his head. The stems looked like bamboo cane, each bearing the same distinctive, large green leaf. Milton raised his forearms before his face and ploughed ahead. There was another crack from a rifle, but the shooter was aiming blind and hoping for a miracle, and the shot went nowhere near him.

The stalks slammed into his body, lashing against his head and face. The pain in his left arm was worsening with every stride. His foot caught against a rock and he tumbled over, scraping his hands and knees as he hit the ground. He paused, gathering his breath, wiping the sweat from his face. He raised himself to his haunches, staying low, and strained his ears for the sound of pursuit.

He heard the sound of running footsteps, then heavy breathing.

“He’s in the corn!” a voice bellowed out.

“We’ll never see him.”

“Look harder. He’s hurt.”

“Get to the other end.
Move
. If he comes out, shoot him.”

Another huge fork of lightning split across the sky. Milton took advantage of the brief flash, moving silently towards the track. He looked out for a second, no longer than that, and worked out his position and the route he would need to take to reach deeper cover in the forest. He was three quarters of the way along the track, a hundred yards from the end of the field. He could see the figure of a man as he jogged to the trees. He turned quickly and looked behind him. Two other men were at the far end of the field, near to the crashed RV.

They were penning him inside the corn.

The flash of light died.

Thunder boomed.

One of the two men by the RV called out. “Milton!” It was Lundquist. “This is stupid. I know you’re hurt.”

Milton crept back into the corn, leaving six feet between himself and the edge of the tractor’s tracks.

“We can wait here all night if we have to.”

He started towards the trees, moving quietly.

“You might as well come out.”

He stayed low, parting the crop as delicately as he could, the bag bumping against his back as he moved.

“You’re making things worse for that girl. You come out now, maybe we go easy on her. But if you put me in a sour mood, I promise you, with God as my witness, I’m going to take it out on her.”

He reached the edge of the crop, leaving six or seven rows between himself and the clear space beyond. Lightning branched overhead once again, and he could see the man who was guarding this end of the field. He was average height and build, dressed in a police uniform, with a pistol in his right hand. It wasn’t the cop from whom he had taken the gun. This one must have been summoned during the pursuit.

Milton stayed low, each footstep placed carefully as he narrowed the distance between himself and the man.

The light faded as the thunder roared.

Milton was close enough to reach out and touch the man’s leg.

He turned back towards Lundquist.

“I don’t see nothing!” he yelled out, the noise loud and sudden. “I’m coming back.”

Milton held his breath.

“Stay the fuck down there, George!”

The man started to retort, caught his tongue, and turned to face the trees. He cursed under his breath, barely audible, as he presented his back to Milton.

Lightning flashed. The stalks parted around him as he stood and took a pace forwards, reaching out to grab the man with his right arm around his chest and his left, weakly, around his neck. He heaved backwards, hard enough to send another burst of pain up from his wounded arm, and dragged the man backwards into the crop. The man, George, was startled and he struggled impotently as Milton held him. A deafening thunderclap unrolled overhead as he wrapped his right arm around the man’s head, and reaching his right hand all the way around to grasp the back of his cranium, he twisted in a hard, crisp movement. The cop’s neck snapped with a loud crack, and his body fell limp.

Milton dropped him to the ground, took his Beretta and frisked him. He found a pair of handcuffs, a handkerchief, and a smattering of change. He pocketed them all, then ejected the magazine from the pistol and checked the load.

Two rounds left.

Unfortunate.

He patted him down for a spare magazine, but he couldn’t find one.

Two shots and at least four men still left out there. Milton didn’t like those odds at all. It had evened out a little, but he was wounded and he didn’t have enough ammunition.

He was still going to have to run.

“George!” Lundquist shouted.

Milton crept to the north end of the field where the crop ended. He parted the stalks and glanced both ways. He saw the rocky fringe, then a hedge line, and, beyond that, the start of the trees.

He paused, waiting for the lightning.

It came, a blinding flash, and then it faded.

He stepped out.

“
Stop!
”

There came a loud, concussive report as a rifle was fired in his direction. The shooter’s aim was bad, or perhaps he was frightened or jittery with adrenaline, but the shot landed short, throwing a shower of scree against Milton’s legs. He swivelled around and raised the gun. Two men, a hundred feet away, at the eastern corner of the field. How had he missed them? He fired, too far away to hope for a hit, but enough to scatter the two men, both of them throwing themselves into the corn.

One round left.

He scrambled up the shallow incline, dislodging small rocks and a cascade of stones, threw himself through a narrow break in the hedge, and then sprinted for the trees.

He heard shouts from behind him, but he knew he would be able to get away from them now. They were scattered, and now they knew that he had a weapon. They didn’t know that he was almost dry. Then they would find the man that he had killed, and that would give them pause once more.

The low scrub scratched and clawed at his legs as he burst through it and started to climb the shallow slope that led into the forest and the hills beyond it. He needed time to collect himself. His arm was still leaking, and he knew that he would need to fix it soon. He needed to think about his next move, too.

Ellie, Mallory, and Arty were in trouble.

Lester Grogan? He was willing to bet that the sheriff was dead.

Milton had tried to persuade himself that he was done with Death.

But Death, it seemed, was not done with him.

It had a habit of finding him, even when he cast himself so far out into the wilderness that he might as well have been in another world. He had been able to bury his old urges and instincts, bury them so deep that he had almost been able to forget them, but Morten Lundquist had roused them.

He would have to account for that.

There would be a price to pay.

The scream in his head was baying for their blood.

And Milton wouldn’t be able to rest until he had drowned himself in it.

He knew that Lundquist and the others would keep coming for him. They already outnumbered him. Maybe there would be others, too. He had no weapon, save a kitchen knife and a pistol with one shot in the chamber. He was badly wounded.

But if Lundquist did persevere, if he came after him, he would give him a demonstration that would make him wish he had never been born.

MORTEN LUNDQUIST stood over the body of George Pelham and shone his flashlight down into his face. His eyes were still open, unblinking into the bright light, but his head had fallen at a loose, odd angle that told Lundquist all he needed to know. George had been the son of George Senior and Patricia, good friends of Lundquist and his wife, who had lived in Truth for years. George Junior, who was barely more than a boy, had been involved in the militia for little more than a month. They had needed a little more manpower to help keep the FBI distracted and off the scent of Michael and the others. He had been glad to join. He was a pious man, like his parents.

Another martyr for the Sword of God.

“What do you want us to do with him?” Leland Mulligan asked, pointing down at the dead man.

“Nothing.”

“We can’t…”

“We need to call it in.”

“And what do we say?”

Lundquist paused as he considered that. Whoever this Milton was, he was either the luckiest man alive, or he knew what he was doing. He had evaded their ambush at the RV and then he had hidden in the corn and picked off the one weak link in the cordon of men who had penned him in. Most people would have run for the forest, and most people would have been shot.

He had heard plenty about the SAS.

Seemed that they were as good as advertised.

He shoved his pistol back into his holster. He had been a policeman for years, ever since he left the army, and he’d never seen anything quite like this. The last man to have been murdered in Truth had been Stephen O’Reilly, ten years back, and he had been stabbed by his wife for messing around with Bill Pascoe’s daughter. This, though?

This was something else.

And more importantly, all this havoc was putting their fulfilment of God's word at risk.

The vice president was due in Minneapolis in four days. They couldn’t let this drag out, start to affect timings, start to affect what God had told him to do.

Lundquist couldn’t tolerate that.

He turned to the men. “Listen up. I’m going to go back to town, and I’m going to raise the militia.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone. But you need to stay here. My best guess, Milton has gone straight into the woods, and he’s going to keep going. He’ll expect us to come on after him. I want you to form a cordon, five hundred yards between you. You can cover a mile.”

“And if he comes out?” Leland asked.

“We shoot him,” Michael said.

Leland looked apprehensive.

Lundquist snapped, “He’s not going to come out, Private. He’s injured. He’s going to go deeper inside, and then he’s going to hide. But we can’t take any chances. That’s why you’re going to wait out here for me to get back with the others.”

“Don’t worry,” his son said. “We’ve got this.”

Lundquist looked at him and laid on the scepticism. “Really, Private? You think so?”

His doubt stung the boy, he knew that. But Michael needed to be kept sharp. He needed to know that Lundquist had been disappointed by what he had allowed to happen up at the lake, and then at the Winnebago, and that he was going to have to earn his father’s trust again.

“If he comes out, I guarantee you, sir, he is
dead
.”

“See that he is.”

Lundquist saluted. The men returned the gesture.

Michael grinned. Lundquist could see that the boy was excited. That was fair enough, in the circumstances. Hell, Lundquist felt the buzz of adrenaline himself. Leading out a posse of men to track down a fugitive? That kind of thing didn’t happen any more.

LUNDQUIST HURRIED back through the field of corn, passed the wrecked Winnebago, clambered up the embankment, crossed the railroad, and then slid down the other side. He ran to the cruiser, got inside, started the engine, and then set off down the road. He took the radio off the hook and pressed it to his ear.

“State police,” he said into the receiver. “State police, this is Truth. Truth to State police, come in, please.”

“State police to Truth. Is that you, Morten?”

“Nancy?”

“That’s right. What’s gotten into you?”

He fed her the story he had prepared: they had a man on the run who had killed three police officers, including the sheriff. He told her that the man had been pursued into the woods north of the Presque Isle River. He explained that he was armed and extremely dangerous.

“Jesus H Christ, Morten. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, unable to hide his impatience. He needed to be on the move.

“What do you need?”

“Every available man up here as soon as possible. He’s in the woods. We need to set up a cordon to keep him there. We need to set up a box: men on the railroad to the south, the river to the north, and ten miles either side.”

“And then what?”

“I’m leading a posse to get him.”

Nancy said she would sound the alert, told him to stay safe, and ended the call.

He swung the car onto the road into town. He reached down and changed frequencies.

“This is Lundquist. Repeat, this is Lundquist. Come in.”

Seth Olsen answered. “Morten. What in God’s name is going on tonight?”

“Has Morris arrived?”

“Not yet.”

“All right. Listen up. He’s bringing the Stanton kids and the girl from the FBI.”

“Want to tell me what for?”

Lundquist ran through what had happened.

“Okay,” Seth said when he was done. “I’ll put them in the barn.”

“You keep them there. You got two dead bodies coming, too. Sellar and Sturgess. You need to get rid of them.”

Seth clucked his tongue. “I guess the pigs haven’t been fed today.”

“Do whatever you need to do. We can’t have any trace of them left. As far as everyone else is concerned, they never came out of the woods. The FBI is going to be back up here again and, if they find out they were around, they’re going to start to doubt my story.”

“Relax. There won’t be a scrap. You know what the pigs are like. Those big old gals, they’ll eat them from the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes.”