The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (39 page)

“Arty. You have to tell me where they are.”

“In the big shed,” he said, his face open and surprised, as if that was something that surely Milton must have known. “On the farm.”

MILTON FOUND a car on a back street, put his elbow through the window and unlocked it from the inside. He got inside, with Arty in the passenger seat next to him, hot-wired the ignition and drove away. It took less than a minute, and it didn’t look as if he had been seen.

“Which way?”

Arty pointed to the south. Milton turned onto Main Street and drove carefully, wary of attracting attention.

“How did you get away?”

“I climbed out. There was a hole in the roof.”

“And then?”

He repeated himself. “I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Mallory told me to run into town, so I did. But the telephones don’t work and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

He was getting agitated again. “It’s okay, Arty. Don’t worry. I’m here now. We’ll soon have this sorted out.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Fix it.”

Milton drove on. “How many people did you see there?”

He screwed up his face. “There was a woman and Mr. Finch, the plumber. We saw them most of all. There were a lot of people in the other barn the night they took us there but they all disappeared. We didn’t see any of them again.”

“Did anyone have any weapons? Guns?”

“The woman and Mr. Finch—they have shotguns.”

“Anything else?”

“No. I didn’t see anything.”

“Well done, Arty. You’ve done very well.” Milton cleared the outskirts of the town and put his foot down. “Hold on.”

MILTON KILLED the lights a mile out and rolled up to the start of a long drive that led towards farm buildings. He switched off the engine and rolled to a stop, water splashing beneath the tires as they passed through deep puddles.

“I want you to stay here,” he said to Arty.

“What about Mallory? And Ellie?”

“I’m going to go and get them. But you have to stay here. Do you understand?”

He shuffled awkwardly in the seat.

“Arty—you have to stay here. Do you understand?”

“I just want to help.”

“I know you do, but I don’t need help. And you’ll get in my way. Stay here.”

Arty grunted that he would. Milton opened the door, exited the car, and slipped into the cover of a clutch of fir trees. He crouched down, flexing his sore arm, and assessed the terrain ahead.

The farm was encircled by a fence. Thirty yards behind the fence was a log gatehouse that reminded him of a frontier stockade. A log was lowered across the dirt road like the arm of a highway toll booth. An oblong of light stretched out from the side of the gatehouse, a door that Milton couldn’t see. The oblong was split in half by a shadow; someone was in the booth and had come to the doorway.

The farmhouse was at the end of the road, lights glowing in the downstairs windows. There was another light above the porch, swaying in the wind. Surrounding it were sagging sheds, bungalows. There was a bunkhouse, probably added as farm and family grew. Now the house was empty and silent, huddling under cedar and pinon trees. He saw other buildings: a tall grain silo, two barns. Faint light glimmered from a number of ramshackle constructions he could see in the distance. There was a long line of vehicles parked along the shoulder of the lane between the guardhouse and the farm.

Save the lights, there was no sign of life.

And then there was.

He heard the sound of a powerful engine. He ducked right down as a pair of high beams swung out from behind one of the barns. A truck, a big eighteen-wheeled semi, crawled slowly out of the yard and rolled through the gate and onto the lane. He saw the figure of a man in the yard, but he was much too far away to be able to identify him. The truck bounced along the potholed track towards him, the lights stretching out across the furrowed fields until they were interrupted by the trunks of the fir trees, casting inky black shadows for a dozen feet behind him. He couldn’t make out any detail through the darkness and the rain and he stayed down low as the semi drew nearer. The brakes sighed as it reached the end of the track, the tractor swinging onto the main road and the trailer following after it.

Milton was close enough now to make out the driver.

Lundquist.

The engine growled again as Lundquist fed it more power. The truck was old and in bad shape. It rumbled away, passing the car with Arty inside and heading southeast.

Milton worked his way around the boundary of the property until he had enough cover between himself and the buildings to make an approach without being detected. This stretch of the fence was old and in need of repair, and Milton was able to duck down and slip between the top and bottom rails. He stayed low, sliding through long grass, moving quickly to a grove of black gum trees with a tangle of young buttonbush beneath their boughs.

He was halfway to the barns. The figure he had seen earlier was still there. It was a man, but he was facing away from him. His silhouette was slender. There was a line of chokeberry and cinquefoil ahead, and he was about to make out for it when another person emerged from the farmhouse. A woman. She was carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, the action open. The first man turned as she approached, and the light from the porch fell onto him.

Michael Callow.

Milton felt the jolt of adrenaline and felt his lips as they pressed tight against his teeth.

Milton heard the sound of a door creaking on rusty hinges. Callow and the woman turned to one of the barns. Two people emerged.

Mallory.

Ellie.

A third person followed them outside.

A man he hadn’t seen before. Big, obese.

Ellie’s wrists were cuffed.

He waited for them to turn away from him, but, before they could, he heard the sound of someone approaching from behind him. He turned his head back towards the car and saw Arthur Stanton’s large figure, moving low and quickly, headed towards the yard.

There was nothing he could do. Arty hadn’t seen Milton or, if he had, he was deliberately avoiding him because he knew what he would say. He was thirty feet away to the right, heading towards another clump of buttonbush. He couldn’t call out or Callow and the others would hear him. But if he stayed silent, what would Arty do?

Milton knew. It would be bad.

He clenched his teeth. Helpless.

Callow stepped in front of Ellie and said something to her, his harsh laugh sounding like a bark as it rang around the yard.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down onto her knees.

The man standing behind Mallory did the same to her.

The woman closed the shotgun.

Milton couldn’t wait.

If he left cover, if they saw him… a spread from the shotgun, medium range, it would pepper him.

But if he didn’t…

ELLIE TRIED the cuffs for the thousandth time, and they still held firm. Her knees and legs were inches deep in a thick slop of mud. She looked across to Magrethe Olsen’s boots, smothered with the same mud, and then followed her legs up until she was looking into the barrels of the shotgun aimed straight at her. She had imagined dying in service, like her father before her, but it had always been an abstract idea. The kind of thing that happened to other people. Now, though, it was horribly, awfully real.

She was going out, kneeling in mud and pig shit in some backwater hick farm. She found herself thinking of Orville. If she ever got out of it, ever told him what had happened, she knew that he would find it hilarious.

But she wasn’t getting out of it.

“I’m a federal agent,” she said, again, knowing that it wasn’t going to help them here.

“You know what’s going to happen tonight?”

“Why don’t you tell me.”

“That truck, that’s the biggest bomb this country’s ever seen. It’s going to make Oklahoma City look like powderpuff.”

“So why don’t you tell me where it’s headed?”

She laughed. “Don’t think so. All you need to know, when that bomb goes off, it’s going to start the war to end all wars. All the Jews and the niggers and the wetbacks, the liberal intelligentsia, the sickness in the federal government, they’re all going to get swept away. All of it. The Messiah is on his way. The Second Coming. Tonight is the start of it.”

Ellie saw, in the corner of her eyes, that Mallory had closed her hand around a large stone.

Callow was just behind her. “Just get on with it.”

Magrethe raised the stock and pressed it into her shoulder.

Ellie started to close her eyes.

There was a sudden blur of motion.

She looked up.

Arthur Stanton.

He came running out of the undergrowth. He moved with a clumsy gait, but he was big and strong and he bellowed with fury. Morris Finch was between him and Magrethe. Arty drew back his fist and pummelled the man in the side of the head with enough impact to spin him around on his standing leg, flipping him so that when he landed it was face first, out cold even before he splashed down into the mud.

Arty headed right for Magrethe.

There was ten feet between them.

Too far.

He roared at the top of his lungs.

She swivelled quickly, too quickly, the barrel swerving away from her and at him.

Her aim was quick, inaccurate, but the shotgun was loaded with buckshot.

She pulled the trigger and fired a spread.

Arty screamed, his legs collapsing beneath him as he slammed down to the earth.

Mallory shrieked.

“
Arty!
”

MALLORY SCREAMED.

Milton crashed out of the chokeberry, put his head down, and pounded the ground. There were twenty feet that separated him and the woman with the smoking shotgun, and she was facing Arty, a quarter turn away from him.

She hadn’t seen him.

He sprinted, his muscles burning and adrenaline surging through his veins.

Callow saw him and shouted a warning.

The woman started to turn, her attention straying away from Ellie and Mallory for a moment.

Long enough.

Mallory bounded to her feet. She had a rock in her hand.

Callow made a move on Milton, trying to block him.

The woman turned back, too late, and saw Mallory.

Milton lowered his shoulder and barrelled into Callow, wrapping his arms around his waist and picking him up, driving him backwards, slamming him into the barn wall.

Mallory swung her arm, the stone clasped in her fist, the impact thumping into the woman’s temple, dropping her backwards.

Callow grabbed Milton’s shoulder, trying to draw him down onto the ground with him, trying to hold him there. The young man was strong.

The woman dropped the shotgun. It landed at Mallory’s feet.

Milton raked Callow’s eyes. The younger man gasped with pain, but held on. Milton butted him, then prised his fingers open. He leaned away just far enough to strike down with his right hand, putting his shoulder into it, trying to punch straight through his head into the muck beneath him. Callow groaned, and his eyes rolled back into his head.

Mallory stooped to collect the shotgun.

Milton scrambled up, his fist tingling.

The woman was on her hands and knees. Blood was running freely down her temple.

Mallory aimed the shotgun at her.

“No, Mallory,” Milton said. “Give it to me.”

Mallory shook her head.

The gun looked too big for her, almost too big for her to hold the fore-end with her left hand at the same time as the index finger of her right hand was up against the trigger.

“
Mallory
.”

Milton saw the emotion in her eyes: fear and anger. He recognised it. Knew how powerful it could be. He had tapped the same combination many times before.

“Mallory, please. You don’t have to do that.”

She shook her head. “I do.”

“It won’t make you feel any better.”

“Ellie,” Mallory said, “is Arty all right?”

Ellie hurried across to where the boy was thrashing on the ground, his hand pressed against his thigh.

The woman moaned, put her hand to her temple, drew it back, and looked at her bloody fingers.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Ellie said. “Flesh wound.”

“Look at me,” Mallory said to the woman. Her voice was cool and drawn.

“
Mallory
.” Milton took a step closer to her and extended his hand, palm out, ready to take the gun from her. “You’ll hate yourself forever. Trust me.”

“Listen to your friend,” the woman said. Her voice was dazed, but there was scorn in it.

“I don’t think so.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot me.”

“No?”

“What’s her name?” Milton said.

“Magrethe Olsen,” Ellie said.

“That’s right, and you killed my son. You are going to burn in eternal hellfire for what you’ve done.”

Milton really couldn’t disagree with that. “You need to shut your mouth.”

She cackled. “Eternal damnation, that’s what you’ve got coming to you.”

Mallory took a step back so that she could cover her properly with the spread.

Magrethe shook her head, ridding herself of the cobwebs. “I knew your daddy, girl. You know that?”

Mallory did not reply. She bit the corner of her lip instead.

“That’s right. I did. Before he went off the rails. He was a good man. I’d say he got dealt a shitty hand in life, I’m thinking about your mother and your brother being born the way he was, retarded and all—”

“Don’t say that,” she cut across her.

She carried on, “But all things considered, your old man was a stand-up fellow. I was older than he was, a few years, who’s counting, but we knew each other like everyone knows everyone else in this town. And I’ll tell you something, Mallory, he’d be proud of how you’ve turned out.”

Magrethe struggled up onto unsteady feet. “I’ll tell you something else, Mallory.”

“Mallory,” Milton said, “give it to me.”

“He would’ve been proud of how you’ve looked after your brother. A retard, I mean, that’s not—”

Mallory’s eyes opened wide at that, and she said, in a voice that should not have been misunderstood, “I told you, don’t call him that.”