Blessed Child (50 page)

The Israeli manufactured .308 with its gas-operated blowback recoil system was his workhorse. He could pick the kid off from here if he had the line of sight, and that was with the silencer.

A father and his kid ran by three cars over, jabbering excitedly. If they'd seen him, they showed no sign of it.

Banks pulled out a dark brown trench coat and slid into it. He glanced to either side, saw that he was alone between the cars, and eased the rifle under the coat. Quickly he strapped it in place, using a wide strip of Velcro that fed under the scope and around his waist. The barrel poked at his armpit. Good enough.

Banks closed the trunk and strode toward the side of the stadium, joining the streams of people hurrying to the entrances like ants scurrying for the nest. Horns still blared from a thousand cars that lined the surrounding streets waiting to squeeze in for the show.

Good enough. He was going to steal the show.

39

T
HE STADIUM FILLED TO HALF
of its 102,000-seat capacity within the first fifteen minutes before the general clogging of main arteries around the facility slowed the influx. A dozen news crews had now set up remote cameras facing the makeshift stage on the north end. A green artificial turf covered the plywood, and on the turf was a stand with twenty microphones strapped together with duct tape. The contraption reminded Jason of one of those porcupine-looking land mines.

They stood off the stage with little to say. It had all happened so quickly, the flight into the hills, the opening of the heavens, and now this show thrown together by Donna. His mind was still buzzing.

“I feel like I'm floating on a cloud,” he said.

“You feel it?” Caleb asked.

“I feel something.”

“I feel it too,” Leiah said. “It's like the air is thick with something. Not just the excitement.”

Caleb looked up at Jason with his impossibly round aqua eyes, smiling. His hair was still disheveled from two nights in the shack. Leiah had insisted they stop at a trinket shop on their way in; they couldn't walk around in clothes smeared with blood from Caleb's wound and enough dirt to start a city garden. The weather was a tad cold for the Magic Mountain T-shirts she'd bought them, but at least they were clean. It was the first time in seven years she had worn short sleeves, and she seemed decidedly content baring her arms.

Caleb's shirt was at least a size too big. “Are you feeling like you did in the field?” he asked.

“Yeah, sort of.”

“The Spirit of God,” the boy said. “Maybe something's going to happen.”

In all honesty, Jason felt oddly out of place standing here while the throngs funneled in. As if he were the stranger here, an alien on show. It was Caleb they had come to see, and he could hardly blame them for that. But he had a part to play as well. It looked as though the boy was mistaken when he'd suggested one of them might die soon. That was good.

The unfolding scene before them felt small and inconsequential to Jason, as if it were just another game to be played, this time in this massive stadium. The real thing had happened in the hills. There the worlds had collided and revealed their real power. Thinking on it, a small chill spread down his spine.
Dear God, I love you dearly. You are my king.

A quiver ran through his bones.

“You okay?” Leiah asked. Her eyes sparkled. “You've been smiling here for the past ten minutes and I think the cameras are going to wonder if you've lost your mind.” She grinned.

“I'm fine.” He kissed her forehead. “I think I'm in love.”

“I know what you mean. Me too.”

He wasn't positive if she meant him or the Father. Maybe both, like him. It didn't matter; they were bound together.

Donna approached them. “Okay, I think now would be a good time. Can you talk to the people, Caleb?”

“It isn't full,” Jason said.

“It will be in a few minutes. Either way our audience is staring at us through those cameras out there. We're live in fifty-two countries. By the studio's estimates, we now have the largest audience that's ever witnessed a single event live. Over three hundred million people are staring at us right now.” She flashed a deliberate grin with her back to the camera.

“Like I said, now would be a good time to do something. Besides, I understand Nikolous will be here any second. We don't need him calling a halt to all this.”

The numbers seemed empty to Jason. The thought of Nikolous storming in felt trivial. Small. That in itself was strange. Maybe Caleb was right; maybe something was about to happen.

“Okay, Caleb,” he said. “The world awaits. Go up there and tell them how it is.”

The boy paused and looked from Jason to Leiah, and then back. He seemed thrilled with them. He reached both arms up to them, inviting an embrace. Jason glanced at Leiah, and they both bent and hugged the boy.

“I'm very happy,” he said.

“We're happy too,” Leiah said, hugging him tight. “Thank you.”

He released them and drilled them with a stare. “Thank you.”

It wasn't until Caleb had mounted the stage that the tone of Caleb's words struck Jason. They felt like a salutation.

Donna ran toward Bill. “We're on!”

The boy walked toward the microphone, and some people at field level began to shout for everyone to shut up. The word spread like wildfire. The boy was taking the stage.

By the time Caleb stopped in front of the wad of mikes, a deafening hush had engulfed the stadium. Only the background symphony of horns, honking in the distance, and the steady backbeat of a chopper's blades sounded high above.

Caleb stood in his large T-shirt and leaned up to the microphones.

“Hello.”

The word reverberated loudly. Too loudly. He pulled back and grinned, amused. He glanced over at Jason and Leiah and tried again.

“Hello.” This time they had turned him down.

“My name is Caleb.”

A young woman in a front-row seat to their left stood, lifted her arms high, and yelled her approval. “Yeaaaa, Caleb! Yeaaaa, Caleb!”

Hundreds rose to their feet around her and joined in her cry. Within seconds the entire place was on its feet, thundering its approval with yells and whistles. Caleb said something into the mike, but it was lost to the roar. The air shook under the power of eighty thousand voices screaming at full volume.

Caleb blinked and stepped back from the mike. It was hard to imagine that a short five weeks ago the small boy they cheered had huddled under his tunic in the back of Jason's bouncing Jeep. Hard to imagine that so many people would drop what they were doing to rush here on the news that Caleb was alive. But then the boy had walked onto the horizon of their worlds and changed everything, hadn't he? They might follow him over a cliff.

A dozen people who evidently fancied themselves as leaders ran onto the field and waved the crowd to silence itself. It took a good thirty seconds, but the din slowly died, to the yelling of a bare-chested man in jeans and long hair who was especially enthusiastic about their quieting.

The boy glanced over at Jason, his smile now gone. Jason nodded encouragement, and Caleb stepped back up to the mike.

“I'm just a boy,” he said. “It's frightening to hear all this noise. You should be praising God, not me.”

He paused. The hush felt unearthly.

“Because you know that everything you've seen comes from God. All the good things, anyway. Dadda told me that we shouldn't look for the praise of men.”

Caleb glanced to the side, and Jason's heart swelled. The boy was speaking like the young educated man he was. It was amazing how his extensive book learning of English had steadily translated to speech over the last month.
You tell them, Caleb
.

The boy faced the mike again. “I'm not a magician. I know that some people think I am, but I'm not. And the power you've seen isn't from my mind like some of you think, either. It's not from me at all. It's from God.”

For a boy who had spoken very little publicly in the five weeks he had been in America, he was now forthcoming, gaining confidence with each word, it seemed.

“And when I told you that Jesus Christ is the only power behind what you've seen, it's not because I don't know better. I know Christ because he's saved me. I think I understand sin pretty good now and it isn't very nice. I walk in Jesus' kingdom, the kingdom of God. He is God. The only God.”

You could almost hear the swallowing of tongues across the world. The boy's words defied the beliefs of well over half of those watching. But he wasn't finished.

“Some of you believe in stone gods. Some of you worship prophets. I don't understand all your fancy words, but I do know God, and I can tell you that he's only one. He's not Buddha, he's not Mohammed, and he's not man. He's Jesus Christ, and he has made a path to God. To the kingdom of God.”

A roar broke out spontaneously. The Christians couldn't contain themselves, and neither could Jason. The stadium shook, and Jason realized that his own voice was among those that made it shake. It hardly mattered that half of those in attendance only stared at the boy with round eyes, shocked at his words. The pronouncement of truth from the rest triumphed, and soon others were joining in. From where he was standing, Jason could actually see the mikes vibrating with the thundering cry.

“And some of you who call yourself Christians . . .”

Jason saw that the stadium was now overflowing. Nikolous had arrived. He stood at the side entrance wide-eyed. The bare-chested man in jeans was running out in the field, vigorously waving the crowd quiet again. The cheers fell off.

“And some of you who call yourself Christians need to learn how to
walk
in the kingdom of God, not just sleep there,” Caleb said. “Dadda told me that just because you are born into a palace doesn't mean that you know how to rule. You are children who are blind to the power of God's Spirit. I think you might still be babies in the palace. Maybe you are still playing with mud pies.”

Jason laughed loudly enough in the silence to warrant the swing of a few cameras his way. He jerked at Leiah's elbow in his side and swallowed his laughter. But she was chuckling under her breath. Dr. Thompson's words were not lost on the boy.

Caleb looked their way and grinned. “Jason and Leiah have walked in the kingdom. If they can, anybody can, because I think they once hated God.”

What a strange, wonderful way to put it,
Jason thought. He dipped his head and smiled. Several cameras swept his way again. Jason expected Caleb to turn back to the mike and continue.

But he didn't.

He just stared at them. “That is all I have to say,” he said. The smile slowly faded from his face. The crowd stood rooted in silence.

A wave of heat crashed over Jason's head and rushed down his back. The air felt awkwardly heavy. He and Caleb froze like that, staring at each other, somehow trapped in time, oddly expectant.

When Caleb's head moved, it seemed to do so in slow motion. It went backward, still staring at him. The boy's arms still hung loosely at his sides, but his head was now bent back at a right angle. A red mist sprayed through the air behind him. His eyes closed and Jason wondered why. Silence swept through the stadium.

For an endless moment Caleb stood like that, with his head bent back impossibly and his eyes closed to the world. And then his legs suddenly buckled. His body crumpled backward and landed on the plywood with a loud thump.

A great white ball of heat exploded in Jason's mind. That was a bullet that smashed through his little head! Caleb had been shot!

Then he thought,
I've been shot too
.

Banks would have pulled the trigger a second time if it hadn't been for the kid's weird performance at the end. He'd just stood there, and Banks couldn't help thinking that the kid wanted him to shoot.

He leaned against the railing above the press boxes and kept the cross hairs on the boy's temple for five seconds before squeezing his right forefinger. It had been perfect. No report, no flash, just a spit, and the kid was dead on his feet. Banks kept the scope on the boy for three full seconds before it crumpled. The body didn't move. He was dead for sure this time.

And what if they don't pay, huh? Huh, huh, huh?

He hesitated one more second knowing he should've taken out the other two by now. Jason stood stage left, gawking.

Suddenly Banks was running out of time. The sound of a chopper's blades beat through the air high above. That would be the police, and they would know by now. Banks spun the rifle toward the woman, but she was running for the boy already. His time was running out; the stadium was in an uproar.

Banks stood abruptly, shoved the rifle under his trench coat, strapped it in, and ran for the back wall. If Crandal didn't pay, he would pop him, that was for sure. It had taken him twenty minutes to climb up here. It would take him no more than two to descend.

He was unstoppable. Good enough. When he said he would make someone dead, they were dead. At least the boy was—he'd never really agreed to take out the two adults anyway. One point two was nothing. And if it really was nothing—if they changed the rules on him—he had himself a new hunt.

Pop, pop
. Good enough.

It took a full three seconds for Jason to realize that he wasn't dead. His head felt as though it had imploded, from shock maybe, but not from a bullet. Caleb—that was a different story.

Cries of shock and unbelief began to build into a sea of confusion. Leiah had already rushed out and fallen to her knees by the boy's body. He thought she might be wailing in horror, but he couldn't be sure because the whole stadium sounded like a warbly siren gone berserk.

The full realization of what had really happened hit Jason then, and he suddenly sucked at the air as if gut-punched.