Chosen (21 page)

Agent John Isaacson was a chameleon, able to penetrate an organization and take on not only the desired characteristics of the group, but also its spirit and soul. Spotting the mark, he would analyze their weaknesses then whisper words of sedition in their ear, encouraging it with their favorite stimulant. He was chosen by Winters for this assignment because Isaacson’s talents had led to the collapse of thriving illegal empires on several occasions.

His first evening at a TAOC meeting, Isaacson knew Damion Lazote was the perfect choice. It took him three weeks to cozy up to the mark due to Lazote’s overblown mistrust of people, especially anyone new. Isaacson, dressed in black, drank Lazote’s favorite drink—tequila and vodka—and completely ignored the man until they ‘accidentally’ bumped into each other. He acted just as shocked as Lazote when they discovered they had a lot in common.

It took Isaacson one more week to convince Damion that Mariah Carpenter was the Antichrist. He knew he had made the right choice by the light of righteous fanaticism that lit Damion Lazote’s eyes.

Gabriel Winters’ plan was nearly flawless. It would have been a complete success if two salient details had come up in Lazote’s background check. The first was Damion’s love of handguns.

He messaged Hoppe’s Elite Gun Oil into the barrel of the gun with an expensive cotton cloth sterilized in boiling water. Slamming the loaded clip into the grip was nearly orgasmic for Lazote. He read just about everything the public library had on handguns, but he never subscribed to junk magazines like
Soldier of Fortune
(the investigation into his background would have turned that up) because to him, his gun was a sacred object and certainly not for hire. If the CIA had uncovered this adoration of firearms, they would have known that Lazote would automatically check the chamber of a gun he had not personally loaded, and realize it held blanks.

The CIA would pay dearly for that blunder. It would be compounded by a second unknown detail.

When Isaacson singled him out for attention, Damion Lazote was automatically suspicious. A loner all his life, so peculiar that even the kids in grade school had given him a wide berth, his paranoia was ingrained into every fiber of his essence.

There was that one boy in the fourth grade who thought he could bully Damion by enlisting the help of his older brother. The bully, accompanied by two of his cronies, had cornered young Damion on his way home from school, with the idea of breaking the little dweeb’s nose. But when the antagonist had looked into Damion’s “wolf eyes” (so called because the whites of the eyeball was completely visible around the iris), he did nothing more than slap the books out of the boy’s hands and run off with his friends.

Lazote remembered them all; the ones who knocked him down, the ones who mocked him, the ones who spat in his face.

His favorite movies featured Charlie Chan because the character’s face was described as “inscrutable.” He liked the sound of the word, so he looked it up in the dictionary. He liked the definition even more than the sound:
Impenetrable
. A dandy word.

Deciding he needed a motto—“Always Inscrutable”—Damion practiced before the bathroom mirror until he was able to hold a stare without blinking for a minimum of a minute. Armed with this weapon, he faced down his tormentors and earned the nicknames “Creepazoid” and “Scary-Hairy,” and even “The Possessed One.” He loved them all. It made everyone uneasy around him, scared by what they could only imagine he could do.

When he was old enough to buy his own clothes, he dressed in black pants, black turtleneck sweaters or black shirts with long sleeves, the collars buttoned up to the neck even in the summer. Only his hands and face were exposed, and for good reason.

With a sharp pin he sterilized in hydrogen peroxide, Damion etched crosses, crowns of thorns, and other symbols of Christ on every part of his body he could reach, sealing each new mutilation with a wad of tissues soaked in alcohol. The pain was exquisite, his attempt to purge the original sin from his soul. He dyed his stringy, light brown hair black; it hung over his ears and straight across his brow. With his pale face that never spent time in the sun, and his deep-set wolf eyes that made him look unstable, he was a man people instinctively avoided.

The stupid bastard
, Damion mused as he stared at the small pistol in his hand.
He’s too dumb to know you can’t kill the Antichrist with such a small caliber
. The new guy had tried to get chummy with him, had talked to Damion like he actually cared to be his friend. But before Damion could tell him to get lost, the creep gave him something to think about.

Lazote had seen the Tom Brokaw special and was fascinated by the
Finding
. The interview with Oprah Winfrey just strengthened his opinion of Ms. Mariah Carpenter. He sensed her compassion was genuine, and was sure she would never treat him like a pariah. He, like millions of others, hoped to meet her someday, if only to stand in the presence of one so honored by God.

But this new guy had a point. The bible said that the Antichrist would be a charismatic individual in his thirties whose appearance would be sudden and dramatic. Miracles attributed to him would come from fantastic powers bestowed not by God but by Satan himself.

And he would be a Jew
.

So what if all the documents said “he”? It
could
be a woman. The False Prophet could be anyone Satan wanted it to be. There were other details (like it residing in Israel, proclaiming itself to be God, and demanding to be worshipped) but maybe Lazote had gotten the drop on the Beast before it (
she
?) had a chance to fulfill the prophecy of annihilation and destruction.

And here was the world in chaos and despair, and here was this woman. She was the right age, had become a celebrity overnight by using psychic powers to find kidnapped children ... surely a miracle. Damion spent several sleepless nights as he pondered the merits of what Isaacson said.

One week after he began this mental gymnastics, he was convinced Isaacson was right. However, the dimwit had given him nothing more than a toy gun. Isaacson was clueless if he thought the Antichrist could be destroyed with such an insignificant weapon that had no firepower. He accepted it with the proper thanks and tossed it into a dumpster on his way home. Damion knew the weapon necessary to cut down the Antichrist had to be special, cleansed in holy water sanctified by the church.

Damion Lazote was ecstatic about performing this service to God. He would assassinate the Beast without anyone’s help, reaping all the glory on Judgment Day that would be his when it died.

The medicine cabinet in his bathroom held very little. Lazote believe chemicals corrupted the body. It did, however, contain a glass vial with a cork stopper that he had found in a “Nothing Over 99¢” store, nestled in the folds of a cotton cloth. He slid the cloth with the vial onto his palm and held it up to the overhead light. His look of delight dimmed slightly.

Three days ago Damion had gone to St Catherine’s, the Catholic Church located several blocks from his apartment. Relieved that the doors to the sanctuary were closed, he approached the font of holy water in the lobby. Looking furtively around to make sure he was alone, he took the vial from his jacket pocket, removed the cork, and dipped it into the water. Once it was full, he replaced the cork and shoved the wet tube back into his pocket. Trotting back to his apartment, he wondered if he had contaminated the holy water with his unblessed vial. No matter; the priests blessed the water in the font every day anyway, what with dirty people dipping their filthy hands into it all the time.

The vial had been full; however, through evaporation, a bit of the water was gone. Shrugging, he brought the cloth to the kitchen table. No matter. He would have enough for the seven applications necessary. Retrieving a black plastic tool case from the bottom drawer of a three-drawer chest, he deposited it on the kitchen table next to the vial.

In his bedroom, Lazote opened the closet door, pulled the cord that turned on the naked light bulb, and pushed his meager assortment of black clothes all the way over to the right. On hands and knees, he scooted into the space left vacant by the clothes then crossed his legs and leaned against the back wall. Hooking his fingers under the freshly painted molding at his feet, he slid it a quarter of an inch up the wall, enough for the piece of wood behind it to fall forward and rest against his shins.

Damion reached into the space behind the board, a smile of erotic pleasure thinning his lips as is hand closed around a velvet bag ... and the hard metal object inside. Easing it out, he pushed the board off his shins and slid the molding down which caught the top of the board and kept it in place. With the velvet-wrapped object clutched to his chest, he crawled out of the closet.

He placed the velvet pouch next to the glass vial on the kitchen table. Reaching under the table with both hands, he felt along the underside until he touched the article he sought. When he peeled back the masking tape that kept the object secure, it dropped into his hand.

Lazote stared at the syringe he’d found in an alley one night on his way home from a TAOC meeting. After soaking it in alcohol and washing it in hot soapy water, he had laid it back in the alcohol just to make sure all the germs were killed. He was confident it was sterile. Lazote’s grandiose paranoia led him to tape it to the bottom of the kitchen table just in case the cops ever raided his place looking for drugs.

Damion opened the drawstrings of the velvet bag and reached inside, removing the love of his life: Grandad’s old 1916 Colt .45, M1911A1 semiautomatic pistol.

The barrel gleamed in the overhead light, so shiny that Damion could see his reflection. The stock was hand-made mother of pearl, the swirl in the pattern as familiar to him as the tattoos scratched into his skin. Reverently he traced the slight indentations. The sensuous experience caused his heartbeat to quicken and his penis to harden. It was so beautiful, this gun, this “hand cannon” as his Grandad had called it. He removed the clip and laid it and the gun down then reached into the velvet bag once more for the smaller pouch also made of velvet.

Over his mother’s protests, Grandad had taught Damion to shoot. Grandad loved him, had taught him lots of things. At thirteen, Damion was left more withdrawn than ever when the only person in his life who truly loved him died of a stroke.

Damion Lazote was a dead shot. He might be puny, but he could hold the Colt as steady as a diamond cutter with a diamante. And now it was time to make Grandad proud and prove to everyone that he wasn’t useless.

Withdrawing a match from its box, Damion struck it against the sandpaper on the box’s side. When the flame ignited, he held it to the wick of the black candle which sat in a dish on his table. Satisfied that the wick had caught, he opened the small velvet pouch, retrieving the plastic tool case and the jeweler’s drill which he plugged into the wall outlet on the baseboard.

Inside the case were four delicate drill bits. Lazote chose the second smallest and pushed it into the drill head until he heard the
snick
that announced it was secured.

Picking up one of the 185gr silver-tipped, hollow-point Winchester bullets, he carefully placed the drill bit against the tip’s indentation. With a prayer to God, he hit the “On” button and the little drill spun rapidly. The
screeeee
! made him wince as it bit into the steel of the shell.

When Damion felt the bit had made a deep enough hole, he blew on the hot shell case until all the metal particles were gone, then repeated the procedure with the remaining six cartridges. He knew he would not need all seven shots; however, the ritual must be complete.

Damion arranged the cotton cloth so the vial would stand upright. Removing its cork stopper, he picked up the syringe with his left hand, depressed the plunger with his right, and stuck the tip of the syringe into the vial until it almost hit the bottom. Then slowly, he pulled the plunger up.

When all the liquid was in the syringe, he grabbed the first bullet. Placing the tip of the syringe into the hole made by the drill, he applied slight pressure on the plunger. When he deemed the hole was filled, he stopped. Without taking his eyes off the bullet, he put the syringe down and dipped his finger into the hot black wax which had pooled on the bottom of the plate, enjoying the momentary burning sensation. Before it had a chance to harden, he placed his waxy finger over the hole in the bullet and held it there for several seconds. When he removed his finger, he patted the cooled wax securely into the tiny hole then removed the excess. Just to make sure, he tipped the bullet upside down. No liquid spilled out.

Damion completed the procedure with the remaining bullets then loaded them into the clip. He hefted the .45, pulled the slide back, and slammed the clip into the grip. The tiny bit of holy water that remained in the syringe was used to wet the slide and hammer. He set the gun on the table, once again stroking the mother of pearl.

When Damion was ready to fire, the single-action, semi-automatic pistol would be in
Condition
1
—cocked and locked: a round chambered, the other six in the magazine, the hammer fully cocked, and the thumb safety on. Since he was right-handed, he could release the safety with his thumb while pointing the Colt as the Antichrist’s black heart.

Next Sunday morning Mariah Carpenter would be in God’s house, singing His praises with its serpent’s tongue. She would never survive the combination of gunpowder and holy water tearing into her vital organs delivered by the hand canon. God, with the help of Damion Lazote, would prevail.

For six days a week, Gregory Braeden Sinclair was tortured by ear-splitting horns, raucous music, screeching children, roaring animals, and shouting vendors. Surrounded by chaos, nauseous smells, and unwashed bodies, he was certain that he resided, if not directly in it, then in the suburbs of Hell. Forced to wear clothes in garish, neon colors, his hair plastered with gobs of acrylic paint, he held onto his sanity with a simple song that he hummed in his head, and when alone, out loud. Without it, Gregory felt he would slip over the abyss into madness.

Nevertheless, there was a purpose to this freakish lunacy. The idiotic smile painted on his face was no more incongruent than the insincere one on his lips. He sought the anonymity of this farce, this nightmare which gave him the ability to seek the ones who had destroyed his life of quiet dignity, an adoring wife, and well-behaved children who flourished under the tutelage of respect, gentility, and his vision for their future. The life where an elite society rewarded its respected members with honors, monetary gains, and distance from those to which he was now forced to perform.

They
had taken this from him.
They
had destroyed his idyllic life, his perfect family, his nirvana. And he would make them pay.

The song sustained him as spotlights blinded him and the rabble chanted his name:

Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head,

And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed.

Nothin’ seems to fit,

Those raindrops are fallin’ on my head, they keep fallin’
.....