Fuse of Armageddon (3 page)

“How will it change?”

“Not knowing is your protection. You have seen enough tonight to know there are others like you, dedicated to saving Western civilization, all with enough power and connections to make it happen.”

Another pause from beneath the veil. “You’re a devout evangelical. You believe Armageddon is almost upon the world. Perhaps this is God’s destiny for you.”

“If I say yes?” Underwood leaned back, his hands behind his head.

“I ask you to send something. By Internet. Something that proves you are willing to be part of this. I’ll ask for more as required.”

Underwood gave it more thought. Entering the service, he’d sworn not to betray his country. While his beliefs put God ahead of his country, was this a time and place to put God ahead of that oath? Had he been asked to worship a beast? ordered to do something morally wrong that would justify turning his back on the military he’d served his entire life?

Underwood made his decision. “No. Flawed as our system is, and much as I hate liberals, it’s democracy that makes America great. I won’t support any form of anarchy against it.”

“No? Remember your faith. God blesses those who bless Israel. The swamp must be drained.”

“No.” Underwood was military, not covert ops. “God doesn’t fight His battles like a terrorist. He doesn’t need to.”

The veiled man snapped the laptop shut. “I won’t embarrass you by trying to convince you otherwise. You are a strong-willed man.” He stood and moved away from the dining table, leaving the laptop in place.

“You are a man of honor. Too few men are willing to take a stand and speak their minds.” He pulled off his veil and gave Underwood a genuine smile. “I owe you this at least.”

“I know you,” Underwood said, staring into the face above him. He was too surprised to consider the significance of the removed veil. “I met you once. Arafat was there too.”

“You impressed me then,” the visitor said. His English accent had disappeared. “You impress me now.” Smith extended his hand.

Underwood stood, leaving the gun at the table. He accepted the handshake, then winced at the man’s firm grip and a stab of pain. Underwood pulled his hand away and stared at it. Blood dribbled from a small puncture wound.

He looked back at his visitor.

“Old spy trick, General,” Smith said. He opened his hand, revealing his palm and the ring with a small spike, gleaming with a trace of blood that looked black in the light of the lantern. “Take my advice. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

Underwood felt numbness going up his right arm. “What—?“

“You’ve had a couple of close military friends die of heart attacks in the last month, haven’t you?” The visitor smiled grimly. “It wasn’t coincidence.”

“You’re telling me that you met with them, too?”

“I’m sorry, General. We can’t take the chance that you’ll tell someone about the offer you refused. The paralysis acts quickly. Don’t fight it. In about thirty seconds, your diaphragm will begin to freeze. Suffocation will not be pleasant, but you will have enough time to pray and put your soul in order.”

His visitor guided him to the couch at the side of the cabin. Barely able to walk, Underwood was powerless to shake off the visitor’s help.

“I . . . trusted . . .”

“The stakes are too high. The friend you trusted with your life knows that. He thought that you could be recruited but was prepared to risk that he was wrong. He believes, as I do, that sacrifices have to be made now if the war is to be won later.”

Smith settled Underwood against the back of the couch.

“An . . . autopsy . . .” It was a struggle to speak. Underwood felt as though a giant hand had gripped his chest.

“Will point to murder? I’m afraid not. You have no idea of the power and reach involved here.”

“This . . . is . . . unbelievable.” Underwood’s eyelids fluttered.

“Our crusaders will get help one way or another.” The visitor shook his head, as if chastising a child. “It could have been you. Blessed, not cursed.”

1

Dawson County, Georgia • 14:32 Greenwich Mean Time


The resurrection of Private First Class Joe Patterson took place twelve months after he had been secretly recruited into the Freedom Crusaders. It was a resurrection six nights after his death, three hours after the sun had cleared the top of the single pine tree visible from the kitchen of the double-wide that had been his home in Dawson County, Georgia, before he’d shipped out to Afghanistan.

Six days before this resurrection, his wife, Sarah, had joined the ranks of military widowhood by stepping away from an episode of
Oprah
inside the living room of the trailer to open the screen door to bright sunshine and two men in U.S. Army uniforms, each with hands clasped in front, one of them with chaplain insignia pinned to his collar.

Wives of men in uniform visualize this moment again and again during the months of service, but no amount of dread and rehearsing is preparation for the actual impact. Sarah had collapsed sobbing before the first man delivered his news with measured sympathy; she could not remember a single word the chaplain had offered as a flimsy comfort to the grief that tore her apart—tore her with the same force Joe had endured in the final milliseconds of his life after his convoy truck triggered a C-4 land mine somewhere north of Kabul.

Now, some six days and sixteen hours later, only prescribed pharmaceutical help allowed her any sleep, which was why she’d been standing at the kitchen sink in a daze when the phone rang. She had no recollection of how long she’d been staring out the window at the blue sky with a full glass of water in one hand and a pill in the other, desperate to catch some sleep, even if it was morning, worrying about whether the doctor had been right when he’d promised the pill wouldn’t harm the baby swelling her womb.

When the phone rang, tears had been running down her face as she thought about what it would have been like to tell Joe that she’d felt the first kicks of the baby. When the phone rang, she didn’t fear that a call at this hour was to deliver bad news. Not anymore.

Still, she set the glass down and headed toward the phone with uncertainty. Not uncertainty caused by the hour of the call, but the uncertainty that had tinged every step and action she’d taken since learning of Joe’s death six days before, as if gravity had ceased to exist while those two men in uniform stood on her doorstep to tell her about Joe, and she kept expecting gravity to disappear again without any warning.

It took three rings for her to cross the tiny kitchen and fumble for the phone. The digital numbers glowing from the microwave read 9:32. Since Joe had been shipped, it had been her habit to convert time here in Georgia to time there because it made her feel closer to Joe, which put the time at 6:02 p.m. in Afghanistan.

She lifted the phone.

“Hello.” Her voice was as dull as her hair. She’d been wearing the same pajamas for days and hadn’t looked in a mirror for even longer.

The hiss she heard was the uncertain connection from a satellite phone nine and a half time zones removed from the double-wide. From Khodaydad Kalay, Afghanistan—something that she would learn almost immediately into the phone call.

“Hello,” she repeated, hearing a faint bounce back of her voice.

Then they came. The words that marked the resurrection of Private First Class Joe Patterson.

“Babe. It’s me. I’ve got one minute. Swear on your mama’s grave that you won’t tell anyone about this call.”

Hoover Dam, Nevada • 14:32 GMT


Of anything—blood, smell, bloating, dismemberment—Kate Penner hated flies the most. Thing was, all the other stuff didn’t actually touch you. Sure, at times the sight or smell of a dead body seemed to cling, but it never actually transferred. Flies, on the other hand, could move from the dead and land on the living. Kate hated flies.

Her flashlight beam hit the dead man hanging upside down in the back of a cube van, the sudden light knocking loose a dozen flies from a thick coating of dried blood on the man’s face.

Kate grimaced.

Kate’s face was wider at the cheekbones than conventional beauty allowed. Her nose had been broken when another cop with bad aim swung a nightstick at a drunk she was wrestling, and it hadn’t quite healed straight, which gave her a certain allure that was more trouble than it was worth. She had great hair, reddish brown with gentle waves down to her shoulders, and knew how great it was, but because of this knowledge, she ignored the hair except to tie it in a ponytail. It was the same philosophy that caused her to use makeup sparingly—bad enough being a woman on the force; she didn’t need extra trouble. Especially since the last time she’d taken pains to look good, it had resulted in attracting a man she thought worth marrying. And she had, though it didn’t work from day one and ended the day she came home to find him with a yoga instructor learning . . . well, it wasn’t the kind of yoga taught in classroom situations.

Her green eyes fooled people into believing she was nicer than she was, and Kate liked this. She liked setting them straight. When she grimaced, as she was doing at the flies, it was more than a good hint that maybe she wasn’t simply an accessory for a social evening.

“We’re close enough,” she told her partner, Frank Vetter, flicking the beam down at the pavement. She couldn’t see anything to avoid stepping on, but you never knew. Not these days, when CSI could use a strand of hair to put someone on death row. The last thing Kate and Frank wanted—or needed—was grief about disturbing the crime scene. And it was undoubtedly that.

A crime. And a scene. Kate checked her watch. Six thirty-three.

She flicked her flashlight back to the dead man. What Kate could see of the man’s face showed Middle Eastern descent. But there was so much blood it was hard to be sure. How could any body have ever held so much? It began somewhere in the middle of the man’s shirt, soaking it so completely that the patterns of the fabric were no longer patterns. The blood covered the man’s chest and neck and had pooled beneath his head, which hung only inches off the deck of the van. All the blood was dry, but that didn’t tell Kate much. This was the desert. Anything liquid dried in a hurry.

Frank stood beside Kate. He held a flashlight too, but with sunrise twenty minutes away, he didn’t need it anymore unless he wanted to add another beam to the darkness inside the van. He’d been a cop as long as Kate—just over ten years each. He, however, was a Dunkin’ Donuts cop, happy putting in his time. Kate didn’t mind—fewer leadership issues that way. Some of her former partners had struggled with the concept of independent-minded women.

“We’ll need the crime scene unit,” Kate said. She was an excellent detective with dogged ability that could have put her at the head of the homicide unit. But she didn’t like the price that would come with a position like that—paying as much attention to department politics as to good investigating. She’d get the promotion she deserved only when the current chief forgot about how she’d mashed his head into the bottom of a punch bowl for slapping her backside at the last Christmas party. Which, of course, meant never. He’d been drunk enough to forget about political correctness and make the grab but sober enough to recall the humiliation of the cherry jammed in his left nostril when he came up for air, spouting like a whale. She should have filed a grievance for where he’d put his hand, but that would have meant politics too.