NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (13 page)

“Send your men in, colonel. The siege is over.”

“The martyr count has now risen to ten,” DeShaun said as he looked around him.

•  •  •

On the east side of the park, Ithurial Finis made invisible his hiding place in a hand-dug cave on the river side of an ancient Indian burial mound, arranging leaves and branches in their natural patterns around it. He covered the opening to his dugout with a camouflaged lid. There he remained, nestled like a worm in a cocoon, until well after midnight when the search for him had moved miles downstream. When he thought the time was right, he inflated the flotation device he had stored in his cave days before, waded into the Tennessee River and kicked his way slowly, noiselessly, to the north bank. In ten minutes, he made his way to his vehicle, dressed his shoulder wound with his emergency supplies, donned fresh street clothes and made off into the night.

THE NEWS OF
the deaths of the entire CM contingent at Shiloh hit the world like an atomic explosion. Within minutes of the first reports, Flash Greenwald was on the air with a special report via a secure radio hookup.

“Today, ladies and gentlemen, the feds have executed ten true heroes, men who had the audacity to speak out against a corrupt regime, to lay their lives on the line for the values that made what used to be our country great. They came in peace and left in body bags,” he said as he broadcast a carefully rehearsed version of the events.

•  •  •

Bass Whitfield met with Ert, Leadoff, Link Jefferson and Sherman Aloyius in the White House as they received a full briefing from the colonel in charge of the federal troops and Brother Billy.

“We have to get out in front of this deal now,” he said to the people on the conference call. “Billy, I want you on every network telling people how this thing came down. Our greatest weapon is the truth. We can’t hide the ball on this one.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Billy said.

“Colonel, I want autopsies on all these men performed immediately, and I want the results made public. Get the best medical examiners in the country. I don’t want anyone saying my administration left a stone un-turned in the investigation,” he said.

“We will get them here tonight, Mr. President,” the colonel said.

When he hung up from the call, Bass rested his face in his hands on the desk in the Oval Office for a minute, while the others in the room stood without speaking, looking at the floor.

Sherman Aloysius broke the silence.

“Mr. President, CM has now demonstrated that it will go to any ends, including the sacrifice of its own people, to further its agenda. We can’t allow them to seize the moral high ground through this act of cowardice.”

“What would you have me do?” Bass said.

“You have to go on the air right now with a message that calms people’s fears. You are going to have to call a spade a spade and let the chips fall where they may,” Sherman said.

“You’re right. Ert, get with my press secretary and set it up. I’ll go on as soon as you let me know things are in place,” Bass said.

“Mr. President,” Leadoff said.

“Yes.”

“I think Billy needs to complete his mission,” Leadoff said.

“What do you mean? There is nothing left for him to do,” Bass said.

“Yes there is. He is still the best person we have to approach J. Franklin Westmoreland. For some reason, I doubt that Westmoreland was responsible for this crisis. He has been careful to build his case politically. He has to know that CM isn’t ready to ramp up the violence. I smell a rat in the CM camp, and I’ll bet you good money its name is Leon Martinez. Let’s give Westmoreland a chance to splinter his movement at the hour of its ascendancy.”

Bass looked at the others in the room who nodded their approval as they considered Leadoff’s plan.

“Get Billy on a plane to Nashville. Tell Reverend Moore he has been appointed to be the talking head in his place on the news tonight,” Bass said.

“I’ll call them now,” Leadoff said as he walked out of the Oval Office into the hallway and hit a speed dial number on his Blackberry.

•  •  •

On the same airstrip near Savannah, Tennessee, where Flash had flown in on his private plane a couple of days earlier, Brother Billy boarded a military jet. In what seemed to him like minutes, the plane began its descent, and he found himself in a military convoy on its way to the federal building in Nashville. He sat in the back seat of the car by himself and looked at the backs of the heads of the two soldiers in the front seat. Out the window, he saw the football stadium on the edge of downtown where the Tennessee Titans played, and he wished he were on his way to a game, where the only battle was between high-paid professional athletes, not the forces of good and evil. He took his New Testament from his blood-stained pocket.

“Boys,” he said to the young men in the front of the vehicle. “Take a look at this.”

He handed them the New Testament.

“My daddy served in World War II. They gave him this Bible to carry with him. It has a metal cover on the front to protect your heart if you carry it in your shirt pocket,” he said.

The soldier in the passenger seat looked at it and handed it to the driver who examined it and handed it back over the seat to Billy.

“That dent wasn’t in the cover when I put it in my pocket this morning,” he said.

The two soldiers looked at each other.

“Sumbitch,” the driver said.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Sumbitch. I guess the bullet that killed the commander of the CM militia ricocheted when it passed through him and hit me in the chest. The shooter almost had him a twofer.”

“Maybe the Lord still has some work for you to do,” the young soldier on the passenger side said.

When they turned the corner near the courthouse, they saw that federal troops had cordoned off the entire block. People pressed against the barricades and waved “Free Frank” signs at soldiers in riot gear. The driver pulled up to a pre-arranged drop off point where several soldiers forced a wedge through the crowd to the door of the car.

“Good luck, Brother Billy,” the driver said. “This is your stop.”

Billy saluted him as he opened his door and stepped out into a phalange of troops that ran interference for him through the crowd and up the steps to the courthouse entrance.

“Does he know what’s happened?” Brother Billy asked one of the guards who met him at the door.

“No. We have the TV turned off. There aren’t any windows in the jail cells, so he can’t see the crowds either,” the guard told him.

Billy took the elevator up and soon found himself in the holding cell, waiting for Westmoreland. In about three minutes, the door to the cell opened and J. Franklin walked in.

“Billy Bright. You’re the last man on the face of the earth I thought I would visit with this evening,” he said as he reached out and patted Billy on the shoulder. “Have a seat in my parlor.”

“This is a little different from your place in the Baptist Building where we had our last meeting,” Billy said.

“There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, my friend,” Westmoreland said.

“I’m afraid you may not know the half of it,” Billy said. Then he recounted the events of the day to the leader of the Christian Militant movement.

“Oh, no. They’re all dead?” Westmoreland asked him, shaking his head.

Billy nodded.

Westmoreland got up from his stool and paced the room searching for words, choosing them carefully when he finally spoke.

“This isn’t my doing, Billy,” he said. “The Lord had led me to start a movement that will, I believe, lead to the coming of his kingdom. But I hoped we would never see innocent blood spilled in furtherance of the cause.”

“Someone in your camp sees it differently, Frank,” Billy said. “You have to give me something to take to President Whitfield that demonstrates your good faith. Otherwise, I suspect the charges against you are about to multiply. We are on the verge of a national calamity, an all-out war that could bring the entire republic to the brink of destruction. You can’t believe that your movement would gain anything from that turn of events.”

Billy could see the wheels turning in his friend’s head, the master politician who grasped intuitively when events dictated a change in strategy.

“Tell Bass Whitfield that I am prepared to make a statement to my followers that will confirm that these militia men acted on their own, out of a misplaced zeal for the CM cause. I will try to pull back the rush to judgment that even now must be gaining momentum,” he said.

“It’s gaining momentum all right,” Billy said. “But not on its own. Someone has Flash Greenwald working overtime to ensure that this grassfire ignites a conflagration that will consume the United States of America.”

“Greenwald is not taking his marching orders from me,” Westmoreland blurted out before he could stop himself. “He’s…”

Westmoreland stopped mid-sentence as if he realized he was about to divulge too much, as if he was playing into the hands of the enemy.

“I’m not here to undermine your movement, Frank,” Billy said. “I’m here to stop a war in the making. I’ll tell the president you are prepared to make a statement. We can visit in more detail about its content if he wants to take you up on your offer. In the meantime, I think you need to use whatever influence you have to rein this thing in internally.”

“I’ll need access to my people,” Westmoreland said, back on his game. “I can’t call any plays from this prison cell.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Billy said. “But I’m not making you any promises.”

The two men stood a foot apart from each other, face to face.

Billy said, “I hope the time comes when we stand like this as friends, not enemies, Frank.”

Westmoreland straightened up and threw back his head. “My only enemies are the enemies of God,” he said as he turned and beat on the door, standing with his back to Billy. When the guard came to escort him to his cell, he turned and cast a heartless glare at Billy before he stepped into the corridor that led down the cellblock.

“A pompous ass to the bitter end,” Billy said as he watched Westmoreland turn the corner out of sight.

THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH
reassured his supporters but fell on deaf ears among the Christian Militants, who considered the slaughter at Shiloh the point of no return.

To make their position clear, the CM secession conventions decided to move their start dates forward and called on their delegates to convene the second day after the siege ended. Although the delegates consisted of all members of the state legislatures and other specially appointed members, crowds thronged the convention halls. Churches from around the country sent buses with hundreds of congregants who held around-the-clock prayer vigils in the parking lots of the convention centers.

Leon Martinez shuttled from state to state conferring with the CM leadership, plotting a strategy for separation of the coalition from the United States. Foremost on the list of topics under consideration was the question of who would lead the Christian Militants once they seceded. The rank and file feared they couldn’t free J. Franklin Westmoreland and, without him, the movement would suffer from lack of leadership at the highest level.

The rumor began to circulate that Westmoreland had designated Leon as his heir apparent, the man to lead until J. Franklin entered the free world again. Leon’s highly organized staff sent up trial balloons at every convention, testing the waters, trying to determine if the time was right for him to make his play.

•  •  •

Bass Whitfield received Brother Billy’s report of his conference with Westmoreland. Bass found Westmoreland’s offer to make a statement renouncing the plot at Shiloh a far cry from what was needed to diffuse the mounting crisis. Likewise, he saw no advantage in putting Westmoreland on house arrest to give him greater access to the CM leadership.

“It is altogether likely that J. Franklin Westmoreland conspired to kill the President of the United States. I am not about to let him strut around like a peacock, acting like he is in the driver’s seat. He could snap his fingers in that jail cell, and the CM would stand down. If he wants to find out who his enemies are, we may have to oblige him,” Bass said to Ert, Leadoff, Sherman and Link. “If I am giving him the bully pulpit by leaving him in jail, then so be it. Link, I need to know if we have enough evidence to make any charges stick against him. If we do, we need to move forward with the prosecution; if we don’t, we need to release him.”

“We’re on the trail of a list of people we believe participated in the assassinations, but so far the only ones we have found were already dead. Ithurial Finis is the key, but it is possible that the remaining people on the list are assassins of the assassins. They may be Ithurial’s private army. If we can get to any of them, we may be able to crack the deal wide open,” Link said.

“So, we don’t have much on Westmoreland?” Bass said.

“Only that Ithurial was with him shortly after the assassination. But until we can pin something on Ithurial, we are SOL,” Link said.

“How long can we hold Westmoreland without an indictment?” Bass asked.

“It all depends on how much leeway the judge will give us, but my best guess is on a high-profile case like this, we have a month or so to play with,” Link said.

“If we don’t get a break in the investigation pretty soon, we need to send Billy back to negotiate something before the judge turns him loose. I don’t want his release looking like a victory for the Militants,” Bass said.

•  •  •

Delegates at the conventions had no stomachs for the fine details surrounding secession. All they knew was that they wanted out of the godless United States and in to the New Israel, the place where God would bestow his blessings on the faithful. Consequently, they left the minutiae of governing to Leon’s people, who came to each caucus prepared to lead the discussions. Time after time, the delegates appointed his staff as the committees to oversee whatever topic was under consideration, from the structure of the new national and state courts, to taxation, to the criminal code, to voting rights, to education, even to highways and bridges.