NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (15 page)

“We knew there would be some bumps along the way,” Leon said. “But I think these events make it possible for us to implement our plan even more quickly than we anticipated.”

“Get to the point,” Westmoreland said.

“I think it’s time for us to purify the land just as we promised,” Leon continued. “We will use the Bible as our law book and mete out swift and sure punishment. We will see to it that those who do not love the Lord our God will not be welcome among us.”

“If people are scared enough, they may be ready to accept it,” J. Franklin said. “But the preachers must stand with us. They must be willing to take a hard line. This is no time for weaklings. When the Israelites crossed the Jordan, they left a trail of pagan bodies in their wake.”

“I have your blessing then?” Leon asked.

“Of course, my son. Go now and do the Lord’s work,” Westmoreland said.

The two men stood and embraced.

When Leon reached the ground floor, he darted out the front door, crossed the street, ran up an alleyway for two blocks, and hopped into the black SUV.

“Which way, boss?” Ralph asked him.

Leon didn’t answer for a while.

“Just pick a road and start driving,” he said finally.

Ralph thought for a second before he took his foot off the brake and pointed the big black car north, away from the federal blockades and deeper into the United States of America.

DESHAUN MOORE DROVE
through Vicksburg Military Park just like another tourist on a holiday. The park road led him past monuments to fallen heroes of the North and South. On a ridge overlooking the Mississippi River, he turned off the park road into a parking lot where visitors could see the river from the towering bluffs that made Vicksburg a seemingly impregnable fortress to the Union forces.

He walked to the western edge of the scenic overlook and began taking pictures with the digital camera he had hung around his neck. After a few shots, he looked at a man standing next to him.

“Can you imagine what the Yankee foot soldiers thought when they first saw this place?” he asked.

The other tourist said, “They must have thought they had died and gone to hell. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to spend some time at the ironclad exhibit down below us,” he said as he pointed over the edge of the cliff in the direction of a parking lot that lay between them and the river. “The Yankees built several of them, but they had trouble finding anyone who was willing or able to navigate them down the Mississippi. Illinois farmers didn’t know much about ironclads, but they had a strong suspicion that boarding one might lead to their early demise.”

“Thanks. I’ll check it out,” DeShaun said. He took a couple of more pictures and strolled back to his car. When he got inside, he spread out his map of the park on the front passenger seat and studied it. Before he started his car, he picked up his phone and sent a one word text, “ironclad.”

He drove down the winding road until he saw an arrow directing him to the ironclad exhibit. He got out of his car and started a self-directed tour of the massive vessel. After a few minutes, he left the ship and went inside the pavilion next to it where the restrooms and gift shop were. In the gift shop, he saw the man from the bluff, one other man, and the gift shop clerk. The man from the bluff studied the details of the model of an ironclad he held in his hand.

The clerk went to the door of the gift shop and flipped the “open” sign over so that it said “closed.” Then he took a ring of keys from his pocket and inserted one in the door lock. DeShaun heard the click of the lock as the plunger engaged into its socket.

“I know it’s too early to close,” the clerk said. “But on slow days like today, we sometimes fudge a little on our hours. Y’all take as much time as you need to finish up.”

The man from the bluff looked around the gift shop for a second, and then walked to the counter with the model of the ironclad in his hand. He placed it on the glass countertop and reached into his right rear pocket for his billfold.

When the clerk saw him put his right hand behind him, he knelt down behind the case and began arranging items on the shelves.

The man from the bluff saw the clerk as he knelt down, looked around him again and started to break and run for the door. DeShaun grabbed him from behind, pinned his arms and slammed his face down on the counter. While they struggled, Brother Billy hit him low, knocking him to the floor as the clerk leaped over the counter with handcuffs in one had. Before the man could break free of DeShaun’s choke hold, the clerk slapped the cuffs on him, taped his mouth shut with duct tape and pulled a black hood over his head.

As he held his Glock 9 mm to the man’s temple, the clerk, Quanah Parker Brown, said, “Ithurial Finis, you are under arrest for the assassination of the President of the United States of America. You have the right to remain silent.”

DeShaun, Brother Billy, and Agent Brown half-carried, half-dragged Finis out of the pavilion. When they got to Brown’s vehicle, they loaded Finis like a sack of potatoes into the trunk. Billy got in Brown’s car, and DeShaun followed them as they sped out of the park to a pre-arranged rendezvous point where a Cessna 182 idled on a grass landing strip. They dumped Finis on the plane’s floorboard, stepped up into the cabin, secured the latch, and gave the pilot the thumbs up.

As the plane cleared the tree tops, the men could see the bluffs of Vicksburg to the south as the long shadows of evening crept over the graves of thousands of men who a hundred and fifty years before had given their lives in a fight to preserve what they held dear.

The single engine of the Cessna roared as its big propeller cut a swath through the late evening air. DeShaun, Brother Billy, and Brown put their headsets on so they could talk to each other without yelling by speaking into microphones that almost touched their lips.

“We got him,” DeShaun said to Brown.

“Yeah. But it was a little too easy,” Brown said as he looked into the approaching darkness and glanced at Ithurial Finis who hadn’t moved a muscle. “A man like Ithurial Finis doesn’t go down that easy unless he has something up his sleeve. Don’t let your guard down for a second until we deliver him to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. I won’t breathe easy ’til I see him safe in solitary confinement.”

“At some point, he will have to come out of solitary and stand trial,” Brother Billy said. “How will you feel then?”

“I hope I’m not on that detail,” Brown said. “I’ve carried out my orders. Finis is Sherman’s problem now. Let’s hope he can handle it.”

IN RURAL GEORGIA
, far away from the nearest town, in a pasture off a dirt road, a group of teenage boys had convened a tailgate party. In the bed of one of their trucks, they had stocked an old Coca-Cola box with glass bottles of Coors and iced them down, the water so cold that when they reached in it, they wondered what it would be like to dive naked into arctic waters, what a person would think about when the cold took them and they knew death was near, a slow death, but death nonetheless.

The boys cut up for the girls, hoping to impress them into the back seats of their mommas’ sedans and their daddies’ pickups. Hank Jr. blared across the cow pasture as they re-counted the night’s exploits on the football field, a lost game, but a battle well-fought.

Close to two o’clock, a CM cruiser pulled down the lane and shined its spotlight on the kids in the field. Oblivious to the patrol car, the boys didn’t let up but kept up their antics, re-playing the game without pads in the pasture, cussing each other every time someone took a hard hit and went down in the mud.

Officer Williams got out of the cop car with his flashlight in his hand and approached the pile of boys wallowing around on the ground.

“It’s about time to call it a night, men,” he said as he walked over to them.

“Hell, we’re just blowing off a little steam, officer,” one of the boys said.

“You haven’t been drinking, have you, Joe Bob?” Williams asked.

“Just a little,” Joe Bob said.

“The new law says the drinking-age is twenty-one,” the deputy said. “I don’t want to have to take y’all in, so why don’t you get in your cars, take these pretty girls home, and sleep it off ’til it’s time for church in the morning?”

“Fuck you, Barney Fife,” one of the boys who had the most to drink said as the rest of the crowd snickered.

“What’d you say, son?” the peace officer asked him.

“You heard me,” the boy said.

“Yeah, I heard you all right.”

By this time, the other deputy had gotten out of the squad car and joined his partner in the field. Deputy Williams nodded at him, and he walked over to the boy with the smart mouth and cracked his head open with a black jack.

As the boy went down, the other teenagers reacted.

“Hey, man, why’d you do that? That’s police brutality,” Max Vernon, one of the teenage ringleaders, said.

“You fellows have a lot to learn about New Israel. The law is what we say it is,” Williams said.

“We’ll see about that,” Max said as he came at the officer who still held the black jack in his hand.

Without a word of warning, Deputy Williams drew his pistol and fired at the young man who was about to attack his partner. The shot found its mark. It entered Vernon’s chest below the sternum and blew a hole in his back as it exited his body. The crowd looked on in horror as the boy, a few hours earlier a high school kid near the top of his class with a bright future, fell to the ground dead.

“Anyone else who wants to be a hero tonight?” Williams said as he waved his pistol at the crowd.

No one spoke a word.

“I want every one of you to get in your cars and go home. When you get there, I want you to tell your folks what you did tonight and what happened because of it. Then, I want you to call all your friends and tell them that from this day forward, the law is the law, and anyone who breaks it will pay with his life,” the deputy said. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” someone in the crowd said.

“This ain’t the United States of America anymore. It’s the New Israel. Forget what you used to know. The rules have changed,” Williams said. “Someone take this boy’s body to his folks’ house and tell Mr. and Mrs. Vernon that the Lord struck him down tonight.”

Two of the teenagers went to the body and picked it up, one at the head and the other at the feet. They laid the body in the bed of the pickup next to the Coca-Cola cooler where the water from the melted ice dripped down and mingled with the young man’s blood before it drained out of the truck bed onto the ground, a tributary of abandoned hope.

“Any beers left in there?” the deputy with the black jack asked the boys who had carried Vernon’s body.

One of the teenagers reached into the icy water, pulled out a Coors and handed it to the officer.

“Get one for my partner while you’re at it,” he said.

The boy reached into the cooler, grabbed another beer, jumped down out of the bed of the truck and got in the cab.

“Get out of here now before someone else ends up like him,” Williams said as he pointed at the dead boy.

The teenagers peeled out of the pasture afraid to look back, afraid to buck the law.

When they were alone, the deputies got back in their patrol unit. The black jack officer radioed in the call.

“We had some trouble from a few punks drinking beer in a pasture,” he said. “We handled it pursuant to Public Law 10-05.”

As they drove away from the scene of the murder, Officer Williams said, “I never much liked that little smart ass Max Vernon anyway.”

“Me neither,” the other officer said. “How about some fried chicken for a late supper?”

“Sounds good,” the murderer said.

BLACKIE DELAY PASSED
through security at the tallest building in Charlotte and rode the elevator up to Stanley Nussbaum’s publishing house. He checked in with the receptionist and in less than a minute, Betty looked over at him and said, “Mr. Nussbaum will see you now, Mr. DeLay.”

Blackie tucked his briefcase under his arm and walked towards the door to Stanley’s office. Before he reached the door, Stanley opened it, reached out to shake his hand and escorted him to one of the large chairs in front of his desk.

“I’m proud you could make time to see me, Mr. DeLay,” Nussbaum said.

“My pleasure. Call me Blackie,” DeLay said.

“We are in the middle of the most decisive events in the country’s history,” Nussbaum said. “Frank Westmoreland needs you on his side.”

“I’m your man,” Blackie said. “When can I get in to see him?”

“Let me brief you on some of the background material first. Once I get you up to speed, you can decide when the best time will be for you to pay him your first visit. I have already told him that I planned to contact you about representing him, so he will be expecting to see you before long.”

Nussbaum paused for a second before continuing.

“There is one thing I need to clarify with you, though,” he said.

“Shoot,” DeLay said.

“I understand you represent Chirp McVeigh, the woman arrested at the Minions of God headquarters in Houston.”

“That’s right.”

“Since she is charged with conspiracy to assassinate the President, do you see a potential conflict between being her lawyer and Westmoreland’s?”

“Based on what I know so far, I don’t see any conflict,” DeLay said.

“I am assuming you were retained to represent her,” Nussbaum said.

“I was,” DeLay said.

“By whom?” Nussbaum asked. “I doubt that she would have the resources necessary to pay your usual fee.”

DeLay squirmed in his seat.

“With all due respect, Stanley, I can’t divulge that information. That’s a client confidence,” DeLay said.

“It wasn’t Frank who paid you, and he didn’t authorize anyone from the CM movement to do so. The Minions have confirmed they didn’t hire you either. I had an investigator check out Chirp McVeigh, and she has no friends or relatives with that sort of financial clout,” Nussbaum said. “As far as I am concerned that leaves only one possible patron for her, Leon Martinez. Is that who hired you?”