Pierced by a Sword (48 page)

Cursing under his breath, he resisted an impulse to stop the Explorer, get out, and beat the tar out of the hoodlums.
Why are they coming after us? Why don't they just leave us alone and go back to stealing their televisions?
The answer came to him:
Because they can. Because they think it would be fun to kill us. Because they're not afraid of being stopped.

Then his mind's small still voice suggested
another reason:
Because the evil one is guiding them.

He prayed.

He tried desperately to remember which street was which.
I grew up around here!
he shouted in his mind.

The street came to a quick end and he had to turn either right or left. The gang was now only fifty yards behind him. He turned left, up a hill, and stopped short before a pileup of cars. The road was completely blocked. He quickly
computed the odds of getting over the rubble, and despaired. He couldn't drive around the wrecks because the houses on either side had collapsed, leaving rubble on the sidewalk. It was an old neighborhood with houses built closely together and set in a few yards from the street.

Nathan cut his lights and quickly turned the Explorer around to face the other direction.
Think! Pray!
Nathan began
a desperate prayer to his guardian angel:
Angel of God, Enlighten me
– He stopped in mid-prayer.

Enlighten.
A plan, unlikely and bold, formed quickly in his mind.
Execute the plan,
he thought.

How far away are the bad guys from the turn I just took?
Nathan calculated, willing panic out of his mind.

He chambered a round in the Colt .45.

"Wait here, stay down–they might not realize you were in the
car with me," he whispered quickly to the others. "If something happens to me, your best bet might be to play possum. Be ready to drive, James. I'm going. When you hear me hit the car with a pebble, hit the high-beams. Keep your hand on the switch, right here."

"What are you–" James whispered back.

"No time!" Nathan whispered harshly, giving James a determined look. He slipped out the door and
disappeared into the dark toward the sound of the men in front of them.

+  +  +

Where are they?
Denny asked himself desperately, huddled in the dark kitchen of Greg's home. Billy Wheat was sleeping on his lap.
They should have been back by now.
A cold chill whispered down his back. Denny began to pray, for there was nothing more he could do.

+  +  +

Joe held the child in his arms as he sat next
to Becky's bed.
You're here!
Yesterday, Amy was hidden in the womb. Today she had exploded into the world, causing an avalanche of thoughts to tumble down the valley of his mind.

"Joe? Joe?" Becky asked anxiously, calling him out of his reverie. He surfaced from a world of abstract connections.

"Yeah Beck?"

"Do you think they'll ever come back?" There was a line of concern on her forehead.

"Yes,"
he replied simply, still looking at Amy.

"How can you be so certain?" Becky asked, as much to hear the answer as to have Joe say something that would give her hope. She was sure he had thought of something that would give her hope.

He turned to look at Becky directly. "Because Nathan's not like the rest of us. A guy like Nathan doesn't come around very often," Joe explained serenely. "If you were
the one in danger, I'd send him to get you, if I couldn't go myself. Maybe I'd send him even if I could go."

+  +  +

Nathan reached down and found a smooth stone in the rubble.

He was wearing Levis, and his leather jacket covered a burgundy polo shirt.
Hard to see me in the dark.
It was the same jacket he had been wearing during his accident last October. He gambled that the gang wouldn't expect
him to leave the Explorer; they wouldn't be looking for him on the street. He could hear them coming around the corner. Their forms came into focus. Nathan's eyes were well-adjusted to the darkness. All the lights in the neighborhood were out. He looked around and saw flickers of candlelight in the few undamaged homes surrounding him.

Stay cool. Check the angles. Execute the plan,
he ordered himself,
ignoring the sound of his own heartbeat. He counted eleven of them. Eleven enemies. Hunters. As he studied them, he realized that they were teenagers.

Sometimes the prey is dangerous. And sometimes the dangerous pray. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle...

When the gang members were twenty yards away, Nathan stood up slowly, halfway hidden behind a telephone pole. He carefully
unclipped the safety on the .45. He gripped the handle hard–a secondary safety mechanism disengaged. Denny's words rang in his ears:
Aim lower than you think. This sucker really kicks. It's not like a toy gun or Nintendo.

Nathan aimed at the feet of the point man–a powerfully built, short teenager wearing a red bandanna. The gang was walking slowly now and had quieted down. This street was dark.

Time for part one,
Nathan thought coolly.

He carefully threw the pebble with his free hand at the Explorer, and in one seamless movement returned his throwing hand to steady his gun. He aimed quickly, just as he saw the point man's gaze turn toward the darkened Explorer. The high-beams came on suddenly, ruining the night vision of the hunters.

He fired once, and dove forward to the ground behind
a Toyota,
toward
the gang members, who were less than fifteen yards in front of him.

He hoped that they would look toward the sound and muzzle flash of the gun and not where he dove into the shadows. Prone on the ground in a crouch which he remembered from his days in the dojo, Nathan surveyed the scene erupting before him:

The thug in the red bandanna screamed, but he wasn't hit. Red Bandanna
fired his handgun at the Explorer wildly, but missed.

It's hard to shoot anything farther than ten feet away with one of these things,
Denny's words echoed in Nathan's mind.

Nathan heard a scream from the Explorer, then it was muffled. The gang was now parallel to the car Nathan was hiding behind. It was clear that they were confused and thought the first shot had come from the vehicle. Two were
firing their guns at it.

Calmly–almost casually–Nathan stood up. He took careful aim at one of the shooters. This time he aimed for the thigh, adjusting slightly, learning from his first shot.

His target saw Nathan out of the corner of his eye and turned to fire...

Nathan shouted "Ambush!" at the top of his lungs, in a heavy New Jersey accent, and emptied three shots at the leg of his assailant,
who collapsed while firing at–and missing–Nathan. One of Nathan's bullets had found its target.

Two, three, four,
Nathan counted his rounds, remembering a trick from reruns of
Magnum, P.I.

Another hoodlum, watching his comrade go down holding his shattered knee, repeated Nathan's shout of Ambush and ran in the other direction. Six or seven followed him. Nathan crawled backwards and then rolled
into the street, firing the rest of the bullets as he rolled, concentrating with all his might on continuing his movement. Only one thug saw Nathan–Red Bandanna. He tried to shoot at Nathan, missing the rolling target, blinded by his fear of return fire. The rest of the gang ran away, leaving Red Bandanna to fend for himself.

Nathan reached the other side of the street and crawled with speed and
agility to the window well of a house. He hit his shoulder hard as he dove into the deep pit. He fumbled mightily to get the extra clip out of his pocket.

Is Red Bandanna coming?
He heard an odd-sounding gunshot ring out above him.
Is that Red Bandanna?
He prayed a Hail Mary as he continued to fumble with the extra clip.

He put the wrong end of the clip into the handle of the .45. He flipped the
clip over quickly, then heard the distinct sound of it sliding in with a metallic click. Summoning his courage, he poked his head up over the window well and saw Red Bandanna stretched out on the street, writhing and bleeding. Nathan heard another gunshot and looked up. He saw a muzzle flash as he heard a third shot come from the second-story window of the house across from him. Red Bandanna lay
motionless.

An ancient man with a white crew cut stuck his head out the window and shouted, "Better git yer butt outta here, sonny boy. Never know if'n they'll come back!"

Then the old man chuckled and said a curious thing to himself that Nathan barely heard in the still night air, "Semper Fi, sonny boy."

Nathan didn't spend much time pondering the dizzying events of the last two minutes. He looked
up and saw James Sullivan getting out of the Explorer. There were two bullet holes in the grill.

"Get back in, Mr. Sullivan," Nathan called softly, feeling pain in his shoulder for the first time. "I'm okay–we're getting out of here."

He ran to the car and was behind the wheel barely a second after James closed his own door. "Everybody okay back there? Better stay down for the rest of the ride
if you can stand it." No one said a word.

Nathan thanked God when the Explorer started right up. He drove down the hill, steering around the body of Red Bandanna.
The thug with the gunshot in his leg must have limped off.

Seconds later he came to the street where the gang had run. He slowed and saw that the gray stepvan was gone.

No one in sight. Where are all the cops?
He had heard a few sirens
but had not seen one police officer. He
had
seen a police car that wasn't working–abandoned and smashed into the side of a building.

Most policemen and firemen were struggling to save their own relatives and friends. There were too many fires to put out and too many crimes occurring for their relatively insignificant numbers to make a difference on this night.

Did I shoot Red Bandanna first, or
did the old Marine get him?
Nathan would never know the answer.

Before taking every turn, he imagined gangs of hoodlums standing in a picket line, weapons ready and aimed at him and his passengers. Having been afraid for hours on end, Nathan had no choice but to drive through the imaginary foes.

Toward the end of the trip, James finished praying his second Rosary with the other passengers and
cleared his throat.

"You're not the same boy who used to come over to play at our house," Chet's father said with a tinge of regret–and gratitude.

"It doesn't matter," Nathan replied tonelessly, remembering the dead body of Red Bandanna. But it did matter. Silently he prayed for God to have mercy on the soul of Red Bandanna. Having seen hell, Nathan feared for Red Bandanna. But he thanked his
guardian angel for giving him the plan that had saved their lives.

Chapter Twenty

1

Early Sunday Morning
16 June
Mishawaka, Indiana

Lee Washington knew what Father Chet had planned. Chet told Lee about it before leaving. Lee was praying with extra fervor in front of the Blessed Sacrament in Immaculate Conception Church. Prayer had become like breathing. It was the only certain way to be with the God Who had saved his life.

After moving to Mishawaka to live with
Chet, Lee confided to the priest that all he really wanted to do with his life was pray. And maybe become a priest. Chet had enthusiastically agreed. "You're real monk material! I can see you as a Trappist."

It was common knowledge that Lee had a gift for prayer. Many people came to ask him to pray with them and over them. Chet often asked Lee to sit in on the informal counseling sessions he had
with foundation workers and local Knights of Immaculata. No one seemed to mind the presence of the quiet black man. Lee rarely spoke during the meetings, but when he did, Chet was impressed. He believed that Lee had the gift of counsel.

With Lee's permission, Chet told Joe Jackson about Lee's possible vocation. Joe encouraged Lee to spend more time in prayer and less time cutting deals for the
Kolbe Foundation. By June the Kolbe Foundation was humming along nicely. Chet dubbed Lee "the white robe" and began searching with him for the right seminary to enter in the fall. It was not an easy search; there were only a few American seminaries that were loyal to the true faith. For the moment, Lee was a kind of lay chaplain for the Kolbe Foundation.

2

Early Sunday Morning
16 June
Fairfield,
New Jersey

An hour after Nathan returned to Greg Wheat's house, everyone crammed into the Explorer and Nathan drove to the airport. The ride went without a hitch. It was still dark when they arrived. Denny wanted to move his Cessna to a far corner of the airport, away from any trees or buildings that could crash down on it during aftershocks. Greg unloaded the luggage at the abandoned Citation
jet in the middle of the runway. Then he parked the Explorer while Denny moved the Cessna. Everything seemed to take too long.

"Are you sure you can hot-wire this thing–it looks sophisticated," Nathan now said as he settled into the copilot's seat of the Citation. The windshield of the jet seemed small to Nathan.

"It's easier than you think," Denny replied, pulling a Swiss Army knife out of his
pocket. "Not many people know how to hot-wire these things, much less fly one after they get the engines wound up."

Denny unscrewed a metal plate beneath the instrument panel with the knife. He then carefully stripped three wires (out of about fourteen he had to choose from) and paused, saying to Nathan, "Go say good-bye to Father Chet. He's not coming with us."

+  +  +

"I'm not getting on the
Citation," Chet calmly told Nathan. "Don't even try to talk me out of it. I made up my mind back in Indiana."

Nathan looked at him. Chet looked back gravely–as if he expected Nathan to whack him.

"I thought you might pull a stunt like this, Chetmeister," Nathan replied with a note of resignation. "You packed too many clothes and books for a one-day trip."

The turbines of the Citation started to
wind up behind them.

"Just tell me why," Nathan shouted in the darkness.

"I'm a parish priest. I belong to Notre Dame du Lac. My people need me," Chet shouted over the engines. "Do I need complicated reasons? Can't it just be simple? I'm a parish priest. That's all I ever wanted to be! I already talked to Lee about taking over for me at the Kolbe Foundation. He's praying for us right now."

Denny
stuck his head out the door of the jet and yelled, "Let's go!"

Nathan shook his head at Denny and held up a hand. Chet and Nathan moved away from the Citation so they could hear each other better.

"You could get yourself killed out here–" Nathan argued.

"So what?"

Before Nathan could say anything more, the earth began to shake lightly beneath their feet. Aftershock. One of several they had felt
since taking the Explorer from Greg's house. The shocks seemed to be coming at closer intervals.

"Come on!" Denny shouted behind them.

"Okay!" Nathan shouted back. He turned to his friend.

"You stubborn Irishman. I love you, you know. I never told you that," Nathan said hoarsely.

"I know," Chet said, smiling. "I love you, too, buddy."

The two men embraced tightly, awkwardly.

"Don't burn the place
down while I'm gone," Nathan joked.

"Don't worry, I will."

Nathan turned, ran to the Citation, and climbed in. Denny secured the door. The Wheats, Chet's parents, and the O'Briens were already strapped in, filling all the passenger seats. Nathan looked at James and Mary Sullivan. James nodded.
So they know that Chet's staying.

Nathan looked out the window. The priest was already moving away from
the runway, carrying a large duffel bag over his shoulder. Nathan wondered if he would ever see his best friend again. The sun was not yet over the horizon, but its glow was growing in the eastern sky beyond Chet.

Probably would have made us wait an hour for that Hollywood background, Chet. You always had a knack for the melodramatic.

Nathan went to the front and took the copilot's seat. There
were a lot more instruments on this dash than on the Cessna.

+  +  +

"So you're sure nobody's going to be ticked off that we're stealing their corporate jet?" Nathan asked Denny as they taxied toward the end of the runway.

"I never quite said that," Denny replied with a smile.

Denny was reminding him more and more of Father Chet by the minute.
Unlike your sister, getting a straight answer from
you is like pulling teeth. One of these days, I'm gonna haul off and pop you...

"So what
did
you say? I mean, did Father Chet check off on this?"

"Sort of," Denny said, looking at various instrument gauges, avoiding Nathan's eyes.

"Sort of? Look, Denny, before you go stealing a million dollar jet–"

"We're not stealing it, Nathan. We're
borrowing
it. It's not like I'm going to keep the damn thing.
The papers here say it's owned by a New York leasing company called Streamline Jets. That's New York
City.
There's a good chance that Streamline Jets doesn't even exist anymore. And, we're going to take this million dollar jet and we're going to land it in a very safe place compared to the middle of this airport with its doors wide open. It'll get trashed here. Streamline will probably give us
a reward, even if we do offer to pay for any expenses we incur. I can fly it back to wherever, after we contact them from South Bend. All we have to do is avoid crashing it.
That
would cost us a lot of money. But of course, if we crash, we'd all be dead, so it really wouldn't cost us–"

"Okay, okay. You're giving me a headache. You sure you know how to fly one of these things...?"

"Don't worry,"
Denny replied.

"How come you always say 'Don't worry' when I ask you yes or no questions?"

"Don't worry about that, either." Denny grinned.

"There you go again!"

"What? That wasn't a yes or no question, was it?"

"Forget it," Nathan said, exasperated.

They reached the beginning of the runway. First dawn was starting to light up the tarmac. Nathan saw Father Chet standing next to the remains of
the control tower. Chet waved. Nathan felt a familiar knot in his stomach.

Another airplane trip. Great.

"Strap yourself in," Denny suggested, noticing the pale look on Nathan's face.

"I don't wear seat belts," Nathan said dryly.

"Suit yourself," Denny replied casually. "It's not like this is an FAA approved flight or anything. Well, here goes–"

Just as Denny began to push the throttle forward,
the second largest earthquake in the history of the East Coast began to rumble...

3

Early Tuesday Morning
18 June
An empty beach on the Gulf of Mexico, Texas

An average looking, middle-aged man with a crew cut sat wearing sunglasses and a fisherman's hat on a beach chair. Beside him, a fishing pole with its line leading into the surf was upright in a stake. A bucket and a tackle box were nearby.

He hadn't caught a thing. But Chip Williams didn't care. He wasn't here to fish. He had flown back to his boyhood city of Austin from Washington on the pretense of visiting his ailing mother. Then he drove several hours to this deserted spot on the Gulf to meet a friend.

After several minutes a big man with a bald head walked down from the roadway onto the beach, and wordlessly set up a beach chair
next to Chip.

"Aren't you dead yet, Williams?" Karl began.

"What? And let you outlive me, Sarge?"

The two men chuckled. Karl offered Chip a cigar. Both men took a few moments to light up correctly.

"Anything catching?" Karl asked after a while.

"Didn't even put bait on the line."

"So, it's that serious," Karl said.

Chip didn't reply. He took a long pull on the Macanudo.

"There's some Maker's in
the box, Sarge," Chip offered.

"Now we're getting somewhere." Karl reached over and opened the tackle box. He pulled the bottle out, uncorked it, and took a hefty gulp. "So why all the cloak and dagger stuff, Chip?"

"The New York quakes were the last straw. Word is that the president and Congress are going to join the European Union to stabilize the dollar..."

"And suddenly you're not so sure
who the Commander in Chief is anymore?"

"I swore to uphold the Constitution, not the president, Karl. I feel like an ass." Chip looked away and threw the cigar in disgust. "I'm not the only one, Sarge. Some strange scuttlebutt is going around. Some of my friends in the Corps have been cashiered for no reason at all. Some of our best men. Rumor has it I'm next in line to walk the plank."

Karl snorted
at the native Texan sitting next to him. Slinger had been in business for decades. He had no love for the regulators, politicians, and bureaucrats who had sunk the massively debt-ridden nation into an endless recession. Like many Americans, he had come to regard the government as an enemy of freedom.

A long silence passed.

"Sarge?"

"Yeah, Chip?"

"They've had foreign tanks on our soil for over
a decade. Not many at first. Hell, I thought it was a good idea. We trained against them in our own exercises. Three days ago, I received photographs in an unmarked envelope. Photos of six giant cargo ships filled with the same kinds of tanks. I can't tell you the source. Let's just say that the cargo ships are coming out of the Gulf of Finland. With troop carriers in convoy. They're going to use
the riots from the quakes as an excuse. They know American troops won't fire on Americans. But foreign ones will."

"Let 'em come," Karl said with a dangerous edge to his voice.

"Huh?" Chip replied, confused.

"Chip, can we dispense with the crap?"

"Sure, Sarge."

"Ever wonder what George Washington and Tom Jefferson and Sam Adams and all those guys felt back in the good old days?"

Chip shook his
head.

"They felt what you feel right now, Chip."

"But Karl if you're talking about what I think you're talking about–foreign armies working in concert with the might of the United States military–we can't win!"

"Didn't the Founding Fathers face the same thing? And against worse odds–"

"–but the bad guys have all the money and the military assets this time around."

"Stop talking like a damned Army
puke, Commandant! I remember something about the signers of the Declaration of Independence pledging their fortunes and their lives. Our side will have the truth, and the land, till the bad guys spill our blood taking it. I don't care if they nuke every city in America with their stinking tacticals. They can't nuke Nebraska. They'll run out of bombs. Then it's back to good old-time warfighting.
Remember, they're just a bunch of bureaucrats when it comes down to it. We're going to be fighting the military equivalent of the Post Office, and they can't even deliver a friggin' letter."

Slinger paused, squinting at the breakers. He took a puff through clenched teeth.

Without a trace of bravado, he continued, "I wish I was a young man, 'cause I'd take the old Garand out of the closet tomorrow
and start training."

"What are we really talking about here, Karl?" Chip asked soberly.

"Revolution. The American Revolution, Part Two."

Both men shared a few swigs of the country's best bourbon, contemplating the unimaginable.

"Then I'll get in touch with a few good men," Chip said at last with a note of resolve.

"Good. We're just getting started, you know," Karl said with little enthusiasm.

4

Sunday Morning, Dawn
16 June
Fairfield, New Jersey

Father Chet was thrown from his feet as he watched the Citation begin its sprint down the runway of Essex County Airport.
Hey, this ain't no aftershock!
he thought crazily.
Dear God, don't let them crash!

As the ground became a moving ocean of rock beneath him, he struggled to lift himself up to a crawling position and yelled, "Go Denny go!"

+
  +  +

Denny had never flown a Citation. Aircraft are not like cars. A typical pilot could not just climb into any model and fly one. Denny was not a typical pilot, however. He was
born
to fly. Years later, people would tell stories about him, saying that perhaps Denny Wheat was born to fly this particular flight.

Nathan was horrified when he saw Denny smile as the earthquake hit.

Denny did the
aircraft equivalent of "flooring it." The runway was a mildly sloped roller coaster. But the rails on a roller coaster don't move. Nathan struggled to click his seat belt together but couldn't figure out the configuration of the locking mechanism.

"Don't worry about your belt," Denny called out.

"Don't worry about the belt?!" Nathan wailed. "Just get us off the ground!"