Pierced by a Sword (56 page)

"It's okay," Father Chet said, hearing his knees crack as he stood up. He raised his voice to sermon level, "Pray for me, all of you. I'll see you in heaven!"

"Be quiet!" the
case worker ordered in a thick Cockney accent.

Ignoring the case worker, Father Chet raised his right hand and blessed his parishioners out loud, before the guard could apply the handcuffs. Men, women, and children began to cry.
I'm a Sullivan. I'm a priest. This is what I signed up for,
he told himself, trying to control his fears and tears.

5

Tuesday Afternoon
13 May
Salt Lake City, The Mormon
Nation

The gunman lined up his scope and made himself comfortable on the roof of an apartment building on East South Temple Street. The target was less than three hundred yards away.
You filthy apostate. You servant of the devil...

John Lanning was preaching and baptizing with more vigor than ever, now that Pope Patrick had resurfaced.

The gunman was one of the many great, great, great grandchildren
of a close friend and contemporary of Porter Rockwell–the nineteenth-century personal bodyguard of Brigham Young. This gunman was proud of his heritage. He was an accountant for a respectable firm in downtown Salt Lake City. As a young man–after he had proven an excellent marksman in the Army–he was recruited to be available to the Council of Fifty for "special" jobs. This was his second one.
His first had been almost eight years ago.

There. To the right. Good. Breathe in,
the gunman told himself.
Torso shot. No head shot.
Those were the instructions.

Lanning's heart lined up in the cross of the hairs etched on the crystal of the gunman's scope.

On three. One... two...

6

Tuesday Afternoon
13 May
Hackensack, New Jersey

Father Chet waited alone in the empty room at the Regional Administration
Building of the World Union Health Ministry. The handcuffs were hurting his wrists. He tried to distract himself from a mood of impending doom. Despair knocked on his door.

Was it worth it? Was it worth it being a priest?

He thought of all the sacrifices he had made in order to find himself shackled in an empty office after months of freezing and starving in jail. Even before the tribulations,
his had not been an easy life.

Then an image of Becky came to his mind. The image was crystal clear, which surprised Chet, because the faces of his relatives and friends had been fading in his memory. In the past few weeks, it had frustrated him that he couldn't imagine a clear image of his mother, or Nathan–or anyone.

Rebecca looked so beautiful in the image he now saw. He remembered the time
and the place well. She was with him at the Grotto at Notre Dame. Her face had a curious but wonderful expression of innocence and determination.

Determination to do the right thing–no matter what. She had just decided to be a Catholic. Because of my priesthood. We used to talk about Beauty all the time. Now,
that
was beautiful!

Her resolve and her goodness complemented her physical beauty. For
Chet, her faith was a glimpse of heaven, then and now. It was just one example of the fruit of his labors, but an example close to his heart. It gave him the grace he needed.

For Becky. For all the Beckys. For Nathan and Joe, and for Mom and Dad and Tommy, Mike, Jimbo. Suck it up, Chet. Finish strong!

+  +  +

Harlan Gello closed his appointment book. Absentmindedly, he opened the drawer in his
desk, took something out, and slipped it into his jacket.

The hour had come.

He strolled into the room and closed the door. The building used to be the headquarters of a now-defunct insurance company. It was quite modern. Quite spiffy. The Health Ministry often had first choice of appropriated buildings.

Gello pursed his lips and sat down across from the priest.

The two men were alone. They sat
facing each other on modern leather chairs. There was no table between them. There were no windows in the room, but there was a fine blue carpet and a Picasso print on the wall. Chet's hands were cuffed behind the chair. They were the kind which tighten if the prisoner struggles. Chet was bleeding from one wrist–the guard had clamped the cuffs extra tight before putting him in the van to take him
here.

Not exactly a dungeon with moldy walls and a shadeless light bulb hanging from the ceiling. You watched too much television as a kid, Chetmeister.

He managed to smile at Gello, but his humor was forced. Goose bumps rose on his arms. That constant companion, hunger, made room for fear.

"Mr. Gello. I've seen you on television. Are you going to offer me a cigarette or something?" Chet asked
bravely, half-joking. He looked like a skeleton. His skin was white, pallid.

Gello had healthy skin, a small paunch. He wore neatly pressed Dockers with a blazer over a Polo shirt. Penny loafers, no socks.

Gello smiled. "Smoking is bad for you, William Sullivan. No one will be allowed to smoke in the New Age." Gello had a gleam in his eyes. A priest's gleam, but of an entirely different priesthood.

The room was silent.

Gello looked at a dossier with "Sullivan" on the tab. He sighed and threw the dossier casually to the side. The papers settled all over the carpeted floor. He shook his head and looked at Chet with a practiced sort of compassion.

"What exactly don't you like about the Omega Project?" he asked, as if he were taking a survey. As if Chet were not cuffed, filthy, and destitute.

Chet decided to ignore the question. He had been praying to the Holy Spirit since Gello had come into the room. Gello frightened him.

Gello is crazy,
Chet's inner voice told him.
Find out why,
grace prompted him.

Chet asked the Blessed Mother to use him as her instrument.
I'm yours. I'm yours. Let your Son speak through me.

"You can still turn back to the Father, Harlan," Chet said. He wasn't sure
why he used those particular words. They did not strike Chet as especially eloquent. Yet, just for a second, the smug gleam in Gello's eyes disappeared, and Chet saw the child within the man connect to the grace.

Have mercy on him, Lord,
Chet prayed.

Then Harlan disappeared. Chet saw the whites all around the man's eyeballs.
We called that "bugging out" back in grammar school,
Chet thought.

The
sinister gleam was back and now Rangor spoke using Gello's voice, but not Gello's tone or facial expressions. Chet came to complete attention, like a deer looking at headlights.

"Harlan is dead," the thing inside Gello croaked viciously, "I will destroy you and all your priests!"

The look in the man's eyes was utterly evil. It was Chet's first encounter with a possessed person. The demon speaking
through Gello screamed insanely and began to laugh.

"I have been given the power to begin with you. Today! I am Legion!"

Gello's hand reached into his jacket and pulled out a long silver envelope opener.

7

Tuesday Afternoon
13 May
Notre Dame, Indiana

"Crowd estimate?" Ivan Blatovsky demanded, speaking curtly into his microphone.

"Two hundred thousand, General, sir," came the reply from a man in
a helicopter hovering above.

The general flicked his mike up on his helmet. His lead tank rumbled down Notre Dame Avenue, closely surrounded by infantry, with a seemingly endless line of armored vehicles behind it. Blatovsky was certain that it was safe enough for him to ride with his upper body exposed atop his Russian K-45. He was keenly aware that he looked like a throwback to the great World
War II panzer commanders. It would look good on television, too. No staff car for Blatovsky. He drew the line at makeup when the CNI correspondent suggested a "bit of powdering." Makeup was for simpering politicians.

The Ukrainian had grown up despising the arrogance and prosperity of Americans. Many of his relatives had died in Stalin's forced starvation of Ukraine, which had killed millions.
As a little boy, he had heard stories from aunts and uncles who had eaten corpses to survive. He had rejected the secret Christian faith of his weak mother; he had embraced the Communist Party in school, at camps, during sports, and with his friends. Soviet propaganda blamed the starvation on the Enemy. The Americans. Fat, lazy, corrupt, greedy cowboys and bankers.

He had endured Russian prejudice
against Ukrainians during his long rise to the upper echelon of the Soviet military. In the process he had eschewed anything Ukrainian, just as Stalin had rejected all things Georgian during his rise to the top. Ivan Blatovsky had suffered humiliations as a battalion commander in Afghanistan. He had chafed at the dishonor of the breakup of the Soviet Union. For him, the debacle in Chechnya was
the last straw. He made his mark with the battle plan that worked so well in Tbilisi. Recovering those TDC oil fields had made Russia a player in the World Union. The command of the Third World Union Army was Blatovsky's reward.

He was insanely jealous that the invasion of Texas had been given to the krauts and frogs in the First World Union Army. The Third World Union Army had sat on its hands
in Canada while the Germans and the French fell to pieces in Texas! Blatovsky had proposed the daring invasion of Chicago and took full advantage of the opportunity. Before the Fall of Chicago, the World Union had been looking for a propaganda victory; Blatovsky was looking for a real, strategic victory–a military victory. And a chance to spill American blood on American soil.

His worshipful staff
had reported that Blatovsky was now being mentioned in the same breath as Rommel and Patton in Amsterdam.

I am a man of destiny! Lenin may be long gone, but his theory that capitalism would corrupt America from within still holds true. They will burst beneath the treads of my armor like ripe, rotting melons.

It was rumored that he would soon replace the German, General Rahner, who had screwed
up so incredibly in the Texas debacle. Blatovsky recommended using tactical nuclear weapons in Texas. Rahner was against it. It was known that seven out of nine ballistic missile submarines (part of the former United States Navy) patrolling the seas had aligned themselves with the Texans. Just one submarine could annihilate all the capitals of Europe in less than thirty minutes. Blatovsky didn't think
Chip Williams had the guts to start a nuclear war. The defining principle of these American rebels was their softness. Blatovsky prided himself on being hard.

Take this job, for instance,
he told himself, looking around at the multitudes gathered for Mass on the campus of Notre Dame.
These people are sheep.

But they had a shepherd. The shepherd was now preparing silly little bread wafers for his
sheep on the steps below the Golden Dome.

Arresting Pope Patrick was a minor headache for the commander of the Third World Union Army. A photo-op. Blatovsky planned to shackle the skinny Irishman in full view of the Third Army's CNI cameras. The Psyche-Ops guys had gone ballistic last night when Blatovsky revealed his plan to personally handcuff and arrest the pope. Blatovsky ignored them. The
atheist Blatovsky, the representative of real power in this world, planned to show everyone who was in charge.

The answer to Stalin's question about how many divisions does the pope command is
none!

Blatovsky laughed out loud. He put his gloved hand over his visor in mock scrutiny.
No. Not a tank in sight that doesn't have my name on it.

He chuckled. Some of the infantrymen walking near his tank
wanted to look up at their one-eyed commander. But they knew better.

One of his staff had mentioned during the cultural briefing this morning that Notre Dame was an institution whose athletic teams were known as the Fighting Irish. That had greatly amused the general.

The crowd parted to let his tank through. They tried vainly not to look at the tanks, which were crunching and grinding the pavement
on Notre Dame Avenue. Many in the crowd succeeded in keeping their attention on Pope Patrick, who was continuing to say Mass on a makeshift altar on the steps of the Administration Building. Above him was the Mother of God in gold.

The general looked through his binoculars at the pope.

That bastard. He is ignoring me,
Blatovsky thought, angered beyond reason.
Well, let's get his attention.

He
pulled the microphone down from his helmet and ordered his tank to stop just as it reached the Father Sorin statue. He was about sixty yards from the Pope and the Golden Dome.

"One shot for the folks watching on the television back home," Blatovsky told the gunner. "Destroy the statue on top of that damned dome."

The gun on the K-45 aligned itself with a few mechanical hums. "Statue on dome targeted,
sir," the gunner responded quickly.

"Fire!" Blatovsky screamed.

+  +  +

John Lanning lifted a baptismal cruet in one hand and made the sign of the cross with the other, gently intoning the most beautiful words in the world, "I baptize thee in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit..."

The gunman in Salt Lake City pulled the trigger and John the Baptizer died for the second
time. This time around, however, he did not go to hell.

+  +  +

The report from the K-45's gun was tremendous. Many in the crowd surrounding the tank suffered permanent hearing loss. A unified gasp of shock and surprise surged from the people.

The statue of Mary atop the Golden Dome disappeared instantly. Suddenly all eyes were on the pope.

Angus barely flinched. His server, Father Washington,
was paralyzed with fear. Angus, no stranger to gunfire, slowly nodded his head to Lee to continue to bring the water, bowl, and towel to the altar, even as the debris fell off the roof in golden chunks around them. No debris fell on the altar. Most of the statue was strewn on the ground on the opposite side of the building.

"Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me from my sin," Pope Patrick prayed,
raising his voice. The entire crowd could hear him on the loudspeakers. The pope looked directly at Nathan Payne. Their eyes met. Nathan nodded gravely.