Soon (7 page)

6

“LET’S START
by passing around the Bible. Don’t anyone take too long with it. As we wait for our turns, the rest of us can sing.”

“That’s it. The Bible is contraband,” Coker said. “Let’s roll.”

“Wait,” Paul said. “I want to hear this. We might catch what their game is.”

It was as if Paul’s textbooks had come alive. Meanwhile, those in the house sang.

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound—

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind but now I see.

“They’ll see in a few minutes,” Coker said. Paul heard him check with the other unit.

No question, a crime was in progress. But what was the point of it? What so gripped these people?

Now the woman was talking.

“Be encouraged, brothers and sisters. Here is the word of the Lord. ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life. . . . “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to give you this message for the churches. I am both the source of David and the heir to his throne. I amthe bright morning star.” . . . Let each one who hears them say, “Come.” Let the thirsty ones come—anyone who wants to. Let them come and drink the water of life without charge. . . . He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!’

“And what is our instruction in light of this?” The woman read again, “‘Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I amwith you always, even to the end of the age.’”

“Protocol says we move now,” Coker said. “The longer we sit, the more vulnerable we—”

“One more minute,” Paul said. “She’s getting down to it.”

“So, dear ones, we are not alone,” the woman was saying. “The Lord is with us, and many other believers are rising up, gathering, certain the end is near. We have all seen the signs that the coming of the Lord draws nigh. That’s why we must be about our Father’s business. We have critical tasks we must perform—despite the law, despite the danger—trusting God to give us courage. As Jesus told His disciples, ‘The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send out more workers for His fields.’

“And why do we believe this, friends? Jesus Himself said, ‘Look, I am coming soon! Blessed are those who obey the prophecy written in this scroll.’ Later He said yet again, ‘See, I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me, to repay all according to their deeds. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.’”

These nuts talking about rising up made Paul’s blood run cold. So they hoped to spread their poison all over the world—to “make disciples of all the nations.” They were plotting something big, “despite the law, despite the danger,” the woman said. And that idea that the end was near, that Jesus was coming soon—that was their justification for flatout sedition.

“We’ve waited long enough,” Coker said. “We’re going in.”

“Be careful. These people might be crazier than we think.”

“Relax, Professor. We know what we’re doing.” Coker turned and motioned to his people to follow him.

He got out and moved around to Paul’s window, giving him a thumbs-up. “Watch, listen, and learn,” he said. He ran, leading his troops to join the others jogging toward the house.

In less than a minute, the house was surrounded. And from what Paul heard, no one inside had an inkling.

“I want to allow you all to be gone before sunup,” the woman said, “so let’s sing another hymn and close in prayer.”

Coker raised his arm and swung his fist in a circle. No knocking, no announcement, no warning—as one, the SWAT team charged the house. Paul ripped off his goggles and leaped from the van to move closer. Windows were smashed, front and back doors rammed in, tear-gas canisters tossed. Screams filled the air.

Through his receivers, Paul heard the SWAT team members bellow encouragement to one another. Then a new sound—the unmistakable, unforgettable
whoosh-splat
of laser beams hitting human flesh. This was no raid; it was a shoot-out. These scruffy outcasts weren’t just a bunch of deluded dreamers—they were armed with high-powered weapons.

Paul sprinted through the darkness, gun drawn. As he neared the porch, flamethrowers belched. The old woman came whirling out the front door, trailing a billowing sail of fire. The hideous, crackling, pinwheeling form and the smell of charring flesh stopped Paul. He dropped her into a hissing, smoking heap with a single shot.

An earsplitting cracking sound made the earth rumble. Low booms, growing in intensity, knocked Paul to his knees.
It’s a
bomb factory!

“Coker!” Paul bellowed. “Get out!”

He caught a lurching flash of white at the side of the house—the white uniform he had last seen drooping from under a coat. The middle-aged couple had slipped out and were staggering away as fast as the man could limp. Paul fired and saw the white form sink, dragging the man down. Rocking forward on his knees, Paul fired again and the man was still.

The wood house twisted on its foundation, shrieking and splintering. A man burst through a front window, stumbling on the porch and staggering to the rail. As Paul took aim, the ground surged, knocking him onto his belly as he fired off a shot. He thought the ray caught the man in the chest as he vaulted off the porch.

Paul struggled to rise but the ground buckled again. It pounded against his belly like a huge heart beating at the earth’s core. A crevasse burst open in front of him. He buried his head in his arms and rolled over the pitching ground into the street, down the hill—sliding, scrambling to his hands and knees when he could get purchase. He was more than halfway down the hill before he managed to stand and coax his battered limbs into a run, heaving and stumbling toward the bottom, now ringed with the gleaming blue lights of the San Francisco police Suburbans.

Two helmeted cops ran to help him, and he collapsed into their arms. Another deafening blast and a great underground heave knocked the three of them into a heap. As they disentangled, a final tremor and concussion sent debris raining from the top of the hill. They lay covering their faces until it settled. When at last they could stand, the top of the hill was invisible, clouded with smoke and dust in the foggy morning light.

As the cops helped Paul into an ambulance, he read their lips asking him what had happened. “Bomb,” he choked out through puffy, bleeding lips, his ears too battered to tell whether he was making sounds. His eyes were swelling shut, and he could hardly bear to settle his bruised body onto the gurney. As medics hooked him to machines, one thought looped through the ache and ringing in his head:
What bomb
could do that kind of damage?

It was a miracle. That’s what the doctors said about Paul’s injuries—or the lack of them. “Nothing but cuts and bruises,” one of them said. “You look a lot worse than you are.”

Paul tried to remember that when he examined the purple mottling on his arms, legs, and torso through a pair of teacup-sized shiners. The coat and hat and gloves that saved him were in shreds before the doctors cut them off at the hospital. Paul insisted on saving the scraps.

His eardrums had ruptured, but with modern technology that required only a simple repair, done in the emergency room. He would need to be shielded from noise for about a week. That was a relief, because he was too banged up to endure more questions.

Jae’s father had been enthusiastic about Paul’s new job. “Exactly what he needs. Young guy like him, trained for the military—he’s bound to get frustrated after a couple of years as a desk jockey. I wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t. I used to see it all the time in the agency. Jae, it will be the best thing for him.”

So when Paul came home bruised and battered, Jae was dismayed but vowed to keep it to herself. It would be hard enough for the children to cope with an injured father—especially one as frightening to look at as Paul—without having to hear their parents fight about it. And what if her father was right? What if part of Paul’s disaffection was the need for a new challenge, a chance to prove himself? He’d certainly shown his mettle. He was a hero. At this point their marriage was so rocky she was willing to accept almost anything that might revitalize it.

“A miracle,” Koontz said, slamming the printout onto his desk. “That’s what the subversives are claiming about the San Francisco explosion.”

He and Paul sat in the safe room reviewing Operation Polly Carr after Paul’s two weeks of sick leave. It had culminated in a kind of earthquake scientists had never seen, one that caused a panic even in a quake-protected city because it looked so much like a terrorist attack. The top of the hill had split, forming a crater into which the widow’s house and a few abandoned ones nearby had disappeared. The strong wavelike tremors had uprooted trees and left cracks in the roadways, but had only minimally damaged other earthquake-fortified homes farther down the hill. Nonetheless these houses had to be evacuated until geological studies determined the hill was stable and, if possible, what had triggered the bizarre predawn convulsion of the earth.

“It was a bomb,” Koontz said. “We just don’t know what kind, and with the whole hilltop collapsed in on top of the house, I wonder if we’ll ever find out. But it’s obvious these people are more sophisticated and dangerous than we thought.”

“What about all those NPO special weapons and tactics people?”

“All gone.”

Paul shook his head. “That poor kid Coker. He was a real go-getter.”

“We think the subversives all bought it too.”

Paul leaned in closer. “There’s something I want to tell you about that, Bob.”

“Fire away.”

“Coker and the team busted into the house—no announcement, no identification. They swarmed the place, attacked with flamethrowers, tear gas, Bayous with laser bayonets, and pulsar handguns—”

“That must have been something.”

“It was! I heard shooting—friendly or not, I couldn’t tell. As I ran to assist, the old lady came spinning out of the house. They had set her on fire. That was before I knew anything about a bomb.”

Bob let out a big breath. “What are you saying?”

“Did we even know that they were armed? It was like those kids walked into a booby trap. So I shot the old lady.”

“Sounds like you put her out of her misery.”

“Then the bomb went off. Did we know it was there?”

“We had our suspicions.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

Koontz hesitated. “The commander of an operation like this needs broad discretionary powers. Maybe the situation was too dicey for him to communicate much with you or the others. You just don’t know.”

“Well, I just kept shooting. I didn’t even think about taking prisoners. I got three more of them—a nurse, maybe, and two guys trying to escape.”

“Kill ’em?”

“Think so.”

“Your first kills?”

“Yes.”

Koontz smiled. “Rough. But don’t let it bother you. You did what you were trained to do, and under fire. Listen, they would have died in the explosion anyway. You’re the only survivor. In this day and age, few of us ever kill anyone. Look at it this way—the bomb went off. That’s as close to proof as we’ll ever get that there were terrorists in that house.”

“Bob, I don’t have regrets. It’s about those kids, Coker and the rest. They didn’t know, and they went up in smoke. They never had a chance.”

Koontz nodded. “Guerrilla warfare. That’s what we’re up against.”