EVIL IN THE DARKNESS

WRATH & RIGHTEOUSNESS

[Episode Eight]

CHRIS STEWART

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used factiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locals or persona, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

“The totalitarian phenomenon is not to be understood without making allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or—much more mysteriously—to submit to it. Democracy will therefore always remain at risk.”

—Jean-Francois Revel,

Last Exit to Utopia—The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era

ONE

Fourteen Miles East of Little Rock, Arkansas

Lieutenant Bono pulled his camouflage jacket around him and rolled over in his sleep. He was crammed in the backseat of a black Cadillac, the largest car abandoned on the freeway that he could find, but his feet were still jammed against the rear door and his legs were cramped from being bent. He had taken off his boots and placed them on the floor beside him; other than that he was fully dressed. He’d rolled up an extra pair of pants to make a rough pillow and spread his military jacket over him for a blanket, though it only covered him to his waist. His gear and backpack were beside him on the floor, everything organized and tidy, just as it should be. Attention to detail. Keep things tight. Keep things clean and oiled and always ready for a fight.

The military issue 9-mm Beretta Special Forces handgun was under the front seat, within easy reach. The tiny, pearl-handled .22 caliber pistol he’d picked up in Baltimore was, as always, strapped around his calf.

Bono shivered in his sleep. It was really cold outside. Frost had formed on the front window, creating a maze of crystals that, in half an hour, when the sun came up, would reflect in tiny prisms of light. His breath formed a light mist in front of his face. The lieutenant rolled over, pulled the jacket to his chin, shivered, and slowly opened his eyes. He lay there for a moment trying to figure out where he was, the semidarkness of predawn illuminating the car in gray light. Within a few seconds it all came back to him and he was instantly awake.

He got up, pulled on his boots, climbed out of the car, and stretched. A small ditch ran under the freeway and he climbed down to it, washing his face and shaving as quickly as he could. He hadn’t shaved in days and it felt good to get the itchy stubble off his neck. Working his way upstream, he traced the water in the growing light until he found a pool where the small stream was calm and clear. He studied the water, looking for signs of vermin or other water life. He sifted it with his fingers, smelled it, let it drip against the light, tasted it, then sat back on his haunches and thought. He had iodine pills in his backpack, but only a few weeks’ worth, and who knew what lay ahead? The next water hole he found might be little better than a sewer, while this seemed fairly clear. Take his chances? Wait for better? He thought for a moment, then leaned over and drank deeply, filling his stomach as much as he could, then his canteen, then the plastic water bottles the Air Force sergeant had given him on the flight into Little Rock. Scrambling up the embankment, he walked back to the freeway and climbed up onto the roof of the car.

The sun was up now, its yellow rays slanting across the horizon, and he took a few minutes to look around. Interstate 40, the major artery between Little Rock and Memphis, ran east and west. Lines of dead cars cluttered the freeway as far as he could see. To the west, toward Little Rock, he could see multiple lines of smoke lifting into the calm sky. Thousands of people, all of them refugees, had moved into the country now, setting up makeshift camps of various shapes and sizes. The nearest campfire was two, maybe three hundred yards behind him. Looking east, he saw no fires. The roads between the major cities appeared to be mostly deserted. Still, he didn’t plan on walking along the freeway. Too many people there. He pulled out his map and studied it in the growing light. The old State Road 70 paralleled the freeway a couple of miles to the south. Using his fingers, he measured the distance to the small ranch where his wife was staying with her parents. Twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five miles. He thought it over. He wouldn’t run, but his walking pace was as quick as a slow man could jog, which meant he could cover maybe thirty miles a day if he kept it up. Two and a half, maybe three days to get there.

Just enough time to kiss his wife, hug his daughter, and turn around and head back to his military unit again.

He thought about his last conversation with his unit commander back in Washington, D.C., and the very specific instructions he’d been given. “You have two weeks. Understand me, Lieutenant. Fourteen days. Not an hour more. I can’t believe I’m doing this anyway, letting you guys even try to go home. But I want you back here, understand. I want you checking in in two weeks. We’re in the middle of a war here. I don’t think I need to remind you. Now go on, get out of here.”

Bono counted the days. One night in the military aircraft flying down to Little Rock. Two days walking south and east. Three days since he’d left Washington, D.C. A total of six days to get to his family, had to plan on six days getting back, which left him two days to spend with his wife and daughter.

Part of him swore in frustration at so little time; part of him smiled at the thought of two days with his family. Two days of heaven and bliss. Truth was, he would walk a year across the Gobi Desert to spend two days with them. He’d crawl across broken glass and nails to spend an hour with his wife.

Jumping down from the roof of the car, he opened the backdoor, took out his backpack, pulled out an incredibly dense military meal bar—two thousand calories of what tasted like sweetened rust and nails, as far as he could tell—hoisted his backpack, checked the weapon in the holster at the small of his back, turned southeast, and started walking with a long, determined gait.

The sun rose and it got warmer. Half an hour later, he started to sweat. His stomach growled. He felt a little dizzy. Sweat began to drip down his ribs.

Twenty minutes later, just as he climbed the embankment of State Road 70, he leaned over and started heaving in gushes.

An hour later, he knew he was in trouble. Whatever was in the water, he felt like it was killing him.

Two gut-wrenching hours later, he wished it would.

TWO

Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania

It was a small group, two women and five men, not including the new president of the United States. With the exception of the lean, thick-haired man who found himself in the amazingly unfamiliar position of sitting in the president’s chair, the members of the group knew each other intimately, having worked together from behind locked doors, aboard private jets, and inside luxury villas for many years. Along the wall before them, a secure conference system brought in video feeds from Paris, London, and Berlin. Altogether, thirteen people were on the line. And though he sat at the head of the conference table, President Albert J. Fuentes didn’t control the meeting, set the agenda, or have very much to say.

He was a weak man, a coyote of a leader, doomed to follow the pack, with no more intelligence or talent than the average man out on the street. The only things he had in great abundance were good looks, an empty character, and hot, burning, soul-selling, back-stabbing ambition. He also had camera presence, having started out as a television newsman, reading other people’s words from a teleprompter as if they were his own.

It was a deadly but useful combination, and the reason why he just might be the perfect choice.

The old man sat on the same style of black leather chair as they all did, but he hunched lower, old and shriveled, almost pygmy-like against the enormous conference table. The others watched him carefully, listening to his every word. He gestured toward Fuentes. “This is him?” he asked.

The others only nodded.

The old man raised an eyebrow. “He’s the best you got?” He smiled weakly as he said it. Fuentes thought that he was kidding. The others knew he was not. “I don’t know. I really don’t,” the old man went on. “I feel like I’m on the iceberg watching the Titanic bearing down. It’s a full moon. We’ll see the bodies. This is going to be a mess.”

The newly appointed vice president, the man who’d chosen Fuentes, sat forward in his chair. He was intense, moody, brilliant, and one of the wealthiest men in the United States. He had already mastered money; now he mastered power. “It’s going to work,” was all he said. There was significant, if unknown, meaning in his words.

Sensing the mood of the people in the room, Fuentes shifted angrily. He did not know the old man, had never seen him before in his life (and he knew everyone who was anyone, or so he thought), and his indignation rose. “I remind you, sir, that you are speaking to the president of the United States.”

The old man didn’t respond as he stared at Fuentes.

“He’ll do what we tell him to,” the new vice president went on, speaking as if Fuentes weren’t there. “And remember, he was the next in line of succession. We had to follow protocol. We couldn’t push too far. I mean, we’ve already had to kill one of them and put another into a coma. We thought it best not to have to kill him, too.”

“You’re going to have to kill him eventually. Might as well do it now,” said the old man.

Fuentes’ face grew white, his lips tight. Was it him they were talking about? He couldn’t even tell. Surely not. He must have missed it. No one looked at him.

The vice president brought his elbows atop his armrest and put his fingers to his lips, building a small tent before his face. He glanced patiently at Fuentes. “I trust him,” was all he said.

The old man pulled on his feeble chin. It was covered with white hairs, scattered and wispy, some of them far too long, as if it was hard to shave between the deep creases on his face. And he exuded an odor. It wasn’t strong and it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, but there was something odd, almost unworldly. Fuentes sniffed the air, trying to identify it. It was old stale air released from a sealed room within an ancient temple; an old book that hadn’t been opened for many years; an old house; a rotting tree; it was, what? He couldn’t tell and maybe it was that simple. The old man just smelled old.

The old man cocked his head to the right, then leaned toward Fuentes. “Do you love your country?” he asked.

Fuentes hesitated. What was the answer he was looking for? “There are things I love about it,” he finally said.

“Do you think it can be rebuilt?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you think it should be rebuilt?”

The president of the United States looked down. This was where they had him. He answered carefully. “We have made mistakes. Plenty of them. There are many things we shouldn’t have done. We’ve hurt the world, there is no question. Most of the world hates us now, and who are we to blame them, when we even hate ourselves? We’ve oppressed, robbed and plundered. Pumped our filth into the air. We’ve started wars to keep the oil coming, spilling blood to prime the pump—”

The old man raised a hand to stop him. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. Some of what you said is truthful, but most of it is crap. You’ve got to learn to see the difference.”

Fuentes hesitated. “We’ve grown weak,” he concluded. “We could be stronger, so much stronger, if we take the proper steps.”

The old man pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapped the box, extracted a filter, and held the cigarette between his dry lips. “Do you realize that you can’t lie to me?” he said.

Fuentes kept his eyes down. Such an unusual thing to say.

“You can’t lie to me,” the old man said again. “You can’t deceive me. I can see into your soul. I sense your deepest thoughts by the flicker in your eye. I know your heart by the way you look at me. I know everything about you. More than you even know yourself. You forget. I never do.” The old man stopped, lit the cigarette, and sat back against his chair.

Fuentes started to fidget, brushing his hands across his face.

“You’re forty-seven,” the man continued. “You used to be a Republican but switched parties when your old boss told you there were better opportunities in the new administration for a man such as yourself.”

Fuentes looked up at the old man, his courage building. That was no secret. Anyone who knew him would know about that.

The man drew a breath of smoke, then broke into an evil smile. “You tell your friends and family, even your wife, that you’ve got a lot of money, but the truth is, you’ve got nothing. Not a dime, as far as I can tell, and you’ve been broke for years. If it weren’t for credit cards, and a handful of overly generous friends, I think you’d be living on the street.”

Fuentes frowned and started to answer but the old man cut him off. “That’s OK, I can live with beggars. It’s some of these other things I find more interesting.” He pulled himself forward by the edge of the table. “When you were ten, you and one of your old buddies, what was his name, David Butter, yeah, I’m sure that’s it, the two of you found a litter of kittens in the old barn behind your grandma’s house. Do you remember that, Albert?”

The president sat lower in his seat, his face growing pale now and sick.

“You put them in a small bag… .”

Fuentes shifted on his chair. A cold chill seeped into the room. “Stop it,” he muttered quietly.

“You dropped them in the creek. Five little kittens. There was no reason. I’ve got to tell you, I think that’s a bit sick. Then, remember back in high school, that sweet young thing you took to the prom—what was her name? Kristen, yes, I think that’s it. A real cute little girl. So much younger than you were… .”

Fuentes wanted to scream, but he was silent, overcome with gut-wrenching surprise and fear. Who was this man? How did he know these things? Where did he get his information?

The old man stared at him. His lips were smiling but his eyes were blank and dark. “Funny, isn’t it, Mr. President,” the name was sweet syrup on his lips, “a man of your background and education; a young television reporter, then Harvard, then state attorney general, U.S. assistant attorney general and now president of the United States. Yet you have so many peculiar habits. So many late nights on the computer. What are you staring at all that time? Why does your wife sleep in the basement? What is she afraid of, President Fuentes?”

The old man stopped and drew another smoke. Fuentes kept his eyes down. His hands trembled on the table, and his breath was short and tight.

“Look at me,” the old man said to him. “Look at me right now.”

Fuentes reluctantly raised his eyes.

The old man leaned toward him. “You’re not who I would have chosen, but some things are beyond even my control. When you’re a member of the Donner party and someone throws you a bone, you’ve got to take it and chew on it, sucking out whatever marrow you can get, know what I mean? And that’s where we are now. Someone threw you to us. Now we’re going to chew.

“But I want you to remember: I know you. I have known you well for years. Yes, we’re going to use you, but there are many things we have to teach you first, many things you need to know. Who I am. Who these others are. What we intend to do. It will come slowly, but we will teach you, and this is your first lesson: You can’t lie to me. You can’t deceive me. So please, don’t even try. All it will do is hurt you. And we don’t want to hurt you, friend.”

Fuentes took a breath and held it, then looked up at the old man. “I understand,” he muttered, though he understood not a thing at all.

“All right, then. We understand each other. Now, let me ask again. We have a chance to rebuild this nation, but in another way, after a different model, a model we’ll control. Are you willing to support us? It all comes down to that.”

Fuentes pressed his lips together and adjusted his perfect hair. Leaning forward, he lowered his voice to a dry whisper. “If you say you truly know me, then you already know I will.”

The old man smashed his cigarette. “Let’s get to work,” he said.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

They talked for hours, outlining a final agenda, naming key players and responsibilities, and setting up a time line to put the plan in place. The last thing they had to decide was when the new president would address the people of the United States.

“It will take FEMA several days to distribute the equipment throughout the country,” the vice president announced. “It’s a huge problem, getting working television receivers and satellite systems out to all the cities and towns. We don’t want people to congregate any more than they have to—larger crowds are unpredictable and so much harder to control. We want a television in every small town. We’re talking a couple hundred thousand systems. It will take a little time.”

“Four days,” the old man prodded.

They agreed that that would work.

Their business complete, the meeting started to break up.

“There is still one problem,” the new vice president said as the group started collecting their things. They hesitated awkwardly, throwing a glance or two in Fuentes’ direction.

“This is private,” the vice president said to his new president.

The president was excused. He left without comment and the group sat down at the conference table once again.

“We think the SecDef is alive,” the vice president announced. “Not only alive, but suspicious. And we can’t find him anywhere.”

The old man’s eyes flashed in anger. “You will take care of him, I am sure.”

The vice president nodded. “He’s an old friend. I think I can round him up.”

“And what about King Abdullah?” one of the women wanted to know. His absence from the conference call had not gone unnoticed among the group.

The old man sat back and thought a moment about his good friend, the Saudi king. The group sat in awkward silence. They all knew what he would do.

“You’re going to kill him?” the vice president asked.

The old man stood up from the table. “I don’t think I’ll have to. He’s stupid. He’s too aggressive, and always there’s his foolish, blinding pride. I don’t think I’ll have to do it. We’ll simply let him kill himself.”

THREE

Twenty-One Miles East of Little Rock, Arkansas

What started as a cool morning, with temperatures just below the freezing mark, quickly heated up to a humid 73 degrees Fahrenheit. The sky was clear, the air still, almost like it was waiting for something new to come. The sun rose higher in the pale sky, beating straight down on Bono’s face.

Just before losing consciousness, the young lieutenant had made an important decision. Knowing he was slipping away, he’d crawled off the road, not wanting to be found by other travelers when he wasn’t in a position to defend himself. Dragging his body painfully between the strands of a barbed wire fence, he’d dropped into a thicket and immediately passed out.

The day wore on and the sun beat down, burning the left side of his face, his right side mashed into the thistles and dirt. He sweat, he threw up across his chest, he mumbled and called out, but he never regained consciousness. By afternoon, a violent seizure racked him and he almost choked on his tongue. Sporadic spasms came and went, convulsing him into a painful ball.

Along the road, several people moved east and west. None of them saw him, though a couple of people thought they heard someone calling as they passed.

Afternoon came and a band of clouds started building in the west. Rain was coming. The sun dropped toward the western horizon and the temperature fell.

As twilight approached, Bono opened his eyes and shivered. Focusing his entire will and using every ounce of energy that he had left, he opened his backpack, his hands shaking violently, his arms barely able to even move, and pulled out his field jacket. Fighting against the crippling pain inside his stomach and chest, he struggled to spread the jacket over his shoulders—it felt like it was made of lead—then dropped his head onto the dirt.

He was so thirsty. Brutally thirsty. His stomach muscles were tied in knots, painful spasms racking him. He heaved at the dryness, but there was nothing left inside him to throw up. He tried to swallow. His tongue and throat were so swollen it was like trying to swallow sand.

“No, no, no,” he almost wept, physical and emotional misery racking him. “Please, whatever it is, I cannot die here. Please, help me to get home first. If it’s Your plan, then I accept it, but please don’t let me die out here by myself. Caelyn will never know what happened to me. Please don’t make Ellie spend the rest of her life wondering what happened to her father. Please, I do not ask this for myself, I only ask it for my family.”

FOUR

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

The sound of thudding footsteps rolled down the narrow hallway of the high-rise apartment building. Sam, lying atop a sleeping bag just a few feet from the apartment door, was immediately awake. He sat up and listened carefully to the sound of the passing footsteps, taking measure of them, his nerves on edge, his breathing light. Four people, maybe a few more. Adults. Most of them heavy treaders, probably men. None of them were speaking. They knew where they were going and what they needed to do. The sound faded, the stairwell door slammed, and they were gone. Sam checked his watch: 3:45 a.m. He stretched, swallowed against the dryness of his mouth, and lay back down. Then, knowing he’d never get to sleep again, he stood.

Luke and Ammon were asleep inside their bags. Luke’s breathing was heavy. It almost sounded sedated. Ammon was curled up, his sleeping bag pushed down around his waist. Sam’s military boots and jacket were lying on the floor beside him. Moving quietly, he pulled on the leather boots, ran the laces behind the quick-lace eyelets, stood, and pulled on his jacket. Turning for the door, he sensed Azadeh’s outline in the darkness and stopped.

“Hey, Azadeh,” he whispered, not wanting to wake up his brothers.

She barely nodded to him, afraid to speak.

He moved toward the door. She followed closely. “Where are you going?” she whispered once she got very close.

“Thought I’d go up on the roof and take a look around.”

She moved a little closer to him. “Can I come with you?”

Sam hesitated. “I don’t know. It might be better if you stayed here.”

She dropped her eyes. The whites, large as they were, were barely visible in the dark. “I’ve been inside this apartment for a very long time. Days. It seems much longer. If I could please just come with you, it would…” she hesitated, searching for the right word, “it would mean good things to me.”

Sam smiled, wondering what word she had been searching for. “It’s going to be cold up there.”

She was already holding her coat and she stepped toward the door. He helped her put her coat on, then pulled the door back. The hallway was empty and he led the way toward the stairs.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The moon, a quarter full, waning and burning orange, was already low on the western horizon when they came out on the roof. With no city lights to drown them out, a million stars filled the night sky. A light wind was blowing from the south, and Sam sniffed the air. “A cold front is going to move through sometime in the next day or so,” he said.

Azadeh nodded, pretending to understand though she had no idea what he meant. Sam watched her, knowing she was faking it, and explained. “A south wind at this time of year and up here in the north,” he pointed to his left, “usually means a low pressure system is moving through. The wind circles around low pressure in a counterclockwise direction.” His voice trailed off. He had lost her again. “It’s going to turn cold in the next day or two,” he said more simply.

Azadeh nodded. That she could understand. She shivered anyway. “It seems cold right now,” she said.

Sam reached out and pulled her collar up around her ears. “Is Chicago colder than Iran?”

Her hair was loose and it blew behind her, falling in shadows down her back. Her face was almond colored in the moonlight and her eyes were large and bright. Sam felt his stomach tighten as he looked at her as he tried hard not to stare. “I grew up in the mountains,” she said. “My village was in the Agha Jari Deh Valley. Remember? You have been there.”

Sam remembered very well.

“I am used to the cold.” Still, she shivered. Sam knew that she was scared.

“It’s going to be OK,” he told her.

She looked at him and nodded. “I think it will.” She brushed a strand of hair away. “I saw what you did on that first night, back in the car. I saw what happened to your brother. I saw what you did for Kelly Beth. I don’t understand it. It makes me feel… awkward. Is that the right word? I don’t think that it is. It makes me feel funny. There is a strangeness in my chest. It keeps me warm. It makes it so I can’t sleep. I wonder what it means.”

Sam hunched his shoulders, struggling for his own words. He was not good at this and it scared him that he might say the wrong thing and screw it up. “It’s going to take a while to understand it. But it has to do with God. With Allah. He is real. Do you believe that?”

“I know that He is real.”

“Do you believe that He can hear us? Do you believe that He can answer our prayers?”

She looked away. “I have prayed my whole life.”

Sam waited, noticing she had left his actual question unanswered. But her face was softer now and not so full of fear.

“God does answer us,” he told her. “God always hears and answers our prayers.”

“Are you a messenger from Allah?” Her voice was full of doubt and wonder.

“No, no, no.” He started laughing. “I’m no messenger from Allah. I’m just a man, just a kid, really, at least that’s how I feel. I’m just like you are, Azadeh, trying to figure this whole thing out.”

“But the prayer you said. You promised your brother he would live.”

Sam bit his lip and looked away. He had no idea what to say. This wasn’t something he was comfortable with. He was a doer, not a talker, and someone else, anyone else, was far better at explaining this kind of thing. “It will take a little time, Azadeh, before you can understand,” he finally said. “But that’s OK. You’ve got all the time in the world.”

He watched her, waited, and, when she didn’t answer, he turned and walked toward the corner of the building, looking around. She followed, keeping a few steps behind. The city had fallen silent below them. The sky was alive and bright, the ground nothing but an empty black hole. Looking west, Sam could barely make out the outline of downtown, the skyscrapers reaching high enough to blot out some of the stars, leaving square shadows against the bowl of light. Looking north, Lake Michigan was another black hole. No lights but the setting moon and stars. No noise now. Perfectly quiet. He took a breath and held it. It was almost beautiful. So peaceful. So serene.

Azadeh moved beside him and touched his shoulder, pointing east. “Look at that!” she whispered in surprise.

Sam turned and looked. Lights! Man-made lights along the shoreline! They were clustered in a row that seemed to stretch two hundred feet or more. A long way away, maybe four or five miles. Lights. That meant electricity. Which meant, what? He didn’t know. Civilization? Maybe. At least it was a start.

He stared, his mouth open, then grabbed Azadeh by the hand and said, “Let’s go.”

FIVE

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

It was getting lighter now, sunrise less than an hour away. They were heading east. The streets weren’t empty, but they were relatively quiet: a few clusters of people here and there, a few fires—an old warehouse had burned down, but it was only smoldering—and a row of barricades, which Sam helped Azadeh climb over. They walked another forty minutes. A couple of miles away from the shoreline, the streets became noticeably more crowded. Word had spread. Lights along the shoreline! Getting closer, Sam could smell the lake: seaweed, wet sand, humid air. Azadeh stayed close to him, her hair tucked underneath the hood of her overcoat, the buttons tight around her waist. Moving toward a large intersection, they turned right and immediately stopped.

Two blocks ahead of them, an enormous crowd had gathered. Noise. Sometimes screams. Fights were breaking out. Smoke—it looked like tear gas. Behind them, they heard the pounding of footsteps as a group of people ran toward the massive crowd. Sam immediately pulled Azadeh to the side, pressing her against the wall of the nearest building, letting the roaring crowd go running by. A dilapidated antique shop was on his right. He approached it, broke the window on the door with his elbow, reached in and turned the lock, pushed the door back, and pulled her inside. The room was dark, though there was a hint of light now, the eastern sky turning light pink and orange. The shop was musty and mostly filled with junk. “Stay here!” Sam commanded. “Lock the door behind you, then go into the back room. There has to be a rear entrance to the building. Find it, then stay here. If anyone comes through the front door, and I mean anyone, you run out the back. You understand me, Azadeh? Go out the back. There has to be an alley back there. Find a place to hide and wait for me.”

“Don’t leave me here,” she whimpered. “Please don’t leave me here alone!”

“Azadeh, you’ll be OK. No one’s going to come in here. If they do, do what I tell you and go running quietly out the back. But it’s important, Azadeh, that you not talk to anyone. They will know where you’re from. Normally, that’s not a problem. Might not be a problem now, but we can’t take the chance. These are not normal times. There is no normal anymore.” He stopped and looked toward the broken window. Another crowd of people ran noisily down the street. He turned back to face her. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“I’m OK. I stay here. If anyone comes, I go out the backdoor and wait for you.”

“That’s right, babe.” He stopped and looked around, suddenly embarrassed. He knew that he was blushing. His dad had called his mother babe, but Sam had never called a woman that.

He held her shoulders. Then he turned and walked out the door. She followed him to the doorway and looked out, but he was quickly swallowed up in the shuffle and panic of the growing crowd. She stood at the door a moment longer, looking out through the broken glass. She then turned away, slipped behind the shop’s counter, leaned against the wall, and slid down to the floor.

SIX

Twenty-One Miles East of Little Rock, Arkansas

The rancher found Bono lying in a ditch, surrounded by his own vomit and coated in sweat. He watched him from the saddle of his horse without moving toward him, suspicious, even angry at finding the stranger who had passed out on his property. Probably a drunk, the rancher thought. Maybe someone running from the law. Maybe worse. Maybe he was one of those men who’d joined up with the tribes that were forming in these parts, some of them violent, most of them crazy, all of them growing desperate. He held his horse back and watched the stranger closely, noting the sickly face and short hair. Seeing the military clothes didn’t help to ease his suspicions, for he doubted they were real; lots of losers hung out in secondhand fatigues they’d picked up at the army surplus store. He’d known more than one liar who claimed he was in the army when the closest the liar had ever come was walking by the recruiting station on his way to the Red Cross to give a pint of blood for thirty bucks.

A little pressure against the mare’s ribs was all it took to move her forward. She stepped over a narrow ditch and stopped again as he leaned forward, crossing his arms atop the saddle horn. He noticed the three-day assault backpack, coyote-tan and clean, then the insulated pouch of water. He studied the equipment hanging with carabiners from both sides of the backpack, all well maintained and clean.

Quickly dismounting, he dropped the reins—the young mare was as trustworthy as his dog and wouldn’t go anywhere. He patted her neck without thinking as he passed and moved quickly toward the stranger.

The young man was almost lifeless, his breathing shallow and slow. The rancher leaned toward him, then pulled back from the smell. Turning his face, he took a deep breath, then pressed two fingers against the young man’s neck, feeling his pounding pulse. Lifting the soldier’s head, he started talking to him. “Hey there, buddy. Can you hear me?” He gently patted his cheeks. “Are you in pain? Can you hear me?”

The dark-haired soldier didn’t move. The rancher quickly wiped his right hand across his jeans to clean his fingers, cradled the soldier’s head, and opened his right eye. The pupil quickly dilated but stared past him, still not seeing. He could feel the soldier’s cold and clammy skin under his careful hand and he gently laid Bono’s head down.

He whistled to his horse. The mare, dark with white socks, lifted her head and stared at him but didn’t move until he whistled a second time. The rancher held his breath against the smell of human waste and vomit, and strained against the soldier’s weight. Sensing his burden, the horse almost knelt, making it easier for him to lift the soldier across the back of the leather saddle. Working quickly, the rancher gathered up the backpack and small sleeping bag and tied them to the saddle with leather straps. He pulled the reins over the black mare’s neck and she lowered her head, allowing them to fall across it. The rancher held on, then started jogging. He wasn’t young anymore, and he was a little overweight as well; it was only a couple of minutes before he was panting like a dog. The horse easily kept up with his pace, moving gently to keep her load from bouncing on her back.

Looking back, the rancher watched her smooth gait and reached back to pat her neck again. A good animal. Smart. Sensitive. One of the best horses he’d ever owned.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, he led the horse and unconscious soldier through a wooden gate at the back of his yard. A large wooden barn, built by his grandfather, was on his left. Metal buildings and granaries were on his right. The area around the outbuildings was paved with asphalt and cement. The farmhouse, a large, brick rancher with a four-car garage and peanut-shaped swimming pool, was straight ahead. A little boy watched him from behind a low fence that separated the farm buildings from the grass, then turned and ran inside. Seconds later, a middle-aged woman exited the house and ran toward her husband. “My goodness, Reed—” She stopped short. “Are you OK? Who is that? Is everything all right?”

The rancher dropped the reins and moved around to the other side of the horse.

“What in the world happened? Is he OK?”

“I don’t know, Jazzy. Found him near the highway. He’d crossed the fence onto our property and passed out down by the old well.”

She took a careful step toward her husband, her dark eyes scared. She was middle-aged, but tan and pretty. Her nails were carefully manicured and her hands were smooth—not the hands of a woman who spent much time out on the farm.

All she could see were the stranger’s legs hanging from her side of the saddle. She followed her husband around to the other side of the horse. “Oh my… oh my…” she whispered upon seeing the uniform. “Reed, is he a soldier?” Her face turned pale, a deep sadness falling across her eyes.

The man grunted as he pulled the stranger off the back of the horse, draped him across his shoulders, and headed for the grass.

Jazzy smelled him and turned away, then yelled toward her youngest son: “Bruce, get a couple buckets from the garage. Fill them from the pool. Go on! Go on! Get ’em now!” The little boy, maybe ten or eleven, had wandered close. So far he hadn’t said anything, but now he turned and ran again.

Reed laid the soldier on the grass at the back side of the house. His wife followed and immediately started taking off his filthy clothes while Reed worked on his boots. The young boy showed up with two sloshing buckets and a wet rag. The woman gently placed the rag over the unconscious man’s forehead. He mumbled but didn’t wake.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Twelve hours later, Bono opened his eyes. It was dark. It was quiet. The bed was soft and warm. He looked at the darkness in utter confusion, then attempted to push himself up from the pillow, panic surging through his veins. He fell back, his head pounding like a hammer as he grunted against the pain. Taking a deep breath, he gathered his strength and tried to lift his head again.

“Shhhh,” he heard a soft voice. “It’s OK. You’re all right. Don’t try to get up just yet.”

A dim glow from a small candle filled the room and, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, his surroundings slowly came into focus. A woman was studying him, her hand upon his arm. “It’s OK,” she repeated, her voice as comforting as anything he’d ever heard. “You can relax here. I’ll stay beside you. Everything’s going to be OK.”

Bono fell back against the pillow. “Where am I?” he muttered through a dry mouth.

The woman lifted a cup of water. “You need to drink,” she said.

Bono strained to lift his head, desperately thirsty, and she pressed the cup against his lips. He drank several gulps, then leaned back. “Where am I?” he repeated.

The woman started to answer, but Bono was asleep again before she could explain.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

“It’s impossible to say for certain,” the rancher said. “It could have been a number of things.” He appeared to hesitate and didn’t explain any further.

Bono sat at the kitchen table dressed in a thick blue bathrobe and white slippers that were a size too big. He was still weak, but an empty soup bowl sat in front of him and he was starting to feel a little better as the food had time to seep into his blood. He eyed his new friends and wondered in amazement at the unlikely coincidence, then turned to look at the pictures on the kitchen wall: the doctor with his family, his horses, pictures of all the things he loved. The man sitting before him had saved his life not because he was a rancher but because he was a surgeon from Little Rock who had fled the city to their family ranch after the EMP attack.

“Had to be something in the water I drank?” Bono said.

The doctor hesitated, then stood up from the table and walked toward the sink. “I’m guessing it had to be.”

“Does this mean, you know, I’ve got some kind of worm or snail or something disgusting growing inside me?”

The doctor laughed. “I don’t suppose you’re any worse off now than you were when you got back from Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever else you’ve been.”

“It wasn’t giardia,” Bono said, still trying to diagnose himself. “Way too fast to be a parasite.”

The doctor turned around. “Without the ability to do some proper blood and lab tests, we’ll probably never know.”

“So I don’t need to worry about it?”

The doctor shook his head. “I didn’t say that, lieutenant. I didn’t say that at all. In a perfect world, we’d do a little more research to try to figure out what it was. But I don’t think it’s going to kill you and I don’t think it will necessarily have any long-lasting repercussions or side effects. I may be wrong, but we can hope.”

Bono sipped at a cup of chocolate milk, staring at the bright blue mug. One of the doctor’s neighbors had a herd of cows. How valuable was that? Gold. Even better. You couldn’t drink gold. Better to have a cow.

“How far up the stream did you walk before you drank?” the doctor asked.

“A little ways,” Bono answered sheepishly, recognizing his foolish error.

The doctor sat down at the table. “You didn’t purify it, boil it, use iodine tablets or anything?”

Bono lowered his head. “I was in a hurry.”

“Look, lieutenant, it could have been a couple of things. My best guess, if you were to backtrack up the stream a ways, you’d find a dead animal in the water. A raccoon, skunk, rat, fox, who knows, but I’d bet my left arm—and I pretty much need my arm for surgery, so you can see I’m fairly sure about this bet—that there was a rotting carcass somewhere not too far upstream.”

Bono’s face turned to ash and he pressed his lips together, looking sick again.

The doctor couldn’t help but notice. “You know, back in ancient days the Persians used to poison their enemies’ water by throwing in dead dogs and rats, the first example of biological warfare that we know of. Entire armies are recorded as having been brought to their knees. Anthrax, Ebola, salmonella—lots of bad things.”

The doctor paused as he thought. Something about the story still didn’t add up. “I want to be sure I understand. You drank the water when?”

“I’ve been here one night is all, right?”

“Yes. I found you yesterday just before nightfall.”

“Then I drank the water yesterday morning. I was very sick by early afternoon.”

It can’t be, the doctor thought. The incubation time for any of these is much longer than just a few hours. The timing isn’t right. It doesn’t add up! He thought for a long moment, then let it go. “You’re lucky you survived it,” he told Bono. “Frankly, if I hadn’t found you, I don’t know if you’d have made it through the night. You were about as dehydrated as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“I wanted to die,” Bono said. “I felt like I was throwing up everything I’ve ever eaten since the second grade. Given the choice of going through that again or dying, just hand me a gun.”

“But you’re feeling better now?”

Bono took another drink of chocolate milk. “You have no idea,” he said.

The doctor pointed to his abdomen. “A little sore, I imagine?”

“Feels like a freight train drove across my chest.”

“You’re going to be sore for a while. And weak. It will take a few days to get your strength back.”

Bono pushed back from the table. The sun was just coming up and the room was lit now by soft morning light. “Thank you,” he said for at least the third or fourth time.

The doctor only grunted.

Bono stood. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

“You should stay and rest a little.”

Bono felt his legs grow weak, his knees seeming to buckle under his weight. “I can’t, sir. I really can’t. I’ve only got a few days.”

The doctor lifted a hand. “I understand,” he said, watching the lieutenant wobble as he grabbed the kitchen table, “but I don’t think you’re going to make it.”

Bono started to turn, then suddenly changed his mind, falling back into his chair and closing his eyes to stop the room from spinning.

“It’s an awful long walk to Memphis,” the doctor said, his eyes narrowing with concern.

“How far is it if I crawl?” Bono tried to laugh. “That’s the only way I’m going to make it unless the world quits spinning.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re going to make it,” he repeated. “I don’t think you could walk around this house.”

The doctor’s wife entered the room with a bucket of small tomatoes, some of the last to be taken from her garden. She glanced at Bono and patted him on the shoulder as she walked by. “You look better,” she said as she moved toward the kitchen sink, where she dropped the tomatoes and started washing them in another bucket of water she’d brought in from outside.

“You’ve been so good to me, Jasmine. I want to thank you,” Bono said.

She kept her eyes on her work. “We don’t have much, but I’m going to make you some sandwiches to hold you over on your journey.”

“You don’t need to do that. Really, I’ve got supplies. I’ll be OK.”

She quickly turned toward him. “Have you told him, Reed?” She eyed her husband.

The doctor looked away. “It didn’t come up,” he said quietly without looking at his wife.

She lifted another tomato and dropped it in the bucket of water. “Tell me, Lieutenant Calton, did you ever run into a Captain Bradley?” she asked. “He was an Apache pilot. Flew with the Third Battalion of the One Hundred and First.”

Bono thought, then shook his head.

The brown-haired woman with the soft hands turned around to face him. “That’s too bad,” she said. “Arnie was a good man. Too young. Too kind sometimes. Too trusting. Not careful enough. But he was a good boy, our son. He was killed eighteen months ago in Afghanistan.”

Bono stared at her without speaking. “I’m very sorry,” he said.

Jasmine turned back to her tomatoes. “So are we.” She pulled some homemade bread from the cupboard. “We don’t have a lot, you understand, but I’ll put together what I can.”

Bono started to argue but could see it wouldn’t do any good. And he was thankful anyway, and willing to accept her generosity. He watched her spread some peanut butter and homemade jam across thick slices of bread. Standing again, he said, “Thank you, sir,” to the doctor, his voice determined. “Thank you for what you’ve done, but I really have to go.”

The doctor stood beside him. “You’ll never make it in your condition.”

“Maybe not, sir, but what choice do I have? I think if I start slow and pace myself—”

“I really can’t allow it.”

Bono stared at him without replying. Turning, he headed to the kitchen door. His clothes were drying on the fence outside.

“Let me ask you something,” the doctor said as Bono walked away. The officer turned back. “Do you know how to handle a horse?”

Bono hesitated. “I rode a horse in Afghanistan.”

“If I give you a good animal, will you take care of her?”

Bono’s eyes moved from the doctor to his wife and back again. “I promise you, I will.”

The doctor nodded. “Figured you would.”

SEVEN

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

It was almost two hours before Sam returned. By then the sun had risen, bringing light to the day. He stood in front of the broken window on the door, his back to it, looking out on the crowded streets. Then he quickly pushed the door open and backed in. “Azadeh,” he called softly.

She was nowhere to be seen.

“Azadeh,” he called a little more loudly. Still no answer. He pulled the Beretta from his holster. The handgrip was already warm. He’d been holding it before. “Azadeh.” This time he whispered, his nerves on end. He listened, waited, then slowly started moving toward a door on the back wall. Passing the store’s counter, he found her asleep on the floor. “Azadeh,” he whispered, kneeling down beside her. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, confusion in her eyes, then sat up instantly, wrapping her coat around her waist. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I must have fallen asleep.” She rolled over onto her knees.

Sam put a hand on her leg to reassure her. “It’s OK. I’m glad you got some sleep.”

She stood up. “I am ready.”

He looked at her and laughed. “Ready to what, Azadeh?”

She looked confused again and then embarrassed. “I don’t know. Whatever you tell me to do.”

He put his arm around her. “Come with me,” he said.

She nodded toward the street. “What did you find?”

“I’ll tell you as we walk.”

“It is good though, no? It is good. Lights? Electricity? Many people go there. They are all excited. I think it must be good.”

Sam shook his head sadly and pulled her toward the door. “I’ll explain everything, but we’ve got to leave right now.”

Azadeh face fell. “You are not happy?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“It is not good?”

“No, it’s not.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

They moved against the flow of people who were rushing toward the shoreline. The crowds were larger now, and more desperate, most of them running, pushing, screaming, cursing, whatever it took to make their way along. Almost all of them carried something to hold water: buckets, plastic containers, empty milk jugs, water packs. One man carried an old metal sink and Azadeh stared at him, her eyes wide in disbelief. There were children with their mothers, babies in tired arms. All of them were moving down the street toward the shoreline, leaving Sam and Azadeh to push against the tide, like fish trying to swim upstream. Four or five blocks farther west, the crowd thinned out and they could finally talk.

“What happened back there?” Azadeh asked him as they walked.

Sam kept his eyes moving. “The United States government has brought in a portable water purification facility. They got it from Canada, apparently. Shipped it across the Great Lakes. It’s got its own power generator, pumps, filters, distribution outlets, the whole bit. They’re pumping water from the lake, purifying it, and making it available to anyone who needs it.”

Azadeh looked relieved. “That is good, no? Water. We all need it.”

Sam adjusted the water pack on his back. Azadeh reached out and pressed it, feeling its weight and pressure, noting it was full. “What is bad about this, Sam?”

He frowned, a fist of worry growing in his gut. Everything was tumbling around him and he didn’t know how to explain. He thought back on what he had seen and heard at the water station. Someone had shoved him. Others pulled him back. The water master had stared at him, his face a threatening scowl. “Where you from?” he had demanded. Sam was slow to respond. What difference did it make? The city official had glared at him and said, “You’re the wrong color.” Incredulous, Sam could only stare, his mouth open. “Where do you live? What neighborhood? We need to ration. What family are you from?”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Walking with Azadeh, he felt another cold chill run through him and he wondered how he could explain it. Azadeh looked at him, her eyes wide. She reached out and touched his arm. “Sam, are you OK?”

He shook his head. “There were soldiers there. They were from a unit I didn’t recognize. They wore dark uniforms and red headgear.” He stopped talking. He was angry and confused. His face screwed up tight.

Azadeh froze, her mind flashing back to the soldiers with black uniforms on the mountain in Iran. Her father tied up to a tree. The gasoline. The matches. She felt suddenly sick inside. Sam stopped beside her, glanced behind them, then pulled on her elbow, picking up the pace. “There were other soldiers,” he went on. “Light blue uniforms with the U.N. symbols on their helmets.” He paused again. “And other soldiers, too.”

Azadeh didn’t understand. “Other soldiers?”

“Yes, Azadeh. Soldiers from other countries. Some of them appeared to be from private security organizations.” He huffed in disgust. “Yeah, I saw them in Afghanistan and Iraq. A bunch of blowhard wannabes with big guns but little brains. It isn’t good, Azadeh. It isn’t good at all.” He gestured to the crowded streets around them. “There should be U.S. soldiers everywhere. Every corner. Every street. If not active duty, there should be National Guard soldiers here.” He paused, as if realizing it for the first time. “I haven’t seen any U.S. soldiers since we got here.” His voice was low. “Where is everyone? Why aren’t they around?”

Azadeh didn’t answer. Of course she didn’t know.

“Our leaders have chosen not to deploy our own soldiers. Why wouldn’t they deploy our soldiers? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Azadeh hurried by his side. “There were soldiers, though.” She gestured to the water station. “Maybe from another country, but still, that is good.”

Sam turned and looked at her. “No, Azadeh, it isn’t good. If anyone should know that, it is you. There are good soldiers and bad soldiers.”

She nodded slowly and dropped her eyes. That was something she understood. “But this is America, Sam. There are no bad soldiers in America.”

Sam reached out and pulled on her hand. “There are now,” he said.

EIGHT

Sam and Azadeh were still five or six blocks from the apartment where the rest of their family was just waking up. A six-story, gray brick building was ahead of them on the corner. The main doors were open and a gang of men were waiting, watching them. As they approached the building, the gang moved off the stairway and onto the street, moving quickly toward them. Sam leaned into Azadeh as they walked, nudging her toward the other side of the street. He kept his eyes ahead, avoiding eye contact with the men. She kept her eyes down, too scared to look up. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders, blown back in the morning breeze that was funneling down the street. The men adjusted their direction to intercept them. Underneath his jacket, Sam’s hand moved toward his gun.

“Hey there,” one of the men called to them. “Hey there, woman. Where you from?”

“Keep walking,” Sam whispered.

“Hey! I’m talking to you!”

“Don’t say anything,” Sam whispered, nudging her again. They were pressed against a building on the opposite sidewalk now.

Three of the men doubled their pace and moved out in front of them, two hemmed them in on the side, a couple more stood at their back. The apparent leader of the gang stepped up beside them. Reaching out, he grabbed a fistful of Azadeh’s hair. She held back a scream, but knocked his hand away. Turning quickly, Sam swept her to his side, pushed her against the building, and moved to stand in front of her, positioning himself between Azadeh and the gang leader. The Beretta M9 was in his hand now but he kept it hidden between his jacket and his ribs. “What’s the problem, buddy?” he demanded of the men. The hoodlums gathered around him. Too confident. Too cocky. They weren’t afraid of him. They didn’t have their guns out, but it was obvious to Sam that they were concealing guns in their clothing.

Sam kept his Beretta hidden. If he had to use it, he was dead. He couldn’t kill them all—a couple of them, maybe more, but he wouldn’t get them all before one of them shot him in the head.

He stood his ground, his shoulders square, his eyes unflinching, his body between the men and Azadeh. Pressing against him, she kept her head down and stifled a cry of fear.

The gang leader looked past Sam, taking in the girl, his eyes a dull and angry fire. It wasn’t lust that burned inside him, it was a black ache for revenge. “Where you from, pig?” he demanded.

Azadeh didn’t answer.

“SPEAK TO ME!” he screamed.

Sam leaned toward him. “Look, man, she isn’t part of the problem, OK? I know you want to hit them—hey, we all do. Believe me, no one wants revenge any more than me. But this doesn’t have anything to do with her. She’s been here in America for a long time. She’s—”

“One of them!” the man sneered. “And we’re going to kill them. Every Arab in our country. None of them will live.”

“She isn’t even Arab!”

“I know an Arab when I see it. They all look the same. They smell the same. I can smell her Arab stench from here.”

“She’s isn’t Arab, she is Persian.”

“Persian, Arab, they’re all the same. And all of them are going to die.”

Sam forced himself to stay calm, keeping an even voice. “Listen to me, buddy. Maybe you don’t see them different, but think about this, OK? There is innocent and there is guilty, and this girl has done nothing wrong.”

The man shook his head in heedless rage. “Don’t play your stupid games on me!”

“She is just as much a victim here as—”

“Are you kidding me?! You and I are the only victims, baby. But that’s about to change.”

A crowd began to gather, pressing closer and closer to the men. Faces of desperation, filled with anger and the deep lust for revenge.

A sudden motion in the street caught Sam’s eye and he looked past the pressing crowd around them. Four soldiers in dark uniforms were moving down the street. They walked together. Too close together. Was that fear Sam saw in their eyes? He studied them quickly: heavy uniforms, Kevlar body armor, dark glasses, leather gloves. One of them carried a FN Minimi 5.56 Standard light machine gun. Another, the lowest-ranking sergeant, carried a NATO squad support weapon. Sam caught the first soldier’s eye, then motioned desperately toward him.

The soldier stopped, looked at him, and took his protective glasses off, but he didn’t say anything.

“Who are you with?” Sam demanded. It was a soldier’s question with many meanings: What unit are you with? Who’s your commander? What’s your specialty? What’s your army? What nation are you from?

The four soldiers stared but didn’t answer.

“Look, guys, I could use your help here!” Sam yelled, incredulous that they hadn’t acted to do anything. The gang members seemed completely unconcerned. None of them made any effort to hide the handguns that were stuffed inside their pants, and Sam saw the knowing look they shot each other.

He took a quick step toward the soldiers, his heart sinking in his chest. “My name is Captain Samuel Brighton. United States Army, Special Forces.”

The soldiers didn’t respond.

“As one soldier to another—”

“They’re not going to help you,” the gang leader sneered.

Sam called to them again.

The gang leader wrinkled his nose in disdain, then turned around to face the soldiers. “Hey there, boys. We ain’t got no problems with you here.”

Sam hissed in desperation. “Can’t you see what’s going on?”

The nearest soldier motioned weakly. “No English,” he stammered, as if that excused everything.

“You don’t have to speak English,” Sam shot back. “All you have to do is not be stupid!”

The foreign soldier looked away. A second one stepped forward, then turned and looked anxiously up the street. Sam saw the nation flag that was velcroed to the shoulder of his uniform. Uganda. “Listen,” he commanded, “I need you to—”

The foreigner raised his hands again. “No English,” he repeated.

“No English?! Man, don’t be so stupid.”

The gang leader laughed and then whispered, “They’re not going to help you, soldier boy.”

Sam swore, then turned and shot a deadly glare toward the dark man. Laughing again, the leader said, “The soldiers are our brothers now. After a hundred years of police oppression, we’ve got real friends in uniforms. To show our appreciation, we sent them up a couple of our women. They’ve been very friendly ever since. And ya know what—once we established we were brothers, I found out their instructions are pretty clear. Protect the food. Protect the water. Other than that, they can’t do nothing. U.N. regulations, they tell me. They’re peacekeepers. That’s it. That’s all they do. You got the water boys of soldiers here. So I don’t think they’re going to help you. Don’t think they’re going to help anyone at all.”

Azadeh looked at them, her eyes pleading.

The gang leader saw her eyes move. “They ain’t gonna help you, girlie,” he leered. “Can’t do a stinking thing for you.” He turned to Sam. “What do you soldiers call it? Rules of engagement? Is that right? Well it seems the U.N. has very limited rules of engagement for their soldiers.” He cursed in sarcasm. “Might as well send over a bunch of kindergarten teachers. Funny thing is, these goobers are working under the same stupid rules over here that they’ve been working under everywhere. They can’t be cops. No law enforcement duties. They can’t fight. They are peacekeepers, baby. They’re not ready for any war. They’re not here to participate in any conflict. Now, uptown, I hear things are a whole lot different. Thousands of real soldiers on the streets. But that’s only for the rich boys. The white boys. We don’t get no protection down here in the ‘hood. So what? We get along. Things ain’t no different than they’ve ever been, even with these baby-blue U.N. soldiers all around.” He turned and spat. “Seems kind of stupid, if you ask me, but I’m just a po’ boy. What do I know?”

He leered at Azadeh. Her head was low, her shoulders slumping, her hands quivering at her side. She felt his eyes boring into her and pressed against the wall again.

“Kinda crazy, ain’t it?” the gang leader sneered. “Here they are, four good soldiers, and they won’t do a thing to stop me. I could rape and kill you right here on the street, and they won’t even raise their guns. Sure, they might go back and file some kind of worthless report. U.N. Form 1592. Observance of the Locals. But that is all they’re going to do.” He bent his head and leaned toward Sam, looking at him below his upraised eyebrows. “Amazing, ain’t it, buddy. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.”

Sam motioned toward the soldiers. “Listen to me, captain—”

“No English,” the squad leader said again. Then they turned and started walking away, shoulder to shoulder, four scared men, all weak and worthless, going through the motions but too frightened of their own shadows to accomplish anything.

The gang leader watched them go, then spat a wad of dark phlegm at Sam’s feet. “You thought they were going to help you. Disappointed, aren’t you?”

The four soldiers disappeared into the crowd.

Sam’s chest was quick and tight. He kept his hand behind his back, the Beretta warm inside his grip. “Look at me,” he whispered as he leaned toward the man. “Do you see this uniform? You see these jump wings and combat badges? I’ve spent my entire adult life over there. I’ve dedicated myself to killing the enemy, and I’ve killed a bunch of them, I guarantee. But this woman behind me, she isn’t one of them.” Sam gestured to the filthy streets and chaos, then lowered his voice a little more. “She had nothing to do with this, man. She’s just like you. She’s just like me. She’s just trying to live through this, you know what I mean.”

The gang leader didn’t soften. “She’s one of them. Anyone can see that. You might be stupid enough to believe she’s not here to cause us problems, but me and my crew ain’t so stupid anymore. It’s time to clean our own house.” He glared at Sam. “We got each other,” he nodded to his brothers, “and that is all we trust. Now, you got a choice here, white boy. You give her to us and we let you go. Or you can be a superhero and try to save her and we’ll kill you both right here. What’s it gonna be? You got three seconds to decide.”

A flash of movement in the smoky morning pulled Sam’s eyes away. Four of the men drew their weapons and pointed them at his head. In a simultaneous burst of motion, he pulled out his Beretta and shoved it into the leader’s face.

“You’ll never get us all,” the leader mocked.

“Maybe not, but I’ll get you.”

“Go ahead and kill me! Do you think I care? We’re all dead. We know it. I’d just as soon die from your bullet as from starving or puking my guts out on the street.” He moved an inch closer, pressing his forehead against the muzzle of Sam’s pistol. His face was loose and lifeless, his bare teeth sticking against the front of his dry mouth. “One thing I can promise you, soldier boy. You kill me, and your little princess there is going to suffer a long, long time. We could keep her alive for weeks, but it will seem like years. Or we could do this simple. You give her to us now, we kill her easy and let you go. You do something stupid, and we kill you, then make her wish she was dead. Now I’m not gonna do it for you, you army pukes know how to count. You got three seconds.”

Sam hesitated, his face turning white with terror. A moment passed in silence. He closed his eyes in dread. Another moment of pure silence.

“Guess that’s it,” the gang leader said.

Sam deflated, swallowing hard against the knot inside his throat. He lowered his eyes and then his weapon. Cursing, he pounded his fist against his hip. Growing limp, he turned to Azadeh.

She nodded and started crying, seeing the defeat inside his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.” He leaned forward until their foreheads touched. They looked at each other, Azadeh pleading with her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry,” he told her. “I’ve got my family, my mother, all the others I have to think about. I’m so sorry to have to do this. It’s an impossible decision, but what choice do I have?”

She didn’t answer. It wasn’t the first time she had been betrayed. Glancing toward the furious men, she knew it would be the last.

“I’ve got to think of the others,” Sam concluded, his voice strangled in anguish, teardrops rolling down his cheeks. He lowered his head, unable to look at her, then leaned into her face, brushed her hair away, and whispered in her ear. “Be cool,” he said.

Lifting her head, she looked up at him.

“Be cool,” he said again.

Turning, he glared at the gang leader and then started walking, pushing his way through the crowd of men. They held their shoulders against him and he had to turn sideways to work his way past. Sneering at his cowardice, they cursed and let him go.

Focusing on Azadeh, his face contorted in rage and pleasure, the leader slapped her hard across the cheek. “I have a family,” he roared in pent-up fury. “My little girl is gonna die now. All of us are gonna die here and it’s all because of you. You and others like you.”

Azadeh stared at him, her eyes wide in terror, a hand across her split lip. Then, looking past her tormentors, she watched in shock as Sam disappeared down the street. Her eyes blurred. It was over. She was defeated, and she didn’t care that much anymore.

NINE

Sam ran as fast as he could, pushing through the crowd, throwing bodies left and right. He felt the outpouring of anger all around him as he ran, heard the cursing voices, felt the hands that pulled at him from every side, but he didn’t stop. He had a few minutes, maybe less, and every second counted.

He ran a block. The streets were crowded now, more so than earlier in the morning, much more than on the day before. He reached an intersection and stopped, looking left and right. Which direction did they go? Which direction? He didn’t know. He ran to the nearest light pole and pulled himself up a couple of feet, his eyes moving desperately.

There. Ahead of him. He saw their pale blue helmets. He dropped and ran again.

They didn’t hear him coming as he ran up from behind, the sound of his footsteps swallowed in the noise of the moving crowd. They were together, still abreast, and he aimed for the center one. Grabbing the soldier by the shoulders, he spun him around.

The other soldiers stopped. Sam’s Beretta was pointing at the captain, the muzzle right between his eyes. The man’s mouth hung open, his eyes wide, his hands lifting at his side. The other soldiers made a half-hearted effort for their weapons, which were hanging from leather straps around their shoulders, but Sam flashed his gun toward them, freezing them like ice. “Don’t, don’t!” the squad leader pleaded in heavily accented English.

“No English,” Sam reminded him. The soldier winced. Sam knew that he had lied; all NATO/U.N. soldiers had to pass a rudimentary English test.

“Don’t kill me!”

“Don’t be stupid!” Sam sneered at him. “If I had wanted you dead, I could have killed all of you by now.”

“We didn’t, we didn’t hurt any of the women—”

Sam angrily shook his head. “This is what the U.N. sends for soldiers!”

“We don’t carry any money.”

Sam jabbed the gun a little closer, making it obvious he didn’t care.

“What do you want?” the man pleaded in frustration. He was starting to understand that Sam wasn’t there to kill him. Still, his hands trembled at the side of his head.

Sam pointed to the automatic weapons the men were carrying. “Your weapons!” he demanded, pressing his Beretta half an inch closer to the man. The soldier had to lean back to relieve the pressure of the metal against the tender skin between his eyes. “Your guns!” Sam cried. “I want them now!”

The soldier didn’t hesitate, slipping the light machine gun off his shoulder and extending it to him.

Sam grabbed the light machine gun, turned toward the next man, grabbed his weapon too, then lowered his Beretta and turned and ran.

Minutes, maybe seconds, was all the time he had.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Sam needed one thing. One simple thing. But he needed it desperately and he needed it now!

Cover. A place to shoot from. A way to stop the men who were after Azadeh before it was too late.

A building loomed behind him, the front door open. It looked like a high school, though it was remarkably beaten down. A large crowd had gathered on the corner where the wide cement steps met the street. A fence ran around the building and Sam dashed through the metal gate. Pushing everyone aside, he ran up the steps, taking them three at a time, rushed into the entry, and hesitated. The hallways were crowded with refugees—why the school was a better place to huddle than their apartments, he didn’t know. The crowd stared at him: blank eyes, lots of children, mothers and their babies. No one reacted to the sight of a crazy man and his guns. Sam studied the crowd in seconds, turned left, ran up another flight of steps, then turned left again. A long hallway, dark and empty. It was cold enough to see his breath. A line of doors on his left and right, dim light bleeding through the milky glass. He chose the first door, jerking on the handle. It was locked. Pulling out his handgun, he shot it open, pushed it back, ran into the classroom, slid down by the window, broke the sheet of glass with his Beretta’s muzzle, brushed the extended shards of glass away, and looked out.

They were a long way down the street, almost a full city block away. The men had Azadeh surrounded. She looked at them in terror. The leader slapped her face, but she stood firm, not cowering. She had moved out from the wall. She was ready. She was going to fight them, standing right up to the end. As Sam watched, the leader reached over and grabbed her by the throat. He had a knife. The others started cheering. A couple of them stepped back, giving their leader room.

Sam didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think. Every action was instinctive and sure.

Lifting the light machine gun, he didn’t feel its more than sixteen pounds. The weapon he had stolen was a FN Minimi 5.56 Para, a short-barreled “paratrooper” version with a telescoped stock and a bluish metal magazine. Looking down the street, he realized it was too far. The gun wasn’t good enough. Not from this range, not for this kind of thing. He stared down the barrel at the group of men, catching flashes of Azadeh’s face between their shoulders as they moved about. He cursed in fear and frustration. The Minimi wasn’t accurate enough, not with all the men around her, all of them moving, all the other people on the street. He estimated the distance. A hundred and twenty meters. More than a football field away. Too far. Way too far. The air was windy and filled with smoke and blowing debris. He swore and lowered the barrel. The light machine gun simply wasn’t accurate enough for this sort of thing. It was made for power, not finesse, to deny area, not to make a pinpoint kill. Still, he knew he had to act. The Minimi wasn’t what he wanted, but it was all he had. Lifting the light machine gun again, he aimed, wishing for his own sniper rifle—did the U.N. soldier ever clean and sight this thing? He adjusted for the wind that blew down between the buildings, did a final estimate of the distance between them, pulled the barrel of the light machine gun a fraction of an inch up and left, then fired a single shot, his shoulder recoiling from the pressure as the hot gases ejected the spent shell and pushed another round into the chamber.

The gang leader’s leg collapsed, his kneecap shattered. Four-tenths of a second later, the sound of the gunshot reached him. He cried in agony and fell onto the dirty street.

Sam shot a full burst now, aiming over the attackers’ heads. Brick, mortar, dust and shattered pieces of metal exploded all around them as half a dozen bullets impacted the side of the building next to where they stood. Some of them screamed. All of them dropped to the ground, their guns aimed in various directions. Azadeh fell, throwing her arms up to cover her head between her knees.

The crowded street exploded with crying, fleeing people. A couple of the men hunkered down and shot, sending random bullets into the air. Then they froze, looking for the shooter, not considering the vital need for cover, foolishly leaving themselves exposed out on the street. Sam aimed again, this time more carefully, and fired again. Another man went down, a quarter-sized hole through the middle of his chest. Another screamed, threw down his weapon, turned and ran. The remaining men continued shouting to each other, pointing left and right. They searched up and down the street, their eyes jerking frantically. Sam remained hidden in the second corner window of the building, a full city block away. If they can see you, they can kill you. He barely raised his head above the windowsill.

Another shot, this one another warning a few inches over the tallest man’s head. Cries and screams of fear and pain and anger. One of the men moved and hid behind another. A couple of them took up firing positions, but their handguns were no match for the shooter—that was painfully clear.

Another shot, this one between them.

That was it. They got the message. This wasn’t a fight they were going to win.

The men scattered and ran. Some fled up the sidewalk, heading north. A couple ran into the crowd, bending low among the panicked people who were running up and down the street.

Sam waited until the shooters had disappeared, then lifted his head above the window and called out. “Azadeh, can you hear me?”

She stood slowly. It was too noisy. She didn’t hear him call. Screams and cries and people running on the street surrounded her. Her eyes darted left and right.

Sam called again, but she still didn’t hear him.

Standing in confusion, she hesitated, then quickly turned and ran, moving down the street toward him, back in the direction from which they had come.

“Good girl, good girl,” Sam coaxed her even though she couldn’t hear. “Don’t look back, just keep on running. I’ll be waiting for you down on the street.”

He watched. She was getting closer. He did a final check for the gang members, then called her name again. She looked up at him, finally hearing his voice. He motioned to her and she understood.

Leaving the window, he ran back through the hallway and down the stairs and met her on the street.

Fifteen minutes later, they pushed into Mary’s apartment building and made their way up the stairs. Knocking on the door, they waited desperately until Mary let them in.

“Where have you been?” Sara asked in a worried voice as they rushed into the room.

Sam and Azadeh glanced at each other but didn’t say anything.

They had already decided there were a few things the others didn’t need to know.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Across the street from the apartment building, a soldier in a dark uniform watched through a long-range scope. The glass in Mary’s apartment had been tinted with a layer of opaque film to keep the sun out, but he still could see enough, and he reached up to the radio transmitter at his neck.

“I’ve got them,” he said.

“Are you certain?” the controller asked.

“Yeah, it’s them.”

“Stand by,” the controller told him.

Three minutes later, the controller came back. “Stay in position. Keep a tag on her.”

“For how long?” the soldier asked.

“Until we tell you.”

The soldier answered, “Roger,” and sat down for the wait.

TEN

Vienna, Virginia, Twelve Miles West of Washington, D.C.

Brucius Theodore Marino stood in the bedroom window looking out on the street. A dozen stalled cars still cluttered the road, though most had finally been pushed out of the way, the worthless metal carcasses left at awkward angles along both sides of the street. The houses in the neighborhood were old, a mix of red-brick, two-story Victorians and old southern plantation homes with white siding and green or black porches that wrapped around from the front doors to the sides. The street was narrow, with old trees draping their branches over the pavement, almost forming a tunnel of branches and leaves. All was quiet—it was still very early in the morning—and he couldn’t see anyone on the sidewalk or the street.

Which meant almost nothing.

He knew that they were near.

He stood, feeling the oppressive lack of sound. He wasn’t used to silence and certainly not used to being alone. He had staff: security men, personal aides, drivers, butlers, maids, and chefs. He had three full-bird colonels whose only jobs were to attend to his travel schedule, and four-star generals climbing over themselves to see that his will was done. He had black sedans, underground bunkers, military helicopters, and jet aircraft at his beck and call.

No, he wasn’t used to the silence, especially the silence of being alone.

But he was alone now. Alone in a way that he’d never been before.

He stood behind the lacy curtain, then moved slowly to his right, looking farther up the street. The residential lane turned into a T intersection at Lawyers Road, which cut through Vienna from the northwest on its way toward Washington, D.C. Ironic, he thought, he’d spent his entire life working as, with, for, and against various lawyers. He worked, ate, slept, partied, ran, philosophized, argued, skied, hunted, and drank with various lawyers—pretty much spent his entire life with members of the second oldest profession. Yet, he would happily admit that he hated them all. Shakespeare’s notion was genius: They should kill the lawyers first.

His grandfather had been a lawyer. His father had been a lawyer. He was a lawyer, graduate of Harvard Law. But his son would never be a lawyer. He would simply not allow it. Not unless they killed him first and buried him somewhere underneath Lawyers Road.

How a lawyer and business leader found himself the civilian commander of the greatest military force in the world, Brucius didn’t know. Looking back on his life, he sometimes wondered. Trading the boardroom for the bunker—was it a worthy sacrifice? “Hey, with a crazy name like Brucius, what’d you expect?” his wife had used to tease. “Where’d your mom come up with that one?” He figured that was as good an explanation as any other: It was all his mother’s fault.

Frowning, he looked out, his heart racing, his palms sweating at his side. He heard footsteps behind him and quickly turned around. His daughter knocked once and entered the small bedroom. “Dad?” she said in a questioning voice. “You’re up early.”

“So are you.”

She glanced at the still-made bed. “You didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“I slept some.” He nodded to the leather chair.

She frowned in displeasure, a growing look of concern on her face.

“Where’s Kyle?” her father said, asking about his son-in-law.

“We heard they’re setting up a government aid center at the Metro station in Falls Church. He’s going to walk down and see if we can get some baby formula and milk.”

He winced at her words, a crush of pain and guilt sweeping over him.

He could get them milk. He could get them baby formula. He could get them anything they wanted and he could get it right now. He could make sure his daughter and her family lived. He was, after all, one of the most powerful men left on earth, and he could have more power. He could have anything he wanted.

All he had to do was come out of hiding. All he had to do was go along.

She watched her father’s face and stepped toward him. “Daddy, are you OK?”

He tried to smile at her. “It’s eight or nine miles to the Metro station in Falls Church.”

“Kyle’s in good shape. No big deal for him. And if we could get some formula, that’d be a really good thing.”

Her father’s face contorted in pain again.

“Dad, are you OK?” she pressed a second time.

He nodded at her sadly. “I’m fine. Really.”

She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t think you are, Dad. I don’t think you’re fine at all. Look at you. This is absolutely crazy! Do I need to remind you who you are? Do I need to remind you of the position you hold? I don’t know what you’re afraid of, I don’t know anything anymore, but surely the government can protect you. If things are as bad as you say they are, if you don’t trust your own people, there has to be someone—the Secret Service, maybe—someone you could trust to keep you safe.”

He waved a hand to dismiss her, then turned away, glancing back toward the window. She took two steps toward him and paused. He knew he looked old, many years older than he had seemed just a few weeks before. She held her hand to her mouth, then folded her arms. “You’re scaring me, Dad. You’re scaring me very badly.”

He turned and walked toward her, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m sorry, honey, more sorry than you’ll ever know. I don’t mean to scare you. I don’t mean to do anything. A few more days, a few more hours maybe, and I’ll be out of your way.”

“Out of my way, Dad? What does that mean? You think I consider you a problem, something I need to get out of my way? This is crazy, Dad, crazy. I’m really worried about you now.”

He tried to smile again, a weak effort she didn’t buy. “No reason to be frightened for me,” he said a quiet and perfectly unconvincing voice.

“Are you kidding? Either there’s a really good reason or you’ve completely lost your mind. You skulk around, hiding from your shadow, refusing to let me answer the phone. Everything’s a secret. I can’t open my front door. For heaven’s sake, Dad, you’re scared to death, and yet you dismiss your security detail, telling them all to go home. You leave your own house and go into hiding, coming here to stay with me and Kyle. Yes, Dad, I’m frightened for you. I’d be stupid not to be.”

The baby started crying from the nursery down the hall, low at first, a few grumbles that were muffled by the door, but quickly growing with displeasure as the infant sought something to eat.

The young women tried to pull away from her father’s grip. “The baby,” she whispered when he didn’t let her go.

He tightened his hands against her shoulders, looking into her brown eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. He said the same thing to her at least once or twice a day.

She looked at him, her eyes tearing with concern. “Don’t you say that to me, Daddy. Don’t you ever say that, OK? You’ve got no reason to be sorry. Don’t you ever tell me that again.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

A small crowd of boys had assembled on the corner, watching in disbelief. A car that was working! They stared as the black SUV drove quickly up the street.

The driver pulled over two blocks from the objective and turned off the ignition. The four men sat for a moment talking, then got out. One of them turned and walked toward the group of teenagers. He said something to them and they scattered. Rejoining the group, he talked another moment with the men before three of them started walking, leaving the driver to guard the car. Very little about the men was subtle. Black suits. White shirts. Dark glasses. Black Bacco Bucci lace-up shoes. The driver had a Heckler and Koch MP5K machine pistol hanging from a strap around his shoulder. A thin wire ran under his dark suit to the receiver in his ear.

No, they were not subtle. But the fight was out in the open now, and they didn’t care about subtlety anymore.

The war had started. It was upon them, the first battle taking shape. Assassins and saviors were on the move now, their forces rushing together, opposing soldiers crashing toward each other on the street.

The first casualty or survivor of the battle would be the Secretary of Defense. Whether he lived or died depended on who got to him first.

The three men walked a hundred yards together. At the corner, they split up. One of them turned east. The other two stayed together, walking toward Lawyers Street.

ELEVEN

Vienna, Virginia, Twelve Miles West of Washington, D.C.

The man walked toward the rising sun. Approaching the road that ran behind the target, he glanced back toward his comrades, but they had already disappeared. He turned. Walking quickly, almost jogging, he moved down a narrow driveway, then jumped a low fence and made his way through the backyard. A dog yelped at him, but he ignored the dog. Twenty feet from the back fence, he started running, then jumped, his powerful legs driving him up. Pulling himself over the fence, he dropped onto the other side.

A huge backyard lay before him. Lots of shrubs and oak and sycamore trees. Grass and a small goldfish pond. A large hedge along the swimming pool. He bent to his knees beside the vinca plants and studied the house. No movement. He listened. No sound. To his right, the lawn sloped away, allowing a walkout basement at the back of the house. He listened once more to the voice inside his tiny earpiece, then crouched and ran toward the door.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The Secretary of Defense watched as his daughter pulled away from him and turned for the bedroom door. Standing in the center of the room, he listened as her footsteps faded down the hall. The baby was insistent now, crying loudly, the hunger driving him, and Brucius could hear his daughter’s soft voice as she tried to soothe him, the creaking of the crib’s wood frame as she lifted the child into her arms.

He stood for a moment, looking toward the window, then moved to the bed and sat down. His shoes had been pushed under the mattress rail and he leaned over, put them on, and tied them quickly. Straightening his back, his hands on his knees, he listened to the silence once again. The baby wasn’t crying now and he wondered how, without formula, she’d made him stop. Standing, he opened the bedroom door and moved down the hall toward the nursery. Pushing back the door, he looked inside.

No one was there.

The bedroom window was open, a quiet breeze blowing the light curtains back.

He called his daughter’s name, then heard footsteps downstairs in the kitchen and quickly moved down the hall.

“Jenny, you down there?”

No answer.

He descended the stairs, stopped at the bottom and listened again, then walked toward the kitchen. Morning light filtered through the hallway window, and shadows from the swaying oak tree in the backyard moved across the back porch. He thought he heard his daughter’s voice and walked into the kitchen.

The room was empty.

The backdoor was open. He glanced out. No one was in the yard.

He instantly panicked, running into the living room. No one. The house was quiet and empty. It seemed he was alone. He couldn’t be! Not so quickly! How could they have gotten in?

“Jenny! Jenny!” he cried. “Kyle! Are you here?” He ran to the front door and found it locked. He looked through the window to the front yard. Not a soul in sight. He ran toward the basement, calling their names. Pushing the door over the narrow steps, he peered into the dark. A cool flow of air blew up against his face.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The two men stopped at the intersection of Lawyers Road, standing beside a six-foot fence. The target house was halfway down the block and they studied the scene before them: rows of handsome Victorian and plantation homes, heavy trees, their leaves gold and orange and ready to fall, a dozen dead cars pushed to the curb, a quiet road, a quiet breeze.

Not a soul in sight. A quiet morning.

The leader listened to the receiver shoved inside his ear canal, pressing it more firmly into place, then cocked his head.

They couldn’t take the target until they killed the others who were also after him. They couldn’t kill the others until they found them. And they didn’t know where they were.

Eighteen thousand feet above them, a pilotless drone moved silently through the empty sky, its sensors looking down, its hypersensitive radar, visual, infrared, and ultraviolet sensors scanning the two-block radius around them inch by inch. Far away—from what location, the leader didn’t know, perhaps an unknown base inside the United States, but more likely from a CIA site overseas—a military pilot controlled the drone, flying it by satellite-remote control, the drone’s sensors relaying what it sensed or saw. And the Predator reconnaissance aircraft saw everything. It could count the squirrels in the trees around them from their body heat, detect the coolness from the water trapped in rain gutters from the downpour the night before, sense the vibration on the front windows of the various homes enough to know if anyone was speaking inside. The man looked up, feeling naked, knowing the Predator could read the heat that escaped through his shirt collar accurately enough to estimate the heartbeats in his chest, knowing it could fire its Hellfire missiles at him and he would never know, the explosion killing him seconds before he ever saw or heard the missiles coming at him through the air.

And they would do it. If they had to, they would sacrifice the team to get the target. Everyone was expendable these days.

His earpiece crackled and he listened once again. Kneeling, he moved away from the fence, his eyes squinting. “No tally,” he cut in angrily.

Further instructions from the Command Center spoke through the receiver in his ear. “Fifth house down?” he asked.

He listened.

“Copy that,” he whispered as he moved his focus farther down the road to a house across the street. “Tan house. A black Audi in the front. Two oak trees in the yard.” He demanded definite confirmation before he moved.

He listened once again, then nodded. He watched. He waited. He saw just a hint of movement, but it was enough to let him know. He crawled back and pointed for his partner. Two hundred feet down. Across the street from the target’s house. The front door partially open.

“Tally,” his lieutenant said. Before he moved, he checked his weapon. His machine gun pistol was set on double shot, allowing him to fire two bullets with a single pull of the trigger, inflicting the far more lethal “double tap.” The Heckler and Koch MP5K 9 mm machine pistol had a thirty-round magazine and folding stock, which he kept folded, allowing him to conceal the perfectly maintained machine pistol at his back. Checking the magazine a final time, he started walking down the street. The MP5K was stuffed inside his suit jacket, but only partially hidden, the blunt stock bulging at his back. He moved down the sidewalk without hesitating, his stride long and confident, his eyes staring straight ahead. He crossed the street just beyond the target’s house and started jogging. Past the first oak tree. Toward the front door. Coming upon the front steps, he slowed to a furious walk. The front door pushed back and a man walked onto the porch. Dark glasses. Work clothes. Something was out of place: a flash of gold. The Rolex on his wrist—what a stupid mistake. Without breaking stride, the man in the suit reached behind his back, pulled out the MP5K, the blunt-nose machine pistol light in his hand. He touched the magazine, aiming as he walked, his eyes unflinching, his hands sure. The man on the porch reached to his left side, but not nearly quickly enough. The assassin fired a set of rapid shots into him, the custom-built silencer spouting smoke and a muffled hiss of hot gas. The bullets penetrated the man’s face, splitting his jaw in two. The assassin didn’t slow down. Onto the front porch. Past the dead man. Through the partially open door. Another double tap, then silence, then movement near the window. The man reappeared at the door, looked around, bent over, and pulled the body inside, leaving a smear of dark blood across the white porch. He kicked the feet into the foyer, stepped out, and shut the door.

The other man watched from the end of the street, then started walking toward the house where the target had been hiding for almost three days.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The Secretary of Defense stood at the top of the basement stairs, his face frozen in fear. The cool breeze that blew up from below smelled of must and rotten leaves.

The basement door was open!

They’d found him!

They’d gotten into the house.

He almost screamed in fury, a guttered growl. “You leave them alone!” he screamed to the empty house. “You leave them be, you hear! It’s me you’re after, not my children. If you hurt them, I will kill you. I’ll kill you, every one!”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The two men moved up behind him without a sound, their shoes silent against the granite floors. “Secretary Marino,” the first man said.

Brucius spun around. He was just over fifty, but he was strong and tense as wire. He almost leapt toward them. “Where’s my daughter?! Where’s my grandson?!” he screamed.

The two men backed up as he ran toward him, both of them holding their hands disarmingly in the air. “Stay! Stay there, Mr. Secretary! It’s going to be OK.”

Brucius grabbed the first man by the throat and squeezed, pinching his Adam’s apple between clenched fingers. “Where’s my daughter and her family? If you hurt them, you dirty little—”

The man swung an uppercut and hit Brucius hard, catching him on the jaw with a blow that dropped him to the ground.

Brucius choked, his mouth smearing with blood from his split lip. “Where is my grandson? If you hurt him, I’ll—”

The man dropped to one knee beside the Secretary of Defense. The other man looked suddenly to his right and placed his right hand to his ear, listening to a voice that no one else could hear. He ran toward the front window and pressed against the wall.

“Get up,” the first man commanded, dragging the secretary to his knees.

The second man peered out the window, then pulled back and dropped to the floor, crawling past the window on all fours. He joined the other man and motioned him to stay low.

The first man listened to the receiver in his ear, then turned his head as if being directed where to look. A flash of movement passed across the back window and he shoved the secretary down, almost smashing his head onto the floor. The second man pulled a snub-nosed machine pistol from under his jacket, impossibly small, black, and cold, the metal glinting in the light. He pressed a toggle near the trigger, selecting single fire, then hunched toward the kitchen window and looked out. The backyard was huge, with several mature trees, a small pond, and a couple of shrub-lined paths.

Plenty of places for a shooter to hide.

The third man suddenly emerged from the foliage of the yard, running toward the house. He crashed through the backdoor, almost breaking it from his hinges as the full weight of his body pushed it in, then nodded to the others without saying anything.

Seconds passed. Outside, the sound of a racing automobile pierced the air, incredibly out of place against the backdrop of silent roads and the silent world. Brucius glanced toward the front window. He reached out, part of him wanting to run, part of him still too scared to move.

The black suits listened to their earpieces, turned to each other, nodded, and ran, hauling Brucius T. Marino, U.S. Secretary of Defense, between them as they moved.

“Where’s my daughter!?” Brucius screamed as they dragged him toward the front door. “Where’s my daughter!? Where’s my grandson!?” He struggled against them, pulling back. He was a powerful man, a little fat, thick arms, lots of weight, and the two men struggled mightily to pull him. Approaching the front door, Brucius fought again, finally pushing to his feet. The first man stopped and leaned toward him, pressing his mouth against the secretary’s ear. “Do you want to live?” he hissed.

Brucius pulled back and stared at him.

“If you want to live, Mr. Secretary, if you want your country to have any hope of survival, then you need to shut up and do exactly what we tell you.”

Brucius studied him, his eyes defiant.

“If you love your country, Mr. Secretary—”

The first man pulled again.

“OK!” Brucius gritted between his bloody lips. “I’ll go with you, I’ll go with you, I’ll do anything you want. I just want to know about my family. I need to know you haven’t hurt them. I need to know that they’re OK. They had no choice. They weren’t a part of this.”

The first man grunted at him.

Outside, the screech of tires. The black SUV came screaming down the street, then veered across the front lawn, almost smashing into the porch. The two men waited at the open door, holding Brucius, their eyes moving up and down the street. There might be others out there. They didn’t know for certain and they couldn’t take the chance. The third man took a final look, ran through the front door and across the porch, and jerked the SUV’s backdoor open. The others waited, looked a final time, then ran out in a crouch, the Secretary huddled between them, their arms across his shoulders, their bodies positioned to protect him from sniper fire.

They shoved the secretary through the backdoor, almost throwing him inside, then jumped in and pulled the door closed.

The driver gunned the engine, his tires spinning, dirt and grass spitting across the yard.

TWELVE

Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

Brucius Marino, the Secretary of Defense (at least he used to be, who knew what he was anymore), sat alone in the middle of a darkened interrogation room. It was small and square, with a cement floor painted white and a single solid door. He rested his arms on the simple metal table and peered across the room at the one-way mirror mounted on the wall. Were they there? Were they watching? He didn’t know.

They had taken his watch, his socks, the laces out of his shoes, his belt, and his wallet, then strip-searched him, examining every inch of his body from his toes to his hair. They had embarrassed him, taken his dignity, and he was furious at them now.

Furious, weary, angry and scared.

He was cold—the room was chilly—and he gently rubbed his arms. He didn’t know what time it was, but he guessed it had been at least twenty-four hours since they had come for him, though it was impossible to tell. He’d been without food, without water, without sleep, and he’d never left the room.

He slumped. Fatigue and disorientation were setting in. He waited, his mouth foul, his breath dry, then lowered his head onto his arms and fell asleep.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The door pulled back, allowing a square of light to fall upon the floor, the patch of white broken only by the shadow of a black man standing there. He was small, with silver glasses framing his almond eyes and graying hair around his temples. “Mr. Secretary,” he said as he walked into the room and closed the door. “Brucius, are you awake?”

Brucius kept his head down though his eyes opened at the voice. For a moment he didn’t move, allowing time to clear his thoughts. Then he slowly lifted his eyes. “Hello, James,” he said, his voice acidic and tight.

“Mr. Secretary, you’ve got to forgive me, the treatment, the isolation. Believe me, it was the last thing we wanted to do. But we just felt… Brucius, we felt as if, under the circumstances, we didn’t have any choice.”

Brucius raised his head and lifted a hand to cut him off.

His angry eyes cut through the other man like broken glass, and the black man almost looked away. “Mr. Secretary,” he went on, “please try to understand, we had no choice. We really didn’t know. It’s impossible to know right now who is with us or against us. The nation is hanging by a thread, and we couldn’t take any chances until we knew for sure. I’m sorry, it has pained me to see this happen, but I think you’ll understand. The enemy is deeply embedded. Until we identify them, we have to take every measure to be sure.”

Brucius leaned back and frowned. “Instead of apologizing, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

The black man moved toward the chair on the opposite side of the table, motioned to the secretary, who nodded consent, and sat down. “You got my family, right?” Brucius demanded.

“Yes. They’re OK. We’ll be flying them out here—”

“Where are we, James?”

“Offutt Air Force Base.”

Brucius nodded. “Offutt… of course. OK, you got my daughter, her husband, and their little boy?”

“As I was saying, they’ll be flying out here tonight. We’ve had to take some countermeasures to make certain we could relocate them without being traced.” He glanced at his watch. “A few hours, Brucius, and I think they’ll be here.”

“What time is it? What day?”

“Seventeen thirty-three local, sir. Tuesday afternoon. It’s been almost thirty-six hours since you arrived here.”

“Thirty-six hours.” Brucius sat back and pushed his hands through his dark hair. He glared at the black man, the anger rekindling inside him. “That’s a long time to work through your suspicions, my friend. Long time to figure out if you could trust me or not.”

The black man didn’t say anything.

“James, I thought that we were friends.”

The man thought before he answered, “The ugly truth is, Mr. Secretary, I might be your only friend.”

Brucius huffed.

James tilted his head. “You know that you can trust me, Brucius. In your heart, you know you can. That’s why, in the pitch of the battle, you trusted my people. I didn’t force you to go with them. You could have stayed.”

“And if I had?”

“Then you’d be dead now. So would your family. Everyone you love.”

Brucius dropped his eyes and swallowed.

“Those men who were coming for you at your daughter’s house in Vienna, they weren’t coming to defend you. They were coming there to kill you. Is there any question in your mind which side they were on? Yeah, I know back in the old days of, say, I don’t know, a week or so ago, a personal assault on the SecDef would have been inconceivable. But things are different now.

“The good news, if there’s any good news in this mess, is that we beat them to you. Still, it was close. Really close. We barely got you out. A couple of seconds later, and you all would have been dead.”

Brucius pressed his lips together. “I need a drink,” he said.

James nodded to the mirror. The two men stared silently at each other, their faces blank. A minute passed in silence until the door pulled back and a military staff sergeant walked into the room, a plastic tray in hand. Sandwiches. Chips. A twenty-ounce diet soda. He twisted the top for Brucius and poured soda into an ice-filled cup, then retreated, closing the door behind him. Brucius drank the entire glass, picked up the bottle, poured again and drank again. Light fizz misted his upper lip and he placed the half-empty glass down.

“OK,” he said. “You’re my friend. That’s why I chose to come here. But you’ve really got some guts, pulling off such an operation and keeping me here like this.”

James nodded, almost smiling. “You think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“Don’t be so sure.” Brucius took another sip. “You might have guts, but that doesn’t prove that you’re no fool. I’ve always told you, James, God knew what He was doing when He put you in that small body. You’re like a Chihuahua, snarling and yelping all the time. You snap at everything. Everyone’s the enemy. But yelping irritates a lot of people. I suspect you’ve angered even more people now.”

“I hate Chihuahuas,” James said. “I want to kick them. They’re obnoxious, noisy dogs.” He reached across the table, opened the bag of chips, and stuffed a couple in his mouth. “And let me tell you something, Brucius, this Chihuahua saved your life. Saved your daughter and her family. You owe me. I’ll remember that. And I’m good at keeping score.”

Brucius finally laughed. “Add it to my bill.” He drained his glass. Leaning back, he looked around, the two men sitting a moment again in silence.

“I’ve been elevated, Brucius,” the black man said. “The director was killed in the attack on D.C. I’m the director now.”

Brucius smiled with satisfaction. “Congratulations,” he said.

James nodded humbly, his modesty sincere. “I wish it hadn’t happened. At least not the way it did.”

“James Davies, FBI Director. Sounds good, don’t you think?”

James pressed his lips and hunched his shoulders. “I don’t care that much.”

Brucius watched him, sucking a piece of ice as he thought. He’d known the man sitting across from him for almost thirty years, going back to their days at Yale. Skull and Bones. Time on the Yard. Coeds, parties, debate, and basketball. He knew James as well as he knew any man. If any of a number of men had told him they didn’t care about being promoted to FBI director, he would have called them bald-faced liars or worse. (And he’d called others much worse, for his temper, like his intelligence, was way off the charts.) But James was different. He’d always been different. And what he said was true: He really didn’t care. All he cared about was serving his country. He was one in a million.

A sudden pain shot through him when he thought about her, and he did the same thing he’d done a thousand times since that dreadful day in Washington, D.C.: He shoved it down, pushing the thoughts of her away. Someday he would think about her, he’d memorialize her in a meaningful way, but not now. He couldn’t. It was too painful. And he was in the middle of a war.

He rubbed his fingers against his temples and cleared his throat. “OK, you’re the FBI director. That’s good, James, very good. We need you right now. Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

James took another bunch of chips. “There’s something else you should know first,” he said as he crunched.

Brucius waited.

“You’re next in line to be the president of the United States.”

The Secretary scoffed. “Next in line. I don’t think so. You’ve got the vice president—”

“Killed in the explosion—”

“The Speaker of the House of Representatives—”

“Who, as we speak, is lying in a hospital in Leesburg, Virginia, with severe neural and cerebral damage. The doctors tell us she’ll remain in a vegetative state until her body gives out, which won’t take much time, based on her other injuries and the strain on the medical services we’re experiencing. Scarce as our resources are, it’s going to be difficult to continue providing life-sustaining measures to a person who has no detectable brain function remaining.”

Brucius’ face drained of color, his lips turning gray. “I knew she’d been injured, but the report I’d been given was that she was expected to recover. I had no idea—”

“She won’t recover. There were complications. Complications that seem very difficult to explain.”

Brucius stopped moving, his eyes and face motionless. “I heard rumors. I didn’t believe them. I didn’t know—”

“Of course you did, Brucius. That’s why you went into hiding. You knew very well. That’s why I had to hunt you down.”

Brucius started to answer but James cut him off. “There’s no explanation for the neurological damage based on the injuries that she sustained. We are certain she was poisoned.”

Brucius Marino, son of Italian immigrants, son of a man who’d worked his way through law school delivering papers and booking at the tracks, son of a man whose mother had died when he was born and who had taught himself to read English before he was even four, took a breath and groaned, then stared down at his hands. “Bethany Rosen would be the next in line—”

“Dead now, Brucius.” James dropped a highly classified report on top of the metal table. “Died in her sleep within a few days of being sworn in. Remarkable, isn’t it?” The black man sat back and picked his teeth.

“With Bethany gone, then that—”

“Brings us to you. You’re next in line. The line of succession is not disputable. The SecDef should have been the next president.”

Brucius wet his lips. It was the last thing that he wanted, the last thing he had ever thought about.

“Whatever,” James went on after a moment of silence. “It doesn’t matter. What they’ve done is more than obvious, claiming you were dead and putting their own man in place.”

Brucius grew intent. “Someone else is president?”

James nodded yes.

“Fuentes?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“The guy’s got the moral compass of a fish.”

“That’s an unfair comparison, don’t you think?”

“I’ll apologize to all the carp.”

James almost smiled. “Anyway, they had to know we’d figure it out, but they don’t care. This isn’t a conspiracy any longer, this is out-in-the-open war. And we’ve lost the first battle, that’s for sure. They saw their opportunity and they took it. They knew if they could get their man in place before we could react, it would be impossible for us to push him out amid the chaos and confusion. Another thing they’re banking on—and I think they got this right—is that the American people are consumed with only one thing: survival. Nothing else. They don’t give a flying bag of bones who’s in charge as long as someone steps forward to take care of them. They would accept Stalin as their leader if he arranged to bring them food. Hunger has a way of focusing the issue, and the protocol of succession doesn’t mean squat to the American people right now.” He fell silent, thinking, then concluded, “Brucius, we’ve thought this out. The last thing the American people will suffer is a constitutional crisis over who’s next in line, especially with another guy already in place. He’s getting ready to address the nation. He’ll say the right things, make all the right moves, start getting the emergency supplies in place. They’ll look to him as their savior. It’ll be hard to move him out.”

Brucius shook his head. “Look, I want to be clear, I have no more desire to be the president than I desire to have toothpicks driven under my fingernails. But there is principle. Precedent. We can’t just go wandering off into la-la land; we have to do this right! If not now, then what about the next time? Who gets to be the president then? If we don’t have some kind of order—”

“Believe me, Brucius, you’re preaching to the choir.”

“It’s not about me. It’s not about what I want or don’t want. It’s about the truth, the principle, doing this thing right!”

James shook his head and leaned forward angrily. “I’ll tell you what it’s about,” he almost sneered. “In the long term, it’s about defending the Constitution. You won’t believe the things they plan to do. They will destroy the country. We’ll be no better than any third-world dictatorship with a worthless constitution of a power that barely moves along. In the short term, it’s about not letting a group of thugs steal the presidency. It’s about keeping the power with the people, not in a group of murderers’ hands. That’s what this whole thing is about. And that’s why we have to act.”

Brucius frowned. The smell of the food sitting on the table was making him sick. “Fuentes,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe that he’s the acting president.”

“He’s not acting, Brucius, he is the president. It is done. We couldn’t stop it.”

Brucius shook his head and swore.

James went on, his voice dark. “It’s too late, we know that. If you were to make a move on the presidency, the American people would perceive it as a greedy and pointless grab for power, especially if Fuentes is able to convince them that the measures he’s proposing are necessary for their survival.” James fumed, his breathing heavy, his eyes angry and alert. Brucius watched him, his head still bent, his eyes looking up through bushy brows; then he stood, moved toward the window, and stared out through the glass.

“They were coming for you, Brucius. Do you understand what that means? They were coming to your daughter’s house to kill you.”

Brucius took a deep breath. “I had a meeting with a few of them a couple of days ago. They tried to persuade me to join them. They were adamant, though adamant is probably too soft a word to describe what they said. It was pretty convincing… .” He stopped, his voice trailing off.

James stood and walked toward his friend. “Let’s be very clear about this, Brucius. Even if they are convincing, they are not right. They are traitors and deceivers. They thirst for power, nothing more. They know our country is on her knees now. She might not recover, we don’t really know, but if these guys have their way, it won’t matter anyway. We won’t be a republic or democracy, we’ll be a dictatorship and nothing more. Sure, we’ll still call our “leader” Mr. President, but it won’t mean a thing. Mr. President, Prime Minister, Party Chairman, King—call him what you want, he won’t be working for the people, he’ll be working for himself. Himself and his inner circle.”

James started pacing nervously, then dropped down in his chair. “You were sleeping when I came into the room?”

Brucius shrugged and nodded.

“I hope you got some rest, because I’m going to lay it on the line. I’m going to tell you everything we know. And when I do, it’ll be a while before you’ll be able to rest again.”

THIRTEEN

Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

After leaving the confines of the interrogation room, Brucius Marino and James Davies turned right, walked down the hall, and climbed two flights of stairs. Down another long hallway, they walked to where the afternoon sunlight slanted through a set of glass doors. Two guards were positioned behind a thick pane of bullet-proof glass. James nodded as they walked toward them. The hallways and offices were busy with officers in uniform, none of whom paid any attention to the civilians in the hall.

Outside, they turned left and moved along the sidewalk that led to the base park. As the men walked, a black SUV followed them along the road. Occasionally, James glanced toward it, knowing his four-man security team was inside. Otherwise he paid it little attention, concentrating on explaining the current political and military situation to the Secretary of Defense. Thirty minutes later, the two men stood atop a ten-foot dam that held back a small pond on the west side of the base, a result of extraordinarily heavy rains over the past couple of weeks. Brucius watched the waves move across the murky water and wondered: drought in one area, massive downpours in another. Even Mother Earth was going crazy.

Turning, he looked toward the road. Funny how they seemed so out of place now, the military trucks and cars that filled the streets. Two weeks before, he wouldn’t have noticed them any more than he would have noticed the air that he breathed, yet now, just a few days later, the working vehicles seemed amazing, almost magical, as they moved along the busy road.

Designed to continue military operations in the event of a catastrophic attack upon the United States, Offutt Air Force Base was staffed with military personnel from every branch of service. Well maintained, trained, and staffed, all the base facilities were hardened and prepared to continue operations in a time of war and, while the senior civilian leaders were gathering, organizing, and taking up residency in Raven Rock, Offutt was preparing to execute whatever orders they received from those leaders in the underground Command Center back in southern Pennsylvania.

The two men stood atop the earthen dam for a long time, the sun setting at their backs, the wind picking up, the brown waves slapping at the grassy shore. When he was finished, James nodded to a small bench near the water and the men sat, a flock of friendly ducks waddling along beside them, pulling feathers and fighting for position. The birds were hungry. With food in critical supply and a national calamity in the making, no one had stopped to hand out the chunks of bread and crackers they were used to receiving.

“Better watch yourselves,” James mumbled to the fowl. “Colonel Sanders will be coming for you.”

Brucius sat down, tugged at his pants, and stiffly crossed his legs. “Feels like winter’s coming early,” he said, his mood matching the coolness in the air.

James looked at the pale, gray sky. Seemed it was never clear or blue now, but washed out with plum-colored rain clouds and dust, though it was sometimes red, especially in the mornings when the night winds had blown. “We can’t afford an early winter,” he answered. “It’s going to be hard enough as it is.”

Brucius leaned forward and rubbed his eyes, his powerful fingers pushing onto the soft skin. “Can you imagine it?” he wondered. “Can you even imagine what it’s going to be like? We’re not prepared. No one’s prepared. We thought we’d planned for everything. We’ve got backups to our backups, redundant military systems all over the place. We’ve got counterterrorist operations, military operations, intelligence operations, offensive capabilities, and defensive countermeasures. We’ve got a triad of nuclear deterrence. Allies. NATO. The list goes on. The only thing we don’t have is—”

“Food.” James finished his thought for him.

Brucius shook his head in despair. “I don’t know; I just don’t know.”

James shooed at a duck that was pulling on his shoe. “Get some rest, Brucius. Get something to eat. Sleep on it. Things won’t seem quite so bad in the morning.”

Brucius hunched his shoulders and frowned.

“Do you have any final questions?” James asked.

Brucius shook his head.

“OK then, here’s the deal. As I told you, constitutionally, Fuentes has no right to claim the presidency, not as long as you’re alive, but I can’t recommend you go after anything until we understand a little bit more about who’s behind all this: who they really are, how they’re organized, where they come from, what they intend to do. We don’t know any of these things and it’s critical—and apparently very dangerous—that we find out as much as we can before we make a move. Yes, you could rise up and claim the presidency, we could fly you out to Raven Rock tonight, but it would do very little good. We could demand they relinquish power. Maybe they’d even do it, I really don’t know. But even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. As long as you’re not willing to follow the path they have laid out, as long as you’re unwilling to discard the Constitution and discontinue individual rights, as long as you insist upon defending our country, as long as you refuse to pull out of the Middle East or subject our military to the U.N. authority, they won’t allow you to hold onto power. They will kill for this—they’ve proven that already.”

The men fell silent, the evening breeze gusting stronger across the great Nebraska plains. A swirl of dead leaves blew before the wind, scattering brown and yellow across the grass.

“So,” Brucius wondered, “what do you suggest?”

James had been waiting for the question and quickly leaned toward him. “We’ve got to keep you here. Keep you safe. Keep you in hiding. No one’s going to know you’re out here, at least not for a while. As long as they don’t know about you, they won’t know about the threat. And as long as they don’t feel threatened, they won’t come for us. More, a false sense of security will bring them out. That will give us time and opportunity to shadow the government and see what they really intend to do. We’ll watch, see how far they’ll go, try to figure out who is pushing this conspiracy and what they really want. Then, once we understand them, once we really know who they are, we can bring you out of hiding and let you stake your claim. For good or bad, whether you want this thing or not, you are the constitutionally mandated president of the United States. But they have the powerful advantage of operating in secret from inside the government.”

As James talked, two of his security men climbed out of the backseat of the black SUV and leaned against the doors, a signal that he had to go. James caught the lead agent’s eye, nodded almost imperceptibly, then turned back to Brucius.

“To defend our nation against all enemies, whether foreign or domestic,” he said. “That’s the oath we both have taken. Our fathers were wise, Brucius, wise enough to see the possibility of this day. But we can’t defend against domestic enemies until we know for certain who they are. So we let them move, let them act, watch them while they work. When we understand them, we bring you forward and put you in place.”

Brucius bit his lip. Another duck snapped at his feet. He closed his eyes to the dying light and let his head fall upon his chest. He was hungry, frustrated and weary to the bone. He needed food and rest. He’d been running on only fumes. Fumes and fear.

How long he sat there, deep in thought, he really didn’t know. Time passed and his breathing settled into deep and measured sounds. But though his eyes were closed, his mind was racing. And as he thought, it seemed a deep darkness settled over him. He felt his body becoming heavy, as if he was being crushed by the very air above his head. He swallowed and tried to hide it, but the fear rolled up inside. Opening his eyes, he slowly turned to James, his face tight with dread. “Are you one of the enemy, James?” he wondered. “Are you with them in this accord? Are you really who you say you are, or did they send you here to me to kill me or to keep me out of sight?”

James didn’t move, his dark eyes unfeeling as he looked straight ahead. “I’ve wondered the same thing about you, Brucius. I’ve wondered every day. Will you betray me? Can I trust you with my life? Because it’s going to come down to that one day. If I can’t trust you, is there anyone? Who am I to turn to? How deep does this go?”

Silence. The blowing wind. A car slowly passing by. A jaybird flying overhead. Then Brucius finally answered, turning slightly on the bench. “I guess all we can do is trust our friends.”

James slowly shook his head. “All of those who are dead now made that old mistake.”

Brucius didn’t answer as he wet his lips against the drying wind.

FOURTEEN

Four Miles West of Chatfield, Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee

“I saw an angel last night, Mommy.”

Caelyn looked toward her daughter and listened carefully. “Really baby? What did she look like?”

“It wasn’t a she, it was a he-angel, Mom.”

Caelyn’s heart skipped a beat and she put her work down, resting the raw potatoes on the plate that was balanced on her knees. “A he-angel? Really? Like what, a little angel, a little boy or something?”

Ellie turned from her mother and looked off, her face crunching as if she were trying to remember. “Not really. He was older. Like a man.”

Caelyn sensed her hands begin to tremble. Don’t do that! she scolded herself. It’s just a little girl’s dream. Don’t read so much into everything.

Still, a strange thought, cold and terrifying, slipped into her mind. “It wasn’t… you know, it wasn’t Daddy, was it, Ellie?” she asked in a breathless voice.

The blonde-haired girl shook her head. “No, it wasn’t Daddy.” She seemed puzzled by the question. “Daddy’s not an angel, Mom.”

The two were quiet for a moment. Ellie eyed her mother keenly, as if she knew something so obvious that it confused her how her mother couldn’t know it too. “Daddy’s not an angel, Mom,” she said again.

Caelyn sighed with relief. “Did DoxMax see the angel?” she asked, referring to Ellie’s imaginary friend. Caelyn didn’t know a lot about DoxMax, how old she was, what she was like, how she had gotten her name—all she knew was Ellie spent hours talking to her, sharing tea parties, playing in the tree swing, hiding under the porch. And it seemed Ellie spent more and more time lately with her invisible friend, which worried her just a little.

Ellie turned and frowned. “Of course not, Mom.” She shook her head in disbelief. “DoxMax was asleep. You know she has to be in bed by eight.”

Caelyn made a face. “Silly me.” She turned back to her work, cutting the potatoes into cubes for the soup.

Ellie thought while looking off again. “He was a pretty angel.” She turned back to her mom. “And very nice.”

“It was a good dream, then?”

“Was it a dream, Mom?”

“I think so, honey. It must have been.”

Ellie nodded, accepting.

Caelyn watched her again. “Did he talk to you, baby?” Her voice remained tight.

Ellie tried to remember. “No, I don’t think so. But it felt good to have him close. I like him a lot. I hope I see him again tonight.”

Caelyn hesitated. “You mean in your dreams?” she prodded.

The little girl didn’t answer as she reached for a small cube of potato that had fallen onto the ground. She tried to toss the dirt-covered bit into the metal bowl, but Caelyn caught it. She used a dish towel to brush it off, then dropped it into the bowl with the other pieces of cut potatoes. One didn’t throw food away anymore just because of a little dirt.

Ellie frowned, then nodded at the barrel beside the porch that they used for a garbage can now. “It smells bad.” She held her nose.

“It’s some of the fat trimmings from the meat that we were smoking,” Caelyn explained, though she knew her daughter wouldn’t understand.

“Ugh!” Ellie held her nose again and turned away.

Caelyn watched the back of her head, the blonde curls just above her shoulders. The thought of Ellie talking to an angel lingered in her mind. “Did he have wings, Ellie?” she tested. For some inexplicable reason, she desperately wanted to know more.

Ellie fell onto the grass, sitting on her legs. “Angels don’t have wings, Mom.” She shook her head, evidently tired of the conversation.

Caelyn turned back to the potatoes. Three mid-sized russets lay cut up in the bowl. A couple of cucumbers were still left in the garden. The family wouldn’t go hungry, but none of them would be overly full after dinner tonight.

Caelyn and her daughter were sitting on the sunny side of the house. It was early afternoon and the sun had passed its peak. Ellie had on a jacket and Caelyn had on a sweater. The wind had shifted out of the north, bringing a cold chill. Caelyn heard the backdoor open and looked over her shoulder to see her mom leaning against one of the white pillars that supported the porch roof. She was staring past the line of trees that formed the windbreak fifty yards from the house. After a long moment Gretta called out, “Miller!” She whistled, her fingers in her mouth, looking for the old dog.

Caelyn turned to the empty fields. She didn’t hear anything, but she could tell her mother did. She followed the older woman’s eyes.

Her mother whistled again, this time more loudly.

Far off in the distance, she heard the dog bark.

Gretta called again, “Miller! Miller, come on!”

Caelyn stood, peering toward the trees. There, in the wind, she heard it, barking and snapping. The dog was out there, past the tree line, beyond the pasture, down toward the hayfields where they had moved the cows.

Her mother cocked her head. “Someone’s down there!” she said in fear. “Someone’s in the herd.”

Caelyn stood up. “Are you sure, Mom?”

Gretta nodded toward the highway. “I saw some trucks go past the house, heading north.”

“What kind of trucks? How would they be working?”

“Big farm trucks. All of them were really old.”

Caelyn stood and moved toward her mother, keeping her eyes on the fields beyond the row of poplar and cottonwood trees. The sound of the barking dog carried toward them on the wind, clearer now, more vicious, more constant.

Then she heard a sudden short, loud pop. The sound echoed against the house.

Her mother’s hand shot to her mouth, her eyes wide, her hands trembling with fear and anger.

Gunshot? Caelyn wondered, cold fear settling over her heart.

Another pop.

And then silence.

Gretta started to run.

FIFTEEN

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

Sam stood in the apartment courtyard, taking in the darkening twilight. The sun was over his right shoulder and his outline cast a long shadow to the east. Luke was well enough to travel, so they had gathered up all of their available supplies. Tonight they were going to leave the city, and he was eager to get on with it.

It was cold and getting colder with every passing moment. He watched his shadow grow, marking the passing of time. Funny, he thought, how it was all so distorted now. The shortening of days. The shortening of time. Everything seemed to crash together.

Sara watched, then moved to his side. “What is it, Sam?” she asked him, sensing his mood.

He acted as if he didn’t hear her, keeping his eyes on the littered street that ran south. It reminded him of something from medieval London during the height of the plague: garbage, human waste and dead bodies in the street. He shivered, staring down the crowded avenue. Worthless cars and buses, a pile of old clothes—where had that come from?—broken sacks of garbage trampled by angry people.

The sky was clear of rain now, the heavy clouds having moved off to the east, and a faint red tint began to glow in the west as the sun moved toward the building-lined horizon. He sniffed, smelling the fires. He couldn’t see them, but he knew that several flaming towers were consuming downtown one high-rise building at a time. The smoke filled the sky with an inky cloak of gray that seemed to drip like hazy fingers toward the ground. An army of people filled the streets, some of them fleeing the fires, some heading toward the ugly smoke, hoping to be entertained. Nothing was quite as exciting as the end of the world, Sam had learned, and the anarchists gathered to watch the destruction with drunken glee. The streets were full of them: drunk, jacked up, an orgy of narcissism, as if it hadn’t yet occurred to them that they were going to die, too. “What?! I’ve always been against the war. I invented anti-globalization. What do you mean, there isn’t any food?!”

He looked carefully at the fools around him, who, he had decided, included pretty much everyone. There were so many now it scared him. How could he not have realized? How could he have been so blind as to what so many of his fellow men believed in, what they really were inside? Even in his worst expectation, he was completely unaware, but there they were, laughing and cursing and dancing as they waited for death out on the street. “OK, I’m going to die, but so are you. So come on, dig the show. Pass the peace pipe, eat your last meal, then come on out and take off all your clothes.”

His hand moved toward the canvas holster at his side. When he felt the cool metal of his handgun, his mind flashed back to the evening he’d said good-bye to Bono back at Langley Air Force Base. He thought about him often, wondering if he, his wife and little girl were OK.

Sara watched her son, then reached out and placed her hand on his arm, gripping his bicep gently. “Sam, are you OK?”

He stared without replying.

“Sam,” his mother pressed.

He stood another moment, then shook his head and turned toward her. “I was—I don’t know—I was thinking about Bono.”

Something in his face worried her and she squeezed again. “Bono?”

“My friend from—”

“I know who you mean. Do you think he’s in trouble?”

“I don’t know. I see his face all the time now. I see his wife and little girl. Seems I can’t get them out of my mind.”

Sara hesitated, brushing a strand of fine hair from her eyes. “You should pray for them,” she told him.

He kept on staring, watching the smoke drifting closer to the ground.

“Pray for them,” Sara repeated, pulling on his arm. “Sometimes that’s all you can do—but sometimes it’s enough.”

SIXTEEN

Four Miles West of Chatfield, Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee

Gretta and Caelyn crawled through the high grass and weeds along the ditch that ran behind the trees. A barbed wire fence stretched before them on the other side of the trees. Beyond that lay a large field of hay, grazed down to the nubs, another fence, then a field of brown grass. Caelyn lifted her head above the weeds and peered out. A gravel road ran north and south between the two fields. Three old farm trucks were parked along the road. Beyond the strip of reddish-brown, their herd of mother cows moved about, watching the trucks suspiciously. A dozen men moved around the trucks, maybe sixty yards away. She watched them carefully. Most of them were armed. Shotguns. Short-barrel rifles. A few pistols sticking out from jacket pockets. Two young women waited inside the nearest truck. Their dark hair was tightly braided and they stared ahead, seemingly paying no attention to anything going on outside the trucks. The men were dark-skinned and bushy-haired, but there was something else about them, something unfamiliar, something out of place. Caelyn thought a long moment as she watched from the cover of the grass; then her heart began to race. It was clear now: the cowboy boots and heavy clothing, the checkered shirts, drooping mustaches, and long black hair. She glanced at the farm trucks—models she’d never seen before. Old. Rusted. Huge, rounded fenders. Like something from a foreign movie. She picked up some of what they were saying, the sound drifting across the open fields, and cocked her head to listen. What she heard wasn’t the Spanish of the border or the Spanglish she had picked up out in California. No, these men came from farther south. Mexico City. The mountains of central Mexico. Someplace far away.

Her mother moved a little closer to her, and Caelyn dropped her head again.

“Do you recognize them?” her mother whispered.

Caelyn shook her head. Her mother’s eyes were not as good as they used to be.

“It’s not that group from out near Baylor—”

Caelyn raised a hand to cut her off.

“Can you see them? Do I know them?”

“No, Mom, you don’t know them.” Caelyn pushed a clump of brush away, hoping to see a little better. “They’re not from around here.” She swallowed a knot of fear and lifted her head above the grass again.

There were a couple of old men among the group, with graying hair and fat bellies, but most of them were young. All of them had the same dark, tough and mean look. Hard lives. Hard men. Men who didn’t care. As she watched, the oldest of the men moved toward their hiding place. Stopping, he looked directly over their heads, staring at the country house behind them. Caelyn’s heart skipped. Ellie was back there, playing in the yard! Had she seen her mother and grandmother run over here? Would she follow her mother across the fields? She gulped again in fear.

The stranger lifted a hand and motioned toward the house. Another man came and stood beside him and they both laughed.

Beside the old trucks, one of the men snapped the bolt on his rifle, pointed toward the herd, settled on a target, and raised the gun. A loud shot thundered toward the women, far more powerful than the first sound they had heard. The thunder echoed across the open field, seeming to carry on for miles. The nearest heifer fell to her front knees, bellowed once, her back legs stiff and straight, then wobbled and fell over, her head thrashing blood and spit. Caelyn stifled a sudden scream. Another shot rang across the open fields. The young cow jerked once more from the impact, then was still.

Caelyn lowered her head, her mother trembling at her side.

Another shot burst across the open air. Caelyn lifted her head above the grass. Another cow was down, the animal bellowing as it jerked its neck from side to side. The two women in the front seat climbed out of the ancient truck. Caelyn stared at their clothes, outfits from a different world: thick, multicolored dresses hanging to their boots; suede jackets with long sleeves rolled up past their elbows; floppy hats against the breeze. The women walked toward the downed animals, long knives in hand. The larger of the women stood over the first cow, pushed its head back with her boot, leaned over, and slit its throat with one long stroke. The ground turned dark red, almost black, from the spilling blood. The second cow let out a final dying bellow, thrashing its legs in pain, bloody-red froth spitting from its mouth. The other woman walked toward it, knelt across its head to hold it down, and expertly slit its throat as well. Near the old green truck, the shooter dropped his rifle to his side, satisfied. Two of the younger men immediately started fighting for his gun. Caelyn could hear their shouts, which at first were merely angry but rapidly grew angrier. The larger of the young men prevailed, pushing the smaller boy back. Turning, he hoisted the rifle and raised it toward the herd. Aiming quickly, he shot, but he missed, and his father yelled at him, words Caelyn couldn’t understand. The young man aimed again and fired, bringing down another cow. Another shot. Another cow down. Caelyn hid her head.

“They’re going to kill them all!” she whispered in anguish. “It makes no sense!” Her heart sank into despair, a thick blackness all around.

Amid the darkness, Caelyn felt a stab of anger. “Heavenly Father, is this really the way You want it?” she prayed desperately. “If they kill our animals, we will starve to death! Are You going to beat me down until I have to fail? Is this supposed to keep me humble? Believe me, Lord, You’ve got me on my knees. Why have You left me here alone, without my husband, having to take care of my parents and my little girl?”

The thoughts came crashing even faster, a rush of hopelessness.

“Can You hear me, Heavenly Father? Are you there? This is more than I can handle. I want to crawl into a hole.

“I have always believed, even from the time I was a little girl, that You were out there and that You loved me, but I don’t know if I believe that anymore. How else am I to read this? You don’t love me. You don’t love Ellie. You don’t care about us anymore.” Rolling onto her back, she brushed away tears and frustration. “Heavenly Father,” she whispered finally, “are You really there?”

The doubts gathered deep inside her and she stopped praying, falling into silence. Her mother watched her, reaching for her hand.

Caelyn thought the doubt and desperation that tumbled from her were coming from her soul, but the seeds were something different, something much more dangerous, more severe.

And though she felt him, she didn’t recognize the blackness that was near.

“Heavenly Father,” she repeated slowly, “are You there?”

SEVENTEEN

“No, he’s not there!” Lucifer sneered as he paced behind Caelyn, taking delight in her despair. “Don’t you know that you’re alone here? He’s not going to save you. Miracles are only for other people. He’s not going to help you now!”

Lucifer smiled as he spoke. This was when he was at his best. Get them scared. Get them to take fear in the future. Weaken their faith, and it was an easy step to convince them that God didn’t love them anymore. So he kept his focus on her, twisting her natural apprehension into faithless fear.

Beside him, Balaam watched, a tiny turn of his thin lips toward his eyes. Other dark angels danced behind them, not as talented, less determined, but still willing to participate in any scene of despair. And their delight was usually full now. So many scenes of horror filled the world.

To Balaam’s right, a group of female spirits leaned toward the two women who were working over the cows. These evil spirits, Balaam trusted, for he had heard their cunning lies. Lucifer’s male servants were far too clumsy, too abrupt and demanding to entrap the women in their deceptions. But their dark sisters were much more patient and subtle in their words. He shivered as he imagined the deceits that were coming through their lips. “No one loves you. You have nothing. Do what your man tells you and don’t ever say a word. Don’t complain. Don’t stand up. You are lucky, you ugly fool. What other man would even have you?” Balaam smiled maliciously as he thought of their lies. “You are worthless. You are different. You’re not worthy of anything but indifference and disdain.”

Such were the lies the fallen women were whispering to the mortals, so effective over time. And the evil sisters knew them well, for they were the same words Lucifer spoke to them every day.

Balaam studied his wretched sisters, closed his eyes, and shivered.

Lucifer focused his attention on Caelyn, his dark whispers so overpowering they bled despair into her heart.

Behind him, the lesser angels continued crying and shouting as they danced around the dying animals. Their lust for blood was nearly overpowering. Blood. Flesh. The human touch. All things of the body. The ache for such things they would never know or experience was all-consuming in their dark and bitter world, and there was constant glee in the killing of the gift they’d never have.

Balaam watched, disgusted at their ignorance. There was no reason for their shouting. He hissed, a snakelike sound emitting from his throat. Walking toward the other angels, he brushed them away with a violent motion of his hand, then, turning to the mortal men, he spoke in their minds. “Kill the entire herd,” he prompted in a whisper. “If you let the animals live, the Anglos will butcher them, providing food for the long winter. But if you kill their cattle now, they will starve to death. So kill the entire herd. Leave them nothing but rotting flesh. After what the Anglos have done to your people, they all deserve to die.”

EIGHTEEN

Caelyn’s stomach turned, the muscles in her chest growing tighter with every breath. Her mother grabbed her arm, her eyes red with fear and sadness. “Can you see Miller?” she whispered. “Your dad will die without him. Can you see him? Is he there?”

Caelyn shook her head. “No, Mom, I didn’t see him.”

“But did you look?”

“I didn’t see him, Mom.”

“My eyes aren’t good enough to see anymore, especially in this dying light.”

Gretta glanced fearfully toward the darkening sky. Where had all the light gone? What had happened to the sun? The afternoon had grown so dark so quickly, she didn’t understand. But even she, an unbeliever, felt the evil of the black soul standing near. She didn’t have a name for it, but she felt Lucifer’s cold chill of his soul and shivered. She looked at Caelyn now, scared and uncertain at the sudden dying light. Reaching out, she touched her daughter’s arm. “Will you please see if you can see him? Your dad will have to know.”

Caelyn waited, then carefully lifted her head and looked out, her eyes scanning the ground around the men. Looking closer, she saw the dog, halfway between the trucks and the grass where they were hiding, a mound of brown fur stretched out in the dirt. She stared, then started crying, warm tears falling down her cheeks. “I’m so, so sorry, Mom.”

Her mother clenched her arm, her fingers digging painfully into the soft skin, then raised her head and peered through the cattails that were rustling in the wind. “They didn’t have to do that,” she whispered angrily. “They didn’t have to kill him.”

Another shot rang out across the darkening sky. Another cow bellowed out in pain. The herd startled at the gunshot but still they didn’t move—too dumb and domesticated to understand their own fear.

Caelyn almost retched in pain and fear. “Please don’t kill them all!” she prayed again.

One of the fat men who’d been leaning against the old truck yelled and darted forward to pull the rifle from the shooter’s hands, cursing all the time. Peering over the tall grass, Caelyn watched as he slapped the younger man upside the head. He was the leader of the gang, she could see that, his chest puffed with pride. Even from a distance, she could see that his arms were darkened with tattoos. His hair was a wild mat, his Wranglers® tight around his thighs, his gut spilling over the front of his jeans, a huge silver buckle flashing on his leather belt. Swearing again, he pushed the butt of the rifle against the younger man’s chest. The kid wobbled—was he drunk?—swept his hands in a wide arc, gesturing toward the herd, and stepped back. The leader frowned, spoke as if he needed to instruct him, raised the rifle, and shot again, downing another cow.

Hearing the shot, Caelyn bowed her head again.

Two more shots. Two more cows down. She stifled the urge to scream. “Please, Heavenly Father, please don’t let them kill them all! Please, You’ve got to help us! The meat will rot! It will be wasted. Please, don’t let them kill them all!”

A flock of birds suddenly cried and lifted from the line of trees along the road. The afternoon grew even darker, the sun falling behind a bank of low clouds. She fell back against the grass, unable to watch the killing anymore.

What could they be thinking!

Then she realized.

They weren’t thinking. They were killing. And now that it had started, it wouldn’t end. The bloodlust, stupid and unexplainable, would drive them in a fury until the herd was dead. This wasn’t about food. This wasn’t about survival. This was about killing and destruction and that was all it was.

Across the field, the young women worked desperately to butcher the cows, paying no attention to the men. Caelyn felt the sense of blackness falling deeper.

Killing and destruction.

Lucifer’s spirit settled over her.

Killing and destruction.

She almost heard Lucifer laugh.

Then a cold and deadly chill ran through her, the hairs on her neck standing on end. A knot of new fear rose up inside her. Something different, something vital. What was it that made her panic? Something urgent, something worse than any fear she’d ever had—

“Ellie! Ellie!” a voice seemed to shout inside her head.

She turned instantly, looking toward the house. Ellie was walking across the open field, her light hair blowing in the stiffening breeze. Caelyn’s heart shot up to her throat, her blood turning cold.

“Mom? Grandma?” Ellie called against the wind.

NINETEEN

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

Sara Brighton pulled again on Sam’s arm. “I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to pray for them,” she said.

Sam shook his head. “I’ve used up all my prayers, Mom.” He smiled just a little. “You, Luke and Ammon forced me to cash in pretty much every prayer chip I ever had.”

“God doesn’t keep track of any prayer chips,” Sara smiled back at him.

Sam turned away, looking down the crowded street again. “I think I’m being stupid anyway. There’s no way Bono needs me. Believe me, Mom, if there’s anyone in the world who can take care of himself and his family, it’s Bono. He’s probably sitting on his country porch right now, sipping a little hot chocolate, cleaning his gun, looking over a field of grain and counting the fat cows tied up in the barn. Maybe he’s the one who should be praying for us here, you know? I’m sure he’s doing just fine.”

“I kind of doubt your friend is lounging around the old farm enjoying his two-week vacation.”

Sam squinted against the falling sun. “Probably not.”

“And you keep thinking of him?”

“All the time.”

Sara let her eyes drift toward the ground. “Your prayers can make a difference. If there’s one thing I have learned, I now know that’s true. I have felt the power of others praying for me and my family—the Spirit has told me the exact moment when they have knelt in prayer. It can make a real difference just knowing others care enough to pray.”

Sam turned and looked at her. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes. I really do. And there’s more, Sam. Maybe lots more reasons than that. Why do we fast and pray, sometimes as a family or congregation? We may not know, we may not see the miracles that take place on the other side of the veil, but they happen. There is a battle going on, and I know it can be influenced by what we do. We may not understand the help that is mustered there as a result of our humble prayers.”

Sam hesitated, then turned toward her. “Help me, Mom,” he said.

TWENTY

Four Miles West of Chatfield, Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee

Balaam looked across the open field, sneering at the two mothers who were hiding in the grass. He wanted the younger one with a particular gnawing rage.

He was the one who had convinced the foreign gang to cross the border. He was the one who had led them to this place. He realized what powerful enemies the young woman and her soldier-husband had become. He knew that Caelyn and her husband were two mortals he wanted to destroy. Worse, he sensed the coming battle and the part that they both would play. So he gloried in the killing of the animals, knowing it would bring suffering to the humans in the end.

Across the field, Lucifer turned away from Caelyn, stopping suddenly to turn. “Look! Look there!” Lucifer cried out as he pointed toward the farmhouse. He ran toward his mortal servants who were busy shooting cows. “LOOK THERE, FOOLS!” he screamed.

It took a little while, but the mortals finally stopped their killing spree. For a moment they looked at each other, wondering what they should do now.

“TURN AND LOOK!” Lucifer cried out again to them, frustrated at their inability to hear his voice.

A small sound carried across the open field and the mortals turned at last. A small, blonde-haired girl was walking toward them. Drawing closer, she stopped, her eyes growing wide.

“GO!” Lucifer hissed. “Go now. Kill the girl!”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Coming closer to the strangers, Ellie finally stopped, looking from one man to another. She saw the dead cows, the pools of dark blood against the ground, and though she didn’t understand what was happening, an instinctive look of terror flashed across her face.

Caelyn watched in horror for half a second, then, standing, she rushed toward her child. Gretta started to chase after her, then stopped and turned toward the men. Frozen there, she hesitated. Her face was long now, tight and stern. She wasn’t frightened any longer, she was full of rage. Swearing, she tightened her fists and marched across the field toward the drunken men. “HEY THERE!” she cried, her voice shrill. “YOU KILLED MY DOG! YOU KILLED MY COWS. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, YOU STUPID MEN!”

Running to her daughter, Caelyn grabbed Ellie and pulled her close, placing her hands over her eyes to protect her from the horror that lay before them. Gretta turned and shot a frantic look toward her. “Run,” she mouthed in desperation, “run, baby, run!” Turning back, she faced the strangers. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!” she screamed again.

The men stared at her as she approached. They didn’t talk. They didn’t lift their guns to protect themselves. They didn’t react at all. It was as if they were watching a stray cat move across the field.

Gretta glanced down at Miller as she passed. The bloodhound was stretched across the closely cut hay, his front legs reaching toward the house, as if he had tried to paw his way home before he died.

A couple of the strangers finally raised their guns. Gretta glared at them and kept on walking, coming to a stop in front of the gang leader. “What do you think you’re doing!” she screamed in his face.

He could feel her breath and tiny dots of spit across his cheeks. If he understood her words, he didn’t show it; his expression didn’t change. She lifted her hand, jerking her thumb toward her dead cows. His eyes followed lazily to where she was pointing, then turned back, lids half closed. She pointed over her shoulder and he tracked her gesture toward the dead dog.

Behind her, Caelyn and Ellie were running toward the house. The men pointed at them and started shouting. “ALTO! PAREN!” they screamed angrily across the open field.

Caelyn cried, her legs beating across the dry ground. The dark clouds piled deeper, seeming to blacken out the entire sky. It came so fast, all jumbled together now, everything a blur of fear and dread. Caelyn running, Ellie against her chest. Short gasps of breath. Ellie crying. Caelyn’s feet kicking the loose dirt. A shot across the open field. A burst of dirt spouting up beside her. The overpressure from another bullet. A high-pitched vibration that stung her legs.

Caelyn hesitated, almost stopping. Another shot, this one closer. Her eyes opened wide in horror as she took a final step. Another buzz, this one right beside her, the bullet whipping past her ear.

She froze. She was holding Ellie so tight that it was hard to breathe. If she ran again, they were going to kill her. She put her daughter down and slowly turned around, shielding the little girl with her body.

Three of the men were running toward her now. Back at the trucks, another had her mother wrapped up, his hairy arms around her neck. Caelyn started to scream, then held it. Kneeling, she turned to Ellie and pushed her. “Run,” she whispered. But Ellie didn’t move, clinging desperately to her mom.

Five seconds later, it was over. The three men had gathered around them. Two of them had her by the arms. The last one picked up Ellie. Working together, they pulled them back toward the other members of the gang.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Lucifer knew he didn’t have much time. If he gave the mortals a chance to think, they wouldn’t do it. As evil as these men were, even they would need a reason before they’d kill human beings, and since there was no reason, he had to push them to act before they had time to think.

“Kill them!” he sneered inside the leader’s ear. “Do it. Get it over with. Go on, you coward, raise your gun!”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Huddled beside her mother, Caelyn felt the wind begin to blow, a cold blast against her face. She shivered visibly. The afternoon was dark, the thick clouds blocking the setting sun. The hair on her neck stood on end and a feeling of foreboding, deep and penetrating, settled over her. A warning. She knew it. She’d felt the feeling too many times before. She glanced in terror at the men around her and pulled Ellie close. She shot a look toward the Mexican women who stood among the dead cows. They were so young. Fifteen. Maybe sixteen. The closest girl looked at her but didn’t move. The smaller one—her little sister?—turned away. She knew what was going to happen and didn’t want to watch.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

“Kill them!” Lucifer screamed again into the mortal’s ear. Lucifer had his arms around the mortal, holding him in a cold and deadly grip. “Kill them now. Kill them all!” Lucifer cried with rage and fury.

The mortal hesitated.

“DO IT!” Lucifer commanded.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Caelyn dropped suddenly to her knees, driven to the earth by the sheer force of Lucifer’s will. It was so oppressive, dark, evil, deadly to her soul. She felt as if the oxygen was being pulled from her chest, as if the core of life inside her was being sucked into a black and swirling hole. Her mind went blank and then black, and she had to close her eyes. She drew her hands up to her cover her head, cried out, then rolled over, her hands reaching to the sky above. Darkness. A shrill voice. Laughing and cursing in her mind. Hate and rage and blackness. She felt her blood run chill. Her heart raced and then slowed, and for a moment she thought that she would die. It was so powerful, so evil. She didn’t know if she could fight it. She didn’t know if she had the will.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Lucifer turned the full force of his burning rage upon Caelyn. “I WILL KILL YOU!” he screamed, his voice powerful and shrill. “I WILL DESTROY YOU! I WILL KILL YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR CHILD! I WILL DRAG YOU ALL TO HELL!”

Then Lucifer rose up in even greater rage and power, his back straight, his arms rising, his eyes on fire, his lips curled back to show his teeth.

Turning away from Caelyn, he rushed toward the mortal. “KILL HER NOW!” he screamed.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The gang leader faltered, a burning in his chest. He was taken in the moment, his brain turned completely off. Yes, he had to kill them. If he didn’t they would—he didn’t know, it didn’t matter, he couldn’t take the chance. He had to kill them and he had to do it now.

But he didn’t. He hesitated.

“Why should I kill them?” the tiny fragment of good still left inside him seemed to say. “Why do I need to kill them? I have never killed anyone.”

The little girl was curled up on the ground, completely terrified. Her mother knelt beside her, looking up at him in fear. They were related, he could see that, a mother and her child. The mother was young and beautiful. How much was she worth on the trading block along the border? An awful lot, he knew.

Kill her? No. He wouldn’t kill her. But he might do something worse.

Reaching down, he touched her blonde hair and she jerked away in fear.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Lucifer leaned so far toward the mortal leader that their two spirits almost met. The mortal didn’t fight him and inviting him inside. “I will do it then,” Lucifer whispered to the mortal, exerting himself to take complete control of the man.

Lucifer felt the warmth of the body, the flesh and tissue, the blood and bone. He almost cried, partly from joy of taking control of the mortal’s body, but mostly from the deep frustration of knowing that such a sacred temple would never really be his.

Slipping further into the man, he sensed the mortal’s emotions, then his deepest thoughts. He almost had him. He cried with passion. He was going to kill the woman with this man’s hand.

Then he felt an unexpected power and suddenly he stopped. An angry groan welled up inside him. Screaming in fury, he departed from the man. The other dark angels stopped their dancing. They felt the power, too.

Three angels of the Savior approached them from the line of trees.

Looking at them coming, the dark angels pulled back as if withdrawing from a flame. Too painful now to face them, too painful to hear their words.

Balaam turned and pulled a dry breath. It wasn’t fear that leapt inside him. The only emotion he felt toward the angels now was hate. Raw and cruel, it cut him to the core and set his guts on fire.

Lucifer turned to face the angels of Light, his lips pulled back, exposing yellow teeth.

He held his ground, his back straight, his eyes dark flames, his arms across his chest. Balaam saw a moment’s hesitation and he quivered inside.

Yes, Lucifer was the master of this world, but in the presence of the Light Ones he was nothing but a slave.

TWENTY-ONE

Archangel Michael moved out from the trees, two other angels of Light at his side. As they emerged from the shadows, time stood still. The mortals froze around them, the words that they were speaking left hanging in the air. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe. It seemed as if their mortal hearts froze inside their chests.

Archangel Michael approached them, paused, glanced toward the house, then moved toward the women and little girl. As he drew closer, he saw the anguish in Caelyn’s face and groaned, hating to see her in such pain. He viewed her almost as a child—so vulnerable, so young, wanting to be strong but falling short, then feeling guilt and disappointment at her weakness and her fear. “It’s not true, Caelyn,” he thought. “You’ve done everything we could expect of you. You’ve done your best. That’s all we ask. And you have always been strong.” He reached out, hoping she would know somehow that friends were near. Then he turned toward Lucifer who was standing to his right.

The lesser spirits cowered but Lucifer stood his ground, defiant fury in his eyes. Moving slowly, he positioned himself between his mortal servants and the angels of Light. “This isn’t your battle.” He nodded to the women. “They aren’t your family. These aren’t your children. ”

Archangel Michael thought before he answered, “All are brothers, Lucifer. Have you forgotten that?”

Lucifer only scowled.

Balaam watched, then took a quick step forward. “What have you to do with us?” he sniffed.

“Silence!” Lucifer hissed to Balaam, shooting a deadly glare in his direction. The other dark angels fell behind Lucifer, seeming to hide behind his presence.

Archangel Michael looked around again, taking in the scene of death, then turned back to face Lucifer. “It is not your time,” he said.

Lucifer nodded to the mortals. “Maybe not. But it is theirs.”

“Their missions are not over. There are great things yet for them to do.”

Lucifer sneered, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “It doesn’t matter. Today. Tomorrow. I am patient. Either way, they are going to die.” He swept his arms around him, taking in the darkened world. “There’s not a soul left here worth saving. You are wasting your time.”

Archangel Michael shook his head. They both knew that wasn’t true. He nodded toward the women. “It’s worth saving them,” he said.

Lucifer almost grunted, pig-like and mean. “Go ahead. It doesn’t matter. I’ll still get them in the end. Soon there will be no one left upon this miserable earth except for the mortals I have captured and the spirits who have always been on my side. You not only lost this battle, you have lost the war.” He started laughing, an ugly roll from deep inside his chest. “How many years now have you fought me, all to be defeated in the end? You thought it couldn’t happen, but we both know that you have lost.”

His wicked servants gathered closer, seeking power from his rage. Lucifer stood before them. Tall. Prideful. Withered with blackness but always deep and strong.

Balaam was the only one who fell back. He knew Lucifer was lying. He knew they couldn’t win.

Lucifer shot another angry look toward Balaam as if he had read his thoughts, then turned to face his enemy. “You cannot hurt me now,” he whispered, feeling strength from those around him. “Not with just the three of you. My forces outnumber you at least fifty to one. And I alone am powerful enough to stop you. You are weaker than you once were.”

Archangel Michael almost smiled. “My authority is enough to stop you, Lucifer.”

Lucifer smirked, then turned. Lifting his arms, he beckoned to his hidden slaves. Another host of dark angels appeared, moving forward to his side. They seemed to slip out from the shadows like mist rising from a swamp on a cold and bitter morning. Hundreds of them. Maybe more. They were angry. Lustful. Jealous and full of rage. Lucifer laughed at the presence of his followers, then turned to face the angels. “I don’t think you can control me. Not here and not now—especially with so many of my dark ones willing to stand here at my side.”

Archangel Michael took in all the enemy’s servants. “Those who are with us are more than you might think,” he said. He raised his hand and gestured. Behind him, along the tree line, angels of Light started emerging from the dark. From the very end of heaven they came. Then, walking together, they came forward: ten, twenty, then a hundred, then more than they could count. Lucifer stared at them in horror, cowering at their light. They were so great. They were so terrible. It cut him to the core to see them, to feel them, to sense their glowing power. They were everything he would never be, full of mercy, peace, and power. He shrank, lifting his hands against his eyes to protect them from their light.

“You must go now,” Archangel Michael commanded as the crowd of heavenly angels gathered at his side.

Lucifer hissed, then nodded to his mortal servants, who were huddled around the women, lust and killing in their eyes. “Even if I go, it doesn’t matter. They will kill them anyway.”

Archangel Michael ignored the comment. “You must go now,” he said again.

Lucifer tried to hold his ground but it was pointless and he screamed in futile fury. He glared at the other angels a final time. So bright. So powerful. So full of grace and truth. Sneering, he cursed them, then slowly, painfully, hunched in fear and shame, Lucifer slunk away.

His other angels followed, crying, complaining and cringing from the light.

TWENTY-TWO

The violent gang of men seemed to pause. They couldn’t hear, they couldn’t see, they couldn’t understand the battle that had taken place on the other side of the veil, but they knew somehow, deep inside them, that something had changed. They sensed the sudden loss of power, the loss of authority that had slipped away. Worse, they sensed the unseen presence of the Light now. To the west, the clouds had parted and a narrow beam of sun was shooting through.

The leader of the men turned toward the women. He was going to take them along. “Come,” he shouted to his men. “It’s time for us to go. Load the meat up, fill the trucks, and let’s get out of here.”

The gang hesitated and he glared at them, disgusted. The truth was that they were cowards and he was ashamed to lead these men. “COME ON!” he screamed, his fat gut pulling tight. “Get the meat. Leave the dead cattle. Grab the women and the little one and let’s get out of here!” He was scared now. His courage had left him. He felt exposed and alone.

His men stood idly for another moment, then sprang into action. Working together, it took them only half an hour to quarter up the two cows, wrap the meat in black tarps, and throw it in the back of their ancient trucks. They moved like scurrying rats, eager to move on.

Caelyn watched them work. She understood what the leader had in mind. They would take them. They would destroy them and then sell them. It would be far worse than death.

But she wasn’t frightened any longer. The evil had evaporated as the darkness before the sun. She felt the power of the Light around her and she stood, her face determined, her eyes bright.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Archangel Michael walked toward her, looking directly into her eyes. “I am with you,” he whispered to her. “All of us are with you, Caelyn. If you could see us, you would know that. But still, you have the faith. You have the power. Everything will be all right.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Holding Ellie tight, Caelyn leaned toward her mother. “They’re going to try to force us to go with them,” she whispered. Hearing her, one of the younger men ran toward her, thrusting his gun into her face. She cringed, twisting her body between him and Ellie. Gretta gritted her teeth and stepped toward him. “Are you kidding me?” she shouted. “If you think I’m going with you, you’ve got holes in your head. You’re going to have to kill me and throw my body in the truck because that’s the only way, little man, I’m going anywhere with you!” The Mexican stared, not understanding but shrinking at her rage. She raised a hand as if she would slap him and he took a quick step back.

The gang leader heard Gretta screaming and ran toward them, an ugly frown across his lips. He knew enough English to understand most of what she had said, and he grabbed her arms and threw her down. “You true,” he sneered at her in a rage. “You not going with us. You old. No good. You die here, mujer.”

He turned to the young man, gesturing for his rifle. The kid, with pockmarked cheeks and dark eyes, hesitated, then extended the old 30.06 bolt action rifle. The man took it, checked the chamber, and turned to Gretta, who was lying on the ground. Looking up at him, she threw a handful of dirt in his direction, then stood and rushed toward him. Caelyn screamed as she tried to hold her back, but Gretta pulled out of her grasp. She beat upon the leader’s chest and he pushed her to the ground again. Raising his rifle, he checked the safety.

Caelyn pushed Ellie toward the truck, then rushed forward, placing herself between her mother and the shooter. As she stood there, her eyes burning, her hands clenched into tight fists at her side, a sudden sense of power settled from the heavens, white, electric and mightier than anything on earth. It seemed to lift her up and square her shoulders. She was taller. She was lighter. She almost glowed with righteous anger, and she lifted her hand toward the man. “You will go now!” she commanded, her voice as full and rolling as the thunder of a coming storm. “You will go now. You will leave us!” She gestured toward the other men. “All of you will leave us. You will leave us, every one!”

The man froze, his face contorted with pain, uncertainty and rage. He took a breath, shot a nervous look toward the others, then glared in rage and raised his rifle again.

Caelyn’s face was white and peaceful. There was an incredible power there. Commanding. Great and terrible, she stood her ground. Then she took a step toward him, filling him with terror from the power of her eyes. “I tell you now,” she whispered, her voice softer now but sure. “If you raise that weapon again to hurt us, my God will strike you dead. He will take your life and blow it out as if it were a candle in the storm. He is my Master. He is my Father and He has sent His servants here. You know it. You can feel it. The darkness has left you. There is nothing here but Light. You are alone now and you will die here if you threaten me again.

“Now you will leave us. And you will never come back here again.”

The man dropped his head and mumbled.

“Go now or you will die.”

He turned toward the others, his eyes low, always looking at the ground. Terrified to even look at her, he gestured to his men. The others felt it and they too cowered before her presence.

One by one, in utter silence, they gathered their things and climbed into their trucks. The engines spouted to life, belching smoke and oil.

The two women in the field didn’t move. They didn’t want to go. A couple of the men cursed at them. Still they didn’t move. None of the men dared to get out of their trucks, but finally, their eyes avoiding Caelyn, three of them climbed out of the vehicles, ran toward the women, grabbed them by the hair, and jerked them toward the trucks, throwing them into the back.

Spewing smoke and noise, their gearboxes grinding, the ancient vehicles bounced away, leaving the two women and the little girl standing in the middle of the field.

Caelyn watched them go, then fell to the ground, her shoulders slumping, her hands trembling at her side. Turning, she motioned toward Ellie, who cried out as she scrambled to her mother and fell into her arms. Caelyn held her, brushed her hair back, then burst into sudden tears, her body shaking, her shoulders heaving, her breathing coming in sobbing gasps.

Gretta stood back, her mouth open, her eyes wide in wonder. “Oh, Caelyn, oh, Caelyn,” she repeated again and again. “Oh, Caelyn, how did you do that? I saw it, I felt it, but baby, I just don’t understand.”

Caelyn and her daughter held onto each other as they sat crying in the open field. Caelyn kept her eyes closed. It was just too much to bear. Holding Ellie, she rocked her back and forth, her vision blurred by salty tears.

Then she heard his voice.

She almost ignored it. She didn’t think it could be real.

He called out again, his voice drifting with the wind across the dry ground. “Caelyn! Caelyn, can you hear me? Ellie, it’s your daddy.”

Caelyn’s heart burst inside her chest. She stood and looked toward the sound of the voice, tears burning her eyes and cheeks.

He called her name again. She whispered something, then wiped her hand across her face. Letting go of Ellie’s hand, she ran across the open field and fell into her husband’s arms.

TWENTY-THREE

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

It was time to go.

The apartment was dark now. A single candle burned in the living room, casting a dance of shadows across the floor and the walls. It was also cold, a hint of frost building on the corners of the windows. Sam stood at the kitchen window and looked out. The others worked around him, gathering what they could. They were going to have to walk and they had to travel light, but there was little inside the small apartment that was going to help them on their journey anyway. Still, they packed up everything that made sense, working quickly now that it was time to go.

Sam didn’t pay any attention to the others as they collected what little food was left, a bundle of children’s clothes, a couple of tools, a few dollars cash. Ammon was stuffing an extra blanket inside a threadbare child’s sleeping bag when he looked up at Sam. His older brother had climbed onto the cracked kitchen counter and was kneeling at the window, looking straight down. His face was tense, his eyes moving, and Ammon immediately knew that something was wrong. He dropped the sleeping bag onto the sofa and walked toward him. “What’s up?” he asked, his heart skipping. Something inside him seemed to tighten up.

“It’s going to be a problem.”

Ammon almost laughed. “Pretty much everything’s a problem right now, man.”

The young captain shook his head and motioned for Ammon to climb up. He easily pulled himself onto the counter and looked down. Most of his vision was taken up by the dirty brick wall of the nearest building, but by looking down and to the left, he could see the street below. It was getting dark and the shadows had already grown deep and full. He looked south. Dead cars. Lots of people. A couple of smoky fires on the street corner. The crowd seemed to cluster around in gangs now. It was cold. Most wore heavy clothing. Hooded faces. Tight circles of people around the fires, their shoulders touching. Lots of guns. Some were holstered, some were brandished. It seemed everyone was armed.

Ammon shook his head in dismay. “Dude, looks like the Wild West down there.” He watched another moment, sucking his lip, then glanced at Sam. His brother was so comfortable with the Army-issue handgun hanging at his side that he seemed to notice it little more than the belt around his waist. Ammon arched his back, the handgun they’d brought from Washington tucked uncomfortably beneath his jacket. Reaching to his side, he pulled it from its leather holster. It felt so heavy in his hand. “Sam, I’m not, you know, I’m not a soldier, like you, bro. I’m not all that experienced with a gun.”

“Not all that experienced? Dude, are you kidding me?! Have you ever shot that thing?”

Ammon’s face burned. He knew that he was blushing.

Sam was smiling at him, the shadows playing with the lines around his mouth and his eyes. “Let’s not kid ourselves. When it comes to handling a weapon, you’re like a child.”

“Hey, Dad taught me a thing or two.” Ammon was only half defensive.

“Dad taught you not to shoot your brothers or stuff a loaded weapon inside your pants. I suspect that’s about all he had the time to teach.”

Ammon tossed the weapon to his other hand in a gesture of confidence. “I can handle this.”

Sam shook his head, his smile growing wider. “Sure you can, dude. You’re a regular Pistol Pete.”

“Pistol Pete was a basketball player, you conehead.” Every conversation between the brothers eventually degenerated into “dudes” and insults.

Sam turned more serious, watching Ammon with the gun. “It’s going to be OK,” he said.

“I know it will. I’m just saying, you know, if things get kind of ugly, I’m not so sure that you’ll want me on the front lines with this thing. I haven’t shot anyone for, you know, a long time now. I’m not sure that I’d know what to do.”

Sam leaned toward him, his face soft, his voice low. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll be there. Follow my lead. Take your cues from me.”

Ammon looked into his brother’s eyes, then turned back to the window and nodded toward the street corner. A group of disheveled men had circled around two young women. Tall and slender, they looked familiar with the streets: tightly braided hair, short shirts, spike heels, and gaudy handbags. What could they be thinking? Ammon wondered in disbelief. He shook his head as the thugs closed around them, animals circling for the kill. Shaking with frustration, he clenched his jaw. Both of the women were on the ground now. “It’s a war out there,” he said.

Sam watched, feeling sick, then looked away. What he saw would have been impossible to even conceive of just a week before. “It’s going to be a little tough.”

“So what’s the plan, dude? We go out shooting? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”

Sam didn’t answer. He’d never seen the movie.

“It’s getting worse every day,” Ammon said. “Every hour. It’s worse now than it was this morning. Lot worse than when we got here. I think they’ve finally figured out the police aren’t coming. No Red Cross. No National Guard. No firemen or army guys to save the day.”

“It didn’t take long for things to completely fall apart.”

Ammon watched through the window. For some inexplicable reason the thugs had let one of the women go. She stood, watched for a moment, seemingly offended, then turned and huffed away. A thick-armed man moved forward, gripped the second girl by the back of the neck, and pulled her caveman-like into a narrow alley, followed by his friends. Through the thin window, they could hear her screams, then lustful cheers.

“It won’t be like this everywhere,” Sam said, as if trying to convince himself. “It can’t be like this everywhere. Somewhere there is sanity.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Ammon forced a hopeful voice. “This place was like a war zone even when things were normal. But if we can get out of the city, get to where we’re going,” he thought of the stake they had selected on the outskirts of Chicago, “I think we’ll be OK.”

“One thing we know for certain. It won’t be worse.”

Azadeh came into the kitchen, grabbed a couple of cans out of the cupboard, leaving it completely empty, then disappeared into the back bedroom again. Sam and Ammon noted her long hair falling down her back, her trim waist underneath the skirt and black belt. “You know, I just don’t see us walking out of here without some issues,” Ammon whispered after they had watched her go. He nodded toward the back bedroom. “It’s going to be a problem. A problem for so many reasons.”

Sam scratched his head. “All the women will be targets.”

“We’ll all be targets. Some will just be a little easier to hit,” Ammon said. “There’s you. Me. A couple guns. Luke will be OK, but it’s going to be a while before he’ll be strong enough to help us in a fight. And that’s about it. Compared with, well, just look down there.”

Sam considered for a long moment, nodded, then climbed down from the counter. “I’ve seen worse,” he said. “Fallujah. Tora Bora. I think both of them were worse.”

Ammon looked at him and laughed. “Really?!” he exclaimed. “Because I’ve got to tell you, dude, from the look on your face, I find that a little hard to believe.”

Sam moved toward the front living room, then looked back. “Fallujah was worse. Certainly more deadly. But not as ugly. In that, you are right.”

Ammon sadly shook his head. “It’s hard to see it in our country.”

“Never thought it’d be like this over here.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

They waited, hoping the crowds on the streets would break up. They never did. So, finally, late at night, they just left.

They walked silently down the stairs, Sam in the lead, Ammon at the back. Luke followed Sam, moving on his own but walking slowly, putting each foot down tenderly and grasping onto the worn stair rail. Mary followed Luke, holding Kelly Beth’s hand so tight she squeezed her little fingers together; then came Azadeh and Sara, who were walking side by side.

It was very dark, almost cavelike, the stairs illuminated only by the faint hint of starlight that shone through the tiny stairwell windows. But all of their eyes had adjusted to the darkness and they moved carefully but surely down the stairs. Pausing at the ground-floor landing, Sam held up his hand and listened, then turned to face the group.

The men had heavy backpacks. Sara had a smaller one, which she had tried to hide under a heavy jacket. All of the women were dressed in men’s clothes. Azadeh looked particularly comical. Her hair was pulled back and hidden beneath an oversized baseball cap, Mary’s work jeans drowned her, and the baggy shirt hung down almost to her knees. The clothing helped, but just a little, for it was hard to hide her beauty, no matter what they did. Sara had tied her own hair up as well, and she had on comfortable jeans and hiking boots. Mary kept Kelly Beth by her side, pulling on her shoulder to keep her close. The little girl was frail—it would take weeks, perhaps months, to regain the weight the cancer had stolen from her—but she moved with enthusiasm, her feet light. She didn’t understand what was going on, so, though she sensed the danger, she didn’t seem scared. Sam knew, because Mary had told him, how happy Kelly Beth was with her mother’s new friends. Still, she tended to hang out near Ammon or Luke, sometimes reaching for their hands, sometimes crawling into their arms. Sam, on the other hand, seemed to scare her. He didn’t know why—his uniform, he suspected—but he could see the hint of suspicion in her eyes.

Sam checked the group a final time. “OK,” he gave his last instructions, “remember to keep moving. Don’t stop regardless of what happens. Keep it two abreast. Stay close together, but not too close. Try not to bundle up too much—a group will draw more attention than two or three people traveling together. And don’t look at anyone. Anyone talks to you, ignore them and keep on moving, no matter what they say. Anyone gives us any trouble, let me do the talking.” He glanced at Ammon. “You’ve got Kelly, right?”

Ammon reached out for her hand. “Got her.” He smiled down.

“Luke, you stay with me. Mom, you stay with Mary. Azadeh…” Sam hesitated just a moment, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “Azadeh, you understand the problem?”

She looked at him and nodded.

“Try not to let them see your eyes. Keep your head low. Keep your hair tucked up and don’t speak—that’s the last thing you want to do. If they recognize the accent, it will set them off. Stay by me. If I get distracted or have to deal with someone, then hang onto Luke.” He took a step toward them. “Keep on walking. Stay close. We’re going to be OK.”

The group looked at him and nodded. He was obviously their leader, and they were prepared to do anything he said.

Mary gestured toward the street that lay beyond the metal door. “Some of them have guns.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, they do.”

“If there’s any problems?”

“Don’t worry about it, Miss Dupree. I can take care of them.”

“Not all of them, Captain Brighton.”

Luke put his hand on Mary’s arm and laughed. “Hey, look, I’ve got a plan. If anyone starts shooting, everyone jump behind me. I seem to be impervious to bullets. All of you hide behind me and I’ll take ’em for the team.”

Sara frowned. Sam laughed. Mary didn’t understand. Ammon slapped him on the back. “Good plan. I like it. You stay in front of me.”

Sam pulled the drinking tube on his CamelBak®, took a sip, and gestured to the others. “The last thing we want to do is advertise the fact that we’ve got food and water, so tank up now,” he said. Everyone drank except for Mary and Sara, who insisted they weren’t thirsty, then tucked the drinking tubes away, hiding them beneath their clothes. Sam looked at them a final time. “Ready?” he asked.

“Go for it, baby,” Luke answered.

Sam turned and pulled back the metal door.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The streets were dark and smoky, both from the small fires on every corner and from the huge, high-rise fires that were burning downtown. The wind had shifted from the west, blowing cold air and smoke across the city. Exiting the apartment building, with its soot-covered brick and filthy hallways, Sam moved across the parking lot toward the street. The others followed in pairs, ten or fifteen feet between them. After crossing the cluttered parking lot, Mary looked back. This had been her home for almost thirty years. Will I ever come back here? she wondered. Something told her that she wouldn’t, and she sighed, half from nostalgia, half from relief.

Reaching the street, Sam turned south, the shortest distance out of the city. All around them, crowds huddled together: men and women, young and old. Where are all the children? Sam wondered with a chill. Some of the men eyed them as they passed. Sam had on his uniform, which seemed to help. Unlike back in Washington, D.C., when everyone had been asking him for help or information, here they seemed eager to ignore him, letting him pass. Moving from the shadows of the buildings, the family walked across the street. An old man, his face lost in the utter blackness, stepped suddenly toward them, almost running across the street. Stopping in front of Sam, he turned, cursed and shouted, then turned and ran again. Sam didn’t slow but kept on walking. Stopping at the street corner, he looked up and tried to read the streets signs, but it was too dark. Catcalls emerged now from the darkness. “Hey, there!” men called to Azadeh. “Come on over here, little girl. Got plenty more of this!” Azadeh kept her head low, barely looking up. Luke pulled her close, putting his arm around her.

“Little man gots himself a woman.” Bitter laughing from the dark. “Git over here, man-child. I’ll give you something you can show her later on!”

A group of young men drew near. Sam stepped closer to his mother. Someone spat. He felt the light spray on his face, warm and wet. A shot rang out farther north. The whites of several eyes moved in that direction. Mary moved up beside Sam and nodded quickly to show the way.

“What you doing with this soldier?” one of the young men sneered at her. “You go on. Get out of here.”

The little group turned and ran. Kennedy Avenue. Columbus Street. East Chicago Avenue. Sam could smell the city all around him: Ispat Island, the fuel tank farms, the railheads, U.S. Steel—all were shut down now, but the smell of diesel, coal and filth still lingered in the air. Lake Michigan was behind them now. They came upon another corner. Another crowd was huddled in the middle of the street, chaotic, mean, and noisy, blocking their way. People turned toward them and started cursing. Sam felt a sick feeling roll inside him, his eyes moving desperately. Ammon jogged up and stopped beside him. “Take the alleyway,” he said. Sam thought, then nodded and turned into the alley. A couple of the strangers watched them disappear, then cut away from the group and followed. Moving into the deeper darkness, Sam pulled suddenly to the side and pushed against the wall, allowing the others to pass. “Keep moving,” he whispered to them.

Silence. Then heavy footsteps. Four men emerged from the darkness and stared at his family as they walked down the narrow alley. Sam watched them from his hiding place between two brick walls, the starlight just enough to illuminate their features. Dirty faces. Filthy clothes. They smelled of smoke and urine. “You see that white woman?” one of the older men sneered. “She don’t belong here. Gonna show her she shouldn’t be here.”

Sam stepped quietly out from behind the man and pressed his gun against the back of his neck, the cold metal pushing against the thin skin that stretched over his hairless skull.

“You’re talking about my mother?” His voice was cold and deadly. The man put his hands out, choking on his laugh. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Sam would pull the trigger. The four men slowly turned around. Sam moved the pistol back and forth to cover them all. “On the ground!” he commanded. He was quick. He was efficient. He knew what he was doing, it was clear. “Down. Get your hands back. You boys know the drill.”

The four men dropped face down on the sidewalk. Sam patted them down quickly, extracting two short-barrel handguns, a couple of empty plastic bags, a crack pipe, a well-made switchblade, and a wad of cash. He held the cheap guns, feeling the light weight, short-hair triggers, and poorly balanced grips. Saturday Night Specials. He dropped one gun and shot it with the other, sending shattered pieces of metal scattering across the ground. Then he shoved the second gun in his pocket and kicked the nearest man. “Stand up,” he ordered. They all stood and he motioned to them. “Get out of here,” he said. They turned away and started walking slowly down the street. “RUN!” Sam yelled at them. They broke into a halfhearted jog.

Turning, Sam walked quickly down the narrow alley. His group was waiting, just beyond where he could see. Ammon’s gun was in his hand. “I had you covered,” he said.

Sam smiled and slapped his shoulder. “Come on,” he said, hurrying past.

Out of the alley. Another corner. He studied the street signs, then turned left. A huge Norfolk Southern rail center lay two miles straight ahead. They planned to make their way to the rail yard, then follow one of the railroad lines heading south, hoping to avoid the crowds on the streets.

Moving quickly, Sam felt a sudden shudder. He was growing anxious, the hair on his neck rising on end. The night was dark. Every street was crowded. He looked at his watch, its luminescent dial barely visible in the dark: 2:34 a.m. Didn’t these people sleep? Why did they love the darkness?

His hair prickled once again.

Something deep inside of him knew.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Balaam could have chosen any of a hundred. So many evil men around him, he could have chosen any one—they were so ready, so eager, their dead eyes waiting, their empty souls ready to step into the dark. Still, he took his time deciding. He wanted to select the perfect one.

Moving through the crowded, filthy streets, he watched and listened, evaluating the darkness that emitted from their souls. Observing the empty mortals, he couldn’t help but smile. So many had already forfeited their sacred agency by violating their bodies with sludge, filth, alcohol, drugs and needles, and pain and deep despair. The addictions they had assembled were wide and varied: Sex. Violence. Pornography. Malignant and deadly thoughts. Hatred for a brother. Hatred for all men. It had taken a long time—the truth was, Balaam and his angels had been working on these mortals for generations now—but their work was paying off. This neighborhood was a cesspool of breeding evil, strong enough to steal the light from even the most innocent of the children who were born to them now.

Moving among the mortals, he considered and then selected.

He was a small man, thin, long fingers, a wispy beard. Dark eyes and angry mouth. A man who’d killed before.

Yes, he was the right man. “Come to me!” Balaam hissed.

The man was filthy and just coming down from the last trip of opium he would experience in this world. Better, he was full of a raging hatred that he couldn’t even begin to understand. Balaam looked at him, studying the deadness of his eyes. Yes, he would do what he was told.

“Come with me!” Balaam said again.

The man started walking toward the darkness.

“Bring others!” Balaam commanded.

The man stopped and turned toward his friends.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

GO, GO, GO! the Spirit told him. Sam looked back at the others. They all felt it too, and, as if at some unheard command, they all broke into a run. Down the middle of street they ran now, heading west, toward a growing crowd. Ammon kept his arm around Azadeh; Luke held onto Sara and Sam, supporting himself against their shoulders, sometimes stumbling as he ran. Mary led the way now. She knew where she was going, and the others followed through the night. They passed through a wide intersection littered with cars, taxis, and city buses: East 169th and something else, Sam couldn’t read the street sign as he passed. They ran for blocks, their breathing heavy, the adrenaline surging through them, giving lightness to their feet. As they crossed a wide T-intersection, a huge building loomed before them and Mary drew up to a stop. “This is it,” she muttered through gasping breaths.

The building was tall and long, stretching almost the entire city block. A twelve-foot, razor-wire fence extended from the corners of the building on both sides. The enormous railroad yard was on the other side of the dirty building.

Sam hesitated, then ran up the cement stairs that led to the front door. He pulled on it. Locked. He returned to the group, his eyes darting back across the road.

They all looked behind them.

Something was out there in the dark.

RUN! They sensed the warning.

“This way!” Ammon cried. He led the group south. The razor-topped fence met the corner of the building. The dirt on the other side of the fence was black: old coal, blackened gravel, broken asphalt, and spilled oil, a hundred years of railroading spread across the enormous yard. A series of railroad tracks, it looked like there were dozens, glinted in the starlight, their shiny tops melting into the darkness as they extended left and right. Abandoned railcars and locomotives stood silent in the night. No one was around.

Ammon pushed against the fence. The chain links were high and tight. Sam moved beside him, pulled out a military Handyman®, extracted a set of wire cutters, and started hacking, cutting low, near the ground. The others gathered around him. The fear was rising, cold and real. A sudden sense of electricity sprung through the air, tart and tangy. Sam’s hand slipped and he cut himself against a strand of wire, the blood oozing around the back of his thumb and dripping from his palm. Ammon saw the blood and pulled back. He thought that he could smell the coppery metallic smell. Another chill ran through Ammon. Shaking his head, he grabbed the wire as Sam cut another section of the fence, holding the cut links back. The work went more quickly and a couple of strands of metal snapped from the building tension in the wire as Sam cut. When he guessed he had done enough, Sam moved to the side, pulled on the section, and motioned to Sara. “Go, Mom, go!” he whispered fearfully. His eyes were always moving, searching the darkness that seemed to swallow up the moonlight. Sara dropped to her knees. She’d already taken off her backpack and she pushed it ahead of her, then quickly crawled through the hole in the fence.

Ammon motioned to the others.

Sam held his gun tightly at his side, his back against the fence, his eyes glinting in the night.

Something was out there. Something he’d never felt before.

Something near.

Something evil.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Sam finally saw him. He walked low, almost like an animal, his knees bent, his head down, as if he were sniffing the ground. A shudder of fear ran through Sam. He pulled back the fence again. “Go, Mary. NOW!”

She bent, her arthritic knees slow to move. Ammon stepped beside her, helping her through the fence. Kelly Beth held desperately to her hand, tears now in her eyes. She didn’t understand the urgency, all she knew was that a sense of darkness had taken hold of her. “Mama,” she pleaded in a whisper as Mary knelt down by the fence.

“Come on, baby,” Mary said as she reached out for her child. She motioned in the darkness. “Come on, baby, come with me.” Her voice was calm and soothing and Kelly Beth quit her crying. Crawling on their bellies, Mary and Kelly Beth moved through the small hole in the fence.

Luke was standing next to Sam now, looking back across the street. Abandoned cars and semitrucks filled the deep shadows. Sam saw him again, lurking behind one of the cars. White eyes. Yellow teeth. A tight and wicked smile. The wind gusted and he smelled it, a dank and burlap kind of smell. Wet dog. City garbage. Sam shivered as he stared.

The man lurched from the shadows, moving closer, running toward another car. Just before he got to it, he seemed to drop down to all fours.

Sam sucked in a sudden breath, an unspeakable fear welling up inside him, fierce and bone-chilling. The evil fell upon him, sucking the breath out of his chest. Then he heard the garbled gutter of the chant that was emitting from the dark. His heart froze. He didn’t move. His blood turned icy cold.

Kill them for the Master!

Kill them for the King!

Kill them for the Master!

Kill them for the King!

The stranger chanted from the darkness. The night grew darker. A suffocating sense of evil sucked up the dim starlight.

Then he saw the others.

A dozen strangers on the street.

Half of them were women.

All of them were moving toward them now.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

They scrambled through the hole in the chain-link fence, Sam the last one through, then stood together on the other side, unsure of what to do. Looking back across the cluttered street, they saw them coming, bent men and hissing women, people filled with hate, lust and burning evil. Sam shivered. For the first time in his life, he was utterly terrified. He didn’t know this enemy, and it scared him to the core.

Turning, he started running toward the railroad tracks, moving into the open rail yard, black gravel slipping under his feet. He stopped suddenly. It wouldn’t do. There was no place in the open yard where they could hide. The others bunched up behind him. “Come on, Sammy!” Ammon whispered, lifting his handgun awkwardly. “Come on, we gotta go!”

Sam hesitated, then turned toward the building. “Follow me,” he said.

He ran toward the side of the rail building. It was dark and tall, four stories high, dirty brick, flat roof, white cement arches over a set of eight-foot windows, an old administration building that was used for storage now. A row of narrow steps ran up to a tall, metal door. Sam ran toward it but stopped, knowing that it was locked. He turned and ran instead toward the nearest window. “Ammon!” he called as he ran. Ammon followed. Sam bent and picked up a rusted piece of rebar, holding it in his hand.

A sudden clang sounded from behind them. A stranger pressed against the chain-link fence, his dark eyes peering at them desperately, his fingers stretched between the metal links. “Kill them for the Master!” he chanted as he stared. His voice was thin, sarcastic and hysterical. His dark eyes wandered to the women. “Kill them all!” he sneered.

Another man ran up behind him and pressed his face against the chain-link fence.

Sam turned to the window. “Help me up!” he shouted. Ammon bent and grabbed his foot, bracing Sam against his knee. Luke broke away from the women and helped Ammon lift. Sam held the rebar over his head and broke the window. Large pieces of glass fell in huge sheets at his side, shattering across the ground. Sam used the rebar to break away the shards of broken glass from the window frame; then he reached up, found a handgrip, and pulled himself into the building.

Falling onto the dusty floor, he rolled over and looked around. The room was almost completely black and empty. He quickly turned and reached back through the window. Starlight filled the rail yard. The others were waiting, six feet below.

More chanting from the dark streets. A group had formed along the chain-link fence. They pressed and felt their way, looking for the hole they knew was there. Sam reached down, bending through the window. “Come on, Mom!” he cried. Sara reached up and Sam almost jerked her off her feet. She scrambled and fell into the building. “Mary!” Sam said, reaching down again.

A terrible scream came from the street. It echoed between the buildings, a painful sound that cut through the darkness of the night. Piercing. Angry. Animal-like in fury, it rolled through the broken window and bounced off the bare back wall. Sam cringed and looked toward the streets as the scream faded slowly. The crowd was growing larger. Some had come to watch. Others had come to kill. The thin man pressed against the chain-link fence, probing with his fingers, searching for the cut-out section. Ammon had lifted Kelly Beth below the broken window. “Got her?” he cried to Sam as he lifted the little girl.

Kelly Beth held up her arms toward the soldier. “Sam, you got me. Please don’t drop me.” Her voice was nothing but a whisper in the dark.

“HERE! HERE!” an old man screamed out to the others, finding the hole cut in the chain-link fence. He leaned down and started crawling. A gunshot rang out from the darkness. The brick beside Luke’s face shattered, sending broken pieces of baked clay into the soft skin beneath his eyes. He turned, his own gun raised, and fired toward the growing crowd, aiming low, a quick shot of white-hot sparks erupting at the crowd’s feet as the bullet ricocheted away.

“COME ON, COME ON, COME ON!” Sam cried from the broken window. He was reaching down for Azadeh now, bending so far through the window that it looked like he might fall. She jumped, grabbed his hands, and quickly pulled herself up, her feet scrabbling against the brick.

Behind them, the first man crawled through the cut-out section of the chain-link fence. He didn’t wait for the others but ran toward the building. Sam reached through the broken window. “LUKE!” he cried. Luke jumped, gritting his teeth in pain. Ammon pushed his brother’s hips, then his feet toward the window, feeling his weight until his wounded brother finally fell onto the other side. Another gunshot from the darkness. Another explosion of shattered brick against the wall. Ammon felt the sting of fractured clay and squinted as a stream of blood began to dribble into his eyes.

Ammon was alone now. The killer was getting closer. Other men were crawling through the fence. Ammon could hear the first man panting as he ran. He glanced over his shoulder to see him coming. He cried, half in fear, half in fury, and looked up at the window. Sam had disappeared, having fallen with Luke onto the floor. Footsteps now behind him, just a few feet away. He raised the gun to fire, but it was too late. The man was too close. Too fast. He screamed as he ran, then lowered his head, making himself into a running ball of bone and speed. Ammon braced. The stranger smashed into him, hurling his weight against his chest. He fell back. His neck shot back, slamming his head into the brick wall. With a violent ooofff the air escaped him. His head spun. His chest burned. He thought he felt his ribs crack. He fell down. The man was on him. Somewhere above him, his mother cried. The assailant screamed in his ear. Pounding with rage and fury, he beat Ammon in the face. But he was weak and lifeless and there was no power in his fists. Ammon lifted his arms to protect his face, then rolled and kicked his leg up, slamming the tip of his boot into the back of the stranger’s head. The man cried in pain and anger, completely out of control. Ammon twisted and threw him off, smashing him into the wall. There was a thud, and suddenly Sam was standing at his side. He reached down, picked the man up by the collar, and threw him into the wall, slamming his head into the brick. The man started sliding downward. Ammon kicked him in the jaw as he fell. The man’s eyes rolled back and he groaned once before rolling lifelessly to the side.

“UP, UP, UP!” Sam commanded. Luke was standing at the window, reaching down to them. Behind them, other voices. Other footsteps. Sam recognized the sound of a 12-gauge shotgun chambering a shell, and the blood turned even colder in his veins. Ammon jumped. Luke pulled. Ammon fell inside. Sam stepped back, ran three steps, and leaped. He reached the splintered window sill and pulled. Ammon and Luke each grabbed an arm and yanked him through. A powerful explosion shattered the brick wall behind them. They rolled across the floor. “Stay down. Stay away from the window!” Sam screamed as he rolled.

Another gunshot. Another explosion through the window. The sound of voices, all of them closing in now.

“He’s got a shotgun!” Sam shouted. He rolled to his knees and halfway stood, keeping his head down; then he started running toward a dark outline of a shadow against the back wall. “Come on, come on!” he cried, motioning toward the door.

The others followed. An empty hallway. Layers of garbage across the floor. A stairway on their right side.

“This way,” Sam cried.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

High ground. Cover. Line of fire. Sam’s mind raced with the tactical considerations as he moved up the dank and malodorous stairway. Everything was filthy and he wished he was wearing combat gloves. Running, he looked around desperately. Where to go? How to protect the others? What was the best way out? If he had been by himself, it would have been so easy to shoot his way out of this mess. But there were his mother, the other women, and Luke, who was still not even close to being well.

He heard the thud of heavy footsteps below them now, then the sound of angry voices and shrill laughter emitting from the hallway on the first floor. Breaking glass. A thunderous BANG! as the front door was shot off its hinges. More voices on the street. A building surge of panic. Who were these people? Where had they come from? Why did they want to kill them?

Nothing made any sense.

The evil all around him thickened. He could feel them. He could feel him. He felt like throwing up. The darkness was so real, so oppressive, it sucked the life right out of his soul. Depressing and despairing, the evil gathered nearer. He could almost hear the voices of the spirits that were watching them from the empty halls.

Sam shivered, stopping on the stairwell, unsure of what to do or where to go. His mother moved beside him, her eyes barely visible in the dark. She leaned into him and whispered in his ear, “Do you feel that, Sam?” He sensed the tears of fear that wet her eyes.

He tried to speak but couldn’t answer, so he slowly moved his head. Then, despite the utter darkness, a thought sprang into his head. Something from the Bible? He wasn’t sure, but the words came with clarity to his mind. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.”

He shivered once again.

This was Lucifer’s day of glory, his night of splendor, and the last days of his pride.

The rulers of the darkness. Sam forced himself not to cry.

So that was what they were up against. But at least he finally knew.

Turning, he raised his fist and raged back at the darkness. “You do not own me or my family. We are your enemies. We are your weakness. And this is not our time. Do what you will with your mortal servants, but you will not move us from this place!”

He waited, half expecting to hear an answer, then turned suddenly toward his mother.

“Do you feel that?” she asked him. Ammon and Luke had gathered beside them on the creaking stairs.

Sam put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s going to be OK,” he said. He didn’t waver. He didn’t hesitate. His voice was hard and firm. He felt cold despite the beads of sweat that ran down his face to sting his eyes. Looking at his younger brothers, he saw the courage and—what was it?—the light that emitted from their faces. It was then it finally hit him, the confusion lifting as he stared into their eyes.

The battle was in motion. The same battle from long ago. The battle for the souls of men, for the soul of their country, for their own family. Eons of waiting and preparing. And now the final days were here.

But he was ready. They all were ready. Lucifer had not defeated them—and he wouldn’t defeat them now.

Turning, he raced up three more flights of stairs to the final landing. Stopping at a locked door, he pulled out his pistol and shot the rusted lock. He pushed the door open and they ran onto the roof.

Ammon quickly looked around, then raced toward the low wall that ran around the rooftop. They were four stories above the streets. Huge fires were burning now below them and a raging crowd had gathered, filling the shadows of the night. “Well, at least we got the high ground,” Ammon said as they moved across the tar-and-pebble roof.

Sam angrily shook his head. “This isn’t Gettysburg,” he answered. He looked around desperately. The nearest building was at least forty yards away, across the street. “We don’t have an escape route.” He ran to the west wall. The rail yard was empty. It was a long way down. “Why did I come up here? It was stupid. This is the last place we should be.”

Ammon grabbed his shoulders. “Dude, it doesn’t matter. We’re not leaving this place anyway.”

Mary was standing by the door. “They’re coming up the stairs!” she cried. Ammon and Luke ran toward her. It sounded like an army on the other side of the door.

“Kind of wish we had that lock now,” Ammon said as they pushed against the door.

“Doesn’t matter. One blast with that shotgun is all it’s going to take,” Sam replied.

Ammon pulled out his weapon. “So we shoot them as they come through the door.”

He heard his mother gasp. “You can’t do that, Ammon!” she cried.

He turned to her. “Mom, what are we going to do, then?”

“I don’t know. But you can’t just shoot them. I don’t care who or what they are. You can’t shoot them, Ammon.” She turned. “You hear me, Sam? That is not who we are.”

“I’ll tell you who we are, Mom,” Sam said very evenly. “We’re dead if we don’t stop them. They are coming, they want to kill us, and they’ve got lots of guns.”

“Sam, we can’t—”

“No, Mom,” Sam shot back. “We will protect ourselves.” He turned to Ammon. “We cannot let them on the rooftop. If they come through that door, we shoot them. You understand me, dude?”

Ammon’s hands were shaking. Sara let out a cry. Mary moved to her and put her arm around her shoulders. “I’ve got my baby here,” she whispered, hoping that Sara would understand. Azadeh hesitated, then moved forward. “Do they want me?” she wondered weakly. “If they do, then I’ll go down there. I will talk to them—”

“No,” Ammon told her. “This has nothing at all to do with you.”

The noise was getting louder, swearing, cursing and shouting from the stairs behind the door. Someone threw a rock onto the rooftop. Another shotgun blast echoed from below. The night was completely dark now, the stars hidden behind a wall of clouds. The cold wind seemed to gust with fury, as if it could blow them from the roof. Pounding on the stairwell. Heavy footsteps. The foulest cursing. Heavy fists upon the door. Words they didn’t understand. A cold chill upon the air. Ammon fell back and aimed his weapon. Sam moved to his side and crouched. Luke pushed his mother and the other women toward the farthest corner of the roof. Kelly Beth was crying now, grasping at him, and he had to tear her from his arm. He huddled the women together. “Stay here,” he commanded before he turned.

Then silence. Deadly silence.

Luke ran back toward his brothers.

“Stay away from the door!” Sam screamed to him. “Get into position—”

The shotgun blast shattered the wood frame around the door, sending splinters, dust and pieces of broken metal exploding through the air. Luke fell back and scrambled across the tar-and-pebble rooftop. Ammon raised his gun and fired.

“NO, NO, NO!” Sam screamed. “Don’t waste your ammo, man!”

Another second of ugly silence.

Another shotgun blast.

The door twisted on its hinges, then fell back.

The thin man with the crooked smile stood there. His eyes were yellow, his teeth exposed, his lips pulled back in wild fury. “It’s time to shine,” he whispered in a dark voice that seemed to emit from somewhere in his chest. He raised the shotgun and stepped forward. Ammon aimed at his chest and was about to fire when something caught his ear. Something in the wind. Loud. Powerful. A dull whopwhop of spinning rotors.

The helicopter swooped in from the north, the sound of its turbine engines and massive rotors swallowed up in the wind. Getting closer, it turned on its spotlight and aimed it at the roof. The helicopter was flying so fast it almost overshot the rooftop before coming to a hover at the corner where the women and little girl were crouching. The spotlight was blinding and Sam raised his hands to shield his eyes. The helicopter was all black. Army markings. Sam almost cried in relief.

A loudspeaker under the nose of the helicopter shattered the dark night. “You there, with the shotgun! Drop your weapon and turn around!” Sam could see the door gunner now, his Gatling gun M134 moving on its floor-mounted hinges to turn his way. At 5,000 rounds a minute, the Gatling could cut a man in two. “DO IT NOW!” the speaker sounded. “DROP YOUR WEAPON OR DIE!”

The man with the shotgun backed up, waited, sneered, then raised his shotgun and aimed it at the women who were huddled at the corner of the building. He didn’t have time to fire. Sam’s bullet hit him in the head, almost directly in the ear.

The chopper settled to a lower position. “GO GO!” the loudspeaker blared.

A group of shadows scurried from the doorway of the building. Two or three men ran through. A half-second burst of gunfire streamed from the Gatlin gun, fire spouting from the barrels, smoke and white-hot tracers shooting through the darkness. The doorway shattered into a thousand pieces. Almost three hundred bullets impacted within a few feet of the center of the door. Another burst of gunfire, this one longer. The men were cut in pieces, blood and bone scattering through the air.

Ammon stared, too amazed and sick to even move.

Sam shook his head, grabbed his brother’s shoulder, and started running. Two Army Rangers jumped out of the hovering helicopter and ran toward them.

TWENTY-FOUR

Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

Sara was terrified and angry. The metal door was locked, there were no windows, and she was cold. The small room was dim and quiet, and though she could hear occasional footsteps in the hall, she felt lonely, as if she were the last person in the world.

Sometime before, they had allowed her to eat and shower—clean! the most wonderful feeling she could imagine—then immediately brought her back and locked her in the room. Alone again, she’d thought back on the helicopter ride through the long night. Not a word had been spoken to them, not a hint of explanation or justification for what they’d done, no indication of who the rescuers were, how they knew about them, or what they intended to do with them now. Before the helicopter had landed at their destination, just as the sun was coming up, hoods had been placed briskly over their heads, their hands secured behind their backs, Sam’s and Ammon’s weapons confiscated. Touching down, the helicopter’s turbine engines still screaming, they’d been pulled from the helicopter one person at a time, all of them resisting except Sam. Separated, they were driven away in different cars. Now she didn’t know where her family was, how long she’d been there, or even where she was.

She lay on the small bunk in the corner and looked up at the security camera that stared down at her. She blinked. It didn’t. She rolled over on the bed. A dim light burned in the deeply recessed, wire-covered socket on the ceiling, but if there was a light switch to control it, she didn’t know where it was. She was tired, cold and wanted to scream. Getting up, she paced until her feet hurt, then lay down once again. But she couldn’t sleep and sat up on the bed. Was it day? Was it night? She didn’t know what to think.

The door finally opened. A man she’d never seen before was standing there. Blue shirt, dark suit pants, gray tie. A military haircut. Stern. Not overtly threatening, but serious. “Mrs. Brighton,” he said, “will you please come with me?”

Sara stared at him. “Who are you?” she asked in a fearful, angry voice.

He stepped into the room. “Please, ma’am.” He held the door back.

“Who are you?” she demanded, not moving from the bed.

“Ma’am,” his voice was firm.

“Show me some ID. I want to know who you are with.”

The man held the door back a little further and she glanced into the hall, catching a glimpse of a passing military uniform. Her heart skipped, the familiar sight an uncertain comfort. It wasn’t like she suddenly trusted the military more than any others—she didn’t trust anyone right now—but it was enough to give a hint of where she was.

“You don’t need to know who I am,” the man said as he held the door ajar. “It doesn’t matter and it doesn’t help you anyway. But if you’ll come with me, I think you’ll have your questions answered.”

“I doubt it,” she answered suspiciously.

The stranger cleared his throat, growing impatient. Let him, Sara thought. Let’s see how he reacts; that’ll tell me more than anything what he’s really about. “Where are the others?” she commanded, her voice rising. “Where are my sons, the black woman, the girls?”

He looked at her blankly. “Ma’am, I understand your fears and skepticism, but the truth is, I don’t who or what you’re talking about—and even if I did, I’m sure I couldn’t tell you. Not right now. Not yet. I’m not the one you want to talk to. There are others who will explain.”

She looked at him as if for the first time. He looked familiar. Yes, she was certain. She had seen him before. Sometime recently. “Did you know my husband?” she asked, the sudden hope in her voice betraying her utter weakness.

“Your husband?” he answered slowly, looking past her.

Sara saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes even though his face remained passionless, his thick arms hanging at his side. “You knew him. Were you with him when—”

He suddenly moved toward her. He was so much bigger than she was, outweighing her by at least a hundred pounds, and she quivered as he grew close. He reached out and she recoiled. Lowering before her, he looked directly into her eyes. “Please, Mrs. Brighton, I understand a little of how you’re feeling. Now please, ma’am, just come with me.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Sara was led into a large conference room. It was midday and the large Venetian blinds on the three walls opposite the door were opened to the light. Beyond the heavily tinted glass stretched a complex of low, brown-brick office buildings, militarily efficient, attractive but simple. Lots of grass between them. A large parade ground. An old fighter aircraft on a pedestal in a roundabout down the road. Seeing the blue sky and open space, she immediately felt better, her spirits lifting at the warmth and feeling of the sun. A large wooden table, surrounded by deep burgundy chairs, took up the middle of the room.

Brucius Marino, the Secretary of Defense, sat at the head of the table.

She froze, staring at him. An old friend? A new enemy? She didn’t know. Near the window, her oldest son was waiting, fresh and clean in a set of formal army greens, his chest decorated with a double row of military ribbons and medals. Sam looked at her and smiled, and she ran to him, putting her arms around his shoulders. He seemed reserved, almost anxious, uncertain and tight. She stepped back and studied his face, then turned.

Marino waited. Sara was suspicious, her eyes darting. She’d known him for many years, but she hadn’t seen him in several months even though Marino and her husband had worked together almost every day. He looked older now and tired, his dark eyes weary. She waited for him to initiate the conversation, but when he was quiet she turned back to Sam. He moved forward, taking her into his powerful arms again. She held him, standing on her tiptoes, her arms around his neck. “It’s OK, Mom,” he whispered quietly into her ear. So tender. So quiet. No way Brucius could hear.

They held each other a few seconds, then pulled apart. Sara wiped her eyes, drawing her fingers quickly across her cheeks. “Where are Luke and Ammon?” she whispered.

“I just got through talking to them.”

“They’re OK?”

“Of course, Mom, they’re fine. Azadeh and Miss Dupree. Kelly Beth. They’re all OK.”

“You’ve seen them?”

“I haven’t seen the girls yet. Azadeh is with Kelly Beth down at the infirmary. They wanted to get some liquid in her, they thought she was dehydrated and undernourished. Kind of hard to tell them that a few days ago she was dying of cancer and that’s why she is so thin.”

Sara’s shoulders shuddered visibly. She lowered her voice and turned away from the table, her eyes on the floor. “Are you… OK?” She didn’t know how to put it without just saying it out loud. Was he here because he wanted to be? Was he operating under any duress?

Sam read the worried look on her face. “It’s OK, Mom,” he repeated. “You’re going to understand.”

She took a deep breath and steeled herself, then turned toward the Secretary of Defense once again. “Hello, Bruce,” was all she said.

He walked around the corner of the table, extending his hand. She looked at it before she took it. His shake was warm and firm. “Sara, it’s good to see you.” He sounded so sincere. “It is so good to know that you’re OK.”

She didn’t answer, staring at him. She couldn’t let him know how much she knew. She had to be careful. She had to use her judgment—and hope that he was on her side.

Marino nodded to the closest chair and she sat down, Sam pulling up a seat beside her. Marino returned to his chair at the corner of the table. “Sara, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to get it out. First, and most important, I want you to know how I felt about your husband, Neil.”

Sara turned her head away.

“I was with him, Sara, right up to the last day. It was only by the grace of God that I wasn’t killed with him. I should have been. They thought I would be. Sometimes I wish that I had been. But it didn’t happen. I am here. He is not. There’s nothing I can do to change that. There’s nothing I can do to ease the pain for either of us now. You lost your husband. I lost my best friend, a man I trusted more than any other in this world. There isn’t an hour that goes by that I don’t think about him, not an hour that I don’t think about what happened in D.C.” His voice trailed off, suddenly caught up with emotion. His lower lip trembled. He blushed with embarrassment and looked away.

Watching him, Sara saw the naked grief that pulled the lines around his mouth. She immediately leaned toward him. “Bruce,” she asked, “is Julia OK?”

Marino took a deep breath to compose himself. His face was tight, the edge of his lips white from stress.

Sara understood. Reaching out, she took his hands in hers. “I’m so sorry, Bruce, so, so sorry. I didn’t know. I had no idea. The news said that you were killed in the explosion—there was just no way to know—I’ve thought about you both a thousand times—I’ve wondered about her… .”

The two friends sat in long silence, both of them lost in pain. Marino cleared his throat, tried to speak, waited, cleared his throat again, and said, “She was downtown with my youngest daughter. Someone called her and told her—” He stopped and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing painfully in his throat. “Someone called her and told her to come downtown. They sent a driver for them, said I was going to meet them… .”

Sara sobbed quietly for him, her cheeks tracked with rolling tears.

“They sent her downtown—they knew—I was supposed to meet them—they were going to kill us both.” His voice grew hard and jagged as shattered glass. “They killed her. They killed my wife and daughter!” He fought to control himself, pain-driven rage burning in his eyes. He stood suddenly and walked around the chair, moving angrily toward the window. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, staring out.

The room was silent. A large clock ticked a full minute on the wall. Sara stared down at her own hands. Marino stared out the window. Sam stared at the picture-covered wall. Sara knew how he felt. He shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have witnessed such a personal and private scene. This was the next president of the United States. She knew that he couldn’t have felt more out of place.

The two grievers waited another moment in silent pain.

“I’m sorry,” Sara said again.

Marino turned around, his eyes red but clear and hard now. “I’m the one who should be saying that to you. Neil was the best man I have ever worked with. You know that I’m the one who chose him, the one who brought him to the White House? The president respected him as much as I did.” He fell silent. “I wish that he was with us now.”

Sara thought of all the people dead or missing. “I wish a lot of people were still with us.”

“Of course.” The Secretary returned to his chair, pulling out a white handkerchief and extending it to her. She took it and wiped her eyes, then grasped the white cloth in a tight fist.

“Sara, I have to ask you something now. I have to know. We’ve got to lay it on the table and get it out. So tell me. Do you trust me? Can I trust you?”

She shifted in her seat, her eyes boring into him. “You tell me,” she answered with a question. “Fuentes? Is he your friend?”

Marino shook his head. “Sara, do you understand the line of succession of the presidency?”

“I understand.”

“Do you realize that I should—”

“Be the president? Yes. I understand that.”

“Fuentes is my enemy. Our enemy. But he isn’t alone, Sara. He has many, many friends. And he isn’t the ringleader, I can promise you that. I don’t think Fuentes could lead a Scout troop across a parking lot if he had a map and GPS. No. He’s not their leader. He was in the right place at the right time and was willing to sell his soul. Maybe he sold himself for money. Maybe not. Maybe all he got in return was the opportunity to keep on breathing in this world.” Marino hesitated, thinking of the shootout at his daughter’s house, knowing they would have found Fuentes quivering under a blanket in the closet if they had come for him the same way. “The man has all the courage of a rabbit,” he continued. “I don’t know what he’s thinking—none of us can know or judge him yet—but we know that we can’t trust him. And he shouldn’t be the president.”

“Then stand up!” Sara shot back. “Stand up and claim the presidency. I had been waiting to hear your name in the news. They said you were dead. That had to be the only explanation, but now I find you hiding here. Do you realize, Bruce, how much they need you out there!?” She jabbed her finger, pointing to the outside world. “It’s slipping away, Bruce, do you understand that? We need you. We need you to make a stand. You don’t have much time. You’ve got to take action. Why are you hesitating? I don’t understand why you won’t act! You are the president, not Fuentes. What are you waiting for!?” Her voice was agitated, even angry. “Neil said that I could trust you. He said you’d do the right thing. He warned me about Fuentes, all the others. He warned me about—” She caught herself and stopped, her dead husband’s words almost sounding in her ears. Go slow. Be careful. Don’t say anything until you are certain. Don’t trust anyone. I don’t trust anyone. Think before you talk!

She fell silent. She’d said too much already. She almost bit her tongue.

Marino watched her, smiling. “It’s good to have the old Sara back,” he grinned.

She looked away and blushed. “I’m sorry, Bruce,” she muttered awkwardly. “I have no right to talk to you that way. I’m embarrassed for myself.”

Marino smiled again, then stood up. “It’s all right. I hold no grudge.”

“And I shouldn’t call you by your first name. What should I call you? Mr. Secretary? Mr. President? You should be the president, and I should call you that.”

He didn’t disagree. She probably should. But it wasn’t true, not yet, not formally, and the last thing he wanted was the perception of presumption. “There’s so much you don’t know yet,” he went on. “So much you don’t understand. I know Neil told you a little bit, but I’m certain he didn’t tell you everything. For one thing, he didn’t know. For another, he would have been very careful about what he told you, knowing it would only make things more dangerous and difficult.”

Sara sighed. “I don’t know how much more difficult it could possibly have been.”

“Trust me, it could have been worse. You don’t even want to know.”

“All right,” she straightened suddenly, “what have I to do with this?”

Marino hesitated. “Maybe more than you think.”

She stared at him blankly.

“Surely you realize what an exceptional effort it took to find you.”

Sara’s mind shot back to the military spy outside her window in Chicago, the night run through the city, being trapped atop the building. She shuddered as she thought.

Marino saw her shoulders tremble. “From what I hear, it’s a good thing that we did,” he added.

“But why? Why did you bring us here?”

“Because I need your help.”

Sara caught Marino’s anxious glance toward her son. Up to this point, Sam had been quiet. Intimidated by the Secretary of Defense—no, the president of the United States—he had hardly dared to speak. But he sat forward now, his back ramrod straight. “I’m a soldier, sir. You’re the Secretary of Defense. I’ll do anything that you tell me to.”

“I know you will, Captain.” Marino turned back to Sara and smiled again. “If your son is anything like his father, he’ll soon be leading his own army. There’s no question I can rely on him.” He leaned toward the soldier’s mother. “It’s you that I’m worried about.”

Sara hesitated. “I don’t understand.”

“I need you, Sara.”

“Me! You need me? Come on, Bruce—Mr. Secretary, what could I possibly do for you? What could I possibly do with any of this?”

Before he could answer, the backdoor to the conference room slowly opened and they turned. Azadeh slipped inside, pulled the door closed behind her, then stood, her shoulders slumping, her eyes always on the floor. She seemed to melt into the wall, her face betraying her desire to be swallowed by the concrete floor. Following the instructions she’d been given, she waited without speaking by the door.

Turning back to Sara, Marino went on, his voice low but powerful, overflowing with emotion. “I do need you, Sara. The presidency needs you. Your country needs you. I need you more than you could know. The plan we’ve put together is going to scare you. It’s going to be down in the trenches, filthy, gruesome work. And I can’t promise you a favorable outcome. I can’t promise you that we’ll be successful or even that any of us are going to live.”

The room fell into such deep silence that Sara could hear herself breathe. She thought, her mind racing, her hands growing damp with sweat.

“I need you all,” Marino finished. “I need Azadeh. I need your son. I just can’t do it by myself.”

“You are the president!” she whispered to him. “You have all of the power of the United States behind you. If you’d just come out and claim the presidency—”

“I’d be dead. If I do that, they will kill me, there’s not a shred of doubt. Before I step foot off this base, I’ll be dead. Now, I’m OK with that, the good Lord knows, and I don’t mean that in a profane way, I mean He knows that I’m not afraid of death. But my passing would eliminate the last chance we have of putting a legitimate presidency in place. I can’t do that. There is far too much at risk.”

“Mr. Secretary, I simply can’t believe that we have slipped that far. Do you really think that they will do, you know, do what you say?”

“Of course they will. Two of my predecessors have been killed already. I would be the third. But, as it is, they think I ran away, choosing to get out of the race. They think I cut and ran, willing to cede the presidency to them. As long as they think that I’ve gone into hiding, they’ll keep their focus somewhere else. And that’s the most powerful weapon we have against them, the ability to work behind the scenes. So we take advantage of the time they give us. We grow a few cells of patriots, a very select group of people we trust, people they won’t be looking for.”

Sara reached across the padded armchair for Sam’s hand. “OK. I understand that much. But what I still don’t understand is what you could possibly need from us.”

Marino opened a manila folder and dropped a picture on the table, tapping the dark face with his finger. “King Abdullah is the one who did this to us.” He kept his eyes on Sara while motioning with his head toward Azadeh and Sam. “So your son is going to take a team, snatch him and bring him back here. Azadeh is going to help them.”

Sara’s face turned white, her breathing labored. She gripped the handkerchief as if it were a lifeline, keeping her from going under. Marino nodded solemnly. “They’re going to go and get him, then we’re going to put him on trial for the things he has done.”

Sara opened her mouth but no sound came out. “You’re a fool,” she finally muttered. “You’re talking about the king of Saudi Arabia, the most powerful, the wealthiest man in the world. He has entire armies that protect him. No one could even get close.”

Marino shook his head. “Abdullah is about to do something very foolish. We think we can take him then.”

Sara didn’t believe it for a second—the look on her face made that clear.

Marino didn’t give her time to think. Pulling out another picture, he dropped it on the table. Three men. Close together. Intense conversation. Their faces tight. The interior of a small café. Foreign cars out on the street. “These are the men behind Fuentes, the men who conspired and murdered to put him in place. Now, listen to me, this is important: Did these men help to plan or carry out the attack against our country? No, I don’t think so. Did they know it was coming? You bet your life they did. Could they have stopped it? Maybe. Probably not. But did they see this as the opportunity they’d been waiting for to make their grab for power? There’s no question that’s the case. We need to find them. We need to stop them. And we don’t have any time.”

Sara reluctantly lowered her eyes to the table. Staring hopelessly at the second picture, she sucked a sudden breath, her face draining of color, her hands trembling on her lap. “No,” she almost groaned. “No, no, please, not him.” She lightly touched the middle man in the picture, then looked up, her eyes wet, her face exhausted. “He was our friend. We both loved him.” She sounded like she might break down. “Neil and I would have trusted him with our lives.”

“Exactly!” Marino answered, his face patient but still determined. “You trusted him. He’ll still trust you! We can use that trust against him as long as he doesn’t know.”

Sara bent her head again and swallowed. It was simply too much to comprehend. Too much betrayal. Too much treachery. Too much disloyalty from those they’d loved. Her mind was on the edge, tilting toward the dark, and she was mute as she fell into despair.

Marino let a few seconds pass in silence, then leaned toward her. “It’s a nasty thing we have to do, and heaven knows that I can’t force you. If you can’t do it, I’ll understand. But there are so few people I can turn to, so few people I can trust, so few people who can really help me. Sara, you are one. Was it a coincidence that we were able to find you?” He tapped the second picture. “Was it a coincidence he is your friend?” He nodded to the dark-haired girl pressed against the wall. “Was it a coincidence your son was with you? A coincidence that you are with a young girl from Iran, which is where we have to go? Was any of this a coincidence? I don’t know. You’ll have to make that judgment for yourself. It seems to me unlikely, and if it wasn’t some lucky happenstance, then you have to ask yourself, why are we together now? And what does God want us to do?”

He stopped and took a breath, exhaling with a sigh. “Is this an ideal situation? Certainly not. But you go to war with the army you’ve got, not the army that you wish for. What I got is what I got. And if we’re going to save this country, I’m going to need your help.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Michael walked, the mountain sloping up before him, the trees swaying two hundred feet over his head. It was a perfect morning. It had rained the night before, and the air was cool, damp and smelled of rain, wet grass and flowers in bloom. He reached a break in the trees and looked up. The morning sky was so deep and blue it felt like he was looking into space. As he worked his way across the clearing, his steps were strong and quick, and though he didn’t fail to see the beauty of the morning, his thoughts were somewhere else.

He sensed it now. No, it was more than that, he knew it, what the future had in store.

Looking up the trail, he doubled his pace.

Would his good friend be there waiting? Had he the wisdom to sense it, too?

The mossy trail wound up the back of the mountain, spongy and giving under his feet. Higher and higher he climbed, never growing weary, never slowing down. As he ascended, the trees grew smaller and then thinner, then completely disappeared, leaving a well-defined tree line as the backside of the mountain opened up. There were more rocks along the trail now, less greenery and more low brush. An expansive meadow lay before him, the slope much more gentle. Granite peaks, snow-capped and steep, jutted out on both his left and right. The trail cut across the meadow and then stopped suddenly.

Michael looked but didn’t see him. He kept walking toward the cliff and was almost upon him before his friend finally came into view, sitting below a large boulder. The man was looking out on the enormous valley. The low clouds hung over the shoreline where the rising sun cast a golden line across the water, a billion diamonds flashing from the cresting waves. The father looked up, then stood as Michael drew closer.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Michael said.

The father gestured to the morning. “I’ve been waiting here a long time.”

Michael put his hand on his shoulder. “I knew you would.”

The father looked at him as if awaiting his instructions, and Michael broke into a smile. “Come, we’ve got to hurry.”

Without another word, the father turned and started walking.

They were his children, and he loved them. He watched over them. He shared their pain and joy. And he knew they needed him now.

COMING IN EPISODE NINE…

READ IT NOW: www.mercuryink.com

Local time: 0314. A little less than four hours until sunrise. Above the underground complex, the night was dark. To conserve energy, but mostly to avoid highlighting their capabilities to the local population, the base commander had ordered all lights extinguished after sunset. There were already hundreds of civilians at the gates. No reason to make it thousands. The time for riots and gunfights along the base security perimeter would come soon enough without publicizing the fact that the military had electricity. And water. And communications. And pretty much everything else.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Looking at the group of evil men, he realized the ugly truth.

The battle wasn’t starting. It was almost over. There was nothing he could do now, no way to stop the coming wave from crashing down. He had walked into a throng of murderers and thieves, a den of predators so full of jealousy and fury that they couldn’t reason anymore. These were no comrades here, no friends or patriots who loved their country or a just cause. This was a group of men who’d been hating for many years, each of them having long before made the decision to betray their country. And, in a sad way, he realized they were not really traitors, for none of them had ever pledged allegiance to their country, not in any real sense of the word. They were outsiders on the inside, the cancer next to the bone, the disease that would kill the nation after having lain dormant all these years.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The old man smiled, his crooked teeth yellow with age. “Do you understand what you’re up against? The oaths we have taken are more powerful than the earth. More eternal than the stars. Do you see that you can’t defeat us? We’re totally committed to this cause. You have no hope. You have no power. There is nothing you can do.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

READ EPISODE EIGHT NOW…

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Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five