Apocalypse Crucible (50 page)

Muckraker:>OKAY.

Mystic:>IF I GO BEYOND THAT WINDOW, THEY PROBABLY THREW A NET OVER ME AND PUT THE BODY IN A WOOD CHIPPER.

Danielle didn’t respond, thinking of the hard way Lizuca had died.

Mystic:>SORRY. WASN’T THINKING. YOU LOST A FRIEND. GIMME THE PIC AND LET’S SEE IF WE CAN FERRET OUT SOME GET-BACK AGAINST WHOEVER DID IT.

Muckraker:>I’LL BE LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU.

Danielle attached the picture of the CIA agent and pressed the Enter button. The menu box told her uploading the picture would take eighteen minutes. She sat and waited, watching the building continue to burn and thinking about the man First Sergeant Gander had taken charge of.

There were a lot of mysterious goings-on. Danielle could hardly wait to find out what the real story was.

United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 0907 Hours

Major Augustus R. Trimble rose from behind his massive desk as Megan entered his private office in the Joint Services building. He waved her toward an oxblood leather chair in front of the desk.

The office was large, bigger than most Megan had seen at the post. That was a sure sign that the base commander, General Amos Braddock, liked the chaplain.

Shelves containing books covered two of the room’s walls. The other two walls were covered with pictures of Trimble with various political figures, including four past presidents as well as President Fitzhugh. Chaplain Trimble was obviously a man who liked to hang out his political connections for others to see. Only a handful of documents detailing his secular training held any space.

“Good morning, Mrs. Gander. Please, have a seat.” Trimble was in his early sixties and overweight. His army uniform was tailored to be gracious to the twenty pounds he carried that exceeded army regs. A few strands of silver hair stuck stubbornly to his pink scalp. His face was round and his cheeks showed signs of turning bulldoggish. Oval glasses sat at the end of his narrow nose and emphasized how close set his eyes were.

“Thank you.” Megan sat then noticed how Trimble gazed at her jeans a second too long. His dissatisfaction with her choice of dress was obvious. “Forgive the jeans,” she said. “I know this isn’t exactly professional attire, but a lot of the work I’m doing right now is hard physical labor.”

She had volunteered the teens to help with transporting and passing out supplies to the general population of the post. Giving them something useful to do in addition to their counseling and grief sessions was part of the overall mental wellness plan Megan and the other counselors had come up with.

More than that, dressing in jeans and loose pullovers helped the teens relate better to her. Right now, the post was filled with guys in uniforms and short attitudes telling everyone what to do and when to do it. Those orders were directed especially at teens because they didn’t have assigned duties and they tended to hang out in the middle of operations to find out more about what was going on. More now than ever, the teens felt ostracized amid all the military comings and goings.

Trimble held up a hand. “I’m not your supervisor, Mrs. Gander, and we’re not here to talk about fashion.”

Megan felt a little better.

“Although,” Trimble went on, “I would like to point out that a uniform, or a professional appearance, is put on for a reason. When you lead people, you need to look like a leader. Not like one of those who need leading.”

Megan bit back an angry retort. Chauvinism tended to thrive in certain pockets of the military. There was an upside to it. A lot of guys opened doors for her. The downside was that some military men felt like women were an afterthought to the overall effort.

“Sometimes,” Megan stated in an even voice, “it’s easier to lead people from within their midst rather than standing on the outside of a group. That way they don’t tend to view you as an outsider. The men you lead wear uniforms. The kids I’m helping don’t.”

Trimble frowned and leaned back in his chair. He put his hands together over his ample stomach. “I’m glad we were able to have this meeting this morning, Mrs. Gander.”

A wall of ice seemed to close around Megan, and she was suddenly not glad about the meeting at all. She waited, letting him take the lead. She wanted to see where he was headed.

“After the incident involving Holly—” Trimble rifled through a yellow legal pad on his desk.

“Hollister,” Megan said in as neutral a voice as she could manage.

“Leslie Hollister.”

Trimble looked up at her over his glasses, then let the papers fall back to the pad, settling in his chair again. “After the
unfortunate
incident involving young Leslie Hollister last night, especially given the intricacies of your involvement, I was planning on speaking with you anyway.”

Megan could feel her temper straining against the tight hold she was keeping on it. She wasn’t rested and she already felt guilty. The handling she’d received during the investigation by the provost marshal’s office, and then being kept under guard by MPs at the hospital, hadn’t exactly been positive experiences.

“Why were you planning on talking to me?” Megan asked.

Trimble blinked. He put his hands together, rested his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. The move was an attempt to threaten to invade Megan’s personal space, and she knew it.

Stubbornly, liking the chaplain less and less with each passing moment, Megan held her ground. Having her personal space invaded was hard on her. She liked having her boundaries. But that invasion technique was one of the first things people in command were taught. She had seen Goose do it with recalcitrant soldiers, but he had never done anything like that to her or the kids. However, when she had conferences with parents of troubled teens, the maneuver was one of the first things men tried to pull during a heated confrontation.

“As a friend and colleague, I would hope,” Trimble said.

Hope all you want,
Megan thought,
but I can’t see it happening.
But she kept from saying that. She needed him to be on her side at least long enough to understand what she was going to say.

“You’ve had a rotten few days,” Trimble said. “I understand you had a daughter who is one of those missing.”

Megan forced the answer out. “A son, actually. Chris.”

“Of course. Pardon me. There’s just been so much going on.” Evidently realizing that his space invasion wasn’t going to work, Trimble leaned back in his seat again. “In addition to your own personal worries about your family, there was the debacle with the Fletcher boy—”

“Gerry,” Megan said, wanting the man to at least know the names of the people he wanted to use against her.

Trimble picked up a pencil and tapped it irritably against the legal pad. “His father—”

“Private First Class Boyd Fletcher.”

“—has chosen to pursue charges for dereliction of duty because you didn’t inform his wife or him that the boy was in the hospital.”

“Boyd Fletcher was the
reason
his son was in the hospital. He physically abused Gerry on a number of occasions. He’d done it before, and he did it that night.”

Trimble frowned. “And how do you know this, Mrs. Gander?”

“Gerry told me.”

“Before he disappeared?”

“Yes. That night.”

Trimble sighed. “The problem is that Gerry Fletcher is no longer available to witness to that. He has disappeared. As has Helen Cordell, whom you contend could have supported your claims against Boyd Fletcher.”

“Helen called me in to handle Gerry. She knew he was one of the kids I counseled on a regular basis.”

“Well, Boyd Fletcher tells a completely different story. A plausible one, I might add.” Shifting in the chair, Trimble placed the pencil precisely on the pad. “I’m afraid we’re going nowhere with this conversation.” “This isn’t the conversation I came here to have,” Megan replied.

“Then why did you come, Mrs. Gander?”

“I need your help.”

Trimble’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “We appear to be at an impasse here, because—quite frankly—I see merit in the accusation Private Fletcher and his wife are making about you and their son.”

“I want to talk about a different matter,” Megan said. “Before we end up with more problems.”

“More problems? We’ve got a hostile city right outside our gate, hundreds of soldiers missing from this post, and confusion raining down from the White House. How could we possibly have even more problems?”

“There are dozens of scared kids at this post, Chaplain.”

Trimble cut in smoothly. “I’m well aware of that. There are also a number of concerned adults.”

Megan thought for a moment, then decided on a different tactic. She needed Trimble on her side. He had the authority to put some kind of plan together. He could help put things back together. If she couldn’t negotiate him past his negative feelings toward her, she needed to at least sidestep them.

“Why do you think all those people vanished?” Megan asked.

After a brief, telling hesitation, Trimble said, “I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone else does yet. Obviously there’s some kind of new superweapon that we’ve not seen the likes of in play.”

“Why couldn’t it be something else? Something that we’ve known was coming but that we are now afraid or reluctant to admit has happened. Or we’re in denial about it.”

Trimble shook his head. “Mrs. Gander, I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about, nor do I have time to waste trying to get you to simply say what is on your mind. I suggest that—”

Megan reached into her briefcase as Trimble spoke. She took out the book on the end times that Bill had left at her house and Jenny had read.

“I’m talking about the Rapture,” Megan said, putting the book on his desk. “I’m talking about the end of the world as we know it. And that’s exactly what has happened here.”

Trimble eyed the book but made no move to reach for it.

“I’m sorry,” Megan said, realizing the mistake she might have inadvertently made. “I don’t know your faith. Maybe you don’t—”

“Oh, come on, Mrs. Gander. I’m a military chaplain. I have a doctorate in divinity from Harvard. Of course I am a Christian,” Trimble declared. “Born and bred. I know all about the Rapture. I’ve written theses on the subject. I daresay I can guarantee that I know more about the subject than you do after reading a book and being inspired by the events of the last few days.” With a forefinger, he pushed the book back toward her. “I’m also quite familiar with this book.”

“You don’t believe that the church will be raptured before the time of the Tribulation?”

“Of course I do.” Trimble settled back in his chair. “Father Kearny and Rabbi Smalls may be of a different opinion in the matter, seeing as how the Catholic and Jewish beliefs don’t reconcile a rapture with the Tribulation in their versions of God’s Word. I believe there will be the Rapture. But this is not it.”

“Given everything that’s happened, how can you say that?”

Trimble frowned. “If the Rapture had occurred, Mrs. Gander, let me assure you that I would have known.”

Then the unspoken truth in Trimble’s reasoning became crystal clear in Megan’s mind, as if someone had suddenly opened the curtains to let the sun in. And Megan felt she knew where that sudden understanding had come from. All at once, she didn’t feel quite so intimidated by this man.

“You don’t believe the Rapture occurred because you’re still here,” she said.

A scowled turned the corners of Trimble’s mouth down and darkened his eyes. “Be careful what you say, Mrs. Gander.”

Megan thought furiously. “Did you know many of the people who disappeared?”

“Several of them, as a matter of fact.”

“What kind of people were they?”

“Mrs. Gander—”

“Are you afraid to answer the question, Chaplain?” Megan knew she’d skated perilously close to the edge. She’d already raised Trimble’s ire. She knew she might just take him past his breaking point. But the truths tumbling from her mouth felt like they were coming from somewhere outside of herself. It was like someone—or Someone—was putting words in her mouth and she had to say them.

Trimble didn’t speak.

“My friends who disappeared,” Megan said, “were all Christians. Devout, loving Christians who held God close in their hearts all the time. They were people who believed in God, who believed that Jesus would be back for them, and who had none of the faith conflicts that I carry with me.” She paused. “My devoutly Christian friends, the ones who trusted God to guide their lives, are gone. And the children, of course—the innocents. Whenever I talk to others about relatives and friends they’ve lost, I keep getting the same descriptions. The missing are innocents and people who believed. People who
really
believed.” She pinned the chaplain with her gaze. “Have
you
heard of anyone being taken who didn’t meet that description?”