Armageddon Conspiracy (35 page)

Brent glanced up. Maggie was still on the ladder, halfway down, struggling to stay conscious. Biddle swung the gun in Brent’s direction. “Messiah bringer,” he croaked this time, his voice no longer human. He was probably ten feet away, too far to charge with any
hope of success. Brent felt the hard shape of the railing at his back. He could throw himself over the side and live, but he stayed rooted in place. He wasn’t leaving Maggie.

He gathered what was left of his strength and prepared to launch himself at Biddle. He knew what it meant. Harry’s voice came to him.
Been there, done that.

He bent his knees to charge when the first shots came.yFortunately, he felt nothing. It was a good way to die, he thought.

After what seemed like forever, his muscles began to relax, and he turned his head to see the red-haired woman in a shooter’s crouch at the stop of the port staircase. Biddle had disappeared, blown backward into the flaming salon by her gunshots. The agent came over, moved Brent aside, and helped Maggie. Together they hobbled down the stern steps to the Whaler.

The yacht was drifting sideways on the current. Up ahead a line of flashing lights charged toward them. It came from what looked like an entire fleet of boats.

Brent could see Coast Guard boats and police boats and helicopters in the air. There would be doctors for Maggie. Most of all, there would be firemen on fireboats, Brent thought. God, how he wanted to see the firemen.

AN HOUR LATER, BRENT SAT
in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask pressed to his face. Every few seconds another question came, and he would pull the mask away to give a hoarse reply. All around a myriad of lights flashed on ambulances, fire engines, S.W.A.T., and FBI vehicles. Nearby, at an old industrial pier, Biddle’s yacht still belched smoke into the clearing sky, and every few moments a jet would roar past on its descent into LaGuardia.

The ambulance attendants wanted to take Brent directly to the hospital, but the red-haired FBI agent he’d pulled from the river insisted on questioning him first. Now, he was giving her his story for the second time.

An ambulance had already taken Maggie away Brent had insisted on that before he’d say a word. The attendants said she appeared to have a concussion, hopefully nothing more. Brent had also learned
that Steve Kosinsky’s wound was apparently serious but not life threatening. He would be back at work in a month or two.

Now, as hard as he tried to answer the agent’s questions, he had to admit that much of what happened remained a blur. The two moments that existed with clarity were personal and mattered to him alone. They had come when he’d stood at the top of the stairs, staring down into the smoke, and when he prepared to charge Biddle’s machine gun. Both times he’d known he was going to die. As much as he’d wanted to live, there had been no regrets, and he’d realized suddenly how it had been for Harry and his father and Fred . . . and even for his mother. It was his choice, and for all of his family, it had always been just that a choice.

BRENT WAS BENT OVER, HANDS
on his knees, sweat pouring from his scalp and down the sides of his face as the August sun pounded his back and scorched the baked grass. Spread before him, some kneeling, others squatting, two even prone on the ground, a squad of thirty-six young men sucked the burning late afternoon air into oxygen-starved lungs. Brent had run the wind sprints right along with them, and now he waited several seconds before he finally relented and blew his whistle to end practice.

Today was the last of the pr-season two-a-days, and Morris County Prep’s varsity football team was going to have a pretty good season if physical conditioning had anything to do with it. Brent had come close to breaking half the members of his squad over the past few weeks, but he could already see a tremendous difference. His boys were going to be able to hit and keep on hitting right
through the final seconds of the game.

His
boys, the thought made him smile. As he watched them trudge off the practice field toward the locker room, he heard a familiar voice behind him. “How are your pansies today?”

He turned to see Fred in a ragged pair of khaki shorts and the Morris County Prep tee shirt Brent had given him. “They’re going to beat up all the other pansies,” Brent replied.

“Some pansies have to be the toughest,” his uncle said. “Might as well be yours.”

Brent smiled. Fred had been appalled when Brent accepted the job. “A private school?” he’d screamed when Brent told him. “You want me to go down to the firehouse and tell the guys you’re coaching at a
private school
?”

In spite of his apparent horror, Fred hadn’t missed a day of practice, often bringing jugs of cold water and even giving whispered words of encouragement when a kid was down from exhaustion and didn’t want to get up.

Brent couldn’t have cared less that it was a private school. He only cared that he’d be teaching math and had a head-coaching job and that the whole package seemed tailor-made. From the day the news hit the papers that Prescott Biddle had helped terrorists plot the assassination of the President, the money had flowed out of Genesis Advisors like oil from a ruptured tanker. The remaining partners had been delighted to buy Brent out of his contract in return for a promise that he wouldn’t sue them.

Now, even after paying taxes on his severance, there had been enough to buy Fred a small house with a well-landscaped yard in Fort Meyers, Florida and a bungalow for himself in Morristown. Fred had
initially told Brent he was a fool and refused to have anything to do with the house, but Brent knew that sometime around mid-November, when his garden had died for the winter, Fred would relent and start driving south.

Maggie was back at the Morristown Police Department. She’d had enough deskwork, she said. She liked people too much and loved working cases. She was determined to remain a cop until she stopped working, whenever that would be. Maybe she’d be a cop forever, which was fine with him.

Last night he’d taken her to dinner to give her the ring and finally pop the question. They were never going to live on a fifteen-acre estate in Far Hills or Mendham, but so what? He had what he needed. He’d had it the whole time, just hadn’t been able to see it.

In classic Maggie style, she hadn’t said yes, at least not right away. “Couple things come to mind,” she’d said after she’d taken a sip of wine.

“Like?”

“It sure took you long enough.”

Brent nodded. “We’ve discussed that.”

In the weeks after the raid on Biddle’s estate they’d talked night after night about their lives and their futures, and he’d slowly convinced her that something had changed for him. He’d made a choice, finally realizing that choices themselves were more important than outcomes and that choices came from either strength or weakness. He knew his father and Harry had made strong choices. His mother had made a weak one. It helped him stop believing some kind of incurable defect permeated his bloodline.

“I ought to think about this a long time and make you sweat,” Maggie added.

“You could,” he agreed.

Now Brent glanced over at his uncle as the two of them ambled toward the locker room, and after a second he put his arm around Fred’s shoulders. “By the way,” he said, “I got engaged last night.”

Fred Lucas looked off in the distance and nodded. “Anybody I know?”

“Maybe.”

“Bout time you did something intelligent.”

Brent nodded. Over the past few months he’d been waking up quite often in the middle of the night and thinking about everything that had happened. He’d read everything he could on the Wahaddi Brotherhood and the New Jerusalem Fellowship. He knew he needed to understand men like Abu Sayeed and Prescott Biddle, how they and their followers could so easily forsake their common humanity to embrace violence, all in the name of their selfish and self-serving sense of God.

Some people, like Harry, his father and Fred, chose to honor and defend their fellow man, but these days so many others were choosing narrowly defined groups that rejected anyone who didn’t agree with their strict tenets. Brent had few illusions. He knew it would keep happening some people making the decent, compassionate choice, others acting out of appalling ignorance, superstition, or venality. It was enough to frighten a man into permanent bachelorhood, but in spite of that he was choosing hope. He was getting married. Who could tell if he was right? He shook his head and tightened his grip on Fred’s shoulder. He had to keep hoping.