NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (27 page)

“That sounds like pretty thin soup to me,” Leon said. “A promise to agree to sit down and talk is a long way from a promise to recognize New Israel as a sovereign nation. Is that the best you can do?”

“There is one other thing,” Ert said.

“What is it?” Leon asked.

“Immunity,” Ert said.

“What do you mean?”

“We will grant you immunity from charges of conspiracy to assassinate the President if you agree to testify against Ithurial Finis,” Ert said. “This offer is off the table if you don’t take it today.”

“So you would have me choose between a deal with the devil or the angel of death?” Martinez said.

“If you want to think of it in those terms,” Ert said. “Like I said, it’s now or never for you on the immunity issue. If we don’t shake hands on a deal before I get in my car, your ass is toast.”

Leon had had enough.

“We’ll see who is toast, Mr. Roberts,” he said. He waved at Ralph who finished his cigarette and strolled back to the limo.

“Let’s get back to Waco, Ralph,” Leon said as he got in the back seat. “I believe Mr. Roberts can find his way home.”

“See you, Ralph,” Ert said as the limo rolled passed him.

Ralph smiled and tipped his cap to Ert as he drove out the park exit and headed southwest on U. S. Highway 31 towards Waco.

When the limo was out of sight, Ert sat back down on the concrete bench and called Sherman on his cell phone.

“No go with Leon,” he said. “But I thought he was going to have a cow when I dropped the bomb on him about our intelligence on him and Finis. He blurted out that Finis took care of Flash. He’s scared shitless but too proud to back down.”

“That sort of attitude has caused a lot of wars,” General Aloysius said. “Come on back to the District, and we’ll figure out our next move.”

•  •  •

A few miles down the road, Leon punched Ralph in the back of the shoulder. “I left my New Testament on the picnic table at the roadside park. We have to go back.”

Ralph had learned that it did no good to argue with Martinez, so he pulled a U-turn in the highway and backtracked ten miles to the place where they had left Ert. The park was deserted. Ralph idled his car to a spot next to the picnic table, stopped, and got out. He went to the bench where Leon had been sitting during his conversation with Ert and searched for Leon’s New Testament. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the table but found nothing.

When he stood up, he turned to go to the car to report his bad luck to Leon, but Leon was already out of the car leaned up against it like he was when he first spoke to Ert.

“No luck?” Leon asked.

“No luck, boss,” he said.

“That’s too bad. You could have used some words from the good book about now,” Leon said. He reached in his inside coat pocket and brought out a Glock 9 mm pistol.

“Ert seemed to have some awfully good intelligence on me,” Leon said. “There’s only one person who could be responsible for that, Ralph. Would you like to come clean?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Leon. I’ve always been straight with you,” Ralph said.

“I’m not that good of a shot, Ralph. I suggest that about now you should turn and run like hell. I might miss,” Leon said as he lowered the pistol and started counting. “When I reach ten, I start shooting.”

Ralph turned and darted for the bushes. Before he took three steps, Leon opened up with the Glock and emptied the magazine into him. Leon walked to Ralph’s body and checked his pulse to make sure he was dead. He dragged the body to the back of the limo, popped the trunk and loaded Ralph’s body into it. He got behind the wheel and drove the limo a few miles up U. S. Highway 31 to the Trinity River bridge. He pulled to the shoulder and waited for a gap in the traffic. When things were quiet, he got out and propped Ralph’s body against the guardrail and lifted it high enough to roll it over the rail. He watched his body fall into the slow-moving river and float downstream, carried along by the gentle current.

Leon got back in the driver’s seat, rolled down the car windows, ejected the Hank Williams CD and replaced it with one containing his favorite gospel music. He turned the volume up, crossed the median on the divided highway and made his way back to Waco, the capital city of New Israel.

AGENT BROWN KICKED
himself when he learned Finis had murdered Flash Greenwald.

“I should have seen that one coming,” he said.

He had his gear loaded and was about to leave for Chicago to see if he could pick up Finis’ trail when Ert called him and asked him to provide backup for him on a mission in Texas. He jumped at the chance to focus on something other than Ithurial Finis for a couple of days.

When Ert pulled into the roadside park that morning, Brown had taken a position three hundred yards from him, camouflaged under a tarp, his Remington bolt action sniper rifle close at hand. He watched Ert and Leon through the long range lens on his digital camera and took pictures to document the meeting between the two emissaries of the warring factions.

When he saw Leon’s limo drive off, he began to gather his gear. But before he could leave, he caught a glimpse of the limo as it topped the hill south of the park and slowed to turn back in the drive. Ert had already left.

“What’s this?” he said.

He lay down again on his belly and drew the tarp over him. He re-positioned his camera and began to take more pictures. He saw Ralph rummage around on the ground like he was looking for a lost item and saw Leon get out of the limo. When Leon drew his pistol, Brown recorded his every move. He watched as Ralph tried to escape and Leon opened up on him with a hail of bullets. He knew Ralph was dead.

“I didn’t know the little turd had it in him,” he said as he watched Leon drag Ralph’s body and load it in the trunk.

When Leon got in the car and began to leave the park, Brown sprinted through the thick mesquite brush to his Camaro and raced up a rutted cow trail to its intersection with the main highway. He saw the rear of the limo as it topped the hill and fell in behind it.

When Leon pulled to the shoulder on the river bridge, Brown jammed his accelerator to the floorboard and passed the limo before Leon could get a good look at him. Several hundred yards down the road, he turned off on a dirt lane that led down to a marshy area in the river bottom. He grabbed his camera and sloshed his way through the mud until he reached a vantage spot where he could observe the limo on the bridge.

He focused his camera on the scene just in time to get a bird’s eye view of Leon nudging Ralph’s body over the guard rail.

He heard the splash of the body as it hit the water and saw it bob to the surface like a cork on a fishing line. He watched it floating in the river and took note of the speed and direction of the current. When Leon drove away, he went back to his car and raced down the highway to a ramp on the far side of the river. He got his waders and a rope out of his gear bag, put his head through the coiled rope and jogged along the west bank of the river as he searched for Ralph’s body. He spotted it still barely afloat a few feet from shore, found a place where he could secure his footing, took the rope in his hand, formed a loop and lassoed Ralph’s foot just before it sank under the surface of the river.

He pulled the corpse to dry land and laid it out on a high spot surrounded by cattails. He took out his cell phone and called the Texas Department of Fish and Wildlife. He reported that he had found a body washed up on the shore of the river and gave the coordinates.

He walked back to his car, stored his gear and hiked up the dirt road to the edge of the highway. In about ten minutes, a truck with Texas Fish and Wildlife markings approached. He hailed it and motioned for the vehicle to turn down the lane.

When the officer got out of the truck, Brown walked over to him.

“I was fishing along the bank when I came upon it. I dragged him to high ground,” he said.

Brown led the officer to Ralph’s body and watched as he turned the body on its back and put his hands in Ralph’s pockets, searching for some ID. He found a billfold with a Tennessee driver’s license and placed it in a baggie with an evidence tag.

“That uniform of his doesn’t look like what a man would wear for an outing on the river,” the lawman said. “Judging from the condition of the body, I don’t think he was in the water long. I don’t suppose you saw any companions of his, did you?”

“You might want to run this license plate,” Brown said as he handed the officer a slip of paper. “It belongs to a black stretch limo that stopped on the bridge a little while before I found the body. I’m sure the owner would love to explain how his chauffeur ended up in the Trinity River with ten bullet holes in him.”

The officer looked at Brown, the slip of paper, and the dead man. He stepped to the Camaro and saw Brown’s camera lying on the front passenger seat.

“Any pictures you care to share with me?” he asked.

Brown handed him a memory card from the camera.

“You can keep it. I have a duplicate,” he said. “If you move fast, you might be able to stop that limo before it gets to Waco. If you need me, call this number and tell them you are looking for Agent Brown. They know where to find me most of the time.”

“Whose number is this?” the officer asked him. “I’ll need to know for my report.”

“It’s the personal cell phone of General Sherman Aloysius, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces. He’s an acquaintance of mine.”

•  •  •

Brown left the officer alone on the trail and got back in his car. As he approached the highway, he started to turn east. He waited for a west bound car to pass. It was a late model silver Nissan Altima carrying a lone occupant, a large man obscured by the medium dark tint of the windows. As the car moved in front of him, something jogged Brown’s memory, a memory trained to observe small, random, seemingly insignificant details. His mind flashed back to western Tennessee where he fled his would-be captors the day he was shot, to the area north of the Tennessee River where he had boarded the Coast Guard vessel that ferried him to Shiloh, to a secluded mountain lane in the Smokies where he parked when he was doing surveillance on Flash Greenwald.

“It can’t be,” Brown said. “Maybe there is a God after all.”

He spun his wheel to the right, reversed his course and headed south and west along the highway staying far enough back from the Altima that even Ithurial Finis wouldn’t be able to tell that he had picked up a tail.

NO LAW ENFORCEMENT
personnel stopped Leon Martinez on his way back to Waco.

He drove to his apartment near Lake Waco, stripped off his blood-splattered clothes, stuffed them in a black garbage bag, took a shower, and put on his best suit. At an automated car wash, he tipped the attendant twenty bucks to clean and vacuum the limousine, making sure that he used enough solvent in the trunk to remove all traces of blood stains.

“That’s the last time I loan this baby out to my friends the day before they go hog-hunting,” he joked with the attendant.

On his way to the Baylor campus, he pulled into a restaurant parking lot and drove to the rear of the building where he threw the plastic bag with his blood-stained clothes into a large dumpster.

When he reached the university, he turned into the secure parking facility next to the New Israel national headquarters. The guard at the gate looked surprised when Leon let down the driver’s side window to flash his ID.

“You slumming today, Apostle Martinez?” the guard kidded him. “Where’s Ralph?”

“He asked for a couple of days off. His momma in North Carolina is having surgery,” Leon said.

“Tell him he and his mother are in our prayers,” the guard said as Leon drove by the window of the guard shack.

He drove to the parking spot marked “Apostle Martinez,” climbed out of the limo, straightened his tie as he looked in the side mirror and went in the private back entrance to the suites for members of the executive branch of the government.

“Let Prophet Westmoreland know that I need to see him pronto,” he told his secretary as he went in his office and slammed the door behind him.

•  •  •

Across Interstate 35 from the Baylor campus, Agent Brown checked into a high rise hotel. He requested a room with a view of the Brazos River and the university. When he got to his room on the tenth floor, he opened the shades and surveyed the scene. He saw the silver Altima parked on the curb on the Baylor side of the Interstate. He set his camera on a tripod and zoomed in on a window of one of the offices in the New Israel national headquarters building. He watched and waited.

•  •  •

When Westmoreland didn’t call Leon back, he decided to take the bull by the horns. About one-thirty, he got in the elevator and took the short ride up one floor to the floor of offices that supported Prophet Westmoreland. He walked into the reception area of Frank’s office and announced himself.

“Frank’s on a conference call with some of the military guys,” his secretary said. “He’ll be with you shortly, I’m sure.”

“I don’t have that long to wait,” Leon said as he walked through a door that led to the inner sanctum. Half-way down the hall, he saw a door labeled “War Room.”

He turned the handle on the unlocked door and found himself face to face with Frank and Stanley who were on a video, telephonic hookup with the commanders on the ground in North Carolina.

“We’re ready to move, sir,” the general on the screen said as Leon entered.

“What sort of defenses have you seen?” Westmoreland asked.

“The governor of Virginia has promised we will meet no resistance from his forces,” the general said. “So far we have detected no build up of federal troops along our attack route. I think that is a signal to us that they have lost the will to fight.”

“Maybe so, general,” Frank said. “But keep an eye out. I don’t want a repeat of the Mississippi Bridge engagement.”