Righteous02 - Mighty and Strong (31 page)

“Jacob!” a woman screamed. She grabbed hold of him, tried to pull him away.

Clarence fired his gun. Jacob flew to the ground under the impact. But even as he did, he realized that he hadn’t taken the bullet.

It was Sister Devorah. She fell on top of him, crying, moaning. Behind, he heard Brother Clarence snarl something, re-chamber his gun. Jacob struggled to free himself. He could hear a baby screaming now, close. Nephi. And there was Fernie, on her feet, trying to reach him. She was bleeding from her shoulder.

No, Fernie! Stay back.

As he pulled free of Devorah, he could see the entrance wound in her chest. It was above the heart, and on the right side, a ragged, bloody perforation that opened her dress high on the breast. Her eyes glazed in shock.

Jacob’s hand found his pocket, and the Beretta that Sister Miriam had given him. He drew it, flipped off the safety.

Fernie held the screaming baby under her injured arm and wrestled with the barrel of Clarence’s rifle with her free hand. He twisted it free, then swung the rifle butt and bashed her in the head. She went down hard, on top of the baby.

Clarence turned the rifle with a look of righteous triumph as Jacob gained his knees. Jacob steadied his hand, pointed it at the man’s chest and fired. Clarence’s rifle went off.

But he was already falling backward from the force of Jacob’s shot when it did. The bullet flew over his head. Jacob sat, momentarily stunned. Clarence went down and didn’t move.

He went to Fernie, first. He rolled her over and Nephi sucked in a long, shuddering breath, then screamed. Fernie groaned, tried to get up, but he held her down.

“No, don’t move.”

The wound at her shoulder was superficial. He quickly scanned her and the baby for other injuries, saw none. “No matter what, stay down!”

Sister Devorah was in worse shape. She gasped for air, her face pale with shock. He rolled her onto her side and felt the blood drain out of his own face. The exit wound came out at an angle that most likely took it behind the superior vena cava and the right atrium. He rolled her back and pushed his hand into the entrance wound to block air from seeping in and collapsing her lung.

Not that it would matter. With damage to the heart, she would die without immediate surgical intervention.

A great wail went up from the crowd in the courtyard. He lifted his head.

Church members threw down their weapons, people fell to the ground. The prophet sprawled across the flagstones. A child lay nearby, together with one of the prophet’s wives. Another woman cradled Timothy’s head in her lap.

The SWAT team streamed into the courtyard. They threw men to the ground, seized weapons, shot at a man who continued firing from the far side of the courtyard before he turned and fled.

Jacob kicked the handgun away. He turned his body so the agents could see he was doing nothing more than trying to help this injured woman. Fernie crawled over with the baby, whose screams turned to shuddering sobs.

“Sister Devorah,” he said. He put his blood-soaked hands on her head. She stared up, still gasping, not seeming to hear him, but he wasn’t sure. “The Lord will protect you, sister. He loves you and will always walk beside you. Today you will kneel at His feet in the Celestial Kingdom and He will lift you and embrace you and say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”

If only he could believe it, could cling to some small scrap of faith.

Chapter Thirty-one:

The prophet was dead.

Only an autopsy could tell for sure, but Jacob’s first guess was a wound from a deer rifle. A stray shot by one of his own brothers. By the time Jacob reached his side, his eyes already fixed in a glassy stare as blood pooled around him. Jacob pushed aside the gathered, wailing church members, but when he bent for closer examination, it only confirmed what he’d already known. Nothing could be done.

That didn’t stop people from grabbing his arm and begging him to save Brother Timothy. He tried to explain that the bullet had likely ruptured the prophet’s aorta and that he had already bled out, heart stopped, blood pressure reduced to negligible levels, etc., but nobody listened.

“Give him a blessing!” one of Timothy’s wives cried, a young and pregnant woman. “Hurry!”

Others took up the cry. Reluctantly, he grabbed an elderly man nearby and the two of them put their hands on the man’s rapidly cooling head. He knew what they wanted; they wanted him to use the priesthood to raise Brother Timothy from the dead.

Maybe if he’d been someone else he would have tried. But Jacob knew all too well the violent struggle of a dying body, what kind of effort it would take from surgeon, knife, and machine to hold death at bay. It would take a miracle beyond Jacob’s ability.

And you didn’t need medical training to see it.
Look at his eyes, for God’s sake,
he wanted to tell them. If Timothy had a soul, it had departed to the other side.

And so instead, he did what he’d done with Sister Devorah. A blessing of comfort rather than healing, only not for the prophet, but to help the stricken church members gathered around them. Nobody argued with him afterward or accused him of doing too little. Instead they buried faces in hands or reached to touch the prophet’s hair. One woman picked up a child’s blanket lying nearby and tucked it under the man’s head.

Not knowing what else to do, Jacob turned his attention to the wounded. There were several, some with grave wounds. Besides Brother Clarence and Brother Timothy, he found two others, one a boy of no more than twelve years. The child had fallen on his deer rifle.

The FBI agents left Jacob alone. They gathered weapons, cuffed most of the men and several women as well. Any time someone argued or got in their way, the FBI shoved that person against the wall and added them to the crowd secured with plastic cuffs in the corner of the square.

Eventually, one of the SWAT team members came striding over to where Jacob bandaged a man’s leg with a strip of cloth. “You, what’s your name?”

“Leave him alone,” called a second man. The strongly-built form of Agent Krantz and the deep voice gave him away in spite of the full SWAT gear. “He’s not a threat.”

Krantz and another man dragged a young man who bled from one ear, his hands cuffed behind him, and threw him into the corner. The young man looked back at the agents with venom.

Sister Miriam came with the children a minute later, who rushed to their mother’s side. Fernie embraced them in a fierce hug, then sent them to Jacob, who did the same.

“Thank you,” Jacob said to Miriam.

But Miriam had already discovered Brother Timothy and pushed through the crowd to kneel at his side.

The stricken look on her face erased any doubts Jacob might have had about her true feelings. Miriam embraced the young pregnant woman at the prophet’s side and the two of them wept over the dead man’s body.

Jacob turned to see Fernie watching him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I never should have come. You were right all along.”

He hugged Fernie and the baby, with Daniel and Leah clinging to their legs and waist. All around the plaza, others formed knots of families and friends.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again.

“Perhaps it
was
the will of the Lord.”

It was funny, in a way. The chaos, the nature of the polygamist communities sprinkled across the West, made something like the Zarahemla compound almost inevitable. He’d seen it in Blister Creek after the fraud trials jailed much of the leadership. People broke away, wandered like the people in Lehi’s dream from the Book of Mormon, lost in mists of darkness. Looking for someone to save them. All it took was one charismatic leader, who claimed he was the One Mighty and Strong, and they would come running.

“And now they’re lost again,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Leaderless. The prophet is dead and they have no one to tell them what to do.”

“Someone has to take charge,” Fernie said. “You can’t just leave them alone, you have to do something.”

“Me?” Jacob asked. “No, I’ve got nothing to do with this, I can’t make sense of what happened.”

“You’re wrong,” Miriam said. She walked from the side of the prophet. Her face was a grim mask, unreadable. “You’re exactly the one who has to do something about this.”

“Me? I’m the last person who—”

“But don’t you see? Brother Timothy is dead, and so is Brother Clarence. You were the prophet’s second counselor. I thought he was making a huge mistake, you know that. But he must have had a reason. And now they’re dead, that leaves you as leader of the church.”

Jacob took a step back. “No.”

“She’s right,” Fernie said. “Everyone is stunned now, they can’t think of anything else. Once things settle down, and the media shows up, and they have to figure out where to go from here, it’s going to take about five minutes before your name comes up.”

“Then I’ll tell them they’re crazy. It’s not me.”

Sister Miriam grabbed his arm. Her grip was so tight it almost hurt. “You have no choice. You’ve been ordained by the Lord’s anointed. Jacob Christianson, you’re the new prophet.”

“For the love of—please, keep your voice down. And no, I’m really not.”

“Your wife was right,” Miriam continued. “Only I’ll bet there are people already thinking about it. Look, those women over there are staring. And pretty soon they’re going to start talking. And you know what’s next? Someone is going to bring up how you denounced Brother Clarence and killed him. That’s right, I already heard. And how when Krantz came he deferred to you. And they’re going to say that
you’re
the one they’ve been waiting for. They’re going to say that
you
are the One Mighty and Strong.”

With a sinking feeling, Jacob looked around the square. And he could see it in some of their faces already. Even here. Fernie watched him with her face shining. Even Miriam gave him a curious look.

“And you know what?” Miriam said. “I never would have believed it, but they might be right.”

#

Agent Krantz came to Fayer’s bed in the hospital. Five arrests, dozens more brought in for questioning. He’d lost none of the hostages, and none of his men, although two more agents were hospitalized at Sanpete County, and they’d airlifted a third to Salt Lake, condition stabilized, thank god.

Injuries, he could take.

Better yet, they had their man. Hosea Green, aka Zeal. Forensics had already tied him to the murder of his half-sister, Emma Green and he was the one they’d caught assaulting Agent Fayer. She said Zeal meant to kill her as soon as he finished raping her. The other two conspirators were also dead. One, the guy who’d hit Garcia, shot on the roof. The other had apparently tried to take over the church or something—details were still fuzzy—and Jacob Christianson killed him.

No, it hadn’t been another Waco, and the media were treating Agent Krantz like a hero. So why couldn’t he shake the glum feeling?

Fayer looked up with a tired expression as he entered the room.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Pretty sucky. My ribs are on fire and my tail bone is throbbing like someone’s banging it with a hammer. Head feels like it’s going to explode. That nurse doesn’t give me more drugs in about five minutes, I’m going on a rampage.”

“Pretty hard to rampage when you’re laid up in bed. Want me to grab a wheelchair? I can push you down the hallways at high speed and you can knock stuff off the shelves.”

She laughed, then winced. “Ooh, ouch.”

“Besides, I thought Mormons didn’t go for drugs. What’s that Word of Wisdom thing you’re always babbling about?”

“There’s an exemption for medical emergencies.” A pause, then, “Chambers stopped by a few minutes ago. Guess we didn’t lose anyone. Nice job.”

He shrugged. “It was a good team. Operation practically ran itself. I just came along for the ride.”

“Not the way I heard it.”

“Okay, so it was one foul-up short of a complete FUBAR.”

“But you pulled it off. Total success.”

“Maybe,” he said, doubtful. “Their prophet died.”

“I’m not shedding any tears over the guy. Break up the cult, hopefully. Besides, Chambers said he was killed by a stray bullet from his own side. Even better. No martyr to worry about. You took out the other two conspirators, too. No messy loose ends.”

“Yeah, but four other church members were killed,” Krantz said.

Two especially haunted him. One was the young woman, her stare glazed, blank, a ragged wound at her chest. And the girl’s grandmother, weeping, turned and attacked him when he approached. She was so light and brittle that when he’d grabbed her wrists he was afraid of breaking them.

Fernie Christianson had put her arm around the old woman’s shoulders. “Shh, no, sister. Please.” She pulled the woman back.

“My Devorah,” the old woman wailed. “Why her, why? She was a gentle girl. Never did any harm. Why would the Lord take her?”

Or what about the boy? Twelve? Thirteen? Krantz had seen it himself. Someone shoved a rifle in his hands and the boy stepped into the open and fired wildly up at the roof, while the coward who’d armed him took cover. The boy didn’t have a chance to shoot a second time.

Fayer reached out a hand and touched his arm. “It could have been worse.”

“It could have been better. I screwed up.”

“You didn’t screw up. You faced operational difficulties and overcame them.”

“It was over when we got to the last courtyard. People were ready to surrender and I didn’t call off Chambers soon enough. I could have stopped it.”

“Self-defense. That’s what you told me and you know what? You were right.”

“That’s different. Face it, there will be a backlash as soon as the details come out. They’ll probably demote me.”

“I don’t believe it. Look, you can’t second-guess a few missteps. You got to me in time, you got the bad guys, and you kept it from turning into a massacre.” She shook her head. “You’re not getting demoted. You’re going to be a hero. You’re already a hero.”