The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (40 page)

“What? A retard?”

“Say that word again.”

“And what? You’ll shoot an unarmed woman? No. You won’t do that, Mallory. Now, enough of this nonsense.”

“I’m warning you.”

“Don’t be so foolish. It’s just a word. You call him special; everyone else calls him a ret—”

The boom was deafening. Magrethe caught the blast at close range, and it tore her to shreds, flinging her backwards, her face and scalp gouged by the buckshot into a raw, pulpy mess.

Mallory looked at what she had done. She stood there for a long moment, stock-still, and then she carefully placed the shotgun on the ground and went over to her brother and Ellie.

THE BODY of Magrethe Olsen lay face up on the ground, shot to pieces. Ellie looked down at her and felt nothing.

Mallory hurried across to her brother, took his hand, and hugged him close.

Milton put out a hand and steadied himself against the side of the barn.

“You all right?”

“I’ll be honest. I’ve been better.”

“What happened?”

“I went back into the hills. They sent a posse after me.”

“And?”

“And I’m here and they’re not.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re dead, Ellie.”

“How many?”

“I stopped counting at five.”

He said it without emotion or inflection. Like it was business. “Are you hurt?”

“Took one in my arm. Lucky shot. I’ve cleaned it out. It’ll need to be treated, but it’s fine for now.”

The rain kept coming down, but Ellie thought that she could hear something else. “We have to stop Lundquist.”

“I saw him, in the truck. Where’s he going?”

“I don’t know. They do, but they won’t say.”

“They’ll say,” he said grimly. “You know what’s in the trailer?”

“It’s a bomb, Milton. They had it parked outside. I watched them load it. Barrels of fertiliser, fuel, explosives, too, I think. They’re planning to blow something up. You get the registration?”

“It’s a white Freightliner. BDH 5578.”

“My partner,” she said, “when he hears this…”

The noise in the rain came again, clearer now. They both swung around and stared into the darkness, but they couldn’t see it yet. Ellie knew what it was: a helicopter, the distinctive
whup whup whup
of the blades, the bird coming in low and fast from the north.

“Ellie,” Milton said, “you have to listen to me. It’s the National Guard.”

“So they’ll help us.”

“No, they won’t. All they know is what Lundquist told them. They think I’m a murderer.” He gestured down at the shot-up woman. “They’ll see her body and shoot me on sight.”

“I won’t let them. I’ll explain—”

“You got any ID?”

“No. They took it away.”

He shook his head. “Then we don’t have time. Lundquist is already on the move, and I need to get after him. We need to get Callow into the house.”

Mallory helped Arty to his feet and supported his bad leg, helping him hobble across to the farmhouse.

Milton took Callow beneath the shoulders and dragged him, face down, after them.

The Black Hawk swooped over the tree line and roared over the roof, the rotor wash sending up a cloud of spray and terrifying a coop of chickens. They ducked their heads in the sudden storm of debris and the clattering, terrible noise.

Inside. The door led into a hallway with three doors. There was a large French dresser that held a collection of plates and other crockery. Milton ushered them all inside and then went back to the dresser. He heaved it around, plates toppling off it and smashing against the floor. He dragged it until it was flush against the door, blocking the way inside.

“You sure that you know what you’re doing?” Ellie said.

“If we let the Guard take over here, we’ll lose any chance we have of getting to Lundquist.”

“They’ll contact the bureau.”

“Yes, and they should, but we’ll have to wait for them to realise that’s what they need to do. We don’t have
time
to wait. The bureau has no idea what’s happening. They don’t even know what happened to you. How long would it take your partner to get out here?”

“Hours.”

“And it’ll be too late by then. Lundquist could have driven to Green Bay, Detroit, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Chicago… He could’ve driven anywhere. If you’re right, if it
is
like Oklahoma, think what he could do with that truck.”

“I know. It’s all I
can
think about.” She frowned. “It’s not going to be easy to mobilise. The storm’s taken out the local phone lines and cell towers. Everything north of Wausau. It would be a nightmare to try to organise the response.”

“So we don’t have any choice, do we? We
have
to do this ourselves. It’s on us.”

He was right; she knew it. “So what do you need?”

“I’ve got to interrogate Callow.”

“You want to tell me what that means?
Interrogate?
”

“You really want to know?”

Ellie bit the inside of her lip. She knew exactly what he meant and, despite everything that the militia had done to them and everything they might go on to do, the prospect still sat uncomfortably with her.

“We don’t have the time to be pleasant, Ellie. I need to know everything he knows.”

“You’ll… you’ll kill him?”

“It’s tempting, but no. I’ll leave that to the government.”

“What do I have to do?”

He nodded, his face a blank and inscrutable mask. “Keep the Guards off my back. I need five minutes with him and then as much of a head start as you can manage.”

“How am I going to do that? I don’t have my ID.”

“I don’t care how you do it. Be persuasive. Five minutes, that’s all.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stop Lundquist.”

MICHAEL CALLOW woke up to the sensation of his feet scraping along the floor. He felt strong arms looped around his chest, hands clasped over his sternum. His head felt unbelievably sore, as if he had been hit with a jackhammer just behind his ear. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and, as he opened his eyes he saw the ceiling of a room he partly recognised above him. He remembered what had happened in the yard outside and felt the first explosive eruption of vomit launch from his gullet, up his throat and out of his mouth. It ran over his chin and into his nostrils, and splattered all over his shirt.

Callow felt as if his head was full of smoke.

They were in the kitchen of Seth and Magrethe Olsen’s farmhouse. He recognised the beadboard on the walls, the soapstone counters, the tin splashbacks, the ceiling panels painted light blue, the big iron range. He saw the baking station. The eighteenth-century mustard-painted Quebecois bar. The antique dining table where they all had pledged their allegiance to the Sword of God, swearing it over his father’s Bible.

John Milton walked over to him and looked down. It all came back to him in a terrifying flood of images and sounds, the chaos that this man had wrought. He tried to tell his legs to move, to get him away from him, to get him anywhere but
here
, but his brain was fuzzy and his legs weren’t listening.

Milton put his right shoulder beneath the edge of the dining table and straightened his back a little to raise it from the floor. He arranged two piles of Magrethe’s thick cookery books beneath each leg, raising them up and sloping the angle of the table.

He came back to him.

Callow tried to struggle, but Milton was strong. He grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him to the table. Callow tried to hook his leg around the cabinet, but Milton yanked him away. He kicked and bucked and tried to plant the heels of his boots on the floor, but all he succeeded in doing was to leave a track of scraped rubber across the wide wooden planks.

Milton pushed him onto the sloping tabletop, grabbed both his shoulders, and hauled him the rest of the way up. He took a nylon washing line and lashed his legs and shoulders to the board, arranging him so that his head was lower than his heart. The dim fog in Callow’s head started to disperse more quickly, but the confusion was replaced by panic, and all he could do was squirm and wriggle. It was useless. The bonds were too tight. He squeezed his eyes as tightly shut as he could.

He started to protest, trying to find the words that would persuade the man that this was unnecessary, but, before he could tell him any of that, a towel was draped over his face, his eyes and his nose and his mouth, blocking out the light. On top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random light to his vision, layers of cloth were added. Total darkness absorbed him.

Milton’s voice was muffled. “Michael, I need you to tell me where your father has gone.”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice muffled, the exhalation of his breath gathering against the towel, with nowhere to go.

“He’s driven off in the semi. He’s going to detonate it. You need to tell me where he’s going to do that.”

The panic cut through his dizziness like a hot knife. Awareness came plunging back.

He blinked furiously against the fabric, remembering what his father had told him as they sat around the kitchen table. He remembered the story of John Wilkes Booth and the words he had shouted after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

He shouted them.

“Sic Semper Tyrannis!”

Thus Always to Tyrants.

He waited, his breathing clotted and difficult through the weight of the cloth above his mouth, and wondered whether Milton had been able to hear his words or whether they were too muffled to be intelligible. Then he felt the wet slap of water as it was poured over his head. He felt a slow cascade of water going up his nose.

He held his breath for as long as he could, but then he had to exhale and inhale, the damp cloths brought tight against his nostrils, as if a huge, wet palm had been suddenly pressed over his face. He couldn’t tell whether he was breathing in or out, whether he was breathing in water, whether his nostrils and mouth and lungs were engulfed with it or whether it was all in his imagination. Lines blurred. Reality shifted, became slippery. The water kept slapping down onto him. He thumped his fist against the side of the table.

The wet towels were pulled away from his face. He blinked furiously into the sudden light, spluttering water from his nose.

“Where is he going?”

“‘Therefore do not fear them. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed…’”

“Where?”

“‘… And hidden that shall not be known.’”

“Want to try again?”

He gasped for air, his pulse racing. “You can do what you want. I’m not saying anything.”

He heard the doubt and fear in his voice and cursed himself for his weakness. He prayed for strength.

“I barely washed your face that time,” Milton said as he dropped the sodden, heavy cloth over his face again.

He heard footsteps moving away. He heard water sloshing into a vessel. He heard footsteps approaching. Water was poured over him again. Callow tried hard, fighting the wave of nausea and terror, but it was a hopeless task, his gag reflex overwhelming him, filling him with abject terror,
primal
terror, and he slapped the table again.

The wet cloth was pulled away for a second time.

Milton was leaning over him, looking down into his face. Those
eyes
, so cold and pitiless. The eyes of the Devil. Callow sobbed out, his breath racing in hungry gulps, and then he looked into those eyes, and he knew that this was not a man from whom he could expect clemency or mercy. Milton would kill him.

“Where is he, Michael?”

“‘Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love. Because of your great mercy, wipe away my sins. Wash away my evil and make me clean from my sin.’”

Milton raised the cloth and held it above his face, water streaming from the sodden fabric and falling onto his face.
“Where is he?”

“Green Bay. The federal courthouse in Green Bay.”

MILTON PLACED the pewter jug on the floor and left Callow trussed up on the table. He hurried into the sitting room. Ellie had found a bunch of keys on the table, and one of them fit her bracelets. She looked up at him, concern on her face.

“It’s Green Bay.”

“Where?”

“Federal courthouse. A bomb that big, though… it’ll do a lot of damage.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He nodded to the cuffs. “Put those on Callow.”

“And then?”

“Explain to the soldiers what’s happened. Everything. Tell them about the truck and that he’s probably taking it to Green Bay.”

“
Probably?
”

“Callow wasn’t lying, but maybe Lundquist didn’t tell him the truth. Can’t say for sure. They’ll need to block all the major roads out of the Upper Peninsula.”

“And you?”

“I’m going after him.”

Milton paused, looking at her. Her eyes flickered down to his arm. He looked down, too, and saw fresh blood spotting on his sweater.

“John, you can’t. Look at you. You’re hurt.”

There was no point in pretending otherwise. “There’s no choice. If he gets stopped, he’ll blow up the truck. An explosion like that will take out everyone within a hundred yards of it. If he can’t kill feds, he’ll make do with soldiers. Maybe I can stop him before that happens.”

He wouldn’t be dissuaded, and Ellie quickly saw the futility in trying. Instead, she came to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and stood on tiptoes, placing a soft kiss on his cheek.

“Good luck.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You still owe me dinner.”

He allowed her a smile, squeezed her hand on his shoulder, and then gently disengaged himself. He turned and left the room, following the hall to the parlour at the back of the house. There was a wide picture window. The lights in the room were off, and Milton approached it carefully, seeing his own reflection looking back at him as he stared out into the darkness of the yard beyond.

He couldn’t see anyone.

The turbines of the Black Hawk whined as the chopper powered down on the other side of the house.

He heard voices.

He slid his fingers beneath the bottom sash and pulled it up, grimacing as the wood squeaked in loud protest. He pulled again, his arm complaining from the effort, and then, when he had opened it far enough, he pulled himself through and dropped down onto the muddy lawn beyond.