I, Judas the 5th Gospel (21 page)

Abaku sighed even more deeply. “Don't you find what is going on in the world right now is making your entire discussion moot?”

Sergut snorted. “What is going on now leads me more to the question of is it right? So you mean that men are the pianos and women the violins and when we get to the Array we will become the music?”

“We will become the Word. God is infallible, so of course it is just, and the world has had thousands of years to get it right. They can't complain now that everything that was written is coming to pass, and all those who've found their salvation in Christ are about to be saved. And we will spread the music, so to speak, to all those who have not had the blessing of knowing God’s love.”

The SUV cleared the pass in the Cibola National Forest, and Abaku had his first glimpse of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. Twenty-seven antenna dishes, each eighty-two feet in diameter, were spread across the plain below, equally divided and aligned along three arms of a Y. Each arm was thirteen miles long, consisting of a rail line on which each antenna could be maneuvered to allow the entire array to be adjusted according to need.

“Impressive, is it not?” Sergut asked, his foot on the brake, allowing the view to linger in front of them.

Abaku shook his head. “Isn’t the Array’s primary mission to listen for extraterrestrial life?”

Sergut laughed. “You watch too many movies. No, the V.L.A. listens for radio waves, but those made by nature, not aliens.”

“But . . .” Abaku halted.

Sergut shot him an inquisitive glance. “But what if we did pick up other intelligent life? What would that mean?”

“Surely having worked here for years, you’ve considered it,” Abaku said.

“I have.” Sergut took his foot off the brake and they rolled down into the high altitude plateau.

“And?” Abaku pressed.

“You are a scientist, too,” Sergut said. “How do you reconcile your science with your faith?”

Abaku wagged a finger at his colleague. “You answer a question with a question. I believe Jesus is the true Son of God; that is the basis of all. The Bible, while a great document, was written by men, and like men, it is flawed in places. I am not a creationist. My science tells me the world is four and a half billion years old. My science tells me that life evolved. But it was God’s plan for the planet to develop and for life to evolve, just as he gives us free will that allows me both my faith and my science. But without my faith, my science means nothing.”

Sergut said nothing, turning off Route 60 and onto a hard-packed dirt road leading to the control center of the V.L.A..

“And now will you answer?” Abaku pressed.

“I have shelves,” Sergut said.

“’Shelves?’”

“In my mind,” Sergut said. “My soul is God’s. My mind, though, has shelves and I put my different packages on different shelves. It is something I had to do growing up in the Soviet Union before I escaped and came here.”

They drove by one of the massive dishes, passing under its shadow. Sergut pulled into the rutted parking lot of the Array headquarters where people were scurrying about, some leaving with briefcases and laptops clutched in their hands. Sergut stopped the SUV. He turned to Abaku. “If God left the devout woman to scream with the KGB and, like you say, she should be happy to have saved her eternal soul and have the pathway to the Christ, then do you not wonder what God has in store for you? Do you know with your scientific certainty in the infallible ways of God and his path to everlasting life through his son, Jesus, that whatever is about to happen will not make you scream and scream? Maybe forever?”

Abaku opened the door. “I pity you. You and your sarcasm and shelves.”

After Abaku slammed the door shut, Sergut leaned his head on the steering wheel and thought to himself,
I pity us all. And I think the lizard pities us, too. But most of all, I pity my grandmother and how long she screamed with God hearing her, and that is not something that I can keep on a shelf.

The Xingu River, The Amazon

The team leader cursed as he pressed through the jungle. Rear security had missed two contacts in the last half hour. All it required was just a break in squelch on the FM frequency the team was on. Not enough to alert anyone with a listening device, and who the hell would be out here in this asshole of the world with a listening device? But enough to let the team leader know security was doing his job.

No squelch meant security was slacking off. Screwing off. Nodding off. Whatever-ing off. The team leader had half a mind to slit the man’s throat wherever he was curled up catching forty winks. Make it forever winks and that much more for...

The team leader froze, swinging up the muzzle of his sub-machinegun. Finger on the trigger, he broke squelch with two short bursts, followed by one long. His eyes swept the jungle, the muzzle of the weapon following his gaze, less than a pound of pressure on the sliver of metal required to spray the surrounding area with bullets. He heard bodies moving through the jungle behind him and called out.

“On me!”

Seconds later, two of his men were at his side.

“Bloody hell!” one of them exclaimed.

The security man was tied to the trunk of a tree by the rather gruesome method of tying his wrist and then ankles together at the rear of the tree, the bones in all the limbs clearly shattered in the process as they curved around the trunk.

“Where’s ‘is head?” the other man asked.

“He won’t be needing it,” the team leader said. “The two of you now have rear security. Bring it in tight, ten meters back from the kill line. You see something, you shoot it.”

“Don’t ‘ave to tell me that,” the second man muttered.

*****

Angelique stood in the bow of the first Zodiac, having given control of the motor over to DiSalvo as she held the GPR, ground positioning receiver, in one hand, alternating her glance from it to the river ahead. The Xingu was still relatively broad, about thirty meters wide and deep, a good three meters under their keel, but that was going to change shortly.

They’d made good time, covering over fifty kilometers so far. They’d also run into no obstacles, not even the smugglers, rebels or drug growers she was used to meeting on the river. In fact, the entire area was unusually quiet, which disturbed her. The Devil’s Fork was about sixty kilometers ahead.

Not only was the jungle quiet, but so were the other two people on the boat. The trip had been made in silence, with only the necessary commands given back and forth. This was not a group for chitchat. Each seemed lost in their own thoughts. Every so often she would look back to the second boat, following ten meters behind, and catch Gates staring at her. It was not the stare she had received before from men who looked at her as a woman, something primordial getting stirred in them as they penetrated deeper into the jungle. It was a look she was having a hard time deciphering.

DiSalvo broke the silence, speaking to Kopec. “Get me a Satcom link.”

Kopec opened up the small dish and set it on the floor of the Zodiac. Then he turned on the radio. He checked, then passed the handset to DiSalvo. “We’re five by five with Atlanta. Transmission is scrambled and secure.”

DiSalvo took the handset and squeezed the transmit button. “This is your Warrior. Over.”

He listened for a long time, almost a minute. His reply to whatever he’d been told was succinct. “I am God’s sword. Out.” He gave the handset to Kopec.

Kopec took it and then turned to pack up the dish and radio. Behind him, DiSalvo drew his garrote and before Angelique could react from the bow of the boat, slid it over Kopec’s head, pulling the wire tight against the young man’s throat. As he did this, DiSalvo whirled his own body, so that his back was to Kopec’s. The Jesuit leaned forward, pulling Kopec up onto his back by the garrote.

Kopec’s arms and legs flailed uselessly as the metal sliced into his neck. Blood spewed forth. His efforts actually assisted the serrated wire cutting into his neck, the metal slicing through skin, muscle and cartilage. Both carotid arteries burst, splattering the interior of the boat and the gear.

“What the hell are you doing?” Angelique cried out, scrambling from the front of the Zodiac toward the two men. In the rear boat, Gates jumped to his feet, the stock of his MP-5 tight to his shoulder, the red dot from the laser sight centered on DiSalvo’s forehead, his finger resting on the trigger.

The garrote passed through Kopec’s windpipe and frothy red liquid bubbled forth.

Angelique knew the technician was dead. DiSalvo’s attack was the way a commando would use a garrote, and it was fast and effective. She had no clue what had prompted it, and she could see that Gates kept the red dot on DiSalvo’s forehead as the Jesuit lowered Kopec to the floorboards. Angelique slapped DiSalvo across the face, getting his attention from his blood lust.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded.

DiSalvo leaned over, and with some difficulty, extracted the garrote from the depths of Kopec’s half-severed neck as blood pooled underneath his head. He looked up at Angelique. Gates’ boat had now drawn alongside and DiSalvo glanced over and noted that Gates had his weapon trained on him.

“He was a spy,” DiSalvo said.

Angelique knelt next to the body and, out of reflex, checked his pulse. She looked up at DiSalvo. “How do you know that?”

“The Head told me.”

From the other boat, Gates had his own question. “How did the Head know that?”

DiSalvo slowly turned to face the soldier. The red dot was on his forehead. “Lower your weapon.”

“How did the Head know Kopec was a spy?” Gates kept his aim.

“One does not question the Head of the Brotherhood,” DiSalvo said. Seeing that Gates was not responding, the muscles on his face tightened. “Kopec made a transmission last night after we were all asleep to Illuminati headquarters. Also, right after Kopec departed Atlanta, his immediate superior, Brother Abaku, had security run an in-depth investigation. They found undisputable evidence that Kopec had been suborned by the Illuminati.”

Gates slowly lowered the sub-machinegun.

“So you’re judge, jury and executioner?” Hyland demanded.

“Yes,” DiSalvo said, “I am.” He pulled out a key and unlocked the metal case from Kopec’s wrist. Then he grabbed Kopec’s body, and dangled it on the side armor.

“What are you doing?” Angelique asked.

“This is all a betrayer deserves,” DiSalvo said as he shoved Kopec over the side into the dark water. It bobbed there for several seconds, then the water began to churn.

“You fool,” Angelique snapped. “Now we’ll have every predator in the water, every Piranha for miles, following us.”

DiSalvo turned to her. “Get back to your position. We keep moving.”

In the second boat, Gates let the MP-5 drop to the end of its sling. He sat down and wrapped his hand around the throttle. Lee seemed unaffected by what had just happened, but Hyland was pale.

“Never seen someone be killed?” Gates asked.

“No, but I caused someone’s death,” Hyland said in a low voice.

“I didn’t know archeology was such a dangerous field of study.” Gates turned up the throttle and they fell in behind the first boat. Gates noted that Angelique had angled herself so that while she was still watching upstream, she was also keeping an eye on DiSalvo.

Hyland turned to Gates. “You asked why I was here.”

“And you never really answered,” Gates said. “Yes, I get that you’re an expert on Judas, but that’s not good enough.” He tapped his chest. “I think everyone here has a secret. Kopec was a double-agent.” He nodded toward the first boat. “Angelique is a lost soul who has no clue who her parents were or why she was abandoned in the jungle. DiSalvo, well the way he handles weapons tells me that wasn’t his first kill. So a man who kills for God. That’s gray if not black inside of him. So what’s inside you?”

“I was weak once,” Hyland said.

Gates said nothing and they continued for another kilometer before Hyland continued, as if some force were in her, pressing to get out. “I made someone love me for the wrong reasons.”

“Mighty powerful, aren’t you?” Gates said.

Hyland shook her head. “You know nothing of love. It’s written all over you.”

“None of us are what we appear to be,” Gates said. “Whoever it was, they had their own reason for falling in love. Not returning it isn’t weak. Who was it?”

“One of my professors. I needed a fellowship. He was nice enough. We never even consummated the affair. But I made him think of possibilities. He went too far and lost his common sense. His wife left him. He was probably going to lose his job once she went public.”

“His problem,” Gates said.

“He’d left the window in his office open. It was storming outside. A strong wind. I still remember the very tips of his shoes grazing the top of his desk. Just a matter of inches. His neck was so stretched from the noose, I wondered if he might not have been trying so hard to get his weight back under him. If he realized he’d made a mistake over a lie. He’d trusted me. And all I cared about was the fellowship. He was a stepping stone.”

Lee was studiously ignoring both of them, as if what they were discussing held no import.