The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE (30 page)

The two soldiers pinning Lamar and Joe release them and the others on the perimeter lower their weapons. Joe rubs at his throat, where the rod pressed hard against his larynx.

“Her next outburst will land her in the brig for the remainder of her stay, congressman,” Forrester says. “Warn her, when she comes to.”

Congressman Reed bends over Annie. He picks her up off the floor and turns to Chief Forrester.

“I’ll explain it to her,” Lamar says.

“Congressman,” Joe says suddenly. “I think maybe I should go to the Mass. If it’s alright with you, that is.”

Reed looks over his shoulder at Joe. “Sure, go ahead.”

Corelli watches the congressman carry Annie over to the bench. When he turns around again, he finds Forrester studying him. It is disconcerting being sized up and measured by someone orchestrating what had to be the most ambitious coup in human history, but Joe manages to affect a grin.

He shrugs at the Chief of Homeland Security. “It’s a Holy Day of Obligation, after all.”

“Fine, Mr. Corelli,” Forrester responds with the hint of a smile. “Mr. Quinn will escort you to the chapel.”

Carlton Quinn steps forward and Joe finds himself shaking hands with the man who took a shot at the President of the United States.

“A Merry Christmas to you, Joe,” Quinn says, pumping Corelli’s hand.

“Yeah,” Joe says. “A Merry Christmas to you too.”

Forrester turns without further ceremony and heads to the stairs. He is followed out by his black-clad praetorian. Quinn gestures Corelli forward. Joe takes a quick look back at his fellow prisoners. Annie’s head is on Reed’s lap. She is beginning to stir. The President and his security detail stare stonily after Forrester’s column. Joe turns and heads down the metal stairs.

On the floor of the control room Corelli finds himself the center of attention.

“This way, Joe,” Carlton says, pointing to the tunnel on their right. Earl Forrester is leading his men to the tunnel on the opposite end of the floor.

“Forrester isn’t coming with us?” Joe asks.

“He ain’t the church going type,” Carlton says. “But we’re working on him.”

“So you’re not all Christians?” Joe wonders out loud.

“Most of us are Catholic,” Quinn declares. “But hey, the Crusade is an equal opportunity recruiter. Forrester is our token ornery, old pagan.”

“The Crusade?”

“Yeah ,” says Quinn, tapping the patch on his right shoulder. “The Omega Crusade.”

“I see,” Joe says, looking from Quinn to the Crucifix and crèche. Returning his attention back to the sniper he decides not to mention that the displays are highly illegal on army bases. He figures people willing to kidnap a President and congressman, not to mention launch a crusade, don’t concern themselves with the latest court rulings on the separation of church and state. Instead, Joe follows Carlton out of the control room.

At the end of the short tunnel, they come to a bank of three elevators. Quinn taps the button on the wall. Corelli decides to do a little probing.

“Don’t you think that mankind in the twenty-first century is a little long in the tooth for a crusade?”

“We don’t think so.”

“Who exactly is ‘we’?” Joe asks. “Aside from being predominantly Catholic, that is. Is
we
the Church? Is the Vatican in on this?”

“No,” answers Quinn. “Rome has her hands full with other business at the moment.”

“What about the demonstrators in the park?” Joe asks. “Are they all in on the crusade?”

“We have operatives and friends in the crowds.”

“But you don’t have the crowds?”

“Not all of them. Not yet.”

“I’m still not too clear on who
we
are.”

“Have you ever asked yourself Joseph, how much more you’re going to put up with?”

“How much more..?”

“Crap brother Joseph, crap!”

Joe stares dumbly at the large freckled face inches from his own.

“How much more crap are you willing to put up with?” Quinn continues. “Look around you, Joe. We’re ass-deep in all kinds of crap. Our nation is following the world down the toilet. We got us terrorists, anarchists, drug addicts and gangbangers running amok in our cities because judges, not wanting to ‘trample on their rights’ let them loose on our streets. We got us a government that has done spent us into the poor house and still wants more. We got us homos teaching our kids that depravity is normal. There are pedophiles waiting in the wings for a turn in the law so they too can get their filthy hands on our children. We got porn coming at us 24/7 from every direction. We can’t go to the mall without worrying about some flea-bagger or rag-top blowing us up or shooting us down. It’s bonkers crazy out there, my man. We’re ass-deep in all kinds of crap, Joseph. And
we
are them folks who say, enough is enough.
We
are who’s going to put a stop to it all. That’s who
we
are.”

The elevator arrives. Joe steps in first at Quinn’s invitation. Corelli makes a note of the elevator’s control panel. There are ten buttons in single file. Carlton punches a button for the fifth level.

“Who is your head honcho?”

“Colonel Miguel Pereira.”

Well, Joe thinks, Annie was right. And twice in one day! She will be insufferable after this. That is, he reminds himself, if any of them survive.

“You are Catholic, aren’t you, Joseph?” Quinn asks.

“Technically, I guess.”

“Lapsed, have you?”

“I guess.”

“When was the last time you took Communion?”

“My brother’s funeral,” Joe answers. “I was twenty.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Quinn says. “I lost a brother at about that same age. It’s rough, I know.”

“Thanks.”

The lopsided grin begins to split Quinn’s broad face. “So I guess you’re tagging along to check us out rather than because you want to attend Christmas Mass?”

“Huh… well…”

“It’s alright lad,” Carlton says, patting him on the back. “I’d do the same in your shoes. Besides, by hook or by crook, right?”

The doors open. The smell of incense perfumes the still air of the new, darker tunnel in front of Joe Corelli.

3

The Church Triumphant

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable… a most sacred right… a right we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.”

—Abraham Lincoln

The microwave dings!

The machine’s bell sounds louder than usual in the silence of Joe’s apartment. He rises from the table and pulls a steaming plate out of the microwave. The filet of Redfish is cooked atop of the steak. Surf and turf, desperado style, he thinks, trying unsuccessfully to amuse his self. He places his dinner on the table beside the computer and goes to the refrigerator. He pulls out a can of Coke. As the door swings in to close, he spots the small bottle of beet horseradish he uses to make his signature Bloody Mary. He pulls it from its shelf. Joe then grabs a fork and steak knife out of his cutlery drawer and sits down before his meal, the first substantial one in three days.

Corelli digs in. The filet is dry and the steak is a little on the rubbery side. He enjoys them all the same. They are hot and solid and good vehicles for the horseradish which more than compensates for the taste burned away by the
microwaving. He empties his mind and loses himself in the simple animal pleasure of eating. When he is done, he shuts his eyes and is still for several minutes before taking the empty plate and can to the sink. After a swig of scotch Joe lights up another cigarette and smokes it leisurely, down to the filter, before picking up the stylus and continuing.

[Colonel Pereira’s Christmas Crusade will survive him and he will survive through it. You cannot kill a man like Pereira, not really. The world has been changed by him; our nation in particular has been altered beyond recognition. He will live on through those changes. Say what you will about the man and his crusade, there is no denying that through it America has been renewed, reborn and returned to the head of the geopolitical pack, leading a newer, braver world into the future…]

The future?

Writing the words, it dawns on Corelli that he has no future, that he is living on borrowed time. The sudden thought is a crushing one. Worse yet, Joe feels he does not deserve one, seeing as he has no dignity left him. Whatever sense of honor there might have been in the act of deposing a tyrant evaporated in the mushroom cloud that took the city of Santa Fe with Colonel Pereira. Corelli has nothing to offer the world in his defense. His own foolishness is poor proof to the world that he is not just another conspirator to mass murder.

One last duty to history remains him, one last act of human decency to offer his fellow man. Without hope of exoneration or even winning some slight sympathy for himself, Joe will make the world know his failing, his stupidity, yes; but Corelli also knows the who’s, the why’s and the how of the Santa Fe tragedy. At the very least, he owes the world an explanation, no matter how it may abuse his name through the ages to come.

[…It is a future that will, rightly, not have me in it. My part in the Santa Fe massacre, though small, is unforgivable. My shame is complete and I will not be so presumptuous as to count on the mercy of man or God. I wish only to make known the truth…]

18:17:16

Felix Culpa
insists it bears repeating: “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The facebook post creates another wave of excitement & head scratching around the world. Like the two previous postings, it is gone in sixty seconds.
Some tens of thousands of users are quick enough to skim through the profile before their machines go dark again, but none that do are any the wiser for what they glean from the site. At facebook headquarters, the CEO throws one of his stress balls at the wall in frustration. It strikes a framed picture of President O’Neill shaking his hand at a star-strewn, Hollywood fundraiser. The blow knocks the photo off the wall. The glass cracks when it hits the floor.

In DC, Ralph Golden puts the PalmPal down beside him on the bench. He laces his fingers & stretches his arms in front of him, palms out. His knuckles & elbows crack agreeably. He is sitting before the giant pipe organ of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The biggest performance of his life is about to start. In minutes Ralph will strike the first chord of the
Dominis dixit
, beginning the Christmas Midnight Mass. The country’s greatest gathering of Catholic choirs will join him, threading the throaty Gregorian chant through the song of the organ pipes. Microphones & cameras will gather the sounds & sights of the Mass. The music & images will be transmitted to the rings of satellites & beamed back down to earth. The outlawed Mass will be broadcast to the world, across every frequency, live & undisturbed in all its sacred glory!

“Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee,”
Massachusetts is leading the congregation through the third mystery of the Rosary, the birth of our Lord.
“Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen...”

The tide of history turned with the birth of Christ; the Nativity was the very point in time on which the cosmos wheeled & pivoted aright.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,”

In His lowly, pauper’s birth, Christ exemplified the virtue of poverty with which the third mystery of the Rosary is associated. Relinquishing the glories of heaven, Christ’s emptied Himself of divine power. This willful condescension & loving sacrifice foreshadowed His future self-impoverishment when Christ would surrender his life for the redemption of man.

“Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen…”

Ralph raises his head, stares absently through the rose window, breathing deep & regularly. The colors of the stained-glass blur & the voices in prayer
recede. His mind stills, empties & before long he is adrift in a timeless silence. The strangely weightless sensation is a familiar one. It is the hushed stillness felt before the rushing in of The Holy Spirit!

18:17:15

Monsignor Francis Green arrives at the Mass staging area by golf cart. There are three large tents set up behind the Peace Monument on the west end of the National Mall. One of the tents is for him and the fifty priests with which he will be concelebrating the Mass; one priest from every state of the union, chosen by lot from among the hundreds who volunteered to risk riot and arrest tonight. The other two tents are for the boys and girls, a pair from each state that will present the offerings. He can hear animated chatter from the children as they dress. The silence from the priests’ tent is deafening. The old priest suspects that the chatter and the silence have the same cause, the military seizure of Washington DC.

“Merry Christmas, my brothers in Christ,” he says, entering the priests’ tent. All fifty of his fellows seem to be present. They are young and old, well mixed of race and at present, in various stages of vesting.

They answer as one. “Merry Christmas, Monsignor!”

Two young priests, already fully vested, close in on either side of him and help Father Green off with his trench coat.

“Thank you,” he says to them. “How are you tonight?”

“Very good, Monsignor.”

“Doing well, Father.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“What do you want to do about the Mass tonight, Monsignor?” The dark and portly priest on his right asks.

“I thought maybe we could start with the Introit and proceed from there, Father Bertrand,” Monsignor Green answers with a slight smile.

Father Bertrand nods a few times, smiling sheepishly. A few of his brother-priests chuckle nervously. “Of course, Monsignor, I mean only… Did you notice the soldiers, Monsignor? The soldiers with crosses on their breastplates, did you see them?”