The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (31 page)

She sighed in frustration. It wasn’t surprising. They had taken off the cuffs on Mallory and her brother. They were hardly likely to do that if there was an easy way out of the shed. There was nothing else to do but to face facts: they were stuck.

“Anything?” Mallory called out softly.

“Not that I can see.”

“Look at these.”

Mallory had found a box of pamphlets and poorly printed newsletters. The light had strengthened enough to read the titles: The Plot Against Christianity, The Thirteenth Tribe, You Gentiles, White Power, The Talmud, The New Jewish Encyclopaedia, The Christian Patriot Crusader, The Klansman, Aryan Nations’ Newsletter, the Christian Vanguard Newsletter.

“What is this all about?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said, although she was starting to get a pretty good idea.

It was almost too late by the time she heard the noise from outside. There came the rattle of a metal bar being drawn through the brackets and then the click of the lock. Mallory stuffed the leaflets back into the box, and they hurried back to the wall and dropped to the floor beside Arthur.

The door swung open, and light swamped the darkness.

Ellie blinked furiously, trying to adjust to the sudden glare.

Morris Finch was silhouetted in the doorway. He was holding a shotgun.

“Morning,” he said. Was he aware of how foolish his good manners sounded? “Did you manage to get some sleep?”

Ellie stood again. “You want to think very carefully about what you’re doing. I’m a federal agent. You know the penalty for the murder of a federal law enforcement officer is death, don’t you?”

“No one’s talking about murder,” he said uncomfortably.

“No, but we
are
talking about kidnapping, right?”

“You just need to help us out.”

“Let us out. Let me have your van. I’ll see to it that you’re treated leniently.”

“Can’t do that. Too much has happened for that.”

“What then? It
is
murder, then?”

“No…”

“What else is there if you won’t let us out?”

“It’s not my decision to make.”

“Who, then?”

“The colonel,” he said, looking away. “He’s in charge.”

“Who?”

“Lundquist.”

“What do you mean, the colonel?”

Finch shrugged uncomfortably. The man’s eyes were dead, his pale face expressionless. Ellie stared at him and he stared back.

She tried again. “What do you mean?”

“He’s in charge.”

“Of
what?
”

Finch didn’t answer.

“Where is he?”

“In the woods.”

“Why?”

“Your friend, the Englishman, he’s out looking for him.”

Ellie felt a buzz of hope. “What happened?”

Finch took a step into the barn. He was morbidly obese, an enormous gold and silver belt buckle holding up jeans big as spinnaker sails. His doughy face became visible from out of the shadows. “He got away last night,” he said, his voice a whisper. “The colonel and the other men have gone to track him down.”

“You have to let us out, Mr. Finch.”

“How do you know my name?” he said, and then, looking at Mallory, he added, “She told you.”

He was a little simple, Ellie saw. She noted that for future reference.

“Milton will go and get help. If you haven’t freed us by the time the FBI gets here, there won’t be anything I can do to help you. You’ll be treated just like the others. Kidnapping of a federal officer, at minimum. You know how long they’ll lock you up for that?”

Finch seemed not to hear her. “Morten tricked him. He said they were in a car crash. He was going to be driven out of town and shot, but it didn’t go down like that. He worked it out, somehow, and he got away.”

“I know they tricked him. I was in the office when they left.” Ellie looked at Finch and saw the faraway look on his face. “Are you listening to me, Mr. Finch?”

He wasn’t listening. “There’s something you need to know. The officer who took Milton out there was Lars Olsen.”

“So?”

“You met his mother last night. Magrethe. Her and his father, Seth, they live out here.”

“And?”

“Milton killed Lars. There was a wreck up on the road out of town. They had to cut Lars out of it. He’s dead. Magrethe was all for coming in here and shooting all of you. She would have done it, too, except I managed to persuade her that it wasn’t a good idea. But I don’t know how long I can keep that up. What I’m saying is, you have to do what we want you to do. If you don’t, there won’t be anything I can do to help you. We have work to do, God’s work, and I won’t let anything stop that from being done, but I’d rather you didn’t have to die for it.”

“You can let us out,” Ellie repeated, but then they heard the sound of footsteps approaching the barn, and Finch looked at her with urgent eyes, imploring her to be quiet.

Magrethe Olsen arrived before she could press him any further. She was carrying another shotgun in the crook of her left arm, and she had a fierce expression on her face. She stepped inside, reached out for a light switch and slapped her hand against it. There were two naked bulbs suspended from the ceiling high above, and they flickered on. She shut the door and turned back to them.

“The man you were with in the woods. John Milton. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said.

“It’d be better if you played ball,” Finch warned them, his newly assertive tone more for Magrethe’s benefit than for theirs.

Mallory stepped forwards. “Why do you want to know?”

“Tell me.”

The girl had a gloating tone to her voice. “Giving you trouble, is he?”

Finch frowned at her. Ellie turned and gave the tiniest shake of her head. She could see from Finch’s discomfort and Magrethe’s anger that it was true, Milton was still out there, and for the first time in hours, she felt a flicker of optimism that maybe they were not completely lost.

Mallory didn’t take the hint. “He’ll give you more trouble by the time he’s through.”

Magrethe slapped Mallory across the face with the back of her right hand.

“Hey!” Arthur started to his feet, but Magrethe turned the shotgun towards him, and Mallory, panicked, reached for his sleeve and yanked him back behind her.

“We don’t know who he is,” Ellie said, trying to get the woman to turn her attention back onto her again.

Magrethe swung the shotgun around and aimed it straight at her chest. “You want to know what your friend Mr. Milton did last night? He killed my son. So you want to think very carefully, give it a lot of thought, how much lip you want to be giving me. I guess you found out plenty about him when you were out in the woods going after the boys. So you better tell me, right now, exactly who he is. What is he doing here?”

Ellie looked at the gun pointed right at her, and swallowed. Finch’s warning had not been gratuitous. There was an iron resolve behind the grimace of wrath that animated the woman’s face. She
would
shoot her. Ellie had seen that look before. It wasn’t a bluff. She had to give her something.

“He’s an outdoorsman. He said he’s been trekking through the countryside.”

“He’s more than that. He killed Lars, and then he got clean away into the woods.”

“He said he was a soldier.”

“Special Forces,” Mallory added gleefully.

“Shut up, Mallory,” Ellie said.

Magrethe jabbed forwards with the shotgun. “And?”

“She’s right. British Special Forces. He didn’t tell us anything else. He’s quiet.”

“You must have more than that.”

“No, that’s it. He’s private. Believe me, I was interested in knowing more about him after I saw how he brought in Callow and the others, but he wasn’t much into talking about himself.”

Magrethe frowned. “What you think, Morris?”

“I think she’s telling the truth,” he said, a little too quickly.

“And I think you’re getting soft in your old age, soft as shit. You want to remember what’s at stake here. This little bitch, she knows enough to put us all away for the rest of our lives. Shit, they all know enough. We’ve got God’s work to do, and, I don’t know, I been thinking about it overnight, and I’m not sure if I can think of one good reason why I don’t put bird shot in them right now and feed them to the pigs. You think of a reason why we better not do that?”

Ellie felt an emptiness in her gut. Again, she doubted it was a bluff.

Finch shuffled uncomfortably. “We don’t want to do that yet, do we? We got their friend running around in the woods, the Lord knows where he is, but it might be that we need them if he keeps causing trouble. What you’d call leverage. We shoot them now, and we don’t have any cards to play. If the colonel wanted them dead, he would’ve said, right?”

The woman’s frowned deepened into an irascible scowl, but he had persuaded her. She took a step back, to the door. “You get to live a little longer, but I’m telling you, if I hear so much as a mouse’s fart from in here, I’m going to come back and shoot all of you. I’ll be honest with you: I was going to do it this morning. Maybe I still will. You don’t want to push your luck.” She stepped back outside. “Morris, get your fat ass out here.”

The man looked into Ellie’s face, his expression eloquent with warning, and then he left the barn, too. Magrethe shut and locked the door, and then they heard the sound of the metal bar as it was slid into its brackets, sealing them inside.

“DON’T PROVOKE THEM.”

“I wasn’t,” Mallory said.

“You were. If you push it too far, they’ll shoot us.”

Mallory didn’t reply.

“I’m
serious
.”

“What’s happening?” Arty asked plaintively.

“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “Did they say anything to you when you were at the mine with them?”

“They talked about God a lot.”

“What about him?”

“They read out of the Bible at nights.”

“Can you remember what they said?”

“Some of it,” he said, his face brightening. “I got a good memory, everyone says so.”

“Tell us.”

“‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.’”

“Anything else?”

“‘These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.’”

Arthur was ready to go on when they all heard the low rumble of a big, powerful engine.

Mallory hurried across to the wall that faced in the direction that the noise was coming from.

“What are they doing?” Ellie said.

“The truck. Come and look.”

Arty helped Ellie to her feet, and they went across to the gap in the wall that Mallory was looking through. She put her eye to the wall and looked out into the yard.

The big Freightliner had been driven into the space between the two barns. There was a trailer, a forty-foot unit, with four men working around the back of it. A collection of large metal drums and barrels had been delivered to the yard on a tractor trailer. The Freightliner’s loading panel had been lowered, and the men were heaving the drums from the trailer into the semi. The drums were the same as the ones that she had seen in the barn.

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said.

She didn’t know, not for sure, but she had an idea.

“What’s in those barrels?”

“Can’t tell.”

She walked across to the barrels that she had seen earlier. Now that the light was better, she could make out the words.

NITROMETHANE 99.5% MIN

FLAMMABLE LIQUID

“What is it?”

“Fuel.”

“Why are they loading it into the back of the truck?”

She didn’t say, but she could guess. The Oklahoma City atrocity had been part of the syllabus she had studied at the academy in Quantico. She remembered reading the testimony from the trial of the bombers, and in particular, she remembered how they had constructed their massive truck bomb.

They had used a Ryder rental truck, a sixteen-foot City Van with a six thousand-pound capacity. The explosion that they had triggered was so big that it had turned a city block into a war zone.

The Freightliner outside was forty feet long. Nearly three times bigger. What was the capacity? Five times more? Ten times?

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ellie said.

MILTON RAN for another five hours, hardly stopping. He didn’t know how long it would take Lundquist to find another way up the ridge. He hadn’t seen an obvious path before he had made the climb. He worked on the assumption that the ascent and his bluff from the top had bought him another hour or, if he was lucky, another two. Lundquist would find his way up eventually, and those dogs would pick up his spoor again.

But that was all right.

He wanted them to.

He wanted Lundquist to follow him.

His path bisected the old railroad tracks that they had followed on the first journey to the mine. It was only the day before yesterday, but it already seemed like much longer ago. He passed the Little Carp River and the wreck of the Model A, and then after pounding uphill for another hour, he made the top of the rise and looked down at the Lake of the Clouds. It lived up to its name this time. The cloud bank was low, a carpet of greys and blacks that provided a ceiling just a few thousand feet over his head. Patches of mist and wispy cloud were lower still, almost on the water itself, and rain lashed into him. Visibility was limited.

That was all right, too.

If he could have had his way, it would have been even more limited.

They thought they were hunting him, but they were wrong.

He started down the slope.

THE ENCAMPMENT did not look as if it had been disturbed in the time that he had been away. The remains of the fire were undisturbed, cold ash that had been rendered into muddy sludge by the rain. The doors to the huts were still shut tight, and when Milton opened them, the insides were just as he remembered them. Nothing had been moved in the two days since he had been here.

The inside of the store shed was gloomy, and he squinted into the murkiness as he assessed the contents. He remembered seeing a green first aid box and it was still there. He opened it: there were fresh dressings, bandages and, best of all, two bottles of pills and a tube of ointment. The first bottle was labelled Amoxi-Boll. It was amoxicillin trihydrate, a broad-spectrum antibiotic that he knew would help with his arm. The other bottle contained ibuprofen. The tube was labelled Bactroban. It contained mupirocin, an antibacterial ointment.