The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) Read online

  “Wouldn’t be a problem if they did. I put out the APB, called state, said that he killed the sheriff, Private Olsen, Private Pelham, and the agent. As far as they’re concerned, this is a multiple cop killer. Most likely, they shoot him on sight and solve this for us. If they don’t, if he somehow manages to surrender, he doesn’t know anything about all this”—he waved his hand at the armaments at the back of the barn—“or the truck and what we’re going to do with it, so he can’t do anything about that. If he denies he killed those men, then it’s the word of a drifter who ignored Lester’s instructions to stay out of town and then beat up two tourists in Johnny’s against the word of the local police. No, sir. How’s that going to play out for him?”

  “Badly,” Forshaw called out.

  “That’s right, Barry. It’s going to play out badly.”

  The men and women nodded in agreement. Lundquist could see that they were impressed. They knew that he was clever and cunning, and they knew that he was a strong leader. They knew that he was filled with the spirit. They all knew it. Lundquist got a thrill of excitement from seeing their reaction, just like he always did. God had chosen him for this responsibility and the spirit had filled his soul, like water pouring into an empty vessel. He was overflowing with it.

  “What about the VP?” Paula McMahon called out.

  “What about him?”

  “It’s soon, right. Three days he’s coming. This has got to affect it?”

  “No,” Lundquist said. “It does not.”

  The vice president was campaigning in Minnesota over the course of the next week. Lundquist had gotten hold of his schedule from a buddy over in the Minneapolis PD and knew that he was going to be stopping for a photo opportunity at a little truck stop on the outskirts of the city. Mom-and-pop kind of place, lots of open space around it, difficult for the secret service to lock down. The kind of place where it would be almost impossible to stop a man who was full of the Word of God and not afraid of dying.

  “I don’t want to sound like I’m doubting you, Colonel, but how can you be sure?”

  “It’s not going to be relevant, Paula. Because we’re going to have ourselves a little hunt.”

  He pointed to the back of the room, where Seth Olsen was bringing out the weapons that they had been assembling with the money that the boys had been liberating from the banks. They had a hundred grand’s worth of equipment and ordinance: automatic rifles, carbines, shotguns, pistols. Thousands of rounds of ammo. “Get yourself equipped. We’re going to make three squads. Each squad will be led by one of the best woodsmen we got. Jesse Kay?”

  Kay was a tracker, short and wiry as a speed freak. “Yes, sir?”

  “You take ten men and go west into the woods from South Boundary Road.”

  Kay saluted him.

  “Ben Teale?”

  “Yes, sir?” Teale was a park ranger. No one knew more about the woods than he did.

  “You take the next ten, go up to Little Carp River Road and then cut in to the east.”

  Teale saluted.

  “Walker Price, you and me get the last ten. We’re going in the woods where he went in.”

  He looked out at them again. They were men and women of God, His Holy brigade, and they were going to do great things in His name. Satan had wrapped his arms around their country and, if left unchecked, he would drag them all down with him back to Hell. Lundquist was not going to let that happen. The thought of their glory, soon to be achieved, filled him with pride, and he swallowed down the emotion that had caught in his throat. He raised his voice.

  “In case you need reminding, I’m going to tell you what’s at stake tonight. America has drifted far from the Founding Fathers’ dream of a white, Christian nation. Jews and non-whites are defiling the Promised Land. Life has become bitter. The farms and factories are closing, small towns are emptying, the fabric of society is shredding. Crime goes unpunished; school prayers are unsaid. Divorce, abortion, drug abuse, and homosexuality threaten our way of life. In the cities, people get rich manipulating paper while farmers are forced to sell their crops for less than it costs to coax them from the soil. The Zionist Occupation Government conspires to rule the earth. The media pours out a steady stream of filth and deception. And they have the audacity to accuse people like us of trying to overthrow the government? We just want it back!”

  There were exclamations of “Yes!” and cries of “Say on!” A woman, her arms upraised, looked faint. Lundquist felt the sweat on his face, left it untouched and pulled down his right sleeve to reveal his tattoo. He turned his wrist so that it faced the others, clenched his fist and raised his arm.

  The others mirrored his salute.

  He recited the words of Revelations 1:3 that he had chosen as their mantra: “‘Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.’”

  The others responded, chanting out the final words: “For the time is at hand.”

  “‘A sword, a sword is sharpened and also polished.’”

  The others joined in with him, their left hands pressed over their hearts, reciting the scripture with lusty enthusiasm. “‘Sharpened to make a dreadful slaughter, polished to flash like lightning. And He has given it to be polished, that it may be handled; This sword is sharpened and it is polished to be given into the hand of the slayer.’”

  “And what did Jesus say?”

  “‘Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth. I came not to bring peace but a sword.’”

  “And who are we?”

  “The Sword of God.”

  “This is the word of the Lord.”

  “Praise be to God.”

  “Amen.”

  “Amen!”

  They took communion after that, passing around a tray of shot glasses filled with grape juice and tiny rectangular wafers. When they had finished, there were cheers and shouts of excitement. Lundquist saw the fire in their eyes. They would do their duty by God. They were like a pack of wild dogs, he thought, and he was about to unleash them.

  Chapter 27

  MILTON HAD entered the forest from a different point than the previous day, and he was soon lost. It was thickly wooded and on a slight incline, a gentle slope that he could soon feel in the back of his calves as he ascended. It was rocky underfoot, ridges that tore out of the greensward and shallow ravines and crevasses that plunged down almost without warning. The land reminded him of Kosovo, of the time he had dropped behind enemy lines with orders to melt into the night until a particular target revealed himself. He would take his shot and be absorbed into the background again.

  Milton was comfortable in this kind of terrain. His history with the regiment had included weeks spent living off the land. He had trained in the jungle in Borneo. There was nothing here that was unfamiliar or daunting to him.

  He kept running, his legs burning and the pain in his left arm pulsing every time his feet struck the earth. At least it had stopped raining, and above him, the clouds had parted to admit a little silvery moonlight. Not much, but enough for him to see where he was going.

  He followed the terrain as it led upwards. He needed to climb, to get as high as he could before he stopped. He needed to gain his bearings. He needed to work out how far he was from the field and which direction he should take.

  He could feel the blood against his skin, a wet slickness that had soaked through his shirt, the curtain that he had wrapped around his arm, and into the lining of his jacket. Branches slapped and scraped, brambles gouged him as he ploughed between bushes, his face soon lacerated by a network of tiny cuts. He broke free from the tree line into a space that had been logged, a collection of stumps and trunks that had been stacked, ready to be collected. Ahead of him was a steep rise up to a plateau, a climb on a shifting trail of loose rocks and gravel. He sprinted at it, managed the first few steps until his momentum was halted, and then bent to power up, pushing his feet into the unreliable give of the surface, his han
ds pressed into the sharp stones to help keep him upright. He churned upwards, an avalanche of scree scattering behind him. The footing became firmer the nearer to the top he climbed and, eventually, he was able to stand again. He stopped, his muscles burning and his breath coming in hungry gulps.

  He turned and looked back in the direction he had come from. The forest stretched out beyond him to the east and west, as far as the eye could see in each direction. He knew from his earlier journey that there were fire breaks and small roads cut into the trees, but they were impossible to see from here. The terrain continued to climb to the north, the trees becoming ever more sparse the higher the ground rose. He turned to the south and saw the beginning of the forest, the field of corn beyond it and, behind that, the line of the railroad and the hazy lights of Truth. He squinted to the southeast, but it was too dark to make out the Stantons’ Winnebago.

  He waited for another minute, his hands on his knees as he filled his lungs with oxygen. He turned and looked north to the shallow hills and peaks that characterised this part of Michigan. He needed to keep moving. He needed to put some distance between himself and Lundquist and his men. He needed to get as far away from the field of corn as he could.

  He saw the line of a stream, five hundred yards away to the northeast. He headed for it. The clouds rolled in again, and soon all he could see were the outlines of the larger rocks and the bunched trunks of the trees. The stream was small, little more than a trickle, maybe even run-off that had found its way into an old winterbourne. He stayed close to the water, stopping every now and again to listen, but all he could hear were the noises of the natural world around him: the chirping of crickets, the shrieking call of a nocturnal predator high above, the gentle tinkle of the water as it passed over bedrock. He wondered whether Lundquist would have access to dogs and, assuming that he might, he ploughed through the water, hoping to mask his scent. He leapt out on the opposite bank and pressed ahead.

  The terrain descended into a low open hollow, and gravity pulled Milton down in a headlong plunge, his feet sinking to the ankles in the loose shale. He raced at speed into the base of the depression, catching his right foot in an uncovered branch, thrusting out his left and barely managing to scramble away without falling. He was sweating heavily, and his arm throbbed. The stream wound its way through the hollow, and he followed it, the ground becoming soft and boggy underfoot. It turned this way and that until it led up the opposite slope. The incline grew steeper and steeper until the water was passing between two steep shoulders of rock.

  There was no point in continuing. This would do. Milton walked to the edge of the water and splashed it across his face for a moment. He was already sodden from the earlier rain, but the water was fresh and invigorating, and it washed the sweat, blood, and muck away.

  He looked at his surroundings. The angle of the ravine was steep, but it looked as if there was a trail that picked a path along the more accessible portions. The path ahead was hemmed in by trees, mountain ash, beech and oak, and the cover from the leaves was dense. He walked to the rock face on his side of the river, followed it up and, after twenty paces, found an outcrop that reached out to provide a natural ceiling.

  He hurried across to it.

  THE BREAK in the storm had been temporary and, now that the thunderhead had rolled back across the moon, the rains were falling once again. He clambered up to the rocky outcrop. The ravine bulged outwards here, and the face was twenty feet from the water’s edge. There was a carpet of scree beneath the ceiling that was, at least where it was close to the overhang, reasonably dry. The outcrop itself was sheltered by a canopy of leaves from large red and silver maple trees, and a comfortable nook was fashioned between two large dogwood bushes. Milton decided that the spot was as good as it was likely to get, and besides, he was tired and starting to feel very cold.

  And his arm ached. It really ached, but he didn’t think it was getting any worse. It could wait. His priority had to be shelter and then fire. He needed to get warm and dry his wet clothes. He would risk hypothermia if he didn’t.

  Shelter first.

  He went back down the slope into the trees and located three six-foot branches that had fallen to the ground. They were reasonably straight, and notched with nubs and small branches all the way down their lengths. He took the bag and removed the kitchen knife that he had taken from the RV, using it to saw into the ends of two of the branches, then used his hands to split them apart into shallow Vs. He rested those two branches against the rock wall and slotted the third branch into the grooves that he had cut. He used the nylon cord to lash the central pole to the struts and then stood the frame against the wall at a sixty degree angle, rolling two small boulders to provide stability at the base and a head start on the thatching he was going to have to do. He went back down to the woodland floor and collected a double armful of coniferous branches and large leaves. He started at the bottom of the frame, above the log, and worked up, thatching the smaller branches and then stuffing the holes with the vegetation. He returned to the wood again. A large pine had fallen, and since the wood inside rotted faster than the bark outside, there were large plates of it that could be easily removed and used as tiles. It took him thirty minutes, but, when he was done, he had shelter from the rain.

  Now, fire.

  He went back down to the trees and gathered tinder: dry grass he found in the lee of a tree, dead cleavers, nettles and parsley, honeysuckle bark, pine needles, fluffy seed heads, dry lichens and mosses. He returned to the outcrop and used the knife to dig out a shallow fire pit, lining it with small rocks and handfuls of scree.

  He took the Beretta from his pocket. One round left. Hypothermia was his most immediate danger, and he couldn’t waste time waiting for a fire to start. He would have to sacrifice the bullet. He released the magazine, racked the slide, and the round fell into his hand. He gathered up the tinder and fashioned it into a nest and added a squirt of the alcohol-based sanitising gel. He used his knife to prise off the end of the bullet and poured out the gunpowder onto a dry shard of wood. He placed the tinder over the gunpowder and used his fire steel to drop a cascade of sparks onto it. The gunpowder fizzed and spat, and a flame caught hold. He curled his hands around it, feeling the negligible fire on his calloused skin, shielding and shepherding it, and then, as it took better hold, he added bigger pieces of kindling, careful not to smother it, nursing the flame at each step until it was strong enough to take the dry twigs that he had scavenged. It took him thirty minutes, but when he was satisfied, the fire was healthy, and it radiated a strong heat.

  All right, he thought. Now the arm.

  He took off his jacket and sweater and unwound the torn curtain. He set up the flashlight so that the beam played back against him. He could examine the wound more carefully now. The bullet had passed through his bicep and left through his tricep. That was fortunate on the one hand, not so fortunate on the other. While there was no slug to remove, the journey through his skin and muscle had slowed the bullet down, the friction exerting enough force to start spinning it. The entry wound was neat and tidy, a perfect little blackened circle that would heal on its own with no need for any serious ministration on his part. The exit wound, though, the round punching out more slowly and rotating as it did so, was wide and messy.

  He went to the water’s edge and rinsed out the grit and debris and, for a moment at least, he numbed the pain. He slathered sanitising gel over the two wounds, wincing from the sudden sting. He reached into the bag and took out the sealed plastic container that held the first-aid kit. There was a needle and thread, but he knew the wound was not ready to be sutured yet. It would be better for it to be left open so that if it did become infected, the pus could drain away. As long as it could drain, it was unlikely to become life-threatening, regardless of how unpleasant it might look or smell. He unfolded one of the dressings and laid it across the entry wound. He attached it with a roll of adhesive tape and then repeated the procedure for the exit wound.

>   Milton spread the remaining ferns on the ground and lay down on them, feeling the warmth on his skin. The smoke from the fire issued out of the chimney he had left against the rock, but he wasn’t concerned. It would be invisible in the dark, and the glow of the flames would be masked by the thatch and hidden in the cleft of the ravine. He looked at the flickering glow as it cast patterns against the moss-covered rock, picking out a glittering vein of quartz that ran down from the top and disappeared into the scree. He added more wood, raising the fire to a happy blaze.

  He closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept for nearly forty hours. He needed to rest. He trusted his body to wake him with the dawn, his habit for twenty years, and then, the fire warm on his face, he was quickly submerged by sleep.

  Chapter 28

  MORTEN LUNDQUIST saw his son at the same time as he heard the barking from the field behind him. Michael had built a bonfire, and he was sitting in front of it, cross-legged, facing into the woods. He had a rifle resting across his lap. Lundquist tramped on, leading his squad of six men out of the field and down to the fringe of the woods. The fire was warm.

  “Morning, Pops,” Michael said to him. “Everything all right?”

  “All good.”

  The men settled around it, some extending their hands to the flames to drive away the cold damp of the early morning.

  “Any sign of him?”

  “He hasn’t come out, least not this way.”

  Lundquist grunted, not ready to start praising his boy after the eternal fuck up he had brought down on them all by letting the Englishman and the agent round them up in the first place.

  The sound of barking drew closer.

  Michael looked up.

  “It’s Walker,” Lundquist said.

  He swivelled and looked over his shoulder. He could see Walker Price coming towards them on the track that cut through the cornfield, his three hunting dogs surging ahead, straining at the master leash. Walker was a lieutenant in the militia, a good and trustworthy man. He was a hunter, too, and a good one. His dogs had keen noses, and he knew that they would be able to track the Englishmen wherever he went. They would give them the advantage in finding him. He supposed that he could have assigned Walker to another team, but, he admitted, he wanted Milton all for himself. God willing, he wanted to be the one to make an example of him. It would be perfect, a chance to underline his leadership just before they started to follow God's word.