The Sign

“Okay, bring it down so it’s by the lower end of the sign and take it around the stadium counterclockwise,” he told Rydell. “And let me know the second you get any interference.”

“Got it,” Rydell acknowledged.

OUT IN THE RED LOT, Rydell and Dalton watched the laptop’s screen breathlessly as the Draganflyer dived into the stadium and circled the sign. All around them, clusters of people were huddled around those who’d brought portable TVs with them, watching the sign in breathless awe.

“Here we go,” Dalton mumbled, nervousness catching in his throat.

MATT STRUGGLED to keep the tiny contraption in view as it began its wide circular sweep around the inside of the stadium. The cell phone was glued to his ear and he could feel his pulse thumping against his cheek. Gracie was on alert too, scanning the entrance behind them, still wary of Ogilvy, uncomfortable with his presence there.

Across the stadium, the crowd was still enthralled by the sight before them. The sign was just hovering there, a gargantuan ball of shimmering energy. Matt’s gaze kept getting drawn to it. It was incredibly hard to resist staring at it, and as soon as his eyes strayed over to it, he’d pull them away, back to the Draganflyer’s last position, trying to stay focused on the tiny black dot.

The skycam had almost reached the southern tip of the east bank of suites when Rydell’s voice shot into his ear.

“We’ve got something. Shit, we’re losing it,” he shouted.

Matt’s neck flinched forward, as if the extra couple of inches would make a difference. He saw the skycam go into a wobble, then it just arced down violently, as if it had suddenly lost all power or been smacked down by a big invisible swatter, and dropped like a rock.

Matt’s heart skipped a beat as he saw it plummet, but his eyes raced back up and lasered in on the suites that faced its last stable position. They were the very last ones, at the southeast corner of the stadium.

“Come on,” he yelled to Gracie, grabbing her hand and bolting back onto the concourse, racing for the escalators.

“SHIT,” Dalton yelled as he lost control of the Draganflyer, his heart pounding, his face clenched in panic, his fingers desperately playing the joysticks in search of a reaction.

The image on the laptop’s screen fizzled out and was replaced by gray static, its accompanying hiss just making things worse.

“It’s gonna fucking kill someone,” he blurted—then the image on the screen suddenly flickered back to life. It was unnerving—a plunging point-of-view from the camera as it dived at a rapidly growing crowd.

“Pull it up,” Rydell yelled.

“I’m trying,” Dalton fired back. The people in the camera’s sights grew bigger, their eyes shot wide as they spotted the alien device hurtling toward them and their faces went taut with alarm—and then it came back to life and swooped away just over their heads, avoiding them and pulling up until it just hovered in place by the stadium’s roof.

Dalton let out a huge breath of relief and darted a look of sheer delight at Rydell. “Whose brilliant idea was that?” he asked, his voice shaky.

Rydell gave him a big pat on the shoulder. “Great job, man. Great job. Now get it out of there and let’s check out that building.”

A crescendo of excitement erupted around them. Rydell and Dalton moved back from the SUV’s trunk and stared up at the top of the stadium as a wave of gasps rolled across the parking lot.

The sign was now rising slowly into the night sky, a curved sliver of light peeking out above the stadium’s roof.

MATT LEAPT OFF the escalator onto level two and raced across the landing area that led to the entrance of the suites. Gracie was trailing close behind. The crowds were gone, there was no one around. Everyone was watching the miracle taking place in the arena. The bouncers were also gone, probably watching alongside the guests in one of the suites.

They were coming in from the north side, and the target suite was all the way down the concourse that ran behind the suites, at the south end of the bank. As Matt charged down the curving concourse, two things happened: He thought something must have changed in the arena as a chorus of oohs and aahs rippled through the suites’ doors. And he saw a man walking his way, heading out of the suites area just as Gracie yelled out, “Matt,” from behind him.

The guy had graying hair, rimless glasses, a light-colored suit, and looked slick. The recognition was mutual as Ogilvy flinched with surprise, but he didn’t have time to do much else before Matt just slammed right into him without slowing down, grabbing him by the arms and spinning him and shoving him up hard against the concourse wall. Ogilvy let out a pained gasp as Matt’s weight crashed into his back and winded him. Matt felt his wound light up with a spike of pain, but ignored it and belted Ogilvy with a punch to the kidneys. The man buckled forward under the pain. Matt was in overdrive. He didn’t let up for a second. He just grabbed Ogilvy’s right arm, yanked it way up high behind him until it almost snapped, then shoved him forward and led him down the concourse at a half jog.

“Which one are they in?” he rasped.

Ogilvy’s head was lolling left and right, like a boxer with cut eyes, teetering on his last legs.

“Which one?” Matt asked again, still rushing ahead. He knew the suite he wanted was one of the last ones in the row and didn’t really need Ogilvy to answer. He figured the target suite wouldn’t be like all the others. They all had their doors wide open, the clusters of people inside them all crowding the front barlike counter. Maddox’s boys wouldn’t be as welcoming, and their suite would have its door shut. Maybe even someone outside, on guard. Within seconds, they’d rounded the concourse. Sure enough, the last suite had its door closed. Matt pushed Ogilvy up against the door and rapped on it firmly while twisting Ogilvy’s arm right up so his shoulder blade was about to pop out.

“Get them to open up, nice and friendly,” Matt hissed into his ear.

“Yeah?” came a low grunt from inside.

Ogilvy swallowed hard, then blurted, “It’s me, Ogilvy,” trying to sound unruffled but not quite pulling it off.

The guy behind the door must have hesitated, as he didn’t open immediately, then the door cracked open. Matt lifted Ogilvy off his feet the second he heard the lock jangle, ripping his shoulder tendons in the process, and shoved him against the door like a vertical battering ram. The door slammed backward, hitting the guy standing behind it in the face. The doors to the suites were rock-solid and soundproof. The impact sounded like the guy had been pounded with a baseball bat. It knocked him off his feet and sent his gun flying out of his hand and tumbling heavily to the ground. Matt stormed in, keeping Ogilvy in front of him like a shield. His eyes registered two other guys in there, in addition to the guy on the ground. They were waiting for him and had silenced handguns trained on the door. Matt didn’t slow down. He kept charging forward, holding Ogilvy in front of him, flying across the room in five long strides. Ogilvy jerked and flailed as several rounds cut into him, but the shooters didn’t have that much time to fire before Matt was right on top of them. He launched Ogilvy at the one dead ahead of him and leapt across at the other shooter, catching his firing arm with his hands and pushing his gun away while landing a heavy elbow across his jaw. He heard it snap as he spun around, still gripping the guy’s gun wrist with both hands and tracking it around through ninety degrees until it was facing the other shooter, who was busy pushing Ogilvy’s bloodied body off of him. The two silenced handguns pirouetted around in unison to face each other, only the one under Matt’s control got there a split second earlier and he squeezed hard against the guy’s trigger finger. The handgun belched a round that caught the opposing shooter squarely in the neck. The guy recoiled as a burst of blood geysered between his shoulder blades, just as he let off a round of his own that whizzed by Matt and buried itself somewhere in the wall behind him.

Matt felt the shooter behind him squirm. He slammed his elbow back into him, mashing his throat. He felt the shooter’s body go rigid as the man convulsed in a pained gurgle—then Gracie yelled, “Matt,” again. He spun his gaze back toward the entrance to the suite and to the guy who’d taken the door in the face. Half his face was glowing an angry purply-red. It had to hurt. He was on his knees, straightening up, looking across at Matt. He’d just recovered his gun when Gracie screamed and just hurled herself at him, tackling him from the side. The shooter reacted fast—he just whipped up his arm and deflected her, sending her crashing against the wall behind him, but it bought Matt the precious seconds he needed to play puppet master again and raise the arm of the shooter behind him and fire off a couple of rounds into purple-face.

He took a second to catch his breath and let his heartbeat go back to something that vaguely resembled normal, then wrenched the handgun out of the shooter’s hand, kicked him aside, and pushed himself to his feet. Gracie stood up, her face locked in shock, and stepped over to join him.

He cast his eyes around the suite, and a grim realization hit him. There was no transmitter in the room. No control master board. And no Danny either. He thought back to Ogilvy wandering around the stadium, to the shooters’ position when he’d come through the door. It had been a trap. They were waiting for him, using Ogilvy to draw him in. The transmitter had to be nearby—the signal had come from that general area—but it didn’t matter anymore. He was sure they wouldn’t have risked having Danny inside the stadium. He had to be outside somewhere. That is, if he wasn’t controlling the transmitter from across the state, or the whole country, for that matter.

Matt’s heart sank. He frowned as Gracie took a couple of steps and looked out through the suite’s floor-to-ceiling glass pane, into the heart of the arena. He edged over and joined her. The sign had risen through the open roof. Its bottom edge was just beyond the tangent to the roofline, dipping into the cube of empty air over the stadium floor. Father Jerome was still on the stage, his arms outstretched, mumbling a prayer. And every single person in the stadium was still standing.

A warble snapped his attention. It was Dalton’s cell phone. Rydell was calling.

He picked it up.

“We think we’ve got them,” Rydell blurted out breathlessly. “Get your ass out here. They’re here.”

Chapter 77

“Where? What’s going on?” Matt asked, his voice racing. “There’s a tall building that backs up against the entrance of the red lot on the north side,” Rydell said. “Might be a hotel, I’m not sure. It’s got a pool on one side and a parking lot all around it. There are four guys on the roof. They’ve got the launchers.”

The words were like an afterburner to his senses. He glanced out the glass wall. The sign was hovering over the stadium now. His mind rocketed back to Rydell telling him it could stay up around fifteen minutes before it burned out. He knew it wasn’t long before it would vanish, and once that happened, the crew with the launchers would also be gone. Taking Danny—if he was there—with them.

“Where are you?” Matt asked.

“At the east end of the lot, by the Center.”

Matt was recalling the park’s layout from the website they’d studied the night before. “So if I come out the north gate—”

Rydell jumped in. “Just head straight up across the lot and you’ll hit it, it’s about five hundred yards away.”

“I’m on my way. Keep this line open and keep me posted.” He turned to Gracie, his face alight with hope. “They’ve got a fix on the launchers. I’m going after them.” He stepped over to the downed shooters, retrieved two of their handguns, and stuffed them under his belt. He pulled his shirt out and let it hang down to cover them. “Come on. You get back to the car and wait with the guys.”

“You can’t go after them alone,” she protested.

“Don’t really have a choice,” he told her. “We’ve got to go.”

OUT IN THE RED LOT, Rydell and Dalton stood transfixed before the laptop’s screen. The Draganflyer was in a holding pattern about two hundred and fifty feet over the target, its night-vision lens on full zoom. They were probably the only people for miles not to be staring at the blazing sign that had now cleared the stadium’s roof and was hovering in the night sky above it. It was a mesmerizing, awesome sight, visible for miles around. The thousands of onlookers in the parking lots and on the jammed freeways were just rooted in place, utterly enthralled by the otherworldly apparition.

Rydell checked his watch. He knew what was coming, and sure enough, it happened almost on cue. The sign pulsed slightly, like a beating heart, then just faded out like a snuffed-out candle. The crowd reacted with an audible collective intake of breath and scattered cries of “Praise the Lord” and “Amen.”

He glanced at the screen. The guys on the roof were moving fast now, packing their gear. He knew how efficient they’d be. They didn’t surprise him. Within a minute, they’d stowed the launch tubes and the rest of their gear and disappeared into the building.

“Come on,” he mumbled, almost to himself, and craned his neck, angling to get a better view of the stadium’s north entrance, as if he could spot Matt, but the entrance was too far and his sight line was blocked by all kinds of tall vehicles. He glanced across at the north end of the lot and the big building that loomed over it, behind a row of trees. He shook his head ruefully, and made a quick decision.

“The guns are in the glove box, right?” he asked Dalton.

Before Dalton could answer, he’d already scurried over and pulled out the Para-Ordnance.

“What are you doing?” Dalton felt a stab of fear at the sight of Rydell holding the silver handgun.

Rydell flicked his eyes across at the stadium, then up at the building, then back at Dalton. He handed him his phone. “I’ve got to help Matt. Stay with the car.” And before he could object, Rydell was gone.

MATT EXPLODED out of the stadium’s north entrance and just plowed on, with Gracie close behind. He reached the lot and stopped, shot a quick glance across the cars to get his bearings, and pointed Gracie in the direction Rydell had said the big SUV was parked.

“They should be around there somewhere, at the back.”

She nodded, and he was gone.

He sprinted through the rows of cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks, cutting around the clusters of revellers, twisting and ducking and weaving like a wide receiver charging the end zone and looking for his own Hail Mary pass. One and a half minutes later, he saw the last row of cars and the low perimeter fence of the lot. He threaded his way through a couple of camper vans and reached the fence, then stopped in his tracks at the sight of Rydell, waiting for him, breathing heavily. He joined him, catching his breath, nodding a question.

“Figured you could use some help,” Rydell said, lifting his jacket to expose the handgun he had tucked under his belt.

Matt tugged his shirttail up to give Rydell a glance of his own arsenal and gave him a slight grin. He held the phone up to his ear.

“Anything?” he asked.

Dalton’s voice came back. “No movement, but the lot on the south side of the building is crawling with people. They’ve got to have their car on the other—hang on.” He stumbled. “Okay, we’ve got one, two, three—four guys, coming out of the east face of the building and heading for what looks like—it’s a van, by the trees in the northeast corner of the lot.”

Matt snapped the phone shut and stuffed it in his back pocket. “You know how to use it?” he asked, pointing at Rydell’s silver handgun.

Rydell nodded easily. “I’ll manage.”

Matt flicked him an okay nod and took off for the trees.

They hurdled the low fence bordering the parking lot and cut across the scrub and the thicket of trees that led to the building. A neon sign informed Matt that it was a Holiday Inn. He led Rydell to the right, past the pool area and its terrace café. It was teeming with people, hotel guests who were now discussing the sign’s appearance animatedly. They kept going, rounding the hotel and reaching its front parking lot.

Matt hugged the side of the building and looked out. The lot was wide and had poor lighting, and its far reaches were bathed in near-darkness. There was a row of cars, then a lane, then two rows of cars, another lane, and one last row of cars. He could make out the roof of the van all the way down, on the far right. It was parked facing the hotel, with its loading bay backing up against another thicket of trees that separated the hotel from the next property. He looked a question at Rydell. Rydell nodded his confirmation that it was the right van. Matt saw movement around it, figures silhouetted in the night. Saw one of them lifting a big tube and handing it to someone out of sight. He looked to Rydell again for confirmation. Rydell nodded. They were Maddox’s men. Loading up.

Matt felt a tightening in his gut. Danny could be right there. Less than fifty yards away.

He pulled out his guns and handed one to Rydell.

“This one will be quieter than that cannon you’ve got there. Go wide that way,” he whispered, gesturing for Rydell to move in from the left. “I’ll cut across from the right. And stay low.”

Rydell confirmed with a slight nod and slipped away in a low crouch.

Matt crept closer to the van. He hugged the cars, slithering through the narrow gaps between them, his eyes locked on the target. It was a Chevy work van. The big, long-wheelbase model. White and anonymous. He heard one of its doors clang shut and saw one of the men stepping toward the back of the van. The others were out of sight behind it. Matt moved in closer, sucked in a deep breath, and rose just enough to clear the roof of the car in front of him, gripping his handgun in a two-handed stance, ready to pump a couple of silenced bullets into Maddox’s men—but there was no one there. They were gone. His nerves bristled as he swept his gun left and right, his eyes and ears at Defcon five—then he heard a rustle off to the right, in the trees beyond the van, and saw a shooter emerge, pulling Rydell along with him, a silenced handgun pressed against the billionnaire’s temple.

Matt flinched, unsure about what to do—just as something hard nudged him in the back.

“Drop it,” the voice said. “Nice and slow.”

Matt’s heart cratered. They’d been expected. For a split second, the notion of making a move sparked in his mind, but the guy behind him cut it short with a sudden, hard punch to Matt’s ear that sent him down to his knees. He dropped his gun, and his vision went blurry. He stayed down for a moment, waiting for it to settle, and through his bleary veil, he glimpsed the vague outline of someone climbing out of the back of the van. It was Maddox, and—he wasn’t alone. He was dragging someone out of the van with him, yanking him by the neck, a handgun pressed against it.

Matt squinted, straining to cut through the fog in his head, but even before it lifted, the recognition was instant.

It was Danny.

He was there. He was actually there.

And very much alive.

Matt’s insides cartwheeled. He pushed himself to his feet, and the adrenaline boost coursing through him brought Danny’s face racing into focus. He gave Matt a pained smile. Matt nodded back and couldn’t suppress a broad smile, even though things weren’t looking too promising for them.

Maddox acknowledged Matt’s presence with a shrug, but his eyes registered genuine surprise when he saw Rydell.

“Well, what do you know,” he quipped, clearly pleased with the unexpected presence of the tycoon. “And people say there is no Santa.”

GRACIE FLARED. “What are they doing?”

The image on the laptop’s screen showed the two figures they knew to be Rydell and Matt putting their guns down and stepping back from the van in defeat. Seconds later, two other figures appeared from the van, tightly bunched, one behind the other.

“Is that a gun?” she asked, fear catching in her throat.

“Hang on,” Dalton said. He fingered the joysticks expertly and brought the Draganflyer down slightly closer for a better look.

The top view of Maddox’s extended arm grew bigger on the screen. And there was no mistaking the gun that was staring Matt and Rydell in the face.

DANNY GRUNTED against Maddox’s tight hold. “I’m sorry, bro,” he told Matt. “I couldn’t warn you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He saw that Danny’s hands were tied together with plastic flex cuffs.

Danny glared at Rydell. “What’s he doing here?” he asked Matt.

“His penance,” Matt replied flatly.

Danny shook his head sardonically. His stare burned into Rydell. “Too little, too late, don’t you think? Or do you also have the power to raise the dead?”

Rydell kept quiet.

Maddox swung his right arm straight out, flicking his handgun in a horizontal arc from Matt to Rydell and back.

“Sorry to have to cut this happy reunion short, boys,” he said tersely, “but we’ve got to get going. So how about you say good-bye to your pain-in-the-ass brother one last time, Danny-boy.” He settled his gun sight on Matt and gave him a curious, almost respectful nod. “It’s been good knowing you, kid. You did really well.”

“Not well enough,” Matt retorted gruffly.

“No, believe me, you did real well,” he insisted.

Maddox raised the gun a couple of inches for a head shot, no emotion whatsoever registering on his face. Matt’s heart stopped at the thought of a bullet shredding into him—then Maddox whipped back as something slammed into him from out of nowhere, something big and black that rocketed out of the night sky with a stealthy whoosh and batted his arm off savagely to one side. His gun went flying off as Maddox howled, the chopper’s carbon fiber blades slicing through skin and muscle, and he fell to the ground in a burst of dark blood.

Matt was already moving as the Draganflyer crashed heavily into the van’s open door—he rammed his elbow back into the shooter behind him, yelling, “Go,” to Rydell as he spun around and pushed the man’s gun hand away while battering him with a cross that ripped his jaw out of its sockets and sent him tumbling to the ground. Matt went down with him, fighting for the gun, but the man’s hand was like a vise around his automatic and he wouldn’t let go—they wrestled for it like starved, rabid dogs fighting over a bone, until the gun spat out a shot that caught the shooter in the gut and he flinched back in agony.

Rydell wasn’t as quick or as effective—he was grappling with his shooter, his hands clasped around the man’s wrist, struggling for the gun. The shooter pulled him in and suckered him into a head butt that caught Rydell flat across the bridge of his nose. Rydell’s legs caved in and he ragdolled. Matt rose in time to see the shooter spin around, his gun rising to align itself on Matt—

—then the shooter jerked back to the tune of a couple of silenced coughs. Matt blinked. It took him a second to realize what had happened, then he saw Danny gripping Maddox’s gun tightly, a thin tendril of smoke spiraling out of the muzzle of its silencer. Danny stared at the shooter’s inert body for a beat, then turned to Matt, his face locked in disbelief at what he’d done—

Danny opened his mouth to say something—

Matt’s eyes went wide—

“Watch out,” he blurted, but—

It was too late—Maddox had already sprung to his feet behind Danny. He crashed into him as Matt dived for the gun that had fallen from his shooter. Matt managed to grab it before Maddox made it to the gun Danny had dropped—only Danny was blocking a clear shot. Maddox’s eyes met Matt’s for a nanosecond before he shoved Danny toward Matt and scurried back away from them, and disappeared behind the van.

“Move,” Matt yelled to Danny, pushing him away, bolting after Maddox—he charged around the van and into the thicket of trees that edged the parking lot, but the darkness had swallowed his quarry up. Matt fired a couple of rounds out of frustration, but he knew he wasn’t going to score a hit. Maddox was gone.

The lot went eerily quiet. Matt turned, scanned the area, then stepped around Rydell and his fallen shooter and joined Danny. He embraced him with a big bear hug. Pulled him back and ruffled his hair.

“Merry Christmas,” he told him.

“Best one ever,” Danny replied, his face all lit up with nervous relief. Rydell got up and joined them. Danny faced him for a beat, a hard, angry glare simmering in his eyes. Then he balled his fists and whipped up his still-tied arms in a big, curving swing that caught Rydell on the cheek and knocked him to the ground. Rydell spat out some blood, but stayed down for a moment. Then looked up at Danny, who was just looming over him.

Matt looked on curiously. “I couldn’t have made it here without his help, bro,” Matt told Danny.

Danny eyed Rydell a couple of more seconds, then turned away and shrugged dubiously. “It’s a start,” he grunted.

“Can we get out of here now?” Matt asked, stepping across to help Rydell up.

Rydell looked toward Danny. “I’m sorry,” he said, his words laced with genuine regret.

“Like I said,” Danny said as he walked away, “it’s a start.”

Less than a minute later, they were in the van, pulling away from the hotel’s parking lot and easing past the long rows of parked cars that lined the roads on both sides.

Chapter 78

They’d changed motels for safety, moving to a different side of town, just in case—although with Maddox badly hurt and a lot of his men dead, they were starting to feel like maybe the crosshairs had lifted off them a little.

Danny and Matt were in their own world. They had a lot of catching up to do and took turns filling each other in on their tortured journeys.

“I’ve got to call Mom and Dad, let them know I’m okay,” Danny said enthusiastically, still fired up by his escape.

Matt had skirted around mentioning them, but he couldn’t duck it any longer. He held Danny’s gaze as he tried to find the words to tell him what had happened, but Danny read his expression before he’d eked out a single word.

“Who? . . . Mom?” he asked.

Matt nodded, but his pained look held more portent than just one parent.

“Not . . . both?” Danny mouthed the words in total disbelief.

Matt nodded again.

Danny’s face tightened, drowning with confusion. Then it just crumpled with profound grief. Matt had already told him about Bellinger’s murder. The triple whammy hit him real hard. He sank to the floor and gripped his head in his hands, feeling as if his veins were flooding with lava.

A more somber mood enshrouded them as Danny told Matt of his despair during those two years. How he’d tried to sneak an e-mail out to him and been caught. How he’d contemplated suicide. How they’d threatened him and drugged him after that.

“You’re here now,” Matt finally told him. “You’re out and you’re safe.” Matt smiled. “And that’s way more than either of us had a couple of days ago.”

“Tell me more. About Mom and Dad. About how it all happened,” Danny asked him.

IN AN ADJACENT ROOM, Rydell stewed alone. He’d found it as uncomfortable to be around Danny as Danny found it to be around him. He also had a lot on his mind.

It was over, that much was clear. Once Gracie returned, the story would blow wide open. And then, whichever way you looked at it, his life was over too. His role in it would be part of the story. A big part of it. There was no way anyone was going to shield him from it. Not Gracie, not Matt or Danny, not Drucker. And even if they’d wanted to, there was no way they’d be able to do it. Not in this blog-rich age. And he wasn’t prepared to run either. It wasn’t his style. Besides, there was nowhere for him to run to. No, he’d be there to face up to what he’d been a part of.

The hardest part of it all was thinking about what it would do to Rebecca. It would be nothing short of devastating. It would follow her for the rest of her life. His mind kept churning it, desperate to find a way to mitigate that, to keep her out of it, but there was nothing he could think of that could do that.

BY THE TIME GRACIE and Dalton finally joined them a couple of hours later, the reunion was a bittersweet, subdued celebration. Yes, they were all safe. Yes, Danny was alive—and free. And Gracie and Dalton were about to become superstars. But there was a downside to the forthcoming media feeding frenzy too. A downside well beyond Rydell’s very public downfall. One that looked far more daunting the more they talked about it.

In the background, a TV was switched on, replaying the evening’s events in an almost continuous loop, with all kinds of talking heads coming in and out to comment on it.

“What’s this going to do to all those people who were out there celebrating tonight?” Gracie asked, pointing at the screen, her voice edgy with concern. “And not just them, but everyone around the country who was tuning in. Everyone around the planet who’s been buying into Drucker’s scam, for that matter. What’s going to happen to them? How are they going to take it?”

“What’s the alternative?” Dalton countered. “We can’t let the lie run. We’d just be digging all those people a deeper hole for Drucker to push them into. The sooner we end this, the better.”

“I know.” Gracie nodded. “It still feels wrong. It’s lose-lose.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then spread her fingers out and massaged her forehead. “I hate this,” she groaned.

“Finch was murdered because of it,” Dalton reminded her.

“Vince too,” Danny added. “And Reece. And many others.”

Gracie heaved a ponderous sigh. “They were killed to keep it quiet until Drucker was ready to pull the cover off. And now we’re going to do it for him.”

“We have to do this,” Danny chimed in. “The longer it runs, the more painful it will be when the truth comes out.”

Gracie nodded grudgingly, then said to Rydell, “I’ll need you to go on the record. We’ll need the evidence.”

Rydell nodded somberly. “What choice do I have?”

She shifted her gaze across the room. “Danny?”

He nodded. “Hell, yes.”

Gracie acknowledged it, then slumped back in her seat, a frustrated, haunted pallor to her face.

Rydell turned to Danny. “How were they planning on doing this? Do you know? How were they going to expose him?”

“They made me design a debunking software. They were going to run it over him once they were ready to out him.”

Rydell pressed. “What does it do?”

“It simulates a breakdown in the technology. Like if you’re watching TV and the signal breaks up. It makes it go all jumpy with static, then it just crashes. It’s designed to be minimally counterintuitive. What you’d expect to see if the sign was a fake. It’ll conjure up a broadcast that’s going haywire.” Danny gave him an uncomfortable smile. “It was either that or a huge Coca-Cola sign.”

“What if we don’t do this and it never comes out?” Gracie threw in, thinking aloud. “I mean, what if there was a way to get Drucker and his guys to keep their mouths shut?”

“The evangelicals would get to keep their new messiah, and Darby and his friends on the far right would get to choose our next few presidents,” Rydell observed gloomily.

“Well by breaking the story and letting people know who was really behind it and what their agenda was, it’ll be even worse,” Gracie countered. “Either way, Darby and all his pals are going to come out of this stronger. Once you and Drucker are exposed, all the heathens and depraved liberals across the country are going to be demonized. We’ll be giving the hard-core right their biggest rallying cry since the fall of the evil empire. Branding people as ‘anti-American’ will get a whole new lease on life. They’ll run away with the next ten elections and turn the country into a Christian theocracy.”

“Hang on, we’re talking about a handful of guys who put this stunt in play, not an entire political party,” Danny protested.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gracie argued back. “What matters is how they’ll spin it. How they’ll use it to split the country even further. They’ll tar everyone with the same brush and make it look like everyone on Drucker’s side of the aisle was in cahoots with him. That’s what they do. And they’re damn good at it too. Just imagine what someone like Karl Rove could do with it.”

“Hey, maybe we could draft him and the other scumbags who sold us the war in Iraq and have them pin this thing on Iran,” Dalton joked.

The others all turned to him with deeply unamused eyes.

“What? I’m kidding,” he protested, his palms turned out.

A dreary silence smothered the room. On the TV, the anchor was back on briefly before the image cut away to footage of violent riots in Islamabad and in Jerusalem. Across the screen, people were clashing furiously as cars blazed behind them. Police officers and soldiers were in the thick of it, trying to stop the carnage.

Gracie sat up. “Turn it up,” she told Dalton, who was closest to the TV.

“. . . religious leaders have urged their followers to show restraint while the questions surrounding Father Jerome are answered, but the violence here shows no sign of abating,” an off-camera reporter was saying.

An anchor came back on, and a banner at the bottom of the screen said, “President to make statement on Houston events.”

“Following the unprecedented events in Houston earlier this evening,” he announced, “a White House spokeswoman indicated that the president would be making a statement tomorrow.”

Gracie and the others didn’t need to hear the rest.

Drucker’s web was spinning out of control.

“Even the president’s getting suckered into this,” Rydell said.

“We can’t let that happen,” Gracie insisted. She let out a dejected sigh and sagged back in her seat. “This is just going to sink us all.” The room went silent. After a moment, Dalton asked, “So what do we do? ’Cause it seems to me like we need to do this pronto, but we’re screwed either way, whether we expose it or not.”

Rydell sat up. “We can expose it,” he stated. “We have to. But only if I take the fall for it. Alone.”

That got everyone’s attention.

He pressed on. “It’s the only way.” His voice was quivering slightly, a tremble of nerves that was alien to Larry Rydell. “My plan didn’t call for a fall guy. It was never intended to empower or undermine any religion. It was just meant to get people to listen. But now . . . after what they’ve done, the way they’ve turned it . . . We’re all agreed that we can’t let this lie go on. But Drucker’s right. We need a fall guy with no political motive if we’re going to avoid tearing this country apart. And that fall guy’s got to be me.” He sighed, then looked around at them with renewed determination. “There’s no other way out of this. If anyone here has a better idea, I’m all ears, but . . . I don’t see it happening any other way.”

“Great,” Gracie grumbled. “So Drucker wins.”

“Don’t worry about Drucker,” Rydell assured her quietly. “I’ll make sure he pays.”

Gracie nodded stoically. No one knew where to look. Rydell was right, and they knew it. But the thought of doing what Drucker was going to do anyway, albeit long before he was planning to, was swirling inside them like a tuna melt that was a month past its sell-by date.

Gracie turned to Matt. He hadn’t said a word throughout.

“You got somewhere else you got to be, cowboy?” Gracie said, a slightly provoking grin bringing a quantum of light back to her eyes.

“We’re forgetting someone in all this,” he said. “Remember?”

Gracie saw it even before he’d finished saying it. “Father Jerome.”

“Damn,” Dalton groaned.

“Can you imagine what’s going to happen to him if this thing breaks?” Matt asked.

“They’ll rip him to shreds,” Rydell said.

“But he wasn’t in on it,” Dalton noted. “You’ll make that clear, right?” he asked him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Matt frowned.

“They’ll protect him,” Dalton argued. “We can make sure they do. Get him somewhere safe before we go live.”

“And after that?” Gracie asked, her voice thick with emotion. “Where’s he going to go? His life will be over, and it’ll be our doing.” She glanced at Matt. “We can’t do this,” she argued, resolve hardening her voice. “Not without letting him know what’s about to happen to him. He needs to be part of this decision. We can’t just have it all hit him unprepared.” She shifted her focus back to Matt. “I have to see him. Talk to him—before anything happens.”

“You saw the news. They flew him back to Darby’s place,” Rydell reminded her. “You walk in there, Drucker’ll make sure you don’t come out.”

“What if you say you want to interview him, one-on-one,” Danny offered.

“Too dangerous,” Rydell grumbled. “Besides, he’s got to be the most heavily protected guy on the planet right now.”

Gracie glanced over at Matt. He seemed to be processing something. “What?” she asked him.

He turned to Danny. “How much gear is there in that van?” he asked him, hooking a thumb toward the motel’s lot.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how much of their gear is in there?”

“The full kit,” Danny said.

“What about the laser transmitter? It was inside the stadium, wasn’t it?”

“One was. We had another with us. For when the sign was all the way out over the roof. It took over then.”

Matt nodded. Visibly putting something through its motions in his mind’s eye. “And how much smart dust do you have left in there?” He caught Gracie’s expression and noticed her posture straightening up.

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“Because we’re going to need it. We can’t feed Father Jerome to the wolves.” Matt glanced around the room. “He was dragged into this, like Danny. And he’s a good man, right? As decent as they come, isn’t that what you said?” he asked Gracie. “We can’t let Drucker ruin his life. Not until he’s had his say on the matter.” He paused to gauge the others’ reaction, then turned to Gracie. “What does Darby’s place look like?”

Chapter 79

River Oaks, Houston, Texas

The chaotic scene outside the entrance to Darby’s gated community was hardly normal, but at least it was quiet. It was almost five o’clock in the morning, and the gathered masses were down for the night. They slept in their cars, in sleeping bags by the side of the road, anywhere they could. Others were still awake, huddled around makeshift campfires, chatting, milling around expectantly. A small, tireless contingent was still crowding the entrance gatehouse, waiting for their messiah to make an appearance. Some wailed in pained desperation while others sang spiritual chants of varying origin. A few diehards goaded the wall of security guards and cops who manned the perimeter barricades. The news crews sheltered quietly by their vans and their satellite dishes, taking turns on watch, afraid to miss out on something. All across the neighborhood, whispered prayers wafted through the evergreen trees that lined the drives, mingling with a thin predawn mist that gave the lushly forested area a portentous, expectant feel.

The sign’s appearance changed all that.

It took them all by surprise, lighting up the night sky, blazing out of the stygian darkness, pulsating with mysterious, unexplained life as it hovered in place just above the treetops.

It was right there, up close and huge.

And it was right over Darby’s house.

The crowd snapped to attention. The believers, the reporters, the cops, the security guards. Even the dogs went manic. Within seconds, everyone was up, on edge, pointing and shouting excitedly. The worshippers were pressing against the barricades, desperate to get closer to it. The cops were scrambling to contain the sudden swell of people. The news cameras were rolling, the field reporters rubbing the tiredness from their eyes and rambling on into their mikes.

Then it started to move.

Drifting, slowly, silently. Floating sideways, away from Darby’s house. Gliding over the trees, heading east, over a neighboring house, toward the country club.

And opening a floodgate of pandemonium.

The crowd broke out and went after it. The sudden shift in their momentum caught the cops by surprise and outflanked them. The barricades toppled over, breached by a wave of hysterical believers who streamed through the trees, chasing the shimmering apparition. Police radios crackled sharply and footfalls crunched heavily as the cops and the security guards raced off to try and control the invading horde.

THE COPS PATROLLING THE EDGE of the fairways on the estate’s western perimeter saw it too. Their radios squawked to life seconds later. Incoherent bursts of chatter were flying across the airwaves. The six of them, who had been making the rounds in twos, converged by Darby’s tennis court to try and make sense of what was going on. They could hear the chaos, an eerie upwelling of noise that subverted the stillness of the night. It was heading away from the house. The rear of the estate, where they were—the part that backed up against the golf course—was calm.

Then one of them saw something. A hint of movement, slipping across the trees at the edge of the fairway. He focused his gaze in that direction and nudged the others to attention. It was hard to see anything in the darkness. The light was coming from behind them, from the porch lights around Darby’s garden and pool and, farther away, the sign in the sky. They fanned out a few yards from each other, muscles tensing up slightly, hands resting on their handguns’ grips, eyes scanning on high alert. Then another one of them saw something. Looked like two figures, creeping along the far edge of the tennis court, heading toward the house.

“Over there,” he hissed, pulling out his handgun and pointing it through tense fingers—then it hit him. It hit them all. A blast of unbearable static, a hissing shriek from hell. It overwhelmed their senses, an anvil punch to their eardrums that shocked them into unconsciousness. A couple of them wet their pants before they even hit the ground.

MATT GLANCED into the darkness behind him. He couldn’t see them, but he was grateful that Danny, Dalton, and Rydell were there, manning the LRAD, hiding in the trees by the seventh green, covering their back. So far, the diversion was working. But it wouldn’t last long. They had to be in and out in fifteen minutes or so.

He waited for a couple of seconds to make sure the guards were staying down, then nodded to Gracie and gave her a let’s-go gesture, knowing that she wouldn’t hear him through the wax plugs shielding her eardrums.

They struck out over the lawn and crept up to the rear façade of the house. Matt spotted two guards walking past the guesthouse and motioned for Gracie to hold position. They both crouched in silence and waited for them to pass, then slipped across to a set of wide French doors. Matt pulled his earplugs out. Gracie followed suit.

“This it?” he asked her in a whisper.

She nodded her confirmation. “Stairway’s off to the right. His bedroom’s upstairs, first door on the left.”

“And the monk’s on the ground floor, beyond the stairs?”

Gracie nodded.

He acknowledged it with a tight nod of his own and pulled out his handgun. He’d brought one of the silenced automatics with him, even though he wasn’t planning on using it unless things got really desperate. Defending himself against Maddox’s goons was one thing. He didn’t really have a problem with that. This was different. Gracie had told him that the guys babysitting Father Jerome were cops and private security guards from the estate. They were just doing their job, and he wasn’t about to cause them any damage beyond the reparable.

He tried the handle. It was open. He slipped inside. Gracie followed. They waited in a low crouch, by the French doors, listening hard. There was no sound coming from the house. Matt glanced around. They were in the guesthouse’s spacious living room. It was lined with bookcases and featured an oversized sofa that faced a big, stone fireplace. It was dark except for a pale glint of light that bounced in from the hallway.

They crossed the room on tenterhooks and slithered up the stairs. Found the first door on the left. Matt tried the handle. It was unlocked. He cracked the door open and slipped through, with Gracie on his heels. Let her in and feathered the door shut behind them. His palm sensed the locking button on its handle, and he pressed it in.

They crossed over to the bed. Father Jerome was fast asleep, breathing in with a slight wheeze. Gracie bent down beside him, glanced hesitantly at Matt, then nudged Father Jerome’s shoulder softly. He stirred awake. He turned over, his eyes blinking open. He saw her, inhaled sharply, and pushed himself up.

“What . . . ? Miss Logan . . . ?” He glanced across the room and saw Matt standing by the window, peering out from behind the curtains. “What’s going on?”

She flicked on the small lamp by the bed. “We have to be quick. You need to come with us. Your life’s in danger,” she said, maintaining an even but urgent tone.

“Danger? From what?”

“Please, Father. There’s no time. Trust me on this. We have to go now.”

He stared at her, his tired face wrinkled with uncertainty. Held her gaze for a brief moment, then nodded and got out of bed. He was wearing dark pajamas.

“I have to get dressed,” he told her.

“There’s no time. Just put your shoes on,” she insisted.

He nodded, and slipped on his socks and lace-up shoes. Matt came over. He put a friendly hand on the old man’s shoulder. “My name’s Matt Sherwood, Father. Everything’s going to be fine. Just stay close to Gracie and try not to make any noise, okay?”

The old priest nodded his readiness, the deepening creases in his forehead betraying his unease. Matt glanced at Gracie. They exchanged tight nods, then Matt opened the door and stepped out.

He didn’t see it coming. The strike came flying out from the right, his attacker hugging the wall closely. It nailed him just behind his right ear, a downward blow that had a hard leading edge to it, as if the fist had been balled around a hard stump. It lit up the inside of his skull. Matt thudded heavily to the floor as Gracie screamed at the sight of Brother Ameen moving swiftly out of the shadows and landing a heavy kick on Matt’s midsection.

Matt grunted heavily as the kick lifted him off the cool tiles of the hallway. He slammed back against the wall, unsure of where the next blow was coming from, his vision blurred. He sucked in a sharp breath and pushed himself onto his hands and knees in time for another kick to explode across his ribs and send him flying back into the wall. Then the monk was right up against him, his thin, taut arms like steel cables around his neck, choking the life out of him. Matt struggled to suck in some air, but the monk’s grip wasn’t about to cooperate. The energy was seeping out of him fast. He tried hitting back with his elbows, but they only found air, and every thrash was draining the little strength he had left in him. He tried to fight off the encroaching dizziness and drew on his last reserves to try a rear head butt, snapping his neck back as hard as he could. The monk saw it coming and jerked his head sideways to avoid it, then tightened his hold on Matt even more. Matt felt his throat getting crushed, felt all kinds of cartilage in there popping and tearing and twisting, felt his lungs retching for air. He gasped, struggling to breathe now, his eyes feeling like they were about to pop out of their sockets—

Then he heard a loud shriek and a dull, crashing thud and felt the monk’s grip slacken. He sucked in a barrel-load of air and sprung backward, shoving Ameen, and turned to see the monk spinning off him before righting himself and shaking his head back to life. Gracie was standing there, her face locked with surprise and fear, the lamp from the old priest’s bedside table now upturned and tightly gripped in her hands, its shade all bent out of shape. She was holding it up like a baseball bat, ready for another swing, her body all tight and curled and hunched like a predator’s about to pounce. The monk wasn’t cowed and he didn’t give her another chance. He swung a lightning arm out and whipped the lamp out of her hands, then brought his arm back with its knuckle out again and caught Gracie on the left temple. The blow landed with a sharp crack. It sent her flying back into the room before she hit the ground hard.

Matt shook some clarity back into his own head and leapt at the monk just as he was turning to face him again. Matt was much bigger and bulkier, but Ameen was a tight coil of hard muscle and knew where and how to hit. They wrestled and punched their way across the hallway, then the monk’s fist found Matt’s bullet wound. A gush of pain erupted across him, causing a momentary blackout that pulled down his defenses and opened him to a frenzy of sharp jabs. Matt recoiled, his body jerking with each blow as if bullets were drilling through him. He was at the edge of the stairs when he heard Gracie scream his name. A flash of lucidity broke through the encroaching darkness, and he saw the monk’s fist racing down at his head for a final, crippling blow. He jerked sideways without thinking, tightened every muscle he could still control, and grabbed the monk’s arm, twisting it savagely and spinning it around like it was a spoke on a six-foot wheel. The move caught the monk by surprise and bent him forward, lifting him off his feet as his shoulder tore out of its socket. Matt kept a tight grip on the monk’s arm and fed his momentum by twisting it even higher in a circular sweep. The monk’s head came down and his feet left the ground as he vaulted over the railing backward and flew into the air, before landing in a heavy, sickening crack at the bottom of the stairs.

Matt creaked his body upright, edged over, and looked down. The monk’s body just lay there, slack and silent. Matt glanced back at Gracie. She stepped over to him, closely followed by a shell-shocked Father Jerome. She looked down. Frowned. Then nodded.

“Come on,” Matt whispered, his voice hoarse. “We don’t have much time left.”

They slipped down the stairs, past the Croatian’s corpse. There was no need to check for a pulse. The man’s head was bent at an angle that precluded life. They threaded their way back out of the living room, past the pool and the tennis court, and skirted the edge of the fairways just as the sign faded out and plunged the neighborhood back into darkness.

By the time they got back to the Lincoln, it was loaded up and waiting for them. They all crammed into it and slipped away, a pregnant silence enshrouding the car as they wondered how the city—and the world—would react to their Christmas surprise.

Chapter 80

Houston, Texas

Maddox blocked out the pain as he watched the ER team deal with his own Christmas surprise. He’d told the admitting nurse he’d had an accident while fixing up his lawn mower. A valid and well-stocked credit card had taken care of the rest. The surgeons had been working on him for over three hours, cutting and drilling and screwing and sewing away at his mangled arm while a couple of tubes snaked into him and replenished the blood he’d left among the trees by the stadium.

He’d insisted on only having local anesthesia, deciding he’d had enough unexpected surprises for one night and knowing full well that he could have even managed without it. They’d just about succeeded in saving the arm, but he wouldn’t have any use of it for a long time, and even then, the doctors had told him that he’d have very limited use of it. The blades had hacked their way through muscle and tendons with abandon. When all was said and done, his arm would be little more than a decorative limb. His right arm. His good arm. In his simmering anger, he’d been tempted to get it over with and have them shear it off at the elbow, but he’d pulled back from the idea, not wanting to make his appearance even more grotesque than it already was. He’d settle for one working arm. He’d just need to train it to compensate.

Even in his weakened, half-drugged state, he registered the commotion in the hospital as news of the sign’s appearance over Reverend Darby’s house had spread. The news was troubling. He knew that wasn’t part of the plan. Which meant someone was going off piste. He wondered if Drucker was behind it, and if so, what he was doing. He realized things were unraveling from all fronts, but he accepted it stoically and knew better than to let his mind fester on what had gone wrong. He knew he needed to focus on the way forward—on completing the task he’d set for himself and, with a bit of luck, on his own freedom and survival. He knew when the time was right to cut one’s losses, when it was better to find a new boat than to keep bailing out a sinking ship. And with Rydell, the Sherwood boys, and that reporter running free, that ship wasn’t just sinking, it was about to be torpedoed into smithereens.

He knew what he had to do: push forward, press on, and, worst case, live to fight another day. It was what he was trained for. He thought back to Jackson Drucker and the rest of his men, thought of their chewed-up bodies littering that Iraqi ghost town, thought about how he’d failed them all. But he’d lived and he was fighting on, and he had to keep doing that. And that didn’t involve him spending any more time in that ER ward than he had to. Which is why, less than an hour after they’d finished patching him up, he was already outside the hospital and making his way to downtown Houston.

Chapter 81

They were still debriefing Father Jerome by the time dawn finally made its appearance over the western suburb of Houston, all five of them—Matt, Gracie, Rydell, Danny, and Dalton—helping each other out in the difficult task of telling the frail old man how the last twelve months of his life had been one big lie.

They told him about Rydell’s original plan. About the smart dust and the launchers and the planet reaching its tipping point. About Drucker’s taking hold of it and perverting it to his agenda. Then they got into the more sensitive topic of what Drucker’s people had done to him. The treatments. The drugs. The LRAD talking to him up on the top of the mountain. And with every new revelation, with every additional detail, his bony shoulders sagged further and the creases in his weathered face got deeper.

By the end of it, he looked thoroughly bewildered, but he was holding up better than Gracie had expected. She’d been worried about how he would take it, but he hadn’t fallen apart. He’d seen a lot in this life, she reminded herself. Bad things. More than most people could ever imagine. For all his physical frailty, the man seemed to have a remarkable inner strength. And yet . . . surely, it all had to be devastating, she told herself. Then she remembered his comment on the plane, and wondered what his inner voice had been telling him all along.

“The voice on the mountain,” he finally said, looking vaguely into the distance. “It was amazing. Even though it didn’t make sense that it could actually be happening to me, it felt so . . . real. Like it was inside my head. Like it knew what I was thinking.”

“That’s because they put those thoughts in your head in the first place,” Gracie told him, her tone careful and soft.

Father Jerome nodded, a sanguine acceptance darkening his face. He sighed heavily, and after a moment, he lifted his gaze toward Rydell. “And you’re going to say it was all your idea?”

Rydell nodded.

Father Jerome’s brow furrowed with a dubious shrug.

Gracie caught it. Her eyes darted across to Matt, who seemed to catch it too, then she swung back to the priest. “What is it?”

The priest didn’t answer. He seemed to be in his own world, processing everything he’d been told, weighed down by it all.

“I’m tired,” he finally said in a hollow voice. “I need to rest.”

GRACIE AND DALTON retreated to their room, Rydell to his. In the fourth room, Danny and Matt stretched out on their beds, staring at the ceiling, sharing a moment of peaceful reflection. They’d caught the early morning news on the in-room TV. The top story was, as expected, the sign’s appearance over Darby’s mansion and the subsequent frenzy, but there was no mention of Father Jerome going missing. So far, they were keeping it quiet.

After a while, Danny asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Same thing you’re thinking about,” Matt said.

“Drucker?”

Matt replied by way of a slight grunt.

“It just really gets my goat, you know?” Danny said. “The idea that he might weasel out of this without damage.”

“Look, the guy’s a dirt bag, no argument. But there’s not much we can do, short of putting a bullet through his skull.”

Danny didn’t answer.

After a beat, Matt asked, quite matter-of-factly, “You want to go put a bullet through his skull?”

Danny tilted his head to one side, gave Matt a maybe look, then stared at the ceiling again. “Not really my style.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“But if Rydell doesn’t take care of him in a big way, I might want to reconsider.”

“We could grab him and lock him up in my cellar for a couple of years as payback,” Matt remarked flatly. “Just feed him dog food and toilet water.”

Danny pursed his lips and nodded, mock-mulling it over. “Nice to know we’ve got options,” he said with a smile.

Matt tilted his head over to him. “It’s good to have you back, man.”

Danny nodded warmly, then turned to stare at the ceiling. “It’s good to be back.”

IN HIS ROOM, Rydell wasn’t staring at any ceiling. He was pacing around, racking his brain, trying to think of another way out. He needed to call Rebecca. He needed to hear her voice. He checked the clock on his cell phone. It was still too early on the West Coast. Especially for Rebecca. That thought brought an inkling of a smile to his face. It also released a tear that trickled down his cheek.

He wiped it off with his sleeve and sat down on the edge of the bed. What an end, he thought. Everything he’d achieved. A true master of the universe, self-made, from nothing. And it was all about to be flushed down the toilet.

He had to talk to Rebecca. He tapped an R into his contacts list, pulled up her number. Poised his finger on the call button. But couldn’t do it. Not because of the time difference. Because he didn’t know what to tell her.

He set the phone back down next to him, felt his eyes filming over, and watched his hands shiver.

IT WAS ALMOST NOON when Matt stepped out of his room to hit the vending machine again. Gracie was out there too, leaning against the grille of the Navigator, a cold can of Coke in her hand. He downed some coins and pulled out a can of his own. Snapped the lid open, took a long sip, and joined her.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“Nope.” She smiled. “My body clock’s so out of whack I don’t even know what day it is.”

“It’s the day after Christmas,” Matt said with a knowing smile.

“Really?” She grinned and looked around. “Not exactly a white one this year, huh?”

Matt nodded. Took another sip. Said, “You should get some rest. You’re about to have the most intense few months of your life. Of anyone’s life.”

“What, even worse than the last few days?” she quipped.

“Oh yeah.” He shrugged. “That was a cakewalk.”

“Some cakewalk,” she said, dreamily. She caught his glance, then looked away, staring through the scenery around them, her mind wandering off.

“What?” he prodded.

She shrugged. After a quiet moment, she said, “It seems like such a waste, don’t you think?”

“What?”

“All those people, at the stadium. Around the world. Hanging on his every word. Singing. Praying. Did you ever hear anything like that in your life?”

He didn’t reply.

“They were loving it. They loved believing in him. They were lifted by it. I know, it’s primitive and it’s cultish and it’s even a bit creepy, but somehow, some part of me thought it was beautiful. For a moment there, they were all happy. They’d forgotten about their problems and their jobs and their mortgages and everything that was wrong in their lives. They were happy and they were hopeful. He gave them all hope.”

“False hope,” Matt corrected.

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked, as much to herself as to him.

“Hope isn’t real by definition, is it? It’s just a state of mind, right?” She shrugged, falling back to earth. “If it wasn’t for all those self-serving leeches using him . . . twisting everything for their own purposes. Using something as beautiful and as inspirational as that to fill their own pockets and grab more power . . .” She looked at him forlornly. “Such a waste, you know?”

“Same-old same-old.” He shrugged. “It’s the way of the world.”

She nodded ruefully. Stood there quietly for a moment, then asked, “So what are you going to do? You’re part of this story too, you know. People are going to want to hear your side of it.”

He cocked his head at her with a pleased look on his face and said, “Good.”

“Why?”

“I thought I might get me a ghostwriter,” he mused. “Knock out a book about it. Something punchy. Like something that guy who wrote The Perfect Storm would write. Maybe flog the movie rights to some studio for a cool mil.” He flashed her a grin.

“Yeah, well, get in line, bub,” she countered.

He let out a slight chuckle. Turned to look at her. It suddenly occurred to him that she was a great-looking girl. Great-looking and, with all the rest of it, everything any man could ask for. And much as he wanted to put the whole nightmare of the last week behind him, the thought of it keeping them involved in each other’s lives for a while longer had taken over as the preferred option.

But they had to get through the tough part first.

“When are you going to hit the button?” he asked her.

Her face tightened at the uncomfortable thought. “I don’t know. How about we let everyone out there enjoy a few more hours of peace. Christmas was only yesterday . . .”

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” she nodded.

They dunked their empty cans in the trash and trudged back to their rooms. They were outside Father Jerome’s door when it cracked open. The old priest was standing there, holding it open, a knot of concentration etched across his forehead.

“I’m sorry, did we wake you?” Gracie said.

“No,” he said. He didn’t look like he’d slept at all, and seemed deeply consumed by his thoughts. He studied them for a beat, then said, “Can you get everyone together? I’ve been thinking about everything that’s happened, and . . . We need to talk.”

Chapter 82

Houston, Texas

The sky was still as balmy and clear as it had been on the big day itself. A relative calm had reasserted itself over the city, even though the air was still heavy with expectation. There hadn’t been any fresh news about Father Jerome in over twenty-four hours, and the city was trying to carry on with life while awaiting the next moment of revelation.

The first people to see the ball of light pulsating over the reflecting pool were the families and couples and joggers who were out enjoying a day in the park. It was small and spherical, maybe twenty feet across, and was hovering innocuously around a couple of hundred feet up over the south end of the long, rectangular ceremonial pool, by the Pioneer Memorial obelisk, at the northern tip of Hermann Park. Curious onlookers gravitated toward it, scanning the grounds around them with wary eyes. They soon spotted the man underneath it, the one in the black cassock and the richly embroidered hood. The light was hovering over him as he walked slowly away from the obelisk.

The onlookers converged on him, calling others over, pointing him out. The park was hugely popular and was surrounded by some of Houston’s most beloved attractions: the zoo, the Garden Center, the Museum of Natural Science with its cylindrical butterfly greenhouse, and the iconic Miller Outdoor Theatre. Given the weather and the holiday, there were a lot of people out there, and it didn’t take long for most of them to swarm in on the frail old man who was walking innocently along the edge of the tranquil body of water. They spoke to him, greeted him, and threw hesitant questions at him, but he didn’t answer or meet their eyes. He just nodded enigmatically and kept ambling quietly, seemingly lost in his thoughts. They kept a respectful distance, staying back a few yards from him. Those who breeched that private zone were told off by others and made to pull back. Throughout, Father Jerome kept moving, slowly, until he made his way up the ceremonial steps to the platform that looked down over the pond.

He stopped there and turned, looking out onto the wide open area before him, framed against the statue of Sam Houston and its monumental arch. The park police were quick to get involved; they reeled in as much backup as they could muster and soon set up a protective cordon around the platform. The news vans rushed over too. Before long, hundreds of people were spread across the grounds of the park, their eyes locked on the tiny figure with the sphere of shimmering light floating above him who just stood there and looked down on them in silence.

Once everything was in place—the crowd, the coverage, the protection—he took a step forward and raised his hands to a wide, welcoming stance. A ripple of sh-sh-sh’s rolled over the crowd, and the entire park was shrouded in silence. Even the birds and the branches of the trees seemed to fall into line as any trace of noise seeped away from the ceremonial plaza and was replaced by an ominous stillness.

Father Jerome’s eyes traveled slowly across the field of onlookers and back. He then tilted his head up to look at the sphere of light floating over him, nodded thoughtfully, clenched his fists with resolve, and addressed the crowd.

“Friends,” he began, “something wonderful has been happening these past few days. Something amazing, something breathtaking and strange and surprising and . . . something I don’t quite understand,” he confessed. A murmur of surprise coursed through the crowd. “Because the honest truth is . . . I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what this is,” he said, pointing upward at the hovering ball of light. “I don’t know why it’s here. I don’t know why it chose me. What I do know, though, is that its meaning hasn’t been properly understood. Not by others. Certainly not by me. Not until last night. And now I think I do understand. I understand what it’s trying to tell us. And I’m here to share that with you.”

KEENAN DRUCKER STOOD in his hotel room, openmouthed, staring at the TV screen, wondering what the hell was going on.

He’d been on edge since he’d gotten news of Father Jerome’s disappearance from Reverend Darby’s mansion, and he’d been worriedly anticipating a quick press blowout from Rydell and his new friends. The fact that it hadn’t happened threw him. He’d wondered why they hadn’t gone public, what Rydell was up to. And the sight on the screen before him, of Father Jerome walking through a park with a growing horde of followers congregating around him, wasn’t making things any clearer.

He heard his suite’s doorbell ring, and crossed to see who was there, his mind still in thrall to the events taking place less than a mile away. He checked the peephole and stiffened at the sight that greeted him, then he composed himself and unlocked the door.

“Jesus,” he said when he saw Maddox’s heavily bandaged arm and his sweaty face. “You didn’t tell me it was that bad.”

Maddox pushed into the suite, ignoring the comment. “There’s a lot of commotion in the lobby. Have you seen what’s happening?” He’d barely said it when he saw the live coverage on the TV. He stepped closer to the screen, then turned to Drucker with a suspicious frown. “What are you doing?”

“It’s not me,” Drucker protested. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Maddox studied him dubiously. “It’s not you?”

“I’m telling you this has nothing to do with me,” Drucker insisted. “It’s got to be Rydell. He’s running things now. They got the priest out last night.”

“The sign,” Maddox realized, filling in the gaps mentally. “I thought it was something you’d planned. Then I tried Dario’s phone and got some cop, and that didn’t add up.”

“Dario’s dead,” Drucker confirmed.

Maddox nodded. Things were unraveling even worse than he’d thought. He turned to the screen, his mind processing what he was seeing. “So what’s he up to? What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Rydell’s got the others convinced the global warming message is too important to kill.”

“But he knows you can blow it all up for him,” Maddox remarked.

“He can also take me down with him,” Drucker reminded Maddox, then added, “and you too, in case you forgot. He was the fall guy, remember? Without him, we’re out of options.” Then his face relaxed with a comforting realization. “They’re not going to expose him. They can’t. Not yet. Not before they figure out who they’re going to pin it on.” His face lit up. “Which gives us time. Time to figure out how to expose him without fingering ourselves as his puppet masters. Time to come up with another way out.”

Maddox studied him for a beat, then came to a quick conclusion. If he was going to disappear—if he was going to live to fight another day—he had to make sure he didn’t leave anyone behind who could ruin things for him. Like a career politician who wouldn’t think twice about selling him out to save his own skin.

But what he was seeing brought back to life a far more attractive option. One he thought had been wiped off his playbook.

He pulled out an automatic before Drucker had time to blink and shoved it right up against the man’s forehead. “I already have. Sit down.”

He herded Drucker backward and into an armchair facing the TV, then in one swift movement, he bent down, grabbed Drucker’s shaking hand with his gun hand, and arced it up so the silencer’s muzzle was jammed against Drucker’s mouth.

Drucker stared at him, terrified and confused.

“Thing is, right from the get-go, I never thought exposing Jerome was a good idea,” Maddox told him. “He’s much more useful this way. The truth is, we’re not out of options here, Keenan. You are.” And he pulled the trigger.

The bullet ripped out the back of Drucker’s head and sent a gray and burgundy mess splattering across the wall behind him. Maddox placed the gun in Drucker’s limp hand, pressed Drucker’s fingers tightly against the grip and the trigger, then let it drop as it would have had Drucker been alone.

Swift, Silent, Deadly. It was one hell of a good motto.

He pulled out his cell phone and hit the well-worn speed-dial number. “I think we’re back in business. How’s our boy?” he asked.

“He’s still put, at home,” his NSA contact told him. “Watching the live coverage from the park.”

“Good. Let me know if he moves. I need him to be home.” He glared at the screen, then slipped out the room, already calculating the quickest route to Hermann Park.

Chapter 83

Father Jerome stared at the crowd and hesitated, and felt a shiver spread across his lips and a tremble in his fingers. His forehead went sweaty as other thoughts started rising out of the caverns of his mind, fighting for attention. His eyes strayed, darting left and right nervously, clouded with uncertainty. Then a familiar voice echoed in his ears.

“You’re doing great,” Gracie told him. “Just keep going. Remember everything we talked about. Think about what you really want to tell these people. Block everything else out and open up your heart to them, Father. We’re right behind you.”

A ghost of a smile broke across his face, and he cast his gaze over the crowd, a renewed resolve blossoming within him. He bobbed his head in a slight gesture of confirmation, and pressed on.

CROUCHED IN THE BACK of the van, Gracie put her binoculars down and turned to address Matt across the big drum of the LRAD.

“This thing’s just incredible.” She grinned, patting it. “I want one.”

“Why not. It is Christmastime, right?” Matt said with an easy smirk. Then his expression tightened and he said, “Let them know I’m going in. And keep your eyes on Father Jerome in case he wobbles again.” He popped the door open.

“Good luck.” She smiled.

He smiled back and said, “I’ll see you in a little while.” He pushed his cell phone’s earpiece into place and glanced across at Dalton, who was behind the wheel. They exchanged a tight nod, then Matt slipped out of the van and headed for the plaza.

ACROSS THE FIELD from the plaza, tucked away behind the Miller Outdoor Theatre, Danny watched the proceedings through another set of binoculars while Rydell liaised with Gracie on the phone. The Navigator was parked nearby, tucked away in the service lot behind the theater, its rear door open. The launch tubes were huddled beside them, now freshly stacked with the last of the smart dust canisters.

“Matt’s on his way,” Rydell told Danny.

Danny nodded. “Launchers ready?”

“They’re all set,” Rydell told him. “You sure you had enough time to write the new programs?”

“They’ll be fine,” Danny said flatly.

Their eyes met. An unspoken anger still festered behind Danny’s gaze. Rydell winced and said, “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

Danny shrugged, and said, “Let’s make sure we pull this off first,” then turned his attention back to Father Jerome. “Ready?”

Rydell nodded. “Ready.”

“Let ’em rip.”

“WE’RE LIVING IN A FRACTURED WORLD,” Father Jerome announced. “Others have come before me. Blessed with revelations, with inspirations. With wise and noble thoughts that they tried to share with those around them. To help humanity. To give us food for thought. But all it’s done is turn man against man. Their wise and noble words and their selfless deeds have been misinterpreted, twisted, abused . . . hijacked by others for their own glorification. Institutions have been built in their names . . . great big temples of intolerance, each one of them claiming to be the true faith and pitting man against man. Turning their words into instruments of control. Instruments of hate. Instruments of war.”

He paused, breathing in short, ragged bursts now, sensing the unease spreading among the crowd. He frowned and redoubled his concentration, pushing the conflicting thoughts back, and said, “We have to try and fix that.”

Just then, the sphere of light spread out, growing outward until it dwarfed the piazza below it. The audience gasped, staring in wonderment as the sign pulsed and rippled with life before morphing into the sequence of geometric patterns it had previously displayed—only this time, it ended up settling on a different image. A cross. A large, blazing cross, burning in the sky over Hermann Park.

A loud cheer and shouts of “Praise the Lord” and “Amen” burst through the throng of onlookers as the cross just held there—but their joy was cut short when the sign started morphing again. The crowd gasped once more as the sign seemed to ripple and stretch outward and around before settling into another sign. Not a cross, this time. A star. The Star of David. The crowd flinched with surprise, roiled by the change, confused and scared and caught off-balance—but the sign wasn’t done yet. It held that shape, then changed again. It didn’t stop. It kept going, shape-shifting into a rotating sequence of symbols associated with other religions—Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Bahaism—and kept going, reaching back into history, assuming representations of all kinds of religious movements stretching back through the spider cults of Peru to the sun gods of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and all the way back to the very dawn of civilization.

The changes sped up, the symbol spinning from one shape to the other, faster and faster, a haphazard and dizzying light show. It sped up until the symbols became almost indistinguishable, the intensity almost blinding—and then, all of a sudden, it just vanished. Just died out. In the blink of an eye, and without any sound or warning, it was just gone.

The crowd went silent, as if they were all robots and someone had hit a mute button. The stunned onlookers just stared around at each other, mystified, not knowing what to think—then the sign burst out in its former glory, assuming its familiar pattern, the shape that was first seen over the ice shelf, and just held it and shimmered above the priest’s head.

“INTERESTING LIGHT SHOW YOU’RE PUTTING ON,” the voice rasped from behind them.

Danny and Rydell turned and froze at the sight of Maddox approaching them from behind. He had a long, black case slung over his shoulder and held a gun in his left hand, his uninjured hand. A curious mix of anger and confusion lined his weary face.

He stepped closer until he was about ten feet away from them and stopped. He guided his gaze above their heads, at the massive sign lighting up the sky a couple of hundred yards farther away, by the monumental arch.

It hadn’t been that hard for him to find them. Not for someone who knew what to look for. A vantage point, within a certain range, somewhere where they could work and watch and not be seen. There hadn’t been that many options. The third spot on his sweep turned out to be the right one.

“I’m feeling all warm and cuddly inside,” he chortled, gesturing for them to raise their hands. “Love and peace and goodwill to all men. Is that what you’re selling them?”

“It’s working,” Rydell told him, glancing across at Danny as he set down his cell phone without killing the line. He raised his hands slightly. “They’re listening.”

“And you think that’s going to make a difference?” His voice rose with his anger. “You think our enemies are going to buy into that horse shit too? Wake the fuck up, Larry. They may be listening, but it’s not going to change anything.”

“It could. Look, I don’t know what you and Keenan have in mind, but I don’t want them to stop believing in God,” Rydell said, raising his voice and volleying the anger back at Maddox. “I’d just like them to use their own minds a bit more. Just listen to Father Jerome. Listen to what he’s saying.”

“It’s an admirable thought,” Maddox said mockingly. “We are the world, we are the children, right? It’s great. Everything he’s saying out there, it’s just great—but you know what it’s going to do?” He set his pack down on the ground, reached into it, and pulled out a sniper rifle. “It’s going to get him killed.”

GRACIE STIFFENED the second the words echoed through the headset of her cell phone.

Maddox was alive—and there. And by the sounds of it, he’d taken them by surprise.

An icy panic stabbed the back of her neck. She turned to Dalton in alarm and said, “I need to call Matt. We’ve got trouble.”

Chapter 84

The crowd was thoroughly rattled and exploded with awe at the appearance of the familiar sign before Father Jerome raised his hands to calm them and his voice burst out, cutting through the confusion.

“Many of us have preached the same message, the only message that counts,” he bellowed as they quieted to listen to his words. “A message of humility. And charity. And kindness and compassion. That’s all that matters. And yet it hasn’t worked. All these religions we’ve built have been around for hundreds, for thousands of years. And yet the world is angrier and more divided than ever. And we need to do something about that.”

“MATT.” Gracie’s voice burst through his earpiece. “It’s Maddox. He’s got Danny and Rydell.”

Matt’s feet froze for a beat—he missed one step, maybe two—then he was suddenly weaving through the crowd, hurtling toward the Miller Outdoor Theatre, a tangle of horrific images tumbling through his mind.

MADDOX SWUNG THE RIFLE at Rydell and Danny. “As soon as he’s done talking, he’s going to get his head blown off. We’ll make it look like some towelhead nutjob took him out, we’ve got a bunch of them on watch. ’Cause that’s how all good prophets end up, isn’t it? They have to die for their cause.”

Rydell started to say something, but Maddox cut him off sharply.

He mocked him loudly. “Come on. You can’t do these things half-assed. You’ve got to go all the way. You’ve got to close the deal. If you really want people to believe his words, if you really want his words to be seared into the minds of all those millions of people out there, he needs to die. He has to. To become a martyr. ’Cause martyrs . . . they’re so much harder to ignore, aren’t they?”

Danny studied him for a beat, then said, “And after he’s dead . . .”

Maddox nodded casually. “Yep. With you both out of the picture, it’ll clean things up, nice and tidy. They won’t find you. They will find the Iranian whacko who shot Jerome, though. A card-carrying fanatic with a great CV, someone we’ve been watching for quite a while. He’ll have his head blown off, of course. Self-inflicted. One for the team.”

“You weren’t planning to expose Father Jerome?” Rydell asked.

Maddox shook his head. “Nope.”

“But Keenan . . .” Rydell got it. “He didn’t know.”

Maddox flashed him an icy smile. “Of course not.”

“So the Iranians, the Muslim world,” Danny said. “They’ll get the blame?”

“Of course,” Maddox smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The prophet who wanted to set us free, shot by an agent of intolerance.”

“You’ll start a war,” Danny blurted. “The people who’ve bought into Father Jerome—they’re going to be mad as hell.”

“I’m counting on it,” Maddox replied coolly.

Rydell took a step forward. “Think about what you’re doing here, Brad—”

“I’ve thought about it, Larry,” Maddox hissed, anger flaring across his face. “I’ve done nothing but think about it while I’ve watched us pussyfoot around and let these savages slaughter us. ‘Rules of engagement, ’ ” he spat out indignantly. “Geneva Conventions. Senate hearings the minute you try and bitch-slap the truth out of some kamikaze who doesn’t think his life’s worth anything anyway. We’re just too weak. We don’t have the balls to get things done. We’re playing by the rules against an enemy who knows wars don’t have rules. They’re laughing at us out there; we’re getting our asses handed to us and you know why? Because they get it. They know how to get things done. They know that if someone slaps you, you don’t turn the other cheek. You rip their fucking arm off. And the only way we’re going to win this thing is to get people really angry, so angry that they’ll be baying for blood.”

“You’ll be dragging millions of innocent people into a war just to punish a few extremists—”

“It’s not just a few extremists, Larry. It’s all of them. It’s the whole fucking region. You weren’t out there. You haven’t lived among them. You haven’t seen the hatred in their eyes. Your ‘we are all one’ bullshit won’t work. We can’t live together. It’s just not going to happen. There’s a fundamental difference between us and them on every level. They know it. We know it. We’re just too gutless to face up to it. And they’re coming after us. They’re not going to give up. Make no mistake, they’re our enemies, plain and simple. They want to destroy us. They want to conquer us, and it’s not a land grab. It’s a holy war. And to win a holy war, you need a crusade. We have to go after them with everything we’ve got, no holds barred. Once and for all. We need to wipe them off the face of the earth. And the death of your fake prophet will make it happen. It’ll be one hell of a call to arms, one that’ll be heard around the world.” He leveled the gun at them. “So you just keep that sign up there and settle back until he’s done. Then we’ll finish this.”

FATHER JEROME FIXED his eyes fervently on the massed onlookers and jabbed a stern finger in their direction.

“We all pray to the same God,” he told them. “That’s all that matters. Everything else—all these institutions we’ve built in His name, all the rituals and public expressions of faith—we created those. We did. Humans, people like you and me. And maybe we were wrong in creating them and giving them the power they have over us. Because God doesn’t care about what you eat or what you drink. He doesn’t care about how often you pray to him or what words you use or where you go to do that. He doesn’t care who you vote for. He only cares about how you behave toward one another. That’s all that matters. He gave you all great minds, minds that have allowed you to achieve great advances. You sent a man to the moon from this very city. That’s how clever you are. You can create life in test tubes. You can wipe out the planet with the weapons you keep creating. You hold life and death in your hands, and you are all gods. And like it or not, you control your lives with everything you do, with very action you take. What you do. What you buy. Who you vote for. And you have infinite powers stored inside you. You have minds that allow you to achieve the impossible. Minds that allow you to reason. To talk to one another and debate things openly. And those same minds should be enough to tell you how you should treat one another. Every single one of you knows that. You can see that for yourselves. You know that hurting and killing one another is wrong. You know that sitting idly while others die of starvation is wrong. You know that dumping lethal chemicals in rivers is wrong. Every day, each and every one of you is faced with a choice, and it’s how you choose to behave that matters. It’s that simple.”

“ALMOST DONE.” Maddox seethed as he watched Father Jerome from their vantage point.

Rydell watched him inch toward the Navigator and prop the rifle on the SUV’s side mirror. He turned to Danny.

“Run the debunking software.”

“What?” Danny asked.

“Run the damn software,” Rydell yelled. “Better to expose him than get him killed and start a war.”

“Don’t,” Maddox growled, spinning the rifle at them—

“Wait,” Danny blurted, raising his hands. “Just calm the hell down, all right? I’m not doing anything.”

“Danny, listen to me,” Rydell urged him. “He can’t kill us both. He needs the sign to stay up. Run the goddamn software.”

“Don’t even try it, Danny boy,” Maddox warned. “It doesn’t matter to me if the sign dies out right now. It’s done all I needed it to do.”

Rydell turned to Maddox in exasperation. “Listen to me,” he pleaded. “This is good. This can change things. It can make things better for everyone. It’ll achieve what you’re trying to do without—”

“Enough,” Maddox yelled, his voice ripping up the air like a mortar shell. “You know what, Larry? You’re no longer needed here.” He raised the gun, three inches maybe, and squeezed the trigger—

—just as Matt tackled him from the side. The bullet flew wide, missing Rydell and ricocheting against the side of the theater as Maddox and Matt fell against the hard ground. Maddox spun around and lashed out with a fierce kick that caught Matt across the chest and winded him.

Matt recoiled in pain as Danny and Rydell rushed Maddox. The soldier scrambled to push himself off the ground, but he forgot his right arm was mangled as if a dingo had been at it and instinctively used it to right himself, causing a torrent of agony to flood through him. He fell back again and glared at Matt as his left hand dived under his jacket. Matt saw the grip of an automatic sticking out from behind Maddox’s belt, saw the rifle he’d dropped lying a few feet away, and dived for it.

Maddox’s hand had less distance to travel and came up first—but he didn’t count on Danny, who was already there and threw his weight against him and shoved him to one side, hard. Maddox flew sideways and landed on his right arm again, and his scream sliced through the empty lot before Matt shut him up permanently with three high-powered rounds to the chest.

“YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE to tell you what to believe or who to worship,” Father Jerome was telling the crowd. “You don’t need to follow any set of rituals. You don’t need to worry about an angry God not allowing you into heaven. You don’t need to march into these great temples of intolerance and be told what is God’s inerrant and infallible word, because the simple truth is that nobody really knows that. I don’t. All I know is that you’re not slaves and you’re not part of any grand master plan. If there is a God, and I believe there is one, then you are all God’s children. Each and every one of you. You create your own destiny. And you need to accept that responsibility and put aside your egocentricity and stop looking for excuses in tired old myths. You make your own fate every single day. You need to look after each other. You need to look after the land that feeds you and gives you the air you breathe. You need to assume your duty toward all of God’s creation. And you need to accept the credit for the good and take the blame for the bad.”

He looked across the stunned crowd and smiled. “Enjoy your lives. Look after your loved ones. Help those less fortunate. Make the world a better place for all. And allow me one last humble request. Please don’t allow my words to you here today to be used and abused in the same way.” He cast his gaze across the onlookers again, shut his eyes, and raised his hands. The sign held there for a moment longer—then it dropped down, slowly, until it engulfed the entire platform around Father Jerome in its dazzling light, obscuring him and his protective ring of cops and park patrolmen from view. The massed audience flinched backward, gasping in horror—then the sign split up and divided itself into smaller balls of light that shot outward, over the crowd, spreading themselves evenly all over them. A horizontal field of hundreds of smaller signs, each no more than three feet across, now hovered over the sea of onlookers, almost within reach of their outstretched hands.

It took a couple of seconds for the first gasp and the first shout to draw the crowd’s attention back to the platform at the top of the steps.

The cops and the park patrolmen were looking around in puzzlement. The whole crowd looked on, also bewildered.

Father Jerome was gone.

Chapter 85

Across town, at his mansion in River Oaks, Reverend Nelson Darby glared at his massive TV. His land line was ringing.

Again.

As was his cell phone.

The preachers he’d invited onto the stage with him were clearly watching the live telecast too. And they weren’t thrilled either.

He sucked in a deep, angry breath.

Grabbed the big phone unit from the limed oak coffee table in his study.

Ripped its power cord out of the wall.

And hurled it straight through his TV screen.

THEY ALL WATCHED the endless replays of the coverage in the executive lounge of the FBO at Hobby Airport with relief. They’d pulled it off, and so far, there was no sign of any vicious reaction, not from anywhere around the world. They all knew they’d opened a huge Pandora’s box, opened up a debate that would surely rage on for months and years ahead. But it was an opportunity none of them could resist.

Rydell had booked the FBO for their exclusive use. The plane bringing Rebecca from L.A. was due any minute. It would then take them all to their various destinations: D.C. for Gracie and Dalton; Boston for Rydell, Matt, and Danny. Father Jerome would be Rydell’s guest until they figured out how to reintroduce him into public life—if at all.

In the well-stocked lounge, Gracie studied Father Jerome as he watched himself on the TV screen.

“No regrets?” she asked him.

He looked at her with warm, smiling eyes. “None whatsoever. We need this. We need a new level of consciousness to deal with the challenges we’re now facing. And who knows? Maybe it’ll work.”

“You have more faith in human nature than I do, Father,” Rydell commented.

“Do I? You created this.” He pointed a bony finger at Rydell. “You created something wonderful. And you did it with the best intentions. It was a shame to let it all go to waste, when it could be used to do so much good. And you had to think it would work, or you wouldn’t have tried it in the first place. Which tells me you also had some level of faith in mankind heeding its call and doing the right thing, no?”

Rydell smiled, and nodded. “Maybe, Father. And maybe they’ll surprise me and listen and take in one tenth of what you said.” He paused, then told him, “I owe you my life, Father. Anything you want, just name it.”

“I can think of a few places that could use hospitals and orphanages,” Father Jerome said casually.

“Just write me up a list,” Rydell told him. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

Gracie gave Father Jerome a soft pat on the shoulder. She looked over at Dalton, who was listening intently as Danny told him all about the technology behind the sign. She wondered if Dalton would bail on her and join Danny and Rydell in geekland, then spotted Matt over by the coffee machine, walked over and joined him.

“So I guess your Hollywood blockbuster’s not gonna happen, huh?”

Matt crinkled his face in mock pain. “Nah. Just as well, really. I wouldn’t know how to deal with all those groupies.” He paused, then added, “Your Woodward and Bernstein moment’s also gone up in smoke.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” she groaned.

Something in her eyes told him it wasn’t that much of a lighthearted retort. “You okay?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. It just feels weird. Pulling off a big scam like this. It feels a bit, I don’t know, condescending. Like we know better.” She chortled. “I feel like Jack Nicholson on that stand, remember? Barking out, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ ”

“You’re way hotter,” he ventured.

It was just the disarming comment she needed. “I sure as hell hope so,” she shot back, then beamed a melting smile at him. “But thanks for noticing. Now would you please do me a favor and find something else for us to talk about?”

He studied her smile, basked in it for a moment, then said, “You like classic cars?”

Author’s Note

Here’s where we are:“I turn back to your prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we are the generation that is going to see that come about. I don’t know if you have noted any of those prophecies lately, but, believe me, they describe the times we are going through.”—Ronald Reagan, speaking in 1983

“If people aren’t involved in helping godly men in getting elected, then we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that certainly isn’t what God intended . . . We need to take back this country . . . And if we don’t get involved as Christians, then how could we possibly take it back? If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin.” And:“Florida is key with regard to a shift in this nation, and no doubt these elections in Florida are key as well. That is why there is such spiritual warfare . . . Father, once again, once again, we’ll rejoice with Your son and bring this nation into alignment with Your government, with Your Kingdom’s principles and authority.”—Katherine Harris, secretary of state of Florida, on why she

chose not to allow a recount of the Florida vote despite

the numerous charges of election fraud and irregularity,

and with Al Gore trailing George W. Bush by only several

hundred votes in the contest for Florida’s electoral votes,

thereby handing Bush the 2000 election

“I recall the election in 2004. Hollywood was against us. The media were against us. The universities were against us. And despite them all the church of Jesus Christ put George W. Bush back in the White House. We’re on the winning side. We are going to win because we have the truth. We have the inerrant word of God.”—Jerry Falwell

“Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.”—2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin,

when asked if she believed in the Rapturist theology of

End of Days

And here’s where we were two hundred years ago:“Merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”—Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United

States, writing about the Book of Revelation

“The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.”—Thomas Jefferson again

It’s a good thing Jefferson lived back then. He wouldn’t stand a chance of getting the nomination, let alone winning the election, in the America of the twenty-first century. Which says it all, really . . .

Acknowledgments

Writing is essentially a solitary effort, and in an effort not to end up typing “All work and no play makes Raymond a dull boy” over and over and looking for the nearest axe, I take every opportunity to pick the brains of my friends and other hapless victims whenever I can muster up a reasonable excuse to call on them. Fortunately, they happen to be a very clever and clear-thinking bunch of people who always manage to find the time to humor me, and for that I’m very grateful to them all. In no particular order, and surely forgetting one or two, my stellar posse on this book included Richard Burston, Bashar Chalabi, Carlos Heneine, Joe and Amanda McManus, Nic Ransome (sorry I couldn’t work in the line “He’s not the messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy!”), Michael Natan, Alex Finkelstein, Wilf Dinnick, Bruce Crowther, Gavin Hewitt, Jill McGivering, Richard Khuri, Tony Mitchell, and my parents.

Hearty thanks go to my editors Ben Sevier and Jon Wood for their advice and their patience. Your insights were, once again, invaluable to me. Big thanks too to Brian Tart, Claire Zion, Rick Willett, and everyone at Dutton and at NAL, Susan Lamb and everyone at Orion, and Renaud Bombard and Anne Michel and everyone at Presses de la Cité, for all their hard work and their enthusiasm, and for making it possible for me to hassle all the above mentioned people for so-called research on a continual basis.

A very special and long overdue kudos goes to Ray Lundgren and Richard Hasselberger, who as art directors at Dutton were responsible for the iconic covers, starting with Templar, that have made such a powerful impact. Ray, that cross with the Manhattan skyline was pure genius. The success of my books owes a lot to the brilliance of your cover designs. Many, many thanks to you both.

Thanks, too, to Lesley Kelley and to Mona Mourad for generously donating to charities and bidding to have characters named on their behalf.

And finally, a big nod of gratitude to my fabulous consiglieres at the William Morris Agency—Eugenie Furniss, Jay Mandel, Tracy Fisher, and Raffaella De Angelis.

About the Author

RAYMOND KHOURY is the bestselling author of The Sanctuary and The Last Templar, which topped international bestseller lists at #1 and spent more than three months on The New York Times bestseller list in hardcover. An acclaimed screenwriter and producer for both television and film, Khoury lives in London with his wife and two children. For more information, visit his Web site at www.raymondkhoury.com