The Sword of God

Chapter 40

Morten Lundquist and Michael Callow had been swept downstream. Lundquist was sure they were going to drown, such was the ferocity of the current as it was swamped with more and more water from the falls, the spate supercharged by the torrential deluge of the last few days. He had struggled to stay afloat for as long as he could, but he was old and tired and the water was cold, and he had started to feel himself slide beneath the surface. The water had pressed into his nostrils and then his mouth, and he was ready to submit to it when his son had surfaced next to him, grabbing him around the shoulders and holding him up, kicking for the quieter waters at the edge of the swell.

The current had spun him around so that he was looking back at the top of the falls. He had seen Milton on the lip of the rock face, trying to aim his rifle with one working arm, the barrel kicking as he had fired. The round passed harmlessly overhead, striking a rocky outcrop. He fired two more times, both shots harmless, and Lundquist realised that they were going to make it. The river would carry them out of range. Tom Chandler was still up there — he was dead, Milton had killed him, obviously — and they didn’t have to worry about him slowing them down any more. Milton would take time to climb down the falls, if he even could, and by then the river would have swept them out of his reach.

They were swept downstream for two miles.

Michael swam them across to the bank when the fierce downstream tug of the river had finally abated. They clambered out, shivering in the cold, the rain a foolish irrelevance now.

“Where are we?” Michael asked.

Lundquist looked around and tried to gain his bearings. “A good way to the south.”

“How far to town?”

“I don’t know. Three hours?”

“We made it. Praise the Lord.”

“Amen,” Lundquist muttered.

He couldn’t stop shivering.

“Do you have the radio?”

The radio! He had forgotten he had it. He reached up to his pocket and patted where it should have been, but there was nothing there, just the damp squelch of his jacket.

“Where is it?”

“Must have lost it… the river…”

He felt a sudden wash of helplessness. If he could have used the radio, he would have been able to call for help, send an SOS to the National Guard and have them send men or a helicopter or something, anything, to get them down out of these godforsaken hills and back to civilisation again.

He dropped to his knees. He was done.

“Come on, Pops,” Michael said. “We have to keep moving.”

“I’m tired.”

“We have work to do. God's word. He spared us for a reason.”

His chin slumped onto his chest. He didn’t have the strength.

“Remember the scripture: ‘Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the one who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.’”

“Deuteronomy 31:6,” he mumbled.

“If we stay here, it’s all finished. Think of all the work you’ve done. We can’t let that go to waste. We are the Sword of God. We have a duty. You preached it. These are the End Times, right? We need to strike the first blow.”

Lundquist nodded. The boy was right. He thought of the truck and the load that they had put together. All the effort it had taken. He thought about what they could achieve with it. The original plan, as he had conceived it, was dead. Milton had seen to that. But perhaps that plan was not God’s will. Perhaps he had another use for them. For Lundquist.

He grabbed Michael’s coat and used it to help drag himself to his feet.

“Come on.”

They set off, both of them aware that Milton was somewhere behind them. Lundquist was cold, and he knew that he needed warmth and dry clothes. Michael, too. Hypothermia didn’t take long to take hold, and if it did, Lundquist knew that they would be in trouble. Done for, most probably. He had seen plenty of hikers caught out by the weather, stumbling around in the woods with no idea where they were or even, sometimes, who they were. He trusted God to keep them safe.

They followed the camber down into the forest.

“Who is he?” Michael said. “Milton. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Lundquist admitted. “A soldier.”

“What he did… I mean…”

“Maybe he is what he said he is.”

“An assassin?”

“Maybe.”

“He’s not an assassin,” he said, although there was doubt in his voice.

“He’s killed…” Lundquist tried to remember how many people Milton had killed. Four? Five? He couldn’t remember. Seemed like there was a lot of blood and death all of a sudden. The dead flashed through his mind: a knife, the arrows, the detonations as the two shacks were blown to kingdom come. How many? No, it wasn’t five. He had forgotten Sturgess and Sellar. Stabbed and shot. Seven, then? No. More. What about Randy Watts and Archie McClennan? Where were they? He must have killed them. There was Pelham, too, his neck snapped and his body dumped in the field for them to discover. And Lars Olsen, who had to be cut out of his crushed car. Twelve. He had killed twelve men.

Twelve.

Lundquist felt fuzzy headed, and as they stumbled ahead, a memory appeared through the haze. It was a face, grizzled and dirty, a man with evil in his eyes, and Lundquist remembered that this man had been a member of his patrol in Vietnam, a vicious man with no regard for human life and a particular talent for death. Lundquist could remember his eyes, icy blue and devoid of any flicker of humanity, as if the things that he had seen and done had burnt the compassion from them. Lundquist thought of that man many times through the years and, since his conversion, he had become certain that he had looked upon the face of Satan.

He had looked into Milton’s eyes as they had struggled with the rifle atop the falls, his eyes just inches from Milton’s eyes, and he realised that those cold blue orbs were just the same.

He doddered onwards, only half aware that he was leaning on Michael for support, when he felt his son stop.

“Hands up!”

Michael stiffened. “Pops…”

“What?”

“Hands where I can see them, now.”

Lundquist grabbed Michael’s shoulder and raised his head. There were four uniformed men blocking the trail ahead of them, two of them with automatic rifles raised and pointing straight at them.

Praise God, Lundquist thought.

Lundquist explained who they were and what they were doing in the wilderness. One of the soldiers radioed their descriptions while the others stood guard. Their identities were confirmed, and the men escorted them the final mile south. They had blankets in their packs, and Lundquist wrapped himself in one, the shivering gradually easing. He was still in soaked clothes, though, and still cold. He needed to get changed. A hot drink. A long bath would have been nice, but that was out of the question. He didn’t have time. He had so much to do. He didn’t know if he could afford to stop.

They broke through the tree line into the fields of corn that fringed the northern border of the town. An olive green Humvee was waiting for them there. Two more soldiers were in the Humvee. They disembarked as the patrol brought them out of the trees.

“Lundquist?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Alex Maguire. We spoke on the radio.”

“I’m glad to see you.”

“I bet you are. Are you injured?”

“No, Colonel. Just cold.”

“We’ll get that straightened out. You want to tell me what’s been happening up there?”

“It’s a massacre.”

“How many?”

“Ten. Maybe twelve. He killed them all.”

He thought of those men, Christian soldiers ready to fight for the cause, and he felt a wave of nausea.

“Jesus. We knew it was bad; that’s why the governor sent us up here, but… well, Jesus. Who is he?”

“I have no idea.”

“You never spoke to him?”

“He said he was an assassin. I thought he was joking, now I’m not so—”

Lundquist felt the nausea rise up from his gullet, and before he could do anything to stop it, it was in his mouth. He bent double and let it pour out, splashing into the furrowed mud, spattering over his shoes and the bottom of his pants.

Michael put his hand on his shoulder. “Pops?”

Lundquist pushed his hand away, overwhelmed with embarrassment at such a show of weakness. It was ridiculous. It was pathetic. He had seen dead bodies before, many more than he’d seen today. The VC had been every bit as ruthless as Milton, and more inventive with the ways that they dealt death. And Uncle Sam had killed freely, too. He remembered foxholes full of dead gooks, a line of smoking corpses after an engineer with a flamethrower had flambéed a trench full of the bastards. What was this in comparison to that? It was nothing. And, he chided himself, what else did he expect? This was war. The word of God that they were about to fulfil, the culmination of years of planning, of course there would be blood spilled by the time he was done. Innocents would suffer. You could take that to the bank.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Tired. And I need to get warm.”

“Yes, deputy, in a minute. One more question. Do you know anything else about him? I mean, he obviously knows what he’s doing up there.”

The question lit him up. “Are you serious? He’s killed the sheriff, three deputies, an FBI agent, and the men I took up there to apprehend him. He very nearly killed me and my son. So, yes, I’d say he knows what he’s doing.”

“Yes,” the man said, embarrassed to have asked. “Of course. I can see that.”

“What are you actually doing to find him?”

The soldier flinched defensively. “I’ve got five hundred soldiers up there and, now that the storm’s passed, we’ve got Black Hawks in the air. He won’t be able to hide much longer. And you say he’s wounded, too?”

“I got a shot off. Hit him in the arm.”

“There we go, then. Matter of time, Lundquist. Just a matter of time.”

Chapter 41

Arthur Stanton didn’t want to go.

“I don’t want to leave you here,” he said to Mallory as she untangled herself from his embrace.

“I don’t want you to, either,” she said, “but you have to. I’m not tall enough or strong enough to climb up there and get out. Ellie can’t do it, either. But you can, Arty. You can do it.”

She looked up at the pitched roof of the barn. It was an awfully long way up. Arty liked to climb, and he was good at it, but she knew he wouldn’t have chosen to try a climb as difficult as this. It was only because she had asked him that he had said that he would, but now that he realised what she wanted him to do when he got to the top, he didn’t want to go.

“Mallory…”

She took his shoulders and squared him up so that she could look right up into his face. “Listen to me, Arthur. You have to get up there, and you have to get out. If you don’t, they are going to shoot all three of us. Do you understand?”

“Why do they want to do that?”

“Because we know what they did to the sheriff. You remember that?”

He nodded.

“And what they tried to do to Mr. Milton. That’s what they’ll do to us if we don’t get out.”

“But you and Ellie aren’t getting out. It’s just me.”

“I know that, Arty. You climb out, climb down and then try to open the door.”

“But what if it’s locked?”

“Then you run back into town. You’re not to stop for anyone. We’re at the Olsen farm. You remember where that is? It’s four miles south of Truth. You need to get back into town as fast as you can, and then you need to call the number Ellie told you in the back of the van. You remember it?”

“313-338-7786.”

“That’s right, Arty,” Ellie said.

“What if the phones are still down?”

“They’ll be fixed now.”

“What if they’re not?”

“You’ll need to turn around and go south,” Ellie said. “Get someone you trust to drive you until you find a phone that works. Or all the way to Detroit if you can’t find one.”

“Who do I speak to?”

“You just need to tell them that you were with Agent Flowers and that she has been abducted. They’ll ask you for more details, but you tell them they have to come to Truth, and they have to come to the Olsen farm.”

“They have to come to Truth, and they have to come to the Olsen farm.”

“That’s it.”

Mallory leaned in to him again, wrapped her arms around his chest, and hugged him.

“I love you, Mallory.”

“I love you, too.” She untangled herself for the second time. “Now, go, Arty. Go, right now.”

The roof was eighteen feet above them. It was supported by a series of oak posts and cross braces, each brace supporting a frame that met at the roof. One of the posts was next to the old plough, and Arty scrambled onto it, grabbing the metal teeth, his fingers breaking the dried muck off into his hands, and hoisted himself onto it. From there, he was able to pull himself onto the first girt that split off from the post at a diagonal. He reached up and heaved, clambering high enough above the beam to reach up for the brace that ran parallel with the floor. His boots scrabbled for grip on the dry wood, but he negotiated the short climb until he was on it.

The damaged section that they had noticed was on the other side, only accessible if you used the beams to traverse across.

The next part was the most difficult. Mallory watched with her heart in her mouth as he stepped out carefully, one foot following in the path of the other, until he was out in the middle of the beam. There was a sigh and long creak as the old wood complained at the addition of his weight and then a judder as it dropped down, almost coming loose, slotting back securely in position just as he was bracing for the long drop to the floor below. He kept going, one foot after the other, until he was on the other side of the barn next to the damaged roof.

“Can you get through it?” Mallory said, just loud enough for him to hear.

A piece of tarpaulin had been fixed to a space between the rafters where the asphalt shingles had come away. Arty reached up for it and pressed his hand against it, noticing the tacks that secured it in place. They had been driven in from the outside. He ran his fingers along the edge of the tarpaulin and the rafters until he found the weakest spot; then he curled his fingers between them and yanked. One of the tacks came free, loosening the tarpaulin and giving him more to tug, and after another minute he had pulled it away from all the nails in one rafter, peeling it back so that it hung down freely.

“I got it,” he called down.

“Quietly,” his sister chided. “Can you get through?”

“I think so.”

“Go on, Arty. Be careful.”

He looked down at Mallory.

“Go on.”

He reached out until his fingers locked into one of the vents set into the ridge beam. He swung his leg up and through the hole, then pulled the rest of his body out and into the dark night. Mallory looked up through the opening. The sky was hidden behind a shroud of thick, black cloud.

“He knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he?”

“You can trust him,” Mallory said, a little defensively.

They heard a bang and then the noise of Arty’s feet skidding on the wet shingles. Mallory held her breath until she heard him dig the heels of his boots in and arrest his slide. There was a pause, and then they heard the sound of his feet as they banged on the wall and then, finally, the wet splash as he dropped down to the ground.

Mallory closed her eyes. She found that she had crossed her fingers.

She heard the sound of his footsteps as he came around the barn to the door. Her heart hammered in her chest. What if they were out there? Magrethe Olsen and Morris Finch. What if they had posted a guard? She felt sure that she would hear the boom of a shotgun, the sound of his body slamming into the ground. She felt sick.

There was no boom.

Instead, she heard the scrape of the metal bar as it was pulled through the brackets.

She hurried across to the door as Arty tried to pull it open. The lock caught, rattling in the frame. Arty pulled again, harder this time, but the lock held firm. There was a crash as he threw his shoulder into it, but, still, it didn’t move. There came another slam, even louder, with the same result.

“Arty!” she said through the door. “Stop.”

“I can’t open it,” he said, his voice frantic with panic.

“Don’t worry.”

He was crying. “I’m sorry, Mallory.”

There came another crash as he threw himself at it again.

“Tell him to stop,” Ellie said urgently. “They’ll hear him.”

“I tried, Mallory, but it’s too strong. I can’t open it.”

“Stop, Arty.”

“What do I do?” he sobbed.

“Go to Truth. Just like we said.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You have to, Arty. The sooner you call that number, the sooner we’ll see each other again.”

“313-338-7786. I got it.” There was a moment of silence, just the sound of the rain on the shingles, and then she heard him again. “Okay, Mallory. I’ll do it.”

“I love you, Arty.”

“I love you, too.”

She heard his footsteps, coming quickly as he ran, and she pressed her ear to the knotted wood until she couldn’t hear them anymore. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

Chapter 42

Milton had been on the move all day. He could have reached the edge of the forest more quickly, but he was still as weak as a baby, and he knew that he needed to move carefully. For all he knew, the Guard had a second perimeter team sweeping up after the first one. If that was true, he didn’t know what he would be able to do. The thought of going back into the deeper forest again was not something he was happy to contemplate. He knew that he didn’t have the strength.

He didn’t have the time.

Ellie and the Stantons didn’t have the time.

He moved carefully through the trees, staying low, and then, when they petered out, he scrambled from bush to bush until he was at the edge of another field. This one was not full of corn. It had been allowed to go fallow, restoring its fertility for a crop the next year. Milton estimated that it was a full mile across the field to the railroad on the other side. He guessed that he had exited the forest two miles to the west of the point that he had entered.

A mile. He would normally be able to cover that in a flat run in five minutes. He was injured and tired, though, so call it seven minutes, maybe eight.

He set off into the open field, feeling naked as he left the cover of the leafy canopy overhead. The field had been ploughed, and his feet caught against the ruts and jammed in the troughs, slowing him down. He fell for the first time when he was a quarter of the way across, getting his legs beneath him again and pushing on. He fell for the second time when he was two-thirds of the way across, landing heavily in a muddy puddle.

He had started to raise himself when he heard the sound of an engine. He dropped to his belly again, pressing himself down amid the mud and the mulch, and held his breath. The engine drew nearer, and then he heard the bounce of a suspension as it crossed the railroad track and started to work across the field. He watched as a Humvee came into view, springing up and down across the uneven field. It went by less than fifty feet away from him, and Milton was sure that he must have been spotted. He saw two men in the vehicle, a driver and, next to him, a soldier armed with an automatic rifle. The driver swung the Humvee around so that it was facing into the forest.

Away from him.

They hadn’t seen him.

Milton got up and ran.

He heard another engine, louder than the Humvee, and when he risked a glimpse into the blackened sky, he saw something that made his heart sink.

A black dot was approaching from above the forest to the north, low and fast, the sound of its engines growing louder and louder as it drew nearer. He recognised it as it cleared the edge of the field: it had the distinctive shape of a UH-60 Black Hawk.

He was at the edge of the field now, the steep rise of the railroad embankment above him and the unruly thatch of scrub directly ahead. He dived head first into the vegetation, rolling deeper inside and praying that he hadn’t been seen.

He turned back and looked.

The Black Hawk swept on, flaring as it approached the parked Humvee, the pilot gently guiding it down onto the rutted field twenty feet away from it. The doors slid open, and soldiers started to disembark. Milton counted fifteen. A hand signal was relayed from the ground to the pilot, and the engines roared powerfully again. The chopper lifted back into the air, the forward landing wheel rotating slowly as the nose dipped. The pilot swooped over the trees and executed a sharp turn to port, hurrying back to the north.

Milton stayed where he was, praying that his position was obscured by the vegetation. The fifteen men unslung their packs and prepared their weapons. The passenger in the Humvee jumped down, stepped across the field to the senior man amid the new arrivals, and gave him his orders. The soldiers formed up in two squads and tramped across the field. Milton watched as the two squads deposited a pair of men every half a mile. They were setting up a cordon.

Milton waited there until his breathing returned to normal.

He had been lucky.

If he had been five minutes longer in getting out of the forest, he would have been trapped. A cordon to the south and patrols in the forest all around. Two pincers that would have caught him above and below, gradually narrowing his freedom to move, until he had nowhere to go. He would have been helpless.

But now he saw that he had a chance. They thought he was still in the forest. They were concentrating the search for him there.

He crawled through the bracken and thistle until he reached the start of the embankment. He turned back again to make sure that he was not observed and then clambered up it. The railroad was ahead of him, the thick sleepers at eye level as he lay prone next to them. Beyond that, in the near distance, was Truth.

Milton pushed himself up to his haunches and then, unsteadily, to his feet. He crossed the rails and slid down the other side until the rise of the embankment shielded him from the soldiers in the field.

He started to walk and then to jog, and then he started to run faster and faster until he was sprinting towards the town.

Chapter 43

The national guard arranged for a Humvee to drive them back into town. Lundquist told them that they lived out at Seth and Magrethe Olsen’s farm, so they took them there. He had them stop at the end of the driveway, before the gate and the guardhouse, saying that they would walk the rest of the way. The last thing he wanted was a couple of soldiers nosing around. The Freightliner was parked up in the yard. They might wonder what a vehicle like that was doing on a farm, and if they looked inside…

He needed to avoid that.

They waited until the Humvee had started to turn around, and as it slipped and slid across the muddy track back to the main road, they walked around the gate and made their way across the yard to the farmhouse.

Lundquist knocked on the door. There was the sound of hurried activity inside and then footsteps. The door opened. Magrethe Olsen was standing there, Morris Finch behind her, his arm resting on a French dresser with a pistol clasped in his hand.

“Morten,” Magrethe said, “we thought you were dead.”

“You should have more faith.”

He bustled past her, Michael tailing in his wake.

“What happened?” Finch said, putting the pistol back into a holster that he was wearing on his belt.

“The Englishman,” he said. “Milton. He happened.”

He suddenly felt dreadfully tired, exhausted right to the marrow of his bones. He went over to the sofa with the quilted cover and slumped down into it.

“The others?”

“All dead.”

Finch blanched. “What do you mean?”

“You want me to spell it out for you, Morris? Milton killed all of them.” They both just stared at him. “God is testing us. He wants to be sure that we are worthy for the task that He has set before us.”

All he wanted to do was sleep, but he was cold and, anyway, he knew that particular luxury was for other men. Weak men. He needed to get warm, think about what he needed to do, and find a moment’s peace where he could work it all out without being bothered by his son or Magrethe Olsen or Morris Finch or anyone else.

He went upstairs to the bathroom. There was a shower over the tub, and he cranked the water on, twisting the faucets around until the water that cascaded down was almost too hot for him to stand under. He undressed and stood there for ten minutes, letting the heat seep into his skin and bones, scrubbing it into his scalp, almost scalding himself in an attempt to drive out the cold from the icy rain and their soaking in the river. He let it run down his face and into his eyes and mouth and ears, kneading his cheeks and his forehead with his knuckles, until he felt red raw.

He was tired. His mind started to drift, and he couldn’t stop it.

He thought about what he had seen all those years ago.

Thirty-five years ago.

His vision.

God's word.

He had been in the jungle. An eighteen-year-old conscript thrown into the deepest circle of Hell. It was sweltering, so hot that his brain felt as if it was boiling inside his skull. His rifle company was in pursuit of the enemy, but the VCs tricked them and led them into an ambush. Machine guns, grenades, knives to finish off the wounded. It was a turkey shoot, and most of his platoon had their tickets punched that day, but he had been spared.

A miracle, by any definition.

He squeezed his eyes shut as the water ran over his face and tried to remember.

There had been a glowing light through the trees. When he followed it, he was led to safety. Praise be to God. He couldn’t remember much of what happened next. Even in the immediate hours afterwards, all he could recall were fragments: the glowing lights that seemed to rise from the ground; the beautiful music that was everywhere and nowhere, all at once; the calm and strong voice that talked to him. The memories merged into one as the hours became days and then weeks and months and years.

He couldn’t remember the words, but the message had been imprinted on his consciousness.

These were the Last Days.

The End Times.

The government would be taken over by the antichrist.

He would be responsible for firing the first salvo in the Last Great War that would wipe the stain of its evil from the Earth.

The Lamb was coming.

He had asked when.

You will know.

What would he have to do?

You will know.

Time passed, he had waited, and now it was upon him.

He did know.

The time was now.

He opened his eyes, turned around, and let the water fall onto his shoulders and back.

He knew that there was no way God's word could be put into effect the way he had planned, not now, not now since there was so much heat in town. The National Guard, for one. The FBI would be back once they were notified that one of their own had gone missing, presumed murdered. The ATF might get involved, too. Lundquist didn’t need to be reminded what they had done at Waco.

John Milton had brought down the full might of the federal government onto Truth and had slammed the lid shut on what he had worked so long to put into place.

Lundquist had worked everything out. Years of planning until the operation was perfect. A series of attacks all across Michigan and Wisconsin, happening all at once, Holy Christian soldiers going forth to do battle against Satan.

The assassination of the vice president would have been the first salvo.

That wasn’t going to be possible now.

He needed to adapt.

The hot water came down, and Lundquist closed his eyes and prayed for guidance.

Magrethe had laid out a set of Lars’s clothes, and Lundquist changed into them and went downstairs. If the woman thought anything about seeing him in her dead son’s check shirt and jeans, then she didn’t say anything. She was in the kitchen preparing a pot of hot coffee. Morris and Michael, who had showered in the downstairs bathroom, were waiting for him in the sitting room. Magrethe brought the coffee inside and shut the door behind her. There were cups on the table, and Finch went to work, pouring the coffee and distributing the cups.

They sat quietly for a moment, sipping at their drinks.

Michael was the first to speak. “What are we gonna do, Pops?”

“We’re going to relax.”

“It’s all gone to shit.”

Lundquist felt his temper flare. “No, it hasn’t.”

“My boy is dead,” Magrethe said. “George Pelham is dead. The others you took up there, they’re dead, too. I don’t know, Morten. I don’t much like agreeing with your boy, but, you ask me, he’s right. It’s exactly what’s happened. This can’t be what God had planned for us.”

“Obstacles are sent to test us. We could’ve died up there with the others, and we didn’t. What does that say to you?”

They frowned. No one answered.

“Michael?”

“Says we got lucky. Falling in the river says that saved us from him.”

“No, it says the Good Lord spared us so we could continue to do His work.”

Magrethe shook her head. “It don’t look that way to me.”

“Where’s your faith, Magrethe? You don’t remember your Bible? ‘Jesus said unto him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’”

She looked down, abashed. “I know that.”

“Hand on my heart, none of what’s happened so far has changed my dedication to our cause a single bit. This is a war. We are fighting Satan and all his minions. Men die in war. Men have died, and I’m going to make damned sure that they didn’t shed their blood in vain. You remember what Jefferson said? ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ I’m going to make sure that their sacrifice refreshes that tree. I’m going to make sure that people see them as patriots and our foes as tyrants. I’m going to make damn sure that happens even if it kills me to do it.”

His vehemence struck them dumb and, for a moment, all they could hear was the rain hammering against the kitchen window.

Magrethe couldn’t look at him. “So what are we going to do?”

“We got to think on our feet. Things change. Plans need to be adapted. We have to move tonight.”

“But the VP?”

He shook his head. “He got lucky. We don’t have time to wait. We’ll pick another target.”

“But we’re not ready. Some of the men who were going to fight are dead.”

“That doesn’t mean that we can’t start without them.”

“How we gonna do that, Pops?”

“I’ve been praying to the Lord for guidance, and He has showed me the way. There’s the federal courthouse down there in Green Bay. They’ve got a lot of things they need to be apologising for: abortion, for a start. You want to get me started on the blood that they’ve got on their hands? What about the Second Amendment? They try to put restrictions on semiautomatic weapons. You confident they wouldn’t take everything away if they thought they could? What you say I drive that truck right up to the front doors and blow that place to kingdom come?”

There was a pause as the others absorbed his words. Lundquist would have gone ahead without them, but he found to his surprise that he needed their approval.

Michael stood. “I’ll come with you.”

Lundquist had already anticipated that Michael would want to do that. He had dismissed it. He didn’t need him and when you came down to it, this was something that felt like it needed to be done alone. He knew that he wouldn’t come back alive and, even if he did, he was ready for the government to kill him so that he might get the chance to spread his gospel far and wide. He wanted some time to himself. Michael would be in his ear the whole time and, even if he was quiet, Lundquist knew that he wouldn’t be able to pray.

“No.”

Michael shook his head. “I can’t let you do that on your own.”

“I need you here, Michael. We’ve got three witnesses in that barn. One of them is a federal agent. They need to be shot right away. Should’ve been shot already. Once they’ve been shot, they need to disappear without a trace. You, Morris, and Magrethe need to take care of that.”

He looked at the woman, and she gave a firm, sure nod. Magrethe was a hard woman. She wasn’t squeamish, not like so many people were these days. Seth had always left it to her to euthanize the cattle that couldn’t be saved. She would take them out around back and put a bullet in their brains. Lundquist knew that he could rely on her to see that the job was done.

“Can you do that, son?”

“Sure. I can do it.”

“What about Milton?” Finch asked.

“We have to assume that he’s coming.”

“How could he know we’re here?”

Lundquist had thought about that. How would he know that? There was nothing to say that he would, but he might have spent a little extra time with Tom Chandler, or any of the others he had killed, and maybe he would have been able to get the information out of them. He was resourceful. They couldn’t assume that he would be ignorant.

“He’s coming. You need to be ready for him. You need to take him down.”

Lundquist opened the door of the trailer and pulled himself up and inside. He took out his flashlight and played the beam over the large barrels of ammonium nitrate, diesel, and nitromethane. The blast would be triggered by four hundred pounds of Tovex Blastrite Gel. A time-delayed fuse led from the cab to a dozen blasting caps. The explosion would be enormous. Volcanic. What a statement it would be. Like the Israelites sounding their horns and the walls of Jericho coming crashing down.

The other militias would come to their side.

The country was like a powder keg. All it needed was a spark.

The start of the Holy Revolution.

The return of the Lamb, riding at the head of God’s army.

He jumped down onto the wet yard and closed the door up nice and tight.

Michael was waiting for him at the door to the tractor cab. He had an M16 in his hands.

“I’m sorry, Pops.”

“What for?”

“If we’d been more careful up there. The other day. If… I don’t know, maybe this wouldn’t have happened the way it has.”

“It’s God’s will,” he said. “Do what I told you and we’ll still make history.”

“You think?”

The boy’s doubt was pitiful. The same for his need for Lundquist’s approval, but, as much as it irritated him, he couldn’t deny that he had affection for him.

He extended his hand. Michael took it, and Lundquist gripped his hand hard.

“You’ve done well, son. I’m proud of you. Maybe we see each other again when this is all said and done, maybe we don’t, maybe we have to wait until we’re both in Heaven, but you take care of things here and then I guess you’ve done everything I could have expected from you. Can you do that?”

“I can do it.”

“I can’t ask for any more.”

Lundquist let go. Michael’s eyes were damp. He proffered the M16 and Lundquist took it, sliding it into the cab.

He reached for the rail and hauled himself up.

“Good luck, Pops,” Michael called after him.

“Ain’t nothing to do with luck, son. ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not into thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and He shall direct thy paths.’”

“Amen,” Michael said.

“Amen.”

Lundquist turned the ignition, and the truck’s engine rumbled. He pressed down on the gas, feeding it revs. Michael looked up at him, his eyes still wet, and slammed the door shut. Lundquist put the truck into first gear and rolled slowly out of the yard.

He figured he could make Green Bay in four hours.

Chapter 44

Milton was slow and cautious as he made his way back into Truth. He knew that the focus of the search would be up in the wilderness, that the Guards would not have expected him to have been able to slip through the cordon, and, even if they could have anticipated that, they would not expect him to head back into town again. They would expect him to take a car and drive away as far and as fast as he could.

That had never crossed Milton’s mind.

He had made promises, and his word meant something to him.

He had promised to kill Lundquist, and he would.

He had promised to come back for Mallory, Arty, and Ellie, and he would do that, too.

The town was eerily quiet. The storm was unabated, and that would have been more than enough to clear Main Street of pedestrians, but there was no traffic on the road, either. The stop lights at the junction flashed red, amber, and green, reflecting on the wet asphalt, but there were no cars to observe them. Perhaps the residents were frightened. Soldiers were abroad, and men had been killed. A maniac was running amok. Perhaps they were all hiding indoors.

Milton moved from cover to cover. He was absorbed into the welcoming darkness of an alley, and then he rushed to hide in the lee of a big industrial bin. He ducked down behind the wing of a car and pressed himself into a doorway.

He heard the grumble of an engine, deeper than a car, and ducked down behind a bus stop. A Humvee, olive green, with a fifty-calibre machine gun mounted atop it, rolled at a medium pace right down the middle of the street.

Milton waited until it was out of sight and then hurried on.

He was passing a takeaway that he had seen when he had first come into town when he saw him.

Arthur Stanton.

He was inside, using a payphone that was fixed to the wall. Milton stood in the doorway for a moment, assessing the place, and then stepped inside.

There was a table and a couple of chairs just inside the door, and Milton sat down so that his back was facing the door. Arty had the phone pressed to his ear and a frown on his face.

“I told you,” the proprietor called out to him from behind the counter. “Everything’s down. Storm’s knocked the whole thing out.”

Arty put the receiver back onto its cradle and turned to the door. His face was anguished, pale, and it looked like he had been crying. He was distracted and he didn’t notice Milton until he reached out and took his sleeve.

“What—” he said, his face twisting with fright.

“It’s me, Arty. Remember? John.”

The disquiet seemed almost to worsen.

“It’s Mr. Milton.”

He stopped. The shock lifted to be replaced instead with upset.

He gestured to the seat opposite. “Sit down.”

He swayed from foot to foot, unsure what to do, but, with a softer “Arty,” Milton gently tugged on his sleeve and he sat.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“Where are Mallory and Ellie?”

He didn’t hear the question. “I got out. I climbed up, got out through the roof. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Mallory said I was to call a number, 313-338-7786—I remembered it, see — but they say the telephones aren’t working, and I can’t do what she wanted me to do. She said I had to go south, to Detroit, but I don’t know how to get there.”

“Arty. You have to tell me where they are.”

“In the big shed,” he said, his face open and surprised, as if that was something that surely Milton must have known. “On the farm.”

Milton found a car on a back street, put his elbow through the window and unlocked it from the inside. He got inside, with Arty in the passenger seat next to him, hot-wired the ignition and drove away. It took less than a minute, and it didn’t look as if he had been seen.

“Which way?”

Arty pointed to the south. Milton turned onto Main Street and drove carefully, wary of attracting attention.

“How did you get away?”

“I climbed out. There was a hole in the roof.”

“And then?”

He repeated himself. “I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Mallory told me to run into town, so I did. But the telephones don’t work and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

He was getting agitated again. “It’s okay, Arty. Don’t worry. I’m here now. We’ll soon have this sorted out.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Fix it.”

Milton drove on. “How many people did you see there?”

He screwed up his face. “There was a woman and Mr. Finch, the plumber. We saw them most of all. There were a lot of people in the other barn the night they took us there but they all disappeared. We didn’t see any of them again.”

“Did anyone have any weapons? Guns?”

“The woman and Mr. Finch — they have shotguns.”

“Anything else?”

“No. I didn’t see anything.”

“Well done, Arty. You’ve done very well.” Milton cleared the outskirts of the town and put his foot down. “Hold on.”

Milton killed the lights a mile out and rolled up to the start of a long drive that led towards farm buildings. He switched off the engine and rolled to a stop, water splashing beneath the tires as they passed through deep puddles.

“I want you to stay here,” he said to Arty.

“What about Mallory? And Ellie?”

“I’m going to go and get them. But you have to stay here. Do you understand?”

He shuffled awkwardly in the seat.

“Arty — you have to stay here. Do you understand?”

“I just want to help.”

“I know you do, but I don’t need help. And you’ll get in my way. Stay here.”

Arty grunted that he would. Milton opened the door, exited the car, and slipped into the cover of a clutch of fir trees. He crouched down, flexing his sore arm, and assessed the terrain ahead.

The farm was encircled by a fence. Thirty yards behind the fence was a log gatehouse that reminded him of a frontier stockade. A log was lowered across the dirt road like the arm of a highway toll booth. An oblong of light stretched out from the side of the gatehouse, a door that Milton couldn’t see. The oblong was split in half by a shadow; someone was in the booth and had come to the doorway.

The farmhouse was at the end of the road, lights glowing in the downstairs windows. There was another light above the porch, swaying in the wind. Surrounding it were sagging sheds, bungalows. There was a bunkhouse, probably added as farm and family grew. Now the house was empty and silent, huddling under cedar and pinon trees. He saw other buildings: a tall grain silo, two barns. Faint light glimmered from a number of ramshackle constructions he could see in the distance. There was a long line of vehicles parked along the shoulder of the lane between the guardhouse and the farm.

Save the lights, there was no sign of life.

And then there was.

He heard the sound of a powerful engine. He ducked right down as a pair of high beams swung out from behind one of the barns. A truck, a big eighteen-wheeled semi, crawled slowly out of the yard and rolled through the gate and onto the lane. He saw the figure of a man in the yard, but he was much too far away to be able to identify him. The truck bounced along the potholed track towards him, the lights stretching out across the furrowed fields until they were interrupted by the trunks of the fir trees, casting inky black shadows for a dozen feet behind him. He couldn’t make out any detail through the darkness and the rain and he stayed down low as the semi drew nearer. The brakes sighed as it reached the end of the track, the tractor swinging onto the main road and the trailer following after it.

Milton was close enough now to make out the driver.

Lundquist.

The engine growled again as Lundquist fed it more power. The truck was old and in bad shape. It rumbled away, passing the car with Arty inside and heading southeast.

Milton worked his way around the boundary of the property until he had enough cover between himself and the buildings to make an approach without being detected. This stretch of the fence was old and in need of repair, and Milton was able to duck down and slip between the top and bottom rails. He stayed low, sliding through long grass, moving quickly to a grove of black gum trees with a tangle of young buttonbush beneath their boughs.

He was halfway to the barns. The figure he had seen earlier was still there. It was a man, but he was facing away from him. His silhouette was slender. There was a line of chokeberry and cinquefoil ahead, and he was about to make out for it when another person emerged from the farmhouse. A woman. She was carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, the action open. The first man turned as she approached, and the light from the porch fell onto him.

Michael Callow.

Milton felt the jolt of adrenaline and felt his lips as they pressed tight against his teeth.

Milton heard the sound of a door creaking on rusty hinges. Callow and the woman turned to one of the barns. Two people emerged.

Mallory.

Ellie.

A third person followed them outside.

A man he hadn’t seen before. Big, obese.

Ellie’s wrists were cuffed.

He waited for them to turn away from him, but, before they could, he heard the sound of someone approaching from behind him. He turned his head back towards the car and saw Arthur Stanton’s large figure, moving low and quickly, headed towards the yard.

There was nothing he could do. Arty hadn’t seen Milton or, if he had, he was deliberately avoiding him because he knew what he would say. He was thirty feet away to the right, heading towards another clump of buttonbush. He couldn’t call out or Callow and the others would hear him. But if he stayed silent, what would Arty do?

Milton knew. It would be bad.

He clenched his teeth. Helpless.

Callow stepped in front of Ellie and said something to her, his harsh laugh sounding like a bark as it rang around the yard.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down onto her knees.

The man standing behind Mallory did the same to her.

The woman closed the shotgun.

Milton couldn’t wait.

If he left cover, if they saw him… a spread from the shotgun, medium range, it would pepper him.

But if he didn’t…

Chapter 45

Ellie tried the cuffs for the thousandth time, and they still held firm. Her knees and legs were inches deep in a thick slop of mud. She looked across to Magrethe Olsen’s boots, smothered with the same mud, and then followed her legs up until she was looking into the barrels of the shotgun aimed straight at her. She had imagined dying in service, like her father before her, but it had always been an abstract idea. The kind of thing that happened to other people. Now, though, it was horribly, awfully real.

She was going out, kneeling in mud and pig shit in some backwater hick farm. She found herself thinking of Orville. If she ever got out of it, ever told him what had happened, she knew that he would find it hilarious.

But she wasn’t getting out of it.

“I’m a federal agent,” she said, again, knowing that it wasn’t going to help them here.

“You know what’s going to happen tonight?”

“Why don’t you tell me.”

“That truck, that’s the biggest bomb this country’s ever seen. It’s going to make Oklahoma City look like powderpuff.”

“So why don’t you tell me where it’s headed?”

She laughed. “Don’t think so. All you need to know, when that bomb goes off, it’s going to start the war to end all wars. All the Jews and the niggers and the wetbacks, the liberal intelligentsia, the sickness in the federal government, they’re all going to get swept away. All of it. The Messiah is on his way. The Second Coming. Tonight is the start of it.”

Ellie saw, in the corner of her eyes, that Mallory had closed her hand around a large stone.

Callow was just behind her. “Just get on with it.”

Magrethe raised the stock and pressed it into her shoulder.

Ellie started to close her eyes.

There was a sudden blur of motion.

She looked up.

Arthur Stanton.

He came running out of the undergrowth. He moved with a clumsy gait, but he was big and strong and he bellowed with fury. Morris Finch was between him and Magrethe. Arty drew back his fist and pummelled the man in the side of the head with enough impact to spin him around on his standing leg, flipping him so that when he landed it was face first, out cold even before he splashed down into the mud.

Arty headed right for Magrethe.

There was ten feet between them.

Too far.

He roared at the top of his lungs.

She swivelled quickly, too quickly, the barrel swerving away from her and at him.

Her aim was quick, inaccurate, but the shotgun was loaded with buckshot.

She pulled the trigger and fired a spread.

Arty screamed, his legs collapsing beneath him as he slammed down to the earth.

Mallory shrieked.

“Arty!”

Mallory screamed.

Milton crashed out of the chokeberry, put his head down, and pounded the ground. There were twenty feet that separated him and the woman with the smoking shotgun, and she was facing Arty, a quarter turn away from him.

She hadn’t seen him.

He sprinted, his muscles burning and adrenaline surging through his veins.

Callow saw him and shouted a warning.

The woman started to turn, her attention straying away from Ellie and Mallory for a moment.

Long enough.

Mallory bounded to her feet. She had a rock in her hand.

Callow made a move on Milton, trying to block him.

The woman turned back, too late, and saw Mallory.

Milton lowered his shoulder and barrelled into Callow, wrapping his arms around his waist and picking him up, driving him backwards, slamming him into the barn wall.

Mallory swung her arm, the stone clasped in her fist, the impact thumping into the woman’s temple, dropping her backwards.

Callow grabbed Milton’s shoulder, trying to draw him down onto the ground with him, trying to hold him there. The young man was strong.

The woman dropped the shotgun. It landed at Mallory’s feet.

Milton raked Callow’s eyes. The younger man gasped with pain, but held on. Milton butted him, then prised his fingers open. He leaned away just far enough to strike down with his right hand, putting his shoulder into it, trying to punch straight through his head into the muck beneath him. Callow groaned, and his eyes rolled back into his head.

Mallory stooped to collect the shotgun.

Milton scrambled up, his fist tingling.

The woman was on her hands and knees. Blood was running freely down her temple.

Mallory aimed the shotgun at her.

“No, Mallory,” Milton said. “Give it to me.”

Mallory shook her head.

The gun looked too big for her, almost too big for her to hold the fore-end with her left hand at the same time as the index finger of her right hand was up against the trigger.

“Mallory.”

Milton saw the emotion in her eyes: fear and anger. He recognised it. Knew how powerful it could be. He had tapped the same combination many times before.

“Mallory, please. You don’t have to do that.”

She shook her head. “I do.”

“It won’t make you feel any better.”

“Ellie,” Mallory said, “is Arty all right?”

Ellie hurried across to where the boy was thrashing on the ground, his hand pressed against his thigh.

The woman moaned, put her hand to her temple, drew it back, and looked at her bloody fingers.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Ellie said. “Flesh wound.”

“Look at me,” Mallory said to the woman. Her voice was cool and drawn.

“Mallory.” Milton took a step closer to her and extended his hand, palm out, ready to take the gun from her. “You’ll hate yourself forever. Trust me.”

“Listen to your friend,” the woman said. Her voice was dazed, but there was scorn in it.

“I don’t think so.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot me.”

“No?”

“What’s her name?” Milton said.

“Magrethe Olsen,” Ellie said.

“That’s right, and you killed my son. You are going to burn in eternal hellfire for what you’ve done.”

Milton really couldn’t disagree with that. “You need to shut your mouth.”

She cackled. “Eternal damnation, that’s what you’ve got coming to you.”

Mallory took a step back so that she could cover her properly with the spread.

Magrethe shook her head, ridding herself of the cobwebs. “I knew your daddy, girl. You know that?”

Mallory did not reply. She bit the corner of her lip instead.

“That’s right. I did. Before he went off the rails. He was a good man. I’d say he got dealt a shitty hand in life, I’m thinking about your mother and your brother being born the way he was, retarded and all—”

“Don’t say that,” she cut across her.

She carried on, “But all things considered, your old man was a stand-up fellow. I was older than he was, a few years, who’s counting, but we knew each other like everyone knows everyone else in this town. And I’ll tell you something, Mallory, he’d be proud of how you’ve turned out.”

Magrethe struggled up onto unsteady feet. “I’ll tell you something else, Mallory.”

“Mallory,” Milton said, “give it to me.”

“He would’ve been proud of how you’ve looked after your brother. A retard, I mean, that’s not—”

Mallory’s eyes opened wide at that, and she said, in a voice that should not have been misunderstood, “I told you, don’t call him that.”

“What? A retard?”

“Say that word again.”

“And what? You’ll shoot an unarmed woman? No. You won’t do that, Mallory. Now, enough of this nonsense.”

“I’m warning you.”

“Don’t be so foolish. It’s just a word. You call him special; everyone else calls him a ret—”

The boom was deafening. Magrethe caught the blast at close range, and it tore her to shreds, flinging her backwards, her face and scalp gouged by the buckshot into a raw, pulpy mess.

Mallory looked at what she had done. She stood there for a long moment, stock-still, and then she carefully placed the shotgun on the ground and went over to her brother and Ellie.

Chapter 46

The body of Magrethe Olsen lay face up on the ground, shot to pieces. Ellie looked down at her and felt nothing.

Mallory hurried across to her brother, took his hand, and hugged him close.

Milton put out a hand and steadied himself against the side of the barn.

“You all right?”

“I’ll be honest. I’ve been better.”

“What happened?”

“I went back into the hills. They sent a posse after me.”

“And?”

“And I’m here and they’re not.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re dead, Ellie.”

“How many?”

“I stopped counting at five.”

He said it without emotion or inflection. Like it was business. “Are you hurt?”

“Took one in my arm. Lucky shot. I’ve cleaned it out. It’ll need to be treated, but it’s fine for now.”

The rain kept coming down, but Ellie thought that she could hear something else. “We have to stop Lundquist.”

“I saw him, in the truck. Where’s he going?”

“I don’t know. They do, but they won’t say.”

“They’ll say,” he said grimly. “You know what’s in the trailer?”

“It’s a bomb, Milton. They had it parked outside. I watched them load it. Barrels of fertiliser, fuel, explosives, too, I think. They’re planning to blow something up. You get the registration?”

“It’s a white Freightliner. BDH 5578.”

“My partner,” she said, “when he hears this…”

The noise in the rain came again, clearer now. They both swung around and stared into the darkness, but they couldn’t see it yet. Ellie knew what it was: a helicopter, the distinctive whup whup whup of the blades, the bird coming in low and fast from the north.

“Ellie,” Milton said, “you have to listen to me. It’s the National Guard.”

“So they’ll help us.”

“No, they won’t. All they know is what Lundquist told them. They think I’m a murderer.” He gestured down at the shot-up woman. “They’ll see her body and shoot me on sight.”

“I won’t let them. I’ll explain—”

“You got any ID?”

“No. They took it away.”

He shook his head. “Then we don’t have time. Lundquist is already on the move, and I need to get after him. We need to get Callow into the house.”

Mallory helped Arty to his feet and supported his bad leg, helping him hobble across to the farmhouse.

Milton took Callow beneath the shoulders and dragged him, face down, after them.

The Black Hawk swooped over the tree line and roared over the roof, the rotor wash sending up a cloud of spray and terrifying a coop of chickens. They ducked their heads in the sudden storm of debris and the clattering, terrible noise.

Inside. The door led into a hallway with three doors. There was a large French dresser that held a collection of plates and other crockery. Milton ushered them all inside and then went back to the dresser. He heaved it around, plates toppling off it and smashing against the floor. He dragged it until it was flush against the door, blocking the way inside.

“You sure that you know what you’re doing?” Ellie said.

“If we let the Guard take over here, we’ll lose any chance we have of getting to Lundquist.”

“They’ll contact the bureau.”

“Yes, and they should, but we’ll have to wait for them to realise that’s what they need to do. We don’t have time to wait. The bureau has no idea what’s happening. They don’t even know what happened to you. How long would it take your partner to get out here?”

“Hours.”

“And it’ll be too late by then. Lundquist could have driven to Green Bay, Detroit, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Chicago… He could’ve driven anywhere. If you’re right, if it is like Oklahoma, think what he could do with that truck.”

“I know. It’s all I can think about.” She frowned. “It’s not going to be easy to mobilise. The storm’s taken out the local phone lines and cell towers. Everything north of Wausau. It would be a nightmare to try to organise the response.”

“So we don’t have any choice, do we? We have to do this ourselves. It’s on us.”

He was right; she knew it. “So what do you need?”

“I’ve got to interrogate Callow.”

“You want to tell me what that means? Interrogate?”

“You really want to know?”

Ellie bit the inside of her lip. She knew exactly what he meant and, despite everything that the militia had done to them and everything they might go on to do, the prospect still sat uncomfortably with her.

“We don’t have the time to be pleasant, Ellie. I need to know everything he knows.”

“You’ll… you’ll kill him?”

“It’s tempting, but no. I’ll leave that to the government.”

“What do I have to do?”

He nodded, his face a blank and inscrutable mask. “Keep the Guards off my back. I need five minutes with him and then as much of a head start as you can manage.”

“How am I going to do that? I don’t have my ID.”

“I don’t care how you do it. Be persuasive. Five minutes, that’s all.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stop Lundquist.”

Michael Callow woke up to the sensation of his feet scraping along the floor. He felt strong arms looped around his chest, hands clasped over his sternum. His head felt unbelievably sore, as if he had been hit with a jackhammer just behind his ear. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and, as he opened his eyes he saw the ceiling of a room he partly recognised above him. He remembered what had happened in the yard outside and felt the first explosive eruption of vomit launch from his gullet, up his throat and out of his mouth. It ran over his chin and into his nostrils, and splattered all over his shirt.

Callow felt as if his head was full of smoke.

They were in the kitchen of Seth and Magrethe Olsen’s farmhouse. He recognised the beadboard on the walls, the soapstone counters, the tin splashbacks, the ceiling panels painted light blue, the big iron range. He saw the baking station. The eighteenth-century mustard-painted Quebecois bar. The antique dining table where they all had pledged their allegiance to the Sword of God, swearing it over his father’s Bible.

John Milton walked over to him and looked down. It all came back to him in a terrifying flood of images and sounds, the chaos that this man had wrought. He tried to tell his legs to move, to get him away from him, to get him anywhere but here, but his brain was fuzzy and his legs weren’t listening.

Milton put his right shoulder beneath the edge of the dining table and straightened his back a little to raise it from the floor. He arranged two piles of Magrethe’s thick cookery books beneath each leg, raising them up and sloping the angle of the table.

He came back to him.

Callow tried to struggle, but Milton was strong. He grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him to the table. Callow tried to hook his leg around the cabinet, but Milton yanked him away. He kicked and bucked and tried to plant the heels of his boots on the floor, but all he succeeded in doing was to leave a track of scraped rubber across the wide wooden planks.

Milton pushed him onto the sloping tabletop, grabbed both his shoulders, and hauled him the rest of the way up. He took a nylon washing line and lashed his legs and shoulders to the board, arranging him so that his head was lower than his heart. The dim fog in Callow’s head started to disperse more quickly, but the confusion was replaced by panic, and all he could do was squirm and wriggle. It was useless. The bonds were too tight. He squeezed his eyes as tightly shut as he could.

He started to protest, trying to find the words that would persuade the man that this was unnecessary, but, before he could tell him any of that, a towel was draped over his face, his eyes and his nose and his mouth, blocking out the light. On top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random light to his vision, layers of cloth were added. Total darkness absorbed him.

Milton’s voice was muffled. “Michael, I need you to tell me where your father has gone.”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice muffled, the exhalation of his breath gathering against the towel, with nowhere to go.

“He’s driven off in the semi. He’s going to detonate it. You need to tell me where he’s going to do that.”

The panic cut through his dizziness like a hot knife. Awareness came plunging back.

He blinked furiously against the fabric, remembering what his father had told him as they sat around the kitchen table. He remembered the story of John Wilkes Booth and the words he had shouted after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

He shouted them.

“Sic Semper Tyrannis!”

Thus Always to Tyrants.

He waited, his breathing clotted and difficult through the weight of the cloth above his mouth, and wondered whether Milton had been able to hear his words or whether they were too muffled to be intelligible. Then he felt the wet slap of water as it was poured over his head. He felt a slow cascade of water going up his nose.

He held his breath for as long as he could, but then he had to exhale and inhale, the damp cloths brought tight against his nostrils, as if a huge, wet palm had been suddenly pressed over his face. He couldn’t tell whether he was breathing in or out, whether he was breathing in water, whether his nostrils and mouth and lungs were engulfed with it or whether it was all in his imagination. Lines blurred. Reality shifted, became slippery. The water kept slapping down onto him. He thumped his fist against the side of the table.

The wet towels were pulled away from his face. He blinked furiously into the sudden light, spluttering water from his nose.

“Where is he going?”

“‘Therefore do not fear them. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed…’”

“Where?”

“‘… And hidden that shall not be known.’”

“Want to try again?”

He gasped for air, his pulse racing. “You can do what you want. I’m not saying anything.”

He heard the doubt and fear in his voice and cursed himself for his weakness. He prayed for strength.

“I barely washed your face that time,” Milton said as he dropped the sodden, heavy cloth over his face again.

He heard footsteps moving away. He heard water sloshing into a vessel. He heard footsteps approaching. Water was poured over him again. Callow tried hard, fighting the wave of nausea and terror, but it was a hopeless task, his gag reflex overwhelming him, filling him with abject terror, primal terror, and he slapped the table again.

The wet cloth was pulled away for a second time.

Milton was leaning over him, looking down into his face. Those eyes, so cold and pitiless. The eyes of the Devil. Callow sobbed out, his breath racing in hungry gulps, and then he looked into those eyes, and he knew that this was not a man from whom he could expect clemency or mercy. Milton would kill him.

“Where is he, Michael?”

“‘Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love. Because of your great mercy, wipe away my sins. Wash away my evil and make me clean from my sin.’”

Milton raised the cloth and held it above his face, water streaming from the sodden fabric and falling onto his face. “Where is he?”

“Green Bay. The federal courthouse in Green Bay.”

Chapter 47

Milton placed the pewter jug on the floor and left Callow trussed up on the table. He hurried into the sitting room. Ellie had found a bunch of keys on the table, and one of them fit her bracelets. She looked up at him, concern on her face.

“It’s Green Bay.”

“Where?”

“Federal courthouse. A bomb that big, though… it’ll do a lot of damage.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He nodded to the cuffs. “Put those on Callow.”

“And then?”

“Explain to the soldiers what’s happened. Everything. Tell them about the truck and that he’s probably taking it to Green Bay.”

“Probably?”

“Callow wasn’t lying, but maybe Lundquist didn’t tell him the truth. Can’t say for sure. They’ll need to block all the major roads out of the Upper Peninsula.”

“And you?”

“I’m going after him.”

Milton paused, looking at her. Her eyes flickered down to his arm. He looked down, too, and saw fresh blood spotting on his sweater.

“John, you can’t. Look at you. You’re hurt.”

There was no point in pretending otherwise. “There’s no choice. If he gets stopped, he’ll blow up the truck. An explosion like that will take out everyone within a hundred yards of it. If he can’t kill feds, he’ll make do with soldiers. Maybe I can stop him before that happens.”

He wouldn’t be dissuaded, and Ellie quickly saw the futility in trying. Instead, she came to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and stood on tiptoes, placing a soft kiss on his cheek.

“Good luck.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You still owe me dinner.”

He allowed her a smile, squeezed her hand on his shoulder, and then gently disengaged himself. He turned and left the room, following the hall to the parlour at the back of the house. There was a wide picture window. The lights in the room were off, and Milton approached it carefully, seeing his own reflection looking back at him as he stared out into the darkness of the yard beyond.

He couldn’t see anyone.

The turbines of the Black Hawk whined as the chopper powered down on the other side of the house.

He heard voices.

He slid his fingers beneath the bottom sash and pulled it up, grimacing as the wood squeaked in loud protest. He pulled again, his arm complaining from the effort, and then, when he had opened it far enough, he pulled himself through and dropped down onto the muddy lawn beyond.

More voices.

He ran across the backyard to the porte cochère that had been built on the eastern side of the house. There was a dirt bike propped up there, a Honda CRF450R, a light and powerful bike that Milton knew would pack a punch. That was good.

The keys were in the ignition. Milton pulled it away from the wall, surprised that it was so light, straddled it, and then twisted the key. He fired the engine with the kick-start, hearing it growl and whine as he fed it revs, and then held on tight as it bucked out from beneath the shelter and started across the yard.

Two uniformed soldiers were right in front of him.

“Stop!”

Milton swerved around them both, the back wheel sliding out, the tyre cutting through the sludge until it bit on the mud beneath. The unexpected jerk almost unseated him, and the effort of clasping hard with both hands sent a blast of pain up his damaged arm.

Milton settled his balance again, not daring to look back, and aimed the bike for the fields that spread out to the south of the farm. More corn, tractor trails bisecting the field right down the middle. He heard the sound of the warning shot fired just above his head, ducked down and squeezed out more revs. The bike shot ahead at forty and then fifty, raced through an open gate and leapt off a furrowed slope, slamming down onto the uneven surface of the field ten feet farther on. Milton was sprayed with mud as he fought to control the bike. He squeezed the brakes until he was comfortable and then aimed for the passage between the crops.

He raced between the tall shoulders of the stalks, deeper and deeper into the field.

Ellie rubbed her sore wrists and crept low to the window, daring a quick glance outside. The Black Hawk had come down in a field to the west of the farmhouse, the branches still shaking and the tremendous noise rattling the panes of glass. A bright searchlight swung around from the open doorway of the chopper, a blinding yellow light that played across the farmhouse, fixing on the window and lighting up everything inside, the darkest shadows painted on the wall behind them.

“What are we going to do?” Mallory asked fretfully.

“You heard what Milton said. We need to let them know we’re not the bad guys.”

“How—”

“Let me talk to them, Mallory. Stay here with Arty. We’ll need to get him some help. Make sure Michael Callow stays here, too.”

She went to the hallway. She put her shoulder behind the French dresser and pushed it aside so she could open the door wide enough to squeeze through.

She walked out into the yard.

The searchlight played out through the trees, throwing spectral shadows against the walls of the farmhouse. She saw the silhouettes of men crouched down low, running away from the field where the Black Hawk had landed. The dark figures parted, some going to the left of her and some to the right. They spread out around her, adopted firing positions, and aimed their rifles at her. The searchlight jerked around again, finally fixing on her, and she had to raise her arm in front of her eyes so that she could see.

“Put your hands up!” a harsh voice called out.

She raised her left hand, the light flooding into her face again.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Ellie Flowers. I am an FBI agent.”

“On your knees!”

“I’m FBI.”

“Do it now!”

She lowered herself to her knees.

One of the soldiers took a step in her direction. He had a pistol in his hand, and it was aimed straight at her head.

“Identification?”

“No, sir. It’s been taken from me.”

“Name?”

“I just told you: Ellie Flowers.”

“Field office?”

“Detroit. 477 Michigan Avenue. My partner’s name is Orville Clayton. Call him.”

“Anyone else in that house?”

“Yes,” she said. “Mallory and Arthur Stanton. They’re local kids. Arthur has been shot and is going to need a medic. There’s a man tied to a table in the kitchen. His name is Michael Callow. You’ll want to speak to him.”

“You want to tell me what in the name of God is going down here?”

“Secure the area, soldier. I’ll need to talk to your C.O.”

“Where’s John Milton?”

“I need to talk to your C.O.”

Chapter 48

Morten Lundquist was shrewd, an old soldier, and Milton guessed that they would make similar tactical assessments.

So he considered what he might have done had the roles been reversed.

Time, first. How much time would he have as a head start? Milton would have assumed that the situation would mean the compromising of his headquarters and with that, his plan. That would have told him that he only had a limited amount of time. Not long enough to gamble with a safer, but slower, journey to the south on quieter roads. Speed would be very important.

Milton’s first assumption: Lundquist would follow the quickest route south.

Milton remembered the map and plotted a route from Truth to Green Bay. He would have driven to Stannard and then picked up the US-45 to the south.

How much of a start did he have? A new Freightliner was a big, powerful semi with 450 horsepower, turbocharged engines which would top out at, what, eighty miles an hour? He had seen the truck, though, and it was old and tired. The engine had sounded worn, and that would mean that it would lose compression and, thus, power. So reduce the top speed by twenty miles an hour: call it sixty. And the load was unstable. Too many bumps and jolts might make for an unfortunate accident. Milton settled on fifty-five, a little less if the roads were bad.

He pictured the map in his head. A thirty-minute head start, fifty to fifty-five miles an hour, that might give him a lead of twenty or twenty-five miles.

The bike was comfortable at sixty, but Milton cranked out more speed, bringing it up to seventy.

Lundquist was probably in Union Bay right now. In an hour, he would have swung to the south and would be on US-64, maybe down in Bergland.

After an hour, Milton ought to be able to make it to Iron Mountain.

He should be able to catch him around there.

He held the throttle wide open, almost maxing it out until he thought the piston was going to blow through the head. He backed off a little, racing around the side of another big eighteen wheeler hauling freight, the trucker pulling down on his air horn as Milton went by him in a blur.

The Humvee had arrived soon after the Black Hawk had touched down and soon after that, another two parked alongside. The soldiers had secured the perimeter of the house and had started to fan out into the outbuildings. A shout went up as they reached the barn and found the body of Magrethe Olsen.

Ellie was taken to the first Humvee. A soldier in soaked olive fatigues dismounted.

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Alex Maguire,” he said, extending his hand.

Ellie shook it. “Special Agent Ellie Flowers.”

“I’m sorry for the confusion.”

“You’ve confirmed my ID, Colonel?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve raised your partner on the radio. He wants to speak to you.”

Ellie took the handset that Maguire offered her and put it to her ear.

“Orville?”

“Ellie?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Ellie, what the fuck is going on up there?”

“I’ll explain. Just—”

“You find those boys?”

“Yes, Orville. I did. Just listen to me, please, for once. I need you to listen very, very carefully.”

There was a pause on the line, a clatter of static. When he finally spoke, he sounded abashed, even with all the interference. “Okay. Go ahead.”

Ellie ran through what had happened as quickly as she could. The colonel was listening, too, which was good; it would save her telling the story twice. She left out the details that were unimportant, like the treatment she had received. That, she knew, would just inflame Orville’s guilt and that would mean she’d have his paternalism to deal with, and she could do without that right now. She left out anything about her and Milton because his jealousy would be just as bad. Instead, she told him about the arrests of the gang, the murder of Lester Grogan, how the bank jobs had been funding the militia, the truck bomb, and that Morten Lundquist was driving it to a target right now.

The colonel waved for his number two, anxiety all over his face.

“Jesus,” Orville said. “You know where he’s going?”

“I think Green Bay. The federal courthouse.”

“You think? Be specific.”

“That’s what one of the militia told us”—she paused, searching for the right euphemism—“in circumstances that suggest he wasn’t lying when he told us.”

“What the hell does that—”

“That’s the most likely,” she cut across him, “but it could be anywhere within a four- or five-hour drive. Your guess is as good as mine where he might go.”

He swore. “I need to make some calls. Can you handle the Guards? They need to find him.”

“Don’t worry, Orville. I’m on top of it.”

“Christ, you know what’ll happen if he gets that truck into a built-up area?”

“He won’t.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Someone’s already gone after him.”

“Who?”

“Milton.”

“Who the hell is this guy?”

“Never mind. Make your calls. We’ll speak later.”

She handed the radio back before he could press her any further.

The colonel looked concerned. “That all true?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m sorry about before, ma’am. I kind of feel we’re three steps behind on this.”

“It’s all right. I know the feeling. How did you know we were out here?”

“We picked up a couple of fellas in the woods. Watts and McClennan? You know them?”

“No.”

“They were part of the posse that went after this Milton guy. Their stories didn’t tally. Watts told us if he got out of the woods, he’d come down here.”

“They’ll be a part of all this.”

“They’ve just been put in custody. But this Milton guy, you want to tell me whose side he’s on?”

“Ours,” she said.

“For sure?”

“He saved my life. And he’s gone after Lundquist now.”

“You should see the mess he’s left up by the lake. Dead bodies left and right. Police are going to have one hell of a job working that out.”

“I’ll explain it in the air.”

He gaped. “I’m sorry, ma’am?”

She nodded in the direction of the Black Hawk. “Can you give me a ride?”

Chapter 49

Milton saw the truck as the lights of Watersmeet were visible on the horizon. The US-45 was long and straight, cutting between the green shoulders of birch and fir that clustered on either side. There had been almost no traffic, just a few trucks making early deliveries and the cars of hunters heading up into the woods so that they could get started at dawn.

He had hammered the bike as hard as he dared, but now the engine was beginning to strain a little. It was running up at seventy, and, at that speed, it was as skittish as a frisky colt. He had been riding with the headlamp off so as not to betray his approach, and that made it even more challenging. The asphalt was decent, but there were patches, now and again, that were littered with potholes. There had been moments when he had passed across them with no warning, sure that the front wheel was going to jerk out of control and that he would be thrown from the seat. He managed to hold on and keep the bike pointing down the road. His left arm throbbed from the continued effort of grasping the handlebars, and his right wrist was sore from twisting the throttle all the way around to its stops.

He saw the lights of the truck when he was a mile behind it. It was too far away to be sure that it was Lundquist, but he was travelling faster than it was, and he closed rapidly until he was three hundred yards away and could recognise the livery in the light of the wan moon. He was driving carefully, observing the speed limit, nothing out of the ordinary.

They passed isolated houses and businesses as they approached the town, and then the buildings started to come closer together. There was a crossroad, where US-2 met US-45, and there were gas stations on both sides of the road, a diner, a strip mall. Milton throttled right back. If Ellie was right and the truck had been loaded with explosives…

He had seen truck bombs go up before, and remembered one blast in particular in Kunduz, the Taliban detonating a dump truck that was smaller than the semi. The neighbourhood had been levelled, scraped off the face of the Earth, and what had been left had been a field of rubble and debris so bleak and desolate as to be almost lunar.

He let the truck pull ahead.

Maguire led Ellie to the chopper, approaching from three o’clock to avoid the forward tilt of the rotors. She was pelted with mud, sticks, and leaves from the wash and, without a step to help her into the waist-high doorway, she accepted Maguire’s helping hand. She took one of the canvas-covered seats and locked herself into the four-point harness.

Maguire handed her a pair of headphones and indicated that she should put them on.

The turbines throttled up, and the chopper lifted into the air, whipping the branches of the trees as it climbed above them.

Maguire’s voice came over the headphones. “You think south?”

“That’s right.”

“We’ll follow Highway 28 and then the US-45,” the pilot said as he dipped the nose and the Black Hawk pulled away from the farm. “When did he leave?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“So he couldn’t have gotten far. We can push this all the way up to one hundred and fifty knots. It won’t take long to catch him up.”

“If he is going south,” Maguire said, looking at Ellie.

“Green Bay,” she said. “That’s what we were told.”

Maguire nodded. He looked ill at ease. His orders had changed radically over the course of the last hour, and he looked a little uncomfortable with the new responsibility that he had been given.

“Is this helicopter armed?”

“Sure,” Maguire said. He nodded to the belted machine guns that had been fitted on either side of the Black Hawk. “We got two 7.62mm machine guns up here. We use them for suppressing fire normally, but they’ll make a mess of anything we point them at.”

“You have orders to use them?”

“I’ve got orders to take a look, and flexibility to act based on that.”

Milton picked up speed again and started to close the half mile that he had allowed to develop between him and the truck. He was halfway there when he heard the engine start to rev harder, and the truck started to accelerate.

Lundquist must have seen him.

He twisted the throttle all the way, the engine firing out at maximum, and the distance closed again.

Four hundred yards.

Three hundred.

Two.

One.

The truck was laden down, riding down low on its axles, and Lundquist either couldn’t, or dared not, try to run any faster than he was.

Milton closed right up next to the rear doors. He balanced himself across the bike, stood up on the foot pegs and leaned forward. He reached up, his hand fastening around the locking handles.

The brake lights flashed a sudden red and the truck lurched right back at him. The front tyre bumped against the frame and then caught beneath it, the wheel buckling and the rear of the bike bucking upwards, propelling Milton out of the seat and over the handlebars, into the door.

He slammed into it, his hands fastened around the handle as his legs crashed down onto the road with the toes of his boots scraping against the blacktop. The sudden friction tore him backwards, but he held on.

He held onto the handle, his right boot wedged against the rear underride guard, and then brought his left foot up alongside it.

The front wheel came free, and the bike somersaulted away behind him.

There was a meaty thud as something bumped up against the doors from inside the trailer.

Milton shuffled across the guard so that he was behind the left-hand door, but close enough to reach the locking mechanism for the right. He anchored with his left hand and stretched out with his right, flicking off the safety latch and rotating the handle. He yanked back just as Lundquist stamped on the brakes again. There was another heavy bump from inside, and then the unlatched door suddenly swung open. A large plastic barrel teetered on the edge and, as Lundquist accelerated again, it overbalanced and tipped out of the back, crashing down onto the road and tumbling over itself, crazy cartwheels that sprayed diesel across the asphalt.

The door swung as Lundquist negotiated a gentle left-hand turn, and as it fell open, Milton got a clear view inside. Ellie had been right: the truck was packed with large plastic barrels of many different colours, together with distinctive “sausages” of explosives that had been fastened onto them with tape.

He wrapped his fingers around a wooden pallet that had slipped down to the lip of the trailer bed, and used it as an anchor to help him slither ahead.

Lundquist braked again. The wheels locked this time, leaving rubber on the road as the trailer fishtailed left and right. Milton slid back again to the edge, his fingers clutching the pallet so hard that he felt splinters digging into his flesh, but he just squeezed harder, his grip the only thing that was preventing him from falling from the trailer.

The pallet slid backwards, too.

Another of the barrels teetered back and forth and, as they swerved again, it fell. More diesel sloshed out of it, flooding out of the back, pouring over Milton. It rushed over his hands, then his wrists and arms and over his torso.

The barrel rolled around on its side, straight down the centre of the cargo bay at him.

The Black Hawk’s navigator worked off a paper map that he held open over his lap, relaying instructions to the pilot. They flew fast and close to the ground, following the route that Lundquist was most likely to have taken. They started due east on Highway 28, the trunkline that bisected the Upper Peninsula east to west.

They reached Stannard Township and swung sharply to follow the 28 south.

Ellie looked down over Bond Falls State Park, the canopy of dense foliage, the road stretching ahead and behind them.

They rocketed over Watersmeet at three hundred feet above ground level.

“There!” the navigator said.

Ellie strained forwards against the restraints that held her in her seat. She craned her neck so she could see through the open door.

“That it?” Maguire asked her.

It was the same truck that she had seen earlier. “Yes. That’s it.”

They drew closer, still staying well back in the event that a blast was triggered.

The truck started to swing wildly to the left and right, as if Lundquist was trying to throw someone off.

Milton.

One of the doors was open, flapping as the truck swerved.

“Holy crap,” the gunner said.

They edged a little closer, and she could see him. He was half in and half out of the trailer, grabbing onto a wooden pallet that was wedged against the closed door.

Her headphones squelched with static, and then she heard the voice of the pilot. “Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight. Have the target in range. Request permission to engage.”

The next voice was distant, without the clamour of the turbines, someone in a command post somewhere. “Roger that, Crazy Horse. We have no personnel close to your position; you are free to engage. Over.”

“Okay, we’ll be engaging.”

“Hey!” Ellie yelled.

The gunner covered his throat mike with his hand. “Permission to fire?”

“Roger, gunner, go ahead. I’m gonna… I can’t see it now. It’s behind those trees.”

“Hey!” Ellie shouted, louder this time.

She reached down and started to fumble with the clasps on her belts.

“Ma’am,” Maguire said.

“Tell them to hold their fire!”

“Don’t try to get out of your seat, please.”

Milton ducked his head as the barrel bounced over the sill at the edge of the truck, spun high into the air, and cleared his trailing legs by a few spare inches.

He reached with his right arm, slowly hauling himself into the trailer. He assessed it quickly. There was a strong, cloying odour of ammonia and diesel. It was pungent, and Milton quickly felt a headache developing. He would not be able to stay inside the trailer for long. It was forty feet long and two-thirds full. He saw barrels of different colours, hundreds of pounds of explosives marked with TOVEX, and thirty PRIMADET blasting caps. There were an additional twenty fifty-pound bags of fertiliser lashed up against the right-hand wall. Milton knew enough about explosives to know that if those blasting caps were ever detonated, they would trigger a blast strong enough to shake the heavens.

He started to feel light-headed from the fumes.

He looked back to the open rear end. The door was still swinging to and fro, given fresh momentum every time the trailer turned through a corner or bounced across an uneven surface. The trailer was twice Milton’s height and the ceiling was a good four feet above him. He went to the nearest barrel and wrapped his arms around it, grunting with exertion as he moved it, inch by inch, towards the rear. When it was close enough to be almost directly beneath the overhang of the ceiling, he clambered atop it, almost losing his balance on more than one occasion, and then reached up to fasten both hands around the edge of the roof. He boosted himself up, scrambling with both feet against the right-hand wall, heaving with every last scrap of strength until he had managed to wedge his torso over the edge, bringing up his right leg and pushing until he was all the way over.

The wind whipped at him, stinging his eyes, and he had to lay flat and clasp the edge of the trailer to stop himself from being blown off. The trees rushed by on either side, and when he wriggled across to the edge, he looked down to see the asphalt unrolling like a long and unbroken black ribbon.

He reached forward, grabbed at the edge, and pushed with his legs.

He reached forward and pushed.

Again.

Again.

Lundquist jerked the wheel left and right, feeling the huge mass of the trailer as it swung across the road. He knew that he had to be careful, that tipping the rig over would be the end of it all, but by the same token, he couldn’t allow Milton to interfere.

He had seen him earlier, racing down the road.

He reached across to the passenger seat and pulled the M16 closer so that he could easily reach the trigger, and yanked the wheel again.

He thought of what David said to Solomon.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished.

He stomped down on the gas and swerved the tractor in the opposite direction.

“You can’t fire,” Ellie said. “The truck’s loaded with explosives.”

“And that’s why we have to,” Maguire shouted into his mic. “If we detonate it out here, all we’ll do is knock over some trees and make a mess of the road.”

“You’ll kill Milton.”

“We don’t know who he is.”

“He’s the only reason we’ve got a chance to stop this.”

“I’ve only got your word for that, Agent. I’ve got clearance to take that truck out at my discretion.”

“Then use your discretion. Give him a chance.”

“We let him drive on, we risk him triggering a blast in a town or a city. Can’t take that risk.”

“He’ll stop him,” Ellie shouted back. “You don’t need to shoot it.”

The headphones squelched again with the pilot’s voice.

“Man on the roof of the truck.”

The gunner looked out. “Okay, confirmed, we got a guy climbing up on the roof.”

“That’s Milton!” Ellie yelled.

“I’m gonna fire,” the gunner said. “Okay?”

“Once you get on, just open up,” the pilot said.

“Give him a chance!”

Maguire looked at Ellie. He bit his lip and then said, “No, this is Maguire. Hold on.”

“Sir?”

“Get ahead of it and then come around. We’ll see what he’s going to do. Position?”

“Six miles out of Iron River,” the pilot reported.

“Get ahead of the truck. If it’s still rolling three miles outside town, take it out.”

Milton had seen the Black Hawk as it swooped ahead of them a hundred yards to the left. They wouldn’t get too close, just in case the trailer was detonated and the blast caught them, too. It raced away to the south. Milton doubted that they would let them pass into another town.

He would have jumped and left the chopper to blow the explosives, but the semi was going too fast. He didn’t much like the odds of walking away if he leapt from it onto the road.

That, and he had made a promise to Lundquist that he meant to keep.

The wind tore at him as he clambered across the full forty feet of the trailer. He gripped onto the lip of the roof and dropped down onto the catwalk behind the tractor. The handle to release the fifth wheel was an arm’s length beneath the trailer and he didn’t know whether it would be too far for him to reach. He lowered himself to his belly, his head pointing to the back of the trailer, and slid further until he was resting on the wheel guard, almost wedged beneath the tractor and the leading edge of the trailer. He looked over the side: the big Yokohama tyre rumbled just inches below him, across asphalt that seemed almost close enough to touch. Spray churned up and over him; he had to blink furiously to clear his eyes and then he had to grip hard with both hands as they turned into a sharp lefthander. The trailer pivoted on the fifth wheel and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be crushed beneath it.

It brushed his shoulder. The edge pressed into his deltoid, smearing thick black turntable grease, and then it straightened out again. Milton slid further beneath the trailer, the last few extra inches that he could manage, and then reached out his hand until his fingers closed around the locking handle.

It could only be pulled out at a perpendicular angle to the tractor.

He yanked it.

Nothing.

He had poor leverage.

Another inch…

He stretched out further until his muscles were taut.

He yanked again.

The handle rattled, and then slid out.

He backed up, clambered onto the catwalk, and braced himself against the cab.

Lundquist gave the engine a jolt of gas and the sudden surge separated the king pin from the fifth wheel. The road ascended a shallow rise and the connecting plate that fastened the trailer slipped out.

It started to fall away.

The airlines and the electrical cable stretched out, went tight, and then were yanked out of their couplings.

Without air, the trailer’s spring brakes automatically locked.

There was a huge crash as the front of the unit slammed down onto the road, sparks flying in a crazy cascade behind it, smoke pouring from the locked tyres.

It jerked left and right.

Milton flinched, expecting a blast.

Nothing came.

It gouged a track down the middle of the road, somehow staying upright. After fifty feet, it ground to a halt.

The tractor, shorn of its weight, raced ahead.

He anchored himself with the broken airlines and stepped onto the side of the tractor. The eight drive tyres turned, the spray flaying him. He reached the corner and stretched out, his fingers fixing around the handle of the storage compartment. He stepped onto the fuel tank, his feet sliding against the bulbous shape of the wet metal, and then he lunged ahead and took the grab handle. The exhaust stack chugged, fumes pouring out into the darkness. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, ducked beneath it, and hopped from the tank to the step.

He raised himself above the line of the window, looked inside…

… and saw the M16.

He let go of the handle, dropped below the line of the window, and swung away.

The automatic gunfire blew out the window, a sparkling parabola of glass that arced outwards and scattered behind him.

He held onto the handle of the storage compartment with his right hand, his right foot on the fuel tank, and swung back to the rear of the tractor.

He didn’t know what to do.

If Lundquist had spare ammunition, and Milton knew that he would, there would be no way he could get into the tractor cab before being shot.

He tightened his grip on the airline.

He was stuck.

“Sir?”

The pilot had given them a lead on the semi and then turned back to face it. Ellie had watched with fear and admiration as Milton had uncoupled the trailer. The road ahead was straight for three miles, and they had seen it scrape to a halt. It hadn’t detonated, not that it would have mattered out here.

Now all that was left to deal with was the tractor.

Denuded of its trailer, it had raced ahead.

She had watched Milton clamber around the side of the cab and had seen the muzzle flash and the sparkle of glass as Lundquist had fired at him. She had watched as he held on with one hand and then swung back around the back. She found that she had been holding her breath.

The tractor was two miles away from them now and it was closing fast.

“Sir?” the gunner said. “What are your orders?”

“When it’s in range, shoot it.”

“What more can he do?” Ellie protested.

“We don’t know if that maniac has explosives in there with him. Can’t take the chance. If your friend has got any sense in him, he’ll jump and get clear.”

The tractor kept rolling.

“Jump? He’ll kill himself.”

“Give him a warning,” Maguire said.

The gunner settled in behind the M-60 and squeezed the trigger. A dozen rounds tore through the darkness, the tracer describing a diagonal trajectory that blew up the road twenty feet in front of the speeding tractor.

Lundquist kept coming, the tractor rushing over the fresh potholes and through the cloud of pulverised asphalt.

Maguire looked at Ellie, his expression apologetic, then at the gunner.

“Do it.”

Chapter 50

Morten Lundquist looked at the Black Hawk. The chopper was hovering above the road two hundred yards away, directly ahead of him.

He didn’t know how he had done it, but Milton had decoupled the trailer. The airlines must have been torn out. Every time he touched the brakes he would be depleting the air tanks, and, when they were empty, the spring brakes would stop the tractor, too.

So he didn’t brake.

He accelerated.

Sixty.

Sixty-five.

The chopper waited for him.

He closed.

One hundred and fifty yards.

One hundred yards.

It was no good.

The game was up.

He had been mistaken.

Maybe he hadn’t been listening.

God's word?

It wasn’t what he had thought it was.

He had a different plan for him.

Thy will be done.

He could see it now, everything that he had done wrong. He had let Milton distract him. He had allowed him to fill his thoughts, his voice drowning out God’s voice.

It was obvious, now.

Milton was an agent of Satan.

And Lundquist needed to stop him.

Perhaps that was what God had always wanted him to do.

He looked up at the helicopter as its powerful searchlight swung across the road and raced towards him, filling the cab with its blinding glow. He blinked, taking his hand off the wheel and shielding his eyes with it just as the muzzle of the big machine gun sparked a vicious starburst.

The rounds detonated into the asphalt and then reached up into the chassis of the truck, shredding the hood, pulverising the radiator and the engine. Flames leapt out, and then a thick pall of black smoke started to rise up.

Lundquist yanked the wheel to the left.

The disabled tractor was doing sixty as it left the road.

Ellie gripped the side of the chair as the rattle of the machine gun overlaid the roar of the turbines.

“Shit!” the gunner cursed.

The tractor passed out of sight.

“Pull up,” Maguire said. “We need a better view.”

They gained altitude, opening up the dark vista of the woods. The forest around here was crisscrossed with the same access roads and firebreaks, and it was one of these into which the tractor had plunged. She could see the glow of its headlamps pulsing orange through the trunks of the trees. The pilot kept the chopper behind the tractor, and they watched as it gradually decelerated before it smashed a path through the trees that fringed the road and came to a sudden stop.

“I can’t set down there, Colonel,” the pilot reported. “There’s nowhere to land.”

“Keep us on station and call in our position. How far away are the units on the ground?”

“Ten klicks.”

“How long can we stay here?”

The pilot checked his dials. “We’ve got a quarter tank. Fifteen minutes if we want to get back again.”

The searchlight shone into the darkened trees. The operator trained it on the wreck of the tractor and then gave out a shout of surprise. “There he is!”

Ellie squinted down.

The figure of a man. Bulky, moving slowly, awkwardly. The spotlight tracked him, moving in a northeasterly direction as he struggled through the undergrowth away from the wreck.

“Is that Lundquist or Milton?”

“Lundquist,” she said.

“Fire at will.”

The gunner fired a barrage, and as he did, the searchlight lost the man. “Dammit.”

Maguire gritted his teeth. “He’s going to get away.”

Ellie looked back at the tractor.

Where was Milton?

The tractor had bounced and leapt, crashing through the smaller trees and tearing the scrub up by the roots. The firebreak was just barely wide enough for it, and then it had turned away and the tractor had kept going in a straight line, slicing through a stand of newly planted fir. The windscreen had shattered as the tractor splashed through a stream. It had eventually slammed to a dead stop against the trunk of an ancient oak.

Lundquist had been thrown around the cab like a puppet, and the final impact had crashed his head against the wheel. The jolt had made him bite clean through his lip, and now blood was running into his mouth and pouring down his chin. The seat belt had cut into the fleshy parts of his neck, and he could feel the bruises forming on his sternum, chest, and pelvis.

He had taken the M16 and kicked the door open. His foot slipped on the step and sent him crashing into a bush bristling with thorns.

He took a pause to catch his breath.

The tractor’s shattered engine ticked, its heat gradually dissipating.

Shards of glass fell like teeth from the broken maw of the window frame.

He looked up as the tremendous clatter of the Black Hawk came from directly overhead.

He ran.

The big machine gun opened up and rounds tore through the canopy overhead, stitching jagged holes in the sodden greensward. He tumbled out of the way, the splashing, muddy impacts stretching away from him and terminating in the trunk of another oak, sending a storm of splinters in all directions.

He scrambled up, burrowed deeper into the undergrowth, and then paused.

The forest was disturbed, filled with the complaints of birds and animals that had been roused by the tractor’s plunge through the trees.

The helicopter was somewhere overhead, close, its turbines roaring and the rotors cutting noisily through the air.

He heard something, saw a flash of movement.

A deer.

He saw the white-tail bob as it pranced out of danger.

Another noise?

He swung up the M16 and fired a burst into the bushes.

Blind fear, the searing white heat of terror, burned through his mind so fast and so fiercely and so thoroughly that he almost forgot his own name.

He remembered one name.

John Milton.

He stumbled forwards, the thorns ripping at his flesh, scratching his face and his hands and tearing his clothes, none of that as important as putting distance between himself and the tractor.

Between himself and the Black Hawk.

Between himself and Milton.

He ran.

Chapter 51

Milton paused. Lundquist had barrelled across a space that had been cleared of trees. In spite of his urge to rush after him, he knew that he could not. The Black Hawk was overhead, the searchlight glaring down at them, its twitching light illuminating the space so well that there would be no way for Milton to pass through it unobserved. He had to wait until the chopper had passed over. Lundquist might not have been sprinting away; maybe he was pressed down on the ground, the M16 laid out before him, aiming.

Milton heard a metallic, amplified voice. “Morten Lundquist! This is the National Guard.”

Milton looked up. The Black Hawk was hovering fifty feet above the tree line.

“Lundquist! You need to surrender.”

Milton knew that there was little they could do. The clearing was much too small for them to land.

There came the strobe of gunfire from the other side of the clearing, and he saw the sparks of impact as bullets struck the helicopter’s fuselage.

The chopper slid away to the right and the clearing was plunged into darkness. Milton heard the crash of movement through the bushes and ran low and fast in pursuit. He stopped and listened and heard, not far up ahead, the sound of something crashing through more thick underbrush.

He followed, staying low. Lundquist wouldn’t run forever. There would come a point when he would grow tired or impatient, and then he would stop. He would try to lay out an ambush, and Milton had to be wary of that. But the noise kept coming, the rustling of the undergrowth and the sound of boots splashing through mud, and as long as he could hear him moving, he knew he could follow safely.

When the noise stopped, he stopped, falling to the ground and inching forwards on his belly, his eyes searching ahead for any sign of Lundquist’s passage. The Black Hawk came back again, the searchlight probing for them, the solid shaft of its light absorbed by the canopy overhead, so bright that Milton could see the veins of the leaves lit up from above. He heard the sound of a curse, and then the running started again, so he got up and ran, too.

It must have been fifteen minutes before the noise stopped for a second time. Milton dropped back into the brush. He waited there, controlling his breathing, vigilant.

He looked around, recognising his surroundings.

Lundquist had been running in circles.

The noise of boots slapping through water came from up ahead, and he followed again. The pursuit continued through a dense thicket of trees and across another open patch of ground. Lundquist led him to a long stretch of dogwood, crawling beneath the branches through the dirt and the muck, and then down a loose slope of scree to a stream, across that and then along the opposite bank. Milton stayed within the margin of vegetation. It would have been faster to run through the water, but he would have made too much noise and would present a target that would be impossible to miss.

He would be patient.

Lundquist was losing it.

Wouldn’t be long now.

The sleeve of Lundquist’s jacket snagged on the thorns of a bush, and the fabric ripped as he tore it loose. He ducked down and cursed, not because of the jacket, but because he was beginning to feel desperate. The Black Hawk was still overhead, the searchlight questing for him, but he could stay ahead of it, and he knew that eventually they would run low on fuel and have to leave. It wasn’t the helicopter that he was worried about.

It was the sure and certain knowledge that John Milton was behind him.

He pushed up and tried to scramble away. The brambles, which he had forgotten about, lashed him in the face. Their spikes scratched into him, tearing the skin on his cheeks and throat. He covered his eyes and pushed through them, feeling the blood on his skin and ignoring it.

He just needed to keep going. He had waited twice, settled down in deep cover, and turned the M16 to face the direction that Milton must surely be coming. But he did not come. The forest was full of noise, loud with panicked birds and animals and the noise of the Black Hawk overhead, but there was nothing that sounded like a man in pursuit. It was as if he had a sixth sense. Whenever Lundquist stopped, Milton stopped.

Or maybe he was wrong, maybe he was paranoid, maybe Milton wasn’t following him after all?

Lundquist stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He was winded, his knees were watery, and he had no idea where he was. He thought of just turning and firing in a wide arc, emptying out the magazine and trusting God, but he couldn’t do it. It would be suicide. He could fire for a week, and he wouldn’t hit him. And the muzzle flashes would just give him away.

He set off again, following the course of a stream to the south, but his legs felt empty, and he had no strength left. He dragged his foot, and his ankle was snagged by a bare root, his momentum arrested as he slammed down onto his hands and knees. He dropped the M16 and tried to withdraw his foot, but he was panicked, and every yank and jerk seemed to jam it in ever tighter.

Finally, he managed it. He scrambled backwards, to his rifle.

Now, he thought. Now he would make his stand.

He swallowed compulsively, his stomach an empty pit. He fumbled the M16 and aimed back down the stream, sweeping into the trees on the left and on the opposite bank to the right.

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.

He listened, but he couldn’t hear anything. Something was different. He realised what it was: the helicopter was gone. It wasn’t just away from him, for he would have been able to hear the engines from miles away, it was gone.

It was just him and Milton now.

But rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

He heard a crashing sound from the other side of the river, swung the rifle in that direction, and fired.

The noise was terrifyingly loud, the echoes cracking around the trees, and he got to his feet and ran again. His foot slipped off a moss-covered rock, and he went flying through the air, legs flailing, and then he pounded back down on his back. His head smacked against a rock, and his vision fluttered, then dimmed. The stream ran around him as he lay there, his eyes squeezed tight. He could feel the sharp pebbles on the bottom digging into his back.

And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’

He couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes and prayed, again, for strength. He gulped for air, but his stomach muscles wouldn’t push out.

He tried to roll over. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t move at all.

He opened his eyes and saw that John Milton was on top of him, his knee pushed into his chest and his arm braced across his throat.

He tried to free himself.

Milton was too strong.

Lundquist looked up into his face, about to beg him for mercy, but he saw his cold blue eyes, and the words died on his lips.

Milton grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and hauled him further out into the stream. It was shallow at the edges, but a narrow channel in the centre was deep enough to reach up to Milton’s knees as he tugged him out with him. Lundquist started to float, no longer able to feel the pebbles against his back. The water splashed over his throat and onto his face, into his mouth and nostrils.

He closed his eyes for the last time as Milton shoved his head below the surface. The water was icy cold, and Lundquist’s skin prickled with it. He felt, finally, shockingly alive just as he opened his mouth and drank it all in.

Chapter 52

Six-thirty at night, a snowstorm kicking eddies against the windows, and the restaurant was emptying out. It was on Lombardi Avenue, close to Lambeau Field, and the Packers were home against the 49ers. There were groups of stragglers at several of the tables, fans in Packers gear finishing their meals before bundling themselves up in their winter gear and heading out for the short walk to the stadium. The restaurant was a local destination, that was what Ellie had heard, a popular stop on the way to the stadium. There were signed pictures on the wall: Bart Starr, Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers. A large portrait of Vince Lombardi had pride of place behind the bar, above the racks of bottles and the cash register. A sign above the portrait read TITLETOWN. Half a dozen TVs were tuned to the local FOX affiliate, the pregame shows well underway.

She went to the bar and sat down.

Green Bay. What the fuck.

The five men at the nearest table to her were loud and irritating. She gathered from their conversation that they were in town for the game, a corporate box, a chance to shake hands with an old Packers alumnus in return for some astronomical payment. Lawyers or accountants, she guessed, cutting loose now that they had managed a night away from their wives. She’d noticed that they had stopped talking as she had walked past the table, and then, when they started up again, their tone was a little lower, conspiratorial, snide little chuckles and guffaws as they looked over at her.

Like she wouldn’t figure out they were talking about her, or couldn’t guess what was coming next.

She almost got up again and left. She wasn’t in the mood. But she decided to stay. She needed a drink and a change of scenery. She’d been staring at the same four walls for hours, the same bland conference room in the same bland federal building, and she was about to lose her mind.

She had been practically breathing the case all week. The National Guard had found Lundquist’s body face down in a stream that ran through the woods. Drowned. An animal had started to make a meal of the soft tissue on his face. She had seen the autopsy photographs. Pretty grisly, his eyes gone, half of his nose, cheeks burrowed out. No definitive evidence of foul play, the pathologist said; he could easily have fallen into the stream and drowned.

Ellie knew better than that.

John Milton had been picked up on the road walking back in the direction of Truth.

Orville had been predictable. He had done exactly what she had thought he would do: he swooped into town, flashed his badge like he was the director, made the calls, and started to look so busy with it all that people who didn’t know any better might have thought it was his bust rather than hers. He had made a ham-fisted attempt at a reconciliation, but his heart wasn’t really in it, not enough to give him the backbone to push on when it became obvious that she hadn’t changed her mind about what she’d said, and after she blew him off when he had suggested dinner so that they could “talk,” he had punished her by sending her to Siberia, otherwise known as Green fucking Bay.

It happened fast. There had been no opportunity for her to speak to Milton.

The media had the story by the time she arrived in Wisconsin. It was a big deal. The director went on the air and laid down the edict that the militia was going to be completely squashed. The US attorney lost no time filing charges against the twenty men and women they picked up in the forest, plus Morris Finch and another ten who were involved. They were looking at trials for attempted bombing, plus conspiracy and weapons offences.

Milton was key to the case.

Orville had decided to do the interview himself. Ellie would have loved to have been in the room for that. She had been given the play-by-play by another agent with whom she was friendly. Orville had put Milton through two solid days of interviews. Word was, he had tried to turn him into a cooperating witness, tried to persuade him that he had to testify. He hinted that charges against him were being stayed on the basis that he cooperated. It sounded like a threat, and she guessed that threatening Milton was not likely to be productive. And so it had proved. His answers became clipped and then monosyllabic, much to Orville’s evident irritation. Eventually, he just stopped answering, saying he would only speak to her. When Orville refused that, Milton had insisted on a phone call.

What happened next had been plain bizarre.

Whoever it was Milton had called, it had blown things up. The director had scurried to meet with him personally. There had been the suggestion of a medal, which Milton had rejected outright, and then a fulsome apology from Orville for the way in which he had been treated. The suggestion was that Milton had agreed to cooperate with the investigation on the condition that he was made a confidential informant. He wouldn’t be asked to testify, but he would share his knowledge of the militia without any risk of being charged. Ellie had even heard that the bureau and the attorney’s office were working on creating the fiction that Milton was working for them as an informer all along.

After that, he was told he could go.

He was last seen walking out of town, his pack and his rifle slung over his shoulder.

And then, it got even weirder.

Ellie had been called by the director. He told her that she was in line for a nice bump in salary. She said great. He said you’ve done well, but this is on two conditions.

First, she had to play ball with the big media campaign they were planning. It was hazy, the details all to be confirmed, but it sounded like they wanted to make her into a heroine. Magazine interviews, morning television, the whole nine yards.

The second condition?

Milton’s involvement in the affair was not to be mentioned, under any circumstances.

She knew how the game was played, and she didn’t know how she felt about it. Her dad would have told the director to shove his media plan up his ass, but Ellie was more practical. He had been jaded, plus he was a man. Ellie was still fresh and keen, and she had found not having a dick was an impediment to quick advancement. She could see the benefits in playing nice.

One phone call from Milton had done all of this?

Who did he know?

She told the director she would think about it.

She looked out of the window. She could see her reflection in the glass, the smart suit and the sensible shoes, and staring at herself, she remembered the trek up through the wilderness to get to the Lake of the Clouds.

It felt like another world.

A man detached from the table of five and came over.

“Excuse me. Mind if I sit down?”

Ellie waved her hand absently. “Free country.”

She was distracted. Orville and one of the bureau’s rising young stars, this fresh-faced ingénue flown over from Quantico, had spent several days shouting at the suspects. They had extracted leads, most likely wild goose chases, but they all had to be followed up anyway, just in case there was a grain of truth to them, some other wacko waiting in the shadows with a truck full of fertiliser and racing fuel. They had been told that there was another militia in Wisconsin, brave Christian soldiers waiting for the first sign of the Second Coming, ready to start the war. Ellie had been told to find them.

These people who almost certainly didn’t exist.

In Green fucking Bay.

“Get you a drink?”

“No, thanks,” she said.

“I’m Frank.”

He was wearing a Packers jersey with FRANK across the back. It was brand new, and he had forgotten to take the tags off.

The barman passed her a bottle of beer.

“Put that on our bill.”

“No,” Ellie said. “I’ll buy my own drinks.”

The man shuffled a little awkwardly, but Ellie could see that his friends were watching the show, and she knew that he wouldn’t give up after the first brush-off.

“You here for the game?”

“No.”

“Business, then?”

“Something like that.”

“What kind of business?”

“This and that.”

“Mysterious.” He laughed.

She ignored him.

“You going to ask what I’m doing here?”

“No.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “There was a charity auction, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, my law firm bid for a box. I’m a partner there. It wasn’t cheap, never is, but we figured it was for a good cause, so why not, right?”

“Right.”

She noticed the small details: expensive shoes, designer denim, Rolex that probably cost the same as a small family car. “Listen,” he said, “if you’re around tonight and you’ve got nothing planned, we’ve got a spare seat. We’d be delighted to have your company.”

Ellie was about to tell him to take a hike when she paused, the words dying on her lips. She saw the indistinct outline of a man standing outside the entrance. He was peering in through the glass, maybe looking at the menu they had there to tempt diners inside, maybe looking into the restaurant, she couldn’t be sure. There was a lattice of frost across the glass, and it was difficult to make out the details, but something about the man said that she knew who he was.

“So?”

She realised he had continued to speak. She hadn’t heard a word of it.

“What do you say?”

She stood quickly, her stool clattering back against the bar.

Frank rested his hand on her elbow, blocking her way forward. “So, you gonna come and have a good time with us?”

The man at the window turned and faded away into the falling snow.

“Excuse me, Frank.”

“Come on, don’t be like that.”

“I’m not interested in your company. It’d be best for everyone if you just took your drink and went back to your table, okay?”

He still didn’t get the hint.

“What’s your name, honey?”

She reached into her pocket, took out the leather wallet that she used to carry her badge, flipped it open and held it up so that he could see it. “Special Agent Ellie Flowers,” she said, angling her torso a little so that her jacket fell back enough that he could see the glint of the Glock 22 on her belt.

He looked down at the badge, wide-eyed. “You’re FBI?”

“That’s right. And I’ve had a hell of a week, and I’m not feeling all that sociable, so go on, go back to your buddies and enjoy the game. Give me a fucking break, okay?”

The man did as she asked and went back to the table.

She hurried to the door and threw it open, the cold air rushing in to embrace her. The snow fell softly, the cars crunching across compacted ice. The road was busy as fans meandered towards the stadium and two blocks over the big floodlights threw up a corona of golden light that reached up into the dark, snowy night.

There were too many people. The man she had seen had been absorbed into the crowd.

She went back inside. Frank’s friends welcomed him back with amused expressions on their faces that said his pride had taken a bit of a slap.

She finished her beer and decided to have another, taking it to a table next to a window. She looked out at the snow again, whipping up against the window, and, beyond it, a cityscape carpeted in white.

John Milton adjusted his pack across his shoulders so that it was more comfortable and trudged on through the snow. The sidewalk was busy with people in Packers’ green and 49ers’ red and white, crowds of fans enjoying good-natured banter, their expectation for the game buzzing in the air. The convivial atmosphere was different from the equivalent back home, he thought. It was better than it had once been, but you could still get a fat lip for wearing the wrong colours on the wrong street.

He paused at a crosswalk, just one man within the crowd. Faceless and anonymous, just how he liked it. The traffic hurried ahead under the green light. The light went to red, and a mounted cop edged forwards, marshalling the crowd.

He had been in town for three days. He had located Ellie on the first day without too much difficulty: a call to the Detroit field office under a pretext provided the information that she had been sent to Green Bay. A brief stop in an Internet café revealed a host of stories about how the FBI was investigating reports of copycat militias in Wisconsin. It had been trivial to find the bureau office and stake it out until he saw her. He had watched her. She was staying in the Marriott, room two-twelve. On the second day, he watched her eat breakfast at six, saw her take a cab across town to the office, and then it picked her up again at eight when she finally finished for the day. He had been close to going over to her, asking her out, seeing if she wanted that dinner. It was cheesy, but he knew it would work.

So why had he backed out? What had stopped him?

He had waited outside her office again today. It was six o’clock when she had finished, stepping out into the cold with a thick winter coat wrapped around her. She had deviated from her routine, and he had followed fifty feet behind her as she had walked, alone, to the restaurant.

That meant something.

He had walked around the block to ensure that he wasn’t being tailed, old habits, and, by the time he had made it back to the entrance she was with another man. He was dressed for the game, Packers colours, but he had the look of an agent: short, well-trimmed hair, anonymous clothes, good quality. Milton had watched as he had laid his hand on Ellie’s elbow. They looked intimate. They were going to the game. He must have been her date.

She hadn’t mentioned whether she was seeing someone but come on, seriously, there had to be someone, right?

What did he think? That they were going to have a relationship? She was an FBI agent, and he was who he was. As far as Milton was concerned, a relationship could only work if it was built on a foundation of total honesty. He felt that very strongly, and it was something he would never be able to offer. Secrets were toxic and he had a million of them. And even assuming that he could be honest, assuming that he could ignore the legal and moral implications of telling her about the things that he had done, it would poison the way that she saw him.

How could it ever have worked?

It couldn’t.

He had been stupid for even entertaining the notion.

Best to leave it as it was. They had their moment.

Ellie would be better with someone from the same world as her. The guy in the bar. They would be a better match.

He thought about mortgages, credit cards, consumer goods. He thought about children and nine-to-five jobs, about medical insurance and dental plans, about pensions and savings accounts, and he knew he was making the right decision.

It was time to move on.

And so he walked on, heading west. There were seven hundred miles between Green Bay and Minneapolis. That would take him three weeks to walk in weather like this. He would have to hitch a ride to make it in time for the gig. He would hike out to the WI-29, get to a truck stop, and see if he could find a driver who wanted some company.

Milton took his battered headphones from around his neck and put them over his ears. He reached into his pocket, took out his iPod and scrolled through his playlists for the one he wanted. He settled on The Smiths, pressed play and nodded his head a little as the distorted guitar riff from “How Soon is Now?” started to play. He took a woollen beanie from his pocket, pulled it over the headphones and then put on his gloves.

He set his face to the west, the icy blast of the wind lashing against his cheeks, his breath clouding before his face, and started to walk.