On the Fifth Day (51 page)

But Devlin looked utterly confused. He kept looking to those around him, whether they were speaking or not, and his gaze kept straying back to the red water lapping on the sand.

"Sir," said Hayes. "I think we have to leave this matter to counterterrorism. We need to be getting back."

"No," said Devlin. "Something about this isn't right."

Thomas considered the big old man's thoughtful, anxious eyes, and at last, he knew. He looked at Hayes, and suddenly he saw it, the last pieces of the mosaic clicking into place so that the picture shifted one last time and he knew.

"It's you, isn't it?" he said. "You are the one who's been pulling the strings from the start. The trust-fund Republican. A bit holier-than-thou, you said, senator, right?"

Devlin had turned slowly to face Hayes, his expression un

certain, expectant.

"Sir," said Hayes, ignoring Thomas. "We really need to go."

"Why?" said Thomas, defiant and genuinely curious, though it was a curiosity touched with dread. "What is going to happen?"

The tension of the moment was broken by a phone ringing. The pilot of the flying boat took out what looked like an oldfashioned walkie-talkie and spoke into it. The answering voice boomed and crackled but was too indistinct for Thomas to catch the words.

"Say again?" said the pilot.

The voice boomed back and the pilot's face fell.

"When? . . . This is nuts. Can't it be stopped?"

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Again the staticky response, urgent, even shrill.

"Hold on," said the pilot. He lowered the handset and turned to the senator. "Sir, I'm sorry, but I'm getting a report of an incoming CIA strike on our present location. A missileequipped aircraft is in the air. It has our present coordinates."

"Tell them to recall it," said Devlin, something of the con

fusion slipping away as he took control.

"Negative, sir," said the pilot. "The aircraft is a pilotless drone. It has been programmed to attack us here and the sys

tem hacked so that it cannot be recalled."

"How many?" said Hayes.

"There were four," said the pilot. "They were supposed to be on recon, but have been programmed to come here. One was destroyed on the ground, another two shot down by an F-18, but the first was too far ahead. They can't stop it."

"Let me speak to them," he demanded, reaching for the handset. As the pilot extended it toward him, Hayes snatched it, reached back, and flung it as far as he could into the crim

son waves.

"What the hell . . . ?" exclaimed the pilot. Hayes looked momentarily down at his own phone, pushed a button, and then, while everyone watched, snatched the pis

tol from the holster under his jacket. He shot the pilot twice in the chest and the man fell like a stone.

"Rod?" Devlin gasped, staring at his private secretary with horror.

Thomas stepped forward, but War and the woman were al

ready moving in, guns raised. The two special forces troops looked panicked and unsure.

"Sir?" said the team leader, looking from Devlin to War.

"You're with me," said War, striding in, submachine gun level. "Pestilence! Over here."

Pestilence?
thought Thomas.

"What is this?" said Devlin, still staring at Hayes. "What did you do?"

"None of your concern, sir," said Hayes. "Just do as you're told and you can walk away from this."

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"Rod," said Devlin, "what are you doing? Is he right?" he said, nodding toward Thomas. "Is this about the
fish?
"

For a second Hayes just glanced at the ocean, and then he spoke softly with something like sadness.

"Faith is weak," said Hayes. "It has to be protected."

"From the truth?" said Devlin.

Kumi looked at Thomas, and he knew she felt as he did, out of it, forgotten.

"It would only confuse people," said Hayes. "And in that confusion would countless souls be lost."

"But murder for a Christian cause?" said Devlin, incredu

lous. "How could you think that was acceptable?"

"Sometimes the ends justify . . ."

"Are you crazy?" Devlin cut in. "All this intrigue and bloodshed over whether or not the Jesus fish on your bumper sticker has legs? This is insane. Blasphemous."

"The blasphemy is that scientists are given more cre

dence than the Word of God!" Hayes exclaimed, his compo

sure melting fast. " 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,' " he exclaimed suddenly, intoning the words like a prophet. " 'And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl
that
may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that
it was
good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.' "

There was a moment of silence. War's eyes were wide and bright. Pestilence smirked. Parks gaped with disdain. Every

one else looked uncertain, rattled by Hayes's conviction.

"That's the way it was, is, and will be," Hayes concluded.

"No debate, no analysis, no literary criticism, no historical contextualization, except for the damned. The Word of the Lord is Truth and there shall be no second-guessing of it."

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He smiled at their shocked silence and, with the toe of his polished wingtip, drew the two interlocking waves of the
ik

thus
symbol in the sand at his feet. Everyone stared at it.

"I am the Seal-breaker," he said, "And this is the only fish we need to talk about."

"No," said Devlin, and his earlier confusion was quite gone now. The situation was clear to him and he had chosen his side. "Now, I can lend you some protection, but this will all have to come out. Put down the gun, Rod. This ends here."

There was a stillness, a moment of decision.

"Very well," said Hayes. He nodded to War, a small, almost casual gesture.

War's weapon coughed twice and the senator fell into the sand, clutching his chest.

There was a horrified pause, and Kumi put her hands to her face in horror and desolation. Hayes saw her and shook his head.

"Sometimes even the faithful make bad choices," he re

marked.

No one really heard, because the lean, black soldier had swung his weapon round and pointed it into War's face.

"Sir!" he yelled. "Drop your weapon! Drop it or I will fire."

War, his smoking gun still trained on the fallen senator, hesitated.

"I am your commanding officer, Edwards," said War.

"No, sir, I don't believe you are," said the soldier. "This is not an antiterrorist operation. I believe we have been misled, sir."

"Your job is to follow orders, Edwards," said Hayes, "not to question them."

"I don't believe you have a part in the legitimate chain of command, sir," said Edwards, still staring down the barrel of his weapon at War, gripping it so that the muscles of his arms flexed and tautened and sweat broke out on his face. "You are a civilian," he said to Hayes, his eyes still on War, "and have no authority here."

"Edwards?" said War carefully. "Lower your weapon."

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"Sir, no, sir," said Edwards. "This is not a counterterrorist operation." Then, his voice lower, and his gaze flitting from War to the team leader, who had been watching in tense si

lence, he added. "Did you know? Sir? Did you know?"

The soldier hesitated, his hard face and harder eyes giving nothing away.

"You did," said Edwards. "You said this was counterterror

ist Black Ops. It wasn't. It wasn't even national security. So what was it?"

"Hey," said the team leader, a crooked smiling snapping across his face. "We all have a living to make."

And then the gunfire started.

Thomas dropped to the sand, pulling Kumi down with him. The team leader went down first, hit twice in the head, but as Edwards brought his weapon around to War, he seemed to sag and his face aged suddenly, freezing in position for a moment before he fell face first into the sand. Behind him, Pestilence, the woman Thomas knew as Roberta, was on one knee, her pistol smoking. Then Parks was snatching the diver's knife from Thomas's belt and lunging at her with a roar of fury. War aimed at Parks and Thomas swung one foot around, cutting his legs from under him. He fell as his machine gun rattled a handful of slugs wildly into the air and Thomas pounced, grabbing madly at the hot metal of the gun, fighting him for control.

For the next ten seconds Thomas knew only a haze of des

perate fury and the sure knowledge that he would be dead in a matter of moments, as somehow he rolled onto his back with War on top of him. He heard Roberta scream with pain and anger, he heard more gunfire, and then the man who called himself War, the man who had tailed him from Naples and shot at him in Bari, had his gun across his throat. War pushed with both hands and Thomas felt his breath tightening to nothing. War and Pestilence. The absurdity of this hired thug mas

querading as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, the sheer, unironic, pompous stupidity of the thing filled him with 390

A. J. Hartley

a sudden rage that had been building since he first heard that his brother was dead. He kicked and punched and clawed with an animal fury, but War held on.

Thomas never saw Kumi's approach, and War realized she was there only a second before the kick. He turned into it and her foot broke his nose, snapping his head back and allowing Thomas to thrust him off, machine gun in hand. He rolled into a crouch and took a second to assess the situation. Roberta lay face up in the sand, Parks's knife sticking out of her chest, her eyes open but sightless. Parks was slumped across her, two bullet holes in his back. War was down and holding his face, Devlin and the two soldiers were already dead, Jim was probably dying. Only Kumi and Hayes were still standing, and he had her in the sights of his revolver. She hadn't seen him . . .

"Stop!" shouted Thomas. "Kumi!"

She turned impossibly slowly and her eyes widened at the sight of the gun's dark eye, but Hayes didn't shoot.

"Kick the gun over to me," he said.

Thomas did so. Hayes picked it up without taking his eyes--or his gun--off Kumi. For a long moment, nothing happened. After the gunfire, the shouting, the fierceness of the struggle, it felt like being thrust into a vacuum.

"Okay," said Hayes, "now we wait patiently."

"For what?" said Thomas, his breath still coming in urgent gasps, his nerves singing with adrenaline despite the stillness.

"For the Wrath of God," said Hayes with a quick smile.

"That's the name of the aircraft. A wonderful thing, technology."

"Hold it," said War, looking up, his face blood streaked.

"We wait? Why don't we just take the plane and go? Leave them here."

"Come on now, Steve." Hayes smiled at War. "You know better than that. This was never going to be a round-trip mis

sion. You ensured that by failing to get them before they left Japan. The moment we all had to come here was the moment it became clear that none of us would leave."

"Steve," said Thomas, liking the smallness of the name, 391

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

the ordinariness. "The rider on the red horse is called Steve. That's great."

"That's all you people have to offer, isn't it?" said Hayes.

"Irony. Relativism. An anchorless moral universe without God or principle."

"How is silencing the truth and killing those who disagree with you principle?" said Thomas. Kumi gave him a warning look but it didn't matter. They were all going to die anyway. He would not die in silence.

"How convenient it must be," said Thomas, "to always as

sume you have the moral high ground. You're a terrorist, Hayes, you know that? Nothing more. And as with most ter

rorists, I'll put my morality over yours any day."

"Faith must be protected," said Hayes. "Faith is all."

"No," said Jim. His voice was low, struggling. "Love is all. Without that you are just . . ."

"A gong booming or a cymbal crashing?" said Hayes, bit

terly amused, training his weapon on the priest. "You people have nothing to offer." He looked hard at Thomas. "You be

lieve in nothing so you have no strength to stand against those who do."

"Sir," said War, insistent, "I still think we can get out of here. I mean, I have a family, a son . . ."

Hayes aimed and fired once. The bullet went through the other man's head just above the right eye. War, or Brad, or--

most pathetically perhaps--Steve, was dead before his body hit the ground.

"I thought you were with me all the way," said Hayes to the corpse. "I have no room for the self-interested."

"You're a crusader," said Jim quietly.

"That's right," said Hayes. "I am."

"Some sort of history lesson seems in order," said Jim, with a wry smile. "The Crusades were, after all, exercises in military barbarism and their goals had no place in religion."

"More watered-down relativism masquerading as Christian

ity," said Hayes with abject scorn. "You are as bad as Knight was."

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"Thank you," said Jim, wearily. "Ed lived for truth and jus

tice. I'm honored to be compared to him. So, you want to tell us about this plane that is going to take us all off to the fires of Hell reserved for liberals and relativists?"

Hayes blinked, apparently confused by Jim's composure, and then his former smile returned.

"See this?" he said, raising his left hand and showing the phonelike device dangling from his wrist. "It's a GPS naviga

tion system that the drone uses as a targeting beacon. But here's the neat part. It's attached to a pulse monitor. If the drone loses my pulse, the Wrath of God is programmed to relock on the coordinates of your boat over there. How many crew are still on board? Twenty? More? I would have gotten them all if all four aircraft had made it, but someone has ob