The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (37 page)

“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.

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.

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.