Covenant (43 page)

            Later that day—after another visit with Chastity—he might even see his wife and children.  He hadn’t seen them in over a week and was overdue for a visit, though his wife, the First Lady of the Kingdom, annoyed him with her petty gossip about the wives of church officials.  His four children, who ranged between the ages of eight and seventeen, were barely tolerable, too, whiny and hopelessly spoiled by their mother.

            Upon reconsideration, perhaps he wouldn’t see them.  He didn’t want to spoil his buoyant mood. 

            Finished showering, he toweled dry and dressed in another suit, a custom-tailored, charcoal gray Brioni.  It was a new suit.  He never wore the same garments twice, and once he’d worn one, he would ship it to a star forward in the NBA, a loyal servant who tithed fifteen percent of his hefty salary to New Kingdom and believed that donning clothing worn by his bishop guaranteed his success on the basketball court.      

            As he was knotting his tie, someone knocked urgently at the suite’s outer door.   

            “Yes?” he asked.  Though he was in the dressing room, his baritone resonated throughout the entire master wing. 

            One of his bodyguards—he was loathe to think of them in those terms, but that was what they were—rushed into the dressing room, chest heaving. 

            “A threat has breached the front gates, sir.”

            “For the love of God, relax, my friend.  A threat has breached the front gates of the campus?”

            “The front gates of the
estate
, your holiness.”

            Something clutched Bishop Prince’s heart.  He would not dishonor himself by labeling it as fear.

            “Then take care of it,” Bishop Prince said.  “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.  Godspeed.”

            “Please remain confined to your suite until we’ve eliminated the threat, sir.”

            Grunting, Bishop Prince dismissed the servant with a wave.  The man fled the room, barking into a hand-held radio. 

            Although Bishop Prince received death threats frequently, the agents of evil had never infiltrated his private residence.  He had a lurking suspicion of who the adversary might be.            

            He went to the wall of closed-circuit televisions and jabbed a button on a remote control.  The screens flickered on.

            The cameras showed close-up views of the back of the house, the front, the sides, and various rooms within, including the angel’s guest room.  Dressed in a white leotard and tights, the girl sat on the bed, supple legs crossed Indian-style.  She brushed her long, dark hair with slow strokes, a gentle smile on her face, as though she were thinking of him.

            It was difficult to pull his gaze away from her.  Sighing, he pressed a button on the remote to receive a different set of camera views.

            More rooms were shown, but he also got a look at the property from a more distant vantage point.  The camera, he recalled, was concealed in a tree near the gates.

            Two men were stalking across the driveway to the house.  Both had guns. 

            As he’d suspected, one of the men was Anthony Thorne. 

            His grip tightened on the remote control.

            Thorne’s appearance meant Noah Cutty had failed.  He looked forward to reprimanding the Director for the ineptitude of his allegedly most capable soldier.

            But why had Thorne come to the estate?  What was he seeking?  Was this an assassination attempt, or did Thorne have another purpose?

            He didn’t know.  Although they had wanted to capture Thorne and interrogate him to learn what the Judas had given him, Thorne was proving such a formidable adversary that perhaps eliminating him immediately was the only viable alternative.  Elimination was the course of action that his security detail would pursue, unless he directed them otherwise. 

            He decided that he would let his servants do their jobs.

            “God and I tried to have mercy on you, Thorne,” he said to the monitor.  “But you’ve forced our hand.”

            He left the displays and went to prepare.  God had promised that no weapon formed against the faithful would prosper.  But God did not suffer fools lightly, either. 

80

            As Anthony and Mike ran across the vast front yard, keeping to the cover of the trees, someone fired several shots at them.  The gunfire had the distinctive crack of a high-velocity rifle, and it originated from the house.

            Anthony crouched behind an oak tree.  Mike hunkered behind a pine on Anthony’s left.

            Anthony’s heart continued to beat at a moderate pace.  No reason to panic.  Of course these people were going to fight back.

            Lying flat on the ground, shoulder pressed against rough bark, he peered around the tree.   

            Seen up close, the bishop’s residence was even more impressive.  A majestic facade with stucco and stone accents, and limestone and fieldstone moldings and veneer.  Wide covered porch marked by graceful arches supported by stone columns.  Lots of dormer windows.  A small turret set high on the right, domed with metal.  It looked as if someone had extracted a nobleman’s chateau out of the French countryside and deposited it on this hill in metro Atlanta.

            The turret in particular caught his attention.  The window was halfway open.  The elevation and angle would have made it a perfect fighting port for a sniper.

            In the infantry, they’d been trained to clear a house from the top down, to avoid using doors and windows and to create a mouse hole for your own entry with demolitions, after which you methodically worked your way down to the lower levels, always keeping the high ground above the enemy.  But they lacked the manpower, resources, and time to do this one by the book.

            Anthony glanced over his shoulder at Mike, and with a hand signal, indicated the gunman’s probable position.  Mike lifted the rifle to his shoulder, and waited.

Here we go.    

            Anthony broke cover and sprinted to the house.  Rifle fire shattered the day, twice from the turret, once from Mike, and then the day was still.

            Anthony leaped over a bed of azaleas and reached a set of long windows on the far left of the front door.  He hugged the wall beside the window frame, breath whooshing through his lungs.

            He hated windows.  Sometimes they were booby-trapped, or at the least, your enemy had them covered and was waiting to blast you if you dared to enter through them.  A cooked off hand grenade to clear the interior would have been useful right about then.

            But he reminded himself that there might be innocent people inside.  The bishop’s servants.  Had to be careful. 

            Mike dashed across the yard and took cover behind one of the veranda’s stone columns.  No one fired on him, which meant the turret sniper either had taken up another position, or been knocked out of the game entirely.

            Anthony hoped for the latter.  Then, the odds would be even, two-on-two.

            He and Mike exchanged a quick look.  Turning, Anthony fired his pistol near the bottom of the window, blowing out glass shards that clattered to the veranda floor.  Keeping his head out of view from inside, he stuck his arm through the ragged hole in the pane, grabbed the bottom of the window, and raised it. 

            While Mike provided supporting fire, Anthony climbed inside through the window.  He snatched a satiny curtain out of his face, and scanned his gun across the room. 

            The theme of unbridled opulence continued inside the house.  It appeared to be a formal living room, huge, full of shadows.  There was a vaulted ceiling, stone and plaster details, intricate crown molding, elegant arches and columns, rich marble floor.  One wall featured a stone-detailed, baroque-style fireplace over twenty-feet high.  All of the furniture looked to be antique. 

            No guards or servants were in sight.  Anthony called out to Mike, “Clear,” and Mike scrambled inside, the rifle hanging from his shoulder.

            “Quite a crib he’s got here,” Mike whispered, looking around appreciatively.  “I ought to pastor a church.”

            Presumably, with two agents left, one would probably on the lower level somewhere, and the third would surely be keeping close tabs on the bishop.  The house was foreign territory, so enormous it could take time to find the room he wanted, and time was a luxury that was steadily dwindling.  The FBI would be on site soon.

            Anthony advanced across the living room, weaving around furniture, boots whispering across the marble.  The shadowed house was as silent as a lurking beast.

            On the right, an archway led to the foyer and a grand staircase.  They avoided it—going there would place them in the line of fire from numerous vantage points.  Instead, he traveled to the far end of the living room, where another archway beckoned into a gigantic, elliptical dining area. 

            The mahogany dining room table was long enough to accommodate thirty people.  A crystal chandelier depended from the coffered ceiling, softly reflecting the gray daylight.  Another broad archway connected the dining room to the main corridor, and ahead, a smaller doorway gave access to a butler’s pantry.    

            Mike grabbed the back of a chair.  Swinging it around, he heaved it through the archway, into the hall.

            A shot rang out while the chair was in midair, puncturing the seat cushion, and giving away the gunman’s position as somewhere toward the far end of the corridor.  The chair slammed against the wall, splinters and cotton stuffing flying.   

            By then, Anthony was already on the move. 

            He hustled across the rest of the dining room, crossed into the butler’s pantry, and rounded the corner into the kitchen.  A black-haired guard was crouched behind a large granite island.  He whirled at Anthony’s entrance, raising a pistol, but Anthony got off a shot first.  The round drilled into the man’s chest, lifted him off his feet and threw him against a wooden stool. 

            Anthony cornered the island.  The guy lay on the marble tile, a stupefied expression on his face.  Not dead.  Body armor had saved him, too. 

            Anthony pressed his boot against the man’s throat.  The guy blinked, gasped.

            “Where’s the bishop’s bedroom?” Anthony asked.

            Confusion swam in the guard’s eyes.  Anthony leveled the gun at his head.  The guard’s gaze honed in on the muzzle—and instantly clarified.

            “You heard me loud and clear, asshole,” Anthony said.  “The bishop’s bedroom—where is it?”

            “We ain’t got all day,” Mike said.

            The guard swallowed, made pointing motions with a trembling finger.  “Up . . . upstairs.”

            “Where upstairs?” Anthony asked.

            “E—east . . . side.”

            “Where’s the third goon?”  Mike said.

            “Upstairs . . . by . . . stair . . . staircase.”

            “Any house servants in here?” Anthony asked.

            “N-no . . .”

            Anthony glanced at Mike.  “KO this guy.”

            Mike slammed the butt of the rifle against the guard’s temple, knocking him unconscious.  They cuffed him and left him on the floor.

            From the kitchen archway, he surveyed the main hall.  Numerous doors led off the wide corridor.  The grand spiral staircase was near the middle, a luxurious blend of carved stone and wrought iron.

            Keeping to the far edge of the hall, they moved toward the staircase.  In a cased niche on the right, Anthony spotted a portrait of Bishop Prince.  Posed alone, clad in priestly vestments, the man wore a haughty expression, as if he were a conquering king. 

            In an alcove to the left of the stairs, there was an elevator with brushed steel doors and gold trim.

            “An elevator,” Mike said.  “Damn, this guy’s ballin’ like Jay-Z.”

            “Some struggling single mother who believes in his ministry paid for this,” Anthony said. 

            “And a grandmother living on a fixed income.”

            A hot column of anger surged up Anthony’s throat, and he choked it down.  He’d save his rage for the bishop.

            On the panel, there were arrows to go up, or down.  Anthony pressed the Up button.     

            The elevator chimed, a sound that would have been heard upstairs, too, and the doors slid open.  He leaned inside the car and selected the button for the second level.     

            Machinery humming, the car began to ascend.

            Mike in the lead this time, they quick-stepped to the staircase and began to ascend, too, keeping to the edge of the risers, where they would make the least amount of noise. 

            Anthony not only hated windows in combat situations—he hated stairs, too.  It was easy to get pinned down on a staircase, easy to be surprised by the enemy, easy to get killed. 

            He hoped the elevator trick worked.

            A few steps above Anthony, Mike rounded the corner at the same moment the elevator chimes sang, signaling the car’s arrival on the second floor. 

            “Oh, shit . . .”  Mike started, and his words were cut off by the unmistakable sound of a fierce blow, and a grunt of pain.  

            Anthony’s heart clutched.  Legs pumping, he hurried around the corner. 

            The elevator diversion had failed—the third bodyguard had been waiting for them.  The guy, perhaps in his mid-twenties, bald-headed, well over six feet tall, so wide and muscle-bound he could’ve played the role of Goliath in a Biblical story re-enactment, had grabbed Mike and flung him across the floor.  Mike was on his knees, spitting up blood, and the guard stood over him, about to twist the rifle strap around Mike’s throat and snap his neck.