The Last Rebel: Survivor (32 page)

Fortunately, she had bolted out of the room and made it through two other rooms when she was overwhelmed by guards—who also took some big hits.

Whatever, now he had her, and she would yield the information on Rosen. First, he had to soften her a bit. They had tied her facedown on a large table and spread her legs and arms, and then to get the torture going he and four other Rejects had sodomized her to the point of her bleeding, something that Szabo had very much enjoyed doing, and very much enjoyed watching, particularly before the fourth assault when alcohol had been poured on her—actually into her—and she had screamed in agony.

Now, Szabo thought, she was ready. If she didn’t talk he was prepared to work on her with a stick two feet long.

What also worked with most people was threats. Threats to remove fingers, limbs, genitalia. That got people talking pretty quick.

He didn’t know exactly what he would do. He would play it by ear. Maybe with her ear!

Whatever, he had to move pretty fast. The longer Rosen was free, the greater the danger. He had to be neutralized. Just had to.

Szabo walked into the room and heard her say something. A single word.

“Jim.”

“Who’s Jim?” Szabo asked.

Bev did not answer.

“I would assume,” he said, “that you were asking that wonderful God of yours for help. Is this Jim greater than your God? If he is, I’d certainly like to meet him.”

He went over and squeezed her behind.

“Boy, you got one of the best booties I’ve ever seen. But it looks like it’s taken a turn for the worst.”

He paused. He walked around and sat down in a chair so his face was close to hers. Her eyes were red from crying and her face was blotchy with red welts and black and blue marks where the guards had beaten her into submission.

“I want to know something from you,” Szabo said, “but first I want to ask you again: where is this God you were trying to spread around? Where is He now that you need Him so much?”

Her lips moved, and then he managed to hear something she said in a half whisper. “He’s right here, right here in the room with me.”

Szabo stood up. He wanted very much to kill her, but he needed to know the answer to the other question:

“Where is that little pipsqueak of a reporter for the
Rolling Stone?
Where did he go?”

“I don’t know,” Bev said.

“You did see him?”

“Yes. He was with us for a while. He told us the whole story of how he hoodwinked you.”

Again, Szabo wanted to kill her right then and there. But that would be stupid.

“What happened to him?”

“One day he decided to leave,” Bev said.

“Why?”

“He was afraid of you. Afraid you would catch up to him.” She paused. “Why are you so afraid of him?”

“I’m not afraid of him. I want to kill him.”

“No,” Bev said, “you’re afraid.”

“You know?” he said. “You got a lot of grit in you, and I’m going to surprise you by saying, first, that I believe you. I don’t think you know where Rosen is.”

Bev said nothing.

“Isn’t that surprising, that I believe you?”

She said nothing.

“But the second surprise is one you’re really going to like.”

Again, silence.

“I’m going to let you live,” he said. “Isn’t that surprising? After all, I had your pregnant friend hung from a tree, so this has to be a surprise.”

“Thanks, Santa.”

“The thing is, I want you to be a walking advertisement that belief in God means nothing. That God exists only in your head, and that He couldn’t help you when you needed Him most.”

Szabo stood up and as he walked away he said: “Yes, I want you to be a walking advertisement for that.”

Inside her head, Bev thought of Jim, and then she thought of God.
Please, God
, she said,
give me the strength to endure this.
Or—
I’m so sorry, Jim—take me home, Jesus, take me
home to your kingdom of light and love. Take me home, or let me endure.

Szabo returned. He had some sort of brown bottle in his hand, filled with a liquid.

He must have pressed a button of some sort, because a bunch of soldiers came into the room.

“Turn this messenger of God over,” he said, “so Jesus can see her lovely face.”

Bev did not put up resistance as the bonds holding her arms and legs to the table were unfastened. She was turned over and retied.

“What I’m holding here is hydrochloric acid,” he said. “Now I want you to be an ad for me, so to do this I have to, shall we say, modify you a bit? And there’s nothing like hydrochloric acid for that.”

He approached her. She turned her mind inward, to nestle herself like a little child in God’s embrace. But God did not shut down her earthly senses, and the Rejects heard again a shriek of agony, and the premier felt his genitalia engorge with blood.

THIRTY-FIVE

Kindhand and Jim, in the lead vehicle, raced east along the road, the road that they speculated Alex Szabo had earlier that morning traveled on and snatched Bev. Both men left unspoken that if Szabo had taken Bev, it might already be too late. He might have killed her. But the world was full of possibilities, and both men followed the brilliant philosophy uttered by a baseball player from long ago named Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Jim was filled with focused rage. Not only was he not taking counsel of his fears, but they were not a factor in what he was doing. There was no fear, just the burning need to produce results, to get Bev safely back in his arms.

If . . . if Szabo had taken her. If he hadn’t, Jim didn’t know what his next step would be. But, as someone once said, “Destiny plays by its own rules.” And Jim was very shortly to find out how true that statement was.

THIRTY-SIX

Twenty-four hours earlier, and in some cases before that, Believers in the camps from all over the country, but mostly clustered in the Northwest, prepared for the invasion of the Rejects, an invasion made possible because of the intel supplied to them by Morty Rosen.

The hours since it had been decided to launch what for the Believers was their own D-day had been spent gathering men and materials. A number of the Reject camps were built into mountains where there were tunnels; against these the Believers planned to employ their own modern-day “tunnel rats.” In other cases, compounds were totally aboveground and tunnel rats were not required. All this information Rosen had furnished.

But at all Believer installations, one thing was basically the same, as reflected in the headquarters base. In the middle of the night, a mass of men knelt in an open field and importuned Jesus Christ to, on this day, help them. Their leader, Father McAulliffe, stood on top of an SUV, his voice patched through to all other Believer forces.

“On this day,” he said, “please to God let us banish from the land the infidels, the devil-worshipping hordes that have infested our lands. Let us cleanse them from our midst, and drive them to the hell from whence they came so our land is once again free and peaceful and we may make it a suitable place to worship you, dear Jesus.

“And grant, too, safety to the Christian soldiers who are now about to enter upon the field of battle and engage in this conflict in your name, dear Jesus. Let them return safe and sound from this battle this day. And to those who will not come back, to those who will die on the field of battle, let them enter through the gates of heaven and into your loving arms forever.”

And he finished, his voice thrumming with emotion: “Dear Jesus, we ask this of you in your most holy name, who shed your blood so that we might live.”

And then he paused and spoke softly to the men.

“And remember this, my dear soldiers in Christ, what we do this day will echo in eternity! Go with God!”

The soldiers, cheering wildly, stood and started to board their vehicles, making up, counting all the other vehicles and men in all the other Believer camps, the largest Believer force that had ever been assembled.

And, true to his promise, Father McAulliffe had agreed to allow Morty Rosen, in helmet and wearing body armor, and with bodyguards, to ride in the lead vehicle of the force, which was theoretically the most dangerous position, but which, Rosen knew, would give him the best possible view and, of course, draw in his readers with the emotion of it all. He was not reporting from the ass end of this convoy, but from the head.

Morty knew he was on his way to a Pulitzer, a slam dunk if there ever was one.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The Rebel convoy rounded the turn that, they knew, had to be close to where the Rejects were when they got a surprise—and almost engaged in a totally unscheduled firefight.

The woods were teeming with khaki-uniformed Believers, and they both leveled their guns at one another, but didn’t fire. Jim had had the presence of mind to hold up his hand.

One of the Believers, a tall, muscular man with the characteristic beard, came over, gun still at the ready.

“Who are you?”

“We’re a Rebel convoy,” Kindhand said. “Where’s you leader?”

The Believers didn’t know quite what to do.

“Better get him,” Jim said. “We got a volatile situation here. Don’t set it off.”

The Believer by this time was backed by innumerable other Believers, all positioned in the woods and with guns facing the Rebels. And by this time, too, all the Rebels had gotten off the long line of trucks and filtered into the woods. It was, indeed, a volatile situation. One shot could ignite a firestorm of bullets, blood, and death.

A group of the Believers went off to get someone.

A minute later, the leader of the Believers, Raymond Dawson, approached. And with him was none other than Morty Rosen.

“Hey, Jim,” Rosen called out, “I heard you were in the neighborhood.”

“What are you doing here?” Jim asked. But now he and Kindhand knew where Rosen had gone when he left the Rebel camp.

“I’m being a good reporter,” Morty said. “This is D-day for the Believers—all across America.”

How, Jim wondered, and why? Because, he thought, Rosen must have given the Believers some very valuable intel. Coincidence had its limits.

Raymond Dawson spoke.

“My name is Raymond Dawson. I’m commander in chief of military ops. Why are you here, sir?” he asked.

“Because,” Kindhand said, “we suspect that the leader of the Rejects has kidnapped Jim’s wife.”

Dawson nodded.

“Are you Christians?”

“Sure,” Kindhand said.

“Then perhaps you and your force would like to join us in wiping this scourge from the face of the earth.”

Jim and Kindhand looked at each other.

“Yes,” Kindhand said, “that would be fine.”

Dawson nodded. He looked at Kindhand.

“You are the commander?”

“Yes.”

“Let me show you our plan and how you can integrate your force into ours.”

Kindhand took the walkie-talkie off his belt.

Jim thought that maybe, during the fight, he could somehow slip inside Compound W.

The walkie-talkie crackled.

“General Garrett?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you come up to the command vehicle? Something I need you to see—and hear.”

When Garrett arrived, Dawson explained his plan. He had formulated a two-pronged offensive against the Rejects. One, called Operation Under, would be directed at emplacements in the tunnels and caves, whereas the other would be an offense against the forces they had in the open. No prisoners were to be taken. It was to be a battle, on both sides, to the death.

Dawson made a suggestion: “I think your forces should work with mine on the above-land aspect of the invasion. Tunnel work requires very specialized training.”

“We have people who have worked tunnels,” Kindhand said, “but I understand where you’re coming from. Fine.”

The explanation took only fifteen minutes, in great part because Dawson realized that he was dealing with a very experienced force.

Then Dawson got what could only be described as a demented glint in his eyes and said into his radio, which would go directly to commanders set to strike at other Reject compounds: “Let’s win one for Jesus!”

The Believers and Rebels filtered through the woods toward the mountain emplacements of the Rejects and then they were close enough—covering fire, including mortars and RPGs, was laid into the mountain to allow Operation Clean-out, the tunnel offensive.

Dawson, like Ben Raines, was another general who believed in preparation. As he once said, “It’s good for preparing a house for painting and a battle.” Two days earlier, recon teams, taking great care not to be exposed, had scoured the country to find shafts leading to tunnels. The shafts were usually marked by mounds of earth. Rosen’s intel had said that the tunnels themselves were typically three feet high but could be much larger. The shafts that led down to them were as much as a hundred feet deep, but many were shorter than that.