Mighty and Strong (The Righteous) Read online

  Fear-Not ignored the younger man. “I'll tell you what's worrying you,” he said to Vigilant. “You're not afraid of the FBI, because you know the Lord is on our side and who can stand against the Lord? You're worried about your own strength. Well don't.” Fear-Not put his hand on the older man's shoulder. “Trust yourself, brother.”

  “Could we talk to the prophet first?”

  “This isn't Brother Timothy's responsibility, it's ours. I'm like Aaron in the court of Pharaoh. Moses was the prophet, but Aaron stretched out the rod that turned into the serpent. It was Aaron who lifted Moses's arm in battle when it weakened.”

  “And Aaron who made the Golden Calf while Moses was on the mountain,” Vigilant said. “Who led the people into idolatry.”

  “There's that cop car again,” Zeal interrupted. “We stand here any longer and they're going to send someone over and ask what we're doing. And if they search us, find what we're carrying, it's all over.”

  “There's plenty of other people walking around,” Vigilant said. “They're not going to bother us.”

  “Unless they're looking for three men in a group,” Fear-Not said. “He's right. We've got to make up our mind and do it. What if the FBI van drives off before we get there?”

  “Come on,” Zeal urged. “Let's just do it.”

  “Make your decision,” Fear-Not said. “But we're going whether you come or not.”

  At last Vigilant nodded his head. “Thou sayest.”

  #

  It was only luck that kept Krantz from being in the van when the attack came. He'd been craving a coffee and a smoke all morning and the last place to do that was standing outside the walls of Temple Square and certainly not in the van with Agent Fayer and Jacob Christianson's younger sister, Eliza, the Mormon missionary.

  Eliza had become another set of eyes on Temple Square. Bright girl, that one. She spent hours greeting visitors at the gates or in the visitor centers and cataloged the suspicious types. The agents had moved their interviews to the van so as not to attract comments and stares from the other missionaries.

  “More discrete that way,” he had told her.

  “Long as you get rid of my companion,” Eliza said. “We're not supposed to be apart.”

  “Yeah, two by two, I know.”

  Fortunately, Elder Peterson had made a call on their behalf and that little rule proved rather flexible.

  This particular interview wasn't producing much. She hadn't seen their suspects for a few days and after Agent Fayer and Agent Chambers's failed tail through Liberty Park and the aviary, it became clear that the cult members were no longer reconnoitering Temple Square. Had they given up?

  “You want me to ask around?” Eliza asked. “See if anyone else has seen anything?”

  “Hmm,” Fayer said. “Not sure there's any point.”

  Eliza straightened her name tag, unself-consciously touched at her hair. In spite of her conservative dress and mannerisms, there was something sensual about the way Eliza carried herself, although Krantz might be imagining it. Perhaps subconsciously hoping that beneath that prudish exterior there was a lustful spark that the right words would inflame.

  What if she'd undone that top button, so he could see the swell of her breasts? He imagined his hands on her bare hips, his mouth on one of those breasts. She had lovely lips and he imagined them at his neck, breathing heavily in his ear, overcome with lust.

  Not that he didn't know better. Look at Fayer, the prude. Take that same Mormon suspicion of sexuality, throw in a fundamentalist childhood and the way religion in general screwed with you and you weren't likely to find a libido under those layers. And even if you did, what would a girl like Eliza find in a lapsed Catholic smoker?

  Which reminded him he really needed a smoke. He was down to three cigarettes a day, but damn, did he need one of them right now.

  “I'll be back in a second. Just going to grab a coffee and a croissant.”

  Fayer gave him a disapproving frown. “Well, hurry back. And try to stand upwind when you smoke, will you?”

  “Either of you want anything?”

  “Nah, I'm good,” Fayer said. She turned to Eliza. “You?”

  “A Danish sounds great,” Eliza said sweetly, “so long as you're offering. I don't have any money, though. Can I owe you?”

  “Nah, don't worry about it. My treat.”

  “You're so sweet. Can you get me the kind with cherry filling? I love those.”

  Mmm, cherry filling. Now that made him hungry.

  He'd found a place with some decent coffee two blocks from the caffeine-free zone of Temple Square. No need to dilute it with milk or sugar it up, it could stand on its own. He left the van and walked there now. The day was turning hot. He loosened his tie.

  Krantz pulled out the pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and tapped one out. Three a day. That wasn't the most horrible thing in the world, was it? His father had once given him grief about taking up the habit. Dad had only smoked one cigarette in his life, or so he claimed. Made him sick. The friend who'd offered Dad the cigarette told him, “Yeah, made me sick too at first, but if you keep up with it, pretty soon you'll like it.”

  “And you know what,” Dad had told him. “I figured that was a lot of work to pick up a disgusting habit. Think about it.”

  Great, except that Krantz had already been smoking for two years when Dad gave him that little speech—not seriously, as he'd already been offered a scholarship to throw shot at USC by then—and the truth was, he'd enjoyed every drag from his first puff to the cigarette he'd been smoking on the back porch when Dad came home early from work and caught him.

  This one was no different. Maybe better than average, knowing he'd cut his rations to the bone. When he finished, he went in for the coffee, the croissant, and Eliza's Danish. Sniffed his shirt on the way out to see how bad it smelled. He couldn't tell, exactly.

  The walk had given him the chance to wonder what those men from the cult were up to. If these fundamentalists were really targeting the senator, why were they nowhere to be seen? Scared off? Not likely.

  Because that's who they were, right? True believers. You had to be confident of your faith to crash airliners into lower Manhattan, or to stage a fiery, suicidal shootout at your Waco compound. These assholes were no different. Why they were targeting the senator, he wasn't sure—something to do with the man's polygamist ancestors, no doubt. But he didn't think they'd give up simply because the FBI was on their tail. Driven underground, more like it.

  So were they watching from a different vantage point? You could see into Temple Square from some of the office buildings in downtown Salt Lake. He and Fayer had looked into that, but nothing suspicious turned up. Somewhere on the hill with a telescope? Could you get the right angle?

  Maybe it was the nicotine that made him unusually alert as he rounded Temple Square or maybe it was the growing suspicion he was missing something. He took in the cars parked along the block and saw at once that something was wrong. An extended-cab pickup truck parked at an awkward angle to the curb; the side doors of the FBI surveillance van hung open.

  His pulse quickened as he broke into a run. The badly parked truck sat empty and idling. The van rocked and shouts came from inside. Krantz grabbed his gun as he reached the vehicle.

  Bodies flailed and grappled inside. Some guy pummeled Fayer, while Eliza tried to pull him off. A second man grabbed Eliza's hair and yanked her backward. Krantz had no shot, not without hitting one of the women. He shoved his gun in its holster, seized the first man and ripped him free. He tossed him to the side and grabbed for the second, younger man, who was punching Fayer in the face.

  This second man was wiry, but more than a match for Fayer, who was trying to get her legs under her to push him away while protecting her face with her arms. His eyes gleamed with an intense light as he rained blows.

  Krantz had the man by the shoulders when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. There was a third man—how had he miss
ed it?—and he swung a baseball bat as Krantz turned. It cracked him on the skull. His vision blackened and he fell to the floor. A second crack to the head. Someone kicking him.

  “No, leave him!” a voice shouted. “Come on.”

  “Krantz!” Fayer's voice screamed. It sounded distant.

  He could see them now, dragging away his partner. But he couldn't get his arms or legs to work. His head was spinning and his hand sticky against his temple. A truck door slammed.

  Krantz regained his balance, staggered from the van while pulling out his gun. Fayer was crammed into the extended cab of the truck, still being beaten into submission by a man in the back seat. Two more men sat in the cab.

  He lifted his gun. A man in the passenger side pointed a rifle at him through the open window. Krantz shot, so did the man in the truck. And then the truck was racing east. It turned the corner of the block and was gone.

  Eliza came out of the van. “They took her,” she panted. “They didn't want me, just her. Oh, no.”

  “What?” he asked, still dazed.

  “Look.” She pointed to his side.

  He reached down and felt the red, sticky mess at his gut, felt light-headed. “Funny,” he said, and he sounded like he was at the bottom of a drum.

  His head throbbed, but he felt nothing from the bullet. So this was what it meant to take a fatal shot. You kept going, you didn't feel a thing. He sank to his seat on the pavement and clutched his side. Would he be conscious when the ambulance arrived?

  “It doesn't hurt, I don't feel a thing.”

  Eliza bent and picked up something from the pavement. “That's because you weren't shot.” She held the tattered remains of the paper sack from the coffee shop. “My cherry Danish took a bullet for you, Agent Krantz.”

  “Oh, god, he missed.” His head cleared and he felt like an idiot.

  It was replaced by the feeling of failure, the horrible memory of Fayer struggling in the back seat of the truck. Every second that passed she'd be farther away and harder to find.

  Sirens sounded from both directions. A crowd gathered on either side of the street and a security guard came running from Temple Square. A police car screeched to a stop.

  He started to think clearly, in spite of his aching head. He rose to his feet and grabbed for his badge. He had to cut through the bullshit back and forth with shouting and badges and lost time until he convinced the cops he wasn't a threat.

  “FBI!” he shouted as two officers spilled out, grabbing for guns. Another car came around the corner from the opposite side of the block, sirens wailing. “I need your help. They took my partner.”

  #

  Several fruitless hours passed while they looked for Fayer. Police set up roadblocks, pulled over dozens of trucks on the freeway. The local news had crews on site within ten minutes and ten minutes later Fayer's picture was on all the stations.

  Krantz took calls from Denver and Washington, got his ass chewed. Several variations on, “Krantz, you moron. You've got two missing agents?” One from the Deputy Director himself, and it was an ugly call.

  The man screamed for ten minutes, threatened to pull him, demote him, fire him. But then offered the HRT, the hostage rescue team that was the most advanced SWAT team in the FBI. “Just get her back, Krantz. And don't lose any of my guys, you got it?”

  Eliza Christianson provided two critical pieces of information. First, a partial license plate number and a model on the truck. They tracked it back, as he'd guessed, to the Zarahemla compound and the Church of the Last Days. The second was a pair of names.

  “Fear-Not,” she told Krantz in a temporary office in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building across the street as he debriefed her. “That's what they called the leader. One of the others—the younger guy beating Agent Fayer—they called Zeal.”

  “Code names?” Four hours since he lost Fayer and he was through the rest of today's cigarettes, tomorrow's, and the next day's as well. He'd sent Chambers for a pack of Marlboros.

  “I don't know what it means,” she said, “but it's not random.”

  Eliza had a nasty bruise at her eye where she'd fought off the attackers and a swollen lower lip. She let the paramedics check her out, but refused to go to the hospital.

  He wrote the two names in his notebook, underlined 'Fear-Not', then tapped his pen on the table, glanced out the window.

  A view down at the green roof of the temple. Every few seconds a police cruiser came down South Temple, and he saw a news truck. Only the local news so far, but that would soon change. He needed to keep the polygamist angle quiet. The last thing he needed was the media clogging up Manti and the road leading to the compound.

  “Did you see if I hit anyone with my shot?” he asked.

  “I don't know,” she said, “but I'm surprised he missed you. He aimed right at you.”

  “He killed your Danish, so he couldn't have missed by much. And the truck was moving.”

  “If the younger guy had been the shooter, he wouldn't have missed.” A cloud passed over her face. “I'm going to have nightmares about that one. Did you see his eyes?”

  “Yeah. Terrorist eyes. But what about the one who hit me with the bat? This Fear-Not guy, the leader. Did you see him?”

  “Brown hair, thinning. Medium build. I didn't get a good look at his face. All three of them came in, but he went back outside to watch for trouble while the other two were supposed to grab Fayer and bring her out. We fought back, but they caught us by surprise.”

  “The third guy must have been around the front of the van when I arrived,” Krantz said, “because I didn't see him.”

  He leaned back in the chair. It creaked under his weight. He was still pissed that he'd missed the third man. He'd known there were three. God, he could use a cigarette.

  “This is what I've got,” he said at last. “They came for Fayer. Let's say they watched until I left and were sure I wouldn't be back for a few minutes. They probably knew you were in there, but figured you weren't a threat.”

  “I did what I could.”

  “I know you did. You held them off long enough. It was my fault, not yours.”

  “Don't be so hard on yourself.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “Easier said than done. But this is what I'm getting at. Either way, they didn't want you, otherwise they could have killed you or carried you off, too. And why did they even talk? If they'd shut up, you never would've heard code names. 'Fear-Not,' 'Zeal.'”

  “They wanted me to hear,” Eliza said. “And they wanted you to know they're polygamists or they'd have done something about the license plate on the truck.”

  “That's what I'm thinking. But why?”

  Eliza chewed at her lip. “I don't know. None of this makes sense. Fundamentalists usually want to avoid attention, not attract it.”

  “So, then?”

  “I don't know, but the key is to think like they do. You don't get inside their heads, you'll never figure out what they're up to.”

  “You've got a career in the FBI when you get off your mission. Think about it.”

  “Ha, right.” She smiled, but then her face turned serious. “Look, is my brother still in Zarahemla?”

  “He told you?”

  “Sure, I'm his sister. He didn't tell me what it's about, just something about helping your investigation. And don't worry, I can keep my mouth shut.”

  “I'm not worried.”

  “So is he still in the compound?”

  “Yeah, afraid so.”

  “He asked me to check on his family if anything happened to him. I should take advantage of this mess and walk up to the house. If you could cover with the mission while I check in on Fernie and the kids, that would be great.”

  Yeah, that. What a screw-up.

  “Here's the thing about your brother,” he said. “I don't know what he's doing in there or when he's coming out. I don't know much of anything at this point.”

  “You could send me in, too,” Eliza said.


  “No, out of the question.”

  “I could do it. Let me talk to my mission president. They'll have to release me.”

  “Not going to happen. The situation is already FUBAR. And here's the thing about checking up on your sister-in-law.” He grimaced. “Jacob's wife followed him down. She's inside, too.”

  A grim expression passed over her face. “Really? Oh.”

  “Yes, and the kids.” Krantz didn't tell her that if he'd been doing his job and watching Jacob's family, Fernie never would have felt so desperate she had to look for her husband in the compound.

  “Look, I'm serious,” Eliza said. “They always need more young women. They'll let me in, I know they will. I could go places, see things, talk to people. I'll do anything to help. And I do mean anything.”

  He gave a vigorous shake of the head. “Absolutely not. Besides, what you're suggesting is exactly what we tried before. No, the time for that tactic has passed.”

  “Does that mean you're going to raid the compound?”

  “I can't answer that question, you know that.”

  She leaned across the table and put her hand on his forearm. “Whatever you do, please, please be careful. I owe my brother everything, you can't understand what he means to me. And Fernie is more than just my sister-in-law. Those two are the only people I can count on in the world.”

  Chapter Twenty-three:

  Jacob and Miriam dug the girl's body out of the sand. First the legs, then they uncovered the torso, the shoulders, and finally the head. No blood, no obvious broken bones. The ground was reluctant to let her go. Miriam dug more around the legs and they tried again. She came free with a wet plop, like a rotten tooth being pulled. Jacob lost his footing, fell, and the body fell across his chest, a hand brushing his face.

  He pulled free, scooted backward. The dead body sprawled, the girl's head lolled back, sand gunked her eyes. They stared toward him. One course of gross anatomy had numbed him to that stomach-churning experience of touching a dead body, but the touch of her hand on his face made his skin crawl.

  Miriam dropped to a knee and brushed dirt from the girl's hair and face. “We need a forensics team.”