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Chapter Forty-four

            Anders Matheson couldn’t believe his luck.  He found a small hill in the middle of flat farmland sheltered by a stand of pines and a pile of large rocks and spent the night there quite comfortably. It was only several hundred meters outside the cult’s compound on the far side of the entrance gate, far removed from the main road.  It afforded the F.O.G. assassin an excellent view of no less than four buildings, three dozen windows, multiple exits and the main parking lot where Harte parked his car. Everything fell comfortably within the 460 meter range of his U.S. Army M24 7.62 sniper rifle with its high performance Leupold scope. All that remained was for Harte to cooperate which, surprisingly, happened quickly. Even more surprisingly, it was happening in the Women’s Cloister, the last place Matheson expected to find Harte. It was actually the best location of all; it was in the building closest to where Matheson set up his observation post and gave him his best shot. 

            Fucking perfect.
            Matheson watched as Harte’s Sasquatch of a sister menaced her brother and some broad wearing a skimpy surgical gown. He adjusted his Steiner binoculars and zoomed in for a closer look. The big ugly bitch was clutching a fixed blade clip point hunting knife with a stag handle and Harte was standing defiantly in front of her. He struggled to hold onto the other woman who was aggressively trying to make him release his hold on her. She looked badly beaten; her face was a mess.  
            What the hell’s going on over there?  
            Whatever it was, it was time to break up the party. He raised his rifle and centered Harte in the cross-hairs. Matheson held his breath poised to take the shot just as all hell broke loose before his astonished eyes. 
            What the shit!? The sniper blinked, pulled up, and grabbed his binoculars.   
            Matheson saw a large wolf-like animal explode through the half open window, shattering the slightly raised lower pane and pane above it into a thousand pieces, and lunge directly for Rae’s raised arm. Like a wide receiver from hell, the speeding, agile beast caught her meaty arm in midair just below the elbow. Matheson adjusted focus again and realized it was a large dog.  Malamute-Shepherd mix?  Whatever it was, he thought, it was lethal -- and beautiful. 
            The velocity and weight of the speeding animal spun the big bitch into a tornado of uncontrolled motion. Matheson watched, transfixed, as Rae crashed into a stainless steel table, fell over a stool and toppled into a large cabinet on wheels, but the powerful dog never let go. His huge canines ripped through soft tissue and crushed bone as his twisting, pulsing body was hurled through the air, still suspended from Rae’s raised arm. Harte dove for cover and the woman he’d been holding onto scrambled out of the way. Like all surgical gowns hers revealed most of her backside.  Matheson thought she had a nice ass.  
             Rae crashed to the floor, slamming the animal into the linoleum with enough force that he should have been knocked senseless but his crushing jaws only released her mangled arm temporarily and he somersaulted gracefully and lunged for her again. His snarling, salivating mouth locked into the same part of her arm and he shook her wildly like a Great White in a feeding frenzy. His growl came from some deep primal space in chilling counterpoint to Rae’s contralto screams of agony and rage. The huge woman pounded him savagely with her free fist and landed powerful blows to his body and head but the dog’s massive clenched jaws continued to win. 
            Jess was as stunned as the rest of them when Wolf crashed through the window and attacked Rae; it took her a few seconds to figure out what the hell happened. Jim Harte cleared his head first and scrambled for the knife Rae was holding when Wolf slammed into her; it had flown out of her hand and spun across the room. He scooped up the knife and charged at Wolf, cursing and slashing wildly as the dog continued to twist and turn and mangle Rae’s arm. The knife ripped through fur and tore into the animal’s flank.
            Jess screamed “Noooooooo!” and plowed into the Prophet’s back. She grabbed his head with both hands and dug her nails into his temples and then she slammed a sharp knee into his spine. He struggled to stay upright as Jess tore at his face, pulling him backward in a frantic effort to keep him away from Wolf.  Her surgical gown had snaps holding it together at one shoulder but they didn’t hold; as the snaps let go the gown slipped off her shoulder, exposing a breast. Matheson enjoyed the view.
            “Nice tit,” he muttered.
            Jim Harte dropped the knife but tried to kick it toward his sister; it fell short of her reach by a few feet. Rae saw it and struggled to drag herself forward, the dog still fighting ferociously to pull her down. Jess locked her legs around the Prophet’s middle and pounded his head with her fists. The big man listed and lurched wildly, struggling to reach behind himself and hammer her with his fists but Jess clung as tenaciously to him as Wolf to his sister. Everyone tumbled and crashed around the room in frenzied chaos making it too risky for Matheson to take a shot at Jim Harte. He didn’t want to accidentally kill the dog.
            Jess clawed her way up to Harte’s shoulders and bit his ear. He screamed in panic “Goddamit!” and “Sonofabitch!” and tried to buck her off his back but lost his footing and staggered clumsily backward until he finally fell like a massive timber on top of her. Jess hit her head on shelving on the way down and was knocked unconscious before she hit the floor.
            Rae continued to drag herself toward the knife but each step also moved her closer to Jess as well as her brother and Wolf was determined to keep the beastly woman as far from his beloved Jess as possible.  He threw all of his ninety-five pounds of compact muscle and unlimited courage into a final fierce effort to hold her back and pull her down but Rae’s extraordinary strength was ultimately no match for the powerful animal.
            She dragged herself within inches of the knife despite the agony of the large dog chewing through her arm and his brute strength pulling her backward.  At the same time that she took a giant lunge forward and grabbed the knife Wolf gave her forearm one more ferocious tug and the whole lower arm snapped from the elbow socket with a loud, nauseating “pop.”
            Wolf and human limb crashed to the floor.
            Rae stood and stared numbly at the macerated remains of her right upper arm, her blood shot from torn arteries and veins in all directions.  
             Her brother scrambled to his feet and ran screaming to his sister.
            “My God! My God! Rae, your arm!” He tore off his shirt, ripping it into large pieces. “Rae, you need a tourniquet!” he yelled, struggling to cover the jagged hemorrhaging stump with a piece of shirt.  
            “Fucker dog,” she hissed, eyes blazing insanely, “fucker dog.” Rae shoved her brother away so forcefully he stumbled and fell to the floor.
            Wolf was several feet away in a puddle of his own blood and her severed forearm with attached hand sat where it fell. Wolf struggled to stand but his back legs were useless and he slumped back to the floor. His brown eyes blazed defiantly and his black lips curled over glistening white teeth; his hatred resonated in a growl that reverberated chillingly throughout the room.  He taunted her with a canine “come get me, bitch!”
            “Fucker dog!”   
            Jim Harte scrambled back to his feet, still desperately trying to help his sister. He grabbed her good arm, pleading “Forget the damn dog! Let me stop the bleeding! You’ll bleed to death!”  
           Rae stared at him. He shouted at her “For God’s sakes, listen to me! You need a tourniquet!”
            She studied him coldly. “Go to hell.” She pulled herself from his grip and stalked toward Wolf, hunting knife poised to kill. Wolf stiffened, his eyes rolled back and his exhausted battered body began to convulse with seizures.
            “Fucker dog!” she screamed as she viciously kicked the helpless convulsing animal in his head and ribs. Each powerful kick from her heavy boot raised him off the floor and shoved him several inches sideways. Wolf continued to seize as she kicked him savagely across the floor.
            Harte ran back to his sister’s side as she kicked Wolf across the room. He tried to wrap his torn shirt around her mangled stump but the bleeding was profuse and she wouldn’t stand still.
            “Damnit,” he screamed in exasperation, “forget the fucking dog! You’ll bleed to death! I said: forget the dog!”
            Rae continued to ignore him but he wouldn’t give up and fought valiantly to stem the gusher of blood that sprayed from the wreckage of her upper arm. When she bent over the dog he lowered himself beside her, still desperately trying to provide some semblance of emergency care to her horrific wound.
            Rae hovered low over Wolf, ready to slash him open and gut him, when suddenly Del and Wiley, weapons drawn, crashed through the door.    
            “Police! Freeze! Police!”
            “Drop the goddamn knife!  Drop the knife!”
            Mayfield and Tooch charged in after Del and Wiley while the younger, surprisingly acrobatic Kenny tumbled into the room through the broken window and sprang like an Olympic gymnast to his feet, gun pointed directly at Rae.  
            “Put your weapon DOWN!” their voices screamed in unison.
            Stunned, Rae and her brother jerked themselves up and turned toward the doorway and then the window. Jim Harte immediately understood and took a step backward. He carefully raised his arms over his head but Rae stood frozen and wild-eyed.
            In that split second of a split second Jess slammed her body into Rae and screamed “I’ve had enough of you, you goddamn bitch!”
            Jess propelled the deadly Amazon directly toward her brother. He lowered his arms from above his head and tried to grab her, to keep her from falling.  As he did so, Rae’s hunting knife, the one that slaughtered Vinson and she would have used to fillet Wolf, plunged deeply into the left ventricle of her brother’s heart. 
            The founder and head of the American Jerusalem All Faith Church looked down at the stag handled knife protruding from his chest.  A very small rivulet of red stain began to discolor the white tee shirt he wore under his dress shirt – the same dress shirt he shredded, a blood stained piece of which he still clutched in his right hand. Harte collapsed to the floor probably before it even registered that his sister just killed him. He fell with a puzzled look on his face.
            Wiley and Kenny wrestled the screaming, kicking, biting Rae to the ground while Del flew to Jess and pulled her to safety. Mayfield and Tooch swept the area and announced it was clear. Tooch stood guard at the door, armed and ready while Mayfield shouted multiple orders into his phone and requested emergency medical support from the police department in Urbana.  
            Jess’s battered face shocked the men; her lower lip was blown up like a balloon, both eyes were nearly swollen shut and an enormous gash in her forehead bled profusely. Her hands were lacerated and bleeding; her nails split down to the flesh. Del covered her with his jacket and tried to close the gash in her forehead with his fingers to slow the bleed. Tooch tossed him a large handkerchief and Del turned it into a compression bandage.
            “Christ, get an ambulance. Get it now!” Del yelled to Mayfield.
            Jess was wheezing, struggling to breathe. She tried to talk but it was difficult. “Don’t talk, baby. Don’t talk,” Del told her. “We’ll have you out of here in a minute,” he tried to assure her, his eyes turning to Mayfield and pleading “hurry up!”
           Tooch balled up his jacket and tossed it to Del who rested it under Jess’s head.
            Del yelled “Where’s that damn ambulance?”
            “On its way, on its way,” Mayfield worriedly shot back.  
            Rae finally collapsed unconsciously to the floor and Wiley was able to apply a tourniquet to her upper arm. Kenny walked over to check on Jess and patted Del on the shoulder. “Hang in there buddy, help’s on the way. We’ll get her outta’ here in a minute.”
            He tore off his jacket. “Here, use this too.” Del thanked him and covered Jess’s bare legs.             Wiley and Mayfield also tossed their jackets to Del who was struggling to keep Jess warm.  A fierce January wind blew through the broken window and the room was cold as a meat locker.
            Matheson saw everything. Damn, he thought; the show keeps getting better. He watched Harte crumple to the floor, stabbed in the chest by his monstrous sister. Harte fell in such a way that his head was out of view, behind a table, but his body wasn’t moving. The sniper figured him for dead and considered packing up and hauling ass but then saw the chance of a lifetime: his choice of two niggers. Killing a nigger was certainly superior to killing a white man, no matter how wrong his thinking. Matheson rested his binoculars on his chest and picked up the rifle. He scanned the room and toyed with each target inside the cross-hairs.
            The body hit the floor before anyone heard the shot and Wiley was the first to see Kenny face down, his blood forming a widening lake around his head. He stood staring at it, thinking it’s also Eliot’s blood and it’s my blood, flowing, flowing, flowing… he watched as it stopped flowing and understood Kenny’s loving gifted heart was beating no more.
            No more. Wiley muttered “no more” and “I never knew you.”   
            “Jesus!” Del threw himself over Jess as Tooch and Mayfield dove for cover. Wiley stood over Kenny, directly in front of the shattered window.
            “Fred GET DOWN!” Mayfield yelled.
            Del looked up and yelled “Wiley! Get out of the damn window!”
            Tooch was the closest and got there first; he reached up and pulled Wiley to the floor. “Jesus Wiley, what are you thinkin’?” Wiley looked dazed.  
            “Christ! What the hell happened?” Mayfield screamed. 
            No one knew. There was nothing but silence until they heard Mayfield on the phone screaming “We have a man down!  A cop down!”

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 http://www.amazon.com/January-Moon-Carter-Calendar-ebook/dp/B004E112LW