Frank counted nearly fifty of them.
The men in black lifted and slid thick wooden bars through brackets on the cathedral doors. Frank and Kanazuchi looked at each other, asking the same question: Why are they locking the doors on this side?
Cornelius Moncrief stepped around the side of the church. A squad of men in black rolled the Gatling guns on their caissons into position, facing out, protecting the cathedral doors; one at the front, one at either side entrance. Another team pulled the fourth gun around to the back.
Cornelius glanced at his watch, gave another order, and three-man teams who appeared to know what they were doing took their places at each of the gun positions.
"All this for us?" asked Frank. "I mean, we're good, but—"
"Not for us," said Kanazuchi.
"Maybe they saw something. Maybe the army's coming for its guns."
Frank saw an alarming idea enter Kanazuchi's mind.
"This way," he said.
They backtracked from the work area near the cathedral entrance and followed the men pulling the last machine gun to the rear. Frank and Kanazuchi settled in behind one of the high mounds of rocks and debris above the path and watched the men in black pass beneath them, stop and set up the gun twenty feet from the rear doors of the church. Frank turned to look at the sheer wall of rock rising in back of the mounds.
"Nobody's gonna attack from this side," he said, puzzled.
Moments later half of the black-clad guards they'd seen out front ran in and formed a line to either side of the Gatling across the rear of the building. Each man carried a repeating Winchester and an extra ammunition belt; they knelt in firing positions, loaded and cocked their guns. Then the team manning the machine gun wheeled the muzzle around and aimed it directly at the rear doors.
"Want to tell me what the hell you think's going on here, Hammer?"
"They are going to kill them."
"Who?"
"The people in the church."
Frank paused. "That's just plain crazy."
Kanazuchi looked at him and nodded.
"And I suppose you think we ought to stop 'em."
"Yes."
"That's what I thought. Shit."
Frank looked off toward the south, past the reddened horizon.
"Mexico," he said quietly.
"What did you say?"
"I said what part of the river are we in now?"
Kanazuchi smiled slightly. "Most treacherous part."
"Suppose you got an idea 'bout how we're gonna do this."
"Hai."
Frank lit a cigar. "You want to tell me or you gonna make me guess?"
He told him.
Reverend Day didn't loosen his fierce grip on Dante's arm the whole way across between Main Street and the church; about halfway there, Dante realized the Reverend was holding on to him so tight because he needed help to walk. Smoke and heat choked the air, making breathing difficult at best. The Reverend hadn't said a word for a while; his face looked gray in the red light and his breath smelled worse than some of the jars in Dante's suitcases.
After leaving the theater, they had gone to the House of Hope, and Dante stood by as the Reverend rummaged through his desk, reading some papers real intently like he was trying to remember something; outside the office lay the bodies of four dead guards he hadn't even looked at. Then they'd gone down and out through a secret passage in the wall and started walking here. The Reverend had been getting weaker with every step. Dante felt scared; he didn't even want to think about anything bad happening to Reverend Day.
Ahead to the left, the last of a crowd of white shirts pressed inside the church; Dante even saw some little kids in the mix. The Reverend looked at the church, looked at his watch, seemed satisfied, then steered them to the right until they found two steel plates set in the dirt. Fumbling out a ring of keys, the Reverend dropped them on the ground.
"If you would be kind enough ... to do the honors," said the Reverend, weary and strained.
"Sure."
Dante picked up the keys, the Reverend fished out the right one for him, and Dante undid the padlock. He lifted the heavy plates off their hinges, revealing a steep staircase descending belowground. The Reverend took his arm again and Dante helped him down the steps. Handing him some matches, the Reverend directed Dante to light a lantern hung on a bracket beside the black stone door at the base of the stairs. It reminded Dante of a bank vault he'd seen once. With the aid of the lantern, the Reverend used another key to unlock the door; he pushed it lightly with one hand and it swung silently open.
A blast of cool, refreshing air washed over them. The Reverend breathed deeply, leaning against the doorway for support.
"You okay, sir?" asked Dante plaintively.
The Reverend nodded, laughed slightly at his concern, tousled Dante's hair, and waved him inside. A clean room, carved out of smooth stone, as cold and welcoming as springwater. An earthy smell that reminded Dante of a graveyard in the rain. The Reverend lowered himself slowly into the room's only chair, fumbled out his watch, and checked the time again.
"You are to wait here, lad," he said, taking Dante's hand, speaking simply and directly. "Leave that door open. Frederick will be along with something that I need; when he does, ring this bell, here on the wall, and I'll come for it. Do not go back to the surface or follow me into that passage...
The Reverend pointed to a dark, curving hallway leading out of the room, carved from the same black marble.
"If anyone besides Frederick comes in, you are to kill them. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir, Reverend."
"That's a good boy," he said, patting Dante's hand. "Help me up and we'll get started."
Dante pulled the Reverend to his feet; the man felt as insubstantial as a scarecrow. Reverend Day gripped the lantern in one hand and walked to the edge of the black hallway, smiled, and waved once to Dante. Dante waved back and the Reverend limped out of sight around the corner. Alone in the dark, Dante sat on the chair facing the door, laid his briefcase across his lap, and undid the clasps. He picked out his two favorite knives by touch, closed the case, and set it carefully beside the chair. His eyes adjusted to the dark, and soon a faint red glow lit up the outline of the open door.
He noticed that outside the church bells had stopped ringing.
Long before it reached him, Jacob saw the light of a lantern approach from the maze, reflecting off its smooth black walls; he'd been lying so long in total darkness, it took him a few moments to figure out which way he was looking: straight up? straight down? For some time he had been hearing the disorienting ghostly echoes of a thousand murmuring voices, the generalized hum of a crowd, drifting down from somewhere above.
He remembered he was on the floor, cold stone beneath him, hands and feet numb from the constrictions of the rope. When consciousness had first returned and Jacob found himself still breathing, he couldn't have been more surprised; surely the
Reverend must have killed him by now. Maybe he had. Maybe this was proof of an afterlife. If so, you'd think they could afford some lights over here.
Considering how lousy I feel, thought Jacob when he realized he was alive, I might as well be dead. But if this is Reverend Day I hear coming, maybe I won't have long to wait.
The shuffling footsteps; spurs jingling.
Yes, it was him.
Reverend Day entered the chamber, and by the light of his lantern for the first time Jacob saw the round room where he had been lying. In a slight depression scooped from the center of a round pattern, a detailed mosaic of some kind, set in the stone floor. Arrayed around him at the edge of the circle, he counted six silver pedestals. A squat coal-burning brazier stood off to one side. The cold wind he had felt issued from a rough gaping hole in the earth at the end of the room opposite the maze; a wide trough cut iri the floor ran down to the lip of the hole from the hollow where he lay. Set in the ceiling above him, he saw a tight circle of grills that looked like manhole covers; the spectral voices he had heard were issuing from there.