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* * *

It was a strange kind of homecoming for Decker. The son of a local policeman, Decker had joined the Bettendorf Police Force himself soon after college in Chicago. But after only two years on the force, he applied to join the FBI and was accepted by the Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Following sixteen weeks of intensive training, and a stint with the Racketeering Records Analysis Unit in Washington, D.C., he had been transferred to the Bureau’s office in Chicago where he worked within the Cryptanalysis Subunit, mostly on white collar crimes involving credit card fraud, money laundering, illegal gambling and a few drug cases. His superiors felt he didn’t have the qualities required for a Special Agent. And besides, his abilities seemed better suited to a desk job.

As Decker approached the farmhouse, driving past the TV crews and news reporters crowded around the outer gate, Chief Landry ambled slowly down the muddy, snow-flecked road to greet him. Decker got out and they shook hands.

Just shy of six feet tall, a trifle thin but wiry, Decker had thick coal black hair, pale gray eyes dotted with blue and green specks, and the gentle features of a poet. Only a long white scar, barely visible below the hairline and sweeping along one eye, and a slight lopsidedness to his face, marred his demeanor. He had just turned thirty last December.

“It’s good to see you again, John Junior,” Landry said. “Happy new year.”

“Happy new year, Popeye,” he responded. “Sorry to hear about Crowley. He was a good cop.” Popeye simply nodded. A minute later, Decker was surrounded by Alvin Cox, a dozen local New Liberty, Bettendorf, Davenport and Eldridge policemen, plus a handful of troopers from the Iowa State Patrol. Despite the somber mood, they joked with him about returning to the Quad Cities. “Look what the cat dragged in,” said Sgt. Higgins. “Is this all the Bureau could spare?” Even two local state troopers, Dick and Harry Sloane — identical twins, like mirror images in their brown and light tan uniforms — swung by to say hello. It was clear they remembered Decker with fondness. Higgins handed him a steaming cup of coffee. Then Special Agent Don Morgan of the SWAT team briefed him on the situation. Within minutes, Decker was back in the surveillance van, listening to the conversation between McNally and Jordan Fletcher.

He fell into the cipher. It was always the same process, like one of those 3-D puzzles that looked like some kind of Impressionistic painting until you relaxed your eyes, stared beyond the image, and it suddenly shifted into place. His old sensei, Master Yamaguchi, had called it “Reclining in Chaos.” There was no other way to describe it. Decker had possessed this skill for as long as he could remember. It was like a good ear for music, or the ability to run fast. He simply had a way with numbers and symbols, a gift for finding patterns in seemingly random data.

He took a deep breath and began, as always, with a substitution cipher, replacing true letters or numbers — plain text — with alternate characters — cipher text. He looked for patterns, series and common combinations. Nothing. Since the cipher McNally used was numeric, Decker dismissed traditional Caesar and keyword number ciphers off the bat. On the other hand, he thought, it might have been a telephone keypad cipher. But since McNally was using two-digit numbers — some of which were greater than twenty-six — he set aside this protocol as well.

It took him only a few seconds to flick through each of these contenders. After his training, and based on his innate skills, he was able to dismiss unlikely ciphers and codes virtually immediately. Also, having been brought up by his Aunt Betsy, a devout Catholic, and her husband Tom, an equally devout Episcopalian, and after his briefing on the White Apocalypse earlier, Decker believed “the book” which Fletcher had referred to in his phone call was the Bible.

In the end, Decker broke McNally’s cipher in less than sixty seconds. It turned out to be a simple book code: chapter and verse, followed by a third number specifying the word in the verse McNally wanted to use in the construction of his sentences. And he discovered it just in time; the suspects were planning to make a break for it from the farmhouse through some kind of tunnel.

Decker jumped out of the van and started to make his way back toward the farmhouse, completely surrounded now by local and state police, plus the FBI SWAT team that had taken up positions with snipers around the property. As he approached, he noticed Troopers Dick and Harry Sloane — the identical twins — standing outside the main fence of the property, drinking coffee, breath steaming from their mouths. It had grown even colder in the last few minutes. The setting sun lingered in the trees across the vacant snow-flecked corn fields. A raised eyebrow of geese sliced the sky. That’s when he saw the head of Peter Sampson poke out from the drainage ditch that ran along the fence line of the property, behind that clump of holly bushes, their berries livid crimson, buckshot of blood, frozen in time. He could barely make Sampson out in the blaze of spotlights the police had set up facing the house. He was only a dozen yards away from the two state troopers.

Decker ran forward. He was about to call out to the Sloane brothers when he noticed Sampson was carrying a hunting rifle. Mary McNally was right behind him, followed by the three children. He watched as Sampson crawled up out of the ditch and aimed his gun at Harry Sloane.

Without even thinking, Decker leapt into the ditch. He wrestled the rifle from Sampson’s hands. Sampson was a large man, well over six feet tall, and built like a defensive guard. He swung at Decker, who danced out of the way at the last moment. Then Sampson reached for another weapon, a .357 magnum stuffed behind his belt. He drew the gun but Decker was much too fast. He jabbed his left palm up under the large man’s nose, sending his head back, and shot a spear thrust deep into the jugular notch beneath his exposed chin. Sampson went down. His windpipe had collapsed, sending shards of cartilage into his throat. Within seconds he had choked to death and lay still. Mary McNally screamed and the Sloane brothers finally turned and noticed the struggle in the ditch. They ran over, their weapons drawn. Minutes later, Ed McNally crawled out of the tunnel — smoking now with tear gas — directly into the arms of the police. The stand-off was over. McNally was handcuffed and led away.

Decker was called out as a hero for saving the lives of the two Sloane brothers. But he felt badly shaken by the incident. As his old friends patted him on the back, he tried to pull away, and finally told them with a crippled smile, “Thanks but… too much coffee. I have to take a leak.” He walked back toward the van, stepped behind it nonchalantly, bent over and threw up.

He had never killed anyone before. He hadn’t been in a fight in years. He spat, wiped his mouth, and straightened up. The feeling was overwhelming. He didn’t know where to put it.

* * *

Three hours later, Decker pulled up to the house of his Aunt Betsy and her husband, Tom Llewellyn, who ran a local hardware store in Davenport. They were expecting him; Betsy had been following the story of the McNally stand-off on the TV all day.

Tom ran out to greet Decker on the porch. Short and stocky, with thin gray hair combed adroitly across his shiny head, Tom wore a scarlet apron over his yellow sweater and polyester mud-brown pants. They entered the house and were immediately assaulted by the smell of home-made biscuits and roast chicken wafting from the kitchen. It was Decker’s favorite meal. Tom always made it for him whenever he came home for a visit. His Aunt Betsy got up from her easy chair, dragging herself from CNN.

Thin and tall, with a handsome wrinkled face set off by snow-white hair, Aunt Betsy had the ice-blue eyes of all the Carricks. They exchanged a polite hello. “It’s good to see you,” she said flatly. “Happy new year, John.” Despite herself, his aunt seemed genuinely relieved. They had never gotten along. Aunt Betsy had always been jealous of her sister, Decker’s mother, and when both his parents had been killed, she had only reluctantly agreed to take her nephew in. Indeed, it had been Tom, her husband, who had finally pushed her to “do the Christian thing.” Tom told Decker to wash up. They were going to be eating right away. The capon had been ready for an hour.