Free The Tenth Circle by Jon Land Page B

where the man had come from. Who was paying him and the others for their services?
    Those questions gave Blaine enough pause to make him swap the sniper weapon for his binoculars again. If there was someone behind Jeremiah Rule, someone backing him with the resources and contacts required to arrange for a security detail composed of special-ops veterans, then assassinating the reverend here and now was unlikely to achieve its desired effects. Sure, it would eliminate Rule, but not those perhaps equally responsible for the bridge bombing that may have claimed Andrew Ericson’s life.
    Someone was supporting Rule, someone was helping enable him to inflame the entire Muslim world and unleash the Islamic radicals now unified in their holy war against the United States.
    Beyond that, it was even possible that Rule’s assassination would unleash his venomous followers, which included any number of white supremacist and militia groups, creating even more chaos in the name of ending it. There were literally millions of armed crazies who fit that bill, many of them of the survivalist mode who hated government and were convinced the black helicopters were hovering over their homes even now. McCracken had known enough of them in his time to be as frightened of their convictions and capabilities as those of any terrorist. He needed to get closer to Rule right now, to feel the energy and anger of the crowd. It was much easier to judge a man up close than through binoculars and listening devices, and Blaine would get a better look at his private security detail from that vantage point as well.
    Blaine moved to the bucket’s controls and lowered it. He wanted to see Jeremiah Rule up close and personal. If nothing changed, he’d approach to shake Rule’s hand at the end of the service and jab the potassium-rich dart into his wrist. Feel him go cold, just the way it had been for Andrew when he hit the frigid waters of the Missouri River.
    “Every man’s fate is his own to control,” he heard Rule clamor, as the bucket thumped to a halt just short of the ground. “And every man must accept the consequences of that.”
    Couldn’t have said it any better myself, McCracken thought.

CHAPTER 19
    Mobile, Alabama
    “Soon we will accept your offerings to the flames, your symbolic rejection of the teachings of heathens who have infested and corrupted our culture and that of the world. For a time, a long time,” the reverend continued, his booming voice rising through the chill mist as he moved about the circle, backlit by the flames, which cast him in an almost surreal glow, “I was lost in a wasteland of confusion and quandary. Of not grasping the true origins of those who must be vanquished or the purpose they provide for the rest of us, the test they provide every day. But then a beautiful light burned bright before me through the dark decay, and I saw the truth. I saw a truth, brothers and sisters, I will now share with you.”
    God won’t be able to help you if you got Andrew killed, McCracken thought, approaching across the grass.
    He watched Rule stop and look down, more at the ground than the flames rising from the pit. It had started to drizzle ahead of an approaching storm, seeming to quell the flames briefly before a stiff wind fanned them further. Two fronts were about to collide, unseasonably warm air flooding the region with the portent of powerful thunderstorms and even scattered tornadoes through the Mobile area. As he approached across the park through the steady drizzle, McCracken thought he saw the reverend’s lips moving, perhaps in silent prayer, his face scrunched up tightly enough to wrap the folds of his skin around each other. Then his eyes opened again, narrow and wild in their intensity.
    “Dante wrote that there are nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, my bothers and sisters, representing the gradual increase in wickedness and evil, and culminating at the center of the earth, where the Devil