Free Don Pendleton - Civil War II by Don Pendleton Page B

the car gently along the sweeping drive, through the gate and onto the avenue. Then he pulled to the curb, produced a set of plastic handcuffs and the nickle-plated revolver.
    "You're under arrest, of course," he said quietly.
    Winston did not immediately comprehend. His thoughts were tumbling, a sense of frustration and urgency plucking at the taut fibres of his nervous system. Fairchild snapped one end of the cuffs onto Winston's left wrist, closed the other end around a clip on the dashboard, then moved the car back into the thin traffic of early-evening Washington. It was just beginning to get dark in the nation's capital. Winston stared at the handcuffs, at the little gun resting between Fairchild's legs, at the cold face of his captor.
    Then the taste of rage came sweet to his tongue. So that's where Charlie first got fucked! By that old man back there, that pompous and empty-headed ass who sold the nation on a sleight-of-hand apartheid plan called AMS\
    The curtain rang full open in Winston's mind, and he saw it all then, the entire conspiracy of two decades, a white conspiracy, an entire nation bent to the will of one pompous and probably demented leader.
    He reached across with his right hand, snared the steerling wheel, and lunged across it. His left foot found Fairchild's right, on the accelerator, and he stomped with everything he had. The cop was fighting him for the wheel, scrabbling desperately to disentangle his foot.
    "You crazy bastard!" Fairchild screamed. Then the brick wall loomed up over the scrunching hood of the car and Winston felt the piercing bite of the plastic cuffs as he became a dislocated flying object.
    I did itl he exulted, in that smashing amount of impact.
    Not until some time later, however, was he to be entirely sure of just what it was he had done.
    He had, in effect, become an integral part of the Omega Project.
    BOOK II - GATEWAY TO TOMORROW
    CHAPTER 1
    Fairchild was unconscious, a white welt traversing his forehead and a bit of blood on one cheek, but he was breathing. Winston fumbled through his pockets, found the key to the handcuffs, and freed himself. He glared at the little revolver through a moment of indecision, then pocketed the weapon. Fairchild was beginning to stir. Winston backed out of the wrecked vehicle on all fours. Several other cars had halted and a crowd of curious pedestrians was forming.
    "A man in there is hurt," Winston advised nobody in particular. Then he slipped through the crowd and walked rapidly down the avenue, turning off onto the first side street he came to.
    There was an ache in his ankle and his head was beginning to spin. He saw a familiarly-shaped building, one of those modernistic atrocities they were calling religious architecture in the nineties, and the neat plaque set into the side with the two words almost apologetically whispering: AMERICAN CHURCH.
    He merged in with the twenty or so people moving up the stone steps, fingering his AMS card and wondering whether he could risk using it. If there was a Zot-spot out on him . . . no, surely not so quickly.
    Winston hadn't been inside a church for a long time, and ] he felt vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect. But he was not seeking an enlightenment of soul—merely a place to wait and rest and bring his whirling mind together.
    The plastic box at the head of the stairs featured three j slots. One was inscribed CHRISTIAN TRADITIONAL, another NON-CHRISTIAN, and the third NEW AGE. A small line of people waited to use the latter two. Christian Traditional was not making it too well and most of the cards feeding into that slot, Winston noted, belonged to the very aged.
    The ankle was hurting and Winston followed the line of least resistance. He carded Christian Traditional and went on through the electron door, picking up his card on the other side. He dropped it into his pocket and shuffled along a narrow passageway with the old folks.
    They came into a large vaulted chamber. A choir of heavenly