NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) Read online

  NEXT BEST HOPE

  Stephen Woodfin

  Copyright © by Stephen Woodfin and Gallivant Press, an imprint of Venture Galleries, LLC, 1220 Chateau Lane, Hideaway, Texas 75771. 214-564-1493

  Venturegalleries.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval program, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise except as may be expressly permitted by the actual copyright statutes or in writing by the publisher.

  Text: Stephen Woodfin

  Editing/Design: Linda Greer Pirtle

  Cover Design: Jutta Medina

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  PART II

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  PART III

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  Last One Chosen (excerpt)

  About The Author

  Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God,

  and each invokes His aid against the other.

  —Abraham Lincoln,

  Second Inaugural Address

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  THE YOUNG AMERICAN President followed his usual routine. He rose at six o’clock, did thirty minutes on the treadmill, showered, grabbed a bite of cereal for breakfast, and entered the Situation Room in time for his seven o’clock meeting with the first female Speaker of the House.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” the Speaker said, rising from her seat to shake his hand.

  “Good morning, Madam Speaker,” the President said. “It looks like we have some work to do on our healthcare plan.”

  The tone was cordial as they sat down at the table and rolled up their sleeves to get to work.

  About fifteen minutes into the meeting, senior Secret Service Agent Ithurial Finis, entered the room. A black man, who stood six feet five inches and carried two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, the former NFL middle line backer would make anyone seeking to harm the President think twice. “I have some bad news, Mr. President,” he said.

  “Do I need to leave the room?” the Speaker asked, looking at the President.

  “No. Stay please,” he said. “Let’s have it, Agent Finis.”

  “Your numbers have just come up,” he said as he pulled his model 1911 Colt .45-caliber automatic from his holster and shot the President first, then the Speaker. Both of them dropped out of their chairs, dead when they hit the floor.

  Agent Finis holstered his gun and strode toward the door. “I’ve done my part. Let’s hope everyone else does the same,” he said to himself as he shut the door behind him and locked it.

  • • •

  A few blocks from the White House in a banquet room at the Mayflower Hotel, the loquacious Vice President was holding forth at a breakfast meeting. After thirty minutes or so, he quieted down long enough for the Secretary of the Treasury to make a brief pitch on economic policy before both men excused themselves.

  “You want to hitch a ride with me?” the Vice President asked the Secretary of the Treasury as they went out the back of the room towards their vehicles.

  “Sure, if you don’t think it will cause some sort of constitutional crisis,” the secretary said laughing.

  Both men slid into the back of the Vice President’s limousine as it pulled away from the curb, leisurely covering the short distance to the Department of the Treasury. The Vice President noticed an armored car that positioned itself alongside his vehicle in the next lane.

  “Kind of early for a bank run, isn’t it?” he said just as the armored car slammed into the side of the limousine and the driver detonated a suicide bomb, causing an explosion that blew windows out of buildings for a five block radius and incinerated the armored car, its driver, the Vice President’s vehicle and all its occupants.

  • • •

  That same morning outside Wharton, Texas, Secretary of Agriculture Bascom “Bass” Whitfield sat on the tailgate of a beat up Ford F250 taking questions from farmers in a cotton field, a place he knew and loved. It was planting time, and he could smell the rich, freshly plowed soil, the sweat of men used to laboring in the sun, fighting back Mother Nature’s ever-present tendency to reclaim the world.

  One of the old timers had the first question, “Bass, when are you going to get rid of all this genetically modified seed and let us get back to growing conventional cotton? My family developed seed for generations, and now I’m afraid to plant it because of all of the chemicals we have to use to grow that new stuff.”

  “Beauregard,” Bass said, calling the old man by name, “I just started this job a couple of weeks ago, but one of the first things I intend to do is to tell those sumbitches at Monsanto and DuPont who think they own the world that they can go straight to hell.”

  The farmers yelled and laughed out loud. “Go get ’em, Bass. You’re the man,” they hooted.

  At a gate on the corner of the field the sons of a couple of the farmers had drawn guard duty. As they sat with their.30-06 caliber Remington rifles across their laps, they noticed a strange vehicle approaching on the dirt road. One of them got on his cell and called his dad, “Are y’all expecting anyone else?” he asked.

  “No, I think everybody’s here,” his dad said.

  “Okay.”

  As the vehicle drew closer, Beauregard “BB” Butler, Jr., twice decorated for his service in Iraq, stepped out in the road and motioned for the car to stop. As it pulled up next to him, the passenger rolled down his window.

  “We’re here for the meeting with the secretary,” he said.

  The farmer boy could see his pressed cotton shirt, silk tie, and sunglasses.

  “I think they’re full up at the meeting,” he said.

  “Ah, come on. There’s always room for a couple more. We’ve been Bascom Whitfield fans since he taught us at A&M,” the driver said, leaning over and looking out the passenger window at him. BB caught just a hint of a foreign accent.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, reaching for his cell again.

  “Don’t waste your time,” the man on th
e passenger side said, starting to roll up his window as the car backed up to turn around.

  The young farmer dove behind his truck just as a hail of bullets erupted from the strangers’ car, riddling his truck all along the driver’s side. He and his buddy, Nathaniel “Nate” Adams, returned fire, knocked out the windows of the car, and struck the two men inside. BB drew his Glock 9 mm and emptied 15 more rounds into the car as fast as he could pull the trigger. He had no doubt he had finished the job.

  The farmers at the meeting knew gunfire when they heard it. They got Bass in the truck, and one of them drove him like hell across the plowed fields in the opposite direction of the battle. The truck bounced over furrows like a power boat porpoising across a heavy chop.

  “Hold it,” Bass said to the driver. “I hear something.”

  As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he looked up to see an Army helicopter overhead preparing to land in the field. When it sat down, a couple of soldiers ran to the truck.

  “Mr. Whitfield,” one of them said. “We need for you to come with us, sir.”

  “What’s going on, soldier?” Bass asked.

  “All I can tell you, sir, is that there have been widespread attacks on a number of government officials in the last few minutes. Our orders are to get you to a secure facility.”

  “All right. Lead the way,” Bass said.

  He turned to the driver, “Thanks for looking out for me. I hope the boys at the gate are Okay.”

  “I’ll bet they got the better end of it,” the farmer said, grinning at him. “Take care, Bass. We need you out here in the cotton patch.”

  Bass followed the soldiers to the helicopter, and the truck driver watched as it lifted off, turned to the north, and quickly moved out of sight.

  CHAPTER 2

  ERT ROBERTS SAT glued to the TV in the kitchen of his law office in Kilgore, Texas, refusing to accept the truth of what he saw. One after another, new reports came in describing the assassinations of government officials. He knew the events of the day were unprecedented in his almost sixty years of living.

  “We are still awaiting some word from the President,” the CNN reporter said, choking back tears, seeking a detached perspective. “His staff has promised he will be on the air momentarily.”

  The camera panned to the White House behind her.

  Ert heard his office door open and watched Leadoff Pickens, his forty-five-year-old fellow attorney and best friend, come in, pull up a chair at the kitchen table and sit down without speaking, staring at the screen.

  The phone rang and Ert’s secretary, Greenpea, paged him, “This guy says his name is Bass Whitfield, and he has to talk to you right now.”

  “Bass Whitfield? You’re kidding, me,” Ert said.

  “That’s what the man said.”

  When he heard Ert say the name, Leadoff looked away from the TV for the first time since he sat down.

  “The Secretary of Agriculture?” he asked Ert.

  “We go back a ways.”

  Ert punched a button on the phone to pick up the call.

  “Bass?”

  “Ert, I’m in the middle of something here. I suppose you have begun to hear the reports,” Bass said, his voice tense, his words tightly compressed.

  “I’m watching them now,” Ert said.

  “I can’t give you a full explanation right now, but I need you to throw some stuff in an overnight bag and get to the airport as soon as you can. I have to get some advice from someone I know I can trust. That’s a short list at this moment. You can bring your protégé that worked the Issacharoff case with you, too,” he said.

  “Leadoff Pickens,” Ert said, watching Leadoff shoot him a quizzical look.

  “Yeah, Leadoff. I like that name. Tell him he’s been drafted in the first round,” Bass said as he lightened up for a second and then fell back into step. “I’ll have a plane waiting for y’all in about twenty minutes. Just identify yourselves to the guards at the airport as my national security advisors. They will be expecting you.”

  “Bass, the TV is reporting that all aircraft across the country are grounded until further notice,” Ert said.

  “There are exceptions for national security purposes and for the President’s advisors,” Bass said.

  “We hardly qualify for that, Bass. I don’t know jackshit about national security, and I’ve never met the President,” Ert said.

  On the phone Ert could hear the sounds of people talking in the back ground and a muffled roar like one hears in the passenger compartment of a commercial jetliner at 35,000 feet. After several seconds, Bass spoke again. “You have now, Ert. I regret to inform you that about five minutes ago, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court administered the oath of office to me. You’re talking to the President of the United States.”

  “My God. I mean, yes sir, Mr. President. We are on our way to the airport right now.”

  “Thanks, Ert. I really appreciate it. It will be good to see a friend,” Bascom Whitfield said hanging up the phone.

  Ert looked at Leadoff who had stood up and begun pacing back and forth in the kitchen as he overheard snippets of the conversation.

  “That means,” Leadoff began.

  “I’m afraid so,” Ert said.

  “There’s no time to waste. Bass, that is, President Whitfield, wants us at the airport in ten minutes,” Ert said.

  “I’ll drive,” Leadoff said as they rushed out the door of the law office, leaving Kilgore, Texas, on a collision course with history.

  • • •

  In the deserted kitchen, the CNN reporter appeared again, sobbing now. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have just learned, and it is an official communication from the President’s staff, at ten-thirty this morning, today April 11th, the medical examiner for the District of Columbia pronounced the President of the United States dead from a gunshot wound to the head.”

  CHAPTER 3

  IN HIS CORNER office of one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers, J. Franklin Westmoreland watched over downtown Nashville like Caesar surveying Rome.

  Word had reached every home in America that the President and the next eight government officials in the line of succession to the presidency were gone, killed in the most deftly executed plot in U.S. history. In addition to the Vice President, the Speaker of the House and the Secretary of the Treasury, the murderers had assassinated the president pro tempore of the Senate, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Interior. Only the newly minted Secretary of Agriculture, Bascom Whitfield, had managed to escape his executioners. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court had also fallen that day, the victim of a sniper’s bullet as he walked his dog.

  The chairman of the Federal Reserve ordered the financial markets closed. The FAA shut down all commercial and private flights; the government sputtered to a standstill, waiting for the ship of state to right itself from its greatest storm.

  Members of Congress and senators huddled in meetings in Washington and at undisclosed places around the country in makeshift bunkers, charting strategies, looking over their shoulders.

  The funerals would start tomorrow. The Department of Homeland Security sought to protect the family members of the survivors and whatever key people in the government it could identify from a threat it did not yet understand.

  Westmoreland, with all the major network news channels running on a wall of flat screen TV monitors, was in the final minutes of his ninth phone call of the morning.

  “I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic at this terrible moment in our history, but I have never been more certain that the Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” he said, his voice stentorian as if he were addressing the general assembly of the Southern Baptist Convention.

  “What do you mean, Frank?” the pastor of one of the country’s mega churches asked with genuine curiosity.

  “Events have created a vacuum of leadership. We, the Lord’s f
lock, are perfectly positioned to fill that void, not just politically, but morally and religiously,” Westmoreland said, getting to the point.

  “Tell me more,” the pastor said.

  After ten minutes of further explanation, Westmoreland signed off and made some notes on his ever-present notebook computer.

  He leaned back in his chair and reflected on the national crisis and his personal journey. As a young preacher boy in the 1960s, he worked his way to the top of the emerging market of television youth ministries with a guitar slung across his back, a Bible in his hand and a glib, lowest common denominator gospel on his lips. When he got too old for youth ministry, he shifted to a more mature audience, feeding them the same gruel peppered with pop psychology, Eastern mysticism, yoga, the gospel of wealth and anything else that got a rise from the audience. Donations to his ministry soared, and soon he was senior pastor of the world’s largest Southern Baptist Church. He stayed there until he decided he was ready to take over the entire denomination, creating a political machine the likes of which no one had ever seen in the church world. He put together a seamless coalition that voted to change the traditional rules, installing him as permanent chairman “for that small interim before the Lord comes and takes us home.”