The Tyndale Code: An Action-Packed Christian Fiction Thriller Novella (An Armour of God Thriller Book 1) Read online

  Sometimes, Waterson had his moments, and he wasn’t such a bad guy . . . Sometimes.

  Chapter 3

  A battered green Willys truck slowly rolled up to Zack and Waterson. It was an old army style vehicle, straight out of a black and white military flick from the 1950s. Plenty of those old trucks were still to be had in Central America. Failed Juntas, black market deals, corrupt police and military caused the market to be flooded with surplus goods. It was a different world down here.

  The driver, a dark-skinned Hispanic man with curly black hair and a drooping mustache, brought the truck to a squealing stop right where they were standing. The little, round man got out from behind the wheel and spoke briefly with Waterson in quick whispers.

  An envelope exchanged hands.

  “He’ll wait for us with the pilot in town,” Waterson explained. “When we get back, he’ll have his truck returned and a nice sum of cash to keep his mouth shut.”

  No amount of money would stop rumors from spreading eventually. Hopefully, they’d be out of the country before anyone caught wind of their presence.

  Zack grabbed both packs and tossed them in the back of the Willys. “Works for me. You drive.”

  The truck bounced and shook, and the gears ground sharply every time Waterson shifted. The seatbelt had been cut away long ago and Zack held onto the bottom of his seat to brace himself. The dirt track got wider and appeared to be more used. Other paths veered off at seemingly random points. “How far?” Zack asked.

  Waterson took a right turn onto one of the unmarked roads. “Won’t be long. Better to stay off the main roads at night.”

  As hard as Zack tried, he couldn’t see anything that made this road different from any of the other roads. “You know where you’re going?”

  “Yup. Been here before.”

  “Here? Where’s here?”

  “Little place called El Pollito.”

  Of the several languages that Zack spoke fluently, Spanish was one of the easiest. “We’re going to a town called Tiny Chicken?”

  Waterson shrugged. “That would be one way of translating it.”

  “Tiny Chicken.” Zack ran the words through his mind. “Little Chick. Chicken Little. Seriously? We’re going to a town called Chicken Little?”

  Waterson laughed. “See, that’s why I like you. You find the humor in everything. Anyway, it’s just a name.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just a name. Chicken Little. I just hope the sky isn’t falling.”

  Chapter 4

  It took twenty minutes before they came to a paved road that continued east. The airstrip had been out in the middle of nowhere. That was fine with Zack. He didn’t want to be spotted by the local government agencies that kept sharp eyes out for foreign nationals trying to sneak into their country.

  He sat silent for the next couple of miles until a loose group of ramshackle houses and buildings came into view. A layer of dust covered what must have once been brightly painted colors, now faded and chipped. Children played football under the streetlights and acted as if they were taking part in the World Cup. Dogs ran everywhere. The town was a little speck of nothing in the middle of nowhere.

  El Pollito.

  “How far to—”

  “Another twenty miles,” Waterson interrupted. “There are no back roads into San Pedro. Better to go in broad daylight, when it doesn’t look like we have anything to hide.”

  That made sense, but it wasn’t part of the plan and it would put them even further behind schedule. “I need to find a phone.” Not like he’d get cell service here. “I should let Father Ferguson know we won’t see him until tomorrow.”

  “There’s a phone where I’m taking us.”

  “Which is where exactly?”

  “Right here.” Waterson pulled the truck into a spot in front a building.

  The place looked like it hadn’t been given a moment’s consideration since the 1940s. Shutters hung crooked from the two front windows. The slanting roof had several clay tiles missing. A man sat in a chair leaning up against the wall, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his face, his arms folded across his chest. It was the kind of place where a person could get killed for the money in his wallet, and where no one would come looking for the body.

  “Come on,” Waterson said, slapping the back of his hand against Zack’s chest. “They’ve got some of the best mezcal in the country.”

  “You know I don’t drink, Frank.” Zack Cole was thirty-two years old and had made a decision early in life not to drink. His friends often gave him a hard time, but it never bothered him. “What’s the plan here?” he asked. “Spend the rest of the night in a bar?”

  “If we’re lucky,” Frank joked, getting out of the truck. “Come on, I’ll buy you a Shirley Temple.”

  Maybe he should have left Waterson out of the deal. Joining forces with him had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, with the delays, and this unexpected pit stop. Zack slammed the truck door behind him a little harder than he meant to. “Is there at least a motel in this place?”

  “Spoilsport. Sure, there’s a little one at the edge of town. Lots of illegal traffic moves through here. Even smugglers need a place to . . .”

  A ruckus drew Waterson’s attention.

  Up the street from the dive of a bar was a knot of children. Four or five boys in ragtag clothing circled around another boy their age. The kid in the middle was scrawny, and he was hunkered down in a crouch, cowering with his hands over his head. The bigger kids kicked sand at him and threw insults that carried on the evening air.

  “Nice place you’ve brought us to,” Zack muttered.

  “It’s a local thing,” Waterson said, leaning his shoulder against the wall as he watched. “The kid in the middle is probably from a home without a father, or maybe he’s an orphan. The other kids probably have parents that are influential in this little flyspeck.”

  The local in the chair next to the door looked up at Waterson from under his hat.

  “Hey,” Waterson said to the guy with a shrug. “No offense.”

  Slowly, the guy turned his gaze to the kids up the street, then back to Waterson, and then he closed his eyes and pretended nothing was going on.

  Zack couldn’t do that.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Waterson asked as Zack stepped off the wide front porch of the bar.

  “I don’t like bullies,” was the answer.

  The kids never saw him coming. They were so intent on their teasing and kicking that it took the first boy totally by surprise when Zack grabbed him by the back of his collar. He yanked him backward off his feet and he landed on his backside in the street.

  The others scattered, except for the kid who had been trapped in the middle of his attackers. He stood up, hands still over his head, and stared wide-eyed at Zack.

  “De nada,” Zack said to him, then turned and walked back toward the bar.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Waterson said, shaking his head.

  “I don’t like thugs.” It was enough of an answer as far as Zack was concerned.

  The local on his tilted chair was staring at him as he went inside. They shared a silent nod of respect.

  Chapter 5

  Zack left the bar early and spent the rest of the evening finalizing his plan to help Father Ferguson retrieve the Bible.

  The next morning he woke up to the sound of roosters outside his motel room. He was anxious to get an early start. Waterson had been wrong about the phone. There was no place in the whole town that had a working landline. Cell service was non-existent. He should have brought a satellite phone. At this point, he would have settled for a blind carrier pigeon.

  “No more side-trips!” Zack insisted as Waterson drove them to San Pedro.

  “Nope. Straight on.” He wore sunglasses in the morning light, though the sun was barely over the horizon. His need for sunglasses wasn’t UV rays. It had more to do with the bottle of mezcal Waterson had managed to put away trying to out-drink th
e town mayor and his wife.

  The scenery was all green fields, farmland and trees. They passed very few cars on the way. The truck’s FM radio spit out a constant stream of static. Finally, Waterson gave up trying to tune anything in and flipped the dial off. “You want to tell me now what’s so important about this Bible, or should I wait and ask the good father?”

  “You really want to know or are you just making conversation?”

  “I really want to know. But give me the CliffNotes version and not your normal lecture.”

  Zack shrugged. “William Tyndale was strangled and then burned at the stake just for creating this Bible.”

  “Burned at the stake? Was the guy a witch?”

  “Do you want to hear the story or not, Frank?”

  “It was just a question.”

  “Tyndale wasn’t a witch. He was a priest and a scholar. In the sixteenth century it was illegal to translate, read, or speak the Scriptures in English or any other tongue without permission of the Catholic authorities.”

  “Whoa, that’s harsh.”

  “Harsh is putting it mildly. Ordinary people could not read Latin and had no access to the official Latin Vulgate. Tyndale didn’t believe that was right and wanted to get the Bible into the hands of the people. His English translation was the first based on the Greek texts and the first English Bible to take advantage of Gutenberg’s movable-type press. This particular Bible is supposed to be a complete edition of the New Testament produced in Worms, Germany by the printer, Peter Schoeffer in 1526.”

  “Are you sure this is the CliffNotes version?”

  “You said you wanted to hear the story.”

  “Well, excuse me, professor Cole. Please continue.”

  “The authorities of the time were furious that it existed and did everything they could to find and eradicate each of the Bibles. There are only three copies in existence. To find a fourth, intact specimen . . . isn’t that enough to make it significant?”

  “Yeah, so . . . it’s a piece of history and a thing of beauty, and there’re only a few others known to exist, and all that. Fine. I get it. But there’s gotta be more to it than that. You don’t get called in just to collect rare items. You’re the real life Indiana Jones.”

  Zack ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. “I am a biblical artifact recovery specialist—and an archaeologist. I help people. What Indiana Jones did was just movie stuff.”

  “I’m just saying. Locating the lost city of Ciudad Blanca . . . that I can see. Translating the language of the birds, I can see.”

  “There’s no such thing as the language of the birds. You know that, right, Frank?”

  “Whatever. With you, there’s always something more. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Not this time. This time I’m just helping a friend of a friend.”

  “Sure. Now, if only the National Police will be that rational about it.”

  “There, see? We have to convince the National Police to return the Bible to its rightful owner. If they don’t, we’ll have to get creative. That’s your something more.”

  “Uh-huh,” Waterson’s tone said he didn’t believe what Zack was telling him.

  The recovery of the Tyndale Bible was important to Father Giovanni and Father Ferguson. Zack had only met Father Ferguson once, but he had made a lasting impression, and he was going to help however he could.

  Chapter 6

  The drive to San Pedro in the old Willys truck took close to forty-five minutes. The small church stood proudly among trees in the middle of the walled grounds. The yellow, aging walls surrounded a number of simple buildings of stucco and adobe with clay tile roofs.

  Zack sat up in his seat. Alert and observant. The silence and the calm of this postcard view made his heart beat faster. “There’s something wrong, Frank.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly. It’s what we don’t see that worries me.”

  They drove through an arched doorway in the outer wall, into the area where the priest’s and the nun’s humble cottages stood. Father Ferguson was the only priest, but there were novices and six or seven nuns. There’s usually someone out and about, tending to the flowers, cleaning the buildings, or doing any of the other hundred chores. It was midmorning, and there was no one around. The place looked deserted.

  “Maybe we should’ve called ahead after all?” Waterson suggested.

  “Did you pack heavy?” Zack asked. He hated guns. He was well versed in the martial arts, but violence of any kind was a detestable concept to him. Although he had been forced to use it in countless situations when it had been necessary to save his life or someone else’s.

  “It’s going to be one of those kinds of days?”

  “Looks like.”

  “Check the glove box.”

  Zack reached into the glove box and pulled out a black .45 Automatic Colt Pistol, another benefit of not coming into the country through official customs.

  The cottages were set up in two rows. Father Ferguson’s was in the front row, but there were still the six little buildings in the second row to watch at the same time.

  “Pull over here,” Zack said. “I want to be on foot when we approach Father Ferguson’s cottage.”

  “Standard cover formation?”

  “No, not this time. Let’s split up. I’ll take the front. You go in between the cottages. Stay tight.”

  “Like a flea on a dog.”

  Waterson removed a gun from his ankle holster. It was only a revolver, a six shot, but Zack knew how accurate Frank was with the thing. They split up and then advanced down the rows, leap-frogging each other, checking in the windows of each cottage as they passed.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Some of the cottages weren’t being used, and they were empty. But the ones that were occupied had breakfast dishes still on the tables as if the novices or nuns had gotten up unexpectedly and walked away . . . or ran.

  The last cottage in the front row was the largest and would be Father Ferguson’s. When they got that far, Frank joined up with him again. Crouching beside the corner, they could hear voices inside. Several of them, talking in hushed whispers. Zack held up three fingers and waited for Frank to nod before counting each one down.

  Three . . .

  Two . . .

  One . . .

  They sprang to the door, Zack first, shouldering it open, guns up, ready to attack or defend each other.

  Six nuns in black and white habits stared back at them. They were red-faced and tears covered their cheeks. Two young men in white robes also faced them.

  On the floor lay the body of a man in his late sixties. Zack recognized the face, but the way he saw it now would be something he could never forget and would fuel his future nightmares.

  Father John Ferguson was dead.

  Chapter 7

  “Zack, we have to call in the authorities.” Waterson paced in front of the church, alternately waving his hands and nervously combing his fingers through his hair. “The man is dead!”

  “Keep your voice down. The nuns are right. We can’t call the authorities. Not yet. Especially if they suspect the police are involved.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” Zack interrupted. “And since when have you ever been in favor of calling the police?”

  “This is different Zack. This is cold-blooded murder.”

  “And what do you think is the first thing the authorities will do? Arrest the two gringos in the country illegally. They’ll make sure we’re to blame, and you can call an eight-by-ten cell in this dirt hole your casa for the rest of your life. Case closed!”

  Zack sat on the church steps, trying to think, and didn’t care that he was rude. Waterson’s ranting wasn’t helping. The police here were well-armed, high-priced thugs. Corruption was a way of life for them. Listening to reason was not a skill most of them possessed.

  Two years ago, in 2010, the National Police Chief was arr
ested in connection with drug smuggling and the deaths of some of his officers. With strong ties between the police and the drug cartels, there was no way they would do a fair and earnest investigation into the death of an aging priest. Especially since it looked like the cartel executed Father Ferguson. At the very least, it was a professional hit. For all he knew, the nuns were right—it could have been the National Police themselves who killed the priest.

  They’d been able to take a good, long look at the priest’s body. Zack had bit back his nausea and looked at the body with an analytical eye. Scuff marks on both knees. Two small caliber bullet holes to the back of the head, and a larger exit wound on his forehead. Powder burns around both entrance sites. Zack had swallowed his emotions. It hurt to see a good man come to such a horrific end. After a life spent in service to others, someone had taken his life away from him. Put him on his knees, and shot him . . . twice . . . in the back of the head.

  Someone had executed Father Giovanni’s friend.

  Anger burned hot through Zack’s veins.

  “You think he was killed over the Bible?” Waterson asked, coming to a stop in front of Zack.

  “Well, gee, Frank. We fly down here to help Father Ferguson get a priceless Bible out of the hands of a corrupt police force and then suddenly he turns up slaughtered in his own cottage on the grounds of his own church. Yes, I think maybe there might be some connection.”

  The sarcasm in his words hung in the air.

  “Then why are we still here? If the police murdered Father Ferguson, you think they’re going to just hand over the Bible?”

  “I made a promise. A promise to Father Giovanni and a promise to Father Ferguson to retrieve the Bible and help in any way I could. Right now those nuns need our help.”

  “Help with what? Finding the killer?”

  Zack sat silent on the steps. Waterson was only half right. He wanted to find Father Ferguson’s killer, but he also wanted to retrieve the Bible. It’s what the father would have wanted. It’s what he wanted. With Ferguson murdered and the police the likely suspects, Zack needed a new plan.