The Destroyer - 76 - The Destroyer 076 - The Final Crusade by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The Rev­erend El­don Slug­gard stormed on­to the set of his Get with God pro­gram. A skele­ton crew of gaffers and cam­era op­er­ators was busy prepar­ing for the next broad­cast tap­ing.

“You’re ear­ly, El,” said Win Jy­mors­ki, the show’s di­rec­tor.

“Get ev­ery­thing to­geth­er. Fast. We’re tap­ing an­oth­er Cross Cru­sade spot.”

“Now? I haven’t seen the script.”

“There’s no script. Ah’ll wing it. Ah’ll show those rag­heads in Tehran. They don’t scare me!”

Quick­ly the elec­tri­cians brought up the lights. The cam­eras moved in­to po­si­tion. The sound­man fussed with mi­cro­phone lev­els.

And the Rev­erend El­don Slug­gard got up on the dais in front of a great flat map of the world. He picked a steel point­er off the Lu­cite podi­um. He paced im­pa­tient­ly, col­laps­ing and ex­pand­ing the point­er grim­ly.

Vic­to­ria was right. One set­back wasn’t go­ing to knock El­don Slug­gard on his ass. That wom­an sure had a way of putting things in per­spec­tive. Es­pe­cial­ly when she got down on her knees.

“When­ev­er you’re ready, El,” the di­rec­tor called.

“Okay. Now,” said El­don Slug­gard de­ci­sive­ly. His voice dropped in­to a deep­er reg­is­ter. It was his preach­ing voice. In the glo­ry days of the El­don Slug­gard World Min­istries, it used to make the over-​six­ty crowd swoon. But now El­don Slug­gard was tar­get­ing an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ic group.

“We’re on,” the di­rec­tor called, throw­ing a cue. El­don Slug­gard faced the cam­era square­ly. The red light came on. He smiled ex­pan­sive­ly.

“This is the Rev­erend El­don Slug­gard, and Ah’m speakin’ to the youth of Amer­ica. Yes, you. Don’t reach out for the chan­nel se­lec­tor be­cause it’s not just me knockin’, it’s God. God Almighty, and your coun­try.” El­don Slug­gard took a deep breath.

“You love your coun­try, Don’t you? And you want to see it strong. And you want to see it con­tin­ue to be Chris­tian. Well, Ah want that too. Hal­lelu­jah! But there’s some who have de­signs on our sweet na­tion. Maybe you don’t read the pa­pers. Maybe your folks don’t talk about this around the din­ner ta­ble. And you know why? ‘Cause they’re scared too! That’s right. Even as Ah’m standin’ here talkin’ at you, there are peo­ple in a for­eign cap­ital plot­ting to take over this coun­try. No, it’s not the Rus­sians, bad as they are. It ain’t the Chi­nese ei­ther. It’s worse peo­ple. You’ve seen them on TV, talkin’ out of both sides of their scrub­by beards. You’ve heard how they once held our diplo­mats hostage for more than a year.”

Slug­gard pound­ed the Lu­cite podi­um with a fat fist. “That’s right. You know who Ah’m talkin’ about. It’s those mul­lahs in Ah-​ran. You can see it on this here map.”

El­don Slug­gard whipped the point­er in his hand like a car aeri­al. It jet­ted out its full length. He placed the point over the Per­sian Gulf. On the map, it was called the Per­sh­ing Gulf, but the cam­era wouldn’t show that be­cause the let­ter­ing was too small.

“This is Ah-​ran,” he went on. “The most bru­tal, re­pres­sive na­tion on earth. You see this gim­crack here? That’s what they call a red cres­cent. It’s got noth­ing to do with Com­mu­nism.

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