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The Shaft, A Supernatural Thriller

By Scott B. Delaney

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Prologue

The following excerpt appeared in a front-page article in the Golden State Gazette newspaper on December 14, 2017:

Pleasanton, California: Members of the Twin Crossings Methodist Church in the small bedroom community of Livermore are in shocked disbelief at the recent shooting that claimed the lives of their senior pastor, Jeremy M. Stevens (age 62); his wife of twenty-seven years, Margaret (59); their son, Franklin (27); and their daughter, Meredith Stanley Stevens (25), at the pastor’s beautiful home located three blocks from the church. All four were found tied to chairs in the Stevens’ downstairs master bedroom, each with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Additional information has not been released by the police.

Because of the eerie similarity between this shooting and the other three shootings in the Bay Area over the last three weeks, FBI officials have begun an official investigation into what is being referred to as the Bay Area Church Murders. As reported three weeks ago, Pastor Ronald Booth, a well-liked mission pastor in southern San Francisco, was brutally attacked and killed outside his small downtown flat near the wharf area of the city. Only three days ago, a music minister from Palo Alto who played a significant role in a recent youth music ministry phenomenon known as the Call was shot twice and killed in what was first thought to be a carjacking gone wrong. Because of the proximity to the other cases, all three are thought to be connected. Churchgoers in the area are increasingly nervous at this time, unable to comprehend how these charismatic leaders in the church and community could be a target of ruthless killers. Bishop Allistair Oversteen of Our Lady of the Lake Cathedral in Oakland made a statement early today addressing his congregation and the community. Below is a small portion of his address:

Ladies and gentlemen of the Bay Area, we are confronted today with an evil that transcends our ability to understand these events and forces us to lean on our faith in the face of this brutality. We are called to love and forgive, though through the loss of these men and women, all brothers and sisters in Christ, we must pray for help to find these abilities. I encourage everyone in this community, especially those in a position of church leadership, to stay on guard and watch closely for situations in their lives that appear out of the ordinary. At this time, we are not sure why these people have been targeted, but we are unable to rule out the possibility that this might be part of a larger, terroristic plan that involves those working diligently toward the call to spread the Word of God to the people of this world. We must not shy away from our God-given responsibilities to lead our churches but instead must rely on his grace and will in our lives to direct, protect, guide, and lead each of us in the way he has provided. Today I pray for peace and for an end to this unthinkable violence. May God be with us as we seek to find the people responsible for these acts.

This case has gained national as well as international attention over the last several days because of similar incidents this week across the United States and many other incidents that have occurred over the last six months both here and abroad. This latest string of murders points to a commonality among many, if not all, church-related murders across our country. Currently, we are unable to report exactly how many cases may be linked to the Bay Area Church Murders. As this case progresses, the FBI and local authorities fully expect to locate the individuals responsible for these actions.

The Call had been an overwhelming success. Why were church leaders being targeted at such an alarming rate for what seemed to be a positive influence on the culture of America, if not the entire world? That was the question many in the Call’s leadership, as well as Christians and non-Christians alike across the country, were asking.
Based in Dallas, Texas, the Call had started as a youth movement focused on renewing the Christian community’s commitment to biblical doctrine and encouraging a stronger focus on the collective mission to win people to Christ, especially younger Americans. The initial idea had been modeled after the wildly popular men’s movement called Promise Keepers, a conservative men’s group based in Denver, Colorado, and founded in the late 1980s, which, at the height of its ministry, reached more than a million men, making a palpable difference in communities across the nation. The mode of worship was strictly contemporary, and many of Christian music’s top artists were fully engaged in the ministry and had gained mainstream musical success because of the huge reach of the Call. The groundswell of support, even among the most conservative of Christian leaders, had created a foundation of Christian unity in young people across the United States that never had been seen before. In fact, a major US news agency recently had printed a front-page article touting what they referred to as the “rebirth of morality in America, spearheaded by American babies.”
Although many regional youth programs, seminars, camps, and retreats seemed to be available across the country, there was little coordination or uniformity with respect to the message delivered or the approach taken in leading the ministries. It was obvious, at least to those responsible for the development of the Call’s mission and strategy, that the absence of a Christian organization offering a unified global approach to worship and personal Christian growth for young people provided a challenging yet welcome opportunity for huge cultural dividends. That need, combined with the incredible potential associated with the development of that type of organization, captured the hearts of a core group of Christian church leaders in the Philadelphia area. America deserved—no, demanded—a movement the youth of the country could identify with and learn from in a way that could change the complexion of the world. No matter the risk, that group stood willing to risk their lives to ensure the Call and its ministry continued to grow and thrive.
At the time of the above article’s release, membership in the Call exceeded 2.1 million youth and young adults under the age of twenty-five. The average age of 16.4 years was an encouragement to the Call’s leadership because of recent studies that indicated at least 60 percent of the members were still largely impressionable when it came to questions of faith. The growth rate was staggering, showing an increase in membership year after year, with 22.6 percent growth two years ago and more than 28 percent through the middle of December that year.

 
1

Portland, Oregon
6:47 p.m.
December 17, 2017

Nicolai Virshenko—or Niki, as his associates knew him—was perched on the weather-worn roof of an abandoned 1940s textile mill immediately adjacent to the Valley Baptist Temple of Portland, Oregon. The wind on that blustery winter day would make his assignment somewhat more difficult than anticipated, but weather was always a game changer in his line of work. In that particular case, he would have to account for the fifteen- to twenty-mile-per-hour gusts and make the appropriate last-minute adjustments when sighting in his target. As usual, the planning phase of his new assignment had started more than four weeks ago, which was the amount of time Niki always demanded from his contact for any assignment he was asked to accept. His military-strategy degree from West Point and his five years of service in Afghanistan had taught him many important lessons, not the least of which was that the planning phase of any mission, while usually the most time intensive, was the most important key to achieving the objective. His client, who referred to himself as Prometheus, had contacted Niki on his cell phone. In a recognizable baritone voice with a thick East European accent, he’d quickly delivered directions to the location where Niki could procure the typical manila envelope that afternoon. Inside the envelope, Niki would find a single sheet of paper with a brief overview of his assignment, including the name of the target; his or her age; a general description, including height, hair color, and weight; work and home addresses; the names of family members with the same appearance descriptors; the expected date of completion; and any additional pertinent information the client thought might be useful to Niki. Prometheus made no small talk when contacting Niki, a fact that pleased Niki to no end. This was strictly business.
Niki, now thirty years old, had grown up in St. Petersburg, Florida, having been illegally adopted in 1988 from a small orphanage outside of Moscow by his first parents, Jeff and Nicki Farwell, two people with dreams of a family but without an appropriate understanding of the responsibilities that came with that change in their lives. Jeff was a successful neurosurgeon at Bayside General Hospital in nearby Tampa Bay, and he invariably equated success in medicine to the size of his bank accounts and the number of summer homes he owned and flaunted. Nicki was approaching forty-five years of age when her ob-gyn informed her that her ovaries did not appear to be viable and that fertility drugs, which had a somewhat questionable success rate in the early 1980s, were not likely to be effective. After three years of trying naturally and fearing that her age might lead to undesirable birth defects, Jeff and Nicki decided to adopt. Unfortunately, the Farwells didn’t have a lifestyle that allowed for the addition of a three-year-old toddler. After two years of nanny-aided child-rearing, an adulterous episode with an OR nurse, and the failure of two large capital investments in magnetic resonance imaging equipment made by Jeff during 1984, they decided to dissolve the marriage, leaving the question of what to do with an unwanted five-year-old Russian orphan named Niki.
Between 1984 and 1996, Niki floated from one foster home to another, reassigned often because of his difficult-to-manage emotional issues and erratic, sometimes violent behavior. Niki was incredibly intelligent, scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile on his SAT. With the recommendation from a well-respected Florida state senator, which was the result of a well-written letter by Niki describing his life’s many hurdles and his focused desire to serve in the United States military, he was granted appointment to West Point. He dedicated himself to the study of war strategy and was the most decorated sharpshooter in his graduating class. After graduating with honors in 2000, Niki was commissioned to serve as a long-range target sniper in Afghanistan as part of a top-secret quasimilitary operation known simply as Deliverance.
After five years of overseas active duty, Niki found himself less than infatuated with not only the war in Afghanistan but also the military in general. Over time, he became more and more belligerent and would regularly disobey orders, sometimes only for affect. After numerous incidents with both superiors and subordinates, Niki was dishonorably discharged and sent back to civilian life. Becoming a hired assassin gave him a new zest for life. The rush associated with that line of work was inebriating for Niki. A regular job was simply not a possibility. He craved control and the ability to solely determine when someone lived or died. Plus, with his connections and background, finding that type of work proved to be simple.
The planning for his current operation wasn’t unique. In fact, the last three operations had been similar in that they’d involved targets who served in church-related positions, traveled infrequently, maintained fairly predictable weekly schedules, and lived and worked in places that didn’t maintain state-of-the-art security systems. That made the hits fairly easy to accomplish without significant risk of being captured on film or triggering an alarm system. Although the recent targets seemed vanilla compared to the usual marks, that was not Niki’s concern. A target was simply a target. The rationale behind the order to kill a human being was of little interest. For Niki, that question was simply unnecessary. The absurdly generous compensation for his work demanded that Niki maintain a level of human detachment that in many ways made him feel inhuman and devoid of any redeemable soul—the subject of many sermons forced on him by the churches he’d attended with his various foster families and the annoying chapel services that were part of the West Point core curriculum. His view of God was simple: God was a fantasy developed to fill the need of a desperate world that refused to accept that when life was over, it was just that—over.
When planning for that type of assignment, Nicolai always spent two weeks shadowing the target in order to identify the work schedule, meal times, family interaction, and modes of transportation used each day. By the end of the second week, Niki tried to think like the target, which seemed to help him choose the appropriate method of murder with confidence. While shadowing each target, he would also spend countless hours on his laptop, searching for any and all internet information he could find on the person of interest. For the most part, that part of the planning phase was to avoid any unseen hurdles during the engagement, but in reality, Niki had accepted the fact that he needed to quell his curiosity about the mark. In quenching his thirst for that information, he felt superior to the mark, holding a power over the target like a skilled hunter who had tracked a trophy buck for weeks. He knew the trail the buck took each morning, the eating habits of the animal, how many other deer might be with him, and how skittish the buck could be at a tiny sound or unexpected smell. That knowledge was the hunter’s power; the weapon was merely an instrument.
The target on that fateful day was Martin McBride, who’d been a senior pastor at Valley Baptist Temple for more than a quarter of a century. Niki’s careful shadowing of the pastor over the last two weeks and his attention to detail, including the reading of the last two weeks’ church bulletins while sitting through an arduously long Southern Baptist–style service last Sunday, indicated that Pastor McBride led a workshop known as Road to Recovery for alcoholics and past drug abusers at seven thirty on Wednesday evenings. Last week, after eating dinner with his wife, Dorothy, Martin had arrived twenty minutes early at 7:10, which had given him enough time to open the doors, turn on the lights, start a pot of coffee, and take ten minutes in the sanctuary to pray about the night’s meeting. If that night went off as planned, one of the meeting attendees would find Martin on the steps to the foyer that separated the main sanctuary from the family life center approximately ten minutes after the time of death.
For that particular shot, Niki chose a Bushmaster Cobb BA50 sniper rifle with a twenty-two-inch barrel and custom-made muzzle silencer. A client in Mexico City had given him the gun as a thank-you for an earlier job in 2010. Where the silencer had been made or purchased was not of interest to Niki; he cared only that it was untraceable and effective. He had used the gun on many occasions but only when hunting deer or elk in the mountains of south-central Colorado, near Creede, where Niki maintained a small ranch and 1,200-square-foot log cabin. With the rifle, he was able to successfully kill a large elk from distances that exceeded 350 yards. Now, sitting on a rooftop approximately 150 yards from where the pastor would stand with his keys extended toward the dead-bolt lock on the mahogany double doors, having little wind to contend with at the moment, Niki knew the shot would not be a significant challenge. In fact, with a wry, contorted smile, Nicolai thought to himself that he might be able to make the kill with no more than the small .22-caliber rifle given to him by his first foster father, a rifle now reserved for occasional rabbit control in the garden outside his cabin.
At 7:06, as Nicolai continued to polish the barrel of his finely crafted weapon, he noticed a caramel-colored car heading up West Main Street approximately four blocks away. As it approached the church, Niki could tell it was Pastor McBride’s 2004 Honda Accord. Careful not to move a muscle as the car pulled into the church parking lot directly in front and to the left of his position, he waited patiently as Martin wheeled his way to his reserved spot near the side entrance of the church offices. Niki deftly raised the rifle, placing the stock carefully on top of the small sandbag resting on the old building’s brick ledge. The expertly trained marksman focused the powerful scope on the door as if to pick his spot and then slowly eased the rifle back in the direction of the pastor, who was slowly walking toward the double doors, twirling his keys in his left hand as he gazed adoringly at the stained-glass windows that framed the sanctuary. As Martin took his last step on the earth, he was unable to hear the almost inaudible click and whoosh of air immediately before the bullet from Niki’s gun hit its mark.

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