Chapter Two

I

Station Twelve stood on an isolated promontory of the French coast, a brooding Napoleonic-era fortress shrouded in grey salt mist, and haunted by gulls which mewed mournfully as they circled the sky above the great cube of impregnable granite.

Father Mancini knew why they had brought him here of all places. It wasn’t just because the prisons of Paris were so overcrowded. No, Mancini knew when he was being taunted. He was kept prisoner within sight of the one sanctuary left for believers in a world under the boot of the Antichrist.

From the narrow window of his freezing cell, he squinted into the biting sea breeze which swirled into his prison and chilled him further; staring out over the choppy sea at the distant band of white just visible through the saline haze.

The legendary Dover seaboard of England. Not more than thirty miles away. A geographical hair’s breadth. But it might just as well have been a hundred times that distance, Mancini thought bitterly.

“Why, Jesus?” he whispered, with even the wind seeming to scorn his prayer by snatching away his words.

Why? Why hadn’t he died with the others? Why had God preserved his life to torture him like this?

II

The Great British Awakening had begun with a vision, high in the clear skies over London one October night. A remarkable sunset presaged what was to come, bloodying the western horizon but refusing to diminish as the hours ticked by. By ten pm, the crimson stain had not only intensified, it ringed the whole dome of the sky, and was seen to be fed by a broad vermillion stream pouring from the foot of a huge crucifix glowing silver at the zenith of the heavens.

Then just before midnight the first of the angels had appeared.

The city had come to a standstill, with crowds thronging the streets in awe of the inexplicable spectacle unfolding against the backdrop of a pristine autumnal sky. Fearful murmuring rippled through the mass of people as three more of the immense entities joined the first, encircling the crucifix on huge brazen wings, their bodies wreathed in light which shimmered through every colour of the spectrum. Each angel carried a golden chalice in its right hand, which they paused to dip into the crimson river sourced in the image of the argent cross. Then they had halted, wings furled, standing with their chalices clasped before them; one at each of the four points of the celestial crucifix.

For several hours, the angels held their positions, transfixing the awestruck crowds far below. Then, just before dawn, the vision had climaxed with the simultaneous departure of the heavenly beings, soaring away north, south, east and west; one towards each of the four cardinal points, to which the blazing crucifix was later discovered to have been perfectly aligned.

In the coming days all heaven broke loose. Some unseen yet irresistible convicting power struck the British Isles; London first, then spreading to every corner of the nation like an unstoppable wildfire.

Cries of repentance rose up from the streets, with hundreds and thousands at a time forced to their knees in deep contrition; consumed in an instant by an unbearable sense of their utter unworthiness. So unbearable that only one person could ever help them. With one voice, multitudes of non-believers cried: ‘Jesus!’

It took less than a month. A few short weeks which saw Britain transformed from post-Christian society to a nation once more fearing God and embracing his laws. Such effects were unprecedented in the history of the Christian faith. Revivals had happened before, but none had ever been this extensive or so swift in its consequences.

Everyone agreed that their had to be a reason. Indeed, many in the pulpit were soon speaking of End Time destiny....

III

“At ease, Major.”

A strikingly-attractive statuesque blonde, thirty-two year old Major Jennifer Sheridan relaxed and took the seat offered to her by her commanding officer,

Brigadier Avery West.

“Sorry to scupper your hard-earned leave, Jenny,” he apologised. “Heaven knows, you’ve deserved it. But I’m afraid we have something of a situation here.”

Jennifer nodded, hooking her bobbed hair behind an ear as she groaned inwardly. What West meant, of course, was that they had a situation on top of the perpetual ‘situation’ that dominated all their lives these days. Bang went any hope of leave till next month. If that damned despot, Martinez hadn’t blown them all to hell by then.

“Any news of Coleen yet, sir?”

The brigadier’s still youthful features clouded considerably at her enquiry and he shook his head.

“Still MIA,” he reported, and Jennifer heard his voice break so that she could have kicked herself for asking. But Coleen was her best friend. When the sirens had wailed that fateful night three weeks ago and radar screens had been ablaze as a squadron of enemy aircraft stormed British airspace on another bombing run, Captain Coleen West had been one of the first into the air, scrambling her faithful Tornado fighter in record time. No one could have prevented her, not even her own father sitting now in silent grief opposite Jennifer. The consummate army pilot, Coleen would have been the last to brook any familial privilege designed to shield her from the heat of frontline conflict.

But Coleen’s Tornado had taken a hit; a bad one, according to other members of Archangel Squadron who had seen her plane trailing a thick spiral of black smoke behind it as it had corkscrewed out of control towards the cold waters of the Channel.

With the enemy bombers routed, Coleen’s comrades had scoured the area where her fighter had ditched, frantically searching for the signal from her personal homing beacon, which should have triggered automatically upon her ejecting from the cockpit.

But no one in Archangel Squadron had actually seen Coleen eject from her stricken Tornado. And the absence of any signal seemed a confirmation of all their worst fears.

“She has such deep faith,” Jennifer murmured, half to herself, and Brigadier West regarded her kindly.

“And what about you?”

Stirred from her private contemplation, Jennifer cleared her throat self-consciously, a sure sign of the awkwardness she always felt when asked about her own experiences of religion.

“You mentioned a situation, sir,” she evaded formally. “What situation?”

IV

Five helicopters took off from Airbase Zebra, a top secret installation in southern England, just after midnight.

An old and battle-worn Lynx escorted by four Red Gemini gunships, British prototype cousins to the lethal Apache attack helicopters. Slotting into a diamond formation with the Sea King at its centre, the aircraft hugged the surrounding countryside at low altitude, skimming fields and villages at less than a hundred feet as they sped towards the coast.

Clearing the cliff-tops which bounded the open sea, the helicopters continued out over the dark, choppy water, making good speed for the French seaboard.

V

Just how had the world been so deceived?

Father Mancini fingered the rosary he had withdrawn from the folds of his habit. His captors had predictably robbed the old priest of his precious Douay Bible, tearing it to pieces in front of him before scattering the pages to the waves. But the rosary had not been so obvious. A length of fraying string knotted at regular intervals appeared to be of little spiritual significance. Yet Mancini would not have traded the well fingered length of cord for all the world.

As he prayed his way along the knots, Mancini mourned for a world seduced by the lies of the Antichrist, and sorrowed for believers forced to endure so much for their faith. Suffering to the point of death in so many cases. Like all of his own faithful band of followers.

Like Sebastian.

Halting abruptly mid-prayer, Mancini noticed the dark stains still on his hands - Sebastian’s own precious blood. The priest choked back the tears as he recalled how the boy he had loved like a son had fallen lifelessly to the floor of the cellar under a merciless burst of machine gunfire. Only a second after Mancini had carried out the awful responsibility of saving Sebastian’s imperiled soul. A single second. The difference between heaven and hell encapsulated in that almost infinitesimal fragment of time.

Mancini recalled that terrible day less than eighteen months previously, when a small but extremely influential sect calling themselves The Royal Blood of Zion had summoned a press conference which, ordinarily, would have attracted none but those fringe elements of the media dedicated to the esoteric. Had it not been for the location of the conference within the European Parliament’s Louise Weiss building in Strasbourg.

Consequently, all the world had been represented in the media scrum which had crowded into the parliament. And thus all the world had observed on their television screens, or had seen in the first editions of their morning papers, the face of the man whom the ancient Scriptures called the Abomination that makes desolate. The man in whom the whole course of sinful human history had culminated, avowed to lead fallen man in the ultimate battle against the living God of heaven.

A sharp gust of wind keened into Mancini’s freezing stone cell, extinguishing his small candle and plunging the room into a thick darkness that, but for the grace of God, seemed to have engulfed the whole world.

VI

Several miles from the French coast, Jennifer saw a string of huge explosions flare on the horizon, and a few seconds later her headset crackled into life, breaking the radio silence.

“Red One, this is Archangel Leader.”

Staring impassively at the distant orange fires, Jennifer adjusted the microphone angled to her lips and responded, “Copy you, Archangel.”

“Goliath is fallen,” the headset crackled cryptically. “Now don’t say we never help you Red Gemini flyboys! Oops, sorry, I mean girls!”

“How would we cope otherwise, Mason,” Jennifer retorted drily. “Okay, everyone hear that? SAM batteries are down so we have the green light. I repeat, we are good to go!”

VII

Mancini jumped at the heavy explosion, the force of which shook Station Twelve to its foundations. From his window, he watched as several additional detonations lit up the night farther along the coast, and then looked up at the noise of aircraft roaring high overhead, although he could see nothing.

Alarms were sounding throughout the prison, klaxon wails mingled with the cursing of soldiers as they mobilised to repel the assault. And then, above the din of this confusion, Mancini heard the helicopters.

Rotors throbbed in the darkness like hoof-beats and the priest craned his neck as the noise intensified and the Lynx flew in low from the ocean, almost directly over his own window.

Mancini whirled as the door of his cell crashed open, and he clutched his rosary at sight of the rifles trained squarely on him.

VIII

Gunfire erupted as the Lynx put down on the roof of the old fortress, and Jennifer saw sparks fly as rounds strafed the helicopter’s armour-plated fuselage. Barking orders to her fellow comrades in the Red Gemini battlegroup, she maneuvered her gunship into an attack position, returning covering fire as the Lynx transport off-loaded its complement of marines.

Jennifer ground her jaw. This didn’t look good. This didn’t look good at all.