Chapter Four

I

Father Mancini felt no fear. Here he was, on the very threshold of eternity, and the elderly priest knew an impossible serenity. A peace which could only have come from God. Calm beyond any human understanding.

Had Elisha known such a peace? Mancini hoped so. Indeed, dear Elisha had deserved no less. The priest trusted that God had granted him stillness in his martyrdom.

Mancini closed his eyes and held his breath as, finally, the rifles cracked in deadly unison.

II

Fighting to hold her gunship steady against a powerful crosswind, Jennifer opened up with its state-of-the-art weapons systems, unleashing an unrelenting storm of firepower onto the enemy soldiers pouring on to the roof of Station Twelve.

It was sheer chaos down there. Intelligence had warned them to expect resistance, but nothing as heavy as this. Somehow they had to break through, create a window of opportunity for the marines pinned down helplessly in the lee of the Lynx.

Over her headset, Jennifer monitored the traffic of communication between the other gunship pilots. She heard something that sounded like a prayer.

Jennifer had always skipped Latin back in school, but she knew enough of the ancient language to recognise the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

“Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom....”

Jennifer frowned and was set to butt in, but her view of the gun battle being fought out way below stopped her. Under the circumstances, even her incorrigible agnosticism welcomed divine intervention.God alone knew, Father Mancini needed all the help he could get.

III

Mancini felt an impact in his chest which winded him sharply. He raised his hand instinctively to clutch the wound as the world around him began spinning.

But his hand closed over nothing. He patted at his intact habit, searching his palm for absent blood.

The room was fading from vision as darkness closed in, forcing Mancini to accept the truth of his demise in spite of any mental confusion. His whole body felt incredibly light, as though buoyed up by some invisible power, and the priest retained his composure within the thick void which enveloped him.

But ahead of him, Mancini could see a circle of bright light, and he remembered all the stories he had ever heard of near death experiences which described something similar.

Except....

Except that Mancini had never expected the afterlife to be as solid, as materially tangible as this, for he could still feel his old habit next to his body.

Unless....

The sudden blast of cold air on his face confirmed Mancini’s realisation and he squinted into the dazzling glare of the Lynx’s searchlights as bullets ate into its already battle scarred fuselage.

IV

“What the...?”

Jennifer saw the marines start, sharing her own incredulity at what they were seeing. Just yards from the stationary Lynx, standing in a pool of light cast by its lamps, was a figure which most definitely hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Covering fire, ten o’ clock!” Jennifer cried into her mic as all her onboard instruments focused on the cowering figure and confirmed Mancini’s identity. All four Red Gemini gunships swarmed protectively above Station Twelve, concentrating their powerful cannons on the enemy troops stubbornly resisting the rescue attempt from the shadow of some steel containers on one side of the roof. A hailstorm of ammunition pounded the position, driving the soldiers back behind the containers, and allowing the marines to finally move forward. Returning fire of their own, they encircled the bewildered old priest and secured him. Then, under the continuing cover of the gunships hovering low overhead, the marines escorted Mancini to the Lynx and hurriedly climbed aboard as the helicopter’s huge rotor began to cut through the salty night air with a shrill whine.

The Lynx rose slowly, its ascent guarded by the gunships until it swung round and flew back out over the dark Channel.

“Okay, folks, wrap it up,” Jennifer ordered as their charge made good for England and home.

The battlegroup complied, raking Station Twelve with one last defiant burst of gunfire before they resumed their escort duty and fell in behind the retreating Lynx.

“Fantastic job, everyone,” Jennifer commended her comrades, just as a massive explosion rocked her helicopter and sent it hurtling seawards.

V

Mancini gripped the rosary as he sat, still shaking, amidst the group of marines inside the stiflingly hot, noisy Lynx helicopter. None of them spoke, just regarded the priest with an understandable mixture of curiosity and wariness. It wasn’t everyday that someone just appeared out of thin air, after all.

One of the soldiers snapped out of the spell at last and handed him a flask of water.

“Here, Father,” he offered with a gentleness which belied his hulking physique. “You must be thirsty.”

Mancini nodded and accepted the flask with a murmur of gratitude. He took a conservative mouthful of the stale contents to wet his parched lips, unsure about slaking his raging thirst with more than the commando might have intended. But the young soldier gestured for him to take his fill, and Mancini drank for almost half a minute until the flask was all but drained.

“You know, Father,” the marine broached as Mancini wiped the sleeve of his habit across his lips, “I’m not really a believer. At least, I wasn’t. My wife, she saw that vision over London and wrote to tell me about it. I knew something was different about her. That much shone through in her letter, but....”

Mancini listened closely, leaning forward to clasp his rough hands over the thick span of the reflective soldier.

“Thomas,” the priest replied with a smile, noting the name of sewn on to the soldier’s dark fatigues. “I don’t understand what happened just now. But I do know two things for certain. God hasn’t done with this stupid old man just yet, and he loves a soldier called Thomas enough to send him a sign of his own that he might believe.”

There were tears in Thomas’s eyes as he nodded. “Yes,” he choked. “I do believe.”

“Thanks be to God,” Mancini said softly. “Now write to your wife. Tell her that you have seen and believed. Just like another Thomas.”

“Someone you know?” the curious marine asked, and Mancini smiled again at his winning ignorance.

“Not yet,” he said. “Just a young man I’ve read about somewhere, that’s all.”

VI

The three gunships circled the spot where Jennifer’s own aircraft had fallen prey to the rogue surface-to-air missile, all of their instruments probing the briny environment for any sign that the battlegroup’s most celebrated pilot had survived the crash.

But there was nothing. No tell-tale transmission from her homing beacon, no trace of body heat on the thermal imagers. Nothing whatsoever to even indicate Jennifer’s presence in the water.

Just like her friend, Captain West, Jennifer seemed to have been swallowed without trace by the unforgiving waters of the Channel.

Only very reluctantly, the remaining gunships peeled away from the search area. A grave silence descended over the incomplete battlegroup, all communication traffic muted, reduced to an exchange of only the most essential technical and navigational data.

“Requiescat in pace,” someone whispered at length. “Rest in peace, Major.”

VII

The Lynx touched down just as dawn was breaking. Before the rotors had stopped, Mancini was escorted from the chopper across the rain-washed runway of a deserted airfield, to a sleeker helicopter where dark-suited secret service agents took over from the marines. Mancini had time to say only a brief goodbye to Thomas as he was bundled aboard, and the heavyset soldier saluted the old priest, who waved from the window as the black helicopter lifted off into leaden skies.

Mancini watched the rolling countryside sprawled so apparently peaceful below, and the remote villages and farms dotted here and there, seemingly immune to the turmoil raging throughout the rest of the world.

None of the half-dozen secret service men were forthcoming about their destination, but as the helicopter flew on, Mancini recognised the suburbs of the capital. He had only ever visited London once before, more than fifteen years previously, and now only burnt out ruins greeted his return; once famous landmarks reduced to rubble, like the tower of Big Ben, standing brokenly against a derelict skyline. Of the rest of the Palace of Westminster, only a vast heap of blackened masonry remained. This promiscuous devastation was a stark reminder that Britain was no Utopia. The nation had defied the rule of the Antichrist, and this was the price to pay for resistance.

If he could have done so, Martinez would have obliterated the United Kingdom by force of nuclear arms, gleefully decimating the defiant population in a radioactive blast that would render the land an uninhabitable wilderness for millennia. But as it was, even the devil’s ultimate human pawn had little choice but to rely on conventional means to punish rebellion. Martinez was no insane despot. He was well aware that the British Trident system was sufficient to bring his burgeoning empire crashing down around his ears.

One day, perhaps, such an outcome would be of no concern to him. But that day would not dawn before all the prophecies of God had been realised in their entirety.