CHAPTER 6
Rayford spent twenty minutes scaring the life out of himself and Mac. The skill of piloting a chopper may never leave, but with the advance of technology, this took some getting used to. He remembered bulky, sluggish, heavy copters. This one darted like a dragonfly. The control was as responsive as a joystick, and he found himself overcompensating. He banked one way—too hard and too fast—then the other, straightening himself quickly but then rolling the other way.
“I’m about to barf!” Mac shouted.
“Not in my chopper, you’re not!” Rayford said.
He put the helicopter down four times, the second time much too hard. “That won’t happen again,” he promised. As he took off for the last time, he said, “I’ve got it now. This should be easy to keep straight and steady.”
“It is for me,” Mac said. “You want to go all the way to Albie’s?”
“You mean put down at an airport, in front of people?”
“A baptism of fire.” Mac plotted their bearings. “Keep her set right there, and we could snooze till we see the tower at Al Basrah. Line her up, let her go, and tell me about Irene’s new church.”
Rayford spent the trip finishing his story. He told how Irene’s frustration with finding nothing deep or meaty or personal at their church gave him an excuse to start going only sporadically himself. When she called him on it, he reminded her that she wasn’t happy there either. “When I pretty much stopped going altogether, she started church shopping. She met a couple of women she really liked at a church she didn’t care so much for, but they invited her to a women’s Bible study. That’s where she heard something about God she had never known was in the Bible. She found out where the speaker went to church, started going there, and eventually dragged me along.”
“What was it she heard?”
“I’m getting to it.”
“Don’t stall.”
Rayford checked his instruments to make sure the engines were still operating in the green arcs.
“I mean don’t stall your story,” Mac said.
“Well, I didn’t understand the new message myself,” Rayford said. “In fact, I never really got it until after she was gone. The church was different all right. It made me uncomfortable. When people didn’t see me around, they had to figure I was working. When I did show up, people asked me about work, and I just kept smiling and telling them how wonderful life was. But even when I was home I went only about half the time. My daughter, Chloe, was a teenager by then, and she picked up on that. If Dad didn’t have to go, she didn’t have to go.”
“Irene, however, really loved the new church. She made me nervous when she started talking about sin and salvation and forgiveness and the blood of Christ and winning souls. She said she had received Christ and been born again. She was pushing me, but I would have none of that. It sounded weird. Like a cult. The people seemed all right, but I was sure I was going to get pushed into knocking on doors and handing out literature or something. I found more reasons to not be in church.
“One day Irene was going off about how Pastor Billings was preaching on the end times and the return of Christ. He called it the Rapture. She said something like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to not die but to meet Jesus in the air?’ I came back with something like, ‘Yeah, that would kill me.’ I offended her. She told me I shouldn’t be so flippant if I didn’t know where I was going. That made me mad. I told her I was glad she was sure. I told her I figured she’d fly to heaven and I’d go straight to hell. She didn’t like that a bit.”
“I can imagine,” Mac said.
“The whole issue of church became so volatile that we just avoided it. Eventually I started to get those old stirrings again, and I had my eye on my senior flight attendant.”
“Uh-oh,” Mac said.
“Tell me about it. We had a few drinks, shared a few meals, but it never went past that. Not that I didn’t want it to. One night I decided to ask her out when we got to London. Then I thought, hey, I’ll ask her in advance. I’m way out over the Atlantic in the middle of the night with a fully loaded seven-four-seven, so I put it on auto pilot and go looking for her.”
Rayford paused, disgusted with himself even now for how low he had sunk.
Mac looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Everybody remembers where they were when the disappearances happened.”
“You’re not saying . . .” Mac said.
“I was looking for a date when all those people disappeared.”
“Man!”
Rayford snorted. “She wanted to know what was going on. Were we gonna die? I told her I was pretty sure we weren’t going to die, but that I had no more idea than she did what had happened. The truth was, I knew. Irene had been right. Christ had come to rapture his church, and we had all been left behind.”
There was a lot more to Rayford’s story, of course, but he just wanted that to sink in. Mac sat staring straight ahead. He would turn, take a breath, and then turn back and watch the scenery as they continued toward Al Basrah.
Mac checked his clipboard and stared at the dials. “We’re close enough,” he said. “I’m gonna see what I can find out.” He set the frequency and depressed the mike button. “Golf Charlie Niner Niner to Al Basrah tower. Do you read?”
Static.
“Al Basrah tower, this is Golf Charlie Niner Niner. I’m switching to channel eleven, over.” Mac made the switch and repeated the call.
“Al Basrah tower,” came the reply. “Go ahead, Niner Niner.”
“Albie around?”
“Stand by, niner.”
Mac turned to Rayford. “Here’s hoping,” he said.
“Golf Charlie, this is Albie, over.”
“Albie, you old son of a gun! Mac here! You’re OK then?”
“Not totally, my friend. We just raised our temporary tower. Lost two hangars. I’m on crutches. Please, not to be bringing a fixed-wing plane. Not for two, three days.”
“We’re in a bird,” Mac said.
“Welcome then,” Albie said. “We need help. We need company.”
“We can’t stay long, Albie. Our ETA is thirty minutes.”
“Roger that, Mac. We watch for you.”
Rayford saw Mac bite his lip. “That’s a relief,” he whispered, his voice shaky. He monitored the controls, stashed his clipboard, and turned to Rayford. “Back to your story.”
Rayford was intrigued that Mac cared so much for his friend. Had Rayford had a friend like that before he was a believer? Had he ever cared about another man enough to become emotional over his well-being?
Rayford looked at the devastation below. Tents had been erected where homes had disappeared in the quake. Bodies dotted the landscape, and expeditions of cheap trailers came to cart them off. Here and there bands of people with shovels and pickaxes worked on a paved road. If they saw what Rayford could see, they would know that even if they spent days on their tiny stretch of twisted pavement, the road for miles ahead would take months to fix, even with heavy equipment.
Rayford told Mac how he had landed at O’Hare after the disappearances, walked to the terminal, saw the devastating reports from around the world, lost his copilot to suicide, paid heavily for a ride home, and had his worst fears confirmed. “Irene and Raymie were gone. Chloe, a skeptic like me, was trying to get home from Stanford. It was my fault. She followed my example. And we had both been left behind.”
Rayford remembered as if it were yesterday. He didn’t mind telling the story because it came to a good end, but he hated this part. Not just the horror, not just the loneliness, but the blame. If Chloe had never come to Christ, he wasn’t sure he could have forgiven himself.
He wondered about Mac. He would tell Mac what was going on, exactly who Nicolae Carpathia was, the whole package. He would tell him of the prophecies in Revelation, walk him through the judgments that had already come, show him how they had been foretold and could not be disputed. But if Mac was phony, if Mac worked for Carpathia, he would have already been brainwashed. He could fake this emotion, this interest. He could even insist he wanted to make a dangerous scuba dive with Rayford, just to stay on his good side.
But Rayford was already beyond the point of no return. Again he prayed silently that God might give him a sign whether Mac was sincere. If he wasn’t, he was one of the better actors Rayford had seen. It was hard to trust anyone anymore.
When they finally came in sight of the airfield at Al Basrah, Mac coached Ray to a gentle, if lengthy, touchdown. As Ray shut down the engine, Mac said, “That’s him. Coming down the ladder.”
They scrambled out of the chopper as a tiny, dark-faced, long-nosed, turbaned man in bare feet gingerly made his way down from a tower that looked more like a guard station at a prison. He had tossed his crutches down, and when he reached the ground, he hopped to them and deftly used them to rush to Mac. They embraced.
“What happened to you?” Mac asked.
“I was in the mess hall,” Albie said. “When the rumbles began, I knew immediately what it was. Foolishly, I raced for the tower. No one was there. We were not expecting traffic for a couple of hours. What I would do up there, I had no idea. The tower began falling before I even reached it. I was able to elude it, but a fuel truck was thrown into my path. I saw it at the last instant and tried to leap over the cab, which lay on its side. I almost reached the other side but twisted my ankle on the tire and scraped my shin on the lug nuts. But that is not the worst of it. I have broken bones in my foot. But there are no supplies to set it, and I am low on the priority list. It will grow strong. Allah will bless me.”
Mac introduced Rayford. “I want to hear your stories,” Albie said. “Where were you when it hit? Everything. I want to know everything. But first, if you have time, we could use help.”
Heavy machinery was already grading a huge area, preparing it for asphalt. “Your boss, the potentate himself, has expressed pleasure at our cooperation. We are trying to get underway as soon as possible to help the global peacekeeping effort. What a tragedy to have thrown in our way after all he has accomplished.”
Rayford said nothing.
Mac said, “Albie, we might be able to help later, but we need to eat.”
“The mess hall is gone,” Albie said. “As for your favorite place in town, I have not heard. Shall we check?”
“Do you have a vehicle?”
“That old pickup,” Albie said. They followed as he crutched his way to it. “Clutching will be difficult,” he said. “Do you mind?”
Mac slid behind the wheel. Albie sat in the middle, knees spread to keep from blocking the gearshift. The pickup rattled and lurched over unpaved roads until it arrived at the outskirts of the city. Rayford was sickened by the smell. He still found it hard to accept that this was part of God’s ultimate plan. Did this many people have to suffer to make some eternal point? He took comfort in that this was not God’s desired result. Rayford believed God was true to his word, that he had given people enough chances that he could now justify allowing this to get their attention.
Wailing men and women carried bodies over their shoulders or pushed them in wheelbarrows through the crowded streets. It seemed every other block had been left in pieces by the earthquake. Mac’s favorite eatery was missing a concrete block wall, but the management had draped something over it and was open for business. One of few eating establishments still open, it was wall to wall with customers who ate while standing. Mac and Rayford shouldered their way in, drawing angry stares until the townspeople saw Albie. Then they made room, as much as they could, still pressed shoulder to shoulder.
Rayford had little faith in the sanitation of this food, but still he was grateful for it. After two bites of a rolled-up pastry stuffed with ground lamb and seasonings, he whispered to Mac, “I can see and I can smell and yet somehow, even here, hunger is the best seasoning.”
On the way back, Mac pulled to the side of a dusty field and turned off the engine. “I wanted to know you were all right, Albie,” he said. “But this is also a business mission.”
“Splendid,” Albie said. “How can I help?”
“Scuba gear,” Mac said.
Albie furrowed his brow and pursed his lips. “Scuba,” he said simply. “You need everything? Wet suit, mask, snorkel, tanks, fins?”
“All that, yes.”
“Weights? Ballast? Lights?”
“I suppose.”
“Cash?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll have to check,” Albie said. “I have a source. I have not heard from him since the disaster. If the stuff is to be had, I can get it. Let’s leave it this way: If you do not hear from me, return in one month and it will be here.”
“I can’t wait that long,” Rayford said quickly.
“I cannot guarantee any sooner. Even that long seems very fast to me at a time like this.” Rayford couldn’t argue with that. “I thought this was for you, Mac,” Albie added.
“We need two sets.”
“Are you going to make a career of diving?”
“Hardly,” Mac said. “Why? You think we should rent instead?”
“Could we?” Rayford said.
Albie and Mac looked at Rayford and burst into laughter. “No rental on the black market,” Albie said.
Rayford had to grin at his own naiveté, but laughing seemed a distant pleasure.
Back at the airport Rayford and Mac each manned a shovel while a dump truck brought in a gravel base for the runway. Before they knew it, several hours had passed. They sent someone for Albie.
“Can you get a message to New Babylon?” Mac said.
“It will require a relay, but both Qar and Wasit have been on the air since this morning, so yes, is possible.”
Mac wrote the instructions, asking that a dispatch go to Global Community radio base informing them that Steele and McCullum were engaged in a cooperative volunteer airport rebuilding project and would return by nightfall.
It was nearly nine-thirty Tuesday morning, Central Standard Time, when Buck was jolted awake. The day was bright and sunny, yet he had slept soundly since that brief dream in the middle of the night. A constant sound had played at the edges of his consciousness. But for how long? As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he realized the noise had been with him for some time.
It seemed to come from the backyard, from beyond the Range Rover. He padded to the window and opened it, pressing his cheek against the screen and looking as far that way as he could. Maybe it was emergency workers, and he and Tsion would have power sooner than they thought.
What was that smell? Had a catering truck pulled up for the workmen? He threw on some clothes. The light was on in the hallway. Had it not been a dream after all? He skipped down the stairs in his bare feet. “Tsion! We have power! What’s happening?”
Tsion came from the kitchen with a skillet full of food and began scooping it onto a plate at the table. “Sit down, sit down, my friend. Are you not proud of me?”
“You found food!”
“I did more than that, Buck! I discovered a generator, and a big one!”
Buck bowed his head and said a brief prayer. “Did you eat, Tsion?”
“Yes, go ahead. I could not wait. I could not sleep in the middle of the night, so I tiptoed in and took your flashlight. I did not rouse you, did I?”
“No,” Buck said, his mouth full. “But later I thought I dreamed I saw lights in the hallway.”
“It was not a dream, Buck! I lugged that generator out of the cellar and into the backyard myself. It took me forever to fill it with gas and clean the spark plug and get it fired up. But as soon as I hooked it to the cable in the basement, lights came on, the refrigerator came on, everything started happening. I am sorry to have disturbed you. I tiptoed into my bedroom and knelt by my bed, just praising the Lord for our good fortune.”
“I heard you.”
“Forgive me.”
“It was like music,” Buck said. “And this food is like nectar.”
“You need sustenance. You are going back to Loretta’s. I will stay here and see if I can get on the Internet. If I cannot, I have much studying to do and messages to write so they will be ready to go to the faithful when I can get hooked up. Before you leave, however, you will help me get into Donny’s briefcase, no?”
“You’ve decided that’s OK, then?”
“Under other circumstances, no. But we have so few tools for survival now, Cameron. We must take advantage of anything that might be there.”
Fortunately, Donny’s well remained intact, and somehow, under a steaming shower a few minutes later, Buck’s spirits were raised. What was it about creature comforts that made the day look brighter, despite the crisis? Buck knew he was in denial. Whenever he felt his realistic, practical, journalist side take over, he fought it. He wanted to think Chloe had somehow escaped death, but her car was still at the house. On the other hand, he hadn’t found her body. Tons of debris still covered the place, and he had not been able to dig through much of it. Was he up to displacing every piece of trash from the foundation to prove to himself she was or wasn’t there? He was willing. He simply hoped there was a better way.
On his way out of the house, Buck was intrigued that Tsion had not waited for him to get Donny’s briefcase from the Rover. The rabbi had it on the table. He wore a shy, impish look. They were about to break into someone’s personal belongings, and both had convinced themselves it was what Donny would have wanted. They were also prepared to close it back up and discard it if what they found was personal.
“There are all kinds of tools in the basement,” Tsion said. “I could use some care and do this in such a way that it would not threaten the integrity of the structure.”
“What!?” Buck said. “Threaten the integrity of the structure? You mean not hurt this cheap briefcase? How ’bout I just save you the time and effort?”
Buck turned the five-inch-deep plastic briefcase vertically and held it between his knees as he sat in a kitchen chair. He angled both knees left and drove the heel of his hand into the case, forcing it to fall between his ankles and land on one corner. That caused the latches to separate and the case to spring out of shape and fly open. His legs kept it from opening wide and spilling. With a feeling of accomplishment, he plopped it on the table and spun it around so Tsion could open it.
“This is what this young man has been lugging with him everywhere he goes?” Tsion said.
Buck leaned over to peek in. There, in neatly stacked rows, were dozens of small spiral notebooks, each not quite as large as a stenographer’s notebook. They were labeled on the front with dates in block hand printing. Tsion grabbed a few and Buck took more. He fanned them in his hands and noticed that each contained approximately two months’ worth of entries.
“This may be his personal diary,” Buck said.
“Yes,” Tsion said. “If so, we must not violate his confidence.”
They looked at each other. Buck wondered which of them was going to look, to determine whether these were private notes that should be discarded or technical notes that might be of assistance to the Tribulation Force. Tsion raised his eyebrows and nodded to Buck. Buck opened one notebook to the middle. It read: “Talked to Bruce B. about underground necessities. He still seems reluctant about suggesting location. I don’t need to know. I outlined specifications, electric, water, phone, ventilation, etc.”
“That is not personal,” Tsion said. “Let me study these today and see if there is anything we can use. I am amazed how he stacked them. I do not believe he could have fit another one in, and he used every bit of space.”
“What’s this?” Buck said, leafing to the back. “Look at these. He hand drew these schematics.”
“That is my shelter!” Tsion exalted. “That is where I have been staying. So, he designed it.”
“But it looks like Bruce never told him where he was building it.”
Tsion pointed to a passage on the next page: “Putting a duplicate shelter in my backyard has proven more labor intensive than I expected. Sandy is getting a kick out of it. Bagging the dirt and storing it in her van takes her mind off our loss. She enjoys the clandestine nature of it. We take turns dumping it in various locations. Today we loaded so much that the back tires looked as if they might explode. It was the first time I had seen her smile in months.”
Buck and Tsion looked at each other. “Is it possible?” Tsion said. “A shelter in his backyard?”
“How did we miss it?” Buck said. “We were digging out there last night.”
They moved to the back door and gazed out on the lawn. A fence between Donny’s home and the rubble next door had been ripped up and moved by the quake. “Maybe I parked over the entrance,” Buck said.
He backed the Rover out of the way. “I see nothing here,” Tsion said. “But the journal indicates this was more than a dream. They were moving dirt.”
“I’ll find some metal rods today,” Buck said. “We can poke them through the grass and see if we can find this thing.”
“Yes, you go. Finish up at Loretta’s. I have much work today on the computer.”
The sun was setting in Iraq. “We’d better head back,” Rayford said, breathing hard.
“What are they gonna do?” Mac said. “Fire us?”
“As long as he’s got you around, Mac, he could follow through on his threat to put me in jail.”
“That would be just like him, to think one man can fly that Condor halfway around the world and back. By the way, you ever wonder why he calls that thing the 216? The number on his office was 216 too, even though it was on the top floor of an eighteen-story building.”
“Never thought about it,” Rayford said. “I can’t see a reason to care. Maybe he’s got a fetish for that number.”
As he and Mac trudged back toward the new tower with shovels over their shoulders, Albie hurried to them on his crutches. “I can’t thank you enough for your help, gentlemen. You are true friends of Allah and Iraq. True friends of the Global Community.”
“The Global Community might not appreciate hearing you honor Allah,” Rayford said. “You are a loyalist, and yet you have not joined Enigma Babylon Faith?”
“On my mother’s grave, I should never mock Allah with such blasphemy.”
So, Rayford thought, Christians and Jews are not the only holdouts against the new Pope Peter.
Albie led them back to where they turned in their shovels. He spoke in hushed tones. “I am happy to inform you that I have already made some initial inquiries. I should have no trouble procuring your equipment.”
“All of it?” Mac said.
“All of it.”
“How much?” Mac said.
“I have taken the liberty of writing that down,” Albie said.
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and leaned on his crutches as he opened it in the fading light.
“Ho! Man!” Rayford said. “That’s four times what I would pay for two scuba outfits.”
Albie stuffed the paper back into his pocket. “It is exactly double retail. Not a penny more. If you do not want the merchandise, tell me now.”
“That does look high,” Mac said. “But you have never done me wrong. We will trust you.”
“Need a deposit?” Rayford said, hoping to assuage the man’s feelings.
“No,” he said, eyes darting to Mac but not at Rayford. “You trust me, I’ll trust you.”
Rayford nodded.
Albie thrust out his bony hand and gripped Rayford’s fiercely. “I will see you in thirty days then, unless you hear from me otherwise.”
Mac took the controls for the flight back. “Got enough energy to finish your story, Ray?”
Buck stopped at the ruins of New Hope Village Church on his way to Loretta’s and strolled past the crater where the old woman’s car rested twenty feet below. Her body was there too, but he could not bring himself to look. If animals had gotten to her, he didn’t want to know. He also avoided the spot where he had found Donny Moore. More movement of the earth had further entombed him.
He carefully climbed to where the underground shelter lay. Clearly, more debris had shifted. He slipped and nearly fell down the concrete stairs that led to the door. He wondered if anything salvageable could be dragged out. He could always come back. Buck headed for the Range Rover and brushed his fingers across his still swollen cheek. Why was it flesh wounds looked worse and felt more tender the second day?
Traffic dotted the area today. Any front-end loader, bulldozer, or dragline that had not sunk out of sight appeared to have been called into service. Buck couldn’t park where he had the day before. Road crews rammed the uptwisted pavement in front of Loretta’s house. Dump trucks were loaded with the huge chunks. Where they would take it and what they would do with it, Buck had no idea. All he knew was that there was nothing else for anyone to do but start rebuilding. He couldn’t imagine this area ever looking like its old self again, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before it was rebuilt.
Buck drove over a small pile of trash and parked next to one of the felled trees in Loretta’s front yard. Workers ignored him as he slowly circled the house, wondering whether to continue picking through what was left of it.
A man with a clipboard studied the residue of the house next door. He shot pictures and took notes.
“Didn’t think insurance would cover an act of God like this,” Buck said.
“It wouldn’t,” the man said. “I’m not with an insurance company.” He turned so Buck could see the ID tag clipped to his collar. It read, “Sunny Kuntz, Senior Field Supervisor, Global Community Relief.”
Buck nodded. “What happens next?”
“We fax pictures and stats to headquarters. They send money. We rebuild.”
“GC headquarters is still standing?”
“Nope. They’re rebuilding too. Whoever’s left there is in an underground shelter with pretty sophisticated technology.”
“You can communicate with New Babylon?”
“Since this morning.”
“My father-in-law works over there. You think I could get through?”
“You ought to be able to.” Kuntz glanced at his watch. “It’s not 9:00 p.m. there yet. I talked to somebody there about four hours ago. I wanted them to know we found at least one survivor from this area.”
“You did? Who?”
“I’m not at liberty to share that information, Mr.—”
“Oh, sorry.” Buck reached for his own ID, identifying himself as also a GC employee.
“Ah, press,” Kuntz said. He peeled up two pages from his clipboard. “Name’s Cavenaugh. Helen. Age seventy.”
“She lived here?”
“That’s right. Said she ran to the basement when she felt the place rattling. Never heard of an earthquake in this area before, so she thought it was a tornado. She was just flat lucky. Last place you want to be in an earthquake is where everything can fall on you.”
“She survived though, huh?”
Kuntz pointed to the foundation about twenty feet east of Loretta’s house. “See those two openings, one up here and the other in back?” Buck nodded. “That’s one long room in the basement. First she ran to the front. When the whole house shifted and the glass blew in from that window, she ran to the other end. The glass was already out of that window, so she just planted herself in the corner and waited it out. If she had stayed up front, she’d have never made it. Wound up in the only corner of the house where she wouldn’t have been killed.”
“She told you this?”
“Yep.”
“She didn’t say whether she saw anybody next door, did she?”
“Matter of fact, she did.”
Buck nearly lost his breath. “What’d she say?”
“Just that she saw a young woman running out of the house. Just before the window gave way on this end, the woman jumped in her car, but when the road started rising on her, she drove into the garage.”
Buck trembled, desperate to stay calm until he got the whole story. “Then what?”
“Mrs. Cavenaugh said she had to move to the back because of that window, and when that house started to give way, she thought she saw the woman come out the side door of the garage and run through the backyard.”
Buck lost all objectivity. “Sir, that was my wife. Any more details?”
“None I can remember.”
“Where is this Mrs. Cavenaugh?”
“In a shelter about six miles due east. A furniture store somehow suffered very little damage. There’s probably two hundred survivors in there, the least injured. It’s more of a holding station than a hospital.”
“Tell me exactly where this place is. I need to talk to her.”
“OK, Mr. Williams, but I need to caution you not to get your hopes up about your wife.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t have my hopes up until I found out she ran from this. My hopes were nowhere when I tried to dig through the mess. Don’t tell me to not get my hopes up now.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be realistic. I worked disaster relief for more than fifteen years before joining the GC task force. This is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I need to ask you if you’ve seen the escape route your wife might have taken, if Mrs. Cavenaugh was right and she ran through that backyard.”
Buck followed Kuntz to the back. Kuntz swept the horizon with his arm. “Where would you go?” he asked. “Where would anybody go?”
Buck nodded somberly. He got the message. As far as he could see was nothing but piles, crevices, craters, fallen trees, and downed utility poles. There had certainly been no place to run.