CHAPTER 14
The taillights ahead went bright red, so Mac slammed on his brakes. But suddenly the GC vehicle disappeared from his vision. In the distance, Operation Eagle cars and trucks roared on, but behind them a great cavern opened and the pursuing GC dropped into it.
Mac jumped out and realized his front tires were on the edge of the gigantic crevasse. Amazingly, the lights of the GC cars grew smaller as they continued to fall. The cavity in the earth was hundreds of feet deep, and his idea to sneak behind the GC had almost been fatal. His knees rubbery, he climbed back into the truck and carefully backed away, looking for a way around.
Roaring up past him came yet another GC car, but as it neared the drop-off, its two occupants leaped out and rolled, their weapons clattering onto the pavement. Their car hurtled into the great beyond. The Peacekeepers slowly rose, retrieved their rifles, and took aim at Mac’s truck. “Duck!” he shouted, and his head banged Hannah’s shoulder as they both leaned toward the middle of the front seat. In the back, the Israelis tussled for position.
The bracketing of gunfire made Mac shut his eyes and cover his head, but it stopped almost as soon as it had started, and he rose and stepped out to see the Peacekeepers sprawled dead. No one else was around. He could only surmise that their own bullets had somehow killed them. Mac’s Operation Eagle truck stood unscathed. His phone rang.
It was Rayford. “Tsion’s on the air right now,” he reported.
“Well, that’s good, Cap. Nothin’ I could use more right now than a little broadcast entertainment.”
“Say again?”
“Nothin’.”
“What’s your location?”
“The Grand Canyon.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Good idea not to.”
“Mac, you all right?”
“Yeah. ’Cept for almost drivin’ my people into the netherworld, I’ll make it.”
“Sounds like you’ll have a story, as usual. Can you see what’s happening in the air over Jerusalem?”
“Guess I been lookin’ the other direction, Ray.”
“Well, look up and listen.”
The air battle had moved away from Mac, but in the distance he could see it, and its low rumbling echoes came rolling back. “They hittin’ anybody?”
“Only each other,” Rayford said. “Look out below.”
“I heard that!”
Chang was overcome by a feeling so delicious it made him tingle to the top of his head. All over his computer were frantic codes and messages and attempts by the broadcasting division in the next building to yank GCNN off the air. But nothing they did worked. He hoped Tsion would finish soon so he could go to the Chaim audio. That would drive them crazy. With no visual to worry about, they would catch each other coming and going trying to mute the sound.
With one ear monitoring Tsion to know when to make the switch, Chang was also still listening to the cockpit of the Phoenix. Carpathia had turned his verbal guns on Fortunato.
“What good is a religion if you cannot come up with some miracles, Leon?”
“Holiness! I called down fire on your enemy just yesterday!”
“You cooked a harmless woman with a big mouth.”
“But you are the object of our worship, Excellency! I pray to you for signs and wonders!”
“Well, I need a miracle, Reverend.”
“Excellency,” Akbar interrupted, “you might consider this phone call miraculous.”
“While that infernal Ben-Judah remains on the air, the only miracle is that either of you remains alive. So, thrill me.”
“You recall we lost two prisoners in Greece recently?”
“Young people, yes. A boy and a girl. You have found them?”
“No, but as time and manpower allowed only a cursory investigation, the best we came up with were witnesses who said a Peacekeeper named Jensen may have been involved in both disappearances.”
“Yes, yes, and though he was our man, you lost track of him. So you have found him now?”
“Maybe.”
“I hate answers like that!”
“Forgive me, Excellency. You know how this Micah and his sidekick seemed to appear out of nowhere.”
“Get to the point. Please! You are making me crazy!”
“We got a tip that the two were seen at the King David Hotel, but when everyone fell ill, we didn’t have time to pursue it. Now we have, and we even know what rooms they occupied.”
“And this is a miracle?”
“We have combed both rooms. One contained a wallet that appears to belong to Jensen. The photo, however, does not match the photo in our personnel files.”
“Why would he be foolish enough to leave his identification behind? It is clearly an attempt to mislead.”
“We’re comparing with our international database fingerprints lifted from each room.”
Chang’s fingers flew. He was into the GC Peacekeeper personnel file in seconds and eradicated all vestiges of Jack Jensen.
“Suhail, there must be dozens of different people’s fingerprints in a hotel room, from every recent guest to the staff to—”
“The predominant prints in the one room trace to Chaim Rosenzweig.”
Carpathia laughed. “The man who murdered me.”
“One and the same.”
He laughed again. “Well, which do you think is Rosenzweig? The one in the robe or the one with the scarred face?”
“Excellency, the prints from the scarred man’s room do not lead to Peacekeeper Jensen, interestingly enough. They match the prints of a former employee in your inner circle.”
Back Chang went into the system, and seconds later Cameron “Buck” Williams, former media czar for the Global Community, was gone as if he had never been there.
“I did not study the sidekick,” Carpathia said, “but he did not remind me of anyone.”
“He was your first media guy.”
“Plank? Nonsense. Confirmed dead.”
“My mistake. Your second media guy but first choice.”
“Williams?”
“That’s the man.”
“Micah’s assistant is not Cameron Williams, Suhail. I would know. And let me tell you something else—Micah is not Dr. Rosenzweig.”
“All due respect, Excellency, but miracles of disguise can be wrought today.”
“He may be approximately the same height, but that voice? That look? That bearing? No. That could not be playacting.” There was a long pause. “Anyway,” Carpathia said quietly, “I pardoned my attacker publicly.”
“And that protects him from whom?”
“Everyone.”
“Including yourself?”
“Excellent point, Suhail.”
“Anyway, you yourself installed Walter Moon as supreme commander. That apparently didn’t give him tenure.”
Chang heard the men laugh, while in the background Viv Ivins supervised the removal of Moon’s body and the cleanup of the area.
Chang switched to Tsion’s broadcast, which closed with Dr. Ben-Judah’s promise to travel to Petra to personally address his million strong “brothers and sisters in Messiah.”
Someone called Suhail. Chang heard him ask Carpathia’s permission to take it, then: “Ben-Judah is coming to Petra, Excellency.”
“Delay its destruction until his arrival.”
“And the blood problem is international.”
“Meaning?”
“Intelligence is telling me the waters of the sea are 100 percent blood.”
“What sea?”
“Every one. It’s crippling us. And we have a mole.”
“Where?”
“At the palace. And connected here somehow.”
“How can you know that?”
“Jensen and Williams? Their files have disappeared from our central database since you and I began discussing them.”
“Quarantine this plane, Suhail.”
“Sir?”
“We will kill the mole, of course, but we must find the leak first. Lie detector tests for everyone. How many is that?”
“Fortunately, not many. Two stewards, myself, and Leon.”
“You were wise to leave me out and diplomatic to leave Viv Ivins out. Do not be diplomatic.”
“You want her polygraphed, Excellency?”
“Absolutely.”
“Perhaps I’ll conduct it myself,” Suhail said.
“And who will conduct yours, Mr. Akbar?”
“Actually, Excellency, lie detecting has become quite streamlined. We now merely use a computer program that detects changes in the FM frequency of the voice. A person has no control over it. He or she can speak at a different pace or even volume, but the FM frequency will change only under stress.”
“Real-ly.”
“It’s gold, sir.”
“Do include me in the testing.”
Chang hacked into the personnel files and created a record showing him in the infirmary and treated symptomatically for boils for the last two days. He saved everything from his computer to the secure minidisk in the bowels of the palace, then purposely crashed the hard drive on his laptop, erasing everything in it. He created a phantom auxiliary hard drive buried under such massive encoding that only another computer working twenty-four hours a day for years could even hope to crack it. He accessed the miniature archive and downloaded everything he needed, then pulled the cords and packed up the machine, putting it deep in a closet. David—the only other person on the planet who could have detected a thing on his hard drive—was actually no longer on the planet.
Chang would be at his desk in his department the next morning, right on time and ready for work. Not only would they not find the mole, but they would also strike out in their search for a contact person in the executive cabinet.
George put down well outside the growing throngs at Petra, opened the door for ventilation, and Buck and the others dozed as load after load of more escapees was delivered. Rayford and Chaim had decided to keep Chaim’s presence a secret for as long as possible so as not to interfere with the massive move into the safe place. Though some had begun walking in and others were airlifted, by daybreak, hundreds of thousands clogged the Siq, awaiting their helicopter hop inside. They sang and rejoiced and prayed.
Buck left the chopper and walked among the people, keeping an eye on the skies and the western horizon as he listened to the radio. Global Community forces had been decimated, nearly half lost in firefights in the sky that never touched Operation Eagle or during ground pursuits that left GC vehicles and bodies buried so deep that rescue operations were abandoned.
The GCNN radio network had switched back to Carpathia’s auspices sometime in the night, after Chaim’s case for Jesus as the Messiah had been broadcast around the world, followed by his prayer of allegiance to Christ. Buck believed Tsion’s prediction that a worldwide revival would break out in the midst of the worst terror of the Tribulation. Reports from around the globe revealed tragedy and death related to the seas having turned to blood.
Ships that counted on processes that made the waters of the ocean drinkable found it impossible to convert the blood. Rotting carcasses of all species of aquatic life rose to the surface, and crews of ships fell deathly ill as many boats radioed their inability to get back to land.
Carpathia announced that his Security and Intelligence forces already had determined the true identities of the impostors who claimed to represent the rebels and that it had been their trickery that resulted in the great seawater catastrophe.
Night had fallen in Chicago, and Chloe found a way to excuse herself during a lull in the news. She took her new telescope and set up at a window far from curious eyes. Waiting until the sky was black, she first scanned the city with the naked eye. The tiny beacon she had noticed some time before still shined from about three-quarters of a mile away.
Chloe carefully settled and steadied herself, bracing the instrument and aligning it with what she had seen. At long last she was able to bring the illusive beam into focus and calm the jumpy lens. To her astonishment, the source of light was at ground level. She sat and sat, cramping again but forcing herself to stay still so she could study the image until it made sense to her overtaxed brain.
She ran the various shapes and images through the grid of her life’s memory, and gradually Chloe thought she came to understand what she was looking at. One window on the ground or basement floor of a big building, maybe ten or twelve stories, emitted light from inside. And the more she sat staring, the more convinced she was that there was activity inside. Human activity.
At eight in the morning Palace Time, Chang was assigned by his supervisor to help monitor reports of deaths and casualties attributed to the oceanic disaster. To the wonder of everyone involved, lakes and rivers had not been affected.
In the large office where Chang and some thirty others sat at desktop computers, he made it a point to only occasionally grunt a response to coworkers who tried to draw him out. He neither looked anyone in the eye nor smiled. His boss, a tall, bony Mexican named Aurelio S. Figueroa, proved an officious loner who treated his superiors like kings and queens and treated his subordinates like servants.
“How are we today, Wong?” Mr. Figueroa said, his Adam’s apple protruding.
“Okay, sir.”
“Happy in your work?”
“Happy enough.”
“Have you heard the news?”
“About?”
“Supreme Commander Moon.”
“I saw nothing on the news about him.”
“Come, Master Wong, I know you are a Carpathia pet. Surely you have inside knowledge.”
Chang shook his head.
“Moon is dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“Shot to death outside the potentate’s plane.”
Chang tried to appear stunned and curious, but he hated being drawn in as Figueroa’s confidant. “The enemy?”
“No! Don’t be naïve! Our people at that level are surrounded by security.”
“Who then?”
“They suspect the stewards.” Figueroa leaned close. “Both Indians.”
“But why?”
“No one else would have done it.”
“Why would they?”
“Why not? You know the Indians.”
“No, I do not.”
“They have a contact on the inside.”
“On the inside of what?”
“Here.”
“Why?”
“You are naïve, aren’t you?”
Chang bit his tongue. He hated stupid people, especially ones twice his age. “Not too naïve to guess your middle name.”
Figueroa’s eyes turned dark. “What does that have to do with anything, Wong?”
Chang shrugged. “Forget it.”
“You couldn’t know it anyway.”
“Of course I couldn’t.”
“Unless you saw my personnel file.”
“How would I do that?”
“You couldn’t. Not without my knowing. Everything done on these computers is recorded, you know.”
“Of course.”
“I could see if you have been snooping.”
“Feel free.”
Figueroa broke into a wide grin. “But I trust you, Wong! You are a friend of His Excellency.”
“Well, my father is.”
“I suppose you have heard they have asked for lie-detecting software. I uploaded it this morning.”
“How would I know that?”
Figueroa clutched Chang’s shoulder, and it was all Chang could do to keep from recoiling. “Because you are connected, my friend!”
“I’m not.”
“We are all going to be subjected to searches, you know. Interrogations.”
“Why?”
“I told you! The Indians, the stewards, have a connection here, a leak.”
Chang shrugged.
“You want to be first or last?”
“To what?”
“To be interrogated.”
“I have nothing to hide. They can interrogate me anytime they want.”
“They will search your apartment, want to see your personal computer.”
“They may feel free. The hard drive has been worthless for some time.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“I was not worried.”
Figueroa looked around, as if realizing he might be criticized for paying too much attention to one worker. “Of course, you weren’t, Wong. You’re connected.”
Chang shook his head. “Who will replace Moon?”
“Akbar is too important where he is. Fortunato has already had that job. Maybe Ms. Ivins, who knows? Maybe no one. Maybe Nicolae himself. One thing is certain, Wong,” Figueroa added, turning to leave, “it won’t be you or me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Chang said, hating himself for playing these games.
As Chang expected, Figueroa stopped. “What are you saying? What do you know?”
“Nothing to speak of, sir,” Chang said. “Have to protect my connection, you know.”
“You’re putting me on. You know nothing.”
“Of course.”
“Seriously, now. I mean it.”
“Me too, sir.”
Five minutes later, as Chang was collating reports from around the world and assembling them for a briefing, Figueroa called from his office. “You swear you’ve never tapped in to see my personnel files?”
“I swear.”
“If I ran a review on your computer, the one here and your own, it would bear that out?”
“This one would.”
“But your personal computer?”
“I told you. The hard drive crashed.”
“Then this about knowing my full name . . .”
“Would be guessing, sir.”
“Want to guess?”
“I’m busy, sir.”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
“I was just talking. I don’t know.”
“Come now, Wong. Take a shot. Tell you what—you get it right, I’ll leave your name off the interrogation list.”
“How could you do that?”
“I have my ways.”
“Why would I care about being interrogated?”
“It’s a waste of time, a nuisance, stressful.”
“Not if you’re innocent. I never even heard of the Indian stewards.”
“The offer stands.”
Chang sighed. Why had he started this? And who would believe Figueroa gave a rip anyway? “I know it starts with an S.”
“Everybody knows that. It’s on my nameplate. But maybe it’s like the S in Harry S Truman and stands for nothing.”
“You use the period after it, so it stands for something. I’d just be guessing.”
“Unless you’re lying about hacking into my file, a hundred Nicks says you couldn’t guess in ten tries.”
“I have only one guess.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Sequoia.”
A long silence. Figueroa swore. “You couldn’t know that!”
“I’m right?”
“You are and you know it, but how did you know? It’s not even a Mexican name. Not even Spanish.”
“I’m guessing Indian. American Indian, I mean.”
“Tell me how you knew that.”
“Guessing, sir. I thought it made sense.”
Why would a light be on in Chicago? Was it possible, Chloe wondered, that someone else had somehow discovered that David Hassid had planted the radiation readings in the Global Community database computer? That reminded her she had not yet told Buck the horrible news.
Chloe tried to plot where she would find the lighted window, then put up the telescope and phoned Buck. It broke her heart to hear that he was at Petra and as excited as she remembered him being in a long time. She let him go on and on about what had happened, how Rayford had seen and been healed by the angel, and how he and the others in the chopper had eventually seen him as well when he protected them from gunfire.
Chloe could only agree with Buck about the signs and wonders, the confrontations with Carpathia, the supernatural change in Chaim, the thrill of pirating the network for the spreading of the truth. Finally he must have noticed her enthusiasm did not match his. “You okay, babe?”
“I have bad news for you, Buck. Two GC MIAs murdered David Hassid, and we all agreed not to tell you and Chaim until your work was almost finished. . . . Buck? Are you there?”
“Give me a minute,” he said finally.
“I don’t know when Daddy was going to tell Chaim. It ought to be soon if he’s right there on-site.”
“Yeah,” Buck managed. “He’ll probably somehow get everybody else out of the chopper first. We don’t want the people to see Chaim yet.”
“Of course.”
“Chloe, what’re we going to do?”
“I don’t know. The most awful part is, it’s only going to get worse. Before I fall asleep I run over in my mind everybody we’ve got left and I can’t help but wonder . . .”
“Who’ll be next, I know. I didn’t know David as well as some of the others did, but just from a practical, logistical standpoint . . .”
“He was so crucial,” Chloe said. “And how much do we know about Ming’s brother?”
“David was high on him, but he is still a teenager. And he’ll never be in the same position, have the same access David had. I hate to talk about it only in terms of what it means to the Trib Force, but—”
“The mourning process has to be so blunted, Buck. Everything’s life and death now. Each loss makes it harder for the rest of us to survive, and it’s only natural that we look at it that way. I just want you all back here and safe one more time.”
“Soon,” Buck said. “Your dad wants to use Abdullah’s underground contacts to get use of a supersonic plane that will hold eight or so. Albie’s credentials are still intact, so he would fly us all back to the States and pick up Tsion for a personal visit to Petra.”
“I want to go,” she said.
“You just said you wanted us back in one piece.”
“I need babysitters.”
“Be serious. We all need some R and R before Armageddon.”
“I don’t.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Dad promised I could go on the next mission if all the bases were covered. I took that to mean if there were enough people here to watch Kenny.”
Buck was silent.
“You don’t approve.”
“No,” he said. “Kenny could stand losing me more than you.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m being silly? Listen to yourself. You’re his mother.”
“So I get the whole responsibility.”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“And you’re so crucial to the frontline work of the Trib Force that we can’t risk losing me and leaving you to be Kenny’s primary caregiver.”
She could tell Buck was angry. “I can’t believe I’m standing here in the middle of the desert, arguing with my wife about who’s going to watch the baby. Listen, you can’t come back with Tsion, because the GC is waiting till he returns before they make an air strike here.”
“Yet you send Tsion into that, and a billion people a day are dependent on him.”
“We believe he’ll be protected here.”
“And I won’t?”
“We don’t know. David wasn’t.”
“I don’t want to fight about this on the phone, Buck. Please don’t be closed to it until we get a chance to talk it through. And be careful. I love you and I couldn’t live without you.”
With her phone in her pocket, Chloe nonchalantly chatted with Zeke out of the hearing of the others. “If I were to go out for a walk, would you keep an ear out for Kenny and not feel obligated to mention to anyone else that I’m gone?”
“This time of night? Ma’am, it’s—”
“Z, please. I’m a grown woman and I need to get out of here. I’ll have my phone with me.”
“I couldn’t lie for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to. Just don’t volunteer anything. I don’t want anyone to worry.”
Buck headed back to the helicopter. The transfer of people into Petra was slow but steady. He wanted to let Rayford know he knew about David and give him a chance to tell Chaim. But as he worked his way through the enthusiastic crowd, beautifully bronzed children, exhausted by the flight and sleeping on parents’ shoulders, distracted him. How he missed Kenny!
The crowd suddenly shifted and smiles froze. Their attention turned to the east, and Buck jogged to where he could see. Billowing across the desert came three huge clouds of dust that threatened to blot out the diminished sun. The two on the left continued to separate themselves from the one on the right. Buck dialed Chang, only to find out he was temporarily incommunicado. He dialed Rayford.
“Chloe told me about David. Get rid of the others for a minute and tell Chaim. And what do you make of what’s coming?”
“Abdullah’s figured it out,” Rayford reported. “GC ground forces. They’re going to separate until they can come at the people simultaneously from three different directions, forcing them into the Siq, which will hold only so many.”
Buck began sprinting toward the chopper. “The news of David can wait. Are the rest of us safe, or just Chaim? And are the people safe outside the entrance?”
“I’m going to switch places with George and get up where I can get a look at these troops,” Rayford said. “When I come back down, be close by. We may have to take up arms.”
“Arms?” Buck said. “I heard about those. Count me out.”
“You may change your mind if the GC opens fire.”
I just might, Buck thought.