“The people of Babylon must bear the consequences of their guilt because they rebelled against our God. They must be killed by an invading army, their little ones dashed to death against the ground, their pregnant women ripped open by swords.”
–Christian Soldiers
As the Christian Soldiers prepared for battle, Pastor Dalton nodded off on a flea-infested sofa and dreamed in black and white.
His Aryan troglodytes, armed with forged swords and spears, stormed the fortified gates of the majestic castle while giant catapults heaved balls of fire that exploded against the dark granite walls of the edifice. Inside, howling Komodo dragons guarded the charcoal-hued sentries that patrolled along the parapet.
“Onward toward the light!” Lord Dahl commanded his troops as a super-Trog named Blar lead the behemoths into hand-to-hand combat.
“I will rip out your soul and feed it to the dragons!” Blar screamed as he swung his giant sword toward a sentry. Dragon breath burned against his snakelike skin.
The groans and grunts of the Trogs grew stronger as each dragon was slain and the Khan’s troops grew thin. The harder the sentries fought, the more evident their loss became until, through the pitch-blackness, Dahl saw a glowing sunset appearing on the dark horizon. From its apex appeared a golden chariot led by two winged horses. Inside, the Khan was at the helm.
Guts and body parts flew as the monstrous Khan guards fought off the inhuman Trogs before they could reach the basilica.
“Forge ahead!” Blar bellowed. “Never stop moving forward!” he screamed as he saw his mighty legions overpowering the inferior forces of the Khan. He too saw a glowing ball of fire on the hill.
“Never stop,” pleaded Dahl as he raced ahead to the presence of Khan, who was dressed in an exquisite black kimono, shining against the night sky as smoke and fire burned beyond him, giving the warrior’s immaculate white dreadlocks an air of invincibility.
“So, Tucker, we meet on the battlefield,” Khan said as he swept his long sword gracefully in an arch and ended up with knees slightly bent, his exquisite sabre held high above his head with both hands.
Dahl circled to his left and held the finest Tarzarian steel sword in the kingdom high in anticipation of a fight to the death. He watched Khan dismount and slowly move toward him, straight as a bee’s path.
“Your men are prepared to take the castle but not win the battle,” Khan rumbled. “They’re just puppets that I command on a long string. Where’s your left flank?”
The men suddenly dropped their weapons and fled back across the castle walls.
The mighty Khan’s guards, battered and slain by the Trogs, rose again and stood alive and unscathed in the spots where they were killed. The dragons howled again as the remaining Trogs abandoned the battle. Pastor Dahl and his loyal captain Blar were alone, facing the translucent, glowing image of the Khan. Blar was first to reach him.
“Stay back, Pastor. I will slay our enemy,” Blar promised as he charged the image of the Khan.
“You need not attack. I will kill you from here,” Khan said, and he reached out and captured the virtual image of Blar running toward him in the palm of his hand. Then he closed his fist and Blar vanished. Dahl saw whatever happened…happen.
“I beg you, Master Khan. I want to live,” he wept and placed his hands together in a prayerful gesture.
“Silence. Your fate has been decided by the babies you seek,” Khan said as faces of the newborn children danced bodiless behind him.
The Pastor saw the bloodless smile of the unmerciful Master as the sword was drawn behind him and he came forward with great speed toward Dahl’s head.
Dalton forced his eyes open before contact, and the shouts of Sergeant Blair echoed through his head.
“Pastor. Pastor! The men are ready. We must make our attack before first light!”
On a gentle hillside above the birth center, Jimmy Blair was poised to pick off anyone coming through the courtyard, but the House of Jeremiah soldiers were masked by darkness and black fatigues, so Jimmy made a command decision to storm the facility from the rear while the frontal attack took place.
“Load the trucks and ATVs,” he ordered. “Our troops in front know what to do.” “We’re good to go,” Dalton assured him over the radio. “The plow will strike the front gate in thirty seconds. Make the rear attack work.”
The men in the rear navigated the border wall only to be greeted by snipers in the courtyard. As Christian Soldiers and Khan’s men were mortally wounded, a few soldiers entered the rear of the building. They stormed the halls, bearing machetes and automatic weapons, searching for the children.
Blair caught a nurse’s aide near the elevator by Blair.
“Tell me where they are. You don’t have to die,” he said menacingly.
She shook in silence as Blair slit her stomach with his hunting knife from one end to the other. Her blood squirted onto her blue smock, leaving a purple-red path along her belly.
“This didn’t have to happen,” he said. He let the nurse drop to the floor, clutching her stomach and staring down the hallway in the direction of the nursery. She winced in pain before fading into unconsciousness.
“Dumb bitch,” Blair said as he reached for his wireless. “We’re on the inside,” he announced. “Pastor, what’s your location?” He walked down the darkened hallways with three of his men at the ready, searching the unoccupied rooms.
“We’ve reached the front gate and headed inside. Where’s the nursery?”
“It must be in the basement. Meet y’all there,” Blair said, wiping the blood and perspiration from his brow with the checked handkerchief he carried in his hip pocket.
Then he paused.
Away down the corridor, he noticed a stairwell heading down. At the top of the stairwell stood six of The House of Jeremiah’s finest and Kublai Khan. They hadn’t seen him yet.
Blair showed his teeth in a smile.
Dalton and the five other soldiers were jammed inside of the snowplow’s cab, bullets pinging off the blade in front of them as Carl floored it. When the plow hit the ornamental steel gate, it crumpled like a cheap folding chair before the whole mess slammed into the stone guard gate and the two men inside stopped shooting and raced for cover.
“Yippee-ki-yay! We’re in,” screamed Carl as he leaned out the driver’s side window and took aim with his rifle. Mike yanked his brother back inside the cab.
“Don’t kill us, you idiot!” he barked. “Save it for them!”
The slow-moving snow removal vehicle hit the sandbags and the soldiers scurried for cover against the faux brick barrier lining the driveway. The Christian Soldiers scrambled out of the cab, but automatic gunfire snarled out from inside the center and flew over their heads.
“Wait ’em out,” the Pastor ordered while keeping his head down.
“Preach, if the boys are inside, we gotta help!” Carl complained.
“Khan has the babies hidden. Blair will find them,” Dalton said and ducked farther back behind the plow blade.
Automatic fire rattled the air as the gate guardsmen circled back and caught Dalton and his men in a crossfire. Mike Prather went down with two high-caliber rifle shells and a small-caliber pistol bullet in his back. He stumbled forward and then fell in a heap in front of this brother, who then tried to drag him to cover. New shots rang out. Dalton’s semiautomatic rifle sang in virtual unison with handguns carried by Brother Timothy and Carl.
“Brother, don’t leave me now,” Carl said as Mike’s scared eyes faded and he coughed up blood.
“Bet…I’m with you,” Mike said, gripping his brother’s hand palm-to-palm.
“Hold on,” Carl begged, his voice barely above a whimper.
He felt it when Mike died in his brother’s grasp.
Carl gently laid Mike’s head on the cold morning grass as another salvo ripped the predawn air. The rear guard returned fire and caught Carl in the shoulder and back. The force of the blast spun him around as he tried to dive over the sandbags for cover. The cry Carl made as the AR-15 shell landed in his back sounded more like a plea for help than a warrior’s verbal indifference to pain.
“Little brother, you didn’t die for nothing! Aggghhh!” Carl screamed as the guards riddled him with automatic fire.
Carl never made it over the pile. His bullet-mangled body landed on a row of sandbags and the security men adjusted fire to greet someone else who felt lucky. But the Christian Soldiers were excellent shots, and more and more guard positions fell silent.
For minutes that seemed forever, the killing field went quiet as smoke and the stench of gunpowder filled the air.
Then:
“Move out!” Dalton shouted as they looked for better cover inside a side door to the center.
The three surviving Soldiers left the corpses of the Prather brothers and followed their preacher into the birth center.
“Ms. Solberg had a seizure and can’t be moved,” said the doctor as the commotion upstairs grew louder.
“The hell she can’t!” Ahmed snapped back. “No child of mine is going to be born in a combat zone. My family and I are out of here.” He helped Kim put on with her pants as Holly looked on.
In minutes, Ahmed had found a safe exit and was guiding Kimberly toward it with Holiday in his arms. A stray Christian Soldier attacked them, holding his machete high in the air.
“Die, mongrel pup! Die!” the soldier yelled as he lurched toward Holly.
Ahmed dropped his daughter’s hand and sprang at the marauder’s chest like a Rottweiler after a rabbit. He grabbed the attacker’s wrist and tackled him to the floor. Ahmed ripped the machete away from the soldier and pushed the sharpened edge against the man’s throat as he held him down.
“My wife…my child. You bastard,” he snarled as he slashed the soldier’s neck and left him bleeding while his family ran for cover.
Inside the second-floor stairwell, Ahmed could see the rear exit door that led to the parking lot. Two more soldiers stood on the first level, obviously looking for the nursery. The hollow emptiness in his belly and the emotional void in his heart were evidence that there was more murderous work to do.
“Can you hold on a few more minutes?” he asked Kim as he put Holly into her arms. She nodded woozily as she leaned against the door of the second-floor stairway.
“I’ll wait. Be careful,” she said.
“Be back in a flash,” he replied, and headed out to do his job.
Ahmed listened to the Soldiers chatting lazily as he crept up on them.
“I guess there’s another stairs down besides this one. Must be over there.” A Pall Mall smoker pointed toward the south with his filter less cancer stick.
“This one’s secured. Let’s get on with it.” A man dressed in a new set of discount duck-hunting camo hefted his gun meaningfully.
“Calm down,” Pall Mall said, and dropped his cigarette to grind it out with his boot as the stairwell suddenly went pitch-black.
The men stood still, obviously waiting for the emergency lighting to kick in.
It didn’t. Ahmed, standing by a light switch above them, had seen to that.
“Shit. I can’t see my fucking hand,” the smoker said.
“I’m over here, you idiot,” Camo replied.
“Damn. Let’s go up and see if they got lights,” Pall Mall suggested.
The sound of Ahmed’s machete was more whoosh than thump, leaving blood, sinew, and loose flesh on the stairs. Soon the sounds of two feet and the moaning of the dead were the only sounds left in the dark.
As the Reynolds-Solberg family left the building, Ahmed led them to the car. Kim and Holiday crouched low until the car reached a service road out of the complex and turned onto a dirt road, heading toward the highway.
“Can you make it, baby?” Ahmed asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Where are we going?” Kim mumbled back.
“Hold on. I got an idea.” He punched the gas, sending the car surging forward into the predawn gloom. Behind him was only the absence of light.
“Stay on the floor. Until I think we’re safe,” he said.
“Protect the nursery with your life,” Kublai Khan said, positioning his men two by two along the dark corridor and inside the delivery rooms and the adjoining nursery.
Minister Khan steadied his P229 handgun and shot the first soldier he saw, a lanky man with sandy-brown hair, bloodshot eyes, and an M-24 at the ready. Khan caught a quick glimpse of the name stenciled above the breast pocket of the man’s fatigues: BLAIR.
Shot in the shoulder, Blair stumbled at the top of the stairs as his men raced down them to greet the first wave of Kahn’s men.
“Meet them in the middle,” Khan commanded.
The men attacked while Khan fired upon the man at the top. The Minister stood in the doorway to the nursery while babies cried for attention behind him. One attacker fought with a guard, who hacked off the soldier’s hand with a machete another Christian Solider had dropped in battle. The man on the middle stairway tier leaped over the rail and landed on Khan.
“You ape!” he shouted. He rode Khan’s back and struggled to get his large blade around the minister’s neck.
Khan pulled the soldier’s left arm forward and, using his own body for leverage, hurled the soldier over his shoulder onto the floor. Before striking the man with a fatal elbow to the neck, the minister looked into the soldier’s eyes and saw the fear and anger that would kill him if given a chance. The Christian Soldier seized on the minister’s pause and wiggled free from his grip. Back on his feet, he grinned in relief and grabbed his sidearm. He stood above the minister with his gun cocked at the ready.
“Come with me. The Pastor wants you,” the soldier said and waved his pistol in a direction away from the nursery door.
Kublai Khan had no choice. He surrendered.
“Through that door, back up the stairs,” the soldier commanded.
At the first-floor landing, the soldier said, “You call yourself a man of God?”
“That I am. You call yourself a Christian?” Kublai Khan replied.
“I am. Sanctified,” the man said with a touch of regret in his voice.
“And yet you plan to kill babies in his name?”
“Yet you try to betray God’s rule?” the man retorted.
“Is that what your preacher tells you about me?”
“You believe in Christ?” the soldier asked as they reached the ground floor and he looked around, probably seeking a secure path to the front lines.
They started slowly down a dark, poorly lit hallway.
“I have my faith,” Khan said. “Even as I walk this path with you.”
“But do you believe?”
“Yes. I do. Do you?” Khan asked.
“I said I was saved.”
“Then why did you call me an ape?”
“You didn’t like my battle cry? Could have called you a nigga?”
“Thanks for the concession,” Khan said. “Son, what’s your name?”
“They call me Nate. But I like Nathaniel.”
“Do you read the Bible, Nathaniel?”
“Not really.”
“There’s a Nathaniel in it.”
“So?”
“Read his story sometime. I want you to see me as just a man.”
“And if I do?” Nate said in disbelief.
“Then something good could come of this madness,” Khan said as they reached the main building.
Pah…ting. Pah…ting.
Nate stumbled as he was hit, leaving Khan an opening to kick him in the groin before knee-dropping him and stomping him in the throat. Nate squirmed and gasped under Khan’s boot as a guard ran up.
“Minister, you all right? We have to get back to the nursery.” The guard pointed back to the babies. Khan paused and looked down at his injured foe, who was busily stewing in his own blood.
“Yahweh is in you,” he said, pushed Nate against the wall, and ran back to fight.
The sounds of Soyun’s groans rang out from the birthing suite.
Her baby began to push through as the attentive doctor looked on and his nurse waited for orders.
A whiskey laced blues song bellowed from a radio, drowning out the battle outside.
You gonna trust me
Or your lying eyes?
No matter what you think you saw
I know that I wasn’t there
Not my skin or my nappy hair
You gonna trust me
Or your lying eyes?
What you think you saw
It’s just a filthy pack of lies.
“Ohhhhh my God!” Soyun yelled, drowning out the commotion just outside the delivery room while still leaving the background guitar strokes vibrant and luminating.
The anguish on the Korean woman’s face turned into a smile the instant she saw her healthy brown baby. The nurse cleared the newborn’s airways and wrapped the baby girl hurriedly in a light blanket before placing it in a bassinet near Soyun’s right side. The baby cooed with surprising good nature, considering the pop of gunfire and the yells emanating from beyond the door.
“She’s beautiful,” the Chinese nurse said.
“Can I hold her?” asked Soyun.
The nurse reached down carefully to transfer the child.
The double door sprang open and a sandy-haired soldier burst through the door with a machete held high. He brought the blade down in a sweeping arc above Soyun as she reached to embrace her newborn. The nurse screamed and twisted her body into the path of the machete while the doctor stabbed the intruder in the neck with a surgical scalpel.
Then something popped, and the sandy-haired man collapsed, a look of shock permanently etched into his face.
Kublai Khan’s pulse raced as his heart quickened and he took aim at Blair from below the stairwell and shot him in the back of his head. Blair fell and his machete clanged against the floor and slid under the hospital bed.
Another shot rang out, killing another Christian Soldier at the door. As Khan raced into the delivery room, past his man, a booming amplified voice rang out throughout the birth center.
“FBI. Put down your weapons.”
The agents stormed the room and the center. The siege was over. FN SCAR assault rifles were trained on the remaining Christian Soldiers, including Pastor Dalton. Kublai Khan spoke to Agent Miller on the front lawn while the staff attended to the wounded.
“Thanks. I knew you were tracking Dalton, but…” Kublai Khan paused to put his hand on the chest of a passing victim on a gurney, one of his men who had survived the attack.
“Just doing my job,” Miller said, standing on the grass in his new-smelling riot gear as Dalton and the remains of his soldiers were being put into a transport in handcuffs and ankle bracelets.
“Can I say something to the Pastor?” Khan asked.
“Go for it,” Miller urged as he signaled to the officers to stop.
The minister looked at the defeated pastor and looked into his soul before speaking.
“I will pray for you,” Kublai Khan said.
The guards waited for a response.
“Save it for someone who gives a damn,” Dalton snarled as the guards led him to the transport.
Khan and Miller watched as the four remaining Christian Soldiers were loaded up and driven away through the small crowd of neighbors that stood around the gate, gawking at the spectacular commotion. Nate limped toward another transport as Khan approached him.
“You’re a good man on the wrong path,” the minister said.
Nate seemed to ignore him, concentrating on walking. He stumbled on the sloped lawn and Khan grabbed his arm to steady him. Nathaniel nodded approvingly.
“Thanks, pastor…I mean, Minister.”
“You’re welcome, Nate.” Khan nodded gravely at him as he was struck by an idea. “I’ll send you a Bible when you get where you’re going. You read that story now, hear?”
Nate blinked at him in surprise nodded, and allowed himself to be guided into the van without another word.
Agent Miller turned to rejoin his agents and said to the minister, “You’re good to go.”
“I’m sure your upcoming inspection will find things in order,” Khan said.
“Won’t be one. They found those girls—or their bodies anyway—in Seoul,” Miller said from over his shoulder as he reached his black SUV. “Somebody’s gonna have questions for Reverend Hung, but it won’t be me.”
