Desecration: Antichrist Takes The Throne (25 page)

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 Abdul-lah’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 baby-sitters.”

“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.

CHLOE
SLIPPED
out in dark slacks and a black jacket. Besides her phone, she carried an ancient Luger she found among Rayford’s keepsakes. She had experimented with it until she figured out how to load it and work the safety. She only guessed how it might fire, but it gave her a measure of security she hadn’t known was available.

She walked five blocks in the pitch-blackness of unlighted streets and heard nary a sound. Chloe looked to her left at every cross street now, imagining she was close to her target. How far off could she be? Maybe a quarter of a mile, she decided. So she went left two blocks and started looking both ways at each corner.

Rayford ascended and hovered at less than a thousand feet, just high enough to allow himself a sense of what the Global Community Security and Intelligence forces were sending their way. “George,” he said, “switch seats with Dr. Rosenzweig, please.”

“What are we looking at?” Chaim said as he settled in. Rayford told him and pointed to where the two other columns of tanks, armored trucks, personnel carriers, and rocket launchers peeled off to circle around the massive crowd of Israelis.

“I worry that only you Israeli believers are safe,” Rayford said. “But are even you safe outside the walls of Petra?”

“Captain, the question must be academic. Without a miracle of God, we are still hours from having more than half our people inside. How long before these attackers reach us?”

“They’re probably within firing range right now,” Rayford said. “In twenty more minutes they will all be in position. If they advance as soon as they are mustered, they would be able to fight hand to hand within ten more minutes of that.”

“So half an hour…”

“Maximum.”

“My people are neither armed nor prepared to defend themselves. We are at the mercy of God.”

“I’m tempted to have you urge all believers who are not Israelis to get into Petra as quickly as they can,” Rayford said. “Do you think your people would defer to them, allowing them to get to the front of the helicopter lines and make way for those who would walk in?”

“Not without understanding, and how would there be time to explain?”

“The alternative is that Operation Eagle suspend the airlift and every able-bodied believer, except those from Israel, be armed and prepared to stand against this attack.”

“You will be hopelessly outnumbered, Captain.”

“But we would inflict damage, and we would not go down without a fight.”

“I would not begin to try to advise you,” Chaim said. “You must do what you must do. What is God telling you?”

“He’s telling me I am as afraid as I have ever been, but I cannot stand by and allow a massacre. Are you able to operate a weapon, Doctor?”

“Forgive me, but I am not here to resist with arms. I am to take charge of these people in Petra and prepare the way for a visit from Tsion. And when he again leaves, I will remain.”

Rayford looked over his shoulder and shouted, “George, Abdullah, find out where Albie and Mac are. Tell them our situation and to connect with us as soon as we’re on the ground, if they can. Stand by to load weapons and set up a perimeter a hundred yards in front of the Israelis.”

“I am only guessing, Captain,” Abdullah said, “but if we are to surround them up to the walls on either side of the Siq, we will likely stand more than fifty yards apart each.”

“I didn’t say this would be easy or even successful, Smitty. I’m open to suggestions.”

“I have none.”

“Then round up our guys and tell the rest that all Operation Eagle personnel are on combat duty effective immediately.” He turned back to Chaim and motioned him to lean close. “Doctor, I need to tell you what happened here yesterday. ...”

Chang had been the fastest keyboarder in his Chinese high school, regardless of whether they were inputting in Chinese or English. Now he sat speed-typing code into a secondary window every chance he got. He maneuvered his monitor in such a way that it faced neither the surveillance camera in the corner nor his coworkers if they remained at their stations. He also forced himself to look not at the characters he was typing but at the reflection off the screen, which told him when Figueroa or anyone else happened to stroll within view.

The secondary window, as he designed it, would show up on any check of the machine as a local notepad, but he programmed his codes so they would appear as random keys rather than any sensible strings. If questioned, he could attribute the gibberish to residue in translating from Chinese to English or even a computer language. He was building and formatting an independent drive he could access from anywhere and which would duplicate the capability of his laptop.

Chloe kept peeking at her watch and asking herself if she was a fool. What did she expect to find? Was she just satisfying her curiosity? Being out by herself, especially in the dark, gave her a wholly satisfying sense of freedom, which in turn made her wonder if she was too young for the responsibilities she bore. She was a wife and mother, head of an international co-op that meant the difference between health and starvation for its millions of members. And yet she needed this kind of an escape? One with perhaps more danger than she knew?

Finally she reached a corner, where she looked right to no avail and then left, which made her stop. Could that be her source of light, that faint strip of a lighter shade that seemed to color the darkness four or five blocks away? Did she have the time or energy to see if she had been that far off in her calculation? Of course. What else was she out here for? It was clear Buck and probably her dad were not really going to let her journey to Petra with Tsion when an air attack was certain. This might be her only mission, and of course, the odds were it would prove to be nothing. But even if it was folly and turned out to be nothing but a game of hide-and-seek in the dark, it was better than nothing.

She turned left.

Rayford banked and circled to drop back down, and as the craft leveled and settled, he saw Buck hurryin toward him, motioning with a finger across his neck to cut the engines as soon as possible. From all over the area, other drivers and chopper pilots emerged from vehicles and aircraft and headed his way, awaiting instructions and weaponry for the stand against the GC.

The crowd, however, seemed to ignore both the Operation Eagle personnel and the GC, though the clouds of dust and the sounds of engines drew closer. Rather, the people all seemed riveted to where the Siq led into the high-walled path into Petra. Rayford had dropped too quickly to see what they could be looking at.

Buck reached the chopper, more frantically signaling the cut-engine message, and Rayford quickly shut down and reached past Chaim to push open the door. “Everybody out,” Buck said. “You’ve got to see this!”

“Do we need weapons?” Rayford called, and they tumbled out.

“Doesn’t look like it. Follow me. Chaim, you all right?”

“Call me Micah, but yes. Lead the way.”

“Aren’t we afraid of people recognizing him?” Rayford said.

“No one’s looking,” Buck said.

“So I noticed,” Rayford said, sprinting behind Buck and realizing that Chaim had hiked up his robe and was somehow keeping pace. George and Abdullah pounded along behind.

Buck led them to an incline, then bent and charged up to where a giant boulder offered a flat surface from where they could overlook the hundreds of thousands. “There,” Buck said, “near the entrance. See?”

Chloe grew more excited the farther she walked. The contrast between the light and the darkness grew stronger, and she knew she had found what she had seen from the safe house in the Strong Building. The possibility that it represented anything more than a rogue light left on by some quirk of the power grid was, she knew, likely only in her head. But as she came within a block and a half of the window, which was barred and indeed at street level, she saw the camera. It sat directly above the window, hooded by a thick metal box that she would not be surprised to learn was covered with graffiti. A tiny dot of red light glowed from it, and the lens, though she could barely make it out, swiveled in a 180-degree arc.

Chloe was certain she was too far from any light source to have been picked up by what appeared to be an old camera, but she slowed and stayed close to buildings and the rubble of buildings, stopping whenever she detected the lens pointing in her direction. When it swung away, she hurried to get closer.

Finally she crossed the street away from the camera and pressed her back up against a wall. Again she stopped when the camera seemed to find her, and when it swung the other way, she edged closer. Eventually she was within three feet of where the light from the window reached the wall next to her across the street. Inside the window she saw only a fluorescent ceiling unit with three of its four tubes illuminated. When next the camera scanned her way, she realized the light barely touched her left sleeve. She stood stock-still, wondering if the camera had any kind of a motion sensor.