Desecration: Antichrist Takes The Throne (36 page)

George had been laced across the shoulders and shoulder blades repeatedly by what felt to him like the chain off a bicycle or motorcycle. Finally a fist struck him in the cheek and the jaw so many times that he knew he would never look the same. He tried and tried to time the swings and punches from his captors so that he could move with the blow. Finally he got the idea to do the opposite. When he sensed a fist was coming, heard the inhale of the assailant, felt the air movement, he lifted his chin and took it square. Just before he hit the floor and lost consciousness, he knew he had succeeded. Sleep, in any form, had to cover his body’s ravaging need for food and water.

They had not been able to get to him with talk of his family. He knew better than to think his family would be any safer if he talked. If they really knew where his wife and child were, they could easily already be dead. He had despaired of his own life by now too. As long as he would wake up in heaven, there was no sense in giving up a thing.

The power to maintain silence had not come from within, but from without. He had, at long last, surrendered to God even whatever resources he thought he had. He came to on the cold floor in a corner with no idea of the passage of time, only that his middle was racked with hunger, his throat desiccated.

His captors argued. “Do you want him dead? You get us killed if we lose him. Give him some water. Enough to keep him alive anyway.”

A few drops on his lips felt like a fresh spring, but he forced himself not to drink it in for fear they would think it was enough to satisfy him. He let most of it dribble until they quit being stingy with the bottle. He grasped the neck of it with his teeth and sucked as hard as he could, filling himself with enough to refresh him before they twisted it away. Then they pulled him back to the chair and resumed.

Abdullah landed at what was left of the airport at Larnaca on Cyprus midmorning. Albie’s contact had recommended it as one of the least patrolled airstrips in the United Carpathian States. He proved dead-on. And he was waiting with a craft, appropriated by Chang’s computer magic, that Mac would fly to Greece and land at an abandoned strip Chang had located some eighty miles west of Ptolemais. He had forged an order to a local GC operative, requiring him to deliver six Peacekeeper vehicles to an earthquake-damaged vacant lot a half mile from there. The memo came back to the bogus New Babylon commander: “You’re out of your mind. Best I can do is one.”

“Watch your tone,” Chang’s imaginary brass had answered. “One will do for now.”

Rayford had not begun to seriously worry until he saw the stress on Chloe’s face as they parted in Cyprus. Of course, it wouldn’t have been natural if she wasn’t scared. He wanted her on edge. But the open-endedness of their mission concerned him most. She and Hannah and Mac would fly in there, drive toward Ptolemais, and what? Start asking around and trust their GC identities? It sounded like suicide, but there was no way they would abandon George Sebastian as long as there was a chance he was still alive.

Rayford embraced her fiercely before she disembarked, wondering, his throat constricted, whether he would see her again. Chloe held on the way she had with Buck and Kenny in Chicago, and when finally she turned to go, Rayford feared he had not said enough. In fact, he had said nothing.

Toward Amman, Albie’s friend took over the flying. As far as anyone knew, he was alone. Once he was in and down and hangared, Tsion, Rayford, and Abdullah would emerge from the plane and walk across the runway to the tarmac, as if appearing from nowhere. When accosted, as they would surely be, Tsion would ask to talk directly with Carpathia, offering hope for an end to the blood in the oceans if he and his two anonymous companions could borrow a helicopter for the trip to Petra.

All Rayford could think of was that the last non-Israeli he had sent into Petra had not come out. And yet he and his Operation Eagle forces had proved invulnerable to the attack of Carpathia’s army. Whether it had to do with timing or location, he could not know. He just didn’t want to jeopardize Abdullah’s life, or his own, if he could help it. But he couldn’t. The risk was there, and they were going.

Chang furtively monitored Suhail Akbar’s and Nicolae’s offices as he sat at his terminal. With the heat turned up and security forces combing the place for a mole, he had to be more careful than ever. He kept an eye on Figueroa’s office and constantly covered his tracks. Finally pay dirt.

Director Akbar’s secretary informed him that GC Security in Amman was calling, ostensibly with Tsion Ben-Judah on the line for Carpathia. “Put them on,” Suhail said. When they were patched through, he insisted on talking with Ben-Judah personally. “How do I know it’s really you?”

“You do not, sir,” Tsion said. “Except that your own people are telling you it is 1.1 have a request of Carpathia and will ask it only of him.”

“You would be wise to address him appropriately and formally, Dr. Ben-Judah.”

“And then he will overlook the fact that I refer to him daily to a billion people as Antichrist, the enemy of God, and to Fortunate as his False Prophet?”

“Hold on.”

Suhail told his secretary to give him time to get to Carpathia’s office and to then transfer the call there. Two minutes later, Akbar sat panting in Nicolae’s office when he hit the speaker button.

“Dr. Ben-Judah!” Nicolae began, as if to an old friend.

“I am requesting helicopter transport to Petra for myself and two associates without interference, in exchange for considering asking God to withdraw the plague of the seas having turned to blood.”

“And why should I contemplate this?”

“You do not need me to tell you that. Surely your people are telling you that there has never been a time of greater resistance to you around the world. Renaming all of the oceans the Red Sea could not be in your best interest.”

“If I have someone ferry you to Petra, the seas will return to water?”

“I do not speak on God’s behalf. I said I would consider asking him.”

“You would only consider it?”

“I will ask. He will consider it.”

“Granted.”

“But we need only the aircraft. Not a pilot.”

“Real-ly. Granted.”

Tsion hung up. Carpathia said, “You are welcome. Suhail, how long to Petra from Amman by helicopter?”

“I will see to it that they are issued one that will get them there in no more than an hour.”

“And everything else is in place?”

“Of course.”

“I want the area leveled within minutes after his arrival and the missile to make sure within moments after that.”

“I will merely give my fighter-bombers time to get out of the way. They will make visual confirmation that he is there, drop their payloads, clear the area, and we will launch.”

“From?”

“Ironically enough, Amman.”

“Excellent. And the planes are equipped with videodisc recording devices?”

“Of course, but not only that.”

“Something more?”

“We have arranged for you to watch live.’

“Do not tease.”

“A monitor will be in your office.”

“Ooh! Oh, Suhail! Something to enjoy.”

Had Rayford not been petrified, he might have enjoyed that Tsion looked the same in the Jordan sun as he did around the Strong Building. It was Abdullah and Rayford who looked like Middle Easterners in their robes. Tsion looked more like a rumpled professor.

“Who is your pilot?” a GC guard asked.

Tsion nodded to Abdullah, and they were led to a chopper. Once in the air, Rayford called Chloe. “Where are you?” he said.

“We’re on the road, Dad, but something’s not right. Mac had to hot-wire this vehicle.”

“Chang didn’t tell the guy to leave the keys?”

“Apparently not. And of course you know Mac. He’s going to hop out and thumb a ride with some other GC while we drive merrily into town, trying to pass ourselves off as assignees from New Babylon to check on the Judah-ite raids.”

“You ready?”

“Am I ready? Why didn’t you make me stay in Chicago with my family? What kind of a father are you?”

He knew she was kidding, but he couldn’t muster a chuckle. “Don’t make me wish I had.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. We’re not coming out of here without Sebastian.”

When Abdullah came within sight of Petra, Chaim was in the high place with a quarter million people inside and another three-quarter million round about the place, waving to the helicopter. A large flat spot had been prepared, but the people covered their faces when the craft kicked up a cloud of dust. The shutting down of the engine and the dissipating of the dust were met with applause and a cheer as Tsion stepped out and waved shyly.

Chaim announced, “Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah, our teacher and mentor and man of God!”

Rayford and Abdullah climbed down unnoticed and sat on a nearby ledge. Tsion quieted the crowd and began: “My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our Messiah and Savior and Lord. Allow me to first fulfill a promise made to friends and scatter here the ashes of a martyr for the faith.”

He pulled from his pocket the tiny urn and removed the lid, shaking the contents into the wind. “She defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by her testimony, for she did not love her life but laid it down for him.”

Abdullah nudged Rayford and looked up. In the distance came a screaming pair of fighter-bombers. Within seconds the people noticed them too and began to murmur.

In New Babylon Chang hunched over his computer, watching what Carpathia saw transmitted from the cockpit of one of the bombers. Chang layered the audio from the plane with the bug in Carpathia’s office. It became clear that Leon, Viv, Suhail, and Carpathia’s secretary had gathered around the monitor in the potentate’s office.

“Target locked, armed,” one pilot said. The other repeated him.

“Here we go!” Nicolae said, his voice high-pitched. “Here we go!”

Tsion held out his hands. “Do not be distracted, beloved, for we rest in the sure promises of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that we have been delivered to this place of refuge that cannot be penetrated by the enemy of his Son.” He had to wait out the roar of the jets as they passed over them and banked in the distance.

“Yes!” Nicolae squealed. “Show yourselves; then launch upon your return!”

As the machines of war returned, Tsion said, “Please join me on your knees, heads bowed, hearts in tune with God, secure in his promise that the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”

Rayford knelt but kept his eyes on the bombers. As they screamed into range again, they simultaneously dropped payloads headed directly for the high place, epicenter of a million kneeling souls.

“Yessss!” Carpathia howled. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!’

Rejoice, O Heavens! You citizens of heaven, rejoice! Be glad! But woe to you people of the world, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.

Revelation 12:12,
TLB