Authors: Shawn Hopkins
“Here,” he said, and took off his jacket, putting it over hers.
“Thanks.”
He pulled his hood up. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”
She shook her head. “They said they found you, told me to go with them. Next thing I know I’m blindfolded and injected with something. Then I’m put in a car and brought out here.” She paused. “That’s what I know.”
The rain erased the remaining snow, and revealed once more the leaves covering the forest floor. He had to speak up so that she could hear him over the sound of it. “There’s more you need to know. Something I have to tell you.”
“About what that guy said? About the terror attack in Los Angeles?”
He clenched his jaw, didn’t know what to say. Did he have to say anything? He was afraid of what she would think.
She spoke again, taking the burden off him. “I know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know. I know that it was an inside job.” She looked up at him. “I know about the drills. I know what you did. I know all about what you used to do.”
His face contorted into a mask of confusion. “How could—”
She cut him off, raising her voice over the falling rain. “After you disappeared, I got a visit from the CIA. They told me they had reason to believe you were still alive. They wanted to know if you’d contacted me. The agent told me about what happened in Iran. He told me they set you up, tried to get rid of you. Because of what you knew.”
“He told you what I knew?”
“Pieces of it. But that’s all I needed. I went online and started investigating everything I could, became a fanatic. Found that there was this whole movement dedicated to exposing the government’s involvement in the attack and trying to reveal the role of terrorism within the globalist plot to usher in a New World Order.”
Scott knew of those groups. They had been around for a while, and he knew their theories were often close to the mark — at least once you got past the straw men the media put up to discredit their message. “What did he say?”
“He said the government was lying about what really happened. He said somehow you were involved. He claimed to be your friend, said he wanted to help you.”
“Yeah right,” he muttered.
“I know all about what happened. Well, as much as anyone can, I guess. And I know you were involved.” She stopped walking, turned and faced him. Water was dripping all down her face, but he could tell she was trying not to cry. “I don’t care.”
He stared at her.
“I forgive you. I don’t care.”
Her gaze was piercing, and he couldn’t stand it. Tears began swelling up in his own eyes.
“I know you’re not a monster, that you’re torn apart by what they made you do! I know that’s why you disappeared!”
“So many people,” he whispered.
She grabbed his sweatshirt. “Let me help you bear the burden of it.”
And then he couldn’t hold back any longer, the guilt finally venting through torrents of convulsing sobs.
She wrapped her arms around him and cried with him. “I forgive you,” she kept saying.
He collapsed to his knees and pulled her down with him. And there, in the mud, under curtains of falling water with soldiers hunting them down, they held each other, refusing to let go.
“I’m sorry I left you. It was the only way I knew how to protect you,” he stuttered. He was running his hands over her face, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“I know,” she said, still crying. “I thought you were dead, but then they came and I…”
“They told me you’d been killed. I wasn’t there to protect you…”
She touched his face, like she couldn’t believe it was real. “Where’ve you been?”
“Vermont.”
She laughed, choking on her tears and the falling rain. “I missed you so much.”
He kissed her, and she kissed him back, as their hands moved up and down their bodies in a frenzy barely containable. Neither one could bring themselves to actually believe it was happening, that it was real. That they were together. Forgetting about the soldiers, about the world around them, they rolled into the mud until Scott came up on top of her. He traced her face with a finger. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the husband you deserved,” he whispered.
She leaned up and kissed him. “I didn’t appreciate how hard you tried until you were gone. Every day I wished that I could go back and do it differently. To be there for you.”
“No. You were right. I should’ve quit when I had the chance. I didn’t know…”
“Shhh.” She put a finger over his lips. “God’s given us a second chance.” And then she grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face down to hers again.
He was lost in a dream, lost in over a decade of futile hopes never realized. Only now they had been. And it changed everything. Changed him. He could feel it already. He didn’t know what it meant or where it would lead, but he could tell that the conflict he’d been feeling over the last few days was somehow coming to an end.
As they lost themselves in each other’s arms, their surroundings disappeared, and they were unable to notice the cold, the rain, the mud…
Or the men sneaking up on them.
42
H
e spotted them from the corner of his eye, men silently closing in on them from out of nowhere. He started to reach for his gun, but thought better of it. Rolling off Jennifer, Scott raised his hands. It was the only thing he could think to do that would buy them some more time. If he forced a gunfight, then both he and Jennifer would be killed, and if they tried running for it, they’d be shot in the back. He knew that these guys wouldn’t kill them if they didn’t have to. They would still want to know where the ring was. But then he recognized two of the men. They were from Malachi’s Mossad team.
Before Scott could say anything, however, the closest Israeli agent, barely visible through bare underbrush and curtains of falling rain, lifted a finger to his lips, informing Scott to remain silent.
Scott leaned over and put his mouth to Jennifer’s ear. “Stay still.” And he slowly pulled out the pistol.
“
Psst
.”
Scott looked behind him in time to see another Mossad agent come slithering through the undergrowth beside him.
“There’s three left,” he whispered. “We lost them a hundred meters northeast.”
“Special Forces?” Scott whispered back.
He nodded, raising his semi-automatic machine gun and disappearing back into the woods.
Scott laid down beside Jennifer. “Lay on your stomach,” he whispered.
She was confused, worry darting back and forth in her eyes, but she obeyed.
Scott climbed on top of her, shielding her, and held the pistol out in front of him, aiming into the dripping seasonal portrait.
Two minutes later, one of the NAU Special Forces soldiers came walking out of the rain right in front of him. Because the rain was falling so hard, splashing mud all over them and hiding them against their surroundings, the soldier couldn’t see them. Both he and Jennifer watched as the soldier moved his weapon back and forth, searching. Scott prepared to shoot, and he could feel Jennifer’s shivering body tense up beneath him as she braced for it. He hoped he didn’t have to do it, that she didn’t have to see it.
But he did.
The soldier’s eyes fell on them, and the gun in his hands began to swing in their direction.
Scott squeezed the trigger three times, and the 9mm bullets struck the soldier in the shoulder and side, twisting him to the ground, the assault rifle in his hand erupting in a reactionary burst that kicked up some mud and sent some bark flying.
And then more gunshots suddenly exploded out of the stillness, and the struggling soldier disappeared beneath a hanging mist of red.
The whole area blew up in exchanged firepower.
Jennifer squirmed under her husband, trying to cover her ears against the sound of SAWs working through belts of ammo and reports from grenade launchers shaking the ground. But soon, the battle began drifting southeast and away from them.
“Come on,” he said, getting to his knees and pulling her up. Her whole front was covered in mud, and she was freezing. “Stay with me. We can do this.” And he led her west, the gunfire disappearing behind them within minutes. Thunder rumbled through the sky.
After what seemed like an hour of walking, Scott grabbed Jennifer. “Hold on.”
Her teeth chattered as she looked around, eyes wide. “What?”
“Shhh.” Peering through the rain, he slowly raised the gun and began circling around her, acting as a shield. He could feel them closing in.
And one of Malachi’s men burst through a wall of undergrowth beside them, almost getting himself shot.
Scott relaxed and let the pistol drop to his side as two more agents appeared, one holding his shoulder and the other limping. Scott tucked the 9mm into the back of his pants. “Thanks,” he stated. Whatever their intentions, they had saved their lives.
The uninjured Israeli, the one who had whispered in his ear back there in the mud, acknowledged the thanks with a simple nod before looking over to Jennifer. “Are you alright?”
Jennifer nodded her head, still confused, her face stricken of all color.
Then he looked back to Scott. “Malachi sent us to keep an eye on you, to make sure you didn’t get yourself killed.”
Scott didn’t believe that.
“What did you tell them?” the agent asked.
“I told them I buried it out in the woods, but they would’ve followed us back to the commune. They put a microchip or something in her.”
“We can take care of that when we get back.”
“You think we could do it here?”
“If you are worried about the commune being discovered, I am afraid there is nothing that can be done about that now.”
Scott thought of Ralston, of the children throwing the baseball. “They’ll be slaughtered,” he said.
“Malachi explained their situation to them. He encouraged them to leave in advance.”
“To go where?”
“There is another community in New York, about a hundred miles northeast.”
“And how are they supposed to get there?”
“Come on, Matthew.” The three Mossad agents turned and began heading back northwest through the woods, leaving Scott to fall in line. Scott grabbed Jennifer’s hand and led her after them. “How are they supposed to get there?” he asked again.
It wasn’t fair, and he needed desperately to do something about it. But what? What was his main priority now? His wife, the fate of the ring, or the community? Just a few hours before, the answer would’ve been absurdly obvious, but now, after looking into Jennifer’s eyes… somehow he needed to find a way to accomplish all three.
****
Two hours later, Scott led his wife into the commune and toward the Israeli command post. He helped her up the steps and into the large tent.
“So, you survived?”
Scott spun to see Malachi standing there wearing a small smile.
“Yeah.” He didn’t return the expression. “Thanks for the backup.”
“What are friends for?” Then he turned his attention to Jennifer. “I hear you have a little problem.”
She instinctively grabbed her neck.
“I think it’s a microchip,” Scott said. “A transmitter.”
“We’ll get it right out,” he responded. He motioned for some of his men to come over. “Lay down on your stomach, please,” he told Jennifer.
She handed Scott his jacket back and lay down on the table, shaking from a bitter chill that seemed to be in her very bones.
Scott watched as they extracted the tiny chip from beneath the skin on her neck, and he knew that he needed to get her someplace warm fast. If she got sick, with her body already exhausted and vulnerable, there would be no hospital available to her.
One of Malachi’s men put a bandage on her neck, while another dropped the chip onto the ground and crushed it with his heel.
Malachi looked at his watch, then to Scott. “We can’t all fit on the Blackhawk so we will make two trips. You and your wife will be on the second trip. In the mean time, you might as well get a fire going.”
Another agent handed Jennifer a blanket, and Scott nodded his thanks as she wrapped herself in it.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” he said to her. Even if it wasn’t, she was too weak to protest. He kissed her on the forehead, put his jacket on, and went after Malachi. Catching up to him, he placed a hand on his elbow.
Malachi turned. “What is it?”
“Did you talk to Melissa?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And she told us everything that she could.”
Scott leaned a little closer. “And what was that?”
“You suddenly care?”
“Maybe. What did she say?”
“She told us what she learned from studying the ring. Did you read all of the books?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know about the rings, about the Copper Scrolls, and what many have theorized they point to.”
A burst of wind suddenly made him conscious of how cold he was. He nodded, understanding that Malachi had lied to him in the car, that he obviously had read the books, or at least knew what was in them.
Malachi continued. “Father Baer’s writings tell of a scroll the Templars found, one that explained how the rings worked. That scroll, as far as I know, has never been found. Maybe it was handed down through the generations of secret societies along with the other ring, but I doubt it. If they still have the instructions, then why would they need to study it so extensively? I think they only had bits and pieces of the whole to work with. They finally had both rings in their possession, but they didn’t know what to do with them.”
Scott pondered this, wondered if it were possible.
Of course it’s possible.
But was it likely? Why would NASA be studying it? If they simply hoped to unlock its secrets, why not use gemologists or archeologists? Why NASA? He figured it was more plausible that NASA’s interest in it had more to do with that whole extraterrestrial hoax they were supposedly conjuring up, the world’s religions an expression of alien intelligence.
Malachi pulled the ring out of his pocket and held it up so that Scott could see it. “This ring, along with the other one, functions as a key that unlocks the secret chamber the Ark now rests in. But, even more importantly, it leads to the
location
of that chamber. We do not believe that gaining access to the chamber will be very difficult. We expect opening it with the rings to be somewhat self-explanatory. The problem has always been finding it.”