Dead Heat

  Ezekiel 36 and 37 had been his starting point, and initially the clearest prophecy of all. It plainly described Israel being reborn as a nation at the end of history, the Jews pouring back into the Holy Land after centuries of exile, and the Jews of this resurrected Israel then rebuilding the ancient ruins, making the deserts bloom, becoming wealthy, and creating "an exceedingly great army." To Bennett's astonishment, all of this had come to pass in his lifetime, even though the Hebrew prophet had written it twenty-five hundred years earlier.

  What's more, the next two chapters of the book of Ezekiel had come true as well.

  Ezekiel 38 and 39 clearly described the rise of a future dictator in Russia who would build a military alliance with Iran and a host of Middle Eastern countries to attack Israel in something that would become known as the "War of Gog and Magog." The prophecy also indicated that just when it would appear as if all hope for Israel was lost and a holocaust was about to occur, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would supernaturally intervene and come to Israel's rescue. Ezekiel described

  fire and hailstones falling from heaven on the enemies of the revived Jewish state. He

  wrote of a massive earthquake that would be unleashed, the chaos and carnage that would ensue, and he wrote that when the smoke cleared, Israel would be physically saved from

  destruction and the Lord would pour out His Spirit on "the whole house of Israel,"

  bringing about a spiritual salvation as well. Ezekiel 38:16 specifically described the event as happening in "the last days." And to Bennett's amazement, he had seen it all happen over the past year. There was no question that he was now in what the Bible called the

  last days.

  If that weren't enough, Ezekiel stated categorically that as such events unfolded, the entire world would perceive Israel and Jerusalem as God Himself did, as the center of history.

  Ezekiel chapter 5, verse 5, put it this way: "This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her." And sure enough, it was all coming true. All eyes were now riveted on Israel, the epicenter of all the major events that were shaking the world and shaping its future.

  As for Europe, Dr. Mordechai and most of the Bible scholars Bennett had been studying

  since the older man's death strongly believed that it had a starring role in the End Times drama as well. In Daniel chapter 2 and chapter 7, for example, the Hebrew prophet

  foretold not only the rise of a ferocious and powerful Roman Empire emerging after the

  empires of Babylon, Media-Persia, and Greece—something that happened just as Daniel

  said it would, hundreds of years after he wrote those prophecies—but also of a revived and all-powerful Roman Empire at the end of history.

  Daniel 8:8-9 seemed to indicate that the Antichrist would be a ruler who emerged

  from the ashes of the Greco-Roman Empire and would gather enormous powers as his

  military forces moved south and east toward the land of Israel, to surround and eventually conquer it.

  Daniel 9:26-27 indicated that the Antichrist—whom the Bible described as a

  horrifically evil, all-powerful future world dictator—would emerge from the people who

  would destroy the Temple and the Holy City of Jerusalem after the Messiah was "cut off." It was the Romans, of course, who had destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in AD 70, not

  long after they crucified Jesus, the King of the Jews and the Savior of the Gentiles.

  It seemed obvious to Bennett, therefore, that the Antichrist was going to rise out of a revived Roman Empire.

  Of course, the very notion of a revived Roman Empire had seemed absolutely

  impossible during the twentieth century. With the onslaught of World Wars I and II and

  the deaths of tens of millions of people, no continent on earth was more divided, more

  destroyed, more enfeebled, more soaked with blood and steeped in hatred for one another than Europe. But then, lo and behold, Israel was reborn in 1948, just as the Scriptures foretold, and Europe began to rise as well. The European Economic Community—the

  forerunner of the European Union—was created on March 25, 1957, upon the signing of

  the now-famous Treaty of Rome. Sixteen hundred years after the Roman Empire had

  faded into the night, it was suddenly rising again, like a phoenix from the ashes. And look at it now, Bennett thought. The EU comprised more than two dozen member states, nearly half a billion people, one tightly integrated economic system, one currency, one increasingly integrated political system, one foreign policy czar, one passport for all its people, borderless crossings, and all of it right on schedule according to Bible prophecy.

  Iraq, too, had a role in the last days. The Hebrew prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had

  made that clear, as had Ezekiel and the apostle John in the book of Revelation. And

  amazingly, Babylon really had risen from the dead and was now the center of power and

  commerce in the postwar Middle East. People had said it could never happen, but it had.

  Bennett had seen it with his own eyes.

  Remarkably, Asia seemed to have a powerful presence in history's last chapter, Bennett

  had discovered. Revelation 16:12 explicitly stated the "kings from the east" would come marching through Iraq, up the Euphrates River valley, onward to Babylon, and eventually on to Armageddon, in Israel's oil-rich Jezreel Valley. Who exactly were these kings?

  Bennett wasn't yet sure. The leaders of China seemed to be waiting in the bull pen, as it were, for their moment on the field. Perhaps North Korea and Indonesia would join them.

  India and Pakistan might too. Time would tell, but based on what he had witnessed so far, it wasn't hard for Bennett to imagine a new coalition of Asian military machines banding together to attack Israel in the not-too-distant future.

  But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't find any specific reference in the

  Scriptures to the United States playing an End Times role, and it bothered him greatly.

  2

  Was he missing an obvious reference? Or was it true that none were there? And if America wasn't in the Bible, Bennett had wondered for months, then what was going to happen to his country?

  Several months earlier, he and Erin had had dinner with a Jordanian pastor friend who

  suggested the answer to his question was the Rapture. At some point soon, the pastor had argued, hundreds of millions—possibly even billions—of born-again followers of Jesus

  Christ were suddenly going to disappear around the world in the blink of an eye, caught up in the heavens with Jesus Himself. When that happened, the pastor had asked, wouldn't America essentially implode?

  That was probably true, Bennett realized. He remembered how devastated the American

  people had been after losing nearly three thousand souls on 9/11. How would they react when twenty or thirty or fifty million people or more were suddenly gone? What would happen

  when some of the highest-ranking officials in the government suddenly disappeared?

  What if tens of thousands of military commanders and police officers and firefighters and doctors simply vanished, from the Carolinas to California? Could any country recover from such an event? Not quickly, Bennett concluded. That would certainly explain how the U.S.

  could effectively be neutralized in the last days.

  But what Bennett had never really considered carefully until now was the possibility

  that something else might devastate the American people, rendering them ineffective

  heading into the last of the last days. A financial downturn on Wall Street. The sudden collapse of the dollar. The beginning of another Great Depression. A series of devastating earthquakes. Or hurricanes. Or other natural disasters, like a tsunami. Now America had been hit by the most cataclysmic terrorist attack of all time—five nuclear warheads. And there might be more to come. None of i
t was clearly prophesied in the Scriptures. Not

  that he could find. But perhaps he should have foreseen the neutralization of America by reading more carefully between the lines.

  If so, what else was he missing? What exactly was coming next? What would he tell the

  president when they stood face-to-face—a meeting that was less than twenty-four hours

  away?

  3

  8:45 A.M.-OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, BABYLON, IRAQ

  "Perhaps it is time for you to leave," Al-Hassani said coldly.

  The seventy-six-year-old Iraqi leader had no intention of being accused of genocide

  by the secretary-general of the United Nations, especially one who was all but

  threatening him with invasion if the United States of Eurasia didn't start shipping his pals more oil and lowering prices for them more quickly. But Lucente clearly wasn't ready to go.

  "I'm not leaving here until you and I come to an understanding," the secretary-general replied.

  "There is nothing more to discuss," Al-Hassani shot back. "I am telling you point-blank that neither I nor anyone employed by, paid by, or associated with the USE had

  anything to do with these evil attacks against the U.S. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion."

  Tariq sipped his tea and said nothing.

  "On the record," Al-Hassani continued, "I tell you what I have already said publicly. I condemn these attacks and anyone who was involved. But between you and me, Salvador,

  while this is a very dark day, it has—albeit unexpectedly—created a historic opening, and you know it. Sitting before you and me is an opportunity to reshape the world in a way not seen since the collapse of the Roman Empire. Are you going to just let it slip away? Or are you going to seize the moment and fulfill your destiny?"

  "What exactly are you saying, Mustafa?"

  Al-Hassani leaned forward and lowered his voice. "I am saying that a world without the United States—or at least a world in which the U.S. is, for all intents and purposes,

  militarily and financially neutralized—creates an enormous global leadership vacuum that you and I could battle to fill, or . . .

  "Or what?"

  "Or a vacuum you and I could work together to fill."

  "Toward what end?" Lucente asked.

  "Toward whatever end we wish," Al-Hassani whispered in reply. "But as for me, I don't dream in black and white."

  "You apparently have given this some thought," Lucente said.

  4

  "Tell me you haven't, Salvador," Al-Hassani challenged. "Look me in the eye and tell me you haven't thought about a world without America, a world without a superpower, a

  world where the United Nations secretary- general is the king of kings and the lord of

  lords?"

  Lucente refused to take the bait.

  "Perhaps we should spend some time brainstorming this together, Mr. Secretary-

  General," Al-Hassani continued. "I have a feeling you and I could be very creative in crafting a new world order, and very effective in bringing it about. But make no mistake: if you try to pin these attacks on me, you'll be facing five-hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil by Christmas. I don't care how many troops you send to stop us. My people would rather set our oil wells on fire than give away our national treasures while you let the bloody Jews build a Temple and emerge as a financial and military superpower unchecked and

  unhindered."

  Lucente sat back in his chair and sipped his tea. "Mustafa, you are telling me without qualification that you had absolutely nothing to do with these attacks?"

  "That is exactly what I am telling you," Al-Hassani said.

  "But you are also telling me that you don't mind taking advantage of the moment to further your own expansionist ambitions?"

  "I'm telling you everything has just changed, Salvador," Al-Hassani said. "I'm saying the whole world is in our hands. For better or for worse, we have been handed a gift. I have no earthly idea who is responsible for what has happened and honestly, I don't very much care.

  My interest is not the past. It's the future, and 'the future belongs to those who prepare for it today."'

  Lucente raised his eyebrows. "Malcolm X?"

  Al-Hassani nodded.

  "Odd," the secretary-general observed, "you don't strike me as being prone to quoting African-American revolutionaries, Mustafa."

  Al-Hassani smiled. "A little revolution is a good thing every now and then; don't you think?"

  "It depends," Lucente said.

  "On what?" the Iraqi asked.

  Lucente took his last sip of tea. "On who's being revolted against, and who's doing the revolting."

  The two men sat in silence for a few minutes, each contemplating the enormity of

  what the other was proposing, as Khalid Tariq wrote quietly in his notebook. They had

  come at last to the moment of truth, Al-Hassani believed. It was time for Lucente to

  decide just what kind of world leader he was destined to be: caretaker or game changer?

  With James MacPherson dead and the American people reeling from the loss of four

  major cities—including their political, financial, technological, and entertainment

  capitals—Al-Hassani was convinced that a charismatic European like Salvador Lucente and an intellectual Arab like himself could emerge as historic figures. Al-Hassani, after all, had the vision, the oil, and half a billion sheep eager to follow his lead. Lucente had decades of experience uniting a deeply divided continent into one political entity, one military

  command, and the strongest currency on the planet. Imagine, Al-Hassani thought, if they worked together. Imagine if as one voice they moved quickly and decisively to offer a chaotic and confused world the way forward into a new era of peace and prosperity.

  5

  The leadership of the entire globe was ripe for the picking. It was time for the harvest.

  The question was, could they work together?

  For his part, Al-Hassani was still furious at Lucente for a host of reasons—for barely

  lifting a finger to stop the Zionists from building the Temple in Jerusalem, for threatening to send E.U. forces to seize his oil fields, for all but accusing him of attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons, to name just a few. Lucente surely had his own list. The secretary-general, Al-Hassani knew firsthand, was a deeply ambitious man. Moreover, he was

  short-tempered and—how to put this?—an occasional stranger to the truth. Theirs would not be an easy partnership.

  But Al-Hassani had no doubt this was the moment, and he had the leverage. A new

  world order could not be fashioned without Babylon and her oil. Nor could a new world

  order emerge if there was continued chaos and bloodshed in the Middle East. If Lucente

  truly wanted the unprecedented global power of which Al-Hassani spoke—and of which

  Al-Hassani was sure he privately fantasized—he would have to strike a grand bargain, and he would have to strike it fast.

  6

  11:10 P.M. MST-NORAD OPERATIONS CENTER

  President Oaks was surprised to see Briggs alive.

  The last he had heard, the NORAD commander had been rushed to the medical unit

  after collapsing from an apparent heart attack. Fortunately for both men, it was not a heart attack, just a sudden decrease in blood pressure, brought on by stress and the fact that in all the chaos, Briggs had forgotten to take his pills.

  When Oaks asked about his condition, Briggs waved off his concern and said he was

  under careful medical supervision. He was back on his feet now and insisting he felt fine.

  The president was in no mood to argue. He needed the general's expertise, and he was

  grateful the man was still functioning. So that was that. There was too much more to be done, and too little time to do it.

  The two men moved immediately into a secure conference room known as "the Tank,"

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p; which was quickly sealed off by an entourage of Secret Service agents. Joining Oaks and Briggs by secure videoconference was Secretary of Defense Burt Trainor, who had arrived at Site R, and Homeland Security Secretary Lee James, now at Mount Weather in a hardened

  communications bunker eighty feet underground.

  "Where are the Joint Chiefs?" the president asked as they began. "I'm sorry to report to you that they are all dead, sir," Trainor said bluntly.

  "All of them?" Oaks asked in shock.

  "Yes, sir, I'm afraid so."

  The president felt shell-shocked. "What about Congress?"

  "We've confirmed that the Speaker of the House was in Manhattan at the time of the attacks," James said. "We're listing him as missing and presumed dead. The Senate majority leader was at his daughter's wedding in D.C. and was killed in the attack. So far, we've only been able to track down a dozen members of the House and five members of the Senate. But we're still looking."

  "And the ones you've found?" the president asked.

  "All Democrats, mostly from the Midwest, sir," James said. "I wired you the names."

  The president picked up a piece of paper marked "EYES ONLY" and glanced down the list.

  Nearly all were relatively junior members. None were committee chairs. None were on the 7

  Foreign Relations or Armed Services committee. How exactly was he supposed to rebuild the American government with this?

  "Where are they all right now?" he asked.

  "All of these have been found and secured by local law enforcement or National Guard MPs," Briggs assured him. "They're being transported by Guard units to Mount Weather as we speak. We'll continue to bring as many as we find there until we can figure out more comfortable accommodations for them."

  "Their comfort is not my concern, General," the president snapped. "Their safety is, and their access to secure communications."

  "Yes, sir—we're on it, sir," Briggs said.

  "Good," the president said. "Now, where are we with hunting down the ships that fired these missiles?"

  "The navy and the air force have sunk three container ships so far, Mr. President," the SecDef said. "I'm told we have just identified a fourth ship off the coast of Long Island.