Clancy hung up and said, “This is too delicious. Is it supposed to be this much fun?”
“There’s more where this came from, son.”
The flag-bedecked Botswanian limo stopped fifty feet from the plane, and Mac idly watched three dignitaries alight. Abdullah unstrapped himself and pressed his nose against the windshield. “Does that look like Ngumo to you, Mac?”
“Hm?”
“That’s not Ngumo.”
“I’ve never met him.”
“Neither have I, but unless he’s lost fifty pounds since I saw him on TV, that’s not him. And since when does the big man carry a bag too?”
Mac removed his headset and leaned forward, but the men were already past where he could see them. He jumped as Fortunato blasted so hard against the locked cockpit door that it sprang open and banged against the wall. “Go! Go!” Leon said. “Take off now!”
“We’re shut down, Leon.”
“Start it up! Now! Those men have weapons!”
“The door’s open, Leon! There’s no time!”
“Do something!”
“Engage three and four,” Mac said, and Abdullah flipped several switches. “Full power, now!”
The two engines on the right side of the plane burst to life with a roar, and Mac maneuvered the controls so the plane swung to the left. Mac saw the three would-be assassins blowing down the runway in the hot jet exhaust.
“You’re a genius!” Leon said. “Now get us out of here!”
The men struggled to their feet, retrieved their high-powered rifles, and ran toward their limo. With the steps and open door of the Condor now facing away from them, Abdullah ran to pull up the stairs and shut the door.
“Now go!” Leon shouted. “Go!”
“We’re low on fuel. We’d have to come back here to land.”
“They’re driving this way! Go!”
Mac started the sequence, knowing the plane was not prepped for takeoff again so quickly. The left side engines screamed to life, but until other crucial gauges caught up, the onboard computer would abort takeoff. If Mac overrode the fail-safe mechanism, he risked crashing.
He turned the jet rear side toward his pursuers, but they roared around front, showing their weapons. “Leave them in the dust!” Leon said. “Let’s go!”
But the gunmen circled back out of sight of Mac and opened fire. The blowing of the tires was nearly as loud as the explosions from the weapons. The Condor was wounded. With more than half its tires shredded, the bird rested unevenly on the runway. Mac would never get it to roll, let alone achieve takeoff speed.
Strangely, not another plane was in sight. All the crazy activity, which had to have been witnessed by both air traffic and ground control personnel, had drawn no emergency attention. Mac realized they had been set up and would likely all die. He and Abdullah had been stranded before this band of killers. Whoever they were, they clearly had the cooperation of the Rehoboth regime.
Bullets ripped through the fuselage. Mac and Abdullah leaped from their seats and followed the screaming Leon through the galley, the lounge, and into the main cabin. “Lie on the floor and stay in the center!” Mac shouted.
The killers had apparently decided to make sure no one survived. Bullets tore through windows and walls up and down the plane. Mac noticed only five men on the floor. Abdullah, Leon, Clancy, Karl’s helper, and he were curled beneath seats, their heads buried in their hands. “Where’s Karl?” Mac shouted, but no one stirred.
Mac felt the pressure of footsteps near him and peeked up to see the cook staggering down the aisle, drenched in blood. “Karl! Get down!” As the man fell, wide-eyed, a gaping hole in his forehead evidenced a fatal wound.
“Do we have a weapon?” Leon shouted.
“Prohibited by your boss, Leon!” Mac said.
“Surely you sometimes break the rules! I’ll pardon you if you produce one! We have no hope, Mac!”
There were two pistols in the cargo hold, and yes, Mac thought, sometimes I break the rules. But there was no getting to the guns, and what would he do with them anyway, outnumbered and facing heavy artillery?
“Do something!” Leon pleaded. “Do you have a phone?”
Mac dug his from his belt and flung it to Leon. The commander frantically poked in a special code, shuddering with every round that pierced the plane. “GC Mega-Alert, this is LF 999, secure line! Inform His Excellency GC One under heavy fire, Johannesburg International. Patch me through to Potentate Rehoboth directly, now!”
Mac heard the phone in the lounge. Dare he crawl out and see who it was? If there was a chance it was the shooters with a demand, it might be worth it. He crawled over Karl and into the lounge, where he grabbed the receiver as the base of the phone bounced on the floor. “Talk!” he barked.
It was the woman he had heard over the intercom, now hysterical. “Mr. Ngumo is not behind this attack! He was overtaken by—oh, no! Oh—” A deafening fusillade made Mac pull the phone from his ear. When he listened again, the woman screamed, “They’ve killed him! No! Please!” More shots, and her phone had fallen.
Mac scrambled on all fours into the cockpit and grabbed the radio mike. “Mayday! Johannesburg runway! GC One under attack!” From the middle of the plane he heard Leon shriek into the phone, “You, Bindura? Why? Carpathia is not even on this plane! I’m telling the truth! Call them off! Please!”
If Rehoboth was behind this, they were as good as dead anyway. He would have thought of everything. Mac shouted over the radio, “Mayday! Johannesburg! Believers on board!” If by some stretch a Christian pilot was in the area, who knew what he or she might be able to do?
Mac was knocked on his face by the force of a concussion bomb, and the plane began to fill with smoke. Leon and Clancy screamed, “Fire!” and Abdullah ran forward.
“They may shoot us, Mac, but we have to jump ship! They’ve set us afire!”
Mac and Abdullah opened the main cabin door, trying to keep from being open targets. Leon pushed Clancy from behind, the young man stiff-legged with fear, crying, lurching toward the door. As soon as Abdullah lowered the stairs, Leon shoved Clancy’s quivering mass down ahead of him as a shield. Clancy was torn apart by bullets, and Leon froze at the top of the steps. Only when a firebomb exploded in the lounge did he take his fateful plunge. Mac and Abdullah leaped aboard him and rode him down the steps as the inferno roared out the door behind them.
Mac believed he would never hit the pavement alive. He had lost all hope and leapt from the plane only to escape the flames. With deafening gunfire surrounding him and the Condor engulfed behind him, he shut his eyes so tight he felt as if his cheekbones were in his forehead. With one hand vise-gripped on Abdullah’s wrist and a knee in Fortunato’s fleshy back, Mac bet his life he would open his eyes in heaven.
But he did not.
Leon dropped to his hands and knees on the runway, Abdullah flipping over him. Mac landed flat on Leon’s back, crushing him to the asphalt. A bullet ripped through Mac’s right shoulder blade and another shattered his right hand, the blasts from the weapon not twenty feet away deafening his right ear.
“Oh, God!” Leon screamed beneath him. “Oh, God, help me!” Mac sensed his own head was the next target and that he would be mercifully put out of his misery.
Blackness.
Silence.
Nothing.
Only smell and taste and feeling.
Mac saw nothing because he chose to keep his eyes shut. He heard only Leon’s raspy panting.
The smell was gunpowdery and metallic, the taste blood, the feeling a hot, deep, searing pain. The tear in his shoulder superseded the tender soreness of the side of Mac’s head. His hand was worse. He almost dared not open his eyes. Nothing about that wound would surprise him. Mac felt as if his hand had been shattered.
Leon’s body rose and fell beneath him as Leon gasped for air. Mac rolled off him onto the pavement on his left side, eyes still shut, mind spinning. Was it over, or would he open his eyes to assas
sins standing over him? Had Leon been hit? Abdullah?
Disappointed that he was not in heaven, Mac forced open one eye. Smoke was so dense and dark he couldn’t see inches past his nose. He drew his ravaged hand to his face for a closer look and felt the devastation in his shoulder. His hand shivered so violently it shook his whole body, and blood splattered from it onto his face.
Mac reached with his other hand to steady the wounded appendage and saw he had all his fingers, though they were splayed in different directions, a bullet having ripped through the back of his hand. His whole body shook, and he feared he was going into shock.
As the smoke slowly cleared, he forced himself to sit up. Leon lay hyperventilating, eyes open, teeth bared. Clancy Tiber lay beside him, obviously dead.
“Abdullah?” Mac called out weakly.
“I am here,” Abdullah said. “I have a bullet in my thigh. Were you hit?”
“At least twice. What happened to the—”
“Do you see the horses?”
“I can’t even see you.”
“I hope they stay long enough for you to see.”
“So do I.”
Rayford awoke after nine in the morning Saturday at the safe house. He could have slept another couple of hours after the night he’d had, but an unusual noise had niggled him awake. His eyes popped open and he lay still, hoping it was later, hoping his body had had time to recharge, wondering if he had lucked out and his aches and pains might have abated.
A rhythmic swishing sound, like someone rubbing their hands together every few seconds, made him sit up. Listening more closely, he thought it might be sniffing or even sniffling. It came from the bedroom next door, where Tsion both slept and worked.
The rest had been good for Rayford’s mind and spirit, but it had only stiffened his ailing joints and muscles. He groaned aloud, pulled on his robe, and peeked into Tsion’s room through the door, which was open a few inches.
At first Rayford didn’t see Dr. Ben-Judah. The chair before his computer screen was empty, as was the bed. But the sound was coming from that room. Rayford knocked gently and pushed the door open another foot. Beneath the window next to the bed, Tsion lay on the floor, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders heaved as he wept bitterly.
“Are you all right?” Rayford said softly, but Tsion did not respond. Rayford stepped beside him and sat on the bed so Tsion would know he was there. The rabbi prayed aloud. “Lord, if it is Hattie, I beg for her soul. If it is Chaim, I covet him for the kingdom. If it is someone in this house, protect them, shield them, equip them. Father, if it is one of the new brothers or sisters, someone I have not even met, I pray your protection and mercy.” He wept more, moaning. “God, tell me how to pray.”
Rayford put a hand on the teacher’s back. Tsion turned. “Rayford, the Lord suddenly impressed deeply upon my heart that I should pray for someone in danger. I was writing my message, which is also weighing on me—probably the most difficult I have had to write. I thought the leading was to pray for my audience, but it seemed more specific, more urgent. I prayed the Lord would tell me who needed prayer, but I was then overcome with the immediacy of it. I knelt, and it was as if his Spirit pushed me to the floor and planted in my soul a burden for whoever was in need. I still do not know, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that this is more than just my imagination. Pray with me, would you?”
Rayford knelt awkwardly, feeling every injury from the night before and having less an idea what to say than Tsion did. “Lord, I agree with my brother in prayer. We don’t understand how we finite beings can say or pray anything that affects what an infinite God wants to do, but we trust you. You tell us to pray, to boldly come to you. If someone we know and love is in danger, we pray your supernatural hedge of protection around them.”
Rayford was moved by Tsion’s emotion and could not continue. Tsion said, “Thank you,” and gripped his hand.
They rose. Tsion sat before his computer and wiped his eyes. “I do not know what that was about,” he said, “but I have stopped questioning how God communicates to us.”
Tsion sat awhile collecting himself, then asked Rayford if he would look over his day’s message. “I will be refining it before posting it this afternoon, but I would appreciate your input.”
“I’d love to read it,” Rayford said, “but I can’t imagine what I have to offer.”
Tsion rose and offered Rayford his chair. “I am going to get something to drink. I shall return for my grade.”
Mac knew if he stayed on the steamy Johannesburg runway he would die. His hours-old ear and scalp wounds oozed from beneath the bandages, and the painkiller had long since worn off. His shoulder felt as if someone had smashed it with a red-hot hammer. His hand would never be the same. The best he could hope for was to save the fingers, which surely would never bend properly again.
The smoke wafted away with the hot late-afternoon wind, and Abdullah came into view fifteen feet to Mac’s left. The young man rested on his knees, turban unwound, face tight with fear and fatigue. His right thigh bore a deep red wound. He pointed into the distance. “They’re still here,” he said.
Mac had had only the briefest glimpse of the phantasmagoric cavalry of frightful men and beasts when Abdullah tried to avoid them in the sky. Now a legion mustered a hundred feet past the runway, snorting smoke and fire and sulfur, snake tails striking and snapping at victims who couldn’t see them.
In their wake, the leonine steeds left bodies. Some jerked spastically before freezing in macabre repose. Others writhed ablaze until death brought relief. Or so they thought, Mac mused. In truth, the victims passed from one flame to another. One of the phony dignitaries ran top speed down the runway. The other two lay dead near the plane, close enough to have killed Mac with their next shots.
Even from behind and far away, Mac found the horsemen and their mounts dreadful. They hovered inches off the ground but galloped, trotted, stepped, and reared like physical horses. Their riders urged them on, stampeding people, buildings, vehicles, wreaking destruction.
The thick, swarthy Leon Fortunato appeared out of the haze, having rolled toward Mac. He grabbed Mac’s face in both hands, and Mac nearly screamed from the pain on one side. “You saved my life, Mac!” Leon cried. “You protected me with your own body! Were you hit?”
“Twice,” Mac said. He pulled back so Leon’s hands slipped away. Mac pointed to the horses. “What do you see over there?”
“Carnage,” Leon said, squinting. “Fire, smoke. And what’s that awful smell, like in the plane earlier? Agh!”
“We need to get away from the plane,” Mac said. Flames poured out the windows.
“The beautiful Condor,” Leon said. “His Excellency’s pride and joy.”
“Do you want to pull Clancy’s body out of the way?” Mac said.
Leon struggled to his feet and staggered, trying to gain his balance. “No,” he said, regaining his voice. “The world is short of graves. We would only cremate him anyway. Let this fire do it.”
Leon turned slowly in a circle. “I thought we were dead,” he said. “What happened?”
“You prayed.”
“Excuse me?”
“You asked God to help you,” Mac said.
“I consider myself religious.”
“I’m sure you do. God must have answered.”
“Why did the attackers stop shooting?”
Mac winced, wishing they had stopped sooner. “How can we know? One ran. The other two haven’t moved.”
Leon and Mac got on either side of Abdullah and slowly walked him toward the terminal.
It was not lost on Rayford, the privilege of having the first look at a message millions around the globe anticipated. Tsion had written:
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
I come to you today with a heavy heart, which is, of course, nothing new during this period of history. While the 144,000 evangelists raised up by God are seeing millions come to Christ, the one-world religion c
ontinues to become more powerful and—I must say it—more odious. Preach it from the mountaintops and into the valleys, my beloved siblings: There is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.
The deadly demon locusts prophesied in Revelation 9 died out en masse more than half a year ago, having tortured millions. But many bitten during the last month of that plague only stopped serving their sentences of agony three months ago.
While many have come to faith after being convinced by that horrible judgment, most have become even more set in their ways. It should have been obvious to the leader of the Enigma Babylon One World Faith that devotees of that religion suffered everywhere in the world. But we followers of Christ, the so-called dissidents—enemies of tolerance and inclusion—were spared.
Our beloved preachers in Jerusalem, despite heinous opposition and persecution, continue to prophesy and win converts to Christ in that formerly holy city that now must be compared to Egypt and Sodom. So we have that for which to be thankful in this time of worsening turmoil.
But by now you know that the sixth Trumpet Judgment, the second woe (Revelation 9), has begun. Apparently I correctly assumed that the 200 million horsemen are spiritual and not physical beings but was wrong to speculate they would thus be invisible. People I know and trust have seen these beings kill by fire and smoke and sulfur as the Scripture predicts. Yet unbelievers charge we are making this up and only claiming to see things they themselves cannot.
That this current plague was wrought by the releasing of four angels bound in the Euphrates River should be instructive. We know that these are fallen angels, because nowhere in Scripture do we ever see good angels bound. These have apparently been bound because they were eager to wreak havoc upon the earth. Now, released, they are free to do so. In fact, the Bible tells us they were prepared for a specific hour, day, month, and year.
It is significant that the four angels, probably bound for centuries, have been in the Euphrates. It is the most prominent river in the Bible. It bordered the Garden of Eden, was a boundary for Israel, Egypt, and Persia, and is often used in Scripture as a symbol of Israel’s enemies. It was near this river that man first sinned, the first murder was committed, the first war fought, the first tower built in defiance against God, and where Babylon was built. Babylon is where idolatry originated and has since surged throughout the world. The children of Israel were exiled there as captives, and it is there that the final sin of man will culminate.