“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Mac said, calling Annie from her office. She knocked and entered, breaking into a smile.
“You must be the infamous Abdullah Smith,” she said. “You have a custom mark reserved for Jordanians.”
Abdullah gave Mac a puzzled look, then stared at Annie’s forehead. “I cannot see mine,” he said. “Is it not like yours?”
“I’m teasing you,” she said. “Yours merely works better with your coloring.”
“I see,” he said, as if he really did.
“Go easy on the American humor,” Mac said.
“Canadian humor,” Annie said. She spread her arms to hug Abdullah, which seemed to embarrass him. He thrust out his hand, and she shook it. “Welcome to the family,” she said.
Again Abdullah looked questioningly at Mac.
“Actually, she’s the newest member of the family,” Mac said. “She’s just welcoming you to this chapter of the Tribulation Force.”
Abdullah left some of his stuff in his small office behind Mac’s, then two laborers from Operations helped take the rest to his new quarters. As he and Abdullah followed the men, Mac said, “Once you get unpacked you can get your feet wet by plotting our course to Botswana Friday. We’ll leave here at 0800, and they’re an hour earlier, so—”
“Johannesburg, I assume,” Abdullah said.
“No, north of there. We’re seeing Mwangati Ngumo in Gaborone on the old border of Botswana and South Af—”
“Oh, pardon me, Captain, but you must not have been there recently. Only helicopters can get in and out of Gaborone. The airport was destroyed in the great earthquake.”
“But surely the old military base—”
“The same,” Abdullah said.
“Carpathia’s reconstruction program has not reached Botswana?”
“No, but with the . . . the, pardon me, regional potentate of the United States of Africa residing in Johannesburg in a palace not much smaller than this one, the new airport there is spectacular.”
Mac thanked the helpers and unlocked Abdullah’s apartment. The Jordanian’s eyes widened as he surveyed the rooms. “All of this for me?” he said.
“You’ll grow to hate it,” Mac said.
With the door shut, Abdullah looked at the bare walls and whispered, “Can we talk here?”
“David assures me we can.”
“I look forward to meeting him. Oh, Captain, I nearly referred to the African potentate as the king! I must be so careful.”
“Well, we know he’s one of the kings, but those two wouldn’t have had a clue. I thought Potentate Rehoboth—what’s his first name—?”
“Bindura.”
“Right—was going to move his capital more central, like back up to his homeland. Chad, was it?”
“Sudan. That was what he had said, but apparently he found Johannesburg preferable. He lives in such opulence, you could not believe it.”
“All the kings do.”
“What do you make of that, Captain?” Abdullah was whispering. “Has Carpathia bought their cooperation?”
Mac shrugged and shook his head. “Wasn’t there some sort of controversy between Rehoboth and Ngumo?”
“Oh, yes! When Ngumo was secretary-general of the U.N., Rehoboth put tremendous pressure on him to get favors for Africa, particularly Sudan. And when Ngumo was replaced by Carpathia, Rehoboth publicly praised the change.”
“And now he’s his neighbor.”
“And Rehoboth is his king,” Abdullah said.
Late Thursday night in Illinois, Rayford finally found himself alone in the kitchen with Leah Rose. She sat at the table with a cup of coffee. He poured himself one.
“Settling in?” he said.
She cocked her head. “I never know what you’re implying.”
He pointed to a chair. “May I?”
“Sure.”
He sat. “What would I be implying?”
“That I shouldn’t get too comfortable.”
“We voted you in! It was unanimous. Even the chair voted, and I didn’t have to.”
“Had it been a tie otherwise, how would the chair have voted?”
Rayford sat back, his cup in both hands. “We got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I’m sure it was my fault.”
“You ignored my question,” she said.
“Stop it. Voting in a new sister would never result in a tie. Hattie was here for months, and she’s not even a believer.”
“So is this our truce chat, or are you just being polite?”
“You want a truce?” he said.
“Do you?”
“I asked you first,” he said.
She smiled. “Truth is, I want more than a truce. We can’t live in the same house just being cordial. We’ve got to be friends.”
Rayford wasn’t so sure, but he said, “I’m game.”
“So all that stuff you said . . .”
He raised his chin. “. . . that exposed me for the crank I am?”
She nodded. “Consider this an all-inclusive pardon.”
He hadn’t asked forgiveness.
“And for me?” she pressed.
“What?”
“I need a pardon too.”
“No you don’t,” he said, sounding more magnanimous than he felt. “Anything you said was because of what I—”
Leah put a hand on his arm. “I didn’t even recognize myself,” she said. “I can’t put that all on you. Now, come on. If we’re going to start over, we have to be even. Clean slates.”
“Granted,” he said.
“I’ve got money,” she said.
“You always switch subjects so fast?”
“Cash. We’d have to go get it. It’s in a safe in my garage. I am not going to be a freeloader. I want things to do, and I want to pay my way.”
“How about we give you room and board in exchange for medical care and expertise?”
“I’m more about care than expertise. I’m no replacement for Floyd.”
“We’re grateful to have you.”
“But you need money, too. When can we get it?”
Rayford pointed to her cup. She shook her head. “How much are we talking about?” he said.
When she told him, he gasped.
“In what denominations?”
“Twenties.”
“All in one safe?”
“I couldn’t fit another bill in there,” she said.
“You think it’s still there? The GC must have torn the place apart looking for you.”
“The safe is so well hidden we had to remind ourselves where it was.”
Rayford rinsed out the cups. “Sleepy?” he said.
“No.”
“Want to go now?”
Mac and Abdullah met with David Friday morning. Once introductions were out of the way, David asked if either had an idea where the 144 computers in the Condor cargo hold could be put to use for the cause.
“I can think of lots of places,” Mac said. “But not one on the way to Africa.”
“I can,” Abdullah said. “There is a huge body of underground believers in Hawalli. Many professionals, and they could—”
“Hawalli?” David said. “In Kuwait?”
“Yes. I have a contact in cargo—”
“That’s east. You’re flying southwest.”
“Only slightly east,” Abdullah said. “We just need a reason to stop there.”
“Virtually right after takeoff,” Mac said. “That’ll arouse suspicion.” They sat in silence a moment. “Unless . . . ,” he said.
David and Abdullah looked at him.
“How far is our flight?”
“Here to Kuwait?” Abdullah asked, pulling out his charts.
“No, to Africa.”
“More than four thousand miles.”
“Then we need a full fuel load to go nonstop. We want to save the GC money, so we’re going to make a quick detour for fuel at a good price.”
“Excellent,” Da
vid said. “I’ll negotiate it right now. All I need is a few cents’ break per pound of fuel and it’ll be worth the detour.”
“What will my contact need to get the cargo?” Abdullah said.
“Big forklift. Big truck.”
“Why’d you leave a note?” Leah asked Rayford as he pulled the Land Rover away from the house toward Palatine. “Surely we’ll be back before anyone wakes up.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” he said, “if someone was peeking at the note already. We hear everything in that house. In the dead of night we hear sounds in the walls, sounds from outside. We’ve been fortunate so far. We only hope for some warning so we can hide out below before we’re found out. We always tell each other where we go. Buck didn’t the other day when he rushed Floyd to see you, but that was an emergency. It upset everybody.”
Rayford spent the next forty minutes maneuvering around debris and seeking the smoothest man-made route. He wondered when Carpathia’s vaunted reconstruction efforts would reach past the major cities and into the suburbs.
Leah was full of questions about each member of the Trib Force, how they had met, become believers, got together. “That’s way too much loss in too short a time,” she said after he had brought her to the present. “With all that stress, it’s a wonder you’re all fully functioning.”
“We try not to think about it. We know it’s going to get worse. It sounds like a cliché, but you have to look ahead rather than back. If you let it accumulate, you’ll never make it.”
Leah ran a hand through her hair. “Sometimes I don’t know why I want to survive until the Glorious Appearing. Then my survival instinct kicks in.”
“Speaking of which . . . ,” Rayford said.
“What?”
“More traffic than I’m used to is all.”
She shrugged. “This area wasn’t as hard hit as yours. No one’s hiding here. Everybody knows everybody else.”
They agreed Rayford should park a couple of blocks away and that they should move through the shadows to Leah’s town house. He pulled a large canvas bag and a flashlight from the back of the Rover.
At the edge of her property, Leah stopped. “They didn’t even shut the door,” she said. “The place has to be ransacked.”
“If the GC didn’t trash it, looters did,” Rayford said. “Once they knew you were on the run, your place was fair game. Want to check it out?”
She shook her head. “We’d better be in and out of that garage fast too. My neighbors can hear the door going up.”
“Is there a side entrance?”
She nodded.
“Got the key?”
“No.”
“I can break in. No one will hear unless they’re in there waiting for you.”
When Mac met Abdullah in the hangar to bring him up to speed on the Condor 216, Annie was already there, supervising cargo handlers. “More, Corporal?” Mac said.
“Yes, Captain. The purchasing director would like us to transport this tonnage of surplus foodstuffs to Kuwait. He got a spectacular deal on fuel, so while you’re taking on fuel, you can off-load this.”
Abdullah was silent inside the plane until they reached the cockpit and Mac showed him the reverse intercom bug. “Imagine the methods of our dismemberment if they found out,” he said.
At ten to eight in the morning, Mac and Abdullah finished their preflight checks and contacted the palace tower. Three figures in white aprons ran toward the plane. “Kitchen staff,” Mac said. “Let ’em in.”
Abdullah opened the door and lowered the stairs. The cook, a sweating middle-aged man with stubby fingers, carried a steaming pan covered with foil. “Out of the way, out of the way,” he said in a Scandinavian accent. “Nobody told me the commander wanted breakfast aboard.”
Abdullah stepped back as the cook and his two aides hurried past. “Then how did you know?” he said.
The cook hurried into the galley and barked orders. Distracted by Abdullah’s hovering, he turned. “Was that rhetorical, sarcastic, or a genuine question?”
“I am not familiar with the first two,” Abdullah said.
The cook leaned on the counter as if he couldn’t believe he was about to waste his time answering the first officer. “I meant,” he said slowly, as if indulging a child, “that no one told me before now, and then the supreme commander himself told me. If he’s looking forward to eggs Benedict once airborne, it’s eggs Benedict he’ll get. Now, was there anything else?”
“Yes, sir.”
The cook looked stunned. “There is?”
“Would you like to impress the supreme commander?”
“If I didn’t I wouldn’t have run to the plane with a tray of hot food, would I?”
“I happen to know Commander Fortunato does not mean airborne when he says airborne.”
“Indeed?”
“No, you see, we have a brief stop in Kuwait after takeoff, and that would be the perfect time to serve him. Quieter, more relaxed, no danger of spilling.”
“Kuwait?”
“Just moments after takeoff, really.”
“Children!” the cook hollered to his aides. “Keep it hot. We’re servin’ breakfast in Kuwait!”
As Rayford expected, the side door to Leah’s shared garage was flimsy enough to be forced open without a lot of racket. But when he crept inside and asked her to point out the safe, he was alone. Rayford caught himself before he called to her, not wanting to compound the situation if something was wrong. He turned slowly and tiptoed back to the door. At first Rayford didn’t see her, but he heard her hyperventilating. She was kneeling near him in the moist grass and mud, her torso heaving with the strain of catching her breath. “I—I—I—,” she gasped.
He crouched beside her. “What is it? Are you all right? See someone?”
She wouldn’t look up, but in the darkness she fearfully pointed past Rayford. He took a good grip on the flashlight and whirled to see if someone was coming. He saw nothing.
“What did you see?” he said, but she was whimpering now, unable to say anything.
“Let me get you inside,” he said.
Helping her up and getting her into the garage was like picking up a sleeping child. “Leah!” he said. “Work with me. You’re safe.”
She sat on the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging her legs. “Are they still out there?” she said. “Can you lock the door?”
“I broke the door,” he said. “Who’s out there?”
“You really didn’t see them?”
“Who?” he whispered loudly. She was shivering. “You need to get off that cold floor.”
He reached for her, but she wrenched away. “I won’t be able to leave,” she said, covering her face with trembling fingers. “You’ll have to bring the car for me.”
He hadn’t expected her to be this high maintenance. “Too risky.”
“I can’t, Rayford! I’m sorry.”
“Then let’s get the money and get going.”
“Forget the money. I wouldn’t be able to work the lock now anyway.”
“Why not?”
Again she pointed outside.
“Leah,” Rayford said, as soothingly as he could, “there’s nothing out there. We’re safe. We’re going to get your cash and go straight back to the car and go home, all right?”
She shook her head.
“Yes, we are,” he said, and he grabbed her elbow and pulled her up. She was incapacitated. He guided her to the wall and gently pushed her back until it supported her. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Horses,” she said. “Huge, dark horses. On the ridge behind the house, blocking the whole horizon. I couldn’t make out the riders because the horses breathed fire and smoke. But they just sat there, hundreds of them, maybe more, huge and menacing. Their faces! Rayford, their faces looked like lions with huge teeth!”
“Wait here,” Rayford said.
“Don’t leave me!” she said, grabbing his wrists, her fingers digging into f
lesh.
He peeled her hands away. “You’re safe.”
“Don’t go near them! They’re hovering.”
“Hovering?”
“Their feet are not touching the ground!”
“Tsion didn’t think they were real,” Rayford said.
“Tsion saw them?”
“Didn’t you read his message about this?”
“I don’t have a computer anymore.”
“These have to be the horsemen of Revelation 9, Leah! They won’t hurt us!”
“Are you sure?”
“What else can they be?”
Leah seemed to begin breathing easier, but even in the faint glow of the flashlight, she was pale. “Let me go check,” he said. “Think about the safe and the combination.”
She nodded, but she didn’t move. He hurried to the door. “To the east,” she stage-whispered. “On the horizon.” Though he felt he was safe, still he kept the door between him and the horizon. The night was cool and quiet. He saw nothing. He stepped away from the door and moved up a small incline, peeling his eyes to peer between buildings and into the open. His heart pounded, but he was disappointed he had not seen what Leah had. Had it been a vision? Why only to her?
He hurried back. She had moved away from the wall but was still not within sight of the door. “Did you see them?” she said.
“No.”
“They were there, Rayford! I wasn’t seeing things!”
“I believe you.”
“Do you?”
“Of course! But Tsion said he didn’t think they would be visible. He’ll be glad to hear it.”
“Where could they have gone? There were too many to move away that quickly.”
“Leah,” Rayford said carefully, “we’re talking about the supernatural, good and evil, the battle of the ages. There are no rules, at least not human ones. If you saw the horsemen predicted in Revelation, who knows what power they might have to appear and disappear?”
She folded her arms and rocked. “I lived through the earthquake. I saw the locusts. Did you?”
He nodded.
“You got a close look, Rayford, really close?”