Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Cal Jordan looked absently from the front window of the crowded main room of the Reardon Art Gallery and out at the traffic on Harrison Avenue. For a moment he was oblivious to the seventy-four patrons, art aficionados, and buyers politely milling around with glasses of punch in their hands, taking in the array of paintings with their heads cocked forward to study every detail, pointing and talking to each other in hushed voices, as if they were in a cathedral. He had even forgotten, for one brief moment, that three of the paintings on display that day were his.

  There was a time, not long ago, when Cal would have thought it incredible that his art would be on display in a place like this, that even as a college student he would find his work in the company of some of the East Coast’s best artists.

  But he wasn’t thinking about that or the cordial, well-heeled manners of the art enthusiasts around him. His mind was elsewhere … back in a dark, ugly place … hands tied, duct tape over his mouth, staring into the face of a sadist.

  In that harrowing place, only two things stood between Cal and certain death: God and his father, Joshua Jordan. Sometimes he wondered whether he confused one with the other, taking his father too seriously, with too much fear and awe, and not having taken God seriously enough.

  But in the cold, sickening fear that had paralyzed him during that incident, Cal cried out to God from the bowels of his soul. The NYCPD bomb squad eventually showed up and rescued him, but he suspected at that moment, and later knew for sure, that his father had been the one behind his rescue. Of course.

  Which made Cal wonder what he was doing now at an art gallery in Boston. He was having second thoughts. He was sensing a change of heart about what he wanted to do with his life. But was it really because of his own prayerful sifting and weighing, or was he just trying to please his father?

  After his rescue, he naively thought that things would be different with his dad. But he came to realize that, yes, in matters of life and death some things can change in a heartbeat. But other things don’t, at least not that quickly.

  Then a familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. “Wow, I am so impressed, Calvin Jordan. At the Reardon Art Gallery …”

  He turned around to see the pretty face of an ex-girlfriend. “Karen, what are you doing here?”

  “In town for a family thing. My folks read the blurb in the paper about the show and saw your name.”

  Cal smiled even though he and Karen shared some painful memories. “So, I don’t see you on campus, but suddenly you show up here for my art show in Boston …”

  “Yeah, I’ve been super busy. Music. Drama club.”

  “And still dating Jeff?”

  Karen reached out and squeezed his forearm. “I’m sorry how that all happened …”

  “I’m over it. Really.”

  “I tried to call after the news about what happened. I couldn’t believe it. So scary. Oh my gosh …”

  “Thanks. I know. I got your messages. My fault. After all that, I wasn’t in the mood to return calls.”

  She nodded and shifted uncomfortably. Then she said, “You look … I don’t know … different. Bigger. Wow, you really do. You look good. Been working out or something?”

  “Yeah. Keeping in shape. Doing some weight lifting. Physical conditioning.”

  “After what you went through, yeah. No doubt.”

  “Well, not just that. Just wanted to do it. For myself, I guess …”

  Then Cal heard another voice. “Mister Jordan, you’ve been avoiding me.” Cal turned and saw the bearded face of Alvin Reardon, the proprietor. He had a strained smile. “I told you I wanted to chat while you were here …”

  Karen gave Cal’s hand a quick squeeze. “You’ve got business. I’ll let you go. Congratulations on the show.”

  When Karen had stepped away, Reardon got right down to details. “Your work is getting a very positive response.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “Now it’s time to expand, I think, get you loosened up as an artist, get more edgy, find your real artistic center. Your still-life work is impressive in technique, but there’s more to art than technique.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “You like to paint traditional stuff: bowls full of grapes with curtains blowing in the background, a worn Bible on the table. That’s fine. A certain kind of passive energy there. But you need to break out. That’s why I brought you here.”

  “I thought I was here because you liked my paintings.”

  “You’re here because of your potential. I would like to bring you along. I want you to bust out of the box you’re in.”

  “I didn’t know I was in one.”

  “You are whether you realize it or not. Your mind-set is too … well, static. Conventional.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s boring. Look, I know you got this Christian thing going. Okay. What you do with your time on Sunday mornings is your business. But if you are going to be a successful artist, you need to explore the reality beyond your personal beliefs.”

  “Like …?”

  “Take Salvador Dalí. His crucifixion piece, for example. Jesus floating on a cubic cross, hovering over a chess board. You could use religious iconic symbols if you want, that’s up to you, but break out of your stuffy, churchy traditionalism.”

  “You know, Mr. Reardon, I just changed my major.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m leaving the art department at Liberty University.”

  “You mean you’re going to an art academy? That’s great news …”

  “No. I mean I’ve decided not to major in art.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing wrong with art. I’ll always enjoy it. But I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something else with my time.”

  Reardon had the look of a racing fan who had just bet on the wrong horse. He stretched out his arm and swept his hand out to take in the whole of his gallery. “What could be more important than this to an artist?”

  Cal shrugged. “That’s what I am about to find out.”

  TEN

  Joshua and Abigail were sitting across from their daughter, Deborah, and her new friend, Ethan, in the big living room of their Colorado lodge. The log mansion was nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with land stretching all the way down to a winding river. The family loved the retreat. For Joshua particularly it had been a haven from the world, a safe house from the forces of destruction, from men whose aim was to spread chaos and death. At Hawk’s Nest he could keep some of that at bay.

  Deborah, with some help from Ethan, had just described their experience on Flight 433 the day before. The boarding. The takeoff. The wild deviation of the big jet. The gut-wrenching experience of the big 797 being jolted into a drastic turn, and Deborah being grabbed by Ethan, keeping her from being tossed up into the ceiling. Then the flight’s return to JFK, and the interrogation of passengers.

  Her parents listened, unmoving. They took turns peppering her with questions. Finally Joshua said, “Two things are clear. First, your jet was responding to an actual security threat, not just a perceived one. Those pilots must have known they were at risk.”

  Ethan was nodding fiercely. “Colonel Jordan, copy on that. I think you’re absolutely right, sir.”

  Joshua turned to him. “And the second thing, Ethan, is that your quick thinking probably saved my daughter from a fractured skull, or worse. How can a father find the words to thank a man who does that?”

  “No need, sir. I’m proud to be of service to your family. Your service and bravery on behalf of the nation, Colonel — ”

  “Retired, Ethan. Now a civilian. You can call me Joshua.”

  “That’ll be hard.”

  “Well, I can’t pull rank and order you around anymore.”

  “So you do remember me, sir, when I served under you at McGill Air Force Base?”
br />   Joshua nodded. He was silently recalling the details of a few nasty incidents involving Ethan. The drunken bar fights, the violation of flight rules. But Joshua was not going to dress down the man who had protected his daughter. Not a chance in a million.

  “I remember you, Ethan. And here you are. So my daughter says you worked with Raytheon.”

  Just then the phone beeped. Abigail picked it up. “Hello, Ted,” she replied. “Great to hear from you.” She fell silent and turned toward Joshua, her expression growing somber. She winced and said, “Josh, you’d better take this in the study.”

  Joshua quickly stepped around the corner, dodged into the library, to his big desk with the multiple computers, and closed the door behind him.

  “Ted, what’s up?”

  Ted was the chief weapons-design engineer for Jordan Technologies. “Josh, bad news …”

  “Tell me …”

  “The jet crash … the one on the news …”

  “Out of Chicago?”

  “Right. Flight 199. It went down because of a missile strike. Our sources in the Pentagon say that the White House is about to release an official statement.”

  “What — ”

  But before Joshua could formulate his next question, Ted jumped in. “There’s something else. That flight was outfitted with an onboard RTS unit when it was struck.”

  “Did the pilot launch our Return-to-Sender laser?”

  Silence.

  “Ted. Talk to me. Did the pilot — ”

  “He tried to.”

  Joshua hesitated, as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus.

  Ted kept talking. “Reports are that the pilot went through the launch sequence for the RTS. They’ve retrieved the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the wreckage. No word yet on that. But the tower said the pilot announced hitting the RTS button after the primary countermeasures, the flares, failed. But the RTS didn’t stop the missile.”

  “How many … my God, Ted … how many — ”

  “There were eighty-eight on board.”

  “Did anyone — ”

  “They’re all gone, Josh. All dead.”

  When Joshua had collected himself, he said, “I want all your data transferred to me so I can review it here at Hawk’s Nest — on the secure line. Everything you’ve got on that flight: our install on that 797, all our protocols, the verification of the test runs, the sign-off by the FAA on that particular jet. Whatever you have on the crash. Everything, Ted. I want everything. And I want it stat.”

  After he hung up, Joshua turned in his wooden swivel chair to look through the window, out to the tall trees and the impenetrable line of mountain peaks in the distance.

  His insides were numb, as if he’d received an anesthetic, but his mind raced wildly.

  More than that, there was the awful, crippling inner torque, the crush of responsibility bearing down on him like a ten-ton weight. The solitude of Hawk’s Nest had been broken. The world was pressing in.

  ELEVEN

  Harrat-Ithnayn, Western Desert of Saudi Arabia

  Like the surface of another planet, the wasteland stretched around him as far as the eye could see, a place with hellish temperatures and brutal terrain.

  Robert Hamilton, Ph.D., had dismounted his camel and was surveying the landscape of hardened black basaltic lava that had cooled into hostile, jagged rocks. His young assistant, Finley, was snapping digital photos. Back with the camels, Maher, their Saudi guide, was swishing his hand to keep the flies away.

  The two volcanologists had driven their Land Rover off the highway and into the desert for a few miles, where they met Maher, who was waiting with the camels. The Rover was no use from that point on. The terrain was impassable by motor vehicle. It was studded with half-ton basaltic rock bombs that had been tossed out of the volcano that had erupted just a few weeks earlier. Deep crevasses had recently ripped through the ground during the earthquake that accompanied the geological disruption. In the distance, a great volcanic cone rose from the table-flat desert during the recent eruption.

  Hamilton took off his wide-brimmed field hat and mopped the sweat that was beading on his bald scalp. He marveled at the scene in front of him.

  Finley stopped snapping pictures, studied his mentor, and said, “Dr. Hamilton, do you need some water?”

  Hamilton shook his head.

  Finley sheltered his eyes with a hand as he looked up in the general direction of the baking sun and said, “I promised Mrs. Hamilton I’d make you take it easy.”

  “Not possible in this place. There’s nothing easy here. Just look at all of this, will you, Finley?” He motioned toward the giant volcanic cone.

  But Finley was still concerned. “Perhaps you can sit down for a few minutes …”

  Hamilton shook his head and laughed. “Finley, stop worrying. I’m not dying yet. I’ll let you know when the time comes. Relax. Enjoy.”

  After swabbing his face with a rag, Hamilton took a few more steps toward the volcano. Then he started talking, almost to himself, as though he was delivering one of his lectures at the University of Hawaii where he taught. “Back in 1256, not far from where we are now, during the Muslim holy days and the beginning of Jumada al-Akhira, the people were gathering in Madinah for prayers at the Mosque of the Prophet. That’s when the earthquakes started. The ground cracked open. Underground, the basaltic magma was building. Then the eruption. Fire in the sky, followed by two solid months of volcanic activity. Lava flows for fifteen miles. The Muslims fled for their lives. They must have thought it was the end of the world.”

  Hamilton paused, reflecting. He swung around to face Finley. “But then, after that eruption, silence. For nearly eight hundred years — until now. Of course, there have been others like this one here in the Middle East. That eruption on the island of As-Tair off the coast of Yemen in 2007. That was impressive. Volcanic ash a thousand feet in the air. And other ones in different parts of the world. The Iceland eruption in 2010. But you see, Finley, folks don’t realize how this region in particular, the whole of the Middle East, from the Saudi Peninsula to Syria, is riddled with fault lines and volcanic fields.”

  Finley smiled and nodded. “Maher says that he’s got us a motel room in Al-Amair. If we leave now we can make it before sundown.”

  “We’ve got camping gear with us, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I’d hate to deal with your wife, Dr. Hamilton. If anything happened — ”

  “I finished the first round of chemo more than two weeks ago. I’m as strong as an ox.”

  “Could you humor me, Dr. Hamilton? Please?”

  Hamilton shook his head. This was a major opportunity, once in a lifetime perhaps. In view of everything else in his life, he needed to nail this down with scientific precision. He wanted to start on his journal submission and hopefully get it published, as a follow-up on some of his earlier published work. Time was not on his side, and he knew it.

  He spoke with resignation. “Fine. All right. Let’s head back. But we need to start tomorrow before sunrise and make the most of the day.”

  Hamilton was almost back to the camels when he stopped and looked back at Finley. He poked a finger in his direction. “Do you realize how big this is?”

  Finley smiled, but Hamilton looked him in the eyes, knowing that his assistant didn’t really understand. “Finley, this is global — historic. What’s going on here is scary stuff. I’ve got to get my data together and tell the climate people and global-warming organizations. They’ve got to be told — right away. Mind you, people are not going to want to hear this. The human race doesn’t like bad news. Especially the kind that upsets their applecart.”

  TWELVE

  Eighty-eight dead. No survivors. That thought threatened to swallow Joshua whole.

  Somehow he managed to keep his MIT-educated engineer’s brain trained on the task before him. Failure analysis. Why had the RTS system failed on Flight 199?

  Then there was the fighter-pilot
side of his brain too, never compromising, needing complete command and control, not satisfied with anything less than a fully successful mission.

  But the mission had failed. Terribly. So terribly that as Joshua studied the information on the computer screen he had to tell himself not to think about the extended families of those eighty-eight people, the grieving husbands, wives, children, grandchildren. How many? What if each passenger left only two surviving family members behind? That would be nearly one hundred and eighty shattered lives. Heartbroken and weeping. What if each had left three behind … and then again, what difference did a game of numbers make in the face of something so awful? As a military man, Joshua was used to the concept of casualties. He had seen them killed on missions and when things went bad while testing experimental aircraft in the desert.

  This was different. These were civilians. When they bought their tickets they hadn’t signed up for the hazards of war. He caught himself. He had to steel himself to the task at hand.

  It was now a little before four in the morning, and Joshua had been in his study since receiving Ted’s phone call. His team had sent him a dump of electronic data, and Joshua was scanning it for anomalies. Nothing jumped off the screen. He ran integrated consistency tests, his own software invention to cross-check each RTS unit, but he came up with nothing. He started to dig down into the granular details of each system of the Commercial Flight Return-to-Sender Laser Defense Unit that he and his group had adapted from the original RTS design plan in order to arm civilian aircraft.

  At this point Ted and Carolyn who was the chief of weapon physics hooked up with Joshua on a conference call. They double-checked everything on the final production protocol, item by item. The digital circuits, in case there had been an electrical failure. The digital logic design. Even the schematics for the diode array inside the laser. Then the onboard computer settings. The data-capturing directorate inside the laser, which commanded the laser beam to copy the signal inside the guidance system of the incoming missile. And the mirror-reverse command, which would instantaneously load the opposite trajectory into that enemy guidance system. All of the functions that were designed to operate while the approaching missile was traveling more than a thousand miles an hour. Those systems were all checked, and they should have worked — all of them.