Mac made a cursory pan of the people within his vision, but mostly he watched Tsion and Chaim, who waited more than ten minutes to be sure.
Then Tsion stepped forward. “The prophet Isaiah,” he said, “predicted that ‘it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel, and such as have escaped of the house of Jacob, will never again depend on him who defeated them, but will depend on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.
“‘The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the Mighty God. For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will return. . . .’ And of the evil ruler of this world who has tormented you, Isaiah says further, ‘It shall come to pass in that day that his burden will be taken away from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be destroyed.’ Praise the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“The prophet Zechariah quoted our Lord God himself, speaking of the land of Israel, that ‘two-thirds of it shall be cut off and die, but one-third shall be left in it. I will bring the one-third through the fire, will refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name and I will answer them. I will say, “This is My people.” And each one will say, “The Lord is my God.”’
“My dear friends, you remnant of Israel, this is in accord with the clear teaching of Ezekiel, chapter 37, where our barren nation is seen in the last days to be a valley of dry bones, referred to by the Lord himself as ‘the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, “Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!”’
“But then, dear ones, God said to Ezekiel, ‘Therefore prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. . . . I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it.’”’”
It had been a long time since Rayford had done such hard physical labor. Even at Mizpe Ramon, the building of the airstrip for Operation Eagle had largely been done under his supervision but by others with heavy equipment. He was in charge of this operation too, but there was no getting around that every pair of hands was crucial.
Lionel Whalum had landed almost without incident at Gobernador Gregores. The only trouble was that the main runway had been destroyed during the war, and the Co-op had rebuilt it by duplicating it a hundred feet parallel to the original. The GC were unaware of the rebuilding or of the huge encampment of underground believers who had been harvesting wheat and trading through the Co-op ever since.
But when the destroyed runway was discarded, which Rayford’s main contact there—Luís Arturo—later told him had taken weeks to haul away, what was left was a smooth, dark depression in the ground. From the air, it looked as if the runway was still there.
Luís had spent his high school and college years in the United States and spoke fluent, though heavily accented, English. He had had enough exposure to campus ministry groups that when he returned to Argentina and suffered through the disappearances, he knew exactly what had happened. He and some friends from childhood raced to their little Catholic church, where hardly anyone was left. Their favorite priest and catechism teacher were gone too. But from literature they found in the library, they learned how to trust Christ personally. Soon they were the nucleus of the new body of believers in that area.
Luís proved to be an earnest, fast-talking man, and while he took especially to Ree Woo and was friendly and cordial to everyone, his top priority was getting the plane loaded and these men on their way again. “All we hear are rumors that the GC is polluting the Chico and that they are onto us,” he said. “I have many reasons to believe that is only the talk of the paranoid, but we cannot take chances. The time grows short anyway, so let’s move.”
He seemed to like Ree so much because, though the South Korean was the youngest and smallest member of Rayford’s crew, with the exception of George Sebastian he proved to be in the best shape of everyone—Americans and Argentineans combined.
Big George’s reputation preceded him, and while he worked, lifting heavy sacks of wheat aboard the plane by himself, many of the South Americans tried to get him to talk about his imprisonment in Greece and his escape.
Rayford noticed that George tried to downplay it. “I overpowered a woman half my size.”
“But she was armed, no? And she had killed people?”
“Well, we couldn’t let her keep doing that, could we?”
Rayford worked mostly alongside Lionel, each of them able to handle one sack of wheat at a time. Ree helped too, but he was young and fast and wouldn’t feel it in the morning like Ray and Lionel would.
After two solid days’ work, thanks to hydraulic-lift loaders and six aluminum pallets that held up to thirty thousand pounds each, the wheat was nearly loaded and the plane partially full when Luís came running. “Señor Steele, to the tower with me, quick. I have field glasses.”
Rayford followed the young man to a new, wooden, two-story tower that had been designed to blend into the landscape. Aircraft had to watch for it, but nosy types unaware of it might not see it at all.
Rayford had to catch his breath at the top of the stairs, but when he was ready, Luís passed him the binocs and pointed into the distance. It took Rayford a few seconds to adjust the lenses, but what he saw made him wonder if they were already too late and their work had been wasted.
CHAPTER 19
Though it wasn’t a long flight from Petra to India, Mac was sound asleep when Albie put the cargo plane down at Babatpur. With the delay at Petra, losing a couple of hours to time zones, and the cumbersome plane, it was the middle of the night when they arrived.
It took Mac a moment to get his bearings, but within seconds he and Abdullah and Albie were rushed from the plane by the man known only as Bihari. Serious and no-nonsense, he said, “Hurry, please. We remain about a hundred miles north of the Rihand Dam.”
“A hundred miles?” Mac said. “How we gettin’ this water back to the plane?”
“Trucks!”
“The GC asleep over here, or what?”
“The GC, my friend, enjoy the drinking water.”
Bihari averaged more than seventy miles an hour in a minivan that had no business going that fast on roads that may never have seen that speed before—especially in the dead of night. Ninety minutes later, in a swirling cloud of dust, he swung into a clearing near a small processing plant and showed Mac and the others towering skids of bottled water that looked as if they would fill two large trucks.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Mac said. “We got us a big, big plane.”
“I wondered if you would notice,” Bihari said. “Did you not hear me honk at passing traffic on the way?”
“Occasionally, I guess.”
“All but two trucks are already on their way to the plane. When we heard you were in the air, we got started. The prospect of real wheat to eat has motivated all of us. With you gentlemen and forklifts, we can load the last two trucks by dawn and be on our way.”
A few minutes later, as Mac backed a forklift toward a stack of skids, he passed Albie. “These people make me feel like a lazy old fool,” he said. “Our job is cushy compared to theirs.”
“They wouldn’t want to worry about the missiles and bullets,” Albie said. “They get away with this by supplying the GC with a little water?”
Bihari interrupted the last of the loading by waving his hands over his head at Mac. “Will your people be discouraged by a setback?” he said.
“Depends,” Mac said. “We still gonna be able to take off and get outta here?”
“Yes, but I believe we are doomed.”
“That wouldn’t make our day. What’s the trouble?”
“We will drive by the dam on our way back to the airport. It is a little out of the way, but you must see it.”
“I’ve seen dams be
fore. Somethin’ wrong with yours?”
“My people tell me the next curse from the Lord has fallen.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I cannot imagine what blood looks like, being forced through the control doors of a dam.”
“Me neither,” Mac said. “How’s your water inventory, minus what we’re takin’?”
“Maybe six months. But the GC will surely raid us when they discover we no longer have sources either.”
“They know where you are?”
“They have to have an idea. It will not take them long.”
“Hidin’ this place oughta be your top priority.”
The sun was going down, and yet heat still shimmered off the plains of Argentina. Rayford tried to hold the binoculars still enough to make out what all the commotion was about. It could have been anything, but none of the options hit him as positive. There were an awful lot of people out there, that was sure. But he couldn’t quite tell if they were military, GC, Morale Monitors, peasants, people from the city, or what.
He handed the glasses back to Luís. “Do we just get in the air? Or had we better check this out?”
“You know what I think.”
“Do we go armed? How many go with us?”
Luís shook his head. “How about I supply the vehicle, and you supply the ideas?”
“Fair enough,” Rayford said. “Sebastian and I will go. And we will be armed but not on the offensive. We’re just seeing what’s going on and keeping you and yours out of it.”
As they descended from the tower, Luís said, “Oh, dear Lord, I pray it hasn’t already happened.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you smell that, Captain Steele?”
Rayford sniffed the air. Blood.
Mac was preoccupied on the drive from the processing plant. Would the huge shipment of wheat have to be trucked all the way down here too? Did they have enough trucks? And where would they store it?
On the one hand he worried about it, and on the other he was glad it wasn’t his problem. Better thinkers than he had put this deal together. It was their concern.
When Bihari stopped at the dam, the other loaded truck pulled up behind. At first no one disembarked. Then all four of them did.
They just stood and watched for a minute. Two of the great doors in the wall of the dam were open, both disgorging huge arcs of liquid, splashing into a ravine and sweeping past them. Blood was so much thicker than water that it sounded and acted differently. It smelled awful, and Mac found it frightening somehow. It reminded him of a nightmare and chilled him.
A man stood several hundred yards from the dam, downstream from the rushing blood. He looked familiar. “Who is that?” Mac said, pointing.
“Who is who?” Albie said.
Mac turned him the right direction and pointed.
“I don’t see so well this time of the morning, Mac. Who do you see?”
“No one sees that man by the rock down there? He’s close to the river.”
No one said anything.
“I’m going to check him out. He’s looking right at us! Waving us down there!”
“I don’t see him, Mac. Maybe this is one of your cowboy marriages.”
Mac cocked his head at Abdullah. “One of my what?”
“One of those things you cowpokes see in the desert when you’re thirsty. It looks like water but it’s just a cactus or something. A marriage.”
Albie threw back his head and laughed. “I grew up ten thousand miles from Texas and I know that one! It’s a mirage, Smitty. A mirage.”
“Well, this ain’t a marriage or a mirage,” Mac said. “I’ll be right back.”
He drew within a hundred yards of the man, who watched him all the way. “If you’re going to come,” the man said, “why not bring an empty bottle?”
“What do I want a bottle of blood for? Anyway, I don’t think I have an empty one.”
“Empty one and bring it.”
Mac turned around, as if it was the most normal request and he had no choice.
As he hurried back, Abdullah said, “So what was it, pod’ner? A marriage?”
“Very funny, camel jockey.”
Mac pulled a bottle from one of the skids, drank half of it on his way back, then poured out the rest.
“Hey!” Bihari called, “that stuff’s as valuable as wheat, you know.”
Mac watched his footing as he reached the rushing crimson tide. “You get around, don’t you, Michael?” he said. “You omnipresent or something?”
“You know better than that, Cleburn,” Michael said. “Like you, I am on assignment.”
“And coincidentally in the same part of the world as me. I never got to thank you for—”
Michael held up a hand to silence him, then reached for the bottle. He sighed and looked to the sky. He spoke softly but with great passion. “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.”
Michael carefully walked among the rocks, down to the edge of the rushing river. The surging blood was so loud that Mac worried he would not be able to hear Michael if he spoke again. And as if he knew Mac’s fear, Michael turned and beckoned him closer. Mac hesitated. Michael was being spotted with blood. His brown robes were speckled, as were his beard and face and hair.
“Come,” he said.
And Mac went.
Michael stood with one foot on a rock and the other just inches from the river. He said, “Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.”
Then another voice, Mac did not know from where: “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.”
Michael bent low and thrust the bottle into the current. The rushing blood pushed against his arm and soaked his sleeve and filled the bottle. And when he drew it from the river and turned toward Mac, there was no blood on him. His robe was dry. His face was clean. His arm was clean. The bottle was full of pure, clean water.
Michael handed it to Mac. “Drink,” he said. Mac put the cold bottle to his lips and tipped it straight up. As Mac closed his eyes and drank it all, Michael said, “Jesus said, ‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’”
Mac opened his eyes and exhaled loudly. Michael was gone.
“All due respect, sir,” Sebastian said, “but you realize it’s just you and me, a couple of guns, and a few rounds of ammunition, and we don’t have a clue what we’re driving into?”
“I was hoping you’d protect me,” Rayford said. “This military stuff is fairly new to me.”
“We’re not really going to take these people on, are we?”
“I hope not, George. We’re hopelessly outnumbered.”
“Sorta what I was getting at, sir.”
“Let’s just play this out and see what we find.”
“Uh, hold on. Could you stop a second?”
“You serious?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rayford stopped and put the vehicle in park.
“You didn’t read that in some military strategy book, did you?”
“What’s that?”
“The see-what-we-find gambit?”
“George, listen. Nothing is as it used to be. We improvise every day. You’re a living example of that. We have no choice here. We’ve got a whole bunch of our brothers and sisters trying to survive out here, and now something could be threatening them. If I went back and got all of them and armed them all, they would be no match for the GC if they decided to advance. So let’s see what this is. We shouldn’t have to get right into the middle of it before we know w
e should turn back. Use the binocs. You see armed GC, say the word, and we turn around. Fair enough?”
George looked like he was thinking. “Consider this,” he said. “See over there? Over your other shoulder. There’s a big group of somebody heading toward the gathering place. Let’s go wide around the back way and get into that group. They aren’t military and they aren’t threatening.”
“Makes sense.”
“Always does. Make use of your resources.”
“Like your mind, you mean?” Rayford said.
“Well, I wasn’t going to say that.”
Mac looked around, his heart stampeding as if he’d run up a mountainside. He scampered down to the rushing river of blood and plunged the bottle into the current. Blood splashed all over him, but when he pulled the bottle out, it was pure freshwater again.
He laughed and shouted and charged back toward Albie and Abdullah and Bihari. But they had apparently never seen Michael and quickly tired of Mac’s antics. “You didn’t see him! You didn’t, did you?”
They looked at him gravely from the trucks.
“Did you see me pour the water out? Well, did you? Bihari, you did, ’cause you told me it was worth its weight in wheat. Remember? Well, then where did I get this?”
Bihari got out of the truck. “Where did you get that?” he said.
“From that river right there! And do you see any blood on me?”
“I don’t!”
“Still think you’re doomed? The GC is going to leave you alone when they see what’s happened to your water source. But you send your people and your equipment down here like usual. God takes care of the ones he’s sealed, amen?”
By now Albie and Abdullah had come to see as well.
“Try a taste of this, gentlemen. You’ll want to drink it all, but it’s for sharing.”
Rayford and George found themselves in the middle of a pilgrimage of some sort. Almost everyone else was on foot. From their clothes they appeared to be both town and country folk, and some peasants. “English, anyone?” George said.