“Oh, I can’t let you do that, ma’am. Now, please. I’m sorry I forgot your information.”
“Is your hand on your gun, Monitor?” she said.
“No, ma’am, well, yes, ma’am, it is, but not on purpose. I—”
“Read my name badge, son, and get that memorized. Now all you have to know is Senior Commander Johnson.”
“Got it. One moment.”
Chloe shook her head. It was a wonder the GC accomplished anything. The door had barely shut when it opened again and the Morale Monitor gestured her in with a nod. He pointed to a glassed-in office in a corner of the floor where the commander sat at his desk, a female underling stationed outside. “I have to get through her too?” Chloe said.
“Yes, ma’am. That is the commander’s secretary.”
Most of the other desks were empty, and the lights here were intermittent too. It seemed all this commander had were enough people to keep him buffered. Chloe strode toward the older woman in uniform. The woman smiled expectantly, but Chloe swept past her. “Irene, Johnson’s staff, to see Stefanich.”
The woman had no time even to protest. Nelson Stefanich looked startled and began to rise.
“Hi, sorry, sir, but Senior Commander Johnson doesn’t have time for me to work my way through all your layers. You have some information for him?”
“Of course, but—”
Chloe whipped out her leather bifold and produced her GC ID card. “What do you need?”
“Well, I’d like to visit with Commander Johnson.” Stefanich sounded eastern European, she guessed Polish.
“He sends his regrets. The GC brass would like this handled with dispatch, and we understood you were prepared to—”
“Sit down, Ms. Irene, please.”
“I really—”
“Please, I insist.”
Chloe sat.
“I had hoped to bring your commander up to speed on the ones we chose for this assignment. We are very proud of their—”
“Excuse me, sir, but we understand zero information has been extracted from the rebel operative.”
“That’s just a matter of time. He is highly trained military, and we have been patient to this point.”
“Might I suggest that if your assignees were at the level you say they are, Commander Johnson would not have had to come all this way?”
“Perhaps. But I am happy with what they have accomplished thus far and plan to recommend them for—”
“Do whatever you like, sir, but please send me back to my boss with what he needs to make contact.”
Stefanich made a show of pulling a file from his desk drawer, but he did not hand it to Chloe. “Are you not aware of what happened today? This prisoner became immediately less valuable with the success of the attack.”
“I understood the results of that are not conclusive. If they were, wouldn’t it be broadcast internationally?”
“There were technical difficulties. You will learn that millions of traitors are dead, including their leadership.”
“We still don’t know where their headquarters are,” Chloe said, “or how much of the leadership might be left.”
“We have them narrowed to the Carpathian States. Even the rebel would not refute that.”
“Sir, are you refusing a senior commander access to your prisoner?”
“No, I’m—”
“Because if you are, I will be the first to fall under his displeasure. But you will be next.” She rose. “I’m already late, but showing up empty-handed, well, I don’t mind telling you, that is going to fall on you.”
“Here you are,” he said, offering the file.
Chloe was moving toward the door. “You can put in for commendations for the locals you hired, but you won’t be in a position to award them if—”
“Here, no, please,” he said, smiling apologetically.
Chloe stopped and looked at him with suspicion. “A folder? I don’t want a folder. All I need to give the commander are directions to the prisoner.”
“That’s what this is! Now, here!”
Chloe stood with her hand on the doorknob, shaking her head. “And your people expect us.”
“Of course!”
She stood with her lips pressed together, squinting at Stefanich. She had come this far; she wasn’t going to return to him. “Let’s have it, then.”
He sat reaching, offering the file. She stared him down. Finally he sighed and rose and approached her. Chloe snatched the folder and left.
CHAPTER 4
Chang sat fidgeting at his desk, pretending to work, unable to concentrate. He was supposed to be coordinating flights and convoys of equipment, food, and supplies from production plants to the neediest areas. He had devised a way to make it appear his instructions were logical and complete, even efficient. But the actual transmissions caused no end of delays. Because of a glitch he had introduced into the system, shipments were held for days at remote locations, then delivered to the wrong places. Often the wrong place for the GC meant the right place for the Co-op or the Trib Force.
Chang had received a commendation for his work, somehow covering his tracks and avoiding having the problems traced to him. Something was niggling at the back of his mind now, though. Something didn’t make sense.
Ming had left a note informing the Chicago Tribulation Force that she was on her way to see her parents in China. If that was true, why would she go east? It only made sense for her to find a flight to the West Coast. True, the major California cities were rubble and the big airports gone, but there were still many places to fly out of.
Chang considered feigning illness and taking the rest of the afternoon off, but he couldn’t risk bringing attention to himself. Too many Trib Forcers were in precarious positions. He needed to be in place for them without suspicion. He watched the clock.
Buck sat with Kenny on his lap and chatted with Zeke and Leah. It was just after eight in the morning, and Leah was riffling through stacks of messages and reports from Co-op people all over the world. Amazingly, the thing was largely working, even with the tragedy of the seas. The sheer audacity of people without the mark of loyalty transporting in their own vehicles gigantic shipments of goods to one another, no money changing hands, boggled the mind.
“Do you know what you have in that wife of yours, Buck?” Leah said.
Buck hadn’t learned how to read Leah yet. He wanted to take that as a straight-out compliment, praise for Chloe. But did he detect a challenge? Was Leah implying he was insensitive, that he didn’t know what he had in Chloe? “Yes, I think I do,” he said.
“I don’t think he does, Kenny. Do you? Do you think he does?”
“Does!” Kenny said.
“Do you?”
The baby giggled.
“Do you know what you’ve got in that mommy of yours, sweetheart? She’s a genius. She—”
But Kenny heard “mommy” and began to squirm and repeat, “Mama. Mama.”
“Thank you, Leah,” Buck said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and sounded as if she meant it.
If she hadn’t, Buck was prepared to add, “Brilliant. Real smart.” That was the effect Leah had on him. She appeared to be trying to distract Kenny by changing the subject, but she should have tried with something that would interest him, not Buck.
“I’m serious,” she said. “You know what I’ve learned here? Chloe knows how many one-thousand-ton or larger oceangoing vessels there were in the world before the seas turned to blood.”
“You don’t say.”
“Say!” Kenny said.
“I do say,” Leah said. “Can you guess?”
“I don’t know,” Buck said. “Thousands, I suppose.”
“Can I guess?” Zeke said.
“Z!” Kenny shouted.
“I’m guessin’ more’n thirty thousand.”
“Ships that big?” Buck said. “Sounds high.”
“He’s right on the money,” Leah said. “What, did Chloe tel
l you or something? How’d you know that?”
Z couldn’t hide a grin. “Yeah, she told me. But that’s a pretty good memory, right?”
Buck turned it over in his mind. “What happens to all those ships?” he said.
“Ruined,” Leah said. “Dead in the water. Well, dead in the blood anyway.”
“And if God lifts the judgment? The blood turns back to salt water, then what?”
She shook her head. “No idea. I can’t imagine what it would take to clean a ship of blood throughout its works.”
“And the dead fish,” Z said.
“Fish!”
“Who could stand the smell? You don’t see it on the news, but people who live on the coasts are trying to move. If nothing changes, the smell will only get worse, and the disease and all that. Ugh!”
“Ugh!”
Buck let Kenny run off. “I can’t imagine how Carpathia deals with this. You can’t spin it, can’t gloss over it. Thousands are dying every day, and think of the crews marooned. They’ll eventually all die. Hey, Leah, I did a piece a few years back on the surprising dependence Panama had on its shipping industry. What does this do to a country like that?”
She flipped through some sheets. “They’re the only country with more ships than Greece,” she said. “It’s got to bankrupt them.”
The mention of Greece made Buck check his watch. “Late afternoon there,” he said. “If the plan is working, they ought to be ready to move in when it gets dark.”
“Why are they waiting?”
Buck shrugged. “Mac thinks it gives them an advantage. He doesn’t know what’s going to unfold, but if they have to shoot their way out or try to escape somehow, he figures they’re a leg up in the darkness.”
Leah sat staring, as if she wasn’t listening.
“Something on your mind?” Buck said.
“I was expecting a call or an e-mail by now. Chloe told me a businessman had something he wanted to ship to Petra. Cheap housing modules of some kind.”
“Yeah?”
“Wealthy guy, made a killing in low-cost housing, then became a believer. He’s really into the timing. Totally buys into Tsion’s charts and graphs, figures the Glorious Appearing exactly seven years from the original agreement between Carpathia and Israel.”
“Don’t you?”
“Sure. If Tsion told me today was yesterday, I’d believe it.” It was clear she had lost her train of thought. “I miss him, Buck. I pray for him constantly.”
“We all do.”
“Not like I do.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What?”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“’Course,” Buck said. “Just thinking about him makes you forget what you were talking about.”
She looked embarrassed. “That’s not true!”
“Prove it.”
“We were, uh, talking about ships. Panama and Greece.”
“We were onto modular housing, Leah.”
“We were, weren’t we?”
“We were. Now who is this guy and what do we need to hear from him?”
Leah stood and looked out a pinhole in the black paint that covered the windows. “Not sure,” she said. “He’s from right here in Illinois. Something Grove. Says we’ve got less than three and a half years left, and he’d like us to help him figure a way to get his inventory to Petra. Says they could build the houses themselves in no time. You think he survived, don’t you, Buck?”
“Survived what?”
“The bombing.”
“This guy was in Petra?”
“Tsion!”
“Oh, pardon me. We’re back to him. Well, I’m just as concerned about my father-in-law, and Chaim, and Abdullah, but yes, I do.”
“Do what?”
“Think they survived.”
“We won’t be able to tell from the news, will we?”
“No. But Chang should know. He knows all.”
Chang had skipped lunch, so when his day was over he went back to his quarters by way of the central mess and filled a bag with food. There was so much he wanted to listen to, but top priority was tracking his sister. He didn’t know if his parents were on the move or already in hiding, but they would be vulnerable regardless, without the mark of loyalty. He had sent them contact information on an underground church in their province, but he had never heard back whether they had or would try to make a connection.
How would Ming find them if he didn’t even know where they were? And how long would it take her to get to China, heading east out of the United North American States?
The mood was somber in the palace complex. Everyone seemed in a hurry to get to their quarters. It had been a strange day. Who had not seen the attack on the rebels, and was anyone snowed by the so-called technical difficulties that suddenly swept the coverage from the air, just when the pilot clearly said he thought he saw people alive below?
Chang casually glanced up and down the corridor, quickly entered his quarters, and locked the door. He ran his computer through a quick program that checked his room for bugs. It showed his systems, installed by David Hassid and left for his use and safekeeping, still secure and running normally.
Chang wolfed down fruit and crackers, then checked his e-mail. There was his confirmation, addressed to the bogus name he used as an operative of the Global Community aviation administration. “Passenger, GC Peacekeeper Chang Chow from sector 30, riding with pilot Lionel Whalum, Long Grove, Illinois. Flight plan nonstop to Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Round trip for Whalum. Mr. Chow’s papers in order, destination San Diego, California. Note: Whalum did not bear the mark of loyalty, but Mr. Chow asserted that he would see to it when they arrived in South Carolina.”
Chang fired off a thanks, then searched the database for flights from Pawleys Island to San Diego. A flier scheduled for that route the next day rang a bell in Chang’s mind. It was a Co-op pilot. So Ming was using Co-op people to get herself to China. Was Whalum Co-op too? He ran a search against Chloe’s records. Nothing. If he was Co-op, he hadn’t been used yet, or at least she hadn’t logged him. Maybe he used another name, or maybe Chloe was behind in entering her records.
Chang checked the international GC database, and while the search engine looked for Whalum, he finished eating. He came back to the computer to find a photo of and an entire page on Lionel Whalum of Long Grove, Illinois. The man was black, of African descent. He and his wife and three kids had moved from Chicago to the suburbs when his business became successful. He had won many civic and business awards. His loyalty to the Global Community was listed as “unknown, but not suspicious.”
Chang switched to another database and copied information for a loyalty oath administration center at Statesville in Illinois. Switching back to Whalum’s records, he changed the loyalty designation to “confirmed,” documented by the GC squadron in Statesville on the date Whalum had received his mark. If he was Co-op, that would take the heat off. And it ought to tip off Ming that Chang was watching out for her.
A tone sounded on Chang’s computer and scrolling type informed him, and all other GC personnel, of “the unfortunate loss of both pilots involved in the attack on rebel forces today. Due to pilot error, their payloads missed the target by more than a mile, and the insurgents fired missiles that destroyed both planes. The Global Community expresses its sympathy to the families of these heroes and martyrs to the cause of world peace.”
Chang quickly flipped to the hangar manifests and found that both multimillion-Nick aircraft were back and accounted for. The morgue listed both pilots as “deceased—remains delivered from crash sites in the Negev.” Their personnel records had already been flagged in red with the date of their deaths.
He called up the recording from Akbar’s office around the time the first flier would have returned. There was clear conversation with Akbar’s secretary and the pilot being escorted to the conference room. A few minutes later came the pleasantries, the invite to
sit again. Then Suhail. “Good effort out there today, man.”
“Thank you, sir,” came the answer with a British accent. “Perfect execution. Felt good.”
“I’m sorry. You’re unaware then that your mission failed?”
“Sir?”
“That the outcome was negative?”
“I don’t follow, Director. Both incendiaries were bull’s-eyes, and the entire area was consumed, as ordered. When I turned for home, the missile had been launched, and according to what I heard—”
“You seriously don’t know that you missed your target.”
“Sir, if the coordinates were correct, we did not miss.”
“There were no casualties, young man.”
“Impossible. I saw people there before we launched, and I saw nothing but fire for several minutes before I left.”
“The effort was there, as I said. Unfortunately, human error resulted in utter failure.”
“I don’t . . . I’m not . . . I’m . . . at a loss, sir.”
“You will be demoted, and the party line is that you don’t know how such a significant oversight could have occurred.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I am not convinced it occurred!”
“I’m telling you it occurred, and that is what you will tell anyone who wants to know.”
“I will not! Either you prove to me we missed our target or I will maintain to everyone I know that this mission went off without a hitch.”
“You will see in due time reconnaissance photos that show no loss of life in Petra.”
“You’ve seen these?”
“Of course I have.”
“And you have no doubt as to their veracity?”
“None, son.”
There was a long pause. The young man’s voice sounded pitiful. “If there is one survivor on that mountain, it’s a miracle. You know what we dropped there. You ordered it yourself! It can’t be explained away, and I won’t take the heat for it.”
“You already have. You and your compatriot will be reassigned, and you know how to respond to—”
“I will not testify to something I don’t believe, sir.”
“Come, come, mister. I see the 2 on your hand and the image of our leader. You’re a loyal citizen. You contribute to the cause, you—”