The music had stirred the crowd to a fever pitch, and the army that followed was clearly something unlike any of them, loyalists or rebels, had ever seen. There would not be room in the Old City for a fraction of the force. Mac wondered how even Carpathia and the rest of the rolling stock were going to navigate the narrow cobblestone streets.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing, Mac,” Rayford said. “This is some festival, eh?”
“Ridiculous!”
“Frankly, I love it,” Rayford said. “The more and the louder the better.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The more pomp and circumstance, the greater the humiliation later.”
“Well, that’s for sure.”
“You find us yet, Mac?”
“I’m headin’ your way. When you gonna split off?”
“We’re not.”
“You’re not? What? You’re gonna go paradin’ into the Old City with Carpathia?”
“Why not? See if you can get in.”
“Unlikely.”
“Try.”
Mac caught up to the parade and had to wonder what all the extra troops were for. The same contingent of soldiers that had been there when he had discovered Buck was more than enough to get the job done from a human standpoint. If they couldn’t do it, the rest wouldn’t help.
Fortunato steered the wide Humvee through Jaffa Gate, and almost immediately the folly of their plan became clear. There simply wasn’t room for the rolling stock to proceed to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. In his earpiece Mac heard Nicolae trying to enlist engineers to bring in heavy equipment and knock down buildings and walls en route. When told that would take hours, he exploded, swearing and demanding to know who told him his parade through the Old City had been a capital idea.
“Leave the cars where they are!” he announced. “I shall lead the rest of the attack on horseback.”
Mac was close enough now to see Carpathia sneak a peek at the sky. Jesus was not there at the moment, and neither was His heavenly army. Mac thought this unnerved Carpathia more than if He’d been there.
Aides immediately attended to Carpathia when he emerged from the Humvee. He straightened his leathers, which seemed no worse for wear since he had not left the vehicle during the debacle at Armageddon. Nicolae also repositioned his garish sword.
But when Fortunato got out, he was wearing plain civilian clothes that made him appear to be on his way to a workday for a local community service club. “Get the reverend a proper uniform and something to clean his face and hair,” Carpathia ordered.
Someone ran off, returning presently. “Biggest we have,” the man said, handing the folded clothes and a wet towel to Fortunato, who gave him a look that would lift roadkill off asphalt. “Sorry,” the man whispered. “Biggest we have.”
“You can change in the cathedral,” someone else told Leon, and he hurried off with a couple of aides. Meanwhile, more generals and hangers-on and toadies surrounded Carpathia, who asked that they make room for the photographers and TV camera crews.
When Leon returned in the too-short, too-tight Unity Army getup, he looked like ten pounds of mud in a five-pound bag. He had tried to religious-ize the outfit by hanging around his neck a large gold chain with 216 dangling from it.
It was all Mac could do to keep a straight face. He fell into step with Rayford and Abdullah as they approached from their vehicle. They had begun to draw a few stares, though fortunately not from anyone who cared enough to ask questions. All three wore caps pulled low over their foreheads, but without proper uniforms they couldn’t pass for Unity Army personnel.
“We’d better split up, eh, Cap?” Mac said.
“I guess. Smitty, you go north. Mac, south. Meet you outside the Eastern Wall at the Golden Gate when this is all over.”
Chaim felt the tingle of anticipation as the remnant fell into place at a high point on the western slope overlooking Jerusalem. It still seemed disconcerting not to see Jesus above them, but he knew the Lord knew best. Antichrist had been crowing about luring the Son of God into his trap, when it was clear to Chaim that the opposite had happened. Carpathia had to have read the Bible. He had to know all this was prophesied. He even had to know the predicted outcome. Yet he brazenly came to the very spot he was supposed to, and in spite of the mass execution of his troops in three other confrontations, he still had the gall to believe he would prevail.
This was going to be something to see, and Chaim wanted to say so to the assembled. He had no means to address them all at once, and from looking at those around him, he knew there was nothing they needed to be told. They, like he, looked on with great expectancy.
Ride on, King Jesus!
CHAPTER 15
Rayford was close enough behind Nicolae that he heard him ask a woman general, “What is our equestrian strength?”
She checked via radio and reported, “Excellency, of more than a million soldiers, a little more than a tenth are on horseback.”
“Call for as many steeds as we need to get the first wave to the Western Wall, and order Reverend Fortunato and me appropriate mounts.”
Within minutes several thousand horses crowded the streets, and Unity Army soldiers were mounting up. A tall, handsome stallion, almost identical to the one Carpathia had ridden out of the city toward Bozrah, was delivered for his use. Cameras clicked and TV crews crowded around as he swung aboard, raising his sword.
He twirled the blade above his head, rousing the troops, who responded with a crescendoing whoop, like a football team about to break from the locker room.
Fortunato struggled up onto a smaller black horse and settled himself.
“Follow me to the Western Wall,” Carpathia shouted, “and make way for the battering ram and missile launchers! Upon my command, open fire!”
Knowing the Old City by now, Rayford sprinted for side streets, heading toward the Western Wall.
Mac was already at the southern corner of the Old City, a few steps north of Dung Gate. Abdullah contacted him by radio and said he had found a perch near Antonia’s Fortress and believed he was safe and undetectable, with a good view of the approaching invaders.
“I am high enough to see the surrounding army forces too, Mac,” he said. “They have the entire Old City encircled, several thousand deep. I can see why they are so confident of victory, having cut off all escape routes 360 degrees.”
Rayford set up a hundred yards short of the Western Wall and far enough south that he had some underbrush for cover. He thought he saw Mac but couldn’t be sure. Almost everyone inside the Old City but the press was part of the attacking force, but the occasional civilian stood atop anything available, cheering and shouting encouragement as Carpathia came into view, valiant and proud on his huge horse, sword pointing to the sky, microphone wrapped around his ear and in front of his mouth so the entire army could hear his commands.
“For the glory of your risen master and lord of the earth!” he shouted, urging his ride to a full gallop, clacking over the cobblestone ground. Fortunato’s horse mince-stepped slowly after, which seemed plenty fast enough for Leon.
The band lagged behind the mounted and rolling and marching troops, loudly clanging out a rousing melody. As Carpathia drew within range of the wall, he peeled off to the south with Fortunato trailing him.
“Horsemen, make way for the armaments!” Carpathia bellowed. “Attack! Break through the wall! Take the Temple Mount! Destroy the rebels!”
But when the horsemen whipped their mounts, they did not make way. Rather, the horses bolted as if blind—nickering, whinnying, braying, rearing, bucking, kicking, spinning into each other, running headlong into the wall, throwing riders.
“Make way!” Carpathia screamed. “Make way!”
The riders not thrown leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted, and their tongues disintegrated. As Rayford watched, the soldiers stood briefly as skeleton
s in now-baggy uniforms, then dropped in heaps of bones as the blinded horses continued to fume and rant and rave.
Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they too rattled to the pavement.
“Reinforcements!” Carpathia called out. “Charge! Charge! Fire! Fire! Attack!”
But every horse and rider that advanced suffered the same fate. First blindness and madness on the part of the horses, then the bodies of the soldiers melting and dissolving. Then the falling and piling of the bones.
Rayford stood, mouth agape, noticing that neither Carpathia’s nor Fortunato’s horses had been affected yet. Leon slid off his mount and flopped to the ground, rolling to a kneeling position and burying his face in his hands.
“Get up, Leon! Get up! We are not defeated! We have a million more soldiers and we shall prevail!”
But Leon stayed where he was, whimpering and wailing.
Plainly disgusted, Nicolae urged his horse back to the middle of the wall and looked past the bones of his decimated troops for reinforcements. He lifted his sword and cursed God, but suddenly his attention was drawn directly above.
Rayford followed his gaze to see the temple of God opened in heaven, and the ark of the covenant plain as day. Lightning flashed and thunder roared, and the earth began to shift.
Carpathia’s horse reared and high-stepped, and Nicolae fought to control him. Fortunato’s horse scampered away without him.
The earth groaned and buckled, and the city of Jerusalem was fractured into three as the great fissures swallowed up Carpathia loyalists and soldiers. Buildings and walls were left intact, except Abdullah reported seeing the cemented-over East Gate—closed off for centuries—blasted open by the movement of the earth.
Rayford slapped his palm over his earpiece and plugged his other ear to hear reports coming in from all over the world. The earthquake was global. Islands disappeared. Mountains were leveled. The entire face of the planet had been made level, save for the city of Jerusalem itself.
And suddenly the Lord Jesus Himself appeared in the clouds again, and the whole world saw Him. He spoke with a loud voice, saying, “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
“Every valley has been exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places have been made straight and the rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord has been revealed, and all flesh have seen it together; for I have spoken.
“Behold, the day of the Lord has come, and your spoil has been divided in your midst. For I gathered all the nations to battle against Jerusalem, but the remnant of the people was not cut off from the city. I went forth and fought against those nations, as in the day of battle.
“And the plague with which I struck all the people who fought against Jerusalem was this: their flesh dissolved while they stood on their feet, their eyes dissolved in their sockets, and their tongues dissolved in their mouths. I sent a great panic over them. Such also was the plague on the horses.
“Behold, I made Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they laid siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And I made Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away were surely cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth were gathered against it.
“I struck every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness; I opened My eyes on the house of Judah and struck every horse of the peoples with blindness.
“I defended the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the one who was feeble among them today is like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the Angel of the Lord before them. I destroyed all the nations that came against Jerusalem.
“Therefore the curse has devoured the earth, and those who dwell in it are desolate. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left.
“In the midst of the land among the people, it was like the shaking of an olive tree, like the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done.
“The children of Israel called on My name, and I answered them. I said, ‘This is My people’; and each one said, ‘The Lord is my God.’”
Though the Lord did not speak audibly to the remnant, Chaim felt as if he and they were being drawn inexorably around the Old City to the east side. As the million-plus slowly made their way past the dead and the dying, a fraction of Antichrist’s forces remained alive. They struggled and staggered toward shelter, also apparently drawn to the east.
The Lord sat triumphant on the back of His white horse in the clouds, His army behind Him, gazing upon the one-sided victory over the forces that had come against Jerusalem.
Mac found Rayford and they went looking for Abdullah. They knew he was all right, because they had radio contact. He too was headed east of the city.
“You should have seen Nicolae and Leon,” Rayford said.
“I saw them briefly,” Mac said, “when Leon fell off his horse.”
“Nicolae galloped off a little while ago, heading back the way he had come. Leon was running after him, pleading to let him ride along, but Carpathia ignored him.”
“Figures.”
The earth still shifted and moved from aftershocks, and Rayford tried to imagine what it must look like from outer space. No more islands. No more mountains. Virtually flat with gently rolling hills. The whole of Israel, except for Jerusalem, was level.
They found Abdullah, who at first looked past them, then smiled and shook his head. “I was looking for two white men, Mac.”
Hannah Palemoon caught up with Chaim, who was surrounded by people with questions. She waited until he recognized her, then said, “How long until we are reunited with loved ones who went on to heaven before us?”
“Very soon, I hope,” Chaim said. “There are many I wish to see too, but first I want to see Jesus face-to-face.”
“What’s next?”
“Oh, I think you know. The Lord Himself will set foot on earth again, for only the second time since His ascension. As you know, He came in the clouds for the Rapture, and this time He briefly walked on the ground when He soiled His robe in blood at Bozrah.”
“Is the enemy completely gone?” Hannah said.
“Soon,” Chaim said. “Very soon.”
Illinois, flat as it already was, was hardly affected by the earthquake, though Enoch was certain no one doubted what had happened. The long, low rumbling of the earth continued, and he heard Carpathia loyalists screaming for their lives.
After his people had returned to their homes, Enoch had begun moving his furniture upstairs, looking forward to a life where he could look out the window without caring who might see in. Just before the earthquake one of the few Global Community Peacekeeper patrol cars he’d seen in recent weeks raced down the street. As it came around the curve in front of his place it veered off the road and hit a fire hydrant.
Neighbors ran to the car, collapsing in disbelief when all they found were skeletons and clothes in the front seat. The declared enemies of God were being decimated around the world.
Enoch tried calling his parishioners, reaching many and missing several who called while he was on the phone. No one was hurt, though some of their homes were damaged. Several were badly shaken, telling of seeing government employees disintegrating before their eyes. And all wanted to talk about their new church, where it might be and how soon they might move into it. Many also mentioned their pilgrimage to the Middle East.
“I don’t know when it’s gonna be,” one woman told Enoch, “but I’ll be along whenever.”
Enoch reminded each that sometime after the earthquake, Jesus would set foot on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the whole world would see Him. “Keep looking up.”
“You still in a teachin’ mood, Smitty?” Mac said.
“That depends on whether I have studied whatever you are curious ab
out.”
“The Mount of Olives, of course.”
“Oh yes, I have studied it thoroughly. You can see it from here, naturally. It is only half a mile from the Eastern Wall of the Old City. It is really more of a hill than a mountain, as you can tell. One of Jesus’ most famous sermons was preached there. When He made His triumphal entry, He came from the Mount of Olives. And He returned there every night of the last week before the Crucifixion, often praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Ascension took place there later too.”
“So it makes sense that’s where He wants to come now.”
“It certainly does to me,” Abdullah said.
George Sebastian had never seen anything like it. He told Priscilla he would catch up with her and the kids and the rest of the Tribulation Force traveling with the remnant. He lagged, and rather than following the remnant around the devastated city, he decided to cut directly through it on his way to the Mount of Olives.
As a career military man, Sebastian had seen the spoils of war before, of course, on many fields of battle around the world. He could not recall, however, a quaint, beautiful city so devastated. Most peculiar, it was nearly impossible to determine who had won.
Sebastian had been kept up to speed on the conflict from the beginning and knew from Buck and then Mac how the city had been completely overrun by the Global Community Unity Army. Half the residents had been killed or captured. Many were still imprisoned and had been tortured and starved.
But now as he ambled through the narrow streets, George saw some surviving Unity soldiers leisurely dividing the spoils, while others regrouped for an assault on rebels who would try to escape from the Temple Mount. He also noticed piles of clothes and bones where the Lord had decomposed the bodies of His enemies.
So this was not over. Jerusalem, the jewel City of God, had been violated to the point of ruin. It was a wonder God Himself had not leveled it along with the mountains and islands of the world.