He quickly pretended to do what the GC were doing, but he was pickier. He used his weapon or his boot to roll over only those dead or dying who were the right size to possibly be Buck. Mac picked up a weapon occasionally and rifled a pocket or two, just in case anyone was watching. He didn’t really want to find Buck now, not unless he remained alive in the Temple Mount. No rebels had survived in the Muslim Quarter, as far as he could see.
It was the strangest battle George Sebastian had ever been part of. One could hardly call it a battle at all. It was just he and his ragtag bunch of earnest, impassioned believers, ringing part of the Petra perimeter with a handful of fairly sophisticated armaments—some directed energy weapons that burned the skin of soldiers and horses from long distances, and too few long-range fifty-caliber rifles—against the largest fighting force in the history of mankind.
The Global Community Unity Army, spearheaded by Antichrist himself, filled the horizon, even when George backed up onto the slopes and looked through solar-powered uberbinoculars. Hundreds of thousands of black-clad troops on horseback seemed to undulate under the shimmering desert vapors, steeds champing at the bit and high-stepping in place, appearing eager to carry their charges in an attack on the hopelessly outnumbered defenders.
Yet Sebastian felt little fear. He couldn’t deny a certain trepidation, scanning the tanks and armored personnel carriers, the foot soldiers, the fighters and bombers and choppers that backed up the cavalry as far as the eye could see. It was no exaggeration to call his enemy a sea of humanity, and he could not imagine a throng so massive ever having gathered in one place before. More than once he had seen most of the million-plus gathered at Petra, and impressive as that was, it was nothing compared to this.
Sebastian’s occasional volleys of DEWs and Fifties had proved a nuisance for the Unity forces. He had even caused several dozen casualties, which sent Gustaf Zuckermandel’s crazy underlings scampering into the field to harvest weapons, IDs, and full uniforms. And the supernatural protection of Petra seemed to hold, even out here. Sebastian had lost nary a troop.
Yet he knew well that if that great army merely advanced upon his position without firing a shot, his entire cache of ammunition would make not one serious dent in the overall force aligned against him. The enemy had begun advancing at a snail’s pace, and while they were neither firing nor launching artillery of any sort, the mere size of that force directing its momentum his way caused the earth to tremble and the footing to become unsure.
And of course he was worried about Rayford. He had seen the man protected like the rest of them, heat-seeking missiles appearing to fly directly through aircraft without harming a hair on anyone’s head. What could have caused injury to him now, and why? Some had speculated that the pieces of his vehicle found in the hills might have evidenced damage from an incendiary. But the latest report from Abdullah Smith was that the damage appeared to be the result of a loss of control, that the ATV had rolled and tumbled, smashing to bits.
What, then, about the blood trail that could have been only Rayford’s? It was way beyond Sebastian to question God, but he had to wonder. Could a missile God caused to miss Rayford have still caused an accident that mortally wounded him? And who was to blame for that? Ray himself? The enemy?
The bigger question now, of course, was what would come of this advance by the invaders. Sebastian believed with his whole heart that Petra was impregnable. What was he doing out here with his band of resisters then? Presumably giving latecomers a chance to benefit from the safety of the place. Before they came within the saving influence of the stone city, Sebastian would try everything in his power to pave the way for them. Yet none had come, and he saw none on the way.
Surely in a matter of hours—some said minutes—this would all be meaningless. Christ would appear, He would win the battle, and Rayford and Buck and even Tsion—dead, alive, or somewhere in between—would be reunited. Still, Sebastian couldn’t get Rayford off his mind. He had been trained to never leave a comrade on the battlefield, regardless. It made no sense that Smitty could find the blood trail of a man severely wounded and thus moving slowly and yet not be able to find the man himself.
The best Sebastian could determine, there were no enemy personnel behind Rayford. He could not have been captured. Worst-case but most likely scenario: Ray had dug himself a shelter against the sun and died there. Did it make a difference, given that he would be with Christ—just like the rest of them—when it was all over? Of course it did. Because you don’t leave a man.
How long had it been since he had checked in with Smitty? He looked at his watch. Too recently. And Abdullah said he would let him know at first opportunity. But Sebastian had to do something, short of heading to the hills himself—clearly an impossibility. He called Chang.
“No, I haven’t heard a thing yet,” the young man reported. “I sure wish you could be here, though. Thousands are turning to Christ, right here in Petra.”
That was wonderful, but Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to say so. Frankly, he carried a bit of resentment, even disgust, for those who had waited this long. Where had they been when all the judgments had come down? All the miracles? No sane person could deny that for the past seven years, God and Satan had waged war. Had these people really been undecided about which side they wanted to join? Any doubt about the reality of God and both His mercy and His judgment had long since been erased.
“I’ve got a call coming in,” Chang said.
“So do I,” Sebastian said. “Later.”
“Big Dog One, this is Camel Jockey.”
“Go ahead, Smitty,” Sebastian said.
“And, Techie, are you there?”
“Roger,” Chang said.
“I’ve spotted Captain Steele.”
Enoch Dumas awoke just after seven thirty in the morning. His musty mattress in the basement of an abandoned house in Palos Hills, Illinois, was warm where he had slept and cold where he hadn’t. And he hadn’t slept much. All night he had told himself that today was the day. He couldn’t imagine sleeping past 4 a.m., but the truth was, that was about the time he finally dozed. Eight in the morning, Central Time, would mark seven years to the minute since the signing of the covenant between Antichrist and Israel, a covenant that had been broken years earlier, but which marked the years before the Glorious Appearing of Christ.
The Place, his little church of thirty or so down-and-outers from the inner city of Chicago, had incongruously burgeoned since they had been scattered to the suburbs with the compromising of the Tribulation Force safe house. They no longer had a central meeting place. While knowing that they should trust no newcomers, every time they got together, more were added to their number. And because they recognized the seal of the believer on the foreheads of the newcomers, Enoch knew they had not been infiltrated. They now numbered nearly a hundred. While some had been martyred, a surprising majority had eluded detection and capture, though they busied themselves every day trying to gather more converts—“getting more drowning people onto the life raft,” Enoch called it.
Sometimes he even found himself urging caution to passionate new believers and warning them that the enemy was constantly on the lookout, eager to devour them, to make them statistics. And yet he was often reminded, usually by one of his own flock, that there was no other choice now than to be overt in their witness.
His favorite times were when the floor was opened and people who risked their very lives by assembling in secret would exude the joy of heaven when they spoke. He could not, nor did he want to, erase from his mind’s eye the testimony of Carmela, a fiftyish, heavyset Latina. In an abandoned laser-tag park about ten miles west of Enoch’s quarters, she had stood telling her story with tears running down her generous cheeks.
“I once was blind but now I see is the only way I can say it,” she said. “I was blind to God, blind to Jesus, selling my body to buy drugs and food. I had left everything and everybody important to me. Before I knew it, I only cared about me and
my next high. It was all about survival, kill or be killed, do what you gotta do.
“But then one day one of you came to me. And it was her, right there.” Carmela had pointed to an older woman, an African-American named Shaniqua. “She handed me one of the brochures, about the meetings and all, and she said, ‘Somebody loves you.’
“I thought, Somebody loves me? Tell me somethin’ I don’t know! Men tryin’ to love me all day. But I knew better. Nobody loved me. Fact, they hated me. Used me. I meant nothin’ more to them than their next meal or their next high. Just what they meant to me. Nobody loved me since my mama, and she died when I was little.
“I knew the brochure had to be somethin’ religious, but her saying that about somebody loving me, and her havin’ the courage to give me the brochure when she knew it was against the law . . . that was the only thing made me not throw it away or cuss her to her face.
“I read it that night, and I’m glad the Bible verses were in it, ’cause I ain’t seen no Bible for years. What got me was that it wasn’t fancy, wasn’t hard to understand, didn’t get all complicated. It just told me God loved me, Jesus died for me, and Jesus is comin’ again. All them Scriptures sounded true to me, ’bout being a sinner, being separated from God, and Jesus being the way back to Him.
“Before I knew it, that was the only thing I wanted. I didn’t know how I’d live, what I’d eat, nothing. But I knew I wanted Jesus. Next time I saw Shaniqua, I just about attacked her, didn’t I, honey? I told her she had to tell me how to get Jesus in my life. She told me it was simple. All I had to do was pray and mean it. Tell God I was sorry for the mess I’d made of my life and take Jesus as my Savior. It ain’t been easy, but know what? I’m ready for when Jesus comes.”
The believers wanted to be together by eight this morning, and they had settled on a parking lot of a former shopping center. Enoch had warned that a daylight assembly of that size would surely bring out the GC, and they would be looking for marks of loyalty.
“Let ’em be checking us when Jesus appears,” someone said, and the rest applauded.
As Enoch quickly showered and dressed, he found himself less worried about interference. The destruction of New Babylon in the space of one hour had so thrown into chaos the international economy that it seemed nothing else mattered to nonbelievers. Suicides were at an all-time high, and he sensed an anti-Carpathian spirit among the formerly loyal.
Social and community services already devastated by the population loss of the last few years were now virtually nonexistent. And rumor had it that even local GC enforcement personnel would be hamstrung without fuel or money for more. Salaries had been frozen for two years as it was, and now it seemed clear to the populace that there would be zero pay for government employees until further notice.
The private sector—what was left of it—was in disarray as well. Carpathia’s tentacles had reached so far into every avenue of life and commerce that the virtual bankruptcy of the international government was certain to cripple everyone within days. Enoch had read of great depressions and bank failures throughout history, but no one had seen anything as far-reaching as this. Muggings, robberies, break-ins—all the unsavory acts that had been the purview of the underworld—now had become part and parcel of everyday life for all.
It was every man for himself now, and any vestige of politeness or manners or even lawfulness would soon be history. Enoch prayed Jesus would return right on schedule.
It was nearing 1600 hours, four o’clock in the afternoon, in Jerusalem. Mac felt slimy in his GC Unity Army uniform and had to fight the temptation to shout his true identity and open fire without worrying about who was watching. He could take out a few dozen more Carpathian troops, but what was the use? They’d be gone soon enough as it was.
The resistance, except behind the walls in the Temple Mount, had been virtually obliterated. Unity forces congratulated each other as they combed through rebel casualties, gathering the spoils. Mac pretended to do the same in a desperate last-ditch effort to find Buck, though he ignored the eyes of people who thought they were his compatriots. Nothing would give him greater satisfaction than seeing Buck standing tall on the Temple Mount when the end came.
Mac was near the half-crumbled wall just west of Herod’s Gate when a phone hit the ground next to him and he heard someone curse above him. The phone looked familiar, but as he reached for it he heard, “Don’t waste your time! Nothing left of it!”
Mac looked up to a young Unity soldier bending over a fallen rebel. “Nice boots, though, and my size. He left one of them in the wall here.” The soldier untied the other boot and was wrenching it off the body when it pulled free and slipped from his hands, dropping toward Mac. He snatched it from the air and recognized it as Buck’s.
“Hey, toss that up here, will ya?” the soldier said, digging the other boot from a crevasse where Buck had apparently left it as he struggled free.
Trembling, Mac tightened his fists around the boot. “A little help, huh, pal?” the soldier said, briefly turning back to the stuck boot.
Mac took a step to get a good angle. Just as the young man freed the boot from the crack and turned toward him, Mac harkened back to his sporting days as a youth. He fired the matching boot so hard that the raider had no chance to react. The sole caught the bridge of his nose and sent him catapulting back over the wall.
To be sure he wouldn’t have to face him again, Mac hurried through the gate. He found the young man splayed on the ground, clearly dead. He ran back in and found enough holes and protrusions to hoist himself up to where Buck lay. He wanted to do something—anything—but he could think of nothing. Whatever he did besides appearing to ransack the body would only give him away, and what would be served?
Mac sucked in deep breaths as he surveyed Buck’s injuries, gaping wounds that left Buck in a deep pool of black blood so sticky that it had barely begun to run down the wall when it coagulated. His whole right side had been torn open, and wounds also disfigured his hip and neck.
A bullhorn called for assignees to the potentate, and Mac knew he might be identified as an imposter if he didn’t report. As he reluctantly pulled away from Buck he prayed that the same fate had not befallen Rayford. It just wouldn’t be right if no one from the original Trib Force had survived to see the Glorious Appearing.
It was four o’clock.
CHAPTER 3
Despite his substantial injuries, Rayford had managed to crawl several hundred yards to an outcropping of rock. With his free hand—though its heel had been scraped raw—he somehow had scooped away enough topsoil from behind the rocks to allow himself to stretch out away from the relentless sun and beyond anyone’s view.
He had exhausted every reserve of strength and had to trade the hope of being seen by his own people for fighting off dehydration and blood loss long enough to survive until the Glorious Appearing. He gingerly positioned his body in the shallow grave in such a way that if he lost consciousness, his gashed temple would remain pressed against his hand. Every time he thought he had stanched the blood flow long enough for it to stop pulsing, he was proven wrong when he released his palm for even an instant.
It was a relief to be out of the sun, but the benefit of the slightly lower temperature with the topsoil gone did not last. Within half an hour Rayford’s mouth and tongue were dry, and he felt his lips swelling. He fought drowsiness, knowing that unconsciousness was his enemy. His wounds stabbed, and he worried about going into shock.
Delirium soon followed, and Rayford daydreamed about people spotting the ATV and following the trail of blood, only to find his lifeless body being pecked at by vultures. At times he discovered he had roused himself to consciousness by singing, praying, or just babbling.
As he stiffened and his temperature rose, he began to feel the deep pang of each injury, and he prayed God would just take him. I wanted to see it from this side of heaven, but what’s the difference? Relief, please. Relief.
He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think h
e could bleed to death from any wound other than the one to his temple. When it seemed everything had ebbed from him but his last breath, Rayford considered releasing his hand and letting his life’s blood slip away too. But he could not.
He quickly lost all sense of time and had to remind himself that his watch seemed to be functioning properly, despite his fast-fading ability to focus. Rayford was stunned to see how little time had passed since he went careening. The sun was still high in the sky, but he would have bet hours had passed. It had been a mere fifty minutes.
When he awoke groaning, he realized he had actually dozed with enough presence of mind to keep the pulsing temple dammed. His neck was stiff, and he had the feeling he would be unable to stand or even roll into a crawling position if his life depended on it. If someone didn’t find him soon, his life would depend on moving yet again. But that simply wasn’t in the cards.
It seemed hours later, and Rayford was bereft of hope. He heard the advancing Unity Army and was surprised to see the sun still nearly directly overhead. It would remain that way until late afternoon, he knew, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to open his eyes to dusk. No such luck.
Far in the distance he heard the high-pitched whine of a powerful dirt bike, the type Abdullah Smith rode. The Jordanian would buzz about Petra, careful in the crowds, then find his way out to the desolate slopes, where he would really open it up. Rayford could only pray that what he heard was Smitty searching for him. He tried to sit up but could not. If he had to guess, he’d have said Smitty was in the area where the ATV had finally landed. That was a long, long way from Rayford’s meager shelter. He tried to stay conscious so he could call out if the dirt-bike sound grew nearer, but he knew it would also have to be shut off if the rider was to hear him.
Rayford realized his pain had spread past the spots that had taken the most direct abuse. His head throbbed all over. His eyes had become supersensitive to light, and he could barely open them to peek at his watch. His neck hurt, his shoulders were tight and achy, his back felt as if hot pokers were piercing his ribs. He was hungry, nauseated, and alternated between overheating and shivering. His leg muscles and even his toes cramped.