Ark (31 page)

John held up his hand. The General looked at him and nodded. “You have something to offer?”

“Am I understanding this right? You’re sending in the archbishop to check on a plasma ball?”

The General looked at the wet ground and sighed. “What course of action would you propose?”

John smiled and looked around at the group. “I’m no expert on this thing, but I have heard all the crap about it. If you want to argue the point, I’m the reason we’re all here. It was me that brought it to your attention.”

“Right you are, son,” said the General, holding his temper in check. “So what’s your point?

“We should send in troops first. I don’t mean armed or anything, but we have shielding that we could rig up. If there’s radiation danger we could at least get close enough to get a better look. Maybe take some measurements.”

“I’m not confident that anything can get near that ark,” Gene opined.

The General nodded in agreement. “I tend to agree.”

John shook his head adamantly. “Gold. We know gold is the reflector. We can get gold anodized fire suits from Forestry.”

“I can’t recall anyone ever trying those with the one in Chicago. What do you think, Gene?” asked the General.

Gene shrugged and looked over at Lieutenant Bush, standing at the rear of the group smoking a cigarette. “It sounds feasible, Sir.”

John smiled broadly. “Guess what’s in the supply trailer? Three, count ’em, three fire suits. We can go in any time.”

The General agreed on the course of action and went into a huddle with Lieutenant Bush.

As the last glow of daylight gave way to night, the cloud or mist that hung over the ark seemed to thicken.

Jim passed the time eating some freeze-dried rations. Then he heard the sound, soft and muffled. He’d been hearing it for a while, like an insect in the bush. It seemed voice-like, but he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was an electronic hum from the generators? Jim cocked his head to locate the sound, but it came and went.

Soon he was distracted by activity near the supply trailer. Three people were getting suited up in glittering baggy costumes. For a moment they reminded Jim of clowns in the circus. Gene had said the coveralls were made from aluminized plastic coated with gold.

When they had secured their headgear, looking like golden space helmets, the three marched awkwardly toward the courtyard gate. They each carried an aluminum case connected to the suit by a metallic hose. As they walked past, Jim could hear the suit respirators hissing. They were wired for radio communications, and each wore a backpack that sported a short floppy antenna. They waved at everyone as they walked past, like astronauts going to the moon.

One of them stopped near Jim, adjusting his breathing gear, and took off his helmet. It was Lieutenant Bush, carrying a box of instruments. The only one Jim recognized was the tape recorder. He could see it was already turned on.

“What are my chances, Wilson?”

Jim was startled to see Bush and even more startled by his question. All he could think of was to smile and say, “Be good.”

Gene gave Jim a strange look. “Be good? Okay. Works for me,” said Bush as he replaced his helmet and joined the other two men.

General Wilcox, now wearing a leather jacket and a headset microphone, followed the men to the bloodstained altar. At that point they were about twenty feet from the open tent flaps of the Tabernacle.

There, apparently by plan, they stopped and talked. They seemed to be giving each other’s suits a last minute check. There was a crackle and a pop as a public address system came rudely to life. Jim spotted the two speaker platforms near the electronics shack.

By the time his eyes returned to the tent they’d entered and only the General remained outside. He positioned himself behind the bronze altar and watched.

The speakers crackled again, then came the sound of breathing. Bush ordered his men to approach the curtain. On the monitor Jim could see that Bush was also moving toward the Holy of Holies but remained a few paces back from his men. He held a Geiger counter in an outstretched hand, waving it back and forth as he said his first words from inside the sanctuary.

“I’m flat on gamma,” he said, “and I’m seein’ a light, right where they put the ark. I see a shape on the inside, on the floor. It’s a shadow of an angel. Huge.” He swallowed hard. “Oh, I see. It’s the design that was sewn on the veil.” He laughed nervously. “Had me going for a second there.”

“What is the light? Can you describe it?” boomed the General’s voice on the PA system. “How about the cloud?” He turned around and waved. “Can someone turn this thing down a bit?”

“I’m at the curtain. Should I pull it back?” said one of the Bush's men.

“Maybe we should just pull it down and run like sons’o’bitches,” said the other.

“Be cool,” said the lieutenant.

“I don’t see any cloud, Sir,” continued Bush. “The candles are lit. Everything seems cool.”

Jim strained to hear something that was just beyond earshot, the same drone that he’d been hearing on and off all evening. Finally he whispered to Gene what he was hearing. Gene listened carefully to their surroundings, tilting his head this way and that.

“Are you mocking me?” asked Jim.

“No, I’m turning my head to pick up high frequency sound. Sometimes it clumps up so one person can hear but someone nearby can’t.”

“Like that annoying ringing that I sometimes get on the TV at home. I know. No, Gene, this is in the low end. It’s much deeper, like the sound of generators.”

Bush ordered one of his men to slip a video camera around the curtain and try to get a shot of the ark.

“Right away, Sir.”

The Tabernacle suddenly brightened, like a flash bulb had gone off in slow motion. It was accompanied by a strange sound, a hiss like a huge snake. It came ringing over the PA system. Jim recognized a voice but it was garbled, gagged, strangled by some catastrophe.

Jim looked into the tabernacle.

Three metalized suits were inflated like balloons. He thought he saw a jet of steam burst from Bush’s helmet ring before the man fell forward, stiff legged and stiff armed like a golden parade balloon. Soon, the microphones melted from the heat.

“Oh my dear God,” said the archbishop.

“I sh-should have known,” said Jim, his voice quivering in shock.

#

By the time the General could run to join the rest of the group who watched helplessly from the outer fence, the light inside the Tabernacle dimmed and went out. The cloud vanished and so had the strange noise that Jim had heard. He felt a weight lift from the pit of his stomach.

“Quick, while we have a chance,” someone yelled, and with a dash a group of soldiers ran into the Tabernacle to retrieve the bodies of Bush and his two men. Once outside, they unclasped the golden helmets. There was a sound of escaping pressure. Quickly the golden suits were unzipped and the helmets removed. Bush’s two helpers were scalded but alive and unconscious, but the lieutenant was cooked from the inside out, white eyed and swollen tongued. They never removed his gold suit, just transferred the body to a rubber body sack.

For the second time that day, the archbishop from New York found himself praying over the dead.

General Wilcox was undaunted. “I want it dismantled. Now.”

“Give it a rest, Dad, for chrissake.” said his son. “Call in S.E.T.I., if you ask me. We’ve got ET in a box. Oh, and by the way, put in that it just broiled a friend of mine. Someone that never did anyone any harm. He was just a computer geek. What’s the point?”

John’s father yelled his name. John spat and walked toward the hospitality trailer saying, “I need a fucking drink!”

Jim watched him leave, then stepped forward. “Now all we have to go on is the Bible, Sir.”

“Look,” said the General. “The cloud is gone. The ark is safe. The point being I think this may be the only chance we have to dismantle it.”

The General ordered a small detachment of six marines into the Tabernacle. He was beginning to instruct them when one of the Levites spoke out angrily. “If you value your men’s lives, General, we should do it.”

“What’s your name?” asked the General.

“Seth,” said the man. “Air Force, chaplain’s assistant.”

“Do you qualify as a priest?”

“No, Sir.”

“Okay, but can you go in and get it? I mean without a head priest?” asked the General.

“I’m no expert, Sir. I just happened to be named Levi. But as long as the cloud is gone, then the priest isn’t needed. I think it’s safe if we do it.”

“Seth, I need that ark out of there.”

Seth went over to the other men in his group and spoke with them.

Just then a wind hit the camp and a piece of sagebrush blew across the courtyard. It appeared that another storm was approaching.

Bravely the four men slipped on their robes and walked to the Tent of Meeting. First they widened the mouth of the Tabernacle by restaking the tent ropes. Once inside, and chanting like their fallen rabbi, they parted the curtain that veiled the Holy of Holies. Then they waited for a moment.

Nothing happened. The sanctuary remained dark.

The four Levites grasped the poles attached to the ark and lifted it. They avoided even close proximity to the outstretched wings of the cherubim and made a hasty retreat from the Tabernacle. As soon as they got outside they carefully put the ark down and slipped on its waterproof coverings, and finally the blue outer covering.

Soon a set of headlights appeared from the rear of the camp; a military armored car. It stopped next to where the Levites stood holding the ark. The back of the truck opened automatically and a metal ramp poked rudely out toward them. The Levites put the Ark of the Covenant on the tongue of metal and stepped back. The driver pulled the ramp back into the truck and closed its sturdy metal doors.

On the General’s command the truck drove off into the night.

Moments later the first of the choppers arrived to take everyone back to Los Alamos.

#

The General insisted that Gene and Jim ride in his helicopter back to the base.

En route, with their discussion masked by the pop-pop-pop of the engines, the General seized the opportunity for some off the record conversation.

“Well, that could have been better,” said the General. “I’m interested in your viewpoint, Jim. I hope you won’t hold back.”

Jim looked blankly at General Wilcox. “I guess we’re all pretty shaken.”

“You could start by acknowledging two good men dead,” said Gene. “If that’s God that did that, he hasn’t learned anything about fairness in five thousand years.”

“Thanks, Gene, but I was asking Jim,” said the General politely. “What do you think happened back there, Jim?”

“I want to say that I don’t know, but I know that’s not what you want to hear. You’ve been pushing hard at all of us. A little more care. A little more reverence, maybe, and we’d still have the rabbi and the lieutenant.”

The General was still wearing his radio headset. He touched the earphone and turned away from Jim. A moment later his face fell.

“Bush’s men. Mike Hanly and David Wheat. The med staff at Los Alamos say they both have second and third degree burns, some lung damage, and they are blind.”

“Blind?” exclaimed Jim.

“Their eyes were cooked. Whatever they saw, it was the last thing they’ll ever see.”

“And Rabbi Levi?” asked Gene.

“No report on the cause of death, yet. Probably coronary.” The General looked away again but this time it was no radio call distracting him. The thought of two dead under his watch was just now having an impact on him. “The Israelis are after us on this,” he said bleakly, staring at the blackness of the night. “I had to push it along.”

The General looked back at Jim. “I believe that you are the only one who can tell us what happened back there. Everything I am told about you makes me think that you have special insight.” He put a hand on Jim’s. “Straight talk, Jim,” he said. “Forget I’m a military officer. Forget all that and just tell me. Give me your gut feeling on what went down back there.”

“Shit,” said Jim. “I don’t have any special insight. If you want to know what I’m thinking, well, first, I miss my wife and kid. Second, I miss being at my computer and doing something worthwhile. And third, I think this whole project of ours is full of shit. You, me, and all the military Thunderbolt crap. I don’t think we’re qualified to deal with it.”

“Good,” said the General. “Okay, that’s a start.”

“I mean it, General. I don’t have a clue.”

“Look, Jim,” said General Wilcox. “People with your abilities often aren’t even aware that they have ’em. Generally, they see their special gifts as a curse because they’re helpless to control them. You’re no different.”

“I don’t have anything for you, General,” said Jim firmly. “If I do, I’ll let you know.”

The General slapped Jim’s leg. “Good. Can’t ask for more than that, can I?”

Gene raised a finger. “May I ask a question?”

The General had been leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked past Gene to talk to Jim. Now he straightened up and looked at Gene. “What is it, Henson?”

“Since I’m in the middle here, and since I know Jim. With all due respect, Sir, the person you should be talking to is your best tech guy,” said Gene. “I assume you recorded the events.”

“Yes, but the best tech guy is you, Gene, since the other one was nuked in his fire suit. That’s why you’re here, Gene, and guess what you’ll be doing for the next few days?”

“I should have known,” said Gene.

Jim stared out the window of the helicopter, angry at himself and at everyone around him. What were they thinking? Everyone knew from the beginning that this might happen. Back in 1976 when he and Gene first talked about the feasibility of building the ark, Gene had expressed trepidation at the idea that the thing might actually work. Jim remembered him saying, “I wouldn’t want to talk to whoever was running that thing.”

“Yes,” said Jim, as he continued to look into the blackness outside the Huey. “We ALL should have known.” He looked at the General. “How soon can I leave ... go home?”