Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle Of The Ages (18 page)

He tried calling headquarters himself from a secure phone, pretending to be from GC International. Nobody was buying. He scripted a speech for Ming to try while he played with Kenny. She struck out too.

Rayford finally tracked Buck down and told him, “Do what you have to do, but be ready to go when everybody else is.”

“I’ll be traveling light anyway, boss,” Buck said. “Don’t suppose one of Lionel’s guys could just drop me back east somewhere?”

Rayford shook his head and moved on.

“Hey, Dad,” Buck said, “your place unlocked?”

“Yep. And empty except for your stuff.”

“I’ll clear it out now.”

On his way to Rayford’s place, Buck passed Razor in the corridor. “Sir,” the young man said, saluting self-consciously.

“Hey, son, hold up. I owe you an apology.”

“No, that’s all right. I understand what you’re going through.”

“That’s a reason, but it’s not an excuse. I want you to forgive me. I was way out of line.”

“Of course, sir. Don’t give it a second thought.”

“Well, thank you. And can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“Where’s the name come from?”

Razor flushed and looked down. “Snowmobile acci-dent.”

“Ouch. Do I want to hear it?”

“First time on. In Minnesota. Not exactly like Mex-ico, you know? Didn’t see the razor wire. Should have been killed. It caught my helmet and luckily dug in rather than sliding down and slicing my head off. It ripped that helmet off as I went underneath. People watching said the wire somehow wrapped itself around the helmet. The wire never broke, and after I had stretched it as far as it would go, it flew back and came forward again like a slingshot and flung the helmet at me, hit me in the back of the head, and knocked me out.”

“But here you are. And no matter how I sounded earlier, I’m glad to have you with us.”

Of all things, that crazy story got Buck obsessing about decapitation. Losing Chloe was his main concern, of course, and he worried about her suffering. He couldn’t stand to think of her being violated, abused, tortured-he didn’t want to even consider all the possi-bilities. It was no consolation to know that even if she was martyred, he would see her in less than a year. What would that mean to Kenny?

Worst of all, all he could think of was how Chloe would most likely die. Death was death and it shouldn’t make any difference, he knew. But if it came to that, if the GC made a public spectacle of her, as they certainly would, there was no way he could watch it. The idea of his beloved dying such an ugly, grotesque death made him ill.

No question she would stay true to her faith to the end. He had heard stories of others, even watched as his old friend Steve Plank thumbed his nose at Carpathia and honored God before he died. Buck also knew that if it came to that, Chloe’s body would be new one day in heaven. But still, he was repulsed by the idea that the person most precious to him in the world might die in the worst possible way he could imagine.

If he couldn’t push it from his mind’s eye now, how would it be if it actually happened? He sought out Ray-ford.

“I’m really busy,” his father-in-law told him, “and you should be too. I’m not saying it’d take your mind off Chloe; it sure hasn’t mine. But you’d be more pro-ductive.”

“I know, but I need a minute.”

He told Rayford of his tormenting daydreams. To his surprise, Rayford’s lip began to quiver. His voice was thick. “I’ve been going through the same thing, Buck. I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Really? This whole idea?”

“Exactly. A father has a different take, you know. Imagine how you feel about Kenny. I was there when Chloe was born. Seems like yesterday she was a little red ball of squealing girl who could be comforted only by being tightly wrapped in a blanket and put on her mother’s chest. Then, to us, she was the most beautiful creature we had ever seen. We would have done anything for her, anything to protect her. That’s never changed. She’s grown up to be a beautiful woman, and somehow, even with all her injuries and disfigurements, I still see her that way.”

“So do I.”

“So, yes, Buck, I know what you’re thinking. We just have to be strong and try not to dwell on it. I don’t know what else to do.”

Chang was walking Naomi to her quarters late at night. “I want to show you something on my computer tomor-row,” he said. “I discovered that the
GCNN
production chief’s solution to the plague of darkness was, I guess, to feel his way into the control room and find the switch that allows the international network feed to be remotely accessed by three or four of the major affiliates.”

“Ingenious,
^”
Naomi said. “Isn’t it?
^”

“Oh, I was impressed. But I’m also excited. There is no block on my accessing it too, and I can override the affiliates with the system David Hassid had set up in New Babylon.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“It has unlimited capabilities, Naomi. When Cameron Williams gets here, we’ll work together and counteract the lies that the GC broadcasts, and we can do it imme-diately.”

“Nothing they can do about it?”

“Not that I can think of, short of starting a whole new network. They may think they have time to do that, but the end is closer than they know.”

“So you drew the short straw, eh there, pardner?” Mac said.

“I am sorry, Mr. McCullum,” Ree said, “but I do not understand that expression.”

“Well, without getting into specifics, it means you got grunt duty.”

They had studied the area through the periscope an hour before and determined they could get the Hummer out of the vehicle bay without being detected.

“Driving you to the plane? No problem. I like to do it.

I only wish I was flying you to Wisconsin. I have flown a Gulfstream only once before, and I liked it.”

“If you’ve got so little experience, I’m glad you’re not flying me, know what I mean?”

A little more than three hours later, Mac touched down in Hudson, Wisconsin, where he was met by the hulking Gustaf Zuckermandel Jr., better known as Zeke.

“I wish you could meet everybody in Avery,” the twenty-five-year-old said. “But even the guy who drove me has already headed back. Took us an hour to drag my stuff into the underbrush.”

Mac followed him to his cache of boxes and trunks. “You sure we want to be lugging this stuff all the way to the plane in broad daylight, Zeke?”

“Unless you want to wait till dark, but there’s no need. This is the part of the country the GC forgot. I haven’t seen a Peacekeeper since I got here.”

As they were loading, Mac said, “No second thoughts about leaving? You must be close to these people.”

“Lots of second thoughts, but I figure a guy’s got to go where he’s called. I was called here, and now I’m being called there. Who woulda thought a no-account like me would ever get called anywhere?”

“Well, you’re the best document and appearance man I ever saw, and I hear you really blossomed here.”

“Oh, that’s not true if you want to know the actual fact, Mr. McCullum. Thing is, there wasn’t anything for me to do here as far as disguises and documents and such, because we flat didn’t need ‘em. So I got real involved in the Bible studies, improved my reading and all that, and pretty soon the leader took me under his wing. I never got to teaching or preaching, but I helped out all I could. I liked it, like to stay busy. They gave me that assistant pastor title sort of as a gift.”

“Honorary, eh?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Well, I hope you were honored, because that really means something.”

“I’m gonna miss everybody, but I got to tell you, I’m ready to get to Petra and just see the place. And to hook up again with Dr. Ben-Judah and Dr. Rosenzweig and you and all the others, well …”

“And you’ve got a big job.”

“You’re supposed to tell me about it.”

Chloe more than woke up after almost four hours in the air. The drugs had worn off and she came to. And she was ravenous. An energy bar and whatever portion of shake she ingested before the Mickey kicked in had been all she’d eaten since seven the evening before she was abducted. That made it easy to pretend she was still unconscious.

“What time is it here?” Jock’s companion said as the plane landed.

“Coming up on noon, and I’m hungry,” Jock said. “You?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m going to feed the prisoner finally. Play a little good cop. Shoot her a little truth juice. See if we can’t get her to sing.”

“She’s been a tough bird, hasn’t she?”

“Tell me about it, Jess. I’d have been doing the ‘Halle-lujah Chorus’ solo by now.”

“What if she doesn’t flip? How long do you give it?”

“If you can’t get to ‘em somehow in the first forty-eight hours, more of the same isn’t going to be any more effective.”

“Starvation isn’t a motivator?”

“Would be for me, but I guess they’ve proved it with prisoners of war. The ones who can survive that first round of psychological and physical torture aren’t likely to ever break, no matter how long you keep it up.”

As Chloe was being carried down the jetway, Jock said, “This facility never had woman prisoners before we took it over. We’ll keep her in solitary. That’s the only real way to keep her separate from the rest of the popu-lation.”

Chloe was laid out across the backseat of a large
SUV
, which she noticed had wire mesh on the windows and no locks or door handles on the inside. Jock handcuffed her anyway. “She’ll be coming to soon,” he explained. “Can’t be too careful.”

When they stopped along the way, Chloe racked her brain for any idea of escape.

Jock said, “I’ll get the food. You stay with her.”

Chloe sat up. “I need to use the rest room.”

Jock stared at her. “Seriously.”

“I’d say.”

“Well, I got no matron who can go with you. You’d have to use the men’s, and one of us would have to be in there with ya.”

“Forget ‘it.”

“You want me to buy you one of those adult diapers?” “How far are we from where I can go?” “Half an hour.”

“I’ll wait.”

While jock was inside, she tried to strike up a conver-sation with the man she had not gotten a look at until now. His mark was a 0, which meant he was from the United South American States. He was strikingly dark with perfect teeth. “You remind me of my husband,” she said.

“That so?” he said.

“Yeah, except he’s not ugly.”

The man found that hilarious and turned to face her.

“You’re funny,” he said. “Why would you want to antagonize me?”

“You’re one of the people who are going to wind up killing me. Doesn’t look like I’m going to get to fight back, do any physical damage, so …”

“Makes sense.” “Jock calls you Jess.” “Yeah. Jesse,” he said.

“Hmm. Named after Jesus. That your real name?

Jesus?” Chloe pronounced it in Spanish.

“Matter of fact, yes, and I have a sister Maria.”

“Is she also a Carpathianist?”

“Of course.”

“How disappointing that must be to your namesake.”

Jock brought food and uncuffed her. The men tore into theirs, while Chloe sat behind the cage that sepa-rated her from the front seat. She said aloud, “Lord, thank you for this food. I pray that you will help me eat it slowly so it doesn’t make me sick, and that you will override any poisons Jock might have put in it. Give me strength to resist any efforts on the part of Jock or Jesse to get me to say anything I shouldn’t. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

“I
LIKED
ALBIE
a lot,” Zeke said as Mac piloted them across the Atlantic. “He was a good man.”

“You got that right, Z,” Mac said. “And for the life of me I can’t understand it, but I’m afraid he did something royally foolish to get himself killed.”

“Doesn’t sound like him. You and Captain Steele and everybody used to listen to his ideas all the time.”

“But everybody’s human. Let your guard down for a second, get overconfident, who knows? He was deter-mined to see this lowlife he used to know, and even when he and I agreed I should go on to Petra and fly Rayford back to the States, Albie still wanted to go through with his little mission. It’s just as much my fault. Both of us thought it was something that had to get done-and fast. Now look where we are.”

“Rayford said Tsion and Chaim are taking it hard.”

“We all are. As much of this as we’ve gone through, it never gets easier. They’re planning a little service for Albie at Petra once everybody gets there from San Diego.”

“When will that be?”

“Oh, first wave ought to be arriving around three in the morning tomorrow. You and I got about a thirteen-hour jump on ‘em. Once I drop you off, I got to get to Al Basrah and clear out Albie’s and my apartment, make sure we didn’t leave any clues for anybody. I’ll be taking a bigger plane from Petra ‘cause I got to bring back this Otto Weser guy and his people.”

“Captain Steele told me about him. So you’re bringing them back to Petra because of that Scripture about God’s people getting out of Babylon before God destroys it?”

“Exactly.”

Z sat staring at the ocean seven and a half miles below. “What must that have looked like when it was all blood?”

“You can’t imagine.”

“Hey, Mac, you think Rayford ought to be trusting Carpathia’s secretary?”

“The way he tells the story, I guess. You don’t think so?”

“I don’t trust anybody who isn’t a believer. What if she has second thoughts, sets a trap, gets you and this Otto ambushed?”

“A pleasant thought.”

“You said yourself, you can’t be too careful.”

“Well,” Mac said, “we’ve got to know what’s happen-ing in Al Hillah, and as much as possible what’s coming after that, and we don’t know how else to do it.”

An hour later, Zeke dug through one of his bags and brought out a book. He looked self-conscious. “Some-thing I wouldn’t even have been able to read when you knew me in Chicago.”

“I was gonna say-”

“But now that I’m reading better, I think I can do more things, you know, scientifically.”