Mark of Evil (40 page)

At the time, there on Zhang’s porch, Ethan couldn’t shake a strange feeling about that, because it had been the same part of the gospel of Luke Ethan had been reading that day. When he turned on the video log, the image of Josh had been there, peering out from the screen as if he were in the room and talking about Jesus’ obedience to the will of God: “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

Ethan was snapped back into his own drastic situation. He could hear the scuffling of Alliance soldiers on the sandy ground on the other side of the stone wall where he was hiding. He held his breath as
he heard them making their way toward him through the labyrinth of the ruins, and he knew he was surrounded. They were only minutes away from capturing him. So, he thought to himself, maybe this was how it was all supposed to end. He whispered a prayer.

“God, not my will, but Your will be done.”

The special-ops pilot in the helicopter had spotted it on his satellite surveillance screen: the small army of Global Alliance troops amassed at the roadblock that was situated some two miles away from the ruins of the Hanging Gardens. And they were armed with some heavy-duty weaponry.

Rivka saw it too. “Now what?” she called out.

“They’ve got a battery of ground-to-air missiles. Among other things . . .”

The copilot sized it up. “Time for some diversion,” he said. The pilot nodded. He used his satphone to call Pack.

“Mr. McHenry, if we try to get in close to those ruins at the gardens at this point, we’re going to face some serious salvos from the ground. I was wondering if you fellas—”

The pilot didn’t have to finish his sentence. He was listening now and nodding, and gave a little sardonic chuckle at the end. “Okay, Mr. McHenry. Much obliged. Just keep your head down and don’t get greased when they open up on you big-time, for they most surely will.”

Pack rapidly explained the problem to his team: without a diversion, the helicopter was guaranteed to meet deadly resistance before even reaching Ethan’s position. So Pack’s group would have to race toward the troops at the roadblock, put some serious fire into the Alliance soldiers, and then speed away in the opposite direction, hopefully drawing fire on themselves and causing some of the troops to give chase in their armored vehicles. Once that happened, the rescue chopper would only need a few minutes to get to Ethan’s position. If they weren’t shot down first, of course.

“Wonderful,” Vincent Romano groaned with an undertone of doubt. “I just love suicide missions.”

Andre lifted both hands. “Buck up, Vince,” he said. “It’s just life or death. That’s all.”

Victoria, Vincent, and Andre strapped themselves into the special chairs that had been bolted to the metal floor of the truck. Each one was armed with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Andre sat next to the lever that he would pull at the perfect time in order to spring open the double doors of the truck, giving all three of them a clear view of the enemy troops down the road.

The chopper pilot had described the location and where the amassed Alliance force had their most dangerous weaponry—the two ground-to-air missile batteries. The job of Pack’s team was to hit those first. And then Pack would swing the truck around and jam the accelerator to the floor, luring the troops to give chase. Hopefully the Alliance pursuers would be looking everywhere except up into the sky where the helicopter would descend to the area where the Brit said he’d dropped off Ethan. Pack realized that ground radar would eventually pick up the chopper, but with its stealth-designed shape it should be cloaked until the last minute, when it was just passing over the area near the troops.

In the back of the super-charged bakery truck the three team members could feel Pack bumping the vehicle off of the sandy desert floor and onto the highway and then slowly picking up speed. Victoria was keeping time on her Allfone watch. Pack would have seven minutes to reach their firing point. The truck traveled around fifty miles
per hour or so for the first five minutes, all according to plan. Pack didn’t want to risk alerting the troops at the roadblock too early in the game.

Suddenly the trio could feel Pack put the truck into racing mode, and the supercharged engine roared as the truck began picking up speed. Victoria looked down at her watch. Sixty seconds to go. Pack had the truck really flying now. She looked down again. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Then ten. And five . . .

“Now!” Victoria yelled
.

Andre jammed the lever back and the double doors flew open with a disturbing clang. At that same instant Pack put the speeding truck into a one-eighty spin. As he did, the three warriors in the back of the truck poised their shoulder-mounted launchers. They had a perfect shot.

Victoria, the eagle eye, had the antiaircraft battery to the left in her sights and would take that one by herself. Vincent and Andre aimed at the artillery unit on the right. The truck was fully turned around with the doors wide open, at a dead stop in the middle of the road. That would last for only ten seconds. Enough time for Victoria to let loose with her missile, which streaked out of the back of the truck with a thin vapor trail behind it.

In the distance they could see a red flash followed by a booming percussion and a cloud of black fiery smoke rising up from her target. “Direct hit,” Victoria shouted to her partners. A half second later in perfect tandem Andre and Vincent both fired their rockets at the second target. Andre overshot slightly but Vincent’s struck dead on into the antiaircraft battery. There was a second ground-rumbling explosion of fire and a plume of smoke.

Now Pack jammed the truck into gear as its six-hundred-horse-power hemi engine with the supercharger blower began to scream. The racing slicks on the back that had replaced the stock tires were spinning and burning rubber on the road as the truck lurched forward like a space program rocket sled and the front end lifted off the
ground in a partial wheelie. Seconds later the truck was doing fifty and quickly seventy and then ninety-five and finally settling into a cruising speed down the highway at one hundred and thirty-five.

In the back of the truck Andre was furiously yanking at the lever to close the heavy hydraulic double doors that had been fitted with armor plating. But something was wrong.

“The doors won’t close!” he yelled. “The hydraulics must have jammed when we took that one-eighty so fast.” He used both hands to tug at it, but nothing happened. The back of the truck was wide-open. The Alliance troops would be shooting back any second. Vincent unbuckled himself and stood behind Andre, and together the two of them yanked at the lever as hard as they could. “I think I feel something moving . . .” Vincent grunted.

Victoria was peering through her military binoculars to the Alliance formation behind them. She saw something. “Incoming!”

An instant later rockets started raining down on the highway behind them blowing up the pavement and sending debris into the back of the truck. Vincent was knocked off his feet. Victoria wiped the dust from her face and asked if everyone was all right.

Before anyone could answer, a single Alliance rocket came flashing into sight and struck the highway at a point forty feet behind the team, exploding and sending shrapnel into the back of the open truck.

Andre, still buckled into his seat, screamed and grabbed his chest, which quickly began to surge blood. Vincent grabbed his own bloody leg and moaned. Victoria thrust her hand into her platinum-blond hair to try and stop the red trickle that flowed down her face.

In the driver’s compartment Pack slid the window open to the back of the truck and yelled to them, “Are you hit?”

Victoria cried back in a desperate voice, “Drive faster! Drive faster!” Then she unbuckled herself and stumbled over to Andre. His face was already beginning to turn a grayish white and his torso was a sea of crimson. She ripped open his shirt and then his shredded
Kevlar vest and saw the irreversible devastation within. He tried to talk but nothing came out but a gurgle.

As Pack brought the truck up to one hundred and fifty miles per hour, racing toward Karbala, Victoria cradled Andre carefully in her arms and soothed him and prayed. A minute later he stopped moving. She knew he was gone.

FIFTY-FIVE

Ethan leaned against the stone wall, listening to the sounds of the drone overhead and the scuffling of the Alliance troops who were closing in around him on the other side of the wall. There was a certain dismal finality about it all. But then he remembered exactly what Josh had said about Moses in that video log. Yes, that was it.
“When you’re surrounded on all sides, just like Moses, that’s when you need to look up.”

With no other options left, Ethan started slinking along the wall that was at his back until he was no longer under the protection of the stone slab above him. He was now exposed to the open air and the blue sky above. Way up there in the sky was a black dot that seemed to be hovering. Ethan held up his hands to the sky.
Not my will, but Your will, Lord.

The black dot grew bigger. It descended, coming straight down, dropping like a big black box. But it wasn’t a box, and as it came into
view he could see it was a strangely angular kind of helicopter with a fan blade on the underside and one in the tail.

Ethan saw the Alliance drone above him as it passed over and then disappeared. As the helicopter dropped quickly down toward earth it fired on the drone-bot, and Ethan heard the blast as it exploded. Then shots starting coming from the chopper, laying a suppressing fire down on the other side of the wall from Ethan, where he had heard the Alliance troops moving in.

Now the helicopter was about thirty feet above him, hovering, and a small door in its side dropped open. A collapsible metal ladder fell out. Then a head poked out of the door and a trim woman with short, dark hair in a flight suit scampered down the ladder and waved to him. Ethan yelled out loud and gleefully as he saw her.

Oh, I can see your beautiful eyes from here, Rivka, you amazing woman. But you’ve gotta hurry; they’re getting close.

The ladder lowered closer to Ethan, with Rivka still hanging on, stretching out her hand to him. It was almost within reach when Ethan became suddenly aware of the sound of gunfire. He looked around to see where it was coming from, then looked up again. Rivka was clinging desperately to the ladder, trying to avoid the bullets being fired from the ground.

A defensive round of fifty-caliber gunfire burst from the helicopter toward the position on the ground where the Alliance forces were firing. Then it was quiet. Ethan leaped up and grabbed hold of the bottom rung of the ladder and began to pull himself up. Rivka was bending down, one hand on the ladder in back of her, the other reaching down.

“Ethan,” she yelled. “Just one more rung up the ladder, darling. Then I can grab your wrist—”

More shots rang out from the ground. Ethan watched in horror as bullets ripped into Rivka’s flight suit. She gave a dazed look at him. Her flight suit ran with red. And then she twisted slightly as
if desperately trying to get a more secure grip on the ladder. But she missed and toppled backward off the ladder with a yelp, free-falling toward the ground . . .

Clinging to the ladder with his right hand, Ethan reached out with his left and caught her by the ankle as she fell. He panicked as he felt his right hand beginning to slip.

Oh my
God, give me strength.

Rivka hung upside down, held only by Ethan’s iron grip. He grunted loudly as he used his right hand to pull himself to a higher rung on the ladder, then locked his chin on the rung to steady himself as he snatched the next rung with his right hand.

Shots rang up from the ground and pinged off the metal ladder. Then the copilot appeared in the doorway with his large-caliber machine gun slung over his arm and blasted his weapon down toward the shooters until there was no more return fire. The copilot dropped his weapon and slid down the ladder like a circus performer. He landed right above Ethan and grabbed his right arm and pulled him up. And kept pulling until he was able to grab one of Rivka’s ankles while Ethan held the other. Together the two men clumsily made their way up the ladder, each of them yanking Rivka upward until they were able to hoist her into the helicopter while she groaned.