The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (251 page)

Buck held the sleeping baby while Chloe finished packing. He heard Rayford and Albie descending and wondered why they were empty-handed after having been upstairs for so long. Maybe they had already carried stuff to the car.

“Did you see this, Dad?” he said, nodding toward the TV where GC CNN played and replayed the most dramatic moments from New Babylon.

“Better not refer to me informally in front of the rest of the Force,” Rayford whispered, as he stared at the TV.

Buck cocked his head. “Whatever you say, Captain Steele.”

He limped to where Chloe had gathered their essentials, traded the baby for a bundle, and slowly made his way out to the Land Rover. The coolness of the predawn refreshed him, though he caught himself sniffing the air and listening. The last thing he wanted, after the bizarre story of Albie’s ruse, was to hear those GC Jeeps returning. What if the squadron leader was braver than Albie gave him credit for and he risked embarrassment and even reprimand to check out the story? He’d be back with more help, and they could all be imprisoned or killed and the place destroyed.

Buck worried about some of his injuries. He had pain in both legs that felt sharper than soft tissue damage, so he worried about broken bones. He was certain he’d also cracked a rib or two and couldn’t imagine that Chaim hadn’t as well. They shared whiplash trauma, even though their heads had first been driven forward.

Buck caught a glimpse of himself in the cracked outside rearview mirror of the Rover as he stepped away from the vehicle. Was it possible he was only thirty-three? He felt even worse than he looked, and he looked fifty. A fabric burn on his forehead he hadn’t even noticed in the hospital had formed a large, ugly scab that was tender to the touch. That had to have come from the first impact and the forcing of his head into the back of the seat in front of him. Deep lacerations from dropping into a woody bush at the Jerusalem Airport what seemed eons ago had healed as high-ridged scars with crimson centers that covered his chin, cheeks, and forehead.

Worse, his eyes had that world-weary look, a deep fatigue that combined survival desperation, love and concern for his wife and child, and the sheer exhaustion of living as a fugitive and enduring searing personal losses. He took a deep breath that brought stinging pain to his ribs. He wondered where he might next sleep, but he didn’t wonder if he would sleep well.

Buck would have returned inside to help, but in his condition he was more help staying put. The others began to straggle out under heavy bundles, except for Tsion who had just two full pillowcases tied together over one shoulder and was supporting Chaim on his other arm.

Albie, the last out, was on the phone. Rayford arranged the seating. He put Chloe, Kenny, Leah, Tsion, and Chaim in the backseat, where they were barely able to close the doors. Buck would ride shotgun in the front with Albie in the middle and Rayford driving. First, however, Rayford and Albie stood between the garage and the house—Albie still on the phone—and Rayford beckoned Buck with a nod.

“The chopper is at Palwaukee,” Albie reported. “And the shuttle pilots are on their way back to Rantoul in the trail plane. You want my advice, Captain?”

“You bet.”

“I say we go directly to the airstrip and put the wounded and as much of the luggage in the chopper as we can. Then you can fly the chopper to the new safe house, and someone else can drive.”

“And you?”

“I should take the fighter to Kankakee. You can pick me up there later in the chopper, and I can fly the Gulfstream into Kankakee.”

“How about torching this place?” Rayford said.

“You have materials?”

“Kerosene and gasoline in the garage. Some flares.”

“That would do it. Have you left anything incriminating inside?”

“Not that I can think of. You, Buck?”

Buck shook his head. “I’d light ’er up.”

“That’s me too,” Rayford said. “Just in case. Leave ’em nothing to find.”

Albie looked at his watch. “I think we’re pressing our luck. Let the GC waste time digging through it, and then
they
can cook it. We need to be gone from here as soon as we can.”

“You’re the expert,” Rayford said. “You want a vote, Buck?”

“I’m with you, D—ah, Captain.”

At Palwaukee Albie stayed in character and informed the in-residence tower man that the procurement of the chopper and the fuel for the fighter and Gulfstream should all be kept under the same GC order number. Greasy haired and short on sleep, the big man seemed as thrilled as he had been hours before to be doing his duty to the GC and particularly to the deputy commander.

“Did you see the news, sir?” the man said. “The wonderful, wonderful news?”

“Did I ever,” Albie said. “Thanks for your kindness. Now we must be off.”

“My pleasure, Deputy Commander, sir! A pleasure indeed. If you ever need anything else, don’t hes—”

Buck was left to nod to the man. Albie was off to the freshly refueled jet, and Rayford to the chopper.

David searched and searched for Annie, unable to raise her on the phone and not willing to holler for her over the midafternoon crowds. Finally he rushed back to his office, flipped on the TV so he could catch Carpathia’s final remarks, and got on his computer to be sure the new safe house was accessible.

He called Rayford, who filled him in on everything since they had last spoken. “I
can
trust Albie, can’t I, David?”

“Albie? He was your find, wasn’t he? We’ve been working fairly closely lately. I think he’s the best, and you and Mac always said he was. Anyway, he’s one of us now, right?”

“Right.”

“If you doubt him, check his mark.”

“Apparently you don’t insult Middle Eastern men that way.”

“Hey! Captain! You’re talking to one.”

“Would someone checking your mark insult you?”

“Well, I suppose if you did, after knowing me so long. I mean, I don’t think you ever have.”

“If I can’t trust you, David, who can I trust?”

“I’d say the same about Albie, but you’re the one who needs to feel right about it. We’re getting in pretty deep with him, looks like.”

“I’ve decided to take the risk.”

“That’s good enough for me. Let me know when you get to the Strong Building. You going to try to put down inside the tower?”

“Not with this load. I’ll keep the chopper as inconspicuous as I can so it won’t be seen from the air.”

“The most you’d have to worry about would be satellite shots, because no planes are flying low enough to shoot anything meaningful. But if you get unloaded and can determine before daybreak that the chopper can be housed way up inside there, you’d better do it.”

“Roger.”

“I’m unlocking everything in the place for you. I’d get in, get settled, and stay quiet and out of sight.”

“We need some black spray paint.”

“Can do. Where should I ship it?”

“Kankakee, I guess.”

“You got it. Rayford? How is Tsion?”

“Chaim and Buck are the banged-up ones.”

“But they’re going to be all right, right?”

“Looks like it.”

“Tsion is the one I worry about. We need him on-line and doing what he does best.”

Rayford guessed he was halfway to the safe house. “I hear that, David. I just hope we can transmit out of the new place like we could out of the old.”

“Should be able to. When the day comes for Mac and Smitty and Annie and me to get out of here, we’ll come and set up the greatest communications center you can imagine. Hey, you’ve got your laptop, right? I sent you a list I found, made by a woman named Viv Ivins, Carpathia’s oldest confidante. It shows the ten kingdoms with their new names, but it also has a number assigned to each one. There has to be some significance, but I can’t decipher it, at least not yet.”

“You haven’t put one of your fancy computer programs on it by now?”

“Soon, but I don’t care what it takes or who figures it out. I just want to know what it means and whether there’s any advantage to our knowing it.”

“We’ll take a shot at it. For now it’s going to be great to be back together, all in one place, getting caught up with each other, getting acquainted better with the newcomers, and reestablishing some order.”

“I’ll know when you get in. I’ve got my cameras on.”

With his computer set, David wanted to return his attention to finding Annie. There were a thousand reasons she might be hard to locate, but he’d rather not consider any of them. He stood and stretched, noticing that the TV picture had changed. The network had switched from a wide shot of the receiving trilogy of Leon, Viv, and Nick and now moved in on Nicolae.

He had stepped down a few rows and looked directly into the camera. In spite of himself, David could see why the man was so riveting. Besides the rugged, European handsomeness, he really sold the care and compassion. David knew he was insidious, but his smarminess didn’t show.

The announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the Global Community, your Supreme Potentate, His Excellency Nicolae Carpathia.”

Nicolae took one step closer to the camera, forcing it to refocus. He looked directly into the lens.

“My dear subjects,” he began. “We have, together, endured quite a week, have we not? I was deeply touched by the millions who made the effort to come to New Babylon for what turned out to be, gratefully, not my funeral. The outpouring of emotion was no less encouraging to me.

“As you know and as I have said, there remain small pockets of resistance to our cause of peace and harmony. There are even those who have made a career of saying the most hurtful, blasphemous, and false statements about me, using terms for me that no person would ever want to be called.

“I believe you will agree that I proved today who I am and who I am not. You will do well to follow your heads and your hearts and continue to follow me. You know what you saw, and your eyes do not lie. I am also eager to welcome into the one-world fold any former devotees of the radical fringe who have become convinced that I am not the enemy. On the contrary, I may be the very object of the devotion of their own religion, and I pray they will not close their minds to that possibility.

“In closing let me speak directly to the opposition. I have always, without rancor or acrimony, allowed divergent views. There are those among you, however, who have referred overtly to me personally as the Antichrist and this period of history as the Tribulation. You may take the following as my personal pledge:

“If you insist on continuing with your subversive attacks on my character and on the world harmony I have worked so hard to engender, the word
tribulation
will not begin to describe what is in store for you. If the last three and a half years are your idea of tribulation, wait until you endure the Great Tribulation.”

with gratitude

It was midafternoon in New Babylon, and David Hassid was frantic. Annie was nowhere in sight and he had heard nothing from her, yet he could barely turn his eyes from the gigantic screens in the palace courtyard. The image of the indefatigable Nicolae Carpathia, freshly risen from three days dead, filled the screen and crackled with energy. David believed if he was within reach of the man he could be electrocuted by some demonic charge.

With the disappearance of his love fighting for his attention, David found himself drawn past the jumbo monitors and the guards and the crowds to the edge of the bier that had just hours before displayed the quite dead body of the king of the world.

Should David be able to see evidence that the man was now indwelt by Satan himself? The body, the hair, the complexion, the look were the same. But an intensity, an air of restlessness and alertness, flowed from the eyes. Though he smiled and talked softly, it was as if Nicolae could barely contain the monster within. Controlled fury, violence delayed, revenge in abeyance played at the muscles in his neck and shoulders. David half expected him to burst from his suit and then from his very skin, exposed to the world as the repulsive serpent he was.

David’s attention was diverted briefly by someone next to Carpathia, and when he glanced back at the still ruggedly handsome face, he was not prepared to have caught the eye of the enemy of his soul. Nicolae knew him, of course, but the look, though it contained recognition, did not carry the usual acceptance and encouragement David was used to. That very welcoming gaze had always unnerved him, yet he preferred it over this. For this was a transparent gaze that seemed to pass through David, which nearly moved him to step forward and confess his treachery and that of every comrade in the Tribulation Force.

David reminded himself that not even Satan himself was omniscient, yet he found it difficult to accept that these eyes were not those of one who knew his every secret. He wanted to run but he dared not, and he was grateful when Nicolae turned back to the task at hand: his role as the object of the world’s worship.

David hurried back to his post, but someone had appropriated his golf cart, and he found himself peeved to where he wanted to pull rank. He flipped open his phone, had trouble finding his voice, but finally barked at the motor-pool supervisor, “I had better have a vehicle delivered within 120 seconds or someone is going to find his—”

“An electric cart, sir?” the man said, his accent making David guess he was an Aussie.

“Of course!”

“They’re scarce here, Director, but—”

“They must be, because someone absconded with mine!”

“But I was going to say that I would be happy to lend you mine, under the circumstances.”

“The circumstances?”

“The resurrection, of course! Tell you the truth, Director Hassid, I’d love to get in line myself.”

“Just bring—”

“You think I could do that, sir? I mean if I were in uniform? I know they’ve turned away civilians not inside the courtyard, and they’re none too happy, but as an employee—”

“I don’t know! I need a cart and I need it now!”

“Would you drive me to the venue before you go wherever it is you have to g—”

“Yes! Now hurry!”

“Are you thrilled or what, Director?”

“What?”

The man spoke slowly, condescendingly. “A-bout-the-res-ur-rec-tion!”

“Are you in your vehicle?” David demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s what I’m thrilled about.”

The man was still talking when David hung up on him and called crowd control. “I’m looking for Annie Christopher,” he said.

“Sector?”

“Five-three.”

“Sector 53 has been cleared, Director. She may have been reassigned or relieved.”

“If she were reassigned, you’d have it, no?”

“Checking.”

The motor-pool chief appeared in his cart, beaming. David boarded, phone still to his ear. “Gonna see god,” the man said.

“Yeah,” David said. “Just a minute.”

“Can you believe it? He’s got to be god. Who else can he be? Saw it with my own two eyes, well, on TV anyway. Raised from the dead. I saw him dead, I know that. If I see him in person, there’ll be no doubt now, will there? Eh?”

David nodded, sticking a finger in his free ear.

“I say no doubt, eh?”

“No doubt!” David shouted. “Now give me a minute!”

“Where we goin’, sport?”

David craned his neck to look at the man, incredulous that he was still speaking.

“I say, where we going? Am I dropping you or you dropping me?”

“I’m dropping you! Go where you want and get out!”

“Sor-
ry
!”

This wasn’t how David normally treated people, even ignorant ones. But he had to hear whether Annie had been reassigned, and where. “Nothing,” the crowd-control dispatcher on the phone told him.

“Relieved then?” he said, relieved himself.

“Likely. Nothing in our system on her.”

David thought of calling Medical Services but scolded himself for overreacting.

Motor-pool Man deftly picked his way through the massive, dispersing crowd. At least most were dispersing. They looked shocked. Some were angry. They had waited hours to see the body, and now that Carpathia had arisen, they were not going to be able to see him, all because of where they happened to be in the throng.

“This is as close as I hope to get in this thing then,” the man said, skidding to a stop so abruptly that David had to catch himself. “You’ll bring it back round then, eh, sir?”

“Of course,” David said, trying to gather himself to at least thank the man. As he slid into the driver’s seat he said, “Been back to Australia since the reorganizing?”

The man furrowed his brow and pointed at David, as if to reprimand him. “Man of your station ought to be able to tell the difference between an Aussie and a New Zealander.”

“My mistake,” David said. “Thanks for the wheels.”

As he pulled away the man shouted, “’Course we’re all proud citizens of the United Pacific States now anyway!”

David tried to avoid eye contact with the many disgruntled mourners turned celebrants who tried to flag him, not for rides but for information. At times he was forced to brake to keep from running someone down, and the request was always the same. In one distinct accent or another, everyone wanted the same thing. “Any way we can still get in to see His Excellency?”

“Can’t help you,” David said. “Move along, please. Official business.”

“Not fair! Wait all night and half the day in the blistering sun, and for what?”

But others danced in the streets, making up songs and chants about Carpathia, their new god. David glanced again at the monstrous monitors where Carpathia was shown briefly touching hands as the last several thousand were herded through. To David’s left, guards fought to block hopefuls from sneaking into the courtyard. “Line’s closed!” they shouted over and over.

On the screen, pilgrims swooned as they neared the bier, graced by Nicolae in his glory. Many crumbled from merely getting near him, waxing catatonic. Guards held them up to keep them moving, but when His Excellency himself spoke quietly to them and touched them, some passed out, deadweights in the guards’ arms.

Over Nicolae’s cooing—“Good to see you. Thank you for coming. Bless you. Bless you.”—David heard Leon Fortunato. “Worship your king,” he said soothingly. “Bow before his majesty. Worship the Lord Nicolae, your god.”

Dissonance came from the guards stuck with the responsibility of moving the mass of quivering, jellied humanity, catching them as they collapsed in ecstasy. “Ridiculous!” they grumbled to each other, live mikes sending the cacophony of Fortunato, Carpathia, and the complainers to the ends of the PA system. “Keep moving. Come on now! There you go! Stand up! Move it along!”

David finally reached sector 53, which was, as he had been told, deserted. The crowd-control gates had toppled, and the giant number placard had been trampled. David sat there, forearms resting on the cart’s steering wheel. He shoved his uniform cap back on his head and felt the sting of the sun’s UV rays. His hands looked like lobsters, and he knew he’d pay for his hours in the sun. But he could not find shade again until he found Annie.

As crowds shuffled through and then around what had been her sector, David squinted at the ground, the asphalt shimmering. Besides the ice-cream and candy wrappers and drink cups that lay motionless in the windless heat was what appeared to be residue of medical supplies. He was about to step from the cart for a closer look when an elderly couple climbed aboard and asked to be driven to the airport shuttle area.

“This is not a people mover,” he said absently, having enough presence to remove the keys before leaving the vehicle.

“How rude!” the woman said.

“Come on,” the man said.

David marched to sector 53 and knelt, the heat sapping his energy. In the shadows of hundreds walking by, he examined the plastic empties of bandages, gauze, ointment, even tubing. Someone had been ministered to here. It didn’t have to have been Annie. It could have been anyone. Still, he had to know. He made his way back to the cart, every seat but his now full.

“Unless you need to go to Medical Services,” he said, punching the number into his phone, “you’re in the wrong cart.”

In Chicago Rayford Steele found the Strong Building’s ninth floor enough of a bonanza that he was able to push from his mind misgivings about Albie. The truth about his dark, little Middle Eastern friend would be tested soon enough. Albie was to ferry a fighter jet from Palwaukee to Kankakee, where Rayford would later pick him up in a Global Community helicopter.

Besides discovering a room full of the latest desktop and minicomputers—still in their original packaging—Rayford found a small private sleeping room adjacent to a massive executive office. It was outfitted like a luxurious hotel room, and he rushed from floor to floor to find the same next to at least four offices on every level.

“We have more amenities than we ever dreamed,” he told the exhausted Tribulation Force. “Until we can blacken the windows, we’ll have to get some of the beds into the corridors near the elevators where they can’t be seen from the outside.”

“I thought no one ever came near here,” Chloe said, Kenny sleeping in her lap and Buck dozing with his head on her shoulder.

“Never know what satellite imaging shows,” Rayford said. “We could be sleeping soundly while GC Security and Intelligence forces snap our pictures from the stratosphere.”

“Let me get these two to bed somewhere,” she said, “before I collapse.”

“I’ve moved furniture in my day,” Leah said, slowly rising. “Where are these beds and where do we put them?”

“I wish I could help,” Chaim said through clenched teeth, his jaw still wired shut.

Rayford stopped him with a gesture. “If you’re staying with us, sir, you answer to me. We need you and Buck as healthy as you can be.”

“And I need you alert for study,” Tsion said. “You made me cram for enough exams. Now you’re in for the crash course of your life.”

Rayford, Chloe, Leah, and Tsion spent half an hour moving beds up the elevator to makeshift quarters in an inner corridor on the twenty-fifth floor. By the time Rayford gingerly boarded the chopper balanced precariously on what served as the new roof of the tower, everyone was asleep save Tsion. The rabbi seemed to gain a second wind, and Rayford wasn’t sure why.

Rayford left the instrument panel lights on and, of course, the outside lights off. He fired up the rotors but waited to lift off until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The copter had twenty feet of clearance on each side. Little was trickier—especially to a fixed-wing expert like Rayford—than the shifting currents inside what amounted to a cavernous smokestack. Rayford had seen choppers crash in wide-open spaces after merely hovering too long in one place. Mac McCullum had tried to explain the physics of it, but Rayford had not listened closely enough to grasp it. Something about the rotors sucking up air from beneath the craft, leaving it no buoyancy. By the time the pilot realized he was dropping through dead air of his own making, he had destroyed the equipment and often killed all on board.

Rayford needed sleep as much as any of his charges, but he had to go get Albie. There was more to that too, of course. He could have called his friend and told him to lie low till the following evening. But Albie was new to the country and would have to fend for himself outside or bluff his way into a hotel. With Carpathia resurrected and the GC naturally on heightened alert, who knew how long he could pull off impersonating a GC officer?

Anyway, Rayford had to know whether Albie was “with him or agin him,” as his father used to say. He had been thrilled to see the mark of the believer on Albie’s forehead, but much of what the man had done in the predawn hours confused Rayford and made him wonder. A wily, streetwise man like Albie—one who had provided so much at high risk to himself—would be the worst kind of opponent. Rayford worried that he had unwittingly led the Tribulation Force into the lair of the enemy.

As the chopper rumbled through the shaft at the top of the tower, Rayford held his breath. He had carefully set the craft as close to the middle of the space as he could, allowing him to use one corner for his guide as he rose. If he kept the whirring blades equidistant from the walls in the one corner, he should be centered until free of the building.