The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (289 page)

As a commercial pilot Rayford had thrived on the schedule, the predictability of his days. But on this mission he had had to adapt at a moment’s notice, depending upon how God led Chaim. This could have been as simple as driving people from Jerusalem to Mizpe Ramon—roughly a hundred miles—then airlifting them about fifty miles southeast to Petra. But somewhere along the line both Masada and the Mount of Olives had been added to the itinerary, and it was Rayford’s job to stretch his personnel to fit the task. One responsibility he carved out for himself was picking up Chaim and Buck once everyone else was safe. Dr. Rosenzweig insisted on their being among the last to arrive at Petra, akin to a captain and his first mate’s being the last ones off a ship, but Rayford wouldn’t know until the last minute where to pick them up.

“Binoculars?” Z said. “I can do ya one better’n that, Chloe. You lookin’ up or out?”

“Mostly out,” Chloe said, yawning. “Nothing specific.” She didn’t want Zeke to know what was on her mind. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. She simply didn’t want any input. The adults had sat watching the temple debacle, and the flight to Petra was underway. Once she was satisfied that Buck was safe, she would be able to sit idle no more.

Zeke had come up with an interesting idea weeks before. Like everyone else, she liked the way he thought, though his way of expressing himself might fool a stranger into thinking he was less than bright. He had encouraged Chloe to clone herself via the Internet. “You know, recruit other people like you. There have to be lots of young moms who are feeling left out of the action. Teach ’em what you do, get ’em to do it in their areas and regions. You can’t do it all yourself anyway.”

The concept had ignited like a gaslit fire. Chloe uploaded manuals and lists of duties, procedures, cross-referenced contact databases—everything a regional director of the International Commodity Co-op would need. She was virtually working herself out of a job.

Now she had gone to the jack-of-all-trades and the one man besides her father who had inventoried the entire Strong Building. Zeke had gone further than Rayford, however. He had computerized a list of everything he had found. A tower that huge bore a mother lode of treasures. “I mean, there
are
binocs,” he said. “Some really super-powerful, top-of-the-line types too. But knowin’ you, you want the most powerful eyes I can find ya, am I right?”

“As usual.”

“It’ll be dawn soon. You want it like right now?”

“If possible.”

“Be right back.”

Zeke took several minutes. His computer told him where this item was, and he headed for the elevators.

Ming headed back to bed while Tsion reported that Chang had informed him he would try to patch Chicago in to the Knesset meeting of Chaim and Buck with Carpathia. “I need to sleep,” Tsion told Chloe, “but I will keep an ear open for that . . . unless you want to.”

“I’ve had enough of St. Nick for one night,” she said. “Why don’t you just record it and get some rest?”

Tsion nodded with a look that said her idea had scored with him. “That way I can listen if I want and not worry if I nod off.”

Zeke returned, looking as if he couldn’t wait to see Chloe’s reaction. He handed her a plain white box that surprised her with its weight. She sat and opened it, producing a huge, squatty telescope about a foot long that took two hands to pull from the wrapping. “Wow,” she said. “Will this need a tripod?”

“Not supposed to,” Zeke said. “But you gotta brace it on somethin’. The window ledge will do. Want any help?”

“No thanks, Z. I appreciate it. Let me figure it out for myself. It’s way past your bedtime too, isn’t it?”

“Way past.”

The sores had so decimated Carpathia’s staff that Buck thought anyone could walk right past security at the Knesset and take him out. The weak, scratching, wincing crew looked up wearily at Buck and Chaim but barely acknowledged their presence. Not only was Buck not searched, but he was also not even asked his name. He and Chaim were ushered into a small conference room, where Nicolae sat with Fortunato on his right and Moon on his left. They looked like refugees from a quarantine camp, both hunched over the table, heads in their hands, barely able to keep their eyes open.

As the door shut behind Buck, Carpathia said sarcastically, “Forgive me for not standing.” He pointed to two chairs. Buck sat quickly, then felt conspicuous when Chaim remained standing.

“I represent the one true God and his Son, Jesus, the Christ,” the old man said. “I prefer to stand.”

Carpathia appeared so angry he couldn’t speak. His jaw muscles protruded as he ground his teeth, glaring. Chaim merely met his gaze.

“All right,” Nicolae said, “I am letting these people run off to the hills. When do the sores go away? I upheld my end of the bargain.”

“We had a bargain?” Chaim said.

“Come, come! We are wasting time! You said you would lift this spell if I—”

“That is not my recollection,” Chaim said. “I said that if you did
not
let them go, you would suffer yet a worse plague.”

“So I let them go. Now you—”

“It is not as if you had a choice.”

Carpathia slammed an open palm on the table, making his cohorts jump. “Are we here to play word games? I want the sores on my people healed! What do I have to do?”

“Make no attempt to stop Israeli Messianic believers from getting to Petra.”

Carpathia stood. “Have you not noticed? I am the only full-time employee of the Global Community not suffering from the plague!”

Chaim remained calm. “And that only because you have not taken your own mark, though I daresay you worship yourself.”

Nicolae rushed around the table and bent to face Chaim from just inches away. “Our medical experts have determined there is no connection between the application of the mark of loyalty and—”

“Why does your bad breath not surprise me?”

“You do not dare to lift the curse for fear your fate will be the same as that of your two associates at the Wall.”

“If your medical experts know so much,” Chaim said, “how is it that they have been able to offer no relief?”

Carpathia sighed and sat on the table, his back to Fortunato and Moon. “So you are not here to negotiate? You are here to tell me I am at your mercy and that there is nothing I can do to ease the pain of my people?”

“I am here to remind you that this script has already been written. I have read it. You lose.”

Carpathia stood again. “If I am not god,” he said, “I challenge yours to slay me now. I spit in his face and call him a weakling. If I remain alive for ten more seconds, he, and you, are frauds.”

Chaim smiled. “What kind of a God would he be if he felt compelled to act on your timetable?”

Buck loved seeing Carpathia speechless. He seemed to tremble with rage, staring and shaking his head. Behind him, Moon tapped Fortunato’s shoulder, making the reverend recoil. “Sorry,” Moon whispered and leaned close to his ear.

“Excellency,” Fortunato rasped, “a word, please.”

“What? What is it?”

Fortunato struggled to his feet, clasped his hands before him, and bowed. “Please, Your Worship. A moment.”

Nicolae looked as if he were about to detonate. He moved back behind the table, making Moon stand too. Fortunato pleaded with him in a voice too faint for Buck to hear.

“I suppose you concur, Moon,” Nicolae said.

Moon nodded and Fortunato added, “It was
his
idea,” which made Moon’s face drop, and he shot Leon a look.

“You two get out of here. I want a meeting, you know where, with the full cabinet.”

“Not here?”

“No! I said you know where! These walls have ears!”

The two gingerly made their way out. Carpathia looked down at Buck. “This one makes me nervous,” he said. “Does he have to be here?”

“He does.”

“My people are pleading for respite,” Nicolae said. “I recognize that I am forced to concede something.”

“And that would be?”

Carpathia’s eyes danced, as if he hated with his entire being what he had to say. “That . . . I . . . must . . . submit to you in this. I am prepared to do what I have to do to enable a lifting of the plague.” He lowered his head as if pushing against an invisible force.

“You are under the authority of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, maker of heaven and earth. You will allow this exodus, and when I am satisfied that the people under my charge are safe, I will pray God to lift the affliction.”

Buck wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke rise from Carpathia’s ears. “How long?” Nicolae said.

“This is a huge undertaking,” Chaim said. “Six hours should be telling.”

Carpathia looked up hopefully.

“But should you attempt to lay a hand on one of the chosen,” Chaim warned, “the second judgment will rain down.”

“Understood,” Carpathia said, a little too quickly. He thrust out his hand.

Chaim ignored it, glanced at Buck, and left.

Buck rose to follow and wondered if Carpathia recognized either of them. He avoided eye contact, but as Buck slipped past Antichrist, Nicolae growled, “Your days are numbered.”

Buck nodded, still looking away. “That’s for sure.”

Chloe scraped a three-inch hole in the black paint at the bottom of a window. Then she placed a cushion from the couch on the marble floor and set the telescope lens against the glass, bracing it on the frame. Several minutes of trial and error finally resulted in her discovering an image in the predawn haze. She thought she had seen something in the middle of the night several days before, but she had not been able to locate it again and thus told no one. Now she slowly scanned the horizon, trying to keep the hugely powerful apparatus steady and the image in front of her eye. The image was so magnified that she guessed she was viewing just a few feet square from more than half a mile away.

The problem was, of course, that such a lens required as much light as she could find. It was designed to bring stars into focus on clear nights. All she saw were the dark silhouettes of a ravaged skyline, and no light anywhere. Frustrated, she set the scope down and refocused with the naked eye, trying to get a bead on what she had seen faintly once. At about two o’clock in her field of vision and maybe three-quarters of a mile away, a speck of light stopped her. So it wasn’t her imagination. The question was, what light would be on in a city the world thought was radiation contaminated? Was it possible Tribulation Force members were not the only intelligent life-forms in this alien universe?

She shook her head. Probably just a streetlight that somehow was still hooked up to power. Still, the scope might offer more clues. Keeping the speck in sight, she raised the instrument to the window and carefully studied the area. After a minute or two she realized she had aimed too high and was taking in the foreboding waters of Lake Michigan. Keeping the apparatus in place, she looked past it again and adjusted, then peeked through the eyepiece again.

The image jumped and moved, appeared and disappeared. It was more than a streetlight, but the harder she tried to focus on it, the more elusive it became. Her neck stiffened, her wrists cramped, her eye wearied. She realized she’d been holding her breath to minimize her movement, but that just caused her heart to beat harder. Finally she had to put the telescope down and move. But when she was ready to try again, the sun teased the eastern horizon. Chloe would have to try again another night.

“Mount of Olives?” Buck said, as he caught up to Chaim.

“Of course. Then to Masada to see what kind of a crowd we have attracted.”

“Question. Why six hours? You trust him?”

Chaim shot Buck a look. “Trust him? Of course! He was willing to shake on it.”

“Okay, dumb question. But there’s no way everybody will be safe by nightfall.”

“We already know he will break the agreement, Cameron. Revelation 12 is clear that Israel is given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, but that the serpent spews water out of his mouth like a flood after her. No question he will attack somehow, plague or not. Tsion believes the ‘flood’ is Antichrist’s army. That same chapter says the earth helps the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing up the flood. May the Lord forgive me, but I want to see that. Don’t you?”

Buck nodded, finally grabbing his phone and listening to see if Chang was still monitoring. “You there?” he said.

“Working on the Phoenix connection,” Chang said. “Thanks. That was spooky.”

“You’re the best.”

“I’ll call you when I’m ready to patch you in.”

Chaim waited till Buck was finished, then asked, “You know what happens after God thwarts Antichrist’s armies, do you not?”

“You mean before or after you drop the second judgment on him?”

“Before
I
drop it? I am merely the messenger, my friend.”

“I know,” Buck said.

“The Bible says the dragon becomes enraged with the woman and goes to make war with the rest of her offspring, ‘who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.’ To me that sounds like the other believing Jews around the world.”

“And what do we do about that?”

“I have no idea,” Chaim said. “We obey, that is all.”

Rayford was too antsy to sit at Mizpe Ramon waiting for the first arrivals. He set a course for the Mount of Olives and phoned Tsion in Chicago on the way. Rayford felt bad when it was obvious from Dr. Ben-Judah’s voice that he had been sleeping. But he said, “You are never an intrusion, Captain Steele.”

“I confess I’m troubled, Dr. Ben-Judah. My military training was during peacetime, so this is the first time I’ve been responsible for so many people in a dangerous situation.”

“But you have been through so much with the Tribulation Force!”

“I know, but I just wish I could be assured I will see no casualties.”

“We certainly have had no such guarantees in our inner circle,” Tsion said, “have we?”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“I just want to be honest, Captain. I assume that is what you want.”

“What I want is what I asked for, I’m afraid—the knowledge that I will lose no one.”

“I believe we will lose none of the 144,000, but most of those are scattered throughout the world. I am also fairly certain that the prophecies indicate that God will protect the Messianic believers who are fleeing Jerusalem. But you are asking about your operation personnel.”

“Right.”

“I can only pray and hope.”

“I’m committed to not engaging the enemy in kill strikes.”

“I am sympathetic to that, and yet you wish for no deaths on your side either. I do not know how realistic that is. Would you not feel justified in an all-or-nothing situation?”

“You mean if it’s my guy or theirs? I guess I would permit firing.”