The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (291 page)

David guessed it would be two hours from Chaim’s speech at the Temple Mount until he saw his first arrivals. He called Rayford. “What gives with our nurses? Hannah owes me an e-mail response. They okay?”

“No reason to believe otherwise. Did you try calling them?”

“No response.”

“I’ll check in on them.” He told David what was happening with the weapons and the med center.

“Need my help on that?” David said.

“You’ve got to hang in there and coordinate until Chaim arrives, and that could be a couple of days.”

“I could appoint one of the first to get here. There’s no science to this. How are you going to handle those big guns by yourself?”

“I’ll get Leah and Hannah to help.”

“They done tearing down and packing up?”

“Should be.”

“You regret having the airstrip built and then having to abandon it?”

“Sure, but we needed it on the front end anyway. Where else were all our birds going to land?”

“Got any prospects on board?”

“For your job? I don’t know, David. Why don’t you stay put?”

“If they speak Hebrew and can elicit trust, that’ll free me up to hop back to the strip with you and load the guns.”

“I’m not even sure I’ll issue the fifties,” Rayford said.

“Well, I’m willing if you need me.”

Late in the afternoon David climbed to the high place and scanned the horizon. Nothing yet, but he heard movement in the rocks below. No way anyone on foot could have arrived before the choppers. He knelt and crept to the edge, holding his breath to listen. His heart banged against his ribs. He guessed two sets of footsteps, slowly moving.

David pulled out the only weapon he could think of, his phone, and readied himself to speed-dial Rayford. He rose to where he could peer over the side. Resolutely and gingerly picking their way through loose rock not fifty feet below him were two sickly, stumbling GC Peacekeepers, uniforms drenched in sweat. Each carried a high-powered rifle. David punched the speed-dial button for Rayford, and the Peacekeepers both looked directly up at him at the same time. Before he could get the phone to his ear, they dropped to their knees and angled their weapons at him.

David dropped the phone and dove for cover, sharp rocks digging deep into his knees and hands. The soldiers, obviously left for dead by their compatriots, must have felt a surge of adrenaline. They couldn’t have expected to find anyone here after surviving the fifty-caliber assault from the other direction, but now they advanced with vigor.

David scrambled to his feet, only to discover something seriously wrong with his ankle. He tried hopping toward a cave, but unarmed he would be easy prey there. He heard his pursuers separate just below the ridge, the sounds of their boots in the rocks coming from about twenty feet apart. If they rushed him, David had nowhere to go.

He was no match for them, but retreat wasn’t an option. He hopped toward the edge, bent to scoop a handful of jagged rocks, and reared back to fire at the first head that popped up.

Rayford glanced at his ringing phone and saw who was calling. Again. So soon. David had never proven to be a pest. “Steele here,” he said.

All he heard were sounds of boots on rocks.

“David? You there?”

From a distance, “God, help me!”

“David?”

A desperate cry, a shout in Hebrew, burps of gunfire from at least two weapons, a fall, a grunt. David’s hoarse whisper, “God, please!” Liquid splashing.

David lay on his back, his body numb, no pain even in his ankle. The cloudless blue sky filled his entire field of vision. His heart galloped and his panicked lungs made his chest rise and fall in waves. Though he could feel nothing, he heard blood gushing from his head.

The soldiers leaned over him, but he could not move his eyes to focus on either of them. If only he could appear already dead . . . but he couldn’t stop his heaving chest. David could pray only silently now. He pleaded with God to let him neither hear nor feel the kill shots as the two pointed their muzzles at his heart and pulled the triggers.

Rayford’s phone was still open, but all he heard after more deafening rifle shots were expressions of effort and what he could only imagine was the lifting of a body and the flinging of it over the side of a mountain. Then footsteps away from the phone, until they faded out of range.

Besides dreading what he would find at Petra, Rayford couldn’t deliver a chopper full of believers to a spot that could be teeming with the enemy lying in wait. Hating himself for already thinking past what sounded for all the world like David Hassid’s death, Rayford knew he had to keep that phone from falling into the wrong hands.

Leah didn’t understand Hannah, but that was okay. She didn’t always understand herself either. They had secured the last of the medical supplies into hard-sided boxes that would fit into a cargo hold and were now monitoring Hannah’s computer.

“You know for sure it was Hassid who called?”

Hannah nodded.

“And you want to talk to him, so why didn’t you—”

“I’m not sure I want to talk to him until I know how he’s going to respond to my e-mail. He should have written me back. Then I’d know and I could take his call. Maybe.”

Leah shook her head. “Even if we didn’t have only three and a half years, I’d tell you life’s too short and you ought to call him. He’s a busy guy. When would he have had time to write you back?”

“I found time to write.”

“Hannah! We’re not building a computer system here that has to serve a million people.”

Hannah was staring at the screen. The news was nothing but Carpathia propaganda, pundits trying to spin his temple folly into something that made sense. Leah leaned in to look at the scroll across the bottom of the screen. “His Excellency the potentate guarantees healing from the affliction of sores by 2100 hours Carpathian Time.”

“I’m stupid,” Hannah said.

“I know.”

“Stop it! We hardly know each other.”

“Sorry. Why are you stupid?”

Hannah pointed to the computer’s status bar below the scrolling message. It showed she had mail. “Bet that’s from David,” she said.

“Let’s find out,” Leah said, but before either could switch screens, their phones rang simultaneously. “Rayford,” Leah told Hannah.

“Mine too,” Hannah said.

Leah held up a hand. “Let me,” she said. “Med center.”

“Leah, Rayford. You two okay?”

“Yeah, except it looks like you called us both at the same time.”

“I did. Hannah there?” Leah nodded at her and Hannah answered too. “You packed up and ready to go?”

“Yes,” Leah said. “But where—”

“Just listen. I’m short on time. You know George?”

“Big guy? Calif—”

“That’s him. I just pulled him off another assignment. He’s gonna land there within three or four minutes and he’s going to need help setting up a nest of fifty-caliber rifles. Smitty will join him soon.”

“Don’t they each have a load of passengers?”

“Yes, and we need to get them as far from the airstrip and the buildings as we can.”

“They’re not going to Petra?”

“Eventually. Just listen. By the time it’s dark, those people need to be isolated and invisible from the air. After I land there briefly and take off again, any other aircraft over Mizpe Ramon will be GC, and George and Smitty will be defending the airstrip.”

“And we’ll be babysitting two loads of passengers until someone comes for them?”

“Three. I’ve got a load too, and I need to pick up a fifty myself.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got a situation at Petra, and I’m going to need one of you to go with me. Leah, that would be you.”

“Hold on!” Hannah said. “Who’s at Petra besides David?”

“We’ve delivered no one yet. I want to be sure the area is secure before we—”

“Why wouldn’t it be? What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know yet, but—”

“But there’s a problem or David could tell you.”

“I just can’t reach him right now is all,” Rayford said. “Let’s not jump to any—”

“Then I’m coming. Leah can help George and Abdullah and herd these people somewhere.”

“Hannah,” Rayford said, “I—”

“Don’t try to talk me out of this, Captain Steele. I—”

“Hannah! This is a military operation and I am your superior officer. I decide who will do what, and I’ve told you who is going and who is staying. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but—”

“Any questions?”

“No, but, well, I think I just heard from David.”

“Either you did or you didn’t. Did he call?”

“He e-mailed.”

“You’re sure?”

“Not entirely,” Leah said. “Check it, Hannah.”

She switched screens. “Yes, it’s from him!”

“When was it sent?”

“Just a sec—oh!”

“Just now or . . . ?”

“No. Some time ago.”

“Anything pertinent? Problems? He need help?”

“No,” Hannah said, scanning it quickly. “Just personal stuff.”

Leah put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder and raised her chin at Hannah in encouragement. The younger woman looked terrified.

“Okay, Hannah? We clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me talk with just Leah now, all right?”

Hannah slapped her phone shut while reading David’s message.

“Leah,” Rayford said, “I don’t know what we’re going to find at Petra, but David tried to call me and all I heard sounded like him being shot.”

“Oh, no!”

“Bring heavy-duty, first-aid stuff and a stretcher.”

“Got it.”

“If we have to load him on the chopper, can you and I do that?”

“Worry about your end, Captain,” she said. Then, whispering and turning away from Hannah, “And you’d better start worrying about that phone and those computers.”

“Way ahead of you,” Rayford said. “Be there in a few minutes.”

Chang was studying the itchy spot on his leg under a light in his New Babylon palace apartment when Rayford called. After a fast briefing, Chang said, “Don’t worry about the phone. I can neutralize that from here.”

“What do you mean?”

Chang began tapping keys as they spoke. “I can nuke the innards, erase the mother chip. In fact, I just did.”

“Now let’s hope they haven’t found it yet.”

“When you connect with David,” Chang said, “I need to talk with him.”

“I didn’t like what I heard, Chang.”

“I know, but you can’t be sure what you were hearing.”

“I know David was unarmed.”

“I’m checking on those computers.”

“Right now? You can do that?”

“Thanks to David, we can do just about anything from here. Luckily, there’s no way they can break into the software. That’s on a revolving encoder that can only unravel itself, and it’s programmed not to.”

“Well, I don’t understand all that, but I’m more worried we’ve got a bunch of crazed GCers up there who think they’d be helping their cause by just destroying all the hardware.”

“They
would
be helping their cause. And they would set us way back. But there wouldn’t be a bunch of them, would there?”

“How would we know?”

“These have to be leftovers from your attack, right?”

“Probably.”

“You heard the Phoenix meeting,” Chang said. “There were two unaccounted for.”

Rayford put down well off the south end of the airstrip at Mizpe Ramon and sat talking with Mac and Albie by radio as Hannah and Leah met the chopper with medical supplies and a stretcher. As Hannah led the escapees away from the craft, first finding out who understood English and Hebrew and using them to interpret for her, Leah tossed the supplies aboard and waited outside. “Mr. Smith is bringing your weapons,” she mouthed.

Rayford nodded and told Mac and Albie to fly their charges to Wadi Musa, near Petra, and to assume they would be both seen and heard by the two GC suspected at Petra. “Tell your people to stay with the choppers until you come back for them, and then get to the footpath entrance as soon as you can. Don’t go in until I get there with weapons for you.”

“Question,” Albie said.

“Make it quick.”

“Have we been all wrong about this being a place of refuge?”

“Albie, all I know to do is to clear it for the people, get ’em in there, and trust God to take care of them.”

“And if you find Hassid’s body?”

Rayford hesitated. “Then I’m gonna assume it’s them or us, and let me tell both you guys something: It’s going to be them.”

When Rayford leaped from the chopper, Abdullah was already hurrying across the sand from the munitions storage unit. He was bent under the weight of three fifty-caliber rifles on his shoulder with a huge belt of ammunition draped over them. His other arm pointed straight out from his body for balance. Rayford and Leah ran to him and helped carry the weapons to the helicopter.

“You all right, Smitty? You ready?”

“George is giving me a course crash,” he said, “whatever that means.”

“Crash course. Quick, fast.”

Abdullah nodded. “I liked the DEWs, but I will shoot these too. George is setting up at a steep angle to take the enemy planes out of the sky, but I worry about accuracy.”

“All you’ll have to hit is one and the rest will run.”

“I hope you are right, Captain. I will be praying for you, and I am hoping you are wrong about Mr. Hassid. He is a wonderful man.”

Rayford hoped so too. He and Leah boarded, and as he guided the chopper up and away, he gazed at the Jordanian sprinting back to where George was setting up to defend the airstrip. Rayford was in the middle of exactly what he had hoped to avoid. People were going to die. One may already have. Knowing he would again see these beloved martyrs, along with all the others he had lost in so short a time, did little to console him. There had to be a limit to the trauma a man could endure. He should have long since blown past his.

Buck had helped Chaim board one of the choppers bound for Masada, and they arrived to find tens of thousands of curious Israelis streaming up the steps into the fabled fortress. Buck had been getting sketchy reports that the airlift had hit a few snags and that the return runs from Petra to the Mount of Olives would be delayed. Rayford was undoubtedly busy and in contact with his people, because he was not answering his phone or returning Buck’s calls. Chang reported that he would rather Buck wait and talk with Rayford personally.

It was around nine in the morning in Chicago, so Buck called Chloe while Chaim was pacing behind him. Just before Chloe answered, Chaim bent and whispered, “I shall speak when this place is full.”

Rayford could not think of a way to avoid detection by whatever GC might be waiting at Petra. Three choppers would land close by inside several minutes of each other, and it wouldn’t be long before dozens more showed up. He considered rerouting the others to Mizpe Ramon, but he feared Carpathia might order an attack there even before the lifting of the plague, in retaliation for the firing upon his forces. Fearing the airstrip was targeted made him wary to risk more than the three chopper loads already waiting near there. Who knew? Maybe Carpathia or Akbar were smart enough to delay their attack until dark.