The Lost Apostles (2 page)

Chapter 2

We have unconfirmed reports of military action in the Macedonian mountains of northern Greece. The Greek government denies any knowledge of this, but refuses to allow reporters into the region.

—From an Associated Press news story

Buffeted by strong winds, the helicopter followed three other stealth aircraft through a night storm, with the female pilot remaining as far back as she could without losing contact. Fifteen year old Lori Vale sat behind her in the low illumination of the cockpit, with a handgun on her lap. She wore khaki jeans and a heavy knit sweater.

Tall and auburn-haired, Lori was old beyond her years, having survived a startling series of events in which the female apostles of Jesus had come back to life in the form of children, and had dictated the new gospels of a sacred book, the
Holy Women’s Bible
. Now the caretakers of the young she-apostles, the United Women of the World, were fleeing a brutal military attack on their headquarters by the ultra-conservative Bureau of Ideology, who wanted to murder the children and prevent their gospels from being released. Lori and the other passengers aboard the squadron of aircraft had barely escaped with their lives.

The window at her side was rain-streaked and foggy, and in the surface she saw her own shadowed reflection. She wiped the glass, but the rainy darkness outside prevented her from seeing where they were going, or their companion craft. The pilot, Rea Janeg, could be heard transmitting code words over the radio, gibberish that made Lori think of ancient Aramaic—the language of Jesus that was spoken by the she-apostle babies and toddlers.

On a round screen, Lori watched the progress of the escaping aircraft as they crossed the Mediterranean Sea in the middle of the night, heading southwest. A stocky brunette, the pilot answered questions about the equipment, and the answers seemed to make sense to Lori. Even though these were all covert aircraft, the pilots in the squadron sent encrypted transponder signals to each other, and data appeared on their navigation screens, showing the formation.

“If we stop sending signals, they can’t see us anymore in this weather,” the pilot said.

Lori found the comment interesting. “Why are you telling me so much?” she asked.

“Because I admire you. A lot of the women do. I’ve heard them talking.” She was referring to Lori’s attempt to free the young apostles from the captivity imposed on them by the United Women of the World and its ambitious, brutal leader, Dixie Lou Jackson.

“Thank you.” For the moment, Lori didn’t let her guard down, but knew she would have to trust someone, sometime. Barring that, she would never be able to sleep. She couldn’t go off on her own, and felt honor-bound to remain with the four toddler she-apostles on this helicopter, to make certain they were protected. She had Mary Magdalene, Veronica, and two of the other children, along with a couple of members of the UWW council—Fujiko Harui and Wendy Zepeda. Lori had to take a chance and trust someone, but whom? Alex Jackson, Dixie Lou’s rebellious son, had been her most trusted confidante, but he’d gotten into trouble, along with Lori, for trying to free all of the children. Now he was aboard one of the other aircraft, under guard.

As she considered this, she peered through the windshield while the stealth vessel flew toward the northern coast of Africa. In the darkness she could not see any sign of land yet, only glints of white on the cold vault of the sea, as whitecaps rolled beneath them. To the naked eye, her helicopter seemed to be alone out here. Overhead, storm clouds blocked the stars, but in the distance a patch of sky came into view just above the horizon, where she saw a few faint stars and a flash of lightning.

“Could our helicopter stop sending transponder signals and still pick up theirs?” Lori asked.

“Absolutely,” Rea Janeg responded. She glanced back, showing curiosity in her expression.

“Interesting,” Lori said. “Shut it off, and don’t reply if they radio us.”

The pilot changed settings on the instrument panel.

Over the ensuing minutes, the radio made intermittent static sounds, and voices crackled over the air. “Number three, do you read me?” a voice asked.

Following Lori’s orders, her pilot did not respond.

Then Lori changed her mind, and said, “Tell them we’re fine, and we’re tracking their signals.”

The pilot nodded, sent the message.

“Roger,” came the response. Then: “Say, shouldn’t we use a woman’s name instead of Roger?”

“How about Rogerette?” another pilot suggested.

Women’s laughter, followed by static. Then one of them said, “Hold on. The wind is increasing.”

Lori’s aircraft jerked and pitched as her pilot fought to maintain control.

And over the radio, the pilot in the command helicopter said, “It’s hard to stay in the air. We’d better touch down at the first landfall.”

Moments later, hearing a commotion inside the passenger compartment, Lori opened the door and peered out, warily. She saw the two councilwomen wrestling in the aisle, screaming at one another and pulling hair as the helicopter pitched around in the storm. Wendy Zepeda was much larger than Fujiko Harui, but the smaller woman was holding her own.

“Stop it!” Lori shouted, waving her gun at them. She had to hold onto the door jamb.

“Wendy has a knife in her purse!” Fujiko yelled, as the two councilwomen separated. “She reached for it when we were arguing, and I stopped her.”

“She’s telling the truth,” said a bespectacled woman with red, braided hair. Michelle Renee was the on-board translator of the Aramaic spoken by the she-apostles.

Lori scowled. “Where is the knife?”

“Under that seat,” Fujiko said, pointing.

Lori saw it.

“Use your foot and slide it out into the aisle,” Lori said to Fujiko. “Then kick it toward me.”

Fujiko did this, and Lori picked up the weapon, a hunting knife.

“Now tie Zepeda up and put her with the guards,” Lori ordered.

“With pleasure,” Fujiko said. “Then I must talk with you.”

Five minutes later, Fujiko sat with Lori in the passenger compartment, while the helicopter continued its bumpy ride across the sea. Still not trusting the councilwoman, even though she seemed to be cooperative, Lori kept her hand on her gun.

“There’s something you need to know,” the Japanese woman said. “Back at Monte Konos, one of the she-apostles said something important.” Nervously, Fujiko secured her shoulder harness as the aircraft was buffeted by winds, and then she continued. “Lydia said that Dixie Lou Jackson developed false gospels with a fake Martha of Galilee. Lydia says that the real Martha remains missing.”

“I thought there was something strange about that Martha,” Lori said, remembering that she’d felt an extrasensory sensation when touching the skin of the Apostle Veronica, but had felt nothing like that when making contact with the twelfth female apostle, the latest arrival. And beyond that, Lori had been troubled about Martha, sensing something about her that she could not quite identify.

“That’s not all, either,” Fujiko said. “According to Lydia, the real Martha of Galilee, wherever she is, has testimony about a She-Judas, a female apostle who conspired with Judas Iscariot to betray the Savior.”

Lori caught her breath. “Did Lydia say anything else?”

“Not that I know.” Fujiko looked back at the translator. “Michelle, anything more?”

The woman was wiping off her eyeglasses. “That’s the essence of it,” she said. “Lydia did not provide much in the way of details, just the broad statements you recounted.”

Deep in thought, Lori returned to the cockpit. Just as she was locking the door, the helicopter jerked, and a cabinet by her popped open, disgorging bundles of large denomination American bills. As she stuffed them back into the cabinet, she saw the pilot glance back.

“Guess they forgot to lock that,” the pilot said. “Dixie Lou likes to keep spending money all over the place.”

“How much is here?” Lori asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe five million, hidden all over this ’copter, and the same on the other aircraft. I heard a couple of councilwomen talking.”

Lori stared at the closed cabinet door, then looked away. It amazed her that the women were handling such large sums so loosely, but at the moment, money was the last thing on her mind.

An hour later, the pilot said, “We’re off the coast of Libya, and our friends are in holding patterns, circling the sand.”

“Go to complete radio and transponder silence,” Lori said.

She then ordered the pilot to veer wide around the other three aircraft, and to steer out over the desert.

* * *

An urgent voice brought Dixie Lou out of a light slumber. Straightening in her seat, the black woman didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, having lost her wristwatch somewhere in the wild confusion of the escape from Monte Konos. She had been dreaming about what she thought she saw during the BOI attack, when the she-apostle Candace vanished before bullets could hit her, and then reappeared after the deadly projectiles passed. Dixie Lou remembered exchanging gazes with Lori Vale after the incident. The teenager had seen the same thing. Curiously, no one else in Dixie Lou’s entourage had mentioned it to her. Had only the two of them seen it?

She had mixed feelings about the entire phenomenon of the reincarnated she-apostles, the gospels they brought with them, and the spectrum of paranormal events surrounding them. On one level, she was highly skeptical, not believing any of it was possible. But on another, the part of her that didn’t think—and instead sensed things—she knew otherwise. A very large unknown was opening around her; she found it fascinating and frightening at the same time.

“One ’copter dropped back,” the pilot said. “We’ve lost track of it.”

“Which one?” Dixie Lou demanded.

The answer told her it was the one with Lori Vale, two councilwomen, and four she-apostles aboard. Then she remembered that Vale had been the one to suggest that they split the she-apostles into several aircraft. Had it been the girl’s premonition of danger, or her trick? Uncertain of whether she should be angry or worried, Dixie Lou rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

She focused on a flight map on the gray screen of her laptop computer, and heard two matrons down the aisle expressing their concern over BOI satellite surveillance. While the escaping UWW aircraft had stealth capabilities, and they were in a storm, the women were worried about the Bureau having even more sophisticated technology that could still detect them. They mentioned the previous incident in which one of the UWW’s high-tech stealth planes had been shot down over the Mediterranean. Dixie Lou wondered about the security leaks that gave mere matrons such information, and felt irritated by this. But she had other priorities right now.

Overhead, the rotors of the helicopter pulsed and vibrated. Dixie Lou felt it in the seats and armrests, and in the floorboard. She blinked her eyes from a nearby flash of lightning, then saw another flash farther away over land, a jagged orange line scribed across the indigo night sky. Thunder boomed, and the helicopter jerked.

“Still no sign of the missing aircraft,” the pilot announced, her voice agitated as she watched her instruments. “Hopefully we can find it after the storm clears. But in this weather, especially with blowing sand that can cause havoc with the engines, I’d recommend that we set down,
immediately
.”

The Chairwoman had to make a quick decision. With Councilwoman Deborah Marvel looking on, she voice-activated her computer to bring up a detailed, secure schematic of the ground. They were over a desert region on the eastern coast of Libya, in North Africa. Once a pariah nation to much of the civilized world for sponsoring terrorism, they had changed regimes, but still had a despotic ruler and a violent secret police. Not the best place to land, but the weather was dicey.

According to the schematic, two villages were nearby. The escaping vessels had crossed the Mediterranean Sea, going in a southerly direction from Monte Konos. The big storm had worsened along the course they’d flown, giving them a rough, jolting ride and forcing them off course, away from the coast of Tunisia where they had intended to land. The weather had apparently, however, provided them with cloud cover, concealing their location from the ever-present, prying eyes of enemy patrols and satellites.

In these extended range aircraft, the Chairwoman had not expected to have to land here, but she gave the order for all of them to set down. They had ground camouflage gear on board for the aircraft, and would need to move quickly to set it up, thus making them difficult to detect on the ground through visual or other sensors.

* * *

As sand swirled around Lori’s helicopter, the craft flew over the lights of a small desert settlement. In poor visibility the pilot complained about cross winds and sand interfering with the operation of the engines, preventing her from getting full power out of them. They sputtered, and she shouted, “We need to land, quick!”

“Do it!” Lori yelled.

Still in her seat behind the pilot, she held onto a safety strap while the helicopter dove and spun, with powerful winds slamming into the hull and driving it one way and another. Metal plates around her stretched and creaked, and seemed ready to come apart. She didn’t like the feeling of helplessness as a passenger, would much rather be at the controls herself, making her own life and death decisions.

Suddenly a hard “kwummph!” sounded, and she felt the jolt of hard contact as they landed. The helicopter tilted hard to the left, then righted itself. The rotors coughed and came to a whining, grinding stop. Lori was shaken up, but not injured.

Back in the passenger cabin, people groaned, and the children cried. Lori’s first thoughts were for the welfare of the she-apostles. She rushed to check on them, and found they were upset but unharmed. Odd sensations flashed in the teenager’s brain as she looked at the children, and especially when she drew close to each one. Unable to identify her feelings, she restrained from touching the children, even though two of them reached their hands out to her.