by Tim LaHaye
Kivisto did. “Now for the good news, sir. One of the Cell-Sol guys got the fax in his truck. He wasn’t happy about me broadcasting it everywhere. He said I shouldn’t be tying up the whole GC network for a missing person’s bulletin. Anyway, he said they saw a young woman who might fit that description being lifted into one of those Ambu-Vans late yesterday.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure exactly where, but for sure it was between that block you pointed out to me and where I am now.”
“That’s a pretty big area, Ernie. Can we narrow that at all?”
“Sorry, I wish I could.”
“Can I talk to this guy?”
“I doubt it. He said something about having been awake since the earthquake. I think he’s bedding down in one of the shelters.”
“I didn’t see any Ambu-Vans at your shelter.”
“We’re taking in only the ambulatory.”
“This woman wasn’t?”
“Apparently not. If she had serious ailments, she would have been taken to, just a minute here . . . Kenosha. A couple of hotels right next to each other just inside the city limits have been turned into hospitals.”
Ernie gave Buck the number for the medical center in Kenosha. Buck thanked him and asked, “In case I have trouble getting through, what are the odds I can drive to Kenosha?”
“Got a four-wheel drive?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna need it. I-94 lost every overpass between here and Madison. There’s a couple places you can get on, but then before you get to the next overpass you have to go through single-lane roads, little towns, or just open fields and hope for the best. Thousands are trying it. It’s a mess.”
“I don’t have a helicopter, so I have no choice.”
“Call first. No sense trying a trip like that for nothing.”
Buck couldn’t help feeling as if Chloe were within reach. It bothered him that she might be hurt, but at least she was alive. What would she think about Amanda?
Buck scrolled back down through Bruce’s journal entry and found the e-mail Bruce had received. The message, from the “interested friend” read: “Suspect the root beer lady. Investigate her maiden name and beware the eyes and ears of New Babylon. Special forces are only as strong as their weakest links. Insurrection begins in the home. Battles are lost in the field, but wars are lost from within.”
Buck turned to face Tsion. “What did you deduce from that?”
“Someone was warning Bruce about somebody within the Tribulation Force. We have only two women. The one with a maiden name Bruce might not know would have been Amanda. I still do not know why he or she referred to her as the root beer lady.”
“Her initials.”
“A. W.,” Tsion said, as if to himself as he righted Buck’s chair. “I do not follow.”
“A&W is an old brand of root beer in this country,” Buck said. “How is she supposed to be the ears and eyes of, what, Carpathia? Is that what we’re supposed to get out of New Babylon?”
“It is all in the maiden name,” Tsion said. “I was going to look it up, but you will see Bruce has already done the work. Amanda’s maiden name was Recus, which meant nothing to Bruce and stalled him for a while.”
“It means nothing to me either,” Buck said.
“Bruce dug deeper. Apparently, Amanda’s mother’s maiden name, before she married Recus, was Fortunato.”
Buck blanched and dropped into the chair again.
“Bruce must have had the same reaction,” Tsion said. “He writes in there, ‘Please God, don’t let it be true.’ What is the significance of that name?”
Buck sighed. “Nicolae Carpathia’s right-hand man, a total sycophant, is named Leonardo Fortunato.”
Buck turned back to Tsion’s computer. “Close files. Re-encrypt. Open search engine. Find Chicago Tribune. Open name search. Ken or Kenneth Ritz, Illinois, U.S.A.”
“Our pilot!” Tsion said. “You are going to get me home after all!”
“I only want to see if the guy’s still alive, just in case.”
Ritz was listed “among patients in stable condition, Arthur Young Memorial Hospital, Palatine, Illinois.”
“How come all the good news is about someone else?”
Buck dialed the number Ernie had given him for Kenosha. It was busy. Again and again for fifteen minutes. “We can keep trying while we’re on the road.”
“The road?” Tsion said.
“In a manner of speaking,” Buck said. He looked at his watch. It was after seven in the evening, Tuesday.
Two hours later, he and Tsion were still in Illinois. The Rover bounced slowly along with hundreds of other cars snaking their way north. Just as many were coming the other way, fifty to a hundred feet from where I-94 once propelled cars at eighty-plus miles an hour in both directions.
While Buck looked for alternate routes or some way to pass poky vehicles, Tsion manned the phone. They powered it from the cigarette lighter to save the battery, and every minute or so Tsion hit the redial button. Either the phone in Kenosha was hopelessly overloaded or it was not working.
For the second day in a row, his first officer, Mac McCullum, awakened Rayford. A tick past 6:30 Wednesday morning in New Babylon, Rayford heard soft but insistent knocking. He sat up, tangled in sheet and blankets. “Gimme a minute,” he slurred, realizing this might be news of his call from Buck. He opened the door, saw it was Mac, and collapsed back into bed. “I’m not ready to wake up yet. What’s up?”
Mac flipped the light on, making Rayford hide his face in the pillow. “I did it, Cap. I did it!”
“Did what?” Rayford said, his voice muffled.
“I prayed. I did it.”
Rayford turned over, covering his left eye and peeking at Mac through a slit in his right. “Really?”
“I’m a believer, man. Can you believe it?”
Keeping his eyes shielded, Rayford reached with his free hand to shake Mac’s. Mac sat on the edge of Rayford’s bed. “Man, this feels great!” he said. “Just a while ago I woke up and decided to quit thinking about it and do it.”
Rayford sat up with his back to Mac and rubbed his eyes. He ran his hands through his hair and felt his bangs brush his eyebrows. Few people ever saw him that way.
What was he to make of this? He hadn’t even debriefed Mac on his meeting with Carpathia from the night before. How he wished it were true. What if it was all a big act, a plot to reel him in and incapacitate him? Surely that had to be Carpathia’s long-range plan—to take at least one member of the opposition out of action.
All he could do until he knew for sure was to take this at face value. If Mac could fake a conversion and the emotion that went along with it, Rayford could fake being thrilled. His eyes finally adjusted to the light, and he turned to face Mac. The usually dapper first officer was wearing his uniform as usual. Rayford had never seen him casual. But what was that? “Did you shower this morning, Mac?”
“Always. What do you mean?”
“You’ve got a smudge on your forehead.”
Mac swiped with his fingers just below the hairline.
“Still there,” Rayford said. “Looks like what Catholics used to get on Ash Wednesday.”
Mac stood and moved to the mirror attached to Rayford’s wall. He leaned close, turning this way and that. “What the heck are you talking about, Ray? I don’t see a thing.”
“Maybe it was a shadow,” Rayford said.
“I’ve got freckles, you know.”
When Mac turned around, Rayford saw it again, plain as day. He felt foolish, making such a big deal of it, but he knew Mac was fastidious about his appearance. “You don’t see that?” Rayford said, standing, grabbing Mac by the shoulders, and turning him back to face the mirror.
Mac looked again and shook his head.
Rayford pushed him closer and leaned in so their faces were side by side. “Right there!” he said, pointing at the mirror. Mac still had a blank stare. Rayford turned
Mac’s face toward him, put a finger directly on his forehead, and turned him back toward the mirror. “Right there. That charcoal-looking smudge about the size of a thumbprint.”
Mac’s shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “Either you’re seeing things, or I’m blind,” he said.
“Wait just a doggone minute,” Rayford said slowly. Chills ran up his spine. “Let me look at that again.”
Mac looked uncomfortable with Rayford staring at him, their noses inches apart. “What are you looking for?”
“Shh!”
Rayford held Mac by the shoulders. “Mac?” he said solemnly. “You know those 3-D images that look like a complicated pattern until you stare at it—”
“Yeah, and you can make out some sort of a picture.”
“Yes! There it is! I can see it!”
“What?!”
“It’s a cross! Oh, my word! It’s a cross, Mac!”
Mac wrenched away and looked in the mirror again. He leaned to within inches of the glass and held his hair back from his forehead. “Why can’t I see it?”
Rayford leaned into the mirror and held his own hair away from his forehead. “Wait! Do I have one too? Nope, I don’t see one.”
Mac paled. “You do!” he said. “Let me look at that.”
Rayford could barely breathe as Mac stared. “Unbelievable!” Mac said. “It is a cross. I can see yours and you can see mine, but we can’t see our own.”
Buck’s neck and shoulders were stiff and sore. “I don’t suppose you’ve driven a vehicle like this one, Tsion,” he said.
“No, brother, but I am willing.”
“No, I’m all right.” He glanced at his watch. “Less than a half hour before I’m supposed to call Rayford.”
The caravan to nowhere finally crossed into Wisconsin, and the traffic weaved west of the expressway. Thousands began to blaze new trails. Thirty to thirty-five miles an hour was top speed, but there were always nuts in all-terrain vehicles who took advantage of the fact that there were no rules anymore. When Buck got inside the city limits of Kenosha, he asked a member of the Global Community Peacekeeping Force for directions.
“You’re gonna go east about five miles,” the young woman said. “And it’s not gonna look like a hospital. It’s two—”
“Hotels, yeah, I heard.”
Traffic into Kenosha was lighter than that heading north, but that soon changed too. Buck could not get within a mile of the hospital. GC forces detoured vehicles until it became obvious that anyone getting to those hotels had to do it on foot. Buck parked the Range Rover, and they set off toward the east.
By the time their destination came into view, it was time to call Rayford.
“Mac,” Rayford said, fighting tears, “I can hardly believe this. I prayed for a sign, and God answered. I needed a sign. How can I know who to trust these days?”
“I wondered,” Mac said. “I was hungry for God and knew you had what I needed, but I was afraid you would be suspicious.”
“I was, but I had already said way too much if you were working against me for Carpathia.”
Mac was gazing into the mirror and Rayford was dressing when he heard a brief knock and the door flew open. A young assistant from the communications center said, “Excuse me, sirs, but whichever one of you is Captain Steele has a phone call.”
“Be right there,” Rayford said. “By the way, have I got a smudge on my forehead right here?”
The young man looked. “No sir. Don’t think so.”
Rayford caught Mac’s eye. Then he tucked in his undershirt and slid off down the hall in his stocking feet. Somebody like Fortunato—or worse, Carpathia—could court-martial him for appearing in front of subordinates half dressed. He knew he couldn’t be in the employ of the Antichrist much longer anyway.
Buck stood silently in the Wisconsin wasteland with the phone pressed to his ear. When Rayford finally came on, he said quickly, “Buck, just answer yes or no. Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“This is not a secure phone, so tell me how everyone is without using names, please.”
“I’m fine,” Buck said. “Mentor is safe and OK. She escaped, we believe. Close to reconnecting now.”
“Others?”
“Secretary is gone. Computer techie and wife are gone.”
“That hurts.”
“I know. You?”
“They tell me Amanda went down with a Pan-Con flight into the Tigris,” Rayford said.
“She’s listed on the manifest, if you can believe what’s on the Internet, but you’re not buying it?”
“Not until I see her with my own eyes.”
“I understand. Boy, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Yours too. Your own family?”
“Unaccounted for, but that’s true of most everyone.”
“How are the buildings?”
“Both gone.”
“You have accommodations?” Rayford asked.
“I’m fine. Keeping a low profile.”
They agreed to e-mail each other and disconnected. Buck turned to Tsion. “She couldn’t be a double-crosser. He’s too perceptive, too aware.”
“He could have been blinded by love,” Tsion said. Buck looked sharply at him. “Cameron, I no more want to believe this than you do. But it appears Bruce strongly suspected.”
Buck shook his head. “You’d better stay out here in the shadows, Tsion.”
“Why? I’m the least of anyone’s worries here, now.”
“Maybe, but GC communications makes this a small world. They know I’m bound to show up sooner or later if Chloe is here. If they’re still looking for you and Verna Zee broke our agreement and ratted on me to Carpathia, they might expect to find you with me.”
“You have a creative mind, Buck. Paranoid too.”
“Maybe. But let’s not take chances. If I’m being followed when I come out, hopefully with Chloe, keep your distance. I’ll pick you up about two hundred yards west of where I’m parked.”
Buck walked into chaos. Not only was the place a madhouse of equipment and patients and officials competing to prove who had authority, but there was also a lot of yelling. Things had to happen fast, and no one had time for cordiality.
It took Buck a long time to get the attention of a woman at the front desk. She appeared to be doing the work of reception and admittance and also a bit of triage. After getting out of the way of two stretchers, each bearing a bloody body Buck bet was dead, he pushed up to the counter. “Excuse me, ma’am, I’m looking for this woman.” He held up a copy of the fax Ernie had broadcast.
“If she looks like that, she wouldn’t be here,” the woman barked. “Does she have a name?”
“The name’s on the picture,” Buck said. “You need me to read it to you?”
“What I don’t need is your sarcasm, pal. As a matter of fact, I do need you to read it to me.”
Buck did.
“I don’t recognize the name, but I’ve processed hundreds today.”
“How many without names?”
“About a quarter. We found most of these people in or under their homes, so we cross-checked addresses. Anybody away from home mostly carried ID.”
“Let’s say she was away from home but had no ID, and she’s not in a position to tell you who she is?”
“Then your guess is as good as mine. We don’t have a special ward for unidentifieds.”
“Mind if I look around?”
“What are you gonna do, check every patient?”
“If I have to.”
“Not unless you’re a GC employee and—”
“I am,” Buck said, flashing his ID.
“—make sure you stay out of the way.”
Buck traipsed through the first hotel, pausing at any bed that had a patient with no name card. He ignored several huge bodies and didn’t waste time on people with gray or white hair. If anyone looked small or thin or feminine enough to be Chloe, he took a good look.
He
was on his way to the second hotel when a tall black man backed out of a room, locking the door. Buck nodded and kept moving, but the man apparently noticed his fax. “Looking for someone?”
“My wife.” Buck held up the page.
“Haven’t seen her, but you might want to check in here.”
“More patients?”
“This is our morgue, sir. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I’ve got the key.”
Buck pursed his lips. “Guess I’d better.”
Buck stepped behind the man as he unlocked the door. When he pushed, however, the door stuck a bit and Buck bumped into him. Buck apologized, and the man turned and said, “No prob—”
He stopped and stared at Buck’s face. “Are you all right, sir? I’m a doctor.”
“Oh, the cheek’s all right. I just fell. It looks OK, doesn’t it?”
The doctor cocked his head to look more closely. “Oh, that looks superficial. I thought I noticed a bruise on your forehead, just under the hairline.”
“Nope. Didn’t get banged there, far as I know.”
“Bumps there can cause subcutaneous bleeding. It’s not dangerous, but you could look like a raccoon in a day or two. Mind if I take a peek?”
Buck shrugged. “I’m in kind of a hurry. But go ahead.”
The doctor grabbed a fresh pair of rubber gloves from a box in his pocket and pulled them on.
“Oh, please don’t make a big production of it,” Buck said. “I don’t have any diseases or anything.”
“That may be,” the doctor said, pushing Buck’s hair out of the way. “I can’t claim the same for all the bodies I deal with.” They were in a huge room, nearly every foot of the floor covered with sheeted corpses.
“You do have a mark there,” the doctor said. He pushed on it and around it. “No pain?”
“No.”
“You know,” Buck said, “you’ve got something on your forehead too. Looks like a smudge.”
The doctor swiped his forehead with his sleeve. “May have picked up some newsprint.”
The doctor showed Buck how to pull back the shroud at the head of each body. He would have a clear view of the face and could simply let the material drop again. “Ignore this row. It’s all men.”
