by Tim LaHaye
Mac was near the entrance, one of the last few to have entered, and he realized that the six sentries he and his platoonmates had replaced had filled out a contingent of another fifty or so who lined the walls of the long room. Knowing what it had taken even to be allowed underground, he had to wonder against whom they were protecting Carpathia. Was he afraid of his own people?
Chang had walked Naomi back into the tech center. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I’ll never sleep tonight, and I’m wasted.”
“Surely you don’t think we’ll have to wait another day.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Today is the day, love. There’s no question.”
“I hope you’re right. I’m wired, but at some point I’m going to crash. Dr. Rosenzweig wants me to get him on international TV just before dark. You may have to prop me up.”
“You’ll rise to it. You always do.”
The wall at his back, made of large blocks of stone, cooled Mac through his uniform jacket. He desperately wanted to peek at his watch. He knew it was well after 1600 hours now, and he believed Jesus could come any second. This was the last place he wanted to be when that happened, but being here was part of the price he paid to find Buck. And there was the prospect of seeing the look on Carpathia’s face.
Mac tried to appear focused on his menial task—providing showy security where none was needed—but when he ran through his mind what he really wanted to be doing, he found it difficult to concentrate. Besides being in broad daylight in the Holy City when the Lord Christ appeared, Mac’s second choice was opening fire on Carpathia from his perfect vantage point. There would be none of that, he knew. It fit no prophetic scenario, but how fulfilling it would be!
Nothing would come of such foolhardiness, of course. The man had been murdered once, and was he now even a man? Drs. Ben-Judah and Rosenzweig had said he was now indwelt by Satan himself, a spirit-being using a human body—albeit a dead one.
In addition, Mac simply wanted to take a load off. The idea of sliding to his seat on the floor, of stretching out with his hands behind his head . . . well, that was something that would come once Jesus had taken His rightful place. Mac’s friends and comrades often talked about what kind of a world they would live in soon, but he kept to himself the idea that what he most longed for was simply rest.
He was certain he was not alone in this. Others had hinted at it. They had all been so busy, so stressed, so sleep deprived, and all that had only worsened as the days grew nearer to the Glorious Appearing. The idea of living in a world of peace and safety so appealed to Mac that he could barely imagine it. To be able to sleep without half an eye or ear figuratively open to danger . . . well, talk about heaven on earth.
And to be reunited with friends and loved ones. It was nearly too much to get his mind around. Best of all, of course, would be to see Jesus personally. Would he get to touch Him, to speak with Him? Mac felt so new as a believer, so limited in his knowledge of the things of God. He felt as if he had been attending seminary under the Tribulation Force’s spiritual leaders ever since Rayford had led him to faith. But there was so much he didn’t know.
All he knew was that Jesus loved him, had died for his sins, and was the reason he did not have to fear death and hell.
Chang had been called before Dr. Rosenzweig and the elders.
“Of course I can do it,” he said, “but the GC has been improving on wresting back control of the airwaves. The shorter the broadcast, the more likely I can keep it on without interruption.”
“I plan to be brief,” Chaim said.
“And if, ah, if—”
“You’re wondering what happens, hoping as I am, if Messiah returns first?”
“Or in the middle of it,” Chang said.
“Well, I should think that event would take precedence, wouldn’t you?”
Chang smiled as the elders laughed.
“Rabbi Rosenzweig is attempting,” Eleazar Tiberius said, “to persuade the rest of the Jewish population—those who have refused the mark of the beast and yet who have not acknowledged Jesus as Messiah—to do just that. He, and we agree, estimates that this may constitute a third of the remaining Jewish population. You understand that these are God’s chosen people, His children from the beginning of time. All of Scripture is His love letter to them, His plan for them.”
“Understand it?” Chang said. “I can’t say that I do. But I believe it.”
Chaim stood. “We must not delay. As I have said so many times, we know the day—today—but we do not know the hour. If we thought we did, we were wrong, were we not, Eleazar?”
The big man smiled. “I acknowledge it. But is it not also true that we know the sequence of events, so we have some idea what follows by what comes next?”
“That is what I will be talking about on the broadcast, my friends.”
Before the anesthetic took effect in his temple, Rayford fought to keep from recoiling from the thrust of the needle. He was amazed that a new twinge of pain could supersede all the others, and he was also struck by Leah’s gentleness as she cradled his head and assured him the sting would soon fade.
“You’re being much better to me than I deserve,” he said, knowing he sounded groggy and hoping she understood.
“Will you stop with that now, Captain? I have work to do, and while I know you’re trying to keep things light, I don’t need to be worrying if you’re serious.”
He reached for her hand. “Take a minute, Leah. I am serious. When you first came to us you know that we sniped at each other. I wasn’t used to your types of questions and probably was threatened by them. I never made that right, but as far as I could tell, you never made me pay.”
She pressed her lips together. “And I’m not about to now. Listen, Ray, you’re hurt more badly than you know. My job is to stabilize you, keep you from going into shock. The fact that you haven’t already is a miracle. But you apparently need to hear this, so let me tell you. My failure was that I never cleared the air between us either. Fact is, you eventually won me over. Everybody could see how much you cared for all of us, how tireless you were, how you put everybody else ahead of your own needs.”
Rayford was embarrassed. He hadn’t meant to elicit this, nice as it was. He squeezed her hand. “Okay, okay,” he said. “We’re friends again.”
“Think of the people who will be in heaven because of you,” she said.
“All right, enough,” he said. “I was just trying to thank you for not rubbing it in.”
“Now will you hush?”
“I will, ma’am.”
Mac noticed Viv Ivins look up with a start but then recover quickly. Carpathia had asked, “Photographers in place and ready, Ms. Ivins?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“I shall be on horseback,” he said. “All Global Community Unity Army personnel in this room, plus their superiors, shall also ride. Your mounts are being saddled as we speak.”
Mac panicked. How long had it been since he had ridden? Was it like riding a bicycle? Would it all come back to him? He had never been atop a steed the size of the Thoroughbreds in the stables. Any horse responded to a sure, confident hand. The beast had to know the rider was in charge. He might have to fake that bravado.
“Are you looking directly at me, soldier?” Carpathia demanded.
“No, sir,” the young Brit next to Mac said, eyes darting everywhere but at Nicolae.
“You most certainly were! You would have done better to admit it and beg forgiveness.”
“Affirmative, sir. I was, and I regret it and offer my sincerest abject apologies.”
“That is the second time you have referred to me as sir! Have you not been instructed neither to look directly at me nor to refer to me in any manner except as—”
“Yes, Excellency! My apologies, Supreme Pot—”
“And now you deign to interrupt me?”
The Brit’s voice was quavery and Mac believed his legs were about to fail
him.
“Sorry,” the young man whispered.
“I cannot hear you, soldier!”
“I’m sorry, Excellency. Forgive me.”
“Who is your superior officer?”
“Commander Tenzin, sir—Excellency!”
Carpathia cursed the man. “Commander Tenzin!”
The Indian commander rushed in, bowing. “At your service, Excellency!”
“Commander, have you taught your men who I am?”
“I have, Lord Potentate.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, my king.”
“And the privilege of serving god on earth?”
“Absolutely, divine one.”
“Even this man? Your name, son?”
“Ipswich, Excellency,” he said, tears flowing now.
Mac wanted to shoot Carpathia dead and feared he just might if the potentate approached.
“Commander Tenzin, what is that in your hand?”
“A rattan rod, Excellency. I so look forward to the privilege of riding with you today.”
The rod was an inch thick and appeared to Mac about four feet long.
“If I told you that Mr. Ipswich has flouted your training, could you think of an appropriate use for your rattan rod, Commander Tenzin?”
“I could, Your Grace.”
Ipswich was whimpering.
“And would you do me the honor of employing it in my presence, for my entertainment and for the education of all?”
Without another word, Tenzin stepped forward and drew back the rod. Before Ipswich could even recoil, his commander lashed his face with such speed and force that the stick caught him just to the left of his nose, splitting both lips, cracking some teeth, and slicing his left eyelid.
Ipswich screamed and grabbed his face with both hands, bending at the waist. Tenzin brought the rod down on the back of his neck, just above the hairline, opening a gash that spattered blood on Mac’s face and chest. It was all he could do to keep from attacking the Indian.
As Ipswich pitched forward, Tenzin cracked him twice across the backside in quick succession, the second blow tearing his uniform pants. That drove him to the floor, and as he tried to scramble away, his commander followed, raining blows on his back.
Carpathia howled in delight. “When he can crawl no more, Commander Tenzin, spare the rod and put him out of his misery!”
Another soldier was quickly enlisted to replace Ipswich in line. He entered pale and shaky and quickly came to rigid attention.
“Ooh,” Carpathia moaned, clasping his hands and gazing upward. “What a way to start the day! Leon . . .”
“Yes, holy one?”
“Ask Commander Tenzin to pay a visit to Chief Akbar.”
“Certainly, lord.”
“But instruct him to punish him only to the point of near death.”
CHAPTER 4
Enoch Dumas led more than a hundred of The Place followers around the back of the abandoned Illinois shopping center. Just before eight in the morning he had begun to teach, trying to inform his people and a few interested others what should precede the Glorious Appearing. None of the heavenly preliminaries had begun, and he sensed the disappointment, doubt, and fear on the part of his little band of believers. But mostly he found himself looking over his shoulder at the main road.
Though there were few vehicles of any type about, given the fuel shortage and the crippled economy, he knew the local GC had not shut down completely. They would have to investigate a meeting of this size. And the discovery of that many people, not one bearing the mark of loyalty to Carpathia, would result in a bloodbath.
There was no longer any earthly excuse not to bear the mark, and punishment was execution on the spot by any means. Even a civilian had the right to put to death an insurgent. All that was required for exoneration from the crime of homicide was either to drag the victim to a local GC headquarters and prove he or she bore no visible mark, or to flag down a patrolling Morale Monitor or GC Peacekeeper and get him to confirm the same.
In fact, there was a healthy bounty on such offenders, and citizens loyal to the potentate competed for cash prizes. Many made their living as vigilantes, and some were famous for their impressive number of kills.
Perhaps that was why Enoch found his usually bold congregation willing to follow him from the public light of day to the relative seclusion of the other side of the empty mall. “If we knew Jesus would get here before the GC, we could stay where we are. But I, for one, do not want to have survived seven years, only to die just before He comes back.”
The group crowded into an inner court, where it was obvious they all felt safer. But they had questions.
“When’s it gonna happen?”
“What’d we miss in the prophecies?”
“Did you only think the ‘weeks’ meant ‘years,’ or what?”
“Could we be off by a long ways?”
“I don’t think so,” Enoch said. “But I don’t know. I was never a scholar or a theologian. I’m sort of a blue-collar student of all this, just like you all are. But I have been reading and studying for years. While there is a lot of disagreement and debate, so far everything, every element of the prophecies, has been fulfilled literally, the way it was spelled out. I have to believe today is the day.”
“Ho’d on!” a woman shouted from the back. She was peering into a cell phone. “Look like somebody done took over the GC’s airwaves again.”
People crowded around.
“That Micah guy,” she said, “runnin’ things at Petra, is gonna speak about what comes next.”
Others pulled cell phones from their pockets and bags. “Should we listen, Brother Enoch? Will you be offended?”
“Hardly,” Enoch said, digging out his own. “What could be better than this? Dr. Rosenzweig is a scholar’s scholar. Let’s have church.”
The assembled put their tiny screens together on a concrete bench and turned them up so the combined volume reached everyone.
Mac saw the narrowing of Carpathia’s eyes and feared someone else was about to catch his rage. His attention had been drawn to the entrance of the room.
“Yes, what is it?” Carpathia said.
An underling said, “Begging the potentate’s pardon, but, Excellency, you asked to be informed.”
“What? What!”
“The zealots at Petra, the Judah-ites—”
“I know who is at Petra! What now?”
“They have pirated their way onto GC television again.”
Carpathia flushed and leaned over the table, resting on his palms. His jaw muscles tightened. “Turn it on,” he said through clenched teeth.
Leon nearly toppled trying to pull out a chair. He sat heavily and made a show of reaching far up under his robe and producing a remote-control laser, which he aimed at the wall behind Nicolae. A screen descended and the picture appeared: Chaim Rosenzweig seated on a simple set, deep in the confines of Petra. His open Bible was before him, and he bore a pastoral smile. A timer showed that he would begin in less than a minute.
Carpathia looked over his shoulder at the screen, then turned back and slammed both fists on the table. “First,” he shouted, “confirm that Ipswich is dead! Then tell Tenzin I have changed my mind about Akbar! I want him dead too! Finally, get hold of Security at Al Hillah. Inform them of the demise of their chief and tell them the following order comes directly from me.
“Whatever it takes, I want Security to take over our broadcast center. I want the management personnel shot to death through both eyes, one administrator at a time, from the top down through the chain of command, one every sixty seconds until someone has wrested back control of the airwaves. Understood?”
No one moved or spoke.
“Understood?!”
“Yes, Excellency!” Leon said, reaching for his phone.
“I’m on it,” Viv Ivins said, phone already to her ear.
Carpathia whirled and faced the screen. “Does no one understand?” he
railed. “Does no one recognize this man? This is the one who assassinated me! And while I raised myself from the dead and reign as your living lord, he remains a thorn in my side. Well, no longer! Not after today! A third of our entire army will overrun Petra tonight, and he shall be my personal target!”
With hydration and an IV started by Leah, Rayford at last began to feel he might make it. He still felt as if he had been run over by a tank, and there would be no walking or helping himself get off this godforsaken slope. But his mental faculties were returning, and he came to believe that Leah and Abdullah could somehow get him back to the compound.
“Two things, Miss Rose,” Abdullah said.
“Shoot.”
“According to Miss Palemoon, we have a problem with the conveyance.”
“What problem? There’s a stretcher in the Co-op. And a gurney too.”
“She checked with Mrs. Woo, and they both believe these will be impossible to transport to this location.”
Leah sat back, and Rayford saw her scan the hills above her leading to Petra. “She may have a point. What’s number two?”
“She says Micah is on GC television and that we might want to tune it in.”
“Do you have a TV, Mr. Smith?”
“Of course.”
“Well, the captain is as stable as I can make him, and we may be here a while. Let’s have a look.”
Abdullah pulled his cell phone from a leather bag attached to his bike.
“You want to see this, Captain?” Leah said.
Chang was glued to his monitor, but he asked Naomi to gather around him the rest of the techies on duty.
“Check this out, people,” he said. “Look at the counter in the upper left of the screen.”
Whistles and back slaps and exultations followed the speeding numbers, racing upward by the tens of thousands a second but having already surged far past the largest television audience in history. Nothing Carpathia ever broadcast had come close; in fact, the previous three records had all been held by Tsion Ben-Judah.
