“I know, Gerald. Two nukes went off.”
Joan shook her head. “No, Patricia just one went off. It struck Houston.”
Black leaned towards the screen. “I need for you to do something for me, Patricia.”
Patricia wiped the tears from her eyes. “I tried to stop the nukes, general. I tried.”
“I know you did, Patricia. Now listen to me real good.”
Patricia nodded. “I’m all ears.”
“I need for you to get into the Pentagon. Can you do that?”
“Not on my own, general.”
Black turned to Joan. “Can you get Jason out there to meet her, Joan?”
“David said he would launch all the nukes if we interfere, Gerald.”
“He’s going in as a 5th Special Forces soldier, not as a Guardian.”
Joan gazed back at the bodies laid out on the ground, so much pain and torment stretched out before her. “I can get him to her.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m going to send you Master Sergeant Jason Aries to help you. I need for you to activate Initiative 13.”
Patricia set her jaw. “That will knock out all our nukes, even our nuclear submarines nuclear arsenal.”
“I understand that, Patricia. It has to be done.”
“I can do it.”
“Where are you,” he said and listened as she gave him her location. “Ok. Expect the sergeant there in a few minutes. General Black out.”
Black turned off the video and faced Joan. “We do this now, Joan. And once the nukes are off line we take these fuckers out.”
Joan left the general and found Jason near a medical aid station. The wounded lay in heaps. The troops did their best to comfort the victims as they died from their wounds and the radiation.
She walked over to him and stared into his wide brown eyes. “Are you ok?”
Jason swallowed and shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is worse than Hell, Joan. Far worse than Hell. Here the innocent suffers.”
“I know, Jason. I need you to do something for me.”
Jason nodded. “Anything.”
“I need for you to go to the Pentagon on a mission.”
“Just me?”
“You and Patricia Jones,” she said.
Jason’s eyebrows furrowed. “The presidential advisor?”
“Yes, her.”
He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “When?”
“Now.”
“Okay, I’ll get my armor on.”
“No armor once the mission starts,” Joan said. “Just you, as a Special Forces soldier.”
Jason pursed his lips and stood. “Ok.”
Joan placed a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay with that?”
“Yes, I’ll mount up and head out right now, Joan.”
Joan nodded and stared into the man’s eyes. “Godspeed, Jason.”
23
General Isaiah Gold ordered his driver to stop. The five military trucks rolled to a halt forty miles from Egypt’s border. He got out into the thick dust cloud churned up from the truck’s big tires to survey the dry land around him.
Isaiah wanted to scream but kept his composure. A nuclear bomb went off in Houston, Texas an hour ago. The savage act spurred him to work harder. The voice in his head prodded him to move faster.
The general gazed at the desert floor once baked by the high sun. The dust cleared, revealing parched earth. No sunlight broke through the gray clouds to scorch the land with heat. A cold wind swept over the area, kicking up five-foot tall dust devils and sending shrubs rolling across the scene.
Isaiah missed the sun and the heat. He promised to never complain about the hot weather again. He walked out from the trucks, soldiers spread out through the area. “Look for the marker, Kaleb.”
“Yes, sir,” the Palestinian said and led four men further out into the cold sands.
Isaiah turned to his assistant, Sergeant Boka. “This place looks like the moon, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“I miss the sun,” he said and stared up at the sky thick with what appeared to be storm clouds. “How did he do that?” He shook his head as several teams marched into the desert.
Isaiah remembered how a voice started to talk to him after the catastrophic event in Los Angeles, California. He woke the first morning the event occurred and watched the violent scene on Al Jazeera. The voice drifted into his head in a low whisper. Isaiah turned in his sofa to look behind him and saw no one. The voice came to him in tiny increments, to condition him, it seemed, until he no longer thought madness assailed his mind.
After a few chaotic and bloody days, Satan’s bid for earth failed at the Battle of Denver. The voice stayed and insisted he would end it. How could he end it when the battle ended in Denver? But those thoughts seemed years ago. Satan continued his onslaught to make the world a dark place.
Isaiah inhaled the air. He missed the desert smell. Now the air seemed laced with dried blood, a rusty metallic tang he found distasteful. A thin ash coated his skin and everything else. He tasted burnt almonds and iron against his tongue. He continued to sweep the land before him with brown eyes.
The voice guided him here. He ceased his efforts to rationalize with the voice. He went out into the desert while the sun still beat its rays upon it and prayed for hours alone. In the desert the voice came to him stronger and continued to repeat the same words. He told the voice no one would believe an invisible person prodded him to do a mission such as this.
The words came steady, filled with confidence. You will end it, it said over and over again like a steady drum beat until the words broke through his subconscious and buried deep within his soul. Isaiah realized he spoke the words aloud in the desert. Then, all his second-guessing ceased and he believed with faith he would end Satan’s incursion. He would play a part. What part, he did not yet know.
Isaiah followed the voice into the land he stood upon and the empty space he faced covered in men searching for a marker. A marker buried underneath the desert floor. An old marker.
Isaiah walked forward. Sergeant Boka followed him. He shifted his eyes from one point on the desert floor to another like a soldier on the lookout for land mines. At each footfall he gave a delicate press on the sand beneath him and then took another step just the same as if he feared a bomb would explode underneath his feet.
Ancient battles occurred here. Excavators never ventured out this far due to the constant modern wars and munitions dropped during those hostile acts. A few took the chance and dug into the ground and their lives ended in bomb blasts. One too many deaths and the artifact hunters abandoned the area.
Isaiah continued to venture out, the teams took the same tentative steps he did. He walked out half a mile when his foot landed on a hard surface. “Boka, wait,” he said.
Sergeant Boka stopped. “What is it, sir?”
The general knelt and brushed the sand from around his boot and dug up a solid square object. “Here, here it is.”
Boka hunkered down next to her general. “Isn’t that too close to the surface, general?”
Isaiah wanted to agree with his sergeant, yet the voice told him what he searched for sat underneath the stone he just dug up. “It’s here, Boka,” he said. “I feel it. We dig here.”
Sergeant Boka nodded. “Bring the teams over,” she ordered.
The teams rushed back to the trucks and returned with shovels and pick axes and gathered around General Isaiah Gold.
With his fingers, Isaiah dug along the stone square edges and pried the marker up from the sand. He stared at the stone, turning it over in his hands. He dropped the stone at his feet, stood and pulled off his uniform shirt and held out his hand. A soldier placed a pickax in his grasp. “We dig here, we dig until I say stop.”
He lifted the pickax with both hands and drove down into the sand at his feet. The teams joined in. Everyone began digging except for Sergeant Boka. She took up a watch post on a hill and waited to see what th
ey would unearth.
24
Armand smiled once the Mother Ship taxied onto the Ronald Reagan International Airport landing strip. The huge plane rolled towards the terminal and stopped. Before the plane, Black Army troops in the hundreds stood in formation with David Brown at its head.
The Satanist left the cockpit and walked the cargo plane’s entire length. He never tried to smile, but at the moment he found it difficult to subdue his emotions. By the time he reached the plane’s rear the massive cargo door sat open and his personal guard dressed in black suits with the Devicorp symbol stitched on their lapels awaited him.
He gave a curt nod to his men and walked down the ramp with six big guards out before him. His three disciples, dressed in coarse black robes with the red pentagram imprinted on the clothing fronts, walked behind him. Their heads lowered in supplication to Satan.
Armand’s dour face broke into a satisfied grin. The Black Army formation snapped to attention. A flag bearer hoisted up a black flag decorated with the pentagram and another bearer lifted up the Devicorp flag. He enjoyed the visuals and stopped before David Brown.
President David Brown saluted Armand with his left hand, then knelt and kissed the triple-six signet ring on Armand’s left middle finger. He rose to his feet.
“Armand, Washington, D.C. and the United States welcomes you.”
“Thank you, President David Brown,” he said. “Shall we go to the White House?”
“Yes, sir.” David turned and nodded. A black Mercedes limo with triple-six plates painted in red, pulled up before the formation. The driver hustled out and opened the rear door, the two men slipped inside the plush leather interior.
Armand settled in the back seat. David poured them both fingers of Glenlivet. He passed a glass to Armand who lifted the drink.
“Cheers to a successful war, David.”
“Cheers,” David said and downed his drink.
“Thank you for the nuclear bomb, David.”
“You’re welcome, Armand. It stopped them. Joan came to threaten me, but I told her any more interference with our objectives and the world would suffer.”
Armand nodded and stared out the window. The broken city shrouded in gray accepted Satan’s authority. Several private homes flew the pentagram and a few even flew the Devicorp flag. The sight brought a tingle down his spine. Within minutes the limo turned into the White House driveway and stopped.
Armand exited the limo and followed David into the West Wing. Guards with triple-sixes burned into their foreheads walked the grounds and lined the hall throughout the White House. Everyone wore black with either the pentagram or Devicorp emblem on their clothes.
The men entered a massive office in the West Wing where several people dressed in black robes gathered. They knelt to the floor once Armand entered the room.
David turned to Armand and lifted a hand. “They are here for you, Armand,” he said. “I also have a surprise.” He clapped his hands twice. A man, woman, and a child stepped forward. The adults knelt before Armand and bowed.
Armand cleared his throat. “Rise, please.”
The man stood and helped his wife to her feet. “Great One, we offer ourselves to Satan as a sacrifice.”
“Of course. But not the little one,” Armand said. He lifted a hand and urged the boy forward. “The little ones are our new soldiers.” He placed his fingers on the boy’s shoulders and turned him to face the crowd. “Suffer the little ones. We do not kill children.” He ran his fingers through the boy’s black hair. “We nurture them in hate,” he said.
David clapped his hands again and the couple fell to their knees. “For Satan and for you, Armand.”
Armand chest hitched. He never cried in his life, even when the Black Priest Paul died so many years ago. A single tear slid down his face. “Thank you, David. I am honored.”
David bowed his head. Two guards armed with wicked knives approached the victims.
The man on his knees looked up. “Please, master. You do the honors.”
Armand allowed himself a smile. His dreams unfolded before his eyes. “Thank you,” he said and stepped forward. A guard handed him a sacrificial knife. The Satanist turned it over in his soft hands, he gazed at the dragon etched into the honed steel and the three sixes engraved in the knife’s black handle.
Armand placed a hand on the man’s head and brushed his fingers through his hair. “You are worthy to be a sacrifice. May Satan bestow his hate upon you for all eternity.” He drove the blade into the man’s jugular vein. Blood spurted from the wound. The man did not flinch or utter a single cry. He slumped to the floor and so did his wife after Armand slid the blade into her jugular vein and opened it.
He lifted the bloodied knife and faced the crowd who cheered. “This is our time. We will claim victory here today and forever more. May your blades be stained with the blood of sacrifices like these brave two, and the blood of our enemies.”
Armand lowered the knife. He wanted to control the entire planet. David Brown could keep the United States. He wanted the presidents and kings throughout the world to bow down to him. And they would come to the United States, the White House, and swear their allegiance to Satan.
“David Brown,” he said.
David snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”
“Find the Guardians and destroy them.” He turned to the crowd. “And add anyone who still prays to God. I want to rule uninterrupted.”
25
Oni returned to the siege of Heaven after the guards chained Michael to the petrified tree. While he tended to Michael, the demons chopped down the once beautiful forest outside Heaven’s walls and built siege engines and catapults.
His eyes held the pristine ramparts around the kingdom, one hundred stories high, impregnable. He wanted to breach those brilliant white walls and find his wife and son. Lucifer’s stall angered him and he did not find any logic behind the move. With Michael’s capture and Joan dead he considered Lucifer’s wait a mysterious act.
The black archangel rode his warhorse through the hellish camp. Demons from small to large did what they could to turn the land outside the gates into what they considered comfortable in Hell. The sight made Oni’s stomach lurch, and he realized he maintained his aesthetic outlook on the world. Even in Hell he kept his palatial room clean and neat. The monsters around him gave disgust a new definition.
Oni rode up to his tent and dismounted. Satan’s great tent, made from dried human skins dyed black, sat in the center like some herpes induced sore. Pennants snapped in the cool wind. The demons worked in shifts to build the siege towers and catapults. Heaven’s fresh air tired them out and gave their skin boils and rashes, another reason why the wait crippled them even more.
The black archangel entered his tent where sat a low chair and desk covered in scrolls. He unrolled a scroll and stared at the diagram. He knew Heaven’s Seven Gates, and so did Lucifer. Oni wanted his wife and son and refused to allow some wall to hinder him. He discovered a hole within the wall large enough to sneak into and rescue his family.
His eyes poured over the maps, tracing a finger over the old path he could take to enter the kingdom. He would bring two Hell guards with him as security and diversion. Oni knew once a guardian angel discovered the hole, they would patch the small opening.
Oni rolled up the diagram and slid it into his black armor. He stepped out into the muck underneath his booted feet and signaled the two Hell guards outside his door. The three mounted their warhorses and rode out from the camp towards Heaven’s eastern wall where gates two and three sat.
The Hell Force camp extended for miles. Not one green patch existed. Millions upon millions pitched tents and worked the former trees into weapons for war. Some demons worked naked while others worked in their black Roman armor.
He glared at the bright blue skies above, a great contrast against the blackness spread out beneath it and the bright white walls around the kingdom. Lucifer spilled earth into darkness, yet his infamous h
ate could not touch God’s eternal love. He rode along the gorgeous wall lined with spear bearing angels. They watched him from the walls with eyes shrouded in shadow from their silver helmets.
Oni gazed up at the high wall, thick with both angels and mortar. He wondered how Satan planned to breach them. He turned away from the wall and urged his warhorse up a gradual hill, his guards following close behind. The Hell Force stretched out to the horizon like a great infestation. The clamorous noise worked into his ears, all curses and grating metal.
He rode down into a valley thick with Satan’s troops. The scene resembled feverish worms over a corpse. The sight sickened him, but not enough to turn his back on Lucifer. The dark one gave him the opportunity to redeem his family.
Oni rode a good distance until he came to a blue pool. He dismounted his warhorse and gazed at the demons around him who did not near the water for fear it would burn their rotted skin like acid. The waters sparkled from the light above.
Oni skirted the blue pool, following a stream branching off from the cool water. He minded the guardian angels high above on the wall. The Oak and ash trees clumped together thick enough to block their view into the wooded tangle below. The stream trailed near the great wall, not far from Heaven’s second gate.
Oni entered the woods with his two Hell guards who avoided the water.
“You two stay aware,” he said while working his way deeper into the woods until the wall sat a few feet before him. Oni noticed each stone fitted together in perfection. He placed his hand against a brick to admire the work and wondered if God built the wall with his own hands.
“What do we do now, sir?”
“You wait,” he said and edged closer to the wall. Scant light filtered through the green canopy above. He closed his eyes. “Kimmie,” he said with his hand against the cool wall. “Where are you?”
He waited, breathing in the sweet air, a slow burn filled his lungs and he knew Hell owned his soul with its hate. He no longer desired Heaven’s fresh air. “Kimmie,” he said low in his voice and pressed his head against the wall. “Where are you?”
Angels of War Battle of Archangels (Book 3) (Angels of War Trilogy) Page 9
