by Ted Dekker
Kelly was still speechless. Her eyes lifted to the sky above him, but Johnny did not notice.
“I feel . . . myself.” Johnny staggered to his feet. “Real again.” A grin tugged at his mouth.
“Johnny,” Samuel said. Without raising his arm, he lifted one finger toward the sky. “What’s that?”
Johnny looked up. Saw the floating boulders, a particularly large one directly above him. He shrieked and dove to safety, tumbling in the sand.
The rocks still did not fall.
“Whoa! What?” Johnny slowly stood and craned his neck to take in the belt of rocks above him. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Samuel said. “You’re making them float.”
“Me? Are you sure?”
“It’s not me.”
“Englishman?” Kelly asked.
Samuel scanned the cliffs. He didn’t think it was Englishman.
They watched the rocks, soaking in the abnormality of it all.
One of the rocks above Johnny jerked. He looked at Samuel, eyes wide.
“Try again.”
Johnny looked up at the same rock. It hung still for a moment. Without warning it flew into the canyon with blinding speed, like a UFO accelerating from zero to sixty in a single, undefined moment. The rock streaked for the end wall, a projectile fired from Johnny’s mind. It slammed into the cliff and shattered, bringing a shower of smaller boulders tumbling down.
Johnny and Samuel spoke at the same time. “Wow!”
“Wow,” Kelly said.
Johnny raised both hands and moved them toward the canyon mouth. The flotilla moved with his suggestion.
“Wow.”
He moved his arms back the other way, like a conductor instructing a symphony.
The boulders stopped on a dime and reversed their direction, flying toward the end of the canyon now.
Johnny whooped with enthusiasm and swept his arms toward the sky beyond the canyon, above Paradise, as if he were sending a fighter jet off an aircraft carrier. Go get ’em, boys!
The boulders streamed east, increased their speed, and then disappeared into the horizon.
Johnny stared after them, stunned. “When will they stop?”
It was Kelly who asked the question on all of their minds. “What if they fall? On Paradise?”
Johnny frantically flung his arms to the sky and motioned the rocks back, like the ground crew might wave a jetliner into the gate, only with twice the animation.
The tiny specks reappeared in the dawn sky. “They’re coming back,” Johnny cried, motioning with even more vigor.
The small spots became larger spots, and from Samuel’s angle the boulders looked as if they were headed directly for Johnny at an unstoppable speed. He instinctively crouched.
Johnny stopped motioning and threw himself to the ground as the flood of rocks zoomed silently into the canyon. A thousand boulders blasted twenty yards over their heads. The flyby took less than a second, followed by a huge wake of air that nearly blew Samuel over.
The squadron of rocks slammed into the far wall with enough force to shake the ground. Half the cliff caved with a thunderous roar. Dust boiled to the sky.
They stared at the destruction in awe. This time all three spoke at once.
“Wow!”
This is it, then, Samuel thought. This is why I chose Johnny and why Johnny agreed to enter the X Group. And yet he knew that it would take more than this to overpower Englishman.
“That’s it,” Samuel said. “Time to go.”
“Did I really do that?” Johnny asked, staring at the rising dust. “Go where?”
“The president is at his ranch in Arizona, an hour by helicopter.” “You have a helicopter?”
“How do you think I got here? Top of the cliffs. The crew are running around like rats at the moment, trying to figure out what caused the ground to shake, but their orders are explicit.”
“Don’t . . . Don’t you think I should practice or something?”
“Englishman has a full day on us,” Kelly said. “The president’s probably already dead.”
“He’s with my father, safe for the moment. But we have to leave now,” Samuel said. “You can practice on the way. Find some barns to float or something. You have the skills and the training to use weapons—just think of this as a new weapon.”
“You can’t be serious!” Kelly said. “You can’t just throw him to the wolves without proper planning!”
“We’ll plan on the way.”
Samuel turned and strode toward the cabin with resolution.
“Hold on.”
He glanced back, saw that Johnny wasn’t following him, and turned around. “We’re not going to make it if we don’t go now, Johnny.”
“You said I couldn’t defeat Englishman with a few boulders anyway. Do I have any other powers?”
The question caught Samuel off guard, but he didn’t have time to explain his suspicions yet again. There was always a price. Even Samson’s power had come with a condition.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out as you go.”
Johnny measured him for a long moment, then turned his head to face a two-story boulder that rested at the base of the cliff.
“Do you believe, Samuel?”
Before Samuel could respond, the boulder rose soundlessly from the ground. It slowly floated toward Samuel and came to a rest two feet over his head.
Do you believe, Samuel? Truth be told, he was unnerved. Perhaps terrified. It wasn’t every day his faith was tested by a boulder weighing several hundred thousand tons.
He reached up and felt the reddish sandstone surface with both hands. A vibration hummed through his palms, down his arms, and along his spine and shot to his heels. There was enough power here to level a city. Amazing.
“I do,” he finally said.
Johnny smiled and winked. “Just checking to make sure I still have the power,” he said. “I think Samson would be a bit jealous.”
The boulder floated to the other side of the canyon and settled quietly on the ground.
“Let’s rock,” Johnny said, striding forward. “No pun intended.”
It was then that Samuel first noticed his eyes. They seemed gray instead of brown. Or was it the light? If Samuel hadn’t been expecting some kind of change, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Apparently Kelly hadn’t. She would soon enough.
Samuel turned and led them toward the cabin. “The truth will set you free, Johnny,” he said, staring forward. “Show them the truth.”
40
The guards waited for him at the gate. He could see their tiny figures moving in the dawn light. Naturally, they’d been alerted to the sedan that had exited the freeway and made its way toward them. They would need to turn the lost tourist around.
Englishman could execute this bit of fun in an unlimited number of ways. He’d considered the possibilities on the long night-drive from Phoenix. But almost all of those ways failed to interest him.
The only way to execute this mission without boring himself to tears was to go right up their throat with a few fireworks to announce his arrival.
He would have to save Dale Crompton’s body from all of the heavy metal they would hurl at him. He couldn’t dodge bullets, but he had other skills.
“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” he whispered. And then aloud but with a low voice, “Hallelujah, amen, you are dismissed. Every last hell-bound one of you.”
Englishman stopped the car a hundred yards from the gate. With the high walls running both ways to the cliffs on each side, he would have to go straight through the entrance. Four armed men now stood before the gate, patiently waiting their turn to die. He would reward their patience by letting them go first.
He pried his eyes skyward, wondering if the drones were armed. A projectile in the back from a low-flying Predator would be most unwelcome. He’d have to keep moving and watch the skies. This could be slightly more challenging than he’d anticipated.
Now that was interesting.
One of the guards was waving at him. Stupid fool was motioning him forward. Do you want me to come? Is that what you want, Jack Black?
A Bradley fighting vehicle was parked on the right, and a tank was parked on the left. He saw now that their guns were manned and aimed at him. According to the docket that he’d breezed through on the flight from New York, the real threat would come from the second line of defense a mile up the road where the troops were dug in.
Englishman gunned the motor, but he kept it in neutral. Sweat tickled both temples. His heart was pounding like tumbling boulders. Now that he was here, staring down so many guns, he wondered if he’d been a little overzealous in choosing this particular approach.
A tremor ran through his fingers.
The sensation was so foreign to him that he found it impossible not to remove his eyes from the gate to look at his hand. Trembling with eager, joyous anticipation. And with fear.
Opposites. Love and hate. Good and evil. It was a good day for a showdown.
Englishman took a deep breath, blinked the sweat from his eyes, dropped the gearshift into drive, put both hands on the steering wheel, and slammed the accelerator to the floor.
The tires spun on the gravel road, caught some traction, and propelled the black Honda Accord forward.
JOHNNY PUT both feet on the helicopter’s skid and readied himself to jump as soon as the pilot gave him the signal. They approached a guard post on a hill behind the main ranch buildings, the largest of six similarly equipped hills.
Something was wrong with his eyes, but he wasn’t sure what. Even now, looking down at the passing ground, he thought his vision was somewhat impaired. The stones and bending weeds were slightly out of focus.
Kelly had been a wreck since their departure, breaking into tears for no reason, it seemed. Yes, he might be headed into danger, but his training was superior.
It was his eyes, she finally told him. She wouldn’t elaborate, but his eyes seemed to scare her.
Riding the side of the helicopter twenty feet in the air, Johnny was struck by the change in himself. He wasn’t the same person he’d been even three days ago. The thought of jumping from this height wouldn’t have bothered him in the least, but now even looking down put but-terflies in his gut.
He was being whisked into a battle that he was suddenly terrified of. The good news, supposedly, was that no attempt had yet been made on the ranch. All Johnny could think about was the bad news, namely, that this frail man named Johnny was their hope.
If Englishman had the same power as he did, how could Johnny be their hope?
The helicopter swept in low and flared to a hover a few feet above the rocky earth.
“Go!”
Kelly placed a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw that she was crying again. She gazed at his face, then quickly averted her eyes.
Something was wrong with his eyes. He should find out what, but the prospect of throwing himself into battle with Englishman dominated his concern.
Kelly wrapped both arms around him and spoke into his ear. “I’m afraid, Johnny.”
He smoothed her hair, at a loss for words. He didn’t even know what he was supposed to do up here on the hill. They’d developed no real plan other than for Johnny to do something if Englishman showed up.
Samuel held a pair of sunglasses out to him, the mirrored kind that pilots wore. “Wear these.”
He didn’t know why Samuel thought he should wear them, but maybe they would help his eyesight. Maybe it was the sunlight that distorted his vision. He took the glasses and put them on.
Was he going blind?
“The truth, Johnny. Show them truth.” Samuel nodded, as if this should mean something to him. “The truth will set us all free.”
Johnny returned the nod.
Kelly released him and he jumped from the skid, landed on a patch of hard sand, and ran toward the four soldiers who waited in the out-post. The helicopter blades lifted the bird up, then toward the ranch house with a blast of hot air.
The ten-by-ten post was built of half walls and sandbags that gave the soldiers inside a 360-degree view of the valley. Four large machine guns were mounted to cover all four sides. Johnny ducked his head under the eaves and faced a Special Forces lieutenant and three guards-men. He knew this by the insignias they wore.
It occurred to him that he could remember these details. And now that he thought about it, he could remember more.
The lieutenant eyed him. “Pardon my ignorance, but remind me what it is you’re supposed to do here?”
Good question.
“We don’t have a place for you to sit.”
Johnny stuck out his hand. “I’m Johnny. They want me to watch over . . . things.”
The commander took his hand without enthusiasm. “Watch what, the weeds grow?”
The radio under one of the grinning guardsmen squawked. “We have a situation at the front gate. Black sedan’s headed our way at high speed. Unresponsive. Do we shoot?”
A crackle of static.
“Blow his tires out.”
“Copy. Disabling veh—”
The radio went abruptly silent.
The guard manning the radio keyed the transmitter to no avail. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
But Johnny knew, and the knowledge immobilized him. Englishman had come. So soon?
He looked past the gun on his right to the ranch below, where the helicopter was just now landing safely. The horizon offered only a gray morning sky above distant cliffs. Or were his eyes making the sky gray? He removed the sunglasses, but the sky was no less gray, so he replaced them.
He was going blind, wasn’t he?
“What happened?” one of the guardsmen asked.
The lieutenant hesitated, scanning the forward perimeter. “We may have some trouble.” He jabbed a finger at Johnny. “Sit.”
Instead, Johnny walked out of the post.
One of them yelled something at him—his heart was pounding so loud that he couldn’t hear the words. He walked twenty paces and faced the south. No sign of Englishman. That was something to be thankful for. But he knew his gratitude would be short-lived.
A chorus of frantic calls barked over the radio in the post. The lieutenant leaned out of the post and shouted angrily at him,
Barking orders about getting his butt back inside, punctuated with obscenities.
Johnny faced the man and floated a dozen sandbags from the ground. He held them suspended in front of the man.
“Holy—”
All four soldiers stepped back, silenced and slack-jawed.
Johnny let the bags fall. “Please,” he said, pausing to catch his breath over the panic that was gripping him. “Let me do my job.”
ENGLISHMAN WAITED until he was absolutely sure they were about to fire before making his first move.
It was a thought more than a move, but it did move some things. Three things to be precise. The guardhouse, the Bradley fighting vehicle, and the tank. He moved them up and out of the way. Fifty very quick feet straight up. The underground electrical wires that fed the guardhouse separated in a spray of sparks as the shack flew up before coming to a sudden stop next to the tank and the Bradley high above the gate.
The guards lucky enough to be left on the ground seemed disturbed by the sudden skyward display. Englishman made their guns hot, instantly hot enough to fry their hands.
He couldn’t hear their cries because the car was roaring and the windows were down, but he could see their faces. They dropped the guns. Johnny wouldn’t have. Even in Hungary he would have controlled his reaction to the heat long enough to get off at least one shot, and one shot from Johnny was enough to kill even Englishman’s flesh-and- blood body.
“Ha!” He couldn’t resist the cry of delight. In the space of five seconds he’d neutralized the front gate.
Englishman slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the seda
n skidded sideways before coming to a dusty stop. The sharpshooters would be climbing out of their holes at any moment. Guns from the sky would begin blazing. Missiles even. They would unleash all hell without the foggiest idea of what hell really was.
He stared up at the floating guardhouse and saw that someone had thrown open a window and was bringing out a rifle. On each side, the hatches to the tank and the Bradley were flopping open, and crew members were poking their heads out.
Englishman let the guardhouse, the tank, and the Bradley fighting vehicle fall to the ground together.
The earth shook. Amazingly, the tank bounced a good five feet before slamming to rest on broken tracks. Its suspension had survived the fall, which was certainly more than could be said for those inside. The Bradley’s undercarriage shattered upon landing. And the guard-house became a pile of kindling. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. You are dismissed.
Englishman floored the Accord. He sent the metal gate flying into the sky, not just fifty feet or even a hundred feet this time. He launched it far into the valley as a warning to the forces hunkered down to meet him.
The Englishman cometh.
41
What Johnny first mistook for a bird flying through the sky grew as it hurtled toward them and became a pair of metal gates. They flew in an arc like debris lobbed from a catapult and crashed into the ground several hundred yards from the ranch house.
One of the guards voiced his shock. “What the . . . ? Did you . . . ?” Johnny did the only thing he knew to do in that moment. He pictured the gates flying back.
They flew. Like gangly missiles propelled from a silent canon, in precisely the same trajectory in which they’d come.
A huge line of boulders ran across the desert floor two miles away, effectively blocking Johnny’s line of sight to the front lines, but with any luck Englishman would see his shot returned.
Or had that been a mistake? He’d just announced himself to Englishman!
A strong voice cut through the radio chatter. “The gates are down! I repeat, the gates are down and we have an intruder. Black sedan coming in like a bat out of hell. Blasted through the front guard, tank and all. Get the drones over here and take him out!”
