The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 1)

by Terry James

  Lori had stayed behind with her father, who was far from full recovery. James Morgan did little more than sit, staring into nothingness. His malady was much like that suffered by an aphasic stroke victim. The Israeli scientist let the analogy move through his thoughts, while he saw Laura clench her arms tightly and shuffle her feet, trying to generate warmth while she listened for the overseas connection.

  Morgan seemed to respond most to conversation that included Clark Lansing’s name. That, and Laura’s addressing him as “Smiling Jack.”

  Kirban wondered if the PND helmet had done cellular damage to Morgan’s brain. The low frequency electronic hum the device produced--could it destroy cognitive functioning over time? What other things might they have done to their victims, the ones used to channel whatever they were channeling through the human brains they held captive within the precognition neuro-diviners?

  What of the dark beings--how might they affect the brain? What damage, through cellular rearrangements, might they do to the victims?

  Kirban saw Laura’s mouth moving. She had made the connection, at last.

  “Yes. This is Christopher Banyon,” Laura heard the minister answer.

  “Pastor! Pastor Banyon, is that you?” Laura said, barely able to hear the voice.

  “Yes…Laura? It is me, Chris Banyon.”

  The voice was louder, clearer.

  “I’ve been advised not to talk but a moment, Pastor…Chris,” Laura said. “We can’t take chances on who might be listening.”

  “I understand, Laura.”

  “Do you have the instructions for us?”

  “Yes,” Christopher said. “Have a pen and paper?”

  “Yes,” Laura said, pinning the receiver between her cheek and the wool material covering her right shoulder.

  “Go to Boothbay,” the minister said. “Ask someone to point you to Rutledge Cove Road. There’s only two houses there. My mother’s home is the saltbox house on the left, the second house. It is painted yellow, with white trim, and a gray roof. You get all that?”

  “Yes. Yellow, white trim, gray roof--Rutledge Cove Road,” Laura repeated.

  “Mother’s name is Grace Banyon. She’ll be expecting you.”

  Within ten minutes of ending the phone call with Laura Morgan, Christopher Banyon answered a knock at the hotel room door.

  “Yes? Who is it?” he called through the closed door.

  “It is I, Ackmid,” the Arab said, his familiar high-pitched voice a welcomed signal that his and Susie’s ride to the Temple Mount had arrived.

  They were halted several times on their way to meet Randall Prouse, like before when they had gone to pray at Mount Olivet. This time, however, the tension was not there. Their road guards were the Israeli military. Rather than feeling danger, they felt relieved that they had armed protectors all the way from the hotel to the small shop, in front of which Ackmid stopped the old Jeep.

  Randall joined them, taking the seat beside Ackmid, who drove the Jeep as fast as it would move, his passengers hanging on to whatever they could find. They stopped 50 feet from the Wailing Wall, and Prouse, Christopher and Susie, glad to do so, stepped from the old vehicle onto the broken concrete that separated them from the often-visited shrine of worship.

  “Ilusia said he would meet us here,” the archaeologist fumed 15 minutes later, while they sat again in the Jeep.

  His archaeological colleague was notorious for being tardy, and Prouse was more irritated than concerned. Still, there was worry in the back of his mind. Ilusia Karpin had to travel from areas that were reportedly still full of fighting.

  Pockets of resistance dotted the Judean hills, and his friend had been wounded twice before by the Palestinian radical thugs, while moving about from dig to dig.

  Christopher and Susie watched the black-hatted worshipers at the wall, bowing and chanting while holding the Torah in front of their faces with both hands. Some placed written prayers in cracks along the wall.

  “Can we go closer?” Susie asked.

  “Not much closer. Not without a hat and shawl,” Prouse said. “The Orthodox clergy frown on men approaching the wall without wearing the right get-up.”

  “What about women?” Susie asked. “Do they have to wear…get-ups?”

  “Women always have their heads covered, but it’s the men who have to wear the hats and prayer shawls. The reading of the Torah is forbidden, unless one has the hat and shawl,” Prouse answered, while again checking his wristwatch.

  Several blackhats, deeply in meditation, walked past the Jeep without acknowledging the vehicle’s passengers.

  Christopher watched the three Orthodox Jews continue toward the wall of prayer, their heads slightly bowed in meditation.

  Randall saw it coming. A pick-up truck, its bed covered by a high canvas top, rolled to a quick stop just behind the Jews. Several men, dressed in khaki uniforms, their faces covered by cloth masks, leaped from the truck, brandishing automatic rifles.

  The men in the black hats and robes saw them, but it was too late to take cover.

  “No! No!” Prouse shouted, but to no avail.

  The attackers sprayed the three men with several bursts of automatic fire and jumped into the pick-up, which sped away. Israeli military vehicles immediately took up pursuit, and the staccato firing could be heard while all three vehicles disappeared around a corner in the distance.

  Prouse already knelt at the sides of the fallen men. He rushed from victim to victim to determine who should be helped first.

  “This one’s alive!” he yelled. “Get some medical help over here!”

  Susie knelt on both knees beside another man. Christopher sent Ackmid to find a military medic, whom he prayed was somewhere near the contingent of troops assigned to prevent just such an atrocity.

  Prouse had torn open the black robe and undergarment, then placed his handkerchief over the sucking wound in the man’s right chest area. The victim’s eyes were open wide, and he mouthed words the archaeologist couldn’t hear.

  “It’s okay,” he said to the dying man. Then, realizing the wounded man might not speak English, he tried to reassure him in Hebrew.

  “I’ve sent Ackmid. I saw a vehicle with a red cross on it. I hope that’s a medic vehicle,” Christopher Banyon said, looking into the face of the dying blackhat.

  The victim’s eyes widened even more when he saw Christopher’s face. The man suddenly was possessed of strength, and of full voice. He grabbed the minister with both hands, clutching Christopher’s khaki shirt just above both breast pockets. The wounded man pulled Christopher toward him, and spoke in gasps, his dying eyes penetrating, his words spoken with desperation. He blurted in English, “Take the fragment, the piece not of the holy scroll--take it into the cave of first discovery at Qumran…Do not fail!”

  He seemed to pause to gain strength, then said, “Old men shall dream dreams…Young men shall see visions.”

  The man’s eyes bulged in his death throes, and he collapsed in Prouse’s arms.

  “I’m sorry I had to tell you these things in such an abrupt manner, Mark, but you had to be told. We need your help. Time is critical.”

  Robert Cooper had told him the day before, but, despite the fact it worried him to the point it kept him awake all night, it hadn’t fully sunk into his tired mind. It was all too fast, too much to digest.

  His dad, alive! Could it be? His father alive. Not a dark, boiling monster, but truly alive?

  Lori’s mother, out of her coma, for some reason Cooper couldn’t explain. Kirban, too, out of his comatose condition. And, now, for some reason, a fugitive… the new director of Covert Operations for the Department of Defense repeated the events that had taken place at the Taos complex while Mark was fighting with the Israeli Air Force.

  “As I told you yesterday, Laura Morgan and Lori were both taken by Gessel Kirban. He’s an enemy agent--we don’t know who he’s working for--but, he must be stopped at any cost.”

  “But, what does he need with
Lori and her mother?” Mark said, pacing to work off anxiety-driven energy.

  “Just as hostages, we think,” Cooper said, watching Mark walk back and forth on the conference room carpet.

  “You say he’s an agent. What has he stolen, or whatever you’re worried about?”

  “He has intimate knowledge of the PND. Like I told you, that technology must, under no circumstances, be discussed, much less displayed outside of security clearance parameters.”

  “And my dad? If he’s still alive, what does he have to do with the project?” Mark stopped his pacing to put the question.

  “Mark, like you were told yesterday, there are things…profound things…that we simply cannot divulge. Suffice it to say that your father was working on some top-secret things in 1947. Things in which people like Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller were involved. Things at Alamogordo, White Sands. The bomb projects, other technologies…”

  Cooper swiveled in the chair to face Mark, who took a seat to the director’s right along the big conference table. “Your father was a top-of-the-line physicist. He was caught up in what the geniuses of such things call a Transmolecular accident.”

  “What does that mean?” Mark asked, his mind running in a thousand directions.

  “Again, all I can say is that it has to do with the disassembly and reassembly of the molecular structure of matter,” Cooper said.

  “It was an accident?” Mark’s question was put in a more demanding-to-know tone.

  “Yes. Something to do with his genetic profile. And, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m not one of them, the geniuses who study such things--I, therefore, can’t explain it.”

  “When can I see him?”

  Cooper said nothing for a few seconds, then spoke in a formal tone, as if, Mark thought, he had been programmed to speak the words.

  “You will be reunited with your father in due course. But, first, we have something that must be done for the sake of the security of the nation.”

  Mark watched the stocky man as he stood from the swivel chair at the head of the conference table, seeing the man’s cold, calculating side emerge.

  “Our priority for now must be to find them, to bring them in so the things they know can’t fall into dangerous hands.”

  Cooper stood with his right hand resting atop the high back chair. “I’m depending on you to find them, and to bring them to me…to the complex. For their own good, as well as for national security,” the director said, looking down at Mark. “Once that’s done, we can reunite you with your father.”

  “How can I find them?” Mark said, anger rising in his thoughts, if not his voice. He felt the pressure of Cooper’s words. Extortion. There was no other word for it.

  “You know their ways, what their habits are,” the director said after sitting again, and leaning back in the chair. He tried to sound consoling.

  “Lori…she will move heaven and hell to find you. You’re the one thing that’s important to her, other than her father and mother.”

  “I thought they were taken from the complex…forcefully taken by Dr. Kirban. Now you sound as if they’re doing all they can to avoid your finding them.”

  Cooper leaned forward on his elbows again, his eyes narrowing beneath the thick, dark brows in an expression that said he was becoming agitated.

  “Whether it is their choice, or whether they’ve been taken by force, I don’t have time to play hide and seek with anyone. The nation’s security must take top priority.”

  He pushed back from the table and stood.

  “And, I assure you, it will take precedence. I really hope you will help resolve the matter as quickly, and as incident-free as possible.”

  Robert Cooper walked to the door leading from the conference room to his office complex. He turned at the last second to glare at Mark, who stood from the chair.

  “Let me be perfectly clear. There are others, Major, that, if I have to turn them loose, will make it impossible to guarantee the safety of your friends,” he said, then turned and left the room.

  Several helicopters swept above the mesa, guarding all roads leading from the scattered community that lay west of Santa Fe. A military troop transport vehicle raced toward the earth-colored building that hid just below the promontory against which it nestled.

  Robert Cooper had hedged his bets. He enlisted the help--extortion though it was--of Mark Lansing, in pursuing the four who represented a threat to the secrets he harbored. But, at the same time, he ordered an all-out assault on the desert community, where, his sources had informed, Gessel Kirban had been secretly conducting experiments independently. Or, more likely, on behalf of some Israeli clandestine service.

  A dozen soldiers wearing desert camouflage jumped from the back of the transport, rifles at the ready. Two kicked down the front door of the small, flat-roofed building, while other soldiers crashed through side and rear doors. Still others bashed in the building’s several windows with rifle butts.

  Five minutes later, the first lieutenant approached the major in charge.

  “Sir, the building is empty. The targets aren’t there.”

  The major then spoke into the field phone he held. “Sir. We have landed, and the desert rats have deserted.”

  The Director of Covert Operations slammed the receiver, a profanity hissing from between his clenched teeth. He studied the dilemma for several seconds, then pushed the intercom button on the desk phone.

  “Miss Catlitt, call Andrews, and have them get a plane ready. Tell them to file a flight plan for New Mexico…Santa Fe.”

  Several miles away, Mark Lansing brooded while he dialed the pay phone in the lobby of Andrews Air Force Base Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. He wanted to take no chances that the small suite Cooper had secured for him had been bugged, or the phone had been tapped. Lori had been right about the man. She had not trusted him from the start.

  Lori… she was his life, his future. Without her, nothing else would matter. And, she was missing. He had to find her. Not for Robert Cooper, and whatever phony cause he claimed to want to protect. He had to find Lori because he loved her more than his own life.

  “St. Paul Presbyterian Church,” the woman’s voice answered in a Texas accent.

  “Ma’am, my name is Mark Lansing. I’m a captain, I mean, a major, in the Marine Corps. I just returned from overseas, and I’m looking for some people it’s vital I reach. They’ve moved, and I’m looking for a mutual acquaintance, hoping he has had contact with them.”

  “Yes? How may I help you?”

  “Rev. Christopher Banyon is the mutual friend. I know he’s no longer the pastor there, but I was hoping you might tell me how to get in contact with him.”

  “All I know is that he’s in Israel, Major,” The woman said. “I have no idea where he can be reached, but if you like, I’ll be sure to get in touch with you if and when I find out anything more.”

  “Yes. That will be great. Please do. I’ll give you a couple of numbers,” Mark said, probing his pockets for the slip of paper with the phone numbers.

  “Wait!” the church secretary interrupted. “Pastor Banyon has a good friend in San Marcos. His name is Randall Prouse, He’s a professor at the college there.”

  Mark heard the woman rummaging through her files.

  “Yes! Here’s the number,” she said. “Now, I know that Pastor Banyon and his wife, Susie, went to Israel with Dr. Prouse on an archeological thing of some sort. But, I’ll bet Dr. Prouse’s wife didn’t go. They have a whole passel of teen-age and college--age children, so she stays home to deal with them. Her name’s Ruth. Yes, Ruth Prouse. Would you like her number? I’ll bet she could find where they’re staying.”

  Mark stood 15 minutes later, trying to find the key to the suite. He thought through the rest of his schedule for the day. Somewhere, he had to find time to call Ruth Prouse again. Her teen-age son hadn’t been any help when he called after hanging up from his conversation with the church secretary. About all he got were
grunts, and “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.” The kid mumbled that he guessed his mother would be back about 5 p.m. That would be Central Time, Mark considered. He would try again.

  Meanwhile, he had a meeting scheduled with someone in the Undersecretary of Defense’s office, a debriefing of his time fighting with the Israeli Air force. About the technology, what it accomplished, from his viewpoint. At least, that’s what the meeting would be about, a colonel at the Pentagon had told him that morning.

  He just wanted to leave, to pull up stakes. Get his stuff and go somewhere they couldn’t find him. He wanted more than anything to find Lori.

  “Major.”

  Mark knew, in his gut, who they were before he turned to see the men approaching from down the hallway. The same two that had picked him up when he got off the plane from Paris.

  “We’ll need you to get your things and come with us, Maj. Lansing,” the taller man said.

  “Where this time?” Mark asked, standing in the doorway, having just managed to get the door unlocked.

  “Director Cooper wants you on the ramp. He’s got orders for you to accompany him to New Mexico,” the shorter, older agent said.

  Early morning, Qumran - June 18, 1967

  “The man was dying, Chris, but he knew what he was saying,” Randall Prouse said, scanning the barren hills so familiar to him.

  He sat behind the driver of the 1950 Ford sedan. Christopher Banyon rode on the right side of the back seat, with Susie in the middle.

  “It was so strange, Randy,” Christopher said. “He knew, in that time of his dying, that all these weird things have been happening to us. It was as if the Lord was talking to me through that poor man’s last breath.”

  The experience had shaken the minister, and he had hurried to read the Scriptures when they left the death scene near the western wall. He felt now, while the old Ford rattled down the rutted road near the Dead Sea, that the weight of history itself was strapped to his back.