by Terry James
She saw the reason for his amazement the moment he spoke.
“I’ve never seen a storm front that looked like that, coming from the east. Not in this region.”
The clouds on the ridge-broken eastern horizon were black, as black as any he had seen, even more ominous than the dark clouds of the tornadic storms that often raked his native west Texas, and Oklahoma to the north.
“This never happens at this time of year, for sure,” Prouse said, starting to gather his big, canvas pack, and the one that Christopher had worn.
“We’ve got to find some place, Susie. We’ve got to get out of that storm.” Lightning fired in a thousand streaks while the clouds rolled toward them. “We’re sitting ducks on this flat land. We’re the only lightning rods around for miles,” he quipped, holding Banyon’s backpack while grasping Susie’s arm with his free hand. “We’ve got to go in the cave. We have no other choice.”
Thunder growled, then became crashes, while the jagged bolts of lightning did their work. Prouse pulled the woman up the steep grade toward the cave’s gaping mouth, while the first large drops of rain began pelting them.
A deafening clap of thunder blasted overhead, and they hurried into the opening. Prouse and Susie Banyon turned to see that the early afternoon now looked to be night.
The wind drove rain so hard that all beyond their immediate view was obscured. The sloping area leading to the cave that they had just scrambled up was now a mound of mud.
“Where’s Christopher?” Susie said, her eyes searching the almost impenetrable darkness of the cave’s interior.
“There must be an opening,” Prouse said, taking a flashlight from the backpack, after dropping the canvas bag to the cave floor.
He searched the cavern with the beam, finding, finally, a small opening along one side of the cave’s back wall. He examined it carefully, realizing immediately the fact he didn’t like. He wouldn’t be able to fit through the opening.
“Chris!” Prouse shouted into the opening just large enough for the minister, more slightly built than himself, to have slithered through.
“There’s no way I can fit through that opening,” the archaeologist said with disgust, after listening, but not hearing a response to his shout.
“I can,” Susie said, bending to look through the opening, seeing only blackness.
“Are you sure you want to?” Prouse said, shining the flashlight’s beam through the opening.
“Yes. If you think I should,” she answered.
“Don’t see why not,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much danger of there being any deep drop-offs here. But, you’ll have to watch your step.”
She said nothing, but Prouse saw fright in the brown eyes.
“You know you don’t have to do this, Susie,” he said.
“Oh, I need to, Randy. I really feel that I do.”
“The way it’s worked out, I think you’re right. Seems the Lord has made it so that only you and Chris can fit through that opening. Who am I to argue with Him?”
He didn’t think the logic was all that sound, but his words were meant to lighten the mood, which they did.
“Watch very carefully for pits. Like I said, I don’t think there will be any, but watch your step. Okay?”
“Okay,” Susie said, taking the flashlight from the archaeologist, who tried to keep her from hitting her head on the lip of the opening when she knelt, then lay on her stomach and began slithering through.
“Let me know what’s going on,” he said, bending to watch her stand and shine the light to illuminate her new surroundings.
Prouse tried to soothe his worry about the two by arguing silently with his fears that there had been hundreds--maybe thousands--of people slip into that small opening since the cave was discovered. There had been no reports of any who never came out--so far as he knew.
One thing sure, he thought while going back to the mouth of the cave to watch the horrific storm raging just outside, he would never be one of the thousands who would go through the hole …
“Stay with him,” Robert Cooper said to his agents in a lowered volume, so as not to be heard beyond their meeting in the hallway. “I want at least two of you with him at all times, understood?”
The three mumbled their understanding and agreement.
Mark Lansing sat in an adjoining room, alone with his Marine Corps duffel bag full of his things. He stared at the wall in front of him, his thoughts racing through his fatigue.
He was a prisoner, although not a prisoner that had been told he was one. But, he felt the bars, as surely as if they had locked him in a cell. He was tired, frustrated…and, angry.
The strange hum vibrated the air around him, assaulted his senses, and added to his agitation. The Taos complex, he now viscerally knew, was a place of embedded evil. It--they--had done whatever they had done to Lori. She was able to get away from them, and now they treated him like a prisoner. Cooper intended to use him as a bloodhound to track down and turn over the girl he loved to the people responsible for this hellish place.
Nausea crawled in his stomach. No doubt it was partly because he hadn’t eaten since noon the day before. But, the convoluting sickness he felt was fueled by nerve-jangling realization that Lori, her mother, and her father, needed his help, and, here he sat, not yet knowing how to get to them…and at the same time lose his watch dogs.
The door opened, and Robert Cooper strode in, Mark thought, looking as fresh as he had during their conversations 12 hours earlier. The man had had no sleep; he was sure of that.
“Now, Mark, I want you to know we’re not lying to you about things,” he said with a forced smile that looked more like a grimace.
“I realize what I’m about to show you will somewhat disturb you. But, your father is making big strides,” Cooper said, walking to a television monitor recessed in one wall.
Mark turned to follow with his eyes, the Director’s walk to the monitor. Cooper manipulated several of the buttons on the monitor, and an image appeared on the screen in color. It was the image of a man, sitting, looking out a window, sunlight framing his profile.
The man looked old, with graying hair that receded high on his forehead. His face was pale, and wrinkled, but the gray-blue eyes seemed to spark with a degree of youthfulness while the camera zoomed slowly in, and then out again.
“It’s your father. He’s now 47. He is coming along quite well; the doctors tell me.”
Mark’s sensation was one of being disembodied. As if he watched the monitor through another person’s eyes, experienced everything through someone else’s senses. He felt no emotions, watching the monitor showing the man Cooper claimed was his father. But, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, a single tear streamed from the corner of his right eye and rolled over his cheek.
“You can be together with your dad again, Mark. Wouldn’t you like that? All you have to do is help us bring Gessel Kirban and the others back into the Taos fold,” Cooper said in a business-like fashion, as if offering Mark a deal he would be a fool to refuse.
Susie Banyon made her way along one side of the low-ceilinged cave. The violent sounds of the storm faded the deeper she went into the cavern. Rifts in the cave floor gaped at various points, and she shined the beam into them. Although they appeared bottomless, they were narrow, and presented little threat while she moved farther along, hugging the wall.
A hundred feet into the cave brought her to a dead-end, but, looking carefully while she approached the blockage, she saw an opening along the wall. It was narrow, but she easily slid through, the flashlight’s beam illuminating a larger cavern.
Her husband sat on a small boulder in the distance. She snapped the flashlight off when she saw that he looked to be engulfed by a yellow field of light. She surmised that he must have his flashlight resting on something, shining upward, onto himself.
Christopher sat staring straight ahead--at what, she couldn’t tell.
Susie stood motionless, and silent, 20 feet to
the right and rear of where Christopher sat.
“Come, Susie,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
She blinked in amazement. He had been expecting her? She walked, without saying anything, toward him.
Her husband reached with his right hand to take hers.
“Where two or three are gathered together, there I am also,” Christopher said, without looking at her.
Susie felt inexplicable warmth bathe her senses. Her sensation was one of peace, comforted by the words she recognized as from Scripture. She remembered that they were the words of Jesus. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
Susie sat beside Christopher, noticing that she, too, now seemed at the center of the yellow glow of light. She saw that his flashlight was lying at his feet. Its glass was dark.
The minister put his arm around his wife and pulled her close.
“I was told to await your coming to me,” he said, gently holding her against his body.
“How were you told?” she asked.
“I was told in my spirit,” he said.
The explanation wouldn’t have satisfied most, Christopher considered. But, he knew it would satisfy this woman of faith. Neither did she question the light that surrounded the--somehow comforted them. The light grew brighter, until it almost blinded them. Their minds seemed in synchronization with each other’s thoughts--with the source of the light that embraced them.
“Place the parchments before you,” they heard the inner-voice say in a wind-like whisper.
Christopher removed the felt covered pieces from his shirt, removed the cloth, then leaned forward to put the pieces on the cave floor just in front of his and his wife’s feet.
The voice spoke to their innermost thoughts. “War in heavens and on earth shall begin the consummation when first scroll words shall be found.” The words sounded again, the thought echoing within their heightened senses. “Watch for the bene elohim…The bene elohim deludes when approaches the great taking away.”
Silence spoke as mightily for the next seconds as had the voice. The thoughts then came to them--words that supernaturally imprinted their brains with all that must be accomplished. The fragments began to glow while they lay in front of Christopher and Susie on the cave’s floor. The pieces of ancient material burst into flames, then were gone, without a trace of ever having existed.
Randall Prouse stood by the narrow opening in the wall while Susie, and then Christopher emerged into the first cavern. He took Susie’s hand to steady her when she straightened.
“The fragments are gone,” Christopher said when he stood and brushed dirt from his khaki pants.
“Gone?” the archaeologist said.
“Randy, they literally went up in flames. Not even a trace. The Lord was finished with them. They had served their purpose.”
“Well, we understand…I guess,” Prouse said. “I don’t know if Yadin will, though.”
They gathered the backpacks and walked toward the cave’s mouth. Prouse wanted to ask a thousand questions about their experiences within the other cavern but didn’t. There would be time…
“That storm…I’ve never seen anything like it. But, it’s been over for about 30 minutes,” Prouse said, leading the way.
“We’re going to be muddy messes by the time we get to the bottom of the dirt mound,” the archaeologist said. “We’ll have to slide down in all that muck.”
He stopped at the mouth of the cave and stared in disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” Susie asked, not able to see around their big friend.
“Strange, indeed,” Prouse said, looking out over the surrounding terrain. “Everything’s perfectly dry…like there was never a drop of rain.”
Chapter 16
The vibrating hum had stopped, and Mark’s thoughts became better defined while he sat, his legs stretched, his feet crossed in the big chair. The quarters were luxurious, he thought, looking around at the elegant interior of the three-room suite.
The one thing that stood out, though, he considered while scanning the walls, there were no windows. Of course, the suite was at least one floor beneath the entry level of the complex. No need for windows.
But, he sensed that the lack of windows, and the fact that there was only one door at the center of the small kitchen/lounge room, had an additional purpose--to imprison him, albeit in a sumptuous manner.
Mark stood from the leather recliner and walked to the door. He tapped on it and tried the knob. The door, made of what felt to be almost solid steel, swung open. Mark stepped into the hallway and looked in both directions. Nothing but cream-colored walls, its surfaces broken along their length by other doors like the one he had stepped from moments before.
Maybe he was imagining the prisoner bit, he thought, opening his door and walking back into the suite. Robert Cooper’s words, before Mark was issued into the suite, were meant to reassure, he imagined. They didn’t.
“Please feel at home, Mark. Anything you need is at your fingertips, including room service. Just use the phone, like you would in a hotel room. Dial 9 to get out.”
The Director, after playing the part of concierge, appointed two of his young goons to accompany their “guest” to the suite. “We’ll talk later today. Meanwhile, get some rest,” Cooper had said, while Mark and his agent-companions walked away.
Mark tried the phone again, picking up the green receiver and dialing 9. He heard the dial tone change from the complex tone to that of the public line. He dialed the 0 and a woman’s voice asked, “May I help you, please?”
He read the number from the piece of paper he had taken from his wallet, then listened while the connections were in process along the lines leading from the complex, and New Mexico, toward Texas.
“Hello,” the sleepy-sounding woman said in a soft, Texas drawl.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry to call so early,” Mark said, looking at his watch and seeing that it was 5:35 a.m., then calculating that it would be 6:35 in San Marcos, Texas.
“Are you Ruth Prouse?”
“Yes,” the woman answered, sounding more alert.
“I’m Maj. Mark Lansing. I’m a friend to your husband’s friend, Rev. Christopher Banyon.”
“Yes, I know Chris,” she interrupted. “He and his wife, Susie, are in Israel with my husband.”
“Yes ma’am, I know. And, that’s why I’m calling. I need to get in touch with Chris…Do you have a number where he can be reached?”
“How did you get this number?” Ruth Prouse asked with caution in her voice.
“I got it from the church secretary of St. Paul Presbyterian Church. I’m sorry, but I failed to write the lady’s name down.”
“I will have to go to the other phone, Major…” she hesitated to get the name again.
“Mark Lansing,” he said.
“Hold a moment, while I go to the other phone.”
In a few seconds, Ruth picked up the kitchen phone and Mark heard paper rustling.
“Major, here’s the number of the hotel where they are staying. My husband is in 833. He can get Christopher for you.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Prouse. I really appreciate the help,” Mark said, after she had read him the number.
When they said goodbye, he held the receiver to his ear a few seconds after she hung up.
Yes. He heard the extra clicks. Just as he suspected, their conversation had been monitored.
Sharkton Cove, Maine, June 20
The trip had been grueling. Lori had driven the mid-size truck-van most of the miles across country, and her arms, shoulders, neck and hands ached from the struggle. She pulled into the Texaco service station, looking in the truck’s long side mirrors to see Gessel Kirban’s Jeep wagon follow her vehicle to the side of the station’s main building. She stepped from the GMC’s high running board, feeling the blood flow more normally again into the muscles of her cramping legs. She stretched, feeling the stiffness of her body begin to dissipate.<
br />
They had come a long way from Santa Fe, New Mexico. The sign they had passed only moments before was a welcome sight. “Welcome to Sharkton Cove, Population 4,700.”
The three of them had spent the night before in Boothbay, at the home of Grace Banyon, whose hospitality had meant much to the travelers. Their trip had been grueling, made worse by constantly checking rearview mirrors all the way from New Mexico.
“If they really want us,” Gessel Kirban had said more than once, “they will get us.”
“Not as long as the Lord is in control,” her mother had said, in answer to the scientist’s pessimism.
Lori didn’t know anything about whether the Lord had assisted them. Didn’t know why the government goons from the complex hadn’t thrown a roadblock up somewhere along their way. But, she did know the trip had been uneventful, except for when her father had gotten carsick somewhere in New York State. He was improving every hour, and she believed things were going to improve even more, once they settled into the home to which Grace Banyon had directed them.
Mark…things wouldn’t be better, until she was with Mark.
Her self-reminder brought a pang of sadness that caused tears to stream in a thin line down her cheeks. Mark would soon join them, she assured herself, straightening her shoulders and wiping the tears with her fingertips while she walked beside the truck’s enclosed bed toward Kirban’s Jeep wagon.
She opened the left rear door of the Jeep and slid into the seat beside her father. He looked into her eyes, stared for several seconds, his expression one of confusion. He recognized his daughter, then, a fleeting, but definite smile, came, Lori saw with delight. She kissed him on his cheek.
“Hi, Daddy. Are you feeling better?” Lori said, reaching to straighten the curl of hair from his forehead.
“He’s doing just fine, baby,” Laura said from the other side of her husband. “He’s been pointing to things he recognizes more and more.”
James Morgan turned to look at Laura while she spoke. She, like their daughter, kissed him, and squeezed his arm with her right hand. She had lost him in the crashed T-38, and, thanks to her Lord, he was again with her. It was like the resurrection, she thought, silently thanking God for the one-hundredth time since they left New Mexico.
