by Terry James
“We’ll leave at 11:30,” he said to Susie. “That’s about…” He checked his watch. “...18 minutes or so.”
David Prouse and Cassie had walked a hundred feet to the east and stood watching the strobes and other lights that provided a spectacular light show against the black sky over Los Angeles International.
David reached his hand toward Cassie, who gladly took it. They began walking slowly back toward the others.
“You know, Cassie, you coming along makes my having to put off that work on all those cases okay.”
She said nothing, but glanced at him with a quick smile, then back to the tarmac in front of them.
“We’re going to find Morgan and Clark. Then… I hope that won’t…” He found himself uncharacteristically at a loss for words to express his thought. “I hope we can still see each other,” he said.
He felt her small hand grip his hand tighter while they walked toward the Criterion.
“I want that, too,” she said, her heart racing. David Prouse was a special guy, she thought, a warm feeling she had never felt before welling within her.
He felt the same, and they said nothing during the rest of their hand-in-hand walk to join the others.
Mark listened to the pilot proudly educate him on the superiority of this, doubtless among the most advanced of all corporate jets. But, while Strubble talked, his mind took over, his eyes devouring the bird’s every nuance of sophistication as he ascended the stairway of not very many steps. Nothing like getting on an old 727 or 707. This plane was close to the ground for now but held great potential for going very high real soon.
It took just one breath to know that there had been a change for the better. No more exhaust fumes, or airport noise, just that new-car leather smell that every man knows and loves. A quick glance to the right revealed a somewhat narrow, but tall aisle that was big enough for most anyone to walk down without stooping over.
There were eight passenger seats, in groups of four along the bulkhead, right and left, in the cabin. Each was elegantly covered in the finest leathers. They reminded him of eight full-sized Lazy Boy recliners. Strubble pointed out that each seat was, in fact, fully reclining and had integrated computers, entertainment consoles and telephones. There was a bar and compact galley in the rear, and at the farthest point, the door was open to a large restroom with a vanity and mirrored closet door. Desks between each seating group were built in, but retractable. The creamy pearlescent white of the interior plastic surfaces were complemented with wood trim made from redwood burl.
This wasn't the kind of seating he was used to --traveling space available as a perk, being a retired Delta employee. He could get used to it, he thought to himself.
The view to the left was what Mark wanted to see more than anything else. He had heard this cockpit was also the newest and highest-tech available. His first impression was that most of the room had been given to the passengers. That was the right priority, he guessed, but the cockpit access and seating seemed tight. It was beautiful, and that more than made up for the snugness.
The five, 7-inch-by-8-inch colored screens glowed with electronically generated representations of familiar instruments. Two pairs of identical flight management systems appeared on the outermost screens, and the one in the middle was the new standard in EICAS display.
The engine indicating and crew alerting system showed the fan speeds in percent, engine temperatures, oil temps and pressures, digital fuel readouts and all the other things a pilot needed to know to operate this aircraft safely.
At the bottom were a couple of what he and other pilots called “idiot lights”, the ones you never want to see illuminated. Just below that, the duel Honeywell GPS pilot input and readout consoles had already been turned on and set up for the flight to Denver.
Radio frequency readouts and every other conceivable bit of information seemed to be presented digitally on other displays through out the cockpit area. No space wasn’t covered by some sort of control, readout, switch, lever or handily placed coffee cup holder.
The throttles were correctly placed, and the reverse thrust levers were integrated in the same style that had been in every design since the first. Flaps on the right, speed brakes on the left, fire control panel just aft of that, and other miscellaneous controls filled out the center console.
The space immediately below the large windscreens was filled on both sides with what seemed like hundreds of circuit breakers. These were those pesky little safety devices which “popped” at the slightest indication of an electrical anomaly, or over voltage, or over heating situation. Every system in the plane, from nose cone to APU exhaust was protected by one of these simple, trusted, devices.
Mark thought how it was a universal trait among pilots to also use these circuit breakers as on/off switches sometimes. The easiest way to disable a noisy warning horn or integrated pilot monitoring system was to use the breaker as a switch. Convenient, but not a good thing to do. Looking straight ahead, out the large windscreen, you couldn't see the nose of the airplane. You were really at the front end of this thing. Below the glass was a glare shield and underneath, the emergency lights. There weren't very many of them, less than a dozen, compared to the other aircraft he had flown, where there had been lights enough to read by if something went horribly wrong. Just below the warning lights was a row of tiny but familiar instruments. A standard attitude indicator, comfortably two-tone gray, like they had been for 40 years or more, and to the right, a single, twin needled, radio magnetic direction indicator. There was even a compass!
He took heart that there was still something here with which he could identify.
Twenty minutes past Midnight – Colorado
The big screen, inset flush with the dark oak wall, filled with the image of the meeting of several hours before. The DOD black ops chief watched the replay from the plush recliner.
The tall young man stood before the D.C group and Jenkins, answering questions. Jenkins fast-forwarded to the spot on the video recording he desired. The German representing the EU asked the question, when Jenkins stopped the fast forward.
“It is our understanding that there is much more to these teletransportation matters, than we’ve been led to believe, Blake. You have been the go-between for the United States government and the European Union since the projects’ beginning. What is the full story? Why haven’t we been given the whole thing?”
Blake Robbins smiled, but the effort was strained.
“Need to know, Ernst. You know the priorities, the protocols. Those who are working on these things at the core level simply aren’t prepared to say, with certainty, that all the things involved are…completed… in the sense that they feel comfortable releasing the facts. That will come--soon, I think.”
The man could be a great presidential candidate, Jenkins smirked to himself, hearing Robbins’ evasive answer. But, it was the next question and answer that the black ops chief was truly interested in.
“I wonder how the core folks would feel if I--if we--recommended the things you hold so close to the vest be either fully divulged, or all funding for them be cut off? Answer me that,” Lester Graves said in a hostile tone.
The room had been silent, Jenkins remembered, while he watched the video replay. The silence had seemed much longer –the tension thicker—in real time, when it was happening, he thought. His eyes narrowed in concentration, watching Blake Robbins’ face take on a very different countenance than before that point.
His complexion became shadowy, eyes black –devoid of human warmth. His voice now seemed to undulate in his throat, and to rumble from deeply within the body, rather than spill easily from the voice box and tongue.
“Tell your people that if they cut off funding…” Jenkins heard the sinister chuckle within the words that preceded the warning he knew was coming. “…all reverse engineering knowledge will be instantly withdrawn. Every project will be instantaneously scrambled, garbled beyond recognition.”
Jen
kins watched Graves’ face become ashen. He had inferred, thus implied, the unmentionable--that those who held the knowledge of the ages could be manipulated, could be held up to extortion by the puny treasures of human government. The attempt to so threaten them amused Jenkins while he continued to view the replay of the previous evening’s meeting.
“Oh, I didn’t mean…”
“We all know exactly what you meant, Mr. Graves,” the voice growled from Robbins’ throat. “This is all the explanation you and your governments will have, for now.”
George Jenkins had heard enough of the meeting, which had culminated with Lester Graves profusely apologizing to Blake Robbins, and to those Robbins represented.
The black ops director switched off the video, and on another. He watched with transfixed interest the scientists while they worked within the laboratory to which the…things… had been moved. From the huge, gleaming, oval chamber that was, he was almost certain, a conveyance from another world. The recorded video quick cut to a close-up of the things in the greenish yellow liquid. They had grown--grown tremendously.
These were the things to which Lester Graves…Ernst Kline… were not privy. Things that would one day be known not just by governments, but by the world. These were man’s future…
Jeb Strubble had a vector to Denver. He engaged the autopilot, after confirming that Denver International Airport was programmed into the computer, then set the air speed at mach 08.87. The Criterion was now at 39 thousand feet, exactly meeting the pre-programmed cruising altitude. Well above all standard commercial travel.
In the Criterion’s main cabin, Mark talked across Lori to Randall Prouse, who sat next to the porthole on the other side of Kristi Flannigan. He was pleased that the super-quiet engines and cutting-edge insulation technology made it easy to converse at near normal level.
“What do you make of the thing that happened on your trip to JFK? The things you saw? The words on the non-activated monitor?”
Prouse let the questions roll around in his mind for a few seconds, before saying, “Don’t know, specifically. But, I’m convinced it’s all about spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6: 12.”
“What about the dark screen, the red sentence on a dead monitor?” Mark probed.
“Beware the Sons of God, daughters of men,” Randy said, as if simply cogitating upon the sentence. The archaeologist’s facial expression made Mark know that Prouse still hadn’t come to any conclusions in the matter.
“It has something to do with Lori and you, Mark, with Morgan and Clark.”
Both Mark and Randall Prouse looked to the seat just ahead of Lori’s, surprised at Susie Banyon’s interjection.
“Genesis 6. These things are back. Or, their hellish brethren are back –like the minions that tried the same thing in times before the Flood,” Susie said.
“Yeah. I’ve thought about that, Susie. Somehow this whole thing is tied to things going on in those mountains of Colorado,” Randall said. “We seem to be right in the middle of an end-of-days war,” he said.
“The Kingdom come,” Susie said. “That’s what Christopher saw in his…vision. Could he have been told the satanic kingdom is coming to earth?”
“Well, it’s not God’s Kingdom. That’s for sure. That won’t happen until Jesus comes to bring God’s Kingdom to this cesspool of a planet,” Randall said.
“Kingdom come!”
Kristi Flannigan’s words interrupted the archaeologist. All eyes turned to the girl, who sat forward, her eyes wide in epiphany.
“That’s what was written on that old man’s sign!” she said with excitement.
“What old man?” Mark said.
“That old guy--an old man wearing a robe, tied at the waist with a rope, or something. He looked like a cartoon of some old prophet you see sometimes. It was a big cardboard sign on a stick. What do you call it? It was like a placard, or something. He was holding it. He jumped right in front of Morgan and me… actually, in front of Morgie. He said something, I can’t remember what. He pointed at her, holding that sign. It said, ‘The Kingdom cometh’.”
Kristi’s face brightened, her eyebrows rising again in the remembrance. “Oh, yes! He said, ‘Daughter of man. Child of darkness’.”
“What happened then?” Lori asked.
“The old man, he acted like he was choking. Grabbed his throat, then fell to the sidewalk. Some people gathered around him. Morgie and I just went on to work.”
“You see? It’s all tied together somehow,” Susie Banyon said from the seat in front of Lori. “And, we are all brought together for some reason, by the Lord, himself.”
“And, it seems to have begun back there in 1947,” Christopher said, almost to himself, his eyes gazing into his own thoughts.
Light burst in the cabin with vision-debilitating brilliance, whiting out everything. The light then dimmed, the things and people in the cabin again becoming clear in the passengers’ recovering sight.
“What was that?!” came from each of them, while they looked at each other, then to the night sky, through which the Criterion roared.
Mark unclasped his seatbelt buckle and stood in the aisle, taking stock of each person. They blinked, trying to recover fully from the temporary blindness –but, he satisfied himself that none suffered serious effects.
David Prouse lurched from his seat, getting to the cockpit door a step ahead of Mark, who rapped on the leather-appointed door with his knuckles.
He knocked again, receiving no response. He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked from the inside, probably automatically. The door was a sealed hatch when closed –a “plug,” he thought.
Something was wrong. All the co-pilot had to do was twist slightly to release the mechanism that would permit entrance. He had knocked several times, loudly enough that their wanting entrance could not be missed by the two men.
“Here, I’ll open it,” the flight attendant said, her eyes showing her anxiety, while she slipped a key device into a slot.
The door opened easily. Mark, the girl, and David Prouse stood in open-mouthed astonishment. The cockpit seats were empty! Jeb Strubble and Hamilton Lamb were gone! Vanished!
“My God!” the girl screamed, grabbing her mouth, tears streaming over her cheeks. “What’s happened?!”
David wrapped his arms around her and tried to quiet her. He handed her to Cassie, who had moved to their side, seeing the girl’s distress. She led her toward the rear of the cabin.
Mark searched the seats, even as he maneuvered his 6-foot, 2-inch frame toward the left seat.
The seat harness –the lap belt—both lap belts—were still fastened as if they had simply collapsed when the bodies they had been restraining had melted away…or whatever happened to them.
“What’s going on?” Randall Prouse asked in controlled tone that was calm but anxious.
“Don’t know, Grandpa,” David answered, looking to the seats again.
“Lap belts still fastened,” Mark said, hurriedly unfastening the belt of the left seat.
Christopher Banyon stood just outside the open door, trying to see over the others.
“They’re gone, Chris. Just disappeared, looks like,” Randy said.
“My good Lord,” Christopher said, beginning a silent prayer for divine help.
He moved back to the women, wanting to assure them. But, what could he say? The pilots weren’t there. The plane was thousands of feet in the air, moving at, who knew how fast, and the plane was pilotless…
“The pilot and co-pilot…they are not there,” he said to the women, whose gasps of fear he moved to address.
“Now, Mark is a pilot. He will get us down safely. He has a whole lifetime of flying experience,” Christopher said, looking first into Susie’s eyes, then into Lori’s and into Kristi’s, hoping he was using his best pastor’s voice.
“The Lord is in control at all times. Let’s remember that,” he said, reaching to pat Kristi’s shoulder lightly, not knowing the strength of he
r faith.
Mark maneuvered into the left seat, buckled the lap belt, and searched around for the headset. It was a Bose, the very best, and he could hear clearly, even before placing the ultralight earpieces over his ears, the voice of an air-traffic controller somewhere calling to Jeb Strubble.
There was a microphone on the bulkhead among the circuit breaker panels. It was the same mike, only smaller, that had been installed in tens of thousands of airplanes. Mark hoped that the pilot's intercom was set up for transmit and receive. He pressed the talk button and responded to the center's call.
“This is Criterion X. We are still level at 240 but we do need a further descent. There's been some changes in personnel and it will take a little time and distance to get situated.” Mark explained his circumstances to the controller. The man acknowledged the pilot, and in a few seconds gave him a discreet frequency to use for all his further communication.
Mark looked around and found what appeared to be a radio control head on the center console. He dialed in the new frequency and was relieved to hear another man identify himself as a final controller for Denver International.
“Good morning, Criterion,” the voice said. “This is DIA, and we will get you home this early morning. Please squawk one three four two and ident. I've got you on the scope, sir, and it looks like a couple of turns will get you right into a spot for landing.”
Even though he had not been flying in this intense environment for years, Mark was reassured by the calmness of the controller's voice. The fact that he was not familiar with this complicated flying machine didn't matter. They would get down in one piece.
“We’ve got company,” David Prouse said, standing in the doorway. “Both right and left,” he said.
Mark glanced to his left, and then to the right. Sure enough, F-16s flanked the Criterion. He could easily make out the configuration of the aircraft, by the glow of their position lights against the blackness. They had made no attempt to cut into the transmission. They were there for one reason. In case a terrorist aimed this plane in a direction other than the directions Denver International gave him. He knew the pilots were under orders –in these times—to shoot down anything that threatened to commit terror from the air.
