by Tim LaHaye
He couldn’t get it open at first. The door was jammed. It seemed such a frail thing, but having shifted in the earthquake, the shed had bent upon itself and was unwilling to budge. Buck lowered his shoulder and rammed it like a football player. It groaned in protest but snapped back into position. He karate kicked it six times, then lowered his shoulder and barreled into it again. Finally he backed up twenty feet and raced toward it, but his slick shoes slipped in the grass and sent him sprawling. In a rage he trotted back farther, started slower, and gradually picked up speed. This time he smashed into the side of the shed so hard that he tore it from its moorings. It flipped over the tools inside, and he went with it, riding it to the ground before bouncing off. A jagged edge of the roof caught his rib cage as he hurtled down, and flesh gave way. He grabbed his side and felt a trickle, but unless he severed an artery, he wouldn’t slow down.
He dragged shovels and axes to the house and propped long-handled garden implements under the eaves. When Buck leaned against them, the edge of the roof lifted and something snapped beneath the few remaining shingles. He attacked that with a shovel, imagining how ridiculous he looked and what his father might say if he saw him using the wrong tool for the wrong job.
But what else could he do? Time was of the essence. He was fighting all odds anyway. Yet stranger things had happened. People had stayed alive under rubble for days. But if water was getting into the foundation of the house next door, what about this one? What if Chloe was trapped in the basement? He prayed that if she had to die, it had already happened quickly and painlessly. He did not want her life to ebb slowly away in a horrifying drowning. He also feared electrocution when water met open electric lines.
With a chunk of the roof gone, Buck shoveled debris away until he hit bigger pieces that had to be removed by hand. He was in decent shape, but this was beyond his routine. His muscles burned as he tossed aside heavy hunks of wall and flooring. He seemed to make little progress, huffing and puffing and sweating.
Buck twisted conduit out of the way and tossed aside ceiling plaster. He finally reached the bed frame, which had been snapped like kindling. He pushed in to where Chloe often sat at a small desk. It took him another half hour to dig through there, calling her name every so often. When he stopped to catch his breath he fought to listen for the faintest noise. Would he be able to hear a moan, a cry, a sigh? If she made the smallest sound, he would find her.
Buck began to despair. This was going too slowly. He hit huge chunks of floor too heavy to move. The distance between the floorboards of the upstairs bedroom and the concrete floor of the basement was simply not that great. Anyone caught between there had surely been smashed flat. But he could not quit. If he couldn’t get through this stuff by himself, he would get Tsion to help him.
Buck dragged the tools out to the front and tossed them over the pavement wall. Getting over from this side was a lot harder than from the other because the mud was slippery. He looked up one way and down the other and couldn’t see the end of where the road had been flipped vertical. He dug his feet into the mud and finally got to where he could reach the asphalt on the other side at the top. He pulled himself up and slid over, landing painfully on his elbow. He tossed the tools into the back of the Rover and slid his muddy body behind the wheel.
The sun was dropping in Iraq as several survivors of other crashes joined Rayford to watch the plight of the British Air 747. He stood helpless, hoping. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for injury or death to anyone. But he was certain that exiting onto the wings was their only hope. He prayed they could then climb the steep banks of sand.
Rayford was encouraged at first when he saw the first passengers crawl onto the wings. Apparently the flight attendant had rallied the people and gotten them to work together. Rayford’s encouragement soon turned to alarm when he saw how much motion they generated and how it strained the fragile support. The plane was going to break up. Then what would happen to the fuselage? If one end or the other tipped too quickly, dozens could be killed. Those not strapped in would be hurtled to one end of the plane or the other, landing atop each other.
Rayford wanted to shout, to plead with the people inside to spread out. They needed to go about this with more precision and care. But it was too late, and they would never hear him. The noise inside the plane had to be deafening. The two on the right wing leaped into the sand.
The left wing gave way first but was not totally sheared off. The fuselage rotated left, and it was clear passengers inside fell that way too. The rear of the plane was going down first. Rayford could only hope the right wing would give way in time to even it out. At the last instant, that happened. But though the plane landed nearly perfectly flat on its tires, it had dropped much too far. People had to have been horribly bounced against each other and the plane. When the front tire collapsed, the nose of the plane drove so hard into the pavement that it shook more sand avalanches loose from the sides, which quickly filled the gorge. Rayford stuffed his phone in his pants pocket and tossed his jacket aside. He and others dug with their hands and began burrowing to the plane to allow air and escape passages. Sweat soaked through his clothes. The shine of his shoes would never return, but when might he ever again need dress shoes anyway?
When he and his compatriots finally reached the plane, they met passengers digging their way out. Rescuers behind Rayford cleared the area when they heard helicopter blades. Rayford assumed, as everyone probably did, that it was a relief chopper. Then he remembered. If it was Mac, it must be ten already. Was it because he cared, Rayford wondered, or was he more concerned with their meeting?
Rayford phoned Mac from deep in the gorge and told him he wanted to be sure no one had been killed on board the 747. Mac told him he’d be waiting on the other side of the terminal.
A few minutes later, relieved that all had survived, Rayford climbed back to the surface. He could not, however, find his jacket. That was just as well. He assumed Carpathia would soon fire him anyway.
Rayford picked his way through the flattened terminal and around the back. Mac’s helicopter idled a hundred yards away. In the darkness, Rayford assumed a clear path to the small craft and began hurrying. Amanda was not here, and this was a place of death. He wanted out of Iraq altogether, but for now he wanted away from Baghdad. He might have to endure Carpathia’s shelter, whatever that was, but as soon as he was able he would put distance between himself and Nicolae.
Rayford picked up speed, still in shape in his early forties. But suddenly he somersaulted into what? Bodies! He had tripped over one and landed atop others. Rayford stood and rubbed a painful knee, fearing he had desecrated these people. He slowed and walked to the chopper.
“Let’s go, Mac!” he said as he climbed aboard.
“I don’t need to be told that twice,” Mac said, throttling up. “I need to talk to you in a bad way.”
It was afternoon in the Central Standard Time zone when Buck pulled within sight of the wreckage of the church. He was coming out the passenger door when an aftershock rumbled through. It lifted the truck and propelled Buck into the dirt on his rear. He turned to watch the remains of the church sift, shift, and toss about. The pews that had escaped the ravages of the quake now cracked and flipped. Buck could only imagine what had happened to poor Donny Moore’s body. Perhaps God himself had handled the burial.
Buck worried about Tsion. What might have broken loose and fallen in his underground shelter? Buck scrambled to the ventilation shaft, which had provided Tsion’s only source of air. “Tsion! Are you all right?”
He heard a faint, breathy voice. “Thank God you have returned, Cameron! I was lying here with my nose next to the vent when I heard the rumble and something clattering its way toward me. I rolled out of the way just in time. There are pieces of brick down here. Was it an aftershock?”
“Yes!”
“Forgive me, Cameron, but I have been brave long enough. Get me out of here!”
It took Buck more than an hour
of grueling digging to reach the entrance to the underground shelter. As soon as he began the tricky procedure to unlock and open the door, Tsion began pushing it from the inside. Together they forced it open against the weight of cinder blocks and other trash. Tsion squinted against the light and drank in the air. He embraced Buck tightly and asked, “What about Chloe?”
“I need your help.”
“Let us go. Any word from the others?”
“It could be days before communication opens to the Middle East. Amanda should be there with Rayford by now, but I have no idea about either of them.”
“One thing you can be sure of,” Tsion said in his thick Israeli accent, “is that if Rayford was near Nicolae, he is likely safe. The Scriptures are clear that the Antichrist will not meet his demise until a little over a year from now.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a hand in that,” Buck said.
“God will take care of that. But it is not the due time. Repulsive as it must be for Captain Steele to be in proximity to such evil, at least he should be safe.”
In the air, Mac McCullum radioed back to the safe shelter and told the radio operator, “We’re involved in a rescue here, so we’re gonna be another hour or two. Over.”
“Roger that. I’ll inform the potentate. Over.”
Rayford wondered what could be so important that Mac would risk lying to Nicolae Carpathia?
Once Rayford’s headset was in place, Mac said, “What the blazes is going on? What is Carpathia up to? What’s all this about the ‘wrath of the Lamb,’ and what in the world was I lookin’ at earlier when I thought I was lookin’ at the moon? I’ve seen a lot of natural disasters, and I’ve seen some strange atmospheric phenomena, but I swear on my mother’s eyes I’ve never seen anything make a full moon look like it’s turned to blood. Why would an earthquake do that?”
Man, Rayford thought, this guy is ripe. But Rayford was also puzzled. “I’ll tell you what I think, Mac, but first tell me why you think I would know.”
“I can tell, that’s all. I wouldn’t dare cross Carpathia in a million years, even though I can tell he’s up to no good. You don’t seem to be intimidated by him at all. I about lost my lunch when I saw that red moon, and you acted like you knew it would be there.”
Rayford nodded but didn’t expound. “I have a question for you, Mac. You knew why I went to the Baghdad airport. Why didn’t you ask me what I found out about my wife or Hattie Durham?”
“None of my business, that’s all,” Mac said.
“Don’t give me that. Unless Carpathia knows more than I do, he would have wanted to know about Hattie’s whereabouts as soon as either of us knew anything.”
“No, Rayford, it’s like this. See, I just knew—I mean, everybody knows—that it wasn’t likely either your wife or Miss Durham would have survived a crash at that airport.”
“Mac! You saw yourself that hundreds of people were going to get off that 747. Sure, nine out of ten people died in that place, but lots survived, too. Now if you want answers from me, you’d better start giving me some.”
Mac nodded toward a clearing he had illuminated with a spotlight. “We’ll talk down there.”
Tsion brought only his phone, his laptop, and a few changes of clothes that had been smuggled in to him. Buck waited until they parked near the torn-up pavement in front of Loretta’s house to tell him about Donny Moore.
“That is a tragedy,” Tsion said. “And he was—?”
“The one I told you about. The computer whiz who put together our laptops. One of those quiet geniuses. He had gone to this church for years and was still embarrassed that he had this astronomical IQ and yet had been spiritually blind. He said he simply missed the essence of the gospel that whole time. He said he couldn’t blame it on the staff or the teaching or anything or anyone but himself. His wife had hardly ever come with him in those days because she didn’t see the point. They lost a baby in the Rapture. And once Donny became a believer, his wife soon followed. They became quite devout.”
Tsion shook his head. “How sad to die this way. But now they are reunited with their child.”
“What do you think I ought to do about the briefcase?” Buck asked.
“Do about it?”
“Donny must have something very important in there. I saw him with it constantly. But I don’t know the combinations. Should I leave it alone?”
Tsion seemed in deep thought. Finally he said, “At a time like this you must decide if there is something in there that might further the cause of Christ. The young man would want you to have access to it. Should you break into it and find only personal things, it would be only right to maintain his privacy.”
Tsion and Buck clambered out of the Rover. As soon as they had tossed their tools over the wall and climbed over, Tsion said, “Buck! Where is Chloe’s car?”
CHAPTER 3
Rayford could not swear to the credibility of Mac McCullum. All he knew was that the freckled, twice-divorced man had just turned fifty and had never had kids. He was a careful and able aviator, facile with various types of aircraft, having flown both militarily and commercially.
Mac had proved a friendly, interested listener, earthy in expression. They had not known each other long enough for Rayford to expect him to be more forthcoming. Though he seemed a bright and engaging guy, their limited relationship had involved only surface cordiality. Mac knew Rayford was a believer; Rayford hid that from no one. But Mac had never shown the slightest interest in the matter. Until now.
Paramount in Rayford’s mind was what not to say. Mac had finally expressed frustration over Carpathia, going so far as to allow that he was “up to no good.” But what if Mac was a subversive, working for Carpathia as more than a pilot? What a way to entrap Rayford. Dare he both share his faith with Mac and reveal all that he and the Tribulation Force knew about Carpathia? And what of the bugging device built into the Condor 216? Even if Mac expressed an interest in Christ, Rayford would keep that volatile secret until he was sure Mac was not a fake.
Mac turned off everything on the chopper except auxiliary power that kept the control panel lights and radio on. All Rayford could see across the expanse of inky desert was moon and stars. If he hadn’t known better, he might have been persuaded that the little craft was drifting along on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean.
“Mac,” Rayford said, “tell me about the shelter. What does it look like? And how did Carpathia know he needed it?”
“I don’t know,” Mac said. “Maybe it was a security blanket in case one or more of his ambassadors turned on him again. It’s deep, it’s concrete, and it’ll protect him from radiation. And I’ll tell you one more thing: It’s plenty big enough for the 216.”
Rayford was dumbfounded. “The 216? I left that at the end of the long runway in New Babylon.”
“And I was assigned to move it early this morning.”
“Move it where?”
“Didn’t you ask me just the other day about that new utility road Carpathia had built?”
“That single-lane thing that seemed to lead only to the fence at the edge of the airstrip?”
“Yeah. Well, now there’s a gate in the fence where that road ends.”
“So you open the gate,” Rayford said, “and you go where, across desert sand, right?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Mac said. “But a huge expanse of that sand has been treated with something. Wouldn’t you think a craft as big as the 216 would sink in the sand if it ever got that far?”
“You’re telling me you taxied the 216 down that little utility road to a gate in the fence? How big must that gate be?”
“Only big enough for the fuselage. The wings are higher than the fence.”
“So you ferried the Condor off the airstrip and across the sand to where?”
“Three and a half clicks northeast of headquarters, just like Carpathia said.”
“So this shelter isn’t in a populated area.”
“
Nope. I doubt anyone’s ever seen it without Carpathia’s knowledge. It’s huge, Ray. And it must have taken ages to build. I could have fit two aircraft that size in there and only half filled the space. It’s about thirty feet below ground with plenty of supplies, plumbing, lodging, cooking areas, you name it.”
“How does something underground withstand the shifting of the earth?”
“Part genius, part luck, I guess,” Mac said. “The whole thing floats, suspended on some sort of a membrane filled with hydraulic fluid and sitting on a platform of springs that serve as mammoth shock absorbers.”
“So the rest of New Babylon is in ruins, but the Condor and Carpathia’s little hideout, or I should say big hideout, escaped damage?”
“That’s where the ingenious part comes in, Ray. The place was rocked pretty good, but the technology delivered. The one eventuality they couldn’t escape, even though they predicted it, was that the main entrance, the huge opening that allowed the plane to easily slip in there, was completely covered over with rock and sand by the quake. They were able to shelter a couple of other smaller openings on the other side to maintain passage, and Carpathia already has earthmovers reopening the original entrance. They’re working on it right now.”
“So, what, he’s looking to go somewhere? Can’t stand the heat?”
“No, not at all. He’s expecting company.”
“His kings are on their way?”
“He calls them ambassadors. He and Fortunato have big plans.”
Rayford shook his head. “Fortunato! I saw him in Carpathia’s office when the earthquake started. How’d he survive?”
“I was as surprised as you, Ray. Unless I missed him, I didn’t see him come out that door on the roof. I figured the only people with a prayer of surviving the collapse of that place were the few who were on the roof when the thing went down. That’s more than a sixty-foot drop with concrete crashing all around you, so even that’s a long shot. But I’ve heard stranger. I read about a guy in Korea who was on top of a hotel that collapsed, and he said he felt like he was surfing on a concrete slab unt7il he hit the ground and rolled and wound up with only a broken arm.”
