Buck felt drawn to them in spite of his desperation to remain unrecognized. He stepped yet closer, causing the crowd to deride him and laugh at his foolhardiness.
Neither witness opened his mouth, but Buck heard them both in unison. It was as if the message was for him alone. He wondered whether anyone else heard it.
“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”
They knew about Ken? Were they consoling Buck?
Suddenly Moishe looked to the crowd and shouted, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Jesus Christ and of his words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
And just as suddenly the two spoke in unison again, softer, without moving their lips, as if just to Buck. “There be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.”
Buck had to speak. He whispered, his back to the crowd so none could hear. “We want to be among those who do not taste death,” he said. “But we lost another of our own tonight.” He couldn’t go on.
“What’d he say?” someone blurted.
“He’s gonna get himself torched.”
The two spoke directly to Buck’s heart again. “There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for Jesus’ sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.”
God had provided for Buck a place to live and new brothers and sisters in Christ! How Buck wished he could come right out and ask the witnesses what he should do, where he should go. How was he going to reunite with his wife when he was a fugitive from the GC? Would he have to be spirited out the way he had rescued Tsion?
A GC bullhorn warned him to retreat. “And to the two who are under arrest. You have sixty seconds to surrender peacefully. We have strategically placed concussion bombs, mines, and mortars with kill power in a two-hundred-yard radius. Evacuate now or stay at your own peril! The clock begins when the last translation of this announcement has ended. In the meantime, the ranking officer of the Global Community, under direct authority of the supreme commander and the potentate himself, will offer to escort the fugitives to a waiting vehicle.”
As the announcement was translated into several languages, the crowd gleefully dispersed, sprinting out of range of the explosives and crouching behind cars and concrete barriers. Buck slowly backed away, never taking his eyes from Moishe and Eli, whose jaws were set.
From the right a lone GC guard, decked out in military ribbons but unarmed and with his hands in the air, hurried toward the witnesses. When he was within ten yards, Eli shouted so loudly that the man seemed paralyzed from the sound wave alone. “Dare not approach the servants of the Most High God, even with an empty hand! Save yourself! Find shelter in caves or behind rocks!”
The GC man slipped and fell, then fell again as he scrambled to get away. Buck picked up his pace too but was still walking backward, his eyes on the witnesses. From a branch high above him came two loud, echoing reports from a rifle. The sniper was less than fifty feet from Eli and Moishe, and what happened to the bullets Buck could not say. A burst of flame shot from Moishe’s mouth straight to the soldier, who somehow kept a grip on his weapon until his flaming body slammed to the stony ground. Then the rifle bounced twenty feet away. He burned quickly into a pile of ashes as if in a kiln, and his rifle melted and burned too.
Silence fell over the area as guards, crowd, and Buck waited for the igniting of the threatened weapons. Buck was now back with the rest of the onlookers, huddled beneath the low-slung roof of a portico across the way. When he was sure the minute had long passed, the air grew cold as winter. Buck shivered uncontrollably as those around him groaned and wept in fear. A wind kicked up and howled, and people tried to cover exposed skin and huddle together against the frigid blast. Hail fell as if a cosmic truck had unloaded tons of golf ball–size spheres of ice all in one dump. In ten seconds the downpour stopped, and the area was ten inches deep in melting ice.
The power that supplied electricity for the TV lights popped and sizzled and blew out, plunging the area into darkness. In three locations simultaneously, what appeared to be boxes of explosives burned, emitted a series of muffled pops, then disintegrated into ash.
Such was the extent of the murderous attack on the witnesses.
Two helicopters aimed gigantic searchlights on the Temple Mount as the temperature rose, Buck guessed, into the nineties. The shin-deep hail turned to water in an instant, and the sound of it running away was like a babbling brook. Within minutes the mud turned to dust as if it were the middle of the day and the sun had baked it.
And all the while, the crowd whimpered and whined every time the circling choppers lit up the area near the Wall. Eli and Moishe had not moved an iota.
As he and Chloe and Tsion headed off to the guest rooms, Rayford thanked Lukas Miklos for his hospitality. “You are an answer to prayer, my friend.”
Tsion promised to send Miklos a list of believers in Greece. “And Mr. Miklos, would you pray with us for Chloe’s husband, Captain Steele’s son-in-law?”
“Certainly,” Miklos said, following their lead to hold hands and bow his head. When his turn came, he said, “Dear Jesus Christ, protect that boy. Amen.”
CHAPTER 14
Buck, thrilled but also grieving and exhausted, caught another cab to within two blocks of Chaim Rosenzweig’s. Still wearing his headgear, he walked close enough to see that the GC were long gone. The gateman, Jonas, dozed at his post.
Knowing neither Jonas nor Chaim professed faith yet, Buck hesitated. He knew Chaim was at least learning the truth about Carpathia and would not turn Buck in. Jonas was a gamble. Buck didn’t know if the man spoke or understood English, having heard him speak only Hebrew. The man had to know some English, didn’t he? Serving as the first contact with visitors?
Emboldened by the exhilarating challenges of Eli and Moishe, Buck took a deep breath, gently touched an itching stitched wound below his eye, and walked directly to the gatehouse. He didn’t want to startle the man, but he had to wake him. He tossed a pebble at the window. Jonas did not stir. Buck knocked lightly, then more loudly. Still he did not rouse. Finally Buck opened the door and gently touched Jonas’s arm.
A burly man in his late fifties, Jonas leaped to his feet, eyes wild. Buck whipped off his disguise, then realized his face had to look horrible. Red, blotched, swollen, stitched, he looked like a monster.
Jonas must have taken the removal of the headdress as a challenge. Unarmed, he grabbed a huge flashlight from his belt and reared back with it. Buck spun away, wincing at the very thought of a blow to his tender face. “It’s me, Jonas! Cameron Williams!”
Jonas put his free hand to his heart, forgetting to lower the flashlight. “Oh, Mr. Williams!” he said, his English so broken and labored that Buck hardly recognized his own name. Finally Jonas put the light away and used both hands to help communicate, gesturing with every phrase. “They,” he said ominously, pointing outside and waving as if to indicate a sea of people, “been looked for you.” He pointed to his own eyes.
“Me personally? Or all of us?”
Jonas looked lost. “Personal?” he said.
“Just for me?” Buck tried, realizing he was copying Jonas and pointing to himself. “Or for Tsion and my wife?”
Jonas closed his eyes, shook his head, and held up one hand, palm out. “Not here,” he said. “Tsion, wife, gone. Flying.” He fluttered his fingers in the air.
“Chaim?” Buck said.
“Sleeps.” Jo
nas demonstrated with a hand to his cheek and his eyes shut.
“May I go in and sleep, Jonas?”
The man squinted at this puzzle. “I call.” He reached for the phone.
“No! Let Chaim sleep! Tell him later.”
“Later?”
“Morning,” Buck said. “When he wakes up.” Jonas nodded, but still had his hand on the phone as if he might dial. “I’ll go in and sleep,” Buck added, acting it out like charades. “I’ll leave a note on Chaim’s door so he won’t be surprised. OK?”
“OK!”
“I’ll go in now?”
“OK!”
“All right?”
“All right!”
Buck watched Jonas while backing away and heading for the door. Jonas watched him too, let go of the phone, waved, and smiled. Buck waved, then turned and found the door locked. He had to go back and explain to Jonas that he would have to let Buck in. Finally, for the first time since the chopper had left the roof hours before, Buck could relax. He left a note on Chaim’s door with no details—just that he was in the guest room with much to tell him and that he would likely see him late morning.
Buck looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. It was worse than he thought, and he prayed the so-called clinic he had visited at least had a modicum of sterility. The stitching looked professional enough, but he was a mess. The whites of his eyes were full of blood. His face was a patchwork of colors, none close to his complexion. He was glad Chloe didn’t have to see him like this.
He locked the bedroom door, let his clothes fall by the bed, and stretched out painfully. And heard the soft chirp of his phone. It had to be Chloe, but he didn’t want to stand up again. He rolled over, reached for his pants, and as he struggled to free the phone from the back pocket, his weight shifted, and he tumbled out of bed.
He wasn’t hurt, but the racket woke Chaim. As Buck answered his phone, he heard Chaim crying over the intercom: “Jonas! Jonas! Intruders!”
By the time it was sorted out, he and Chloe were up-to-date, Chaim had heard the whole story, and the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. It was agreed that Chloe and Tsion and Rayford would go on home to Mount Prospect and that Chaim would work on finding a way for Buck to get back when he had recuperated.
Chaim was even angrier than Buck had seen him on the phone to Leon. He said the TV news had been running and rerunning the videotape of Buck talking with the GC guard who was killed a few seconds later. “The tape makes it obvious you were unarmed, that he was fine when you left him, and that you neither turned around nor returned. He fired over your head, and moments later he was spun around by bullets from high-powered rifles at close range. We all know they had to have come from the weapons of his own compatriots. But it will never get that far. It will be covered up, he will be accused of working with you or for you, and who knows what else will come of it?”
The “what else” turned out to be a news story concocted by the GC. Television reports said that an American terrorist named Kenneth Ritz had hijacked Nicolae Carpathia’s own helicopter to stage an escape by the Tsion Ben-Judah party from house arrest at Chaim Rosenzweig’s. The reports claimed Rosenzweig had hosted Ben-Judah, murder suspect Cameron Williams, and Williams’s wife and had agreed to lock them under house arrest for the GC. Scenes of Dr. Rosenzweig’s roof access door, “clearly broken from the inside show conclusively how the Americans escaped.”
A Global Community spokesman said Ritz was shot and killed by a sniper when he opened fire on GC forces at Jerusalem Airport. The other three fugitives were at large internationally, and it was assumed that Williams, a former employee of the Global Community, was an accomplished jet pilot.
The stateside members of the Tribulation Force followed the news carefully, keeping in touch with Chaim and Buck as often as possible. Rayford was amazed at the improvement in Hattie after such a short time. Her illness and despair and stubbornness had synthesized into a fierce hatred and determination. She grieved the loss of her child so deeply that Rayford was haunted by her stifled wails in the night.
Chloe, too, battled anger. “I know we should expect nothing less from the world system, Daddy,” she said, “but I feel so helpless I could explode. If we don’t find a way to get Buck back here soon, I’m going over there myself. Have you ever wished you could be the one God uses to kill Carpathia when the time comes?”
“Chloe!” Rayford said, hoping his response sounded like scolding rather than a cover for the fact that he had prayed for that very privilege. What was happening to them? What were they becoming?
Word came from Buck that Jacov had helped him get set up undercover with Stefan. Rayford felt better about that than his staying with Chaim. It was clear Global Community security forces believed Buck had escaped with the others, but living under an alias in a lower middle-class neighborhood made him less vulnerable and gave him a chance to heal. He told Rayford by phone that within a few weeks he would attempt to return to the States commercially, probably from a major European airport. “Since they’re not looking for me over here, I should be able to slip out under a phony name.”
Meanwhile, Rayford had stayed in touch with Mac McCullum and David Hassid and used David’s leads to replace everyone’s computers and add to their bag of tricks cell phones that could both access the Internet and were solar-powered and satellite-connected globally.
Tsion often expressed to Rayford his satisfaction with his new computer—a light, thin, portable laptop with every handy accessory he could even dream of needing. It was the latest, fastest, most powerful model on the market. Tsion spent most of every day communicating with his international flock, which had exploded even before the meetings in Israel and now multiplied exponentially every day.
With Hattie improving physically if not mentally, Dr. Floyd Charles had time to take Ken’s place as the Tribulation Force’s technical adviser. He installed scrambling software that kept their phones and computers untraceable.
The toughest chore for Rayford was dealing with his emotions over Ken. He knew they all missed him, and Tsion’s message at a brief memorial service left them all in tears. Chloe spent two days on the Internet searching for surviving relatives and turned up nothing. Rayford informed Ernie at Palwaukee, who promised to pass the word to the staff there and secure Ken’s belongings until Rayford could get there to assess them. He said nothing to Ernie about Ken’s gold stash, knowing that the two, while fellow believers, had not known each other long.
Buck bought a computer so he could log onto the Net and study under Tsion without having to strain to see the tiny screen of his phone. But he was unable to find untraceable software that would allow him to communicate with Chloe except by phone. He missed her terribly but was pleased to hear she and the unborn baby were healthy, though she admitted Doc had expressed some concern over her fragility.
She kept busy building a business model based on Ken Ritz’s notes. Within a month, she told Buck, she hoped to run the business by computer, networking believers around the globe. “Some will plant and reap,” she said. “Others will market and sell. It’s our only hope once the mark of the beast is required for legal trade.” She told him her first order of business was enlisting growers, producers, and suppliers. Once that was in place, she would expand the market.
“But what about when you have a baby to take care of?” he said.
“I hope my husband will be home by then,” she said. “He has nothing to manage but a little alternative Internet magazine, so I’ll teach him.”
“Teach him what? Your business or child care?”
“Both,” she said.
Late one Friday she mentioned to Buck on the phone that Rayford was planning to visit Palwaukee Airport the next day. “He’s going to look at Ken’s planes and try to get to know this Ernie kid better. He might be a good mechanic, but Ken hardly knew him.”
That night Buck logged on to find Tsion’s teaching for the day. The rabbi seemed down, but Buck realized that people who di
dn’t know him personally probably wouldn’t notice. He wrote about the heartbreak of losing friends and family and loved ones. He didn’t mention Ken by name, but Buck read between the lines.
Tsion concluded his teaching for the day by reminding his readers that they had recently passed the twenty-four-month mark since the signing of the peace pact between the Global Community (known two years before as the United Nations) and the State of Israel. “I remind you, my dear brothers and sisters, that we are but a year and a half from what the Scriptures call the Great Tribulation. It has been hard, worse than hard, so far. We have survived the worst two years in the history of our planet, and this next year and a half will be worse. But the last three and a half years of this period will make the rest seem like a garden party.”
Buck smiled at Tsion’s insistence at always ending with a word of encouragement, regardless of the hard truth he had to convey. He closed by quoting Luke 21: “‘There will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.’”
The next morning at seven in Israel, Buck was watching a television news report of Nicolae Carpathia’s response to Eli and Moishe, who were still wreaking havoc in Jerusalem. The reporter quoted Supreme Commander Leon Fortunato, speaking for the potentate, “His Excellency has decreed the preachers enemies of the world system and has authorized Peter the Second, supreme pontiff of Enigma Babylon One World Faith, to dispose of the criminals as he sees fit. The potentate does not believe, and I agree, that he should involve himself personally in matters that should be under the purview of the Global Community’s religious division. His Excellency told me just last night, and I quote, ‘Unless, that is, we discover that our Pontifex Maximus is impotent when it comes to dealing with those who use trickery and mass hypnosis to paralyze an entire country.’”