“Wait here,” Rayford said, shifting into park in front of Leah’s garage.
“Rayford! No! Let’s get back!”
He leapt out. “Yeah, I’m gonna leave that kind of money . . .”
“Please!” she called after him.
Rayford strode past bodies and into the garage. He zipped up the sack and just managed to hoist it over his shoulder. Walking through smoke and flames he neither smelled nor felt, he pushed the bag into the back of the Rover and slid behind the wheel. As he pulled away, he looked at Leah. “Welcome to the Trib Force,” he said. She merely shook her head, still holding her ribs.
Rayford speed dialed the safe house. He turned again to Leah. “Better buckle up,” he said.
Mac slipped past the Fortunato party as they were being served and left the plane to monitor fueling. That allowed him to watch the cargo transfer. Abdullah opened the hatch, and a squadron of forklift trucks buzzed onto the tarmac, up the aluminum ramp, and into the belly of the plane. While Fortunato was eating, 144 computers and more than a ton of foodstuffs were smuggled off the GC’s own Condor 216 and would be appropriated by their enemy before sunset. Brilliant, Abdullah, Mac thought. Nothing like breakfast to keep the supreme commander oblivious.
Buck awoke when Chloe answered the phone.
“What time is it?” he said.
She pointed to the clock, which read 12:30.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s Daddy.”
“His note said he and Leah—”
She shushed him again.
“Outside?” she said. “Why? . . . All right! I’ll do it. . . . Tsion? Are you serious? You want me to wake him? . . . Well, hurry!”
She hung up.
“Buck, get up.”
“What? Why?”
“Come on. Daddy wants you to wake Tsion and look out the window.”
“What in—”
“Hurry! He and Leah are on their way.”
“What are we looking for?”
“The 200 million horsemen.”
“It’s started? You can see them?”
“Get Tsion!”
Airborne again, Mac asked Abdullah to oversee the controls. “I want to see if Leon starts talking strategy.”
He reached back to be sure the door was locked, unbuckled his seat belt, slouched in his seat, shut his eyes, and depressed the bug switch. One of Fortunato’s aides was trying to impress the boss.
“It’ll be so neat when he finds out Carpathia’s not here, and that it’s just you on the plane.”
“I didn’t just hear you refer to the potentate by merely his last—”
“I’m sorry, Commander. I meant His Excellency, the potentate. I would love to be there when Ngumo discovers that Potentate Rehoboth not only knows about the meeting, but that he has also been invited.”
The other aide waded in. “What’s the point of this trip if you’re just going to put Ngumo in his place?”
“A valid question,” Leon said. “Naive, but valid. First, this is a particularly clever way to do it. It’s not just an insult; it’s a stinging insult. Despite our smiles and subservient attitudes, there will be no doubt in his mind that this is a slap in the face. It’s not a meeting with His Excellency. It’s not even a face-to-face with the supreme commander in private. He will get nothing he asks for and will be told to like it. It could have been done by phone, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. Anyway, this is an alliance-building mission.”
“With Rehoboth?”
“Of course. It is crucial that His Excellency be confident of his regional potentates. A few more accommodations to Bindura, and we’ll guarantee his loyalty. There are rumors of insurrection, but we’re dead certain of six potentates, 90 percent sure of Rehoboth, and not so sure of the other three. They will be in line by the time of the disposition of the Jerusalem problem, or they will be replaced.”
“The Jerusalem problem?”
“Don’t disappoint me. You have worked hand and glove with me this long and you don’t know what I mean when I refer to the Jer—”
“The two witnesses.”
“Well, yes . . . no! That’s what the rebels call them. And they call themselves some biblical thing, lampstands or trees or some such. Don’t stoop to their terms. They are the crazy preachers, the wall-bangers, the—”
That last had sent the aides into paroxysms of laughter, which served only to start Leon on a string of comments he thought funny. To listen to his yes-men, he had only underestimated his comedic gift. Mac was shaking his head at the absurdity when Abdullah startled him with a slap across the chest.
Mac straightened up as if snapped with a wet towel. “I’m sorry,” Abdullah shouted, “but look! Look! Oh! It was there!”
“What?” Mac said. With the sun climbing behind them to the left, the cloudless expanse before them appeared an endless clear blue. Mac saw nothing, and so now, apparently, did Abdullah.
“I saw something, Captain. I swear I did.”
“I don’t doubt you. What was it?”
“You’d doubt me if I told you.” Abdullah’s eyes were still wide. He leaned forward and looked in every direction.
“Try me.”
“An army.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A cavalry, I mean.”
“Abdullah, you’re not even looking at the ground.”
“I would not have woken you if I saw something on the ground!”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“I expect to see horses on the ground!”
“You saw horses in the sky?”
“Horses and riders.”
“There aren’t even clouds.”
“I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I believe you think you saw something.”
“You might as well call me a liar.”
“Never. Clearly, you thought you saw something. You weren’t napping. Were you?”
“Now I am a liar and asleep on the job?”
Mac laughed. “If you say you saw something, I believe you.”
“It didn’t look like 200 million, but—”
“Ah, you’ve been reading Tsion’s lesson—”
“Of course. Who hasn’t?”
Mac cocked his head. “You were daydreaming, maybe dozing. Don’t look at me like that. I’m saying just for a split second, thinking about Dr. Ben-Judah’s message—”
“You are going to offend me if you continue this, Captain.”
Mac clapped Abdullah on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, brother. You have to admit it’s possible.”
Abdullah shrank from Mac’s hand. “You have to admit it’s possible I saw horses and riders.”
Mac smiled. “What were they doing? Staging? Marshaling for the big parade?”
“Captain! You’re insulting me!”
“C’mon, Abdullah! Tsion says the horses and riders come from the pit, same as the locusts. What would they be doing up here?”
Abdullah looked disgusted and turned away.
“Do you think I’d insult you on purpose?” Mac said.
No response.
“Well, do you?”
Abdullah was silent.
“Now you’re going to pout.”
“I’m not familiar with pout.”
“Well,” Mac said, “for not being familiar with it, you’re pretty good at it.”
“If pout means being angry at someone you thought was your friend and brother, then I’m pout.”
Mac laughed aloud. “You’re pout? May I call you pout? This is my friend and brother, pout!”
And before Mac could blink, horses and riders blotted out the sky. Abdullah jerked the controls and the plane tilted nearly straight up, pinning Mac to his seat. He heard crashing and banging in the galley and lounge. Then Leon crying out.
Just as Mac realized he was going to regret being unbuckled, Abdullah overadjusted, and the plane dipped. Mac slammed into the ceiling, full force, turning his face just in time to take the damage
on the left side of his head. Control knobs broke off, tearing his flesh and piercing his ear. Blood splattered onto the windshield and control panel.
Abdullah finally brought the craft under control and sat staring straight ahead. “I did not do that to get back at you for sporting with me,” he said, his voice shaky. “If you did not see what I almost hit, I am terribly sorry and hope you are not seriously injured.”
“I saw them plain as day,” Mac said, his heart thundering. “I’ll never doubt you again. I’ve got to stop the bleeding. If you see them again, don’t try to avoid them. Keep her steady. They’re floating around in space. You’re not going to hit them.”
“My apologies. It was instinct.”
“I understand.”
“Are you all right, Captain?”
“Not totally, but it’s superficial, I’m sure.”
“Good,” Abdullah said. He mimicked a flight attendant: “You should always keep your belt fastened when you are in your seat, even when the seat belt light has been turned off.”
Mac rolled his eyes.
“Now is it time for you to be pout?” Abdullah said.
Mac stood and reached for the door, just as someone banged on it from the other side.
CHAPTER 9
Buck apologized profusely to Tsion, explaining, “Rayford and Leah went to her place to get something and just now called to tell us to look out the window.”
Tsion, his hair wild, pulled on a robe and followed Buck downstairs. Chloe, holding Kenny, stood before the windows facing west. “Maybe we need the lights off,” she said. “I see nothing.”
“What are we looking for?” Tsion said.
“The 200 million horsemen,” she said.
Tsion rushed to the front of the house and pulled back the curtain. “I would not be disappointed if God moved up the Glorious Appearing a few years,” he said. “Must be cloudy. No stars. Where is the moon?”
“Back here,” Buck said.
“I cannot imagine Rayford was serious,” Tsion said, rejoining Buck and Chloe.
“He was excited,” Chloe said. “Scared even.”
Buck moseyed out the back door and looked east, where the horizon glowed red. “Wonder if this is it,” he called out.
“Something is burning somewhere,” Tsion said wearily. “But isn’t Mrs. Rose’s home in the other direction?”
“I ought to drive that way and see what I can see,” Buck said.
It was clear Chloe didn’t like that idea. “Let’s wait and see. It’s not worth the risk if it’s just a fire.”
The phone rang. Chloe handed the fussing Kenny to Buck and hurried to get it. “No, Dad,” she said. “Maybe fires in the east. . . . Are you sure it’s begun? . . . Here, talk to Tsion.”
As soon as Mac unlatched the cockpit door, Leon barged in, disheveled, swearing.
“A little turbulence,” Mac said.
“Turbulence?! What’s with the smoke, the smell? I’ve got a man down, and Karl says one of his people is unconscious! We’ve got to land, man! We’re going to suffocate! And you’re bleeding!”
Mac followed him into the lounge, where one of Leon’s aides frantically pumped the chest of the other. Karl screamed from the galley, “We’re all going to die!”
Leon covered his own mouth with a handkerchief, gagging and coughing. “Sulfur! Where’s that coming from! That’s poison, isn’t it? Won’t it kill us?”
Mac smelled nothing. He would check the control panel, but the Condor had supersensitive smoke and fume alarms, none of which had engaged. Mac knew he’d look suspicious if he were not also suffering. He covered his mouth. “I’ll turn up the ventilation system,” he said, as Karl dragged his fallen worker from the galley. “Get those two into the sleeping quarters. There are enough oxygen canisters for everyone.”
“Isn’t there somewhere we can land?” Leon said.
“I’ll find out,” Mac said.
“Hurry!”
He rushed back into the cockpit and locked the door. “What’s going on?” Abdullah said. “You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“I’m all right,” Mac said. “Those horses have power up here, even inside a pressurized cabin. Everybody smells sulfur, they’re gagging, using oxygen, passing out. Leon wants us to land.”
“We should go straight on to Johannesburg,” Abdullah said, working with Mac to check every gauge. “What is affecting them is not coming from this plane. They’d be no better off on the ground.”
“They could get medical treatment.”
Abdullah looked at Mac. “So could you, but if they are being plagued by the 200 million horsemen, no medicine will save them.”
“What’s our ETA?”
“Several hours.”
Mac shook his head, his wounds making him wince. “We’re going to have to put down or Leon is going to find out we’re invulnerable.”
Abdullah pointed to the controls, Mac took over, and Abdullah pulled charts from his flight bag.
“They will be here any minute,” Tsion said, hanging up from Rayford. “The plagues of fire and smoke and sulfur have begun. I did not expect this, but the horsemen are visible, at least to some. Rayford and Mrs. Rose saw them. And unbelievers are being slain.”
Buck turned on the television.
“Mayday! Mayday!” Mac heard over the radio.
“This is Condor, go ahead.”
“Mayday! My pilot is dead! I’m choking! Cockpit full of smoke. Agh! The smell! I can’t see! We’re losing it! Going down!”
“What’s your location?”
But all Mac heard was the unnerving wailing. This was like the day of the Rapture, only now it was unbelieving pilots whose planes would be lost, maybe a third of them.
Mayday calls filled the frequency. Mac was helpless. He was also light-headed. He switched to a news radio feed. “No one has an answer yet to the puzzling rash of fires, outbreaks of smoke, and noxious, sulfur-smelling emissions killing thousands all over the globe,” the newsman said. “Emergency medical professionals are at a loss, frantic to determine the cause. Here’s the head of the Global Community Emergency Management Association, Dr. Jurgen Haase.”
“If this were isolated, we might attribute it to a natural disaster, a rupture of some natural gas source. But it seems random, and clearly the fumes are lethal. We urge citizens to use gas masks and work together to extinguish spontaneous fires.”
The newsman asked, “Which is more dangerous, the black smoke or the yellow?”
Haase said, “First we believed the black smoke emanated from the fires, but it appears to be independent. It can be deadly, but the yellow smells of sulfur and has the power to kill instantly.”
The reporter said he had just been handed a bulletin, and he sounded terrified. “While there are pockets in which no fire or smoke or sulfur have been reported, in other areas the death count is staggering, now estimated in the hundreds of thousands. His Excellency, Global Community Potentate Nicolae Carpathia, will address the world via radio and television and the Internet inside this half hour.”
Abdullah shoved a map under Mac’s nose. “We are equidistant from airports that can handle a heavy in both Addis Ababa and Khartoum.”
“It’s up to Leon,” Mac said. “He’s the one who wants to land.”
Abdullah took over again, and Mac emerged from the cockpit to find Leon on the phone. Mac grabbed a cloth napkin from the galley, soaked it, and held it to his ear. He tossed another damp cloth into the cockpit so Abdullah could wipe down the window and panel.
“One moment, Excellency,” Leon said, “the captain needs me. . . . Yes, I’ll ask.” Leon covered the phone. “His Excellency asks where we are.”
“Over the Red Sea. We can either—”
Leon held up a hand to silence Mac and told Carpathia. He handed the phone to Mac. “The potentate wishes to speak with you.”
“What is your plan, Captain?”
Mac told him the options.
“Can you not turn back t
o either Mecca or somewhere in Yemen?”
“They have no strip that will handle a craft this large, sir.”
“Addis Ababa is in what used to be Ethiopia,” Carpathia said, as if to himself.
“Correct,” Mac said. “Khartoum is in old Sudan.”
“Go there. I will contact Potentate Rehoboth in South Af—, in Johannesburg and have him ensure that his people in Sudan extend every courtesy. If you are then able to complete this journey, it will be very beneficial to the cause.”
“May I ask how things are there?”
“Here? We have lost dozens, and the stench is abominable. I am convinced this is chemical warfare, but it will not surprise me if the opposition claims some supernatural source.”
“Me either . . . sir.”
“The Jerusalem Twosome are already carrying on about it.”
“Sir?”
“My new name for them. You like it?”
Mac did not respond. People were dying all over the world, and Carpathia was playing word games.
“They are, of course, taking credit for what is happening,” Carpathia said. “That makes my job easier. Their day will come, and the world will thank me.”
Buck sat in front of the TV with Tsion and Chloe, waiting for Rayford and Leah. From countries in daylight came images of fire and billowing smoke, people gagging, gasping, coughing, falling. Panic.
The phone rang. It was Mac calling for Rayford. Buck filled him in and was stunned to hear Mac and Abdullah’s account. Mac told him of Carpathia’s nickname for the two witnesses.
“He’s about to come on TV,” Buck said. “I’ll have Rayford call you.”
Rayford and Leah pulled in as Carpathia was being introduced. The stateside Trib Force sat before the TV, watching cosmic history. Tsion stood and paced as Carpathia solemnly looked into the camera. The potentate was at his typically parental best, assuring the horrified masses that “the situation will soon be under control. We have mobilized every resource. Meanwhile, I ask citizens of the Global Community to report suspicious activity, particularly the manufacture or transport of noxious agents. Sadly, we have reason to believe that this massacre of innocent lives is being perpetrated by religious dissidents to whom we have extended every courtesy. Though they cross us at every turn, we have defended their right to dissent. Yet they continue to see the Global Community as an enemy. They feel they have a right to maintain an intolerant, close-minded cult that excludes anyone who disagrees.