“Do you find yourself asking the same today? I say to you as Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’
“Oh, children of Israel around the globe, I am being signaled that our enemy is close to wresting back control of this network. Should I be cut off, trust me, you already know enough to put your faith in Christ as the Messiah.
“Not knowing when this signal shall fade, let me close by reading to you one of the most loved and powerful prophecies concerning Messiah that was ever written. And should my voice be silenced, you may find it and read it for yourself in Isaiah 53. And remember, this was written more than seven hundred years before the birth of Christ!
“‘Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
“‘Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
“‘He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
“‘Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.’”
During the broadcast, Chang had superimposed on the screen a Web site where those who were making decisions to receive Christ could let Dr. Rosenzweig know at Petra. Even before the GC reclaimed control of the television network, the Web site was being overrun with such messages. Millions around the world, most of them Jews, were acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah and putting their faith in Him for their salvation.
Mac was always moved by Scripture, and all the more so now to see Nicolae Carpathia, Antichrist himself, and his False Prophet, Leon Fortunato, squirm so.
“I wonder,” Nicolae said, “how many died in Al Hillah before we succeeded in pushing the pirates off the gangplank. Who was the next one standing, now in charge?
“Well, let me tell you something. These people can say what they want, preach what they want, believe what they want. But if they have not taken my mark, not sworn their allegiance to the living god of this world, they shall surely die. This man appeals to the Jews, the dogs of society, the ones I have declared my enemies from the first. Meanwhile I have cut them down like a rotted harvest all over the world.
“And while my assassin sits temporarily free, hiding like a coward behind stone walls, my armies are decimating his wretched brothers and sisters in their so-called Holy City. After we have stormed Petra and laid waste to our enemies there, we shall return to complete the taking of Jerusalem. The resistance thinks they own the surface above where we even now reside, but their options are gone. They have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
“Let their Savior appear! I welcome Him. I will cut Him down like a dog and ascend to my rightful throne.”
Mac’s thighs ached and quivered with fatigue. The wall behind him had lost its coolness, and he couldn’t figure it. Had his body heat finally tempered the subterranean effect? No, something was happening. The temperature was rising. How could that be? What would cause it?
Even Carpathia, immune to hunger and fatigue and thirst since his resurrection, if the reports could be believed, noticed. He tugged at his collar. “What has happened to the air-conditioning?”
“None is needed, Excellency,” Leon said. “We are forty feet below the sur—”
“I know where we are! I want to know why the temperature has risen. Do you not feel it?”
“Of course I do, exalted one. But there is no source of heat here. It has always remained a constant of—”
“Will you silence yourself! The temperature has risen, and even our collective body heat should not have resulted in that much difference.”
Could it be? Mac wondered. Was there a chance this was a sign of the imminent return? Might Jesus appear even here, in the lair of His enemy? “Lord, please!”
Maybe outside the sun had darkened.
Rayford shielded his eyes and squinted into the sky. Not one cloud. The sun had finally coursed far enough to see the temperature drop, perhaps more than ten degrees, since its brutal noontime peak. Rayford gratefully accepted Abdullah’s offer of his cap, which was a little small but served its purpose.
“If we’re not going to be able to carry you to Petra,” Leah said, “we at least need to sit you up. Can you manage it?”
“I can’t imagine,” Rayford said. “But I know you’re right. I’ll need help.”
“You’re going to be dizzy,” Leah said, which proved an understatement. When she and Abdullah sat him up, blood rushed so quickly from Rayford’s head that he felt he’d lost his bearings, though he was still firmly planted—albeit on his seat now—in the shallow grave of his own making.
“Whoa,” Rayford whispered.
“When you’re steady,” she said, “tell me what hurts most.”
“I can tell you that now. The ankle. Then the shin. Then the hand.”
“I’ll take them in order,” she said, “but it’s all going to be temporary and makeshift. It’s not what I would want done if I had you in a sterile environment and could do an MRI.”
As Leah cleansed and anesthetized the ankle, which had a gaping gash and obvious damage inside, she said, “A surgeon will want to work on the bone before closing this up, but you don’t need sand and air in it.” She cut away dead and damaged skin that could not be salvaged and sutured it in such a way that it could easily be accessed again.
“This is going to hurt,” she said, cutting away his khaki pants below the left knee and examining his shin with both hands. “No doubt you have a fracture, but this is not an easy bone to set. I can give it a try, but only before I numb it. You up to it?”
“I have a choice?”
“No. We may have to try to put you on one of our bikes, and without this set and splinted, you’ll pass out from the pain.”
“And what about the pain from your trying to set it?”
“No promises.”
Rayford had been severely injured before, but he could not remember agony like this. Leah failed in her first attempt to set the shinbone, but she simply said, “Sorry, I can get it,” and took another run at it. Despite a wad of gauze to chew on, Rayford screamed loud enough—he feared—to alert the Unity Army. Even once the bone was clearly in place, his leg hurt so badly that it jumped and quivered for more than ten minutes as he fought to keep from whimpering.
“I’ll let that settle down some before applying a splin
t,” Leah said.
“You’re so kind,” he said, and elicited a smile from her.
The splint, fortunately, was inflatable plastic and once in place provided enough stability that the pain finally started to subside. Leah busied herself cleaning and dressing the wounds on the heel of his hand, his chin, and on both arms and both knees.
“I’m going to look a sight,” he said. “Better not let Kenny see me until some of this stuff is off.”
George Sebastian was relieved to know that Rayford had been found alive, but he had to wonder how busted up his boss must be. More pressing, he was uneasy about what the Unity Army was up to. They had closed the mile gap by half, advancing on his position so slowly that the maneuver had taken hours. And now they were stopped. If it was some sort of psychological warfare, it was working. Sebastian’s people were spooked.
It was as if this roiling armada, fronted by the hundreds of thousands of mounted horsemen, was just waiting for one word from Antichrist to either open fire or charge. Bothering Big Dog One most was that he now had to turn his head more than 120 degrees just to take in the breadth of the fighting force he faced. And regardless of how high he could place himself, he could never see its full depth. The end of this army literally blotted out the horizon.
Mac was as stunned as Leon clearly was when Carpathia said, “I need a chair. Get me a chair!”
Nicolae rarely sat anymore. He was known not to have eaten or slept in three and a half years, persuading loyalists he was the true and living God, and confirming to his enemies that he was indeed Antichrist, indwelt by Satan. His rage was legendary. But no one had seen a weakness or physical frailty in him.
And now he needed a chair?
Leon Fortunato leaped from his own and slid it behind the potentate, who shakily sat. Nicolae tore at his collar and unbuttoned his shirt, feebly fanning himself with his hand. “Allow me, Excellency,” Fortunato said, and he knelt and grabbed the hem of his own ostentatious robe, lifted it to his waist, and began fanning the potentate.
Normally Carpathia would quickly tire of such obsequiousness, but he actually appeared panicky and grateful. But when Leon turned to ask Viv Ivins to pour Nicolae a glass of water, his garish fez slipped off and landed in the blousy folds of his skirt. His next tug tightened the fabric and launched the hat into Carpathia’s lap.
“Oh!” Leon cried out. “Oh, Majesty! Forgive me!” He lurched forward and tried to retrieve the fez, succeeding only in knocking it out of Nicolae’s lap and onto the floor on his other side. Leon’s momentum carried him over the potentate, and now he was stretched out across the ailing world leader, his ample belly in his boss’s lap. He grabbed the hat with both hands, and as he rocked back to his feet he jammed it atop his head again, uttering every apology imaginable.
Mac was certain Nicolae would execute his right-hand man for such a breach of etiquette, but he appeared to have hardly noticed. Carpathia was in trouble. Viv Ivins finally got a glass of water in front of him, but by now his hands were at his sides and his usually ruddy countenance had paled.
Leon grabbed the water and held it to Carpathia’s lips as the fez began to tumble yet again. This time Leon angrily batted it away with his free hand and it toppled to the floor behind them. Carpathia could barely manage to open his mouth, water sloshing down his chin.
“Get paramedics in here!” Leon squealed. “Someone, please! Hurry!”
CHAPTER 5
Sweat trickled down Mac’s back. The temperature was rising, almost as if there was a fire below the Temple Mount. With Carpathia having his own problems, Unity Army sentries fell out of attention and wiped their brows, tugged at their shirts and jackets, and traded looks as if to ask what was going on.
Mac turned and leaned out the arched opening at the sound of shouts. Whatever this was, it was widespread. And suddenly, the stables were in chaos. Unfettered horses broke free from their handlers, neighing, spooking each other into a stampede that had nowhere to go. Stablemen tossed lassos but found themselves pulled off the ground when the steeds reared, and then thrown to the ground when they took off, horses jostling horses, fighting for space to get through the arches.
Men and women were trampled, some to death, but when a shortsighted soldier fired into the air, things only got worse. More than a thousand full-size Thoroughbreds were manic and terrified. Following their instincts, they tried to flee, crushing anything in their path, including each other.
Mac saw great equine shoulders ripped open as horses were crushed against the stone walls. He heard legs snapping, saw horses nipping and biting each other, and soon it was a free-for-all.
“Where’s the fire?” someone shouted. Many must have heard only “fire,” for it was repeated and repeated, soldiers screaming it all over the underground. Mac saw no flame, smelled no smoke. But he heard “Fire!” “Fire!” “Fire!” and like the rest, his instinct was to head for the surface.
But a commander nudged him back into the room with the barrel of a nuclear submachine gun. “There is no fire!” he announced. “Every soldier in this room has a job, and that is to protect the potentate. That is what we shall do. No one enters; no one leaves.”
“Permission to speak, Commander,” came from a corner.
“Granted.”
“What is causing the heat?”
“No idea, but let everyone else kill themselves trying to escape a fire that doesn’t exist. You’re not going to best a twelve-hundred-pound horse that wants your space anyway, so stay here and do your job.”
“What’s wrong with the potentate?”
“How should I know?”
“Are the paramedics coming?”
“I don’t know how they’d get here. But you can bet no one else will get in. If this is a plot against His Excellency, it stops right here. Now come to attention! Weapons at the ready!”
Mac had never liked being underground, but up till now this foray had not brought on claustrophobia. The sheer size of the area had given him room to move and breathe. But now, outside the only room where everyone remained still, pandemonium reigned. There would be no escape, no freedom, no daylight, no air, no lessening of the heat, even if he opened fire and killed everyone around him and made a break for the surface. What was happening on the dirt ramp and the wood stairs dwarfed mass tragedies due to fire in crowded buildings. Even without an actual fire, this was going to be catastrophic.
With his safety turned off and his firing finger on the trigger, Mac fought to maintain his composure, remaining at attention, staring straight at Carpathia, sweat running freely now inside his uniform.
Nicolae looked wasted. His formerly full head of hair appeared somehow sparse now. His clear, piercing eyes were bloodshot and droopy. His face was sallow, and though it made no sense, Mac believed he could see veins spidering across the man’s face, framing his hollow eyes.
Carpathia’s fingers looked thin, his skin papery, his shoulders bony. It was as if he had lost fifty pounds in minutes. His pale, bluish lips were parted, and his teeth and gums showed . . . the mouth of a dead man.
“You must drink, Excellency!” Fortunato whined.
“I am spent,” Carpathia said, and though Mac could barely hear him, his was clearly not the voice Mac had come to recognize. His words seemed hollow, faint, echoey, as if he spoke from a dungeon far away. “Hungry,” Carpathia said flatly. “Exhausted. Dead.”
No doubt he meant that last as a figure of speech, but to Mac he did look dead. Were his skin any worse he could have passed for a decomposing corpse. Even his ears had lost color and appeared translucent.
In the next instant, Mac found himself on his knees, shielding his eyes from the brightest light he had ever experienced. It reminded him of a science experiment in junior high more than fifty years before when he and his classmates wore heavily tinted goggles as they ignited magnesium strips.
Mac peeked to find that he was not the only soldier on the ground. Most had pitched forward onto their stomachs, weapons rattlin
g to the floor. Whatever the source radiating from the middle of the table, it lit the room like the noon sun.
“Beautiful! Beautiful!” people whispered, interlaced with the oohs and aahs associated with fireworks displays. All the dignitaries had thrust their chairs back from the table and covered their eyes, peeking through fingers to gaze on this magnificent appearance, whatever it was.
Mac pushed himself up and rocked back on his haunches, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the initially blinding radiance. As he squatted there, hands on his weapon again, it was clear why so many thought this . . . this apparition was so striking. It seemed to hover inches above the table, directly in the center, such a bright gold-tinged white that you could not take your eyes from it. It shone with such brilliance that no detail was clear, from the bottom to the top of what appeared to be a roughly six-foot human form. There was no way to tell whether it—if it was a humanoid being—wore shoes or clothes or was naked.
Gradually Mac realized he was looking at the back of a being that faced Carpathia and Fortunato. Flowing blond hair came into view, but it appeared that the rest of the body would remain a mystery to the human eye. Clearly, this was not the Glorious Appearing of Christ, as Mac knew He was to return on the clouds with His faithful behind Him.
Viv Ivins’s chair was empty, but Mac could hear her moaning in ecstasy on the floor.
Leon was also on the floor, head buried in his hands, rocking, weeping.
Carpathia had fallen forward in his borrowed chair, his cheek on the table, arms outstretched, palms flat. “Oh, my lord, my god, and my king,” his death-rattle voice repeated over and over.
From outside the room Mac heard the awful, terrifying sounds of death. Panic, screams and screeches, pleading, bones being crushed, air pushed from lungs, horses snuffling and caterwauling as other, smaller creatures might do.
Pitiful, lonely cries could be heard from grown men and women. “Save me! Oh, God, save me! I don’t want to die!”