“Rubber bullets?”
“Maybe.” Rubber bullets or not, Ethan knew that a shot to his skull from one of those would knock him out, and could even be fatal. And a hit anywhere else would certainly disable him. “They must want us alive.”
“What’s the plan?”
Ethan surreptitiously glanced around. They were standing about five feet from the wrought-iron fence at the edge of the building’s flat rooftop. “You slide down the rope. I’ll handle the illustrated man with the gun.”
“I thought you were the master rope climber.”
“But you’re the old guy. Age before . . . whatever.”
“Shut up!” the tattoo guy yelled. Without warning he fired his pistol, winging Ethan in the thigh. Ethan howled, grabbing his leg. He grunted to Louder, “Yeah, rubber bullets. Get down the rope. Meet me at the Acropolis.”
The two bounty hunters were now about five feet away. Louder turned and launched himself over the fence, sliding down the rope. The tattooed shooter aimed for him, but Ethan leapt forward and buried his head in the man’s midriff, taking him to the ground as the pistol clattered out of his hand. The tattoo guy gasped for air, the wind knocked out of him.
The tall man with the ponytail jumped into the fray and locked his arm around Ethan’s throat from behind. Ethan grabbed the ponytail and tossed the man over his shoulder, sending him onto his back with a smack.
Struggling to his feet, Ethan began to limp toward the edge of the building. But the tattoo guy had recovered enough to catch him by the ankle and trip him. As Ethan jumped to his feet again he saw Mr. Ponytail scrambling over to the pistol. Ethan hobbled toward the fence, coming within a couple of inches of the rope before the tattooed bounty hunter caught up to him and wrestled him to the ground. As the two men struggled, Ethan caught a glimpse of Ponytail picking up the pistol. An instant later the man had the multibarrelled gun in his hand and with three shots left was running full speed toward Ethan.
It was now or never. Ethan punched his assailant solidly in the face, knocking him out. As the ponytailed gunman ran toward him, Ethan lifted up the listless bounty hunter and held him like a shield. Mr. Ponytail fired and hit the bleary-eyed tattoo guy squarely in the back. With a low groan he registered the strike, now only semiconscious.
Ethan dropped him and vaulted over the fence to rappel down the rope. By the time he reached the porch of the second floor below, Mr. Ponytail was aiming his gun down at him. Ethan swung himself out of sight onto the patio.
An elderly couple sat there on the deck in folding chairs. They watched him, wide-eyed with mouths agape.
“Folks,” Ethan announced hurriedly, “you’d better go inside.” He pointed to the sliding door that led to their little porch. “Stay there for your safety. I’m borrowing one of your chairs.”
The elderly man nodded hesitantly, like he was trying to understand. He and his wife rose unsteadily to their feet, Ethan helping the wife until she had both feet planted beneath her, and made their way into their apartment.
Ethan snatched up a folding chair and collapsed it. He stepped up to the edge of the patio and waited. Two seconds later Ponytail came sliding down the rope with his gun now jammed in his pocket. When he saw Ethan staring back at him, he grabbed frantically at the weapon, trying to yank it out of his pocket as he swung back and forth on the rope.
Ethan raised the folding chair. “Stop persecuting God’s people.” He swung the metal chair and smacked it into the man’s midsection. Mr. Ponytail dropped off of the rope and fell straight down, clipping through an awning and finally landing on his back on the roof of a car.
Ethan grabbed the rope and finished rappelling down to the sidewalk below. The ponytailed thug was rolling around in pain on the car’s roof like a turtle on its back. Reaching into his pocket, Ethan pulled out a gospel tract and tossed it onto the man’s chest. “Read that,” he said to him. “Seriously. You’re on the wrong side. There’s still time to turn your life around.”
Then he placed under the windshield wiper of the car a few old-fashioned international CReDO currency bills. He’d heard a few merchants were still accepting those remnants of the last one-world currency that had been in circulation before the world’s money system went totally digital. Those bills would cover the damage to the car roof. He felt bad about the torn awning, but there was nothing he could do about that now.
He limped across the street to another apartment complex and made his way through the lobby to a back entrance that led to an alley. He’d have to use a staggered route for the first part of his walk up to the Acropolis to avoid detection. He was feeling the heat from the Global Alliance in Athens.
Only one thing to do: After the meeting, time to leave the area and relocate.
Ethan made his way to Therios Street, where it took a steep turn up to the Acropolis and its overshadowing marble structures, the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena—monuments to the long-dead prestige of pagan Athens. Therios Street would put him in the wide open, but there wasn’t any other way to get there. Once up among the ancient ruins, things might be safer, at least on the ground. With the devastating effect of worldwide depression, tourism was a bust. The grounds surrounding the ancient sites were usually vacant, except for hordes of homeless people sleeping under trees.
As Ethan glanced up at the familiar remnants of ancient Greece where he would meet Louder and Gikas, he began to silently pray. For a successful meeting. For some way to provide a financial system for millions of new Jesus Remnant members around the world. And for some way to protect them as long as he could while the rest of the world continued to collapse.
THREE
When Ethan arrived at the large rock outcropping near the ancient ruins of the Acropolis, Louder and Gikas were there, along with a big, ominous-looking “assistant” who Ethan took to be the bodyguard. Gikas, a short, stocky man with bushy eyebrows, announced that he was the local agent for Jo Li, the reputed mastermind behind an underground network for buying and selling. But Gikas looked distracted. He kept nervously scanning the sky. When Ethan started to dialogue, Gikas put up his hand to silence him. Gikas craned his head quickly back and forth, surveying the Acropolis. After a moment he said, “I thought I heard one of them.”
“One what?” Ethan asked.
“One of those Global Alliance drone-bots they use for flyovers. Very little armed security on the ground here in the ruins.”
“We’ve noticed that,” Louder said.
“Yeah, now they are doing it from the air,” Gikas continued. “They use the drones for nontaggers like you guys.”
Gikas launched into a diatribe on the problems that global surveillance had created. Everyone—and especially Ethan—knew what Gikas was talking about. Ethan didn’t need a lecture on the dilemma of nontaggers who, like his own group, had refused to receive a BIDTag—the invisible, biological identification tattoo with a hidden QR code, required by force of law to be lasered onto the backs of hands or on the foreheads of every citizen on the planet, including those in America. People had been told it was for homeland security purposes. But with the onslaught of global depression, the BIDTag had been converted for another use as a human debit card—a cashless, worldwide electronic system for payment and banking.
When they’d worked shoulder to shoulder in Israel, Josh Jordan had continually drilled Ethan on the significance of those events. Josh kept reminding his younger apprentice how it fit into the tapestry of Bible prophecy. So when Josh and his family were raptured, Ethan was already trained to understand “the signs of the times,” as Josh would put it: the geopolitical events happening around the world and in the United States. Like the fact that the United States Congress had voted to join the world’s universal payment scheme, but President Hank Hewbright had promptly vetoed it. Then Congress overrode his veto in a squeaker of a vote. That’s where matters still stood in America. Appeals to the Supreme Court had been fruitless; the vanishing of several Supreme Court justices at the Great Disappeara
nce meant a weakened high court, with several members missing and President Hewbright unable to get any of his judicial nominees confirmed.
Standing there in the shadow of the huge rock outcropping, Gikas was going on and on about the robotically operated drone planes that had been employed by the Global Alliance for surveillance and police work. “If they scan you from the air and don’t see your BIDTag, you get one warning over the loudspeaker from the drone, telling you to stop and to wait for someone to arrive on the ground to arrest you. A second warning if you don’t stop. Then they start shooting from the air.”
Ethan nodded. This was old news for him. Except that he knew something Gikas didn’t: for Ethan there would be no second warning, or even a first.
“Yeah,” Louder replied. “We’re pretty up on all of that.” He gave a knowing glance at Ethan. Both of them knew that because Ethan was a leader of the resistance, his image had been cataloged into the facial-recognition program of the Global Alliance ID data centers—the main one in New Babylon, Iraq, and the others in Rome, London, Frankfurt, and Singapore—and they were all digitally linked and uploaded to the drone-bots around the world.
Gikas concluded his point. “Just have to be careful. Need to keep an eye on the sky.”
“The drone-bots have a recognizable pitch to the engines,” Ethan said. “I can usually hear them coming.”
“Anyway,” Gikas went on, “let’s get back to why you’re here.”
Ethan jumped to his main point. He explained how he needed assurance that if his Remnant followers joined Jo Li’s underground economy they would not be linked to anything criminal. No dirty money. No tie-in to drugs, prostitution, human trafficking.
Gikas stretched out his arms in wonder. “What kind of people do you take us for?” He laughed loudly and so did his bodyguard.
“Ethan March is a guy with principles,” Louder said. “I thought you knew that.”
“Okay, okay,” Gikas replied. “I know about you people. Goody-good. Nicey-nice. All squeaky clean and talking all about God and Jesus. Which is why I’m happy to tell you that our trading system is completely legit. The people who trade back and forth in our system are just people who didn’t get BIDTagged, and so they need to be able to buy and sell some other way. Jo Li’s system is legal because he found a loophole in the law.”
“I need to see how his financial system actually operates,” Ethan said. “I need more information.”
“For that, you will have to talk to Mr. Jo Li himself,” Gikas said.
“Where is he?”
“Not here,” Gikas replied.
“Close?”
“Not very. Hong Kong.”
Ethan took a moment to consider that. Then he asked something very different. “Tell me, Gikas, do you believe in God?”
Louder smiled as if he wasn’t surprised.
Gikas answered, “Sure. Yeah. Why not.”
“You don’t sound very convinced,” Ethan said.
Gikas winked at his bodyguard as he answered. “It’s just that, you know, there’s a lot of unknowns.”
Ethan asked, “Do you know anything about this huge rock we’re standing next to?”
Gikas took a step toward the historical marker attached to the outcropping and eyed it. “Yeah, something about Paul the apostle doing something here. Some religious thing.”
Ethan began to explain how two thousand years ago, at that exact spot, Paul had told the great philosophers of ancient Athens about the God who had been unknown to them but could be known through His Son, Jesus.
The big bodyguard shuffled his feet and nudged Gikas, motioning with his head, like it was time to leave. But Gikas took a second to study Ethan. “You people are a strange bunch,” he said and thrust an index finger toward Ethan. “I’m going to have to figure you out.”
“Will you arrange the meeting with Jo Li?” Louder asked.
“Maybe,” Gikas said with a shrug. “It’s up to him, not me. He’s the big guy. I’m a nobody.”
“Wrong,” Ethan said with a smile. “God thinks you’re somebody.”
Gikas was about to reply, but now Ethan hushed him as he held a finger to his lips. He gazed straight up. “There’s a drone-bot approaching. I can hear it.”
A second later they were all eyeing the sky.
Ethan searched for somewhere to hide. The high mount of the Acropolis was too far away. He would never make it. Down toward the city? That was a mile at least to the nearest building. Probably more.
Now they could see the clean white underbelly of the drone approaching their position.
“We’re exposed!” Ethan yelled. He pointed to the grove of trees off to the side of Mars Hill. “Head to the trees.”
Gikas yelled back, “They’ve got body sensors. They can still scan us in the woods.”
As he started racing toward the trees, still limping slightly, Ethan explained, “But the bullets may get blocked by the trees!”
He watched the drone dropping in altitude over their position. Then the laser orb on the belly of the unmanned attack plane flashed. On the ground Ethan was bathed with red light. “I’ve been painted!” he cried. “Everyone scatter. Get away from me!”
“Ethan!” was all Louder had time to scream.
A mere three seconds later—just enough time for the onboard computer in the drone to recognize Ethan from the sky—bullets from the fifty-caliber gun in the drone’s belly turret started blasting down at him. He yelled to Louder as he kept running clumsily toward the grove of trees. “Jimmy, get out of here! Meet me back at the apartment. Gikas, make the arrangements for the meeting with Jo Li.” Pistoning toward a full run as bullets exploded around him, he ducked inside the small wooded area. The bullets ripped through the treetops.
He found a large tree and wrapped his arms around the trunk, pressing against it as hard as he could, and waited. He could still hear the drone up in the sky, cruising back and forth over the trees. He glanced at his Allfone watch. The usual protocol was a seventeen-minute gunnery pursuit, and then the drones usually departed if they hadn’t confirmed a hit on their target. The only thing he could do now was wait it out and not move a muscle.
He stood absolutely still, pressed against the rough bark of the olive tree, until he heard the sound of the plane’s engine fading. Finally the drone was no longer visible in the sky. He let go of the tree and breathed. And breathed again.
Thank You, God.
But he couldn’t relax. Not yet. He had to get out of Athens. He knew that in a matter of minutes the plaza around Mars Hill would be crawling with Global Alliance police forces.
As he made his way down the hill, he had another thought. So much for taking me alive.
FOUR
AMMAN, JORDAN
Bart Kingston sipped a cup of Turkish coffee at a sidewalk café. The Jordanian man on the other side of the little glass table held a small, handheld AllView image display unit. He looked uncomfortable and was passing it back and forth from one hand to the other. The Jordanian was obviously a man under pressure.
Kingston wondered about the overly public place his contact had picked for their rendezvous. “Can I ask you something?” he said. “Why here? Why not a quiet hotel room?”
The Jordanian laughed, but not as if something was funny. More like a cynical snort. “Hotel rooms have only two exits. The Global Alliance breaks down the door and now you have only one way out—through the window.” He put the AllView unit down and finished his coffee. Then he glanced around and picked the unit up again. “At least here I keep my options open. You know, for running.”
Kingston, a former journalist for GNN, knew the stakes. The news footage chip in the image unit was the kind of stuff that could make the Jordanian—or a newsman like Kingston, for that matter—disappear forever if he was caught with it.
“You say, Mr. Kingston, that you are now with this AmeriNews group?”
Kingston nodded.
“I hear the Alliance hates you people,” the
man added with a scowl.
“Sure,” Kingston answered. “Because we are American based. Because we’re the only web-based news service left in the world that’s still independent. Not controlled by the Global Alliance, or by any of its ten world government regions. Or by the Alliance’s web-news network, for that matter.”
The Jordanian man set the compact device on the table, exactly in the middle between the two men. “Two thousand units. Agreed price. The digital video chip is already in the recorder.”
“Agreed,” Kingston said.
Before Kingston began to electronically transmit the money, both men glanced around the café again, just one more time. Looking for snoops. Spies. Agents of the Alliance. Close by, a couple sat arguing about something. Two tables away, a young man was smoking a cigarette and eyeing a trio of attractive women passing by. It all looked normal enough.
“Okay,” Kingston said. “I need your BIDTag.”
Kingston held out the screen of his Allfone, and the Jordanian man placed the back of his hand to the screen of the digital communications device until it could read his BIDTag. The screen flashed. Next Kingston passed his finger over a tab with a dollar sign on it. His Allfone was an older model, and the symbol was a relic of the past now that the dollar had been abandoned as the monetary unit in America and anywhere else.
The screen on Kingston’s handheld read Transaction Ready. Kingston placed the back of his own hand to the little screen. Another flash. The screen read Amount to Transfer?
After the monetary units were typed in, the screen lit up again. Monetary transfer complete. Thank you, Mr. Kingston. The corner of the screen flashed with a summary of the payment and the identities of the parties involved.
“Done,” Kingston announced and displayed the screen of his Allfone to the Jordanian, who nodded and looked satisfied but still very nervous. The Jordanian slid the video recorder over to Kingston. Then he added, “Please do not tell who I am or where you got this.”