Two hours later, Connor Sloan led Grace into the elevator. She watched in confusion as he punched the button for the roof.
“Why are we going up?”
“We’ll be traveling by air today.”
“Air? But isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s a quad. And armed. So we should be fine. And there are three decoy vehicles in the underground garage. They will leave in just a few minutes. They should distract any trackers we may have.”
“I don’t know, Connor. This doesn’t sound so good.”
“Mam, I was a little worried about taking you out in the convoy. The last trip, we had a couple of close calls. Closer than I am comfortable with. Today, we go by air.” The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Connor exited the vehicle, checking the area, and then motioned for her to follow. Reluctantly she did. In silence he led her to the door that would open onto the landing pad outside. “We’ll wait here until the convoy has left. Once they are at least two miles away, I’ll message the quad pilot to land.”
“Where is it now?”
“Twenty thousand feet. Out of missile range.” He turned aside, sending messages. “Okay, they are away. Just a few minutes more.” She noticed that he was watching his smart contact intently.
“You have vid?” She asked.
“No, satellite imagery. They’ve made the first turn, all three in a row. I can watch, but I am not running their mission.” She watched him as he continued to follow the progress of the three decoy vehicles. “Damn!” He said suddenly.
“What?”
“Bravo car just bought it. Alpha and Charlie made it though the next intersection.”
“What happened?”
“Not sure. An explosion from underneath the car. Could have been planted on the road.” A few more tense moments passed. Grace felt her heart thrumming in her chest. The thought of another agent losing his or her life to protect her was more overwhelming than she could comprehend. Once more the thought of why she should be spared surfaced. She was just another person on the planet. So what if her husband was a candidate for president. Did that make her better than those that had given their lives to protect her, she thought. She was just one woman. Just another of God’s children. A humble servant to her Father in Heaven. Had the sacrifice that had just happened been God’s will? Could it have been? And if it was, that left the why? Why had so many been sacrificed to save her? What part of God’s plan was she supposed to fulfill?
“They’re away.” Connor said. “Alpha and Charlie have made it to the expressway.”
“Will they be safe?”
“I hope so, mam, but it’s up to them. I’ve messaged the pilot. We’ll be boarding in two minutes. When I open the door, you stay directly behind me and follow my lead. If I crouch, you crouch. If I run, you run. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She said hesitantly. She knew what a quad was. She had seen them before, in pictures, on the vid, and even high in the sky. But Grace had never before rode in one. The ones she had seen had been shaped like large scale version of the drones that crowded the skies now. There were millions of the smaller versions, delivering packages, providing surveillance for the police and media, and even expanding access to the cloud. She trusted Connor, but she could not help but be nervous.
“Now!” He said, as he drew his weapon, and opened the door. The four rotors at each corner of the top of quad, blasted a gale of wind in every direction as the rounded cabin landed on its skids. Connor looked about quickly as he began to run towards the craft. He glanced back to make sure she was close behind. The noise was remarkably low. She expected that the engine sounds would deafen her as she approached, but the only real sound she heard was the rushing winds thrown off by the rotors. The side of the cabin dropped open, revealing a short set of stairs leading up from the pad. As they approached the cabin, Connor stepped to the side, pivoted, and rushed to get Grace inside. As she entered the relatively roomy passenger area, and he climbed in behind her, and the side of the cabin quickly closed. Silence enveloped them.
“Go! Go! Go!” He said to the female pilot, who gave him a thumbs up, and suddenly the quad leaped upwards. Grace was thrown into the seat beside her, as the craft quickly gained altitude, spun around, and accelerated forward. “Buckle up!” Connor said, as he reached over her and pulled her seatbelt harness together and clicked it in place. The rate at which the quad climbed higher and higher into the air, shoved Grace down deep in her seat, as if a great weight was pushing her farther and farther down. She was having difficulty getting her breath, and desperately grasped the sides of her seat. Again the craft began to spin to one side, and accelerated upward and back.
“SAM lock.” The pilot said, her voice calm and patient. She manipulated the controls, and the right side of the quad suddenly lurched upward, and the entire craft accelerated down and to the left. Grace watched in horror as the Surface to Air Missile, flew by the window right in front of her face. “Bogies at twelve and two.” The pilot said, again her voice as calm as the surface of pond. She righted the quad, tilted it to the left, and then the craft dropped from the sky. Grace nearly threw up as the bottom of her world fell out. The weight on her chest was gone, but now she freely floated in her chair, the straps of the harness the only thing that kept her from drifting away. Then just as quickly, she hit a brick wall as the decent of the quad stopped, and she was thrown back into her chair by a sudden forward acceleration.
“Targets acquired. Laser Pulse firing.” The pilot said, just as two explosions appeared in the sky. “Targets destroyed.” The craft leveled off, and began to ascend again. “Bogey at five o’clock.” The quad plunged to the left, and spun around. “Bogey is acquiring target lock.” Suddenly the quad lurched upwards, and spun in the other direction, and accelerated to the right. “Bogey has target lock. Hang on, folks.” An explosion rocked the small craft, and the straps of the harness bit into Grace as she was thrown forward. “Aft port rotor is down.” The pilot said as the quad began to spin wildly around and around. This is it, Grace thought. Dear Lord, if it be your will. She felt a hand grasp hers. Despite the centrifugal force of the spin of the quad, she forced herself to look over at Connor. Though she could see the strain of their spinning on his face, he did not appear to be afraid.
“It will be okay.” He said confidently. She wanted to believe him, she really did. But deep in her heart, she knew it was just a matter of moments before it all came to an end.
“Counterbalance engaged.” The pilot said, and gently the spinning stopped. Just as Grace began to believe they may live after all, the quad jumped up into the sky, swooped to the left, and then flipped over into a complete three-sixty barrel roll. “Target acquired.” The pilot said as the quad spun into the second three-sixty roll. “Missile away.” Coming back to level, the rolling stopped, and the ascension began again in earnest. “Target destroyed.”
“Oh my God.” Grace whispered under her breath. She realized than Connor still held her hand.
“You okay?” He asked, the concern evident in his voice.
“I think so. Just trying not to throw up.” She said, and smiled at him weakly.
“Good shooting, Captain.” Connor said to the Pilot.
“All in a days work, sir. Radar is clean and green. Leveling at twenty thousand feet.”
“What about that rotor?” He asked.
“No worries, sir. The gyro system has counterbalanced for it. ETA is in thirty minutes.” Grace’s heart began to slow down, and her nausea began to subside.
“She’s pretty good.” She said weakly to Connor.
“No, mam. She is very good.” He said and smiled back at her.
“And the others? In the cars?”
“Alpha and Charlie report they have made it to the rendezvous point. They are okay, mam.”
“I’m sorry, Connor. About the others.”
“I know you are, mam. They died in service to their country. In the Secret Service, if you have to go, we all hope to go that way.”<
br />
“God bless you. God bless you all.”
“Thank you, mam. And God bless you as well.” He finally released her hand, and settled back into his chair. “You know, mam. Grace.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t help but believe that there is more at stake here.”
“What do you mean?”
“More than the election. More than the plans we uncovered.”
“How so?”
“Grace? I can’t help but think that...that...”
“That what?”
“That there is a direction to this. To all of this.”
“Spell it out for me, Conner. I’m not understanding what you’re saying.”
“That maybe...maybe all of this...my being assigned to you, the narrow escapes we have made, the plans that we found, what Mr. Alexander plans to do...”
“What?”
“That it’s all divine intervention.”
“God’s will.” She said softly. He nodded.
“I don’t know, Connor. It’s just all so much. I just can’t imagine that God would allow something so horrible, so inhumane to even to begin to develop.”
“But the original Holocaust did happen, Grace.” She stared into his eyes for a moment before she could answer. He was right after all. It had happened, and millions had died painful and senseless deaths at the hands of the Nazi’s. Connor himself had said before, that maybe God was not there when it happened. But how could that be. God was everywhere. He was all things. He was all seeing, all knowing. Her God was an omniscient loving God. How could he have let that happen. How could he be letting it happen again.
“But how could he just let it happen again?”
“Grace, you know that I am a Christian. It was you that brought me back to that path. Do you have any doubt that I believe in our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ?
“No.”
“Do you believe that I would not do anything that I believed God called on me to do?”
“No.”
“Do you believe that what we are facing is evil in its purest form?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that the position we find ourselves in now, the position where we may be able to stop the coming atrocities, that we found our way here by accident?”
“I...I...I don’t know.” She said, confused. He shook his head.
“Yes, you do, Grace. You do know. It could not have been an accident that the two of us are here, in this moment, now. That we have proof of what is to come, and proof of who is behind the plan. That we are in a position to stop it before it can happen. Grace. This is divine intervention if there ever was such a thing.”
“But, Connor. We don’t know that.”
“Don’t we?” He looked away from her. “What if, Grace? What if, back in the nineteen forties, what if there was someone. A friend, a confidant, a wife...someone who was close to Hitler, close enough to reach out and touch him every day. What if that person had proof of what was to come. What if that person believed in God, but refused to see the path paved before them. What if that person, turned away from God’s will unknowingly. What if they could have stopped Hitler before the Holocaust ever began, but they were confused. They were unsure. They did not believe strongly enough, or clearly enough about the path they should follow. Grace. What if God was there?”
“Wait...but if God was there, wouldn’t his will have been done anyway?”
“Free will, Grace. Isn’t that what Christ’s death on the cross really gave us?”
“I don’t understand. The sacrifice of Jesus was to wash away our sins. So that we could accept Christ in our hearts, and become pure. So that we could enter the Kingdom of Heaven and have life everlasting.”
“But where do our sins come from?”
“The devil.”
“Yes...but from inside us as well. God knows that we are but human. He knows that we make mistakes, and that we have opinions, and that we can be both right and wrong at the same time. He made us, so he knows our fallacies. But the thing he knows more than anything is that we have free will. All the way back to the Garden of Eden, he had given man the freedom to choose his path. When Eve intentionally took the fruit from the Tree of Life, she knowingly chose of her own free will to do so.”
“But the serpent...” She began, but then paused.
“True, the serpent, the devil, surely influenced Eve. I think there is little doubt that had the serpent not been present, Eve would never have defied the word of God, and left the fruit to hang on the tree. But, Grace, she did not leave the fruit alone. Don’t you see? Simply the fact that she did take the fruit from the tree is proof of God’s knowledge that not only do we have free will, but that we have the free will to make the wrong decisions, as well as the right ones.”
“But if it is God’s will, then that is what should come to pass.”
“Sometimes, yes. And sometimes, no. In order for us to truly have free will, as expected by God in the very beginning, then he has to give us the chance to make a choice. Whether it be to turn left or to turn right. To look up, or to look down. To look at the Tree of Knowledge and turn away, or to approach the tree and pull down the fruit. We have to be able to make those choices.”
“But why?”
“Because if we can’t...if those choice are taken away from us. If they are decided by God and God alone, then what can it mean to worship him? What would it mean to give ourselves to him? Would we not already be slaves to him? Doing everything he has already decided should be done throughout time eternal?”
“But doesn’t he already know everything that will happen?”
“I don’t know, Grace.” He paused and looked away. “When my wife first died, I thought so. I believed so. And it was that belief that pushed me away from God. The harder I tried to reconcile the horrible wasting away of her life, with our love for our Savior, the further I drifted away. And then one day, as I thought about those actions of Eve in the Garden, I began to realize that we can’t have it both ways.”
“Both ways? What do you mean?”
“He can’t know everything that will ever happen, and still not have known that Eve would take the fruit.”
“Maybe he did know.”
“Maybe. But if he knows all things through the end of time, then he would have known that he would have to sacrifice his only begotten son from the very beginning. As he crafted the Heavens and the Earth. As he said ‘Let there be light’, he would have known that Jesus would die on the cross, so that we may have the chance to consciously choose in his salvation. So even then, it would be from our own free will that salvation would ultimately come.” He turned back to her, and held her hand again. “Grace, who are we to know the thoughts of God. We are just simple beings, with our faith to guide us. But I believe with all of my heart and soul, that we are put on this Earth so that each of us has the opportunity to become one with God. And at some time in each of our lives, whether we recognize it our not, we will be faced with a decision that will ultimately decide the outcome for our immortal souls. For some, those decisions may be simple. Something directly from the ten commandments maybe, or to do or not do something that everyone would recognize as good or evil. But for some of us, Grace, the crossroads we will find ourselves at will not be so easy to understand. And the decisions that we face will not be so black and white.”
“It’s all so confusing.”
“I know, Grace. I know. But Grace?”
“Yes?”
“I think we are at that crossroad now. You and I.”
“With Mason?” She asked. He nodded.
“Yes. But more importantly with his plans. Grace...we may be the only people on Earth that can stop him.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then maybe, two hundred years from now, two God fearing people might be having a discussion similar to ours now. They’ll be wondering where was God, when the second Holocaust happened.”
Chapter 26