Apollyon: The Destroyer Is Unleashed (21 page)

“Not too low.”

“High enough to clear power lines,” Ken said. “Low enough to stay under radar.”

“We gonna be all right?”

“Depends on where he was when he first called. If he was still in Chaim’s neighborhood, we’ve got a pretty good lead on him. I doubt he’ll stay this low or go this fast. No way he’s dumb enough to believe we’re going to Ben Gurion. Somebody’s bound to spot us, and then he’ll chase us to the airstrip. No time for restroom stops or seat changes at the airport, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Rayford sat near the runway listening to the radio traffic and resisting the urge to coach Ken. If he didn’t know enough to stay low and push the chopper’s limits, nothing Rayford could say would help.

The radio came to life again with a report from a small, fixed-wing plane that had sighted the low-flying GC chopper with its lights off.

“Chopper Two is in pursuit. Chopper One, you are breaking international aviation law by running without lights, high speeds at low altitude, and hijacking of government aircraft. Proceed directly to Jerusalem Airport and remain on board or suffer the consequences.”

Airport personnel swept into action, emergency vehicles cruising the runways. “Attention please. Jerusalem Airport is temporarily closed due to an emergency. Be advised, all landing sequences and takeoffs are suspended until further notice. Cessna X-ray Bravo, you copy?”

“Roger.”

“Piper Two-Niner Charley Alpha?”

“Roger.”

“Gulfstream Alpha Tango?”

“Roger,” Rayford said, but he did not shut down. He hoped Ken would understand why he was waiting at the wrong end of the runway. This would be a takeoff without clearance and in the wrong direction.

And here came the chopper. Ken wouldn’t have time to talk on the phone, and the radio was not an option. Rayford checked his gauges. He was ready.

Ken started to put down at the original spot.

“Gulfstream’s up there!” Buck shouted. “And you’ve got security coming on the ground!”

Ken hopped the craft back up and set down near Rayford. The door of the Gulfstream hung open. Buck, Chloe, and Tsion set themselves to jump out of the chopper. “Hold tight a second,” Ken shouted. “They see us board the Gulf now, they can block him easy! I’m going to have to play cat and mouse with ‘em, make ‘em think Ray’s not involved!”

As security vehicles approached, Ken leapfrogged them, hovering just above where he had first set down, two hundred yards from the Gulfstream. “Put down right there, Chopper One!” came the voice from Chopper Two on the radio. “And do not disembark. Repeat, do not disembark.”

Ken put down but kept the blades whirring as the ground vehicles headed his way. “Shut it down, One!” the radio blared. Buck and the others saw Chopper Two descending from Rayford’s end of the field, right toward them.

“Stay out of sight, and forget your bags, people,” Ken said. “If I get you close, you’re going to make a run for the Gulf.”

“We’re still going to try to do this?” Chloe said. “It’s hopeless!”

“It’s never hopeless as long as I’m breathin’,” Ken said.

Rayford stared out the cockpit windshield of the Gulf-stream, imagining that any second Ken and all that was left of his own family would be surrounded by armed GC guards. They would never expose him, but dare he just sit and wait to leave when the airport reopened? His body boiled with frustration, wanting to do something, anything.

Ken was a creative, resourceful, smart guy. And it did appear he still had those blades spinning. What was he going to do? Let Chopper Two chase him some more? There was no hope in that.

“Shut it down, One!” the command came again. “You are surrounded with no possible escape!”

Chopper Two was within thirty feet of Ken, also on the ground now with blades engaged. Rayford watched, amazed, as Ken went straight up about a hundred feet, then pointed the nose of the chopper at the Gulfstream and seemed to fall right in front of it. It hit the tarmac at such an angle that it slid fifty feet and spun to a stop next to the open door.

“Let’s go kids!” Ken shouted. “Right now!”

He smacked the door open with a running back-like stiff-arm and grabbed Buck, tugging him past the front seat and out. Buck waited on the ground and caught Tsion as Ken handed him off. Tsion charged up the steps of the Gulfstream and stood ready to shut the door.

Buck was grateful Ken took a little more time with Chloe. “Go all the way in!” he said. “Tsion’s got the door!”

Rayford watched in horror as GC vehicles raced his way yet again. He had to get airborne. Betting ground control could not see people boarding his plane, he got on the radio. “Gulf Alpha Tango to ground control, requesting permission to get out of the way of this activity.”

“Roger, Gulf. Just stay out of the way of security vehicles.”

Rayford started rolling, though he knew only two had boarded. The Gulfstream screamed and whined as he slowly moved forward, edging past Chopper One, his door dragging on the pavement and throwing sparks. He couldn’t leave the ground until everyone was aboard, then he had to pressurize the cabin before getting too high.

Buck’s brain went into slow motion, and a kaleidoscope of images raced through his mind. In what seemed the next millisecond he remembered taking a bullet to his heel in Egypt while diving with Tsion aboard a Learjet piloted by Ken. Now while whirling to grab the door as the Gulfstream edged by, he saw clearly through the struts of the chopper that GC men sprinted toward them, taking aim.

Buck screamed, “Ken! Ken! Go! Go! Go!” as Ritz caught up to him. Buck pumped his legs as fast as he could, and Ken loped right behind with those long limbs. The Gulfstream picked up steam, and Buck felt the pull of the power on his body. He glanced back at Ken, whose face was inches from his, desperate determination in his eyes.

Buck was about to leap up the steps when Ken’s forehead opened. Buck felt the heat and smelled the metal as the killing bullet sliced his own ear on the way by, and his face was splashed by Ken’s gore. The big man’s eyes were wide and vacant as he dropped out of sight.

Buck was yanked along, sobbing and screaming, his arm caught in the wire that supported the open door. He wanted to jump off, to run back to Ken, to kill someone. But he was unarmed, and Ken had to have been dead before he hit the ground. In spite of himself, despite his grief and horror and anger, Buck’s instincts turned to his own survival.

The Gulfstream was now speeding along too fast for Buck’s legs to keep up. Tsion leaned out as far as he could, straining with all his might to pull the door up and Buck with it. But the more he pulled, the more entangled Buck became. Chloe was helping now, crying and screaming herself, and Buck worried about the baby.

He lifted his feet to keep from scraping the leather off his shoes and burning his feet. The Gulfstream was at takeoff speed, the door stuck open, Buck pinned in the support―and he knew Rayford had no choice but to throttle up.

Buck tried to swing forward and catch a foot on the step, but the momentum and the wind made him unable to move. He was nearly horizontal now, and the vibration in the aluminum skin of the plane changed when the wheels left the ground. He squinted against the wind and grit that stung his eyes, and he could see Rayford would be lucky to clear the ten-foot fence in the grass at the wrong end of the runway.

The plane lumbered over the fence, and Buck felt as if he could have lowered a toe and brushed it. One thing was sure: He was not going to get into that plane now that it was in the air. The door would have to be shut mechanically. He could wait for that to sever his arm and fall to his death, or he could take his chances in the underbrush on the far side of the fence.

Buck pulled and twisted and jerked until his elbow cleared the wire. The horrified faces of his wife and his pastor were the last images he saw before he felt himself fall, cartwheeling, hitting the tops of tall bushes, and lodging himself, scraped and torn and bleeding, in the middle of a huge thicket.

His body shuddered uncontrollably, and he worried about going into shock. Then he heard the Gulfstream turn, and he knew Chloe would never let her father leave without him. But if they came back, if they landed to look for him, they were all as good as dead. Ken was already gone. That was enough for one night.

Painfully, he wrenched himself free and knew his injuries would require attention. No bones seemed broken, and as he stood, shivering in the cool of the night, he felt the bulge in his pocket. Was it possible? Had his phone survived?

He didn’t dare hope as he flipped it open. The dial lit up. He hit Rayford’s number.

“Mac?” he heard. “We’ve got a mess, and we need help!”

“No,” Buck barked, his voice raw, “it’s me and I’m all right. Go on, and I’ll hook up with you later.”

Rayford wondered if he was dreaming. He was certain he had killed his own son-in-law. “Are you sure, Buck?” he shouted.

Chloe, who had collapsed in despair, now grabbed the phone out of Rayford’s hand.

“Buck! Buck! Where are you?”

“Past the fence in some nasty underbrush! I don’t think they saw me, Chlo’! Nobody’s coming this way. If they saw me running for the plane, they have to think I made it aboard.”

“How did you survive?”

“I have no idea! Are you all right?”

“Am I all right? Of course! Ten seconds ago I was a widow! Is Ken with you?”

“No.”

“Oh, no! They’ve got him?”

“He’s gone, Chloe.”

Rayford decided to fly north as fast as he could, guessing that GC forces would assume he was heading west. “Tsion, dig through Ken’s stuff and see if he has any record of friends of his in Greece. He mentioned our putting down there or Turkey if necessary.”

Tsion and Chloe opened Ken’s flight bag. “This is painful, Rayford,” Tsion said. “This brother flew me to safety when there was a bounty on my head.”

Rayford could not speak. He and Ken had clicked so quickly that he had made an instant friend. Because of their hours together in the air, he’d spent more time with him than anyone but Buck. And being closer to Ken’s age, he felt a true kinship. He knew violence and death were the price of this period of history, but how he hated the shock and grief of the losses. If he began thinking of all the tragedy he had suffered―from missing out on the Rapture with his wife and son, to the loss of Bruce, Loretta, Donny and his wife, Amanda . . . and there were more―he would go mad.

Ken was in a better place, he told himself, and it sounded as hollow as any platitude. Yet he had to believe it was true. The loss was all his. Ken was finally free.

Rayford was bone weary. He was not supposed to be handling the flight back. Ken had reserved his hours behind the controls so he could pilot the Tribulation Force back to the States.

“What is all this?” Chloe asked suddenly. “He’s got lists and ideas and plans for businesses, and―”

“I’ll tell you later,” Rayford said. “He was quite the entrepreneur.”

“And brilliant,” Tsion said. “I never figured him for this kind of thinker. Some of this reads like a manifesto of survival for the saints.”

“No names though? Nothing that looks like a contact in Greece? I’m going to start that way, just in case. I can’t fly much farther anyway.”

“But we can’t land without a local contact, can we, Dad?”

“We shouldn’t.”

“Can Mac help?”

“He’d call me if he was free to talk. I’m sure they’ve involved him in this fiasco. Pray he’ll somehow misdirect them.”

Buck’s facial lacerations were deep but below the cheekbones, so there was little bleeding. His right thumb felt as if it had been pulled back to his wrist. He could not stop the bleeding from his left ear where the bullet that had killed Ken had sliced it nearly in half. He quickly took off his shirt and undershirt, using the latter to wipe his face and sop his ear. He put his shirt back on, hoping he wouldn’t appear so monsterlike that he would scare off anyone who might help him.

Buck crept to the airport edge of the underbrush but didn’t dare get near the fence. Though no searchlights pointed that way, the fence provided a perfect background for any watchful eye to detect movement. He sat with his back to a large bush to catch his breath. His ankles and knees were tender, as was his right elbow. He must have taken the brunt of the crash into the spiky plant on his right side. He tilted his cell phone toward the light to see his foggy reflection in the lighted dial.

Feeling a sting below the cuff, Buck pulled his pant legs up a few inches to find both shins bleeding into his socks. His muscles ached, but under the circumstances he felt Fortunato. He had his phone, and he could walk.

“We might have found something,” Tsion said. In Rayford’s peripheral vision he could see the rabbi showing a phone directory page to Chloe.

“That looks Greek to me. What do you think, Dad? He’s got a number for a Lukas Miklos, nickname Laslos.”

“What city?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Any other notations? Can you tell if it’s a friend or a business contact?”

“Try the number. It’s all we’ve got.”

“Wait,” Tsion said. “There’s a star by the name and an arrow pointing down to the word lignite. I don’t know that word.”

“I don’t either,” Rayford said. “Sounds like a mineral or something. Dial him up, Chloe. If I’m landing in Greece, I’ve got to start initial descent in a few minutes.”

Buck couldn’t remember the name of Jacov’s mother-in-law. And he never caught Stefan’s last name. He didn’t want to call Chaim; his place had to be crawling with GC. He walked in the darkness, staying in the shadows, and made a huge loop around the airport and onto the main road. There he could either hitchhike or flag a taxi. Not knowing where else to turn, he would go to the Wailing Wall. Nicolae had publicly warned Moishe and Eli to disappear from there by the end of the stadium meeting, which told Buck they would be there for sure.

“Yes, hello, ma’am,” Chloe said. “Does anyone there speak English? . . . English! . . . I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Does anyone there―” She covered the phone. “I woke her. She sounds scared. She’s getting someone. Sounds like she’s waking him up.