Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle Of The Ages (30 page)

“Defending the perimeter here, yes, he told me. My question is, why don’t we ignore the perimeter if our borders are impregnable?”

“Because people are seeking refuge here all the time, and they are not safe until they get inside.”

“And yet they are safe in the air. How do you figure that?”

“I’ve quit trying to figure out God, Tsion. I’m surprised you haven’t.”

“Oh, Rayford, you have just stepped into one of my traps. You know how I love to quote the Word of God.”

“Of course.”

“Your mention of figuring out God reminds me of one of my favorite passages. Ironically, it leads into a verse that justifies my going in spite of the danger.”

“I’m listening.”

“Romans 11:33-36: `Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him?” For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.”’

“Impressive.”

“But, my friend, that leads into the first verse of the twelfth chapter, which is my justification: `I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”’

“Just hope it’s
a living
sacrifice, Tsion.”

Chang had concluded that Carpathia believed the prophecy about the drying up of the Euphrates, because he had sanctioned sensitive devices in the river that recorded information that was fed into and evaluated by the GC mainframe computer. Chang, of course, was monitoring that from Petra. Nearly four weeks later, he knew when the event occurred before the GC did.

“It’s happened!” he shouted, standing at his computer. Everyone nearby jumped and stared, and Naomi came running. “There was water in the Euphrates a minute ago, and now it is as dry as a bone. You can bet tomorrow it will be on the news-someone standing in the dry, cracking riverbed, showing that you can walk across without fear of mud or quicksand.”

“That is amazing,” Naomi said. “I mean, I knew it was coming, but isn’t it just like God to do it all at once? And isn’t that a fifteen-hundred-mile river?”

“It used to be.”

Mac’s and Abdullah’s reconnaissance flights over the area showed that weaponry had been taken from the armories in Al Hillah until they had to be empty. Within days, great columns of soldiers, tanks, trucks, and armaments began rolling west from as far away as Japan and China and India.

“And here,” Chang told Naomi, “is the break Tsion has been looking for, whether he knew it or not. Look at this.” He printed out a directive from Suhail Akbar himself, instructing Global Community Peacekeepers and Morale Monitors to cease and desist with all current assignments and consider themselves redeployed to the GC One World Unity Army. “Your superiors have been similarly assigned, and you will report to them in the staging area in twenty-four hours or face
AWOL
charges.”

“What happens to the streets?” Naomi said.

“I can’t imagine, love. The inmates will be running the asylum. But that means people without Carpathia’s mark can come out from hiding.”

“If they dare. There’s still a bounty on their heads. The loyalists will kill them and stack their bodies, waiting for the end of the war to cash in.”

“Won’t they be disappointed.”

“I must go as soon as possible,” Tsion told Rayford. “What is the fastest way Cameron and I can get to Jerusalem?”

“Helicopter, I suppose, if I can find you a pilot.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Uh, well-I guess nothing. Anything else?”

Tsion laughed. “I cannot wait. I have packed food-stuffs and a change of clothes, and if Cameron has done as I requested, he will have done the same. Who would know if a chopper is available?”

“Meet me at the helipad in half an hour.”

Priscilla Sebastian made a valiant effort to distract Kenny Bruce as Buck tried to extract himself from the boy’s embrace.

“I’ll be back soon,” Buck said. “Got to go with Uncle Tsion.”

Kenny said nothing. He just hung on.

“Grandpa’s going to come see you after he drops us off, okay? You’re going to stay with him while I’m gone.”

Kenny lightened his grip and pulled back to look at Buck. “Grandpa?”

“That’s right.”

“Plane ride?”

“I bet so.”

“When?”

“Soon. Soon as he gets back.”

“I wanna go.”

“Not enough room. Now you be a good boy and play with Beth Ann, and Grandpa will be here soon. Okay?” ay.*

Mac was working with Otto Weser and George on planning the evacuation from New Babylon, as soon as the word came that believers were to move out. No one, not even Tsion, seemed to know how that would be super-naturally announced or even whether anyone outside New Babylon would hear it.

“I know of a few other cells there,” Otto said. “I have left instructions with one of the leaders to call me once she gets the word. I don’t know what else we can do. I’ll tell them to meet us at the palace airstrip and hope we have a plane big enough to get them all out of there.”

“All we can do is all we can do,” Mac said.

Naomi interrupted their meeting. “Want to say good-bye to Tsion? Everyone is turning out for the farewell.”

“He’s going already?”

She told Mac why.

“Tsion never lets any grass grow on an idea, does he?”

He and George and Otto followed Naomi to a clearing near the helipad, where it seemed hundreds of thousands had shown up. “Word travels quick round here, doesn’t it, Otto?”

“Mr. McCullum, many of these people are weeping. He’s only going to Jerusalem, isn’t he? That can’t be more’n a hundred miles, can it? And surely he’s coming back.”

“That’s what they’re cryin’ about, Otto. Most folks wonder if he will be back.”

Rayford waited on firing up the chopper so Tsion could be heard. The rabbi pulled a white cloth from his pocket and waved it vigorously at the people as Buck boarded behind him. “These people are going to want your neck when you come back without him, Rayford,” Buck said.

“Which, of course, I plan to do in an hour or less.”

“I’d
just better not come back without him,” Buck said.

“People! People!” Tsion shouted. “I am overwhelmed at your kindness. Pray for me, won’t you, that I will be privileged to usher many more into the kingdom. We are just days away now from the battle, and you know what that means. Be waiting and watching. Be ready for the Glorious Appearing! If I am not back before then, we will be reunited soon thereafter.

“You will be in my thoughts and prayers, and I know I go with yours. Thank you again! You are in good hands with Chaim ‘Micah’ Rosenzweig, and so I bid you farewell!”

He continued waving as he boarded. Rayford noticed the rabbi’s tears as he buckled himself in.

“Something’s on your mind,” Naomi said, as she and Chang walked hand in hand. He had just finished transmitting to Rayford’s helicopter a schematic of Jerusalem with various potential put-down spots.

Chang shrugged. “Sometimes I’m glad I’m here and safe and can sleep-unlike at the palace-but other times I feel I’m taking the easy way out. Everyone else is gearing up for the battle.”

“Oh, Chang. Don’t say that. You put in your years of frontline work. And anyway, you know full well you’re much more valuable here in the center than out there shooting or being shot at. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“You were getting along fine before I got here.”

She dropped his hand and put her hands on her hips, cocking her head at him. “You have a short memory, Chang Wong. How can you forget that I spent a good portion of every day on the computer with you, though we were more than five hundred miles apart? I would have been nowhere without your teaching me, which is the way I feel now.”

“Everything’s up and running here. I could be gone a few weeks.”

“I wasn’t talking technically, Chang. Call me selfish, but I’m glad you’re not venturing out. Father loves me, but not like you do.”

“I should hope not.”

She smiled. “And I enjoy spending time with him, which is something a lot of women my age can’t say about their fathers. But I would rather be with you. Remember, we want to survive so we can be together for a millennium. Let’s not risk that for the sake of your conscience.”

“You don’t think I’d be good in combat.”

“Actually I do, Chang. I know you’re half the size of that Sebastian character and much more rational than Buck Williams. But I believe a person’s personality and character come out when the pressure is on, and I’ve seen you under pressure. With a little training, you could hold your own.”

Rayford was studying Chang’s transmissions and trying to discuss with Buck the best place to land. Buck was busy digging through what he’d brought and said, “It’s your call, Ray. I can’t imagine one spot is going to be any less treacherous than another.”

“Remember that all these GC are expected to be in Megiddo tomorrow,” Rayford said. “Not today. They might still like a plum arrest.”

“I disagree,” Buck said. “Their directive told them to immediately cease and desist and head toward where they had to be. I don’t know a guy in uniform who wouldn’t take them up on that.”

“Just take me to the Wailing Wall, Rayford,” Tsion said. “I want to be preaching when I get off this thing.”

“Could you think of a more dangerous place?”

“Danger is not the issue now, Captain. Time is. The Day of the Lord is at hand. Let us not be setting up camp when the enemy attacks.”

“Easy for you to say,” Rayford said.

“Not unless I am on the ground. Now, for once, do what I ask.”

Rayford came within sight of the Temple Mount. It was crawling with people. “Agh!”

“They will move,” Tsion said. “Trust me. Put this thing down, and they will get out of the way. Wouldn’t you?”

THE
INSTANTANEOUS
drying up of the Euphrates proved good news to only the kings of the East, who transported their weapons directly into Israel across dry land. The rest of the Fertile Crescent was no longer fertile. Irrigation dried up, hydroelectric plants shut down, factories closed. In short, everything that depended on the massive power of the great river was immediately diagnosed as terminal.

Chang’s prediction of GCNN’s carrying accounts of reporters standing in the middle of the dry riverbed proved accurate. But all the fancy pronouncements and isn’t-it-something-that-I’m-standing-here-where-yesterday-I-would-have-been-a-hundred-feet-below-the-surface did not amuse millions who depended upon the Euphrates for their very existence.

It didn’t surprise Buck that Tsion proved to be right. When Rayford lowered the chopper into a clearing at the Temple Mount, hundreds of angry people scattered, raising their fists at him.

Buck grabbed his bag and tucked his Uzi behind his back and under his jacket. He leaped from the chopper and scampered to safety in underbrush near the Wall. He looked back to see Tsion doing the same and was amazed at the agility of this newly trained guerilla.

They knelt, catching their breath and watching Rayford lift off. The chopper whirling out of sight took the attention off them. Buck looked around. “This is where I saw the two witnesses taken into heaven three and a half years ago,” he said.

That old curiosity was back. Rayford couldn’t shake it. No way he could be this close to Armageddon-he guessed less than seventy miles-and not do a flyover. It was crazy, he knew. He might find himself in an air traffic jam. But the possibility of seeing an aerial view of what he had been hearing and reading and praying about drew him like an undertow. And if the result was that he plunged into the abyss like a rafter over the falls, it was worth the risk.

“Cameron, look,” Tsion said. “Look at all the unmarked men! They proudly parade around, beaming at each other, as if defying the GC.”

Global Community Peacekeeping and Morale Monitor forces were nowhere to be seen, of course. But war was in the air. For all the posturing of the devout Jews at the Temple Mount, it was clear that terror pervaded the place. These people knew where the GC were, and they knew they would soon be Carpathia’s targets.

“The old men are at the Wall,” Tsion said, “praying fervently and openly as they have not been able to do for so long. How my heart breaks for them. The young men are talking, planning, looking for arms. They are determined to defend this city, as I am.”

“But the city is to fall, Tsion,” Buck said. “You’ve said so yourself.”

“Only temporarily, and the more of these people we can keep alive, the more can come into the kingdom. That is all I care about.”

Mac was still not sure what to make of Otto Weser. He was a good man, no doubt, but he was amateur in his thinking. He may have been a successful timber business-man in Germany, but Mac would not want to have served under him in combat.

“But don’t you see, Mr. McCullum,” Otto was saying, “if we are already on the ground at the palace airstrip when the supernatural announcement comes, we’ll be that much more ready to quickly get people on board and out of there.”

“And what if we never hear that announcement, or people can’t get to the airstrip? There we sit with the city coming down around us.”

“But will we not be protected as believers?”

“Think, man! If believers were protected, why would God be calling his own people out of there before he levels the place?”

“I want to wait no longer, Cameron. I’m going to the Wall and I will simply begin preaching.” “But what if-”

“There is no more time to think things through,” Tsion said. “We are here for one purpose, and I am going to do it. Now are you going to cover me? Go with me? What?”

“I’ll go with you. No one will give me a second glance, once you open your mouth.”

Tsion pressed a yarmulke onto his head and handed one to Buck. “No sense getting stoned for a technicality,” Tsion said. “We are going to a holy place.”