Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist (15 page)

“Probably. It’s going to be hard to hide that I did your work.”

“It was the least you could do,” she said.

David fought to attribute her sudden unattractiveness to claustrophobia and frustration. “I love you even when you’re ornery,” he said.

“That’s big of you.”

He shrugged and turned his palms up in surrender. “I’d better get back. Until you and I declare ourselves, we can’t be seen together. For one thing, I have to account for your whereabouts.”

“That’s only fair.”

He shook his head and rose.

“Someone should have told me,” she said.

He didn’t look at her. “I got that point.”

“I’m just saying,” she said, “that I’m the one who could get booted out of my job and reassigned. You know what that’ll mean.”

He turned back. “Ten minutes ago I would have loved that. It would have meant we could declare ourselves and I’d get more time with you.”

David could tell he had wounded her. “And now?” she said.

“Like I said, I love you even when you’re―”

“You know the price, David. I want what you want, but what’s best for the Trib Force?”

“I can’t be much good to the Force, frustrated without you.”

“Who has the access to GC brass that you do?”

“I know. So, are we in love again or what?”

She came to him, and they held each other. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Me too.”

Mac had not been to Johannesburg since before the great wrath of the Lamb earthquake. From the air it resembled New Babylon. The rebuilt airport served as a major hub of international travel. Regional Potentate Rehoboth’s palace housed his several wives, children, and grandchildren, along with servants and aides.

The left side of Mac’s head felt twice as big as the right, and pain stabbed each wound with every beat of his heart. Even applying his headphones was a chore, trying to keep the gauze from pressing tighter against his stitches.

Upon landing, Mac and Abdullah were to open the door and lower the steps. They could then leave the plane, retire to their quarters, or remain in the cockpit, as long as they did not interfere with the meeting. Karl and his assistant would remain on board to serve food. Mac told Leon that he and Abdullah would remain also, probably in their quarters. Of course, they stayed in the cockpit, where Mac listened in on Fortunato and his remaining aide.

“Clancy,” Leon said, “I would like you to phone Ngumo at the
VIP
guesthouse. You can see it there at the end of the airport. Here’s the number. He will not likely answer himself, but put the speakerphone on so I can hear, just in case.”

Mac wished he could take notes, but he couldn’t risk being found with them. He would just have to remember as much as he could―no easy task with the pain. He heard Clancy slowly enter the number. A mature woman answered. “You have reached Mwangati Ngumo’s secretary. May I help you?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you. I am Clancy Tiber, personal assistant to Global Community Supreme Commander Leon Fortunato. I am pleased to tell you that the supreme commander is prepared to receive Mr. Ngumo and two aides aboard Global Community One.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tiber. You may expect them in five minutes. Mr. Ngumo is very much looking forward to his meeting with Potentate Carpathia.”

Clancy hung up and said, “This is too delicious. Is it supposed to be this much fun?”

“There’s more where this came from, son.” The flag-bedecked Botswanian limo stopped fifty feet from the plane, and Mac idly watched three dignitaries alight. Abdullah unstrapped himself and pressed his nose against the windshield. “Does that look like Ngumo to you, Mac?”

“Hm?”

“That’s not Ngumo.”

“I’ve never met him.”

“Neither have I, but unless he’s lost fifty pounds since I saw him on TV, that’s not him. And since when does the big man carry a bag too?”

Mac removed his headset and leaned forward, but the men were already past where he could see them. He jumped as Fortunato blasted so hard against the locked cockpit door that it sprang open and banged against the wall. “Go! Go!” Leon said. “Take off now!”

“We’re shut down, Leon.”

“Start it up! Now! Those men have weapons!”

“The door’s open, Leon! There’s no time!”

“Do something!”

“Engage three and four,” Mac said, and Abdullah flipped several switches. “Full power, now!”

The two engines on the right side of the plane burst to life with a roar, and Mac maneuvered the controls so the plane swung to the left. Mac saw the three would-be assassins blowing down the runway in the hot jet exhaust.

“You’re a genius!” Leon said. “Now get us out of here!”

The men struggled to their feet, retrieved their high-powered rifles, and ran toward their limo. With the steps and open door of the Condor now facing away from them, Abdullah ran to pull up the stairs and shut the door.

“Now go!” Leon shouted. “Go!”

“We’re low on fuel. We’d have to come back here to land.”

“They’re driving this way! Go!”

Mac started the sequence, knowing the plane was not prepped for takeoff again so quickly. The left side engines screamed to life, but until other crucial gauges caught up, the onboard computer would abort takeoff. If Mac overrode the fail-safe mechanism, he risked crashing.

He turned the jet rear side toward his pursuers, but they roared around front, showing their weapons. “Leave them in the dust!” Leon said. “Let’s go!”

But the gunmen circled back out of sight of Mac and opened fire. The blowing of the tires was nearly as loud as the explosions from the weapons. The Condor was wounded. With more than half its tires shredded, the bird rested unevenly on the runway. Mac would never get it to roll, let alone achieve takeoff speed.

Strangely, not another plane was in sight. All the crazy activity, which had to have been witnessed by both air traffic and ground control personnel, had drawn no emergency attention. Mac realized they had been set up and would likely all die. He and Abdullah had been stranded before this band of killers. Whoever they were, they clearly had the cooperation of the Rehoboth regime.

Bullets ripped through the fuselage. Mac and Abdullah leaped from their seats and followed the screaming Leon through the galley, the lounge, and into the main cabin. “Lie on the floor and stay in the center!” Mac shouted.

The killers had apparently decided to make sure no one survived. Bullets tore through windows and walls up and down the plane. Mac noticed only five men on the floor. Abdullah, Leon, Clancy, Karl’s helper, and he were curled beneath seats, their heads buried in their hands. “Where’s Karl?” Mac shouted, but no one stirred.

Mac felt the pressure of footsteps near him and peeked up to see the cook staggering down the aisle, drenched in blood. “Karl! Get down!” As the man fell, wide-eyed, a gaping hole in his forehead evidenced a fatal wound.

“Do we have a weapon?” Leon shouted.

“Prohibited by your boss, Leon!” Mac said.

“Surely you sometimes break the rules! I’ll pardon you if you produce one! We have no hope, Mac!”

There were two pistols in the cargo hold, and yes, Mac thought, sometimes I break the rules. But there was no getting to the guns, and what would he do with them anyway, outnumbered and facing heavy artillery?

“Do something!” Leon pleaded. “Do you have a phone?”

Mac dug his from his belt and flung it to Leon. The commander frantically poked in a special code, shuddering with every round that pierced the plane. “GC Mega-Alert, this is LF 999, secure line! Inform His Excellency GC One under heavy fire, Johannesburg International. Patch me through to Potentate Rehoboth directly, now!”

Mac heard the phone in the lounge. Dare he crawl out and see who it was? If there was a chance it was the shooters with a demand, it might be worth it. He crawled over Karl and into the lounge, where he grabbed the receiver as the base of the phone bounced on the floor. “Talk! “he barked.

It was the woman he had heard over the intercom, now hysterical. “Mr. Ngumo is not behind this attack! He was overtaken by―oh, no! Oh―” A deafening fusillade made Mac pull the phone from his ear. When he listened again, the woman screamed, “They’ve killed him! No! Please!” More shots, and her phone had fallen.

Mac scrambled on all fours into the cockpit and grabbed the radio mike. “Mayday! Johannesburg runway! GC One under attack!” From the middle of the plane he heard Leon shriek into the phone, “You, Bindura? Why? Carpathia is not even on this plane! I’m telling the truth! Call them off! Please!”

If Rehoboth was behind this, they were as good as dead anyway. He would have thought of everything. Mac shouted over the radio, “Mayday! Johannesburg! Believers on board!” If by some stretch a Christian pilot was in the area, who knew what he or she might be able to do?

Mac was knocked on his face by the force of a concussion bomb, and the plane began to fill with smoke. Leon and Clancy screamed, “Fire!” and Abdullah ran forward.

“They may shoot us, Mac, but we have to jump ship! They’ve set us afire!”

Mac and Abdullah opened the main cabin door, trying to keep from being open targets. Leon pushed Clancy from behind, the young man stiff-legged with fear, crying, lurching toward the door. As soon as Abdullah lowered the stairs, Leon shoved Clancy’s quivering mass down ahead of him as a shield. Clancy was torn apart by bullets, and Leon froze at the top of the steps. Only when a firebomb exploded in the lounge did he take his fateful plunge. Mac and Abdullah leaped aboard him and rode him down the steps as the inferno roared out the door behind them.

Mac believed he would never hit the pavement alive. He had lost all hope and leapt from the plane only to escape the flames. With deafening gunfire surrounding him and the Condor engulfed behind him, he shut his eyes so tight he felt as if his cheekbones were in his forehead. With one hand vise-gripped on Abdullah’s wrist and a knee in Fortunato’s fleshy back, Mac bet his life he would open his eyes in heaven.

But he did not.

Leon dropped to his hands and knees on the runway, Abdullah flipping over him. Mac landed flat on Leon’s back, crushing him to the asphalt. A bullet ripped through Mac’s right shoulder blade and another shattered his right hand, the blasts from the weapon not twenty feet away deafening his right ear.

“Oh, God!” Leon screamed beneath him. “Oh, God, help me!” Mac sensed his own head was the next target and that he would be mercifully put out of his misery.

Blackness.

Silence.

Nothing.

Only smell and taste and feeling.

Mac saw nothing because he chose to keep his eyes shut. He heard only Leon’s raspy panting.

The smell was gunpowdery and metallic, the taste blood, the feeling a hot, deep, searing pain. The tear in his shoulder superseded the tender soreness of the side of Mac’s head. His hand was worse. He almost dared not open his eyes. Nothing about that wound would surprise him. Mac felt as if his hand had been shattered.

Leon’s body rose and fell beneath him as Leon gasped for air. Mac rolled off him onto the pavement on his left side, eyes still shut, mind spinning. Was it over, or would he open his eyes to assassins standing over him? Had Leon been hit? Abdullah?

Disappointed that he was not in heaven, Mac forced open one eye. Smoke was so dense and dark he couldn’t see inches past his nose. He drew his ravaged hand to his face for a closer look and felt the devastation in his shoulder. His hand shivered so violently it shook his whole body, and blood splattered from it onto his face.

Mac reached with his other hand to steady the wounded appendage and saw he had all his fingers, though they were splayed in different directions, a bullet having ripped through the back of his hand. His whole body shook, and he feared he was going into shock.

As the smoke slowly cleared, he forced himself to sit up. Leon lay hyperventilating, eyes open, teeth bared. Clancy Tiber lay beside him, obviously dead.

“Abdullah?” Mac called out weakly.

“I am here,” Abdullah said. “I have a bullet in my thigh. Were you hit?”

“At least twice. What happened to the―”

“Do you see the horses?”

“I can’t even see you.”

“I hope they stay long enough for you to see.”

“So do I.”

Rayford awoke after nine in the morning Saturday at the safe house. He could have slept another couple of hours after the night he’d had, but an unusual noise had niggled him awake. His eyes popped open and he lay still, hoping it was later, hoping his body had had time to recharge, wondering if he had lucked out and his aches and pains might have abated.

A rhythmic swishing sound, like someone rubbing their hands together every few seconds, made him sit up. Listening more closely, he thought it might be sniffing or even sniffling. It came from the bedroom next door, where Tsion both slept and worked.

The rest had been good for Rayford’s mind and spirit, but it had only stiffened his ailing joints and muscles. He groaned aloud, pulled on his robe, and peeked into Tsion’s room through the door, which was open a few inches.

At first Rayford didn’t see Dr. Ben-Judah. The chair before his computer screen was empty, as was the bed. But the sound was coming from that room. Rayford knocked gently and pushed the door open another foot. Beneath the window next to the bed, Tsion lay on the floor, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders heaved as he wept bitterly.

“Are you all right?” Rayford said softly, but Tsion did not respond. Rayford stepped beside him and sat on the bed so Tsion would know he was there. The rabbi prayed aloud. “Lord, if it is Hattie, I beg for her soul. If it is Chaim, I covet him for the kingdom. If it is someone in this house, protect them, shield them, equip them. Father, if it is one of the new brothers or sisters, someone I have not even met, I pray your protection and mercy.” He wept more, moaning. “God, tell me how to pray.”

Rayford put a hand on the teacher’s back. Tsion turned. “Rayford, the Lord suddenly impressed deeply upon my heart that I should pray for someone in danger. I was writing my message, which is also weighing on me―probably the most difficult I have had to write. I thought the leading was to pray for my audience, but it seemed more specific, more urgent. I prayed the Lord would tell me who needed prayer, but I was then overcome with the immediacy of it. I knelt, and it was as if his Spirit pushed me to the floor and planted in my soul a burden for whoever was in need. I still do not know, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that this is more than just my imagination. Pray with me, would you?”