Three (7 page)

They were all somewhat
startled at the sudden growling and turbulence as the landing skids were
lowered.  The aircraft reduced power and descended, touching down on the
McMurdo snow strip with a bump.  The reverse thrust of the four turboprop
engines gradually brought the aircraft to a stop.  It taxied toward a large hangar,
shutting down its engines after turning to face away from the hangar door. 
When the rear ramp was lowered, Joshua, Joel, and Enoch were met with a blast
of cold air as they looked out on an airstrip and tarmac of ice and snow. 
Donning their cold weather gear, they removed the restraining straps and helped
with the unloading of the transport equipment.  Entering the hangar, they saw
many wooden supply crates stacked in various places around the large hangar
floor.

They were welcomed to the
supply team by the supply chief and told to secure their gear and follow him to
their quarters.  The dormitory was located just behind the hangar and had
sleeping quarters for a dozen people.  At present they were the only occupants,
along with the three locals who had been working to pack food in the crates
that would soon be shipped to the Amundsen – Scott Station at the Pole. 

As they settled into their
dormitory and carefully organized their winter clothing, Joel commented to his
commander, “Colonel, I noticed the support people here at the airport all drive
around in small, heated Sno-Cats.  It is too cold for any guard to walk a post
for hours at a time.  I’m hoping our guard will be riding and not walking.”

“Good observation, Joel.  If
you’re right, we should be able to hear the Sno-Cat from within the hangar as
it makes its rounds.”

That night, after a
three-hour training session followed by a hardy meal of beef steaks and
potatoes, the six members of the loading crew bedded down for the night in
their rooms now darkened against the overnight twilight.  After all of his
fellow workers were asleep, Joel left the sleeping quarters and carefully made
his way to the hangar side door.  As expected, it was unlocked, and he quietly
entered.  He found no one inside and was able to settle into a corner to listen
for the guard making his rounds. 

He was able to determine that
the Sno-Cat came around the hangar once every half hour, and the outside sweep
of the hangar took only five minutes.  Returning to the quarters, he bedded
down for the rest of the night.

The following morning a
Sno-Cat trailer was moved into the hangar and each team member practiced
carefully loading and strapping down a dummy crate onto the trailer using the
hydraulic fork-lift.  The supply chief supervised the work and insisted that
the process of approaching the supply crates with the fork lift be repeated
until it could be done with no contact of the forks with the crate or pallet until
the pallet was lifted from the floor.  In the same way, he scolded the various
operators if they sat the crates down too hard on the trailer.  The practice
and rebukes went on all day, until all were too tired, or angry, to continue. 

The chief then informed the
five men that loading of the food crates would begin early the following day and
take three hours.  “The work will be done out on the tarmac in the bitter cold.
You’d better protect yourselves from hypothermia and frostbite by carefully
layering your winter clothes and by drinking plenty of water while you work. 
But, even more important, you’d better not make one mark or scratch on any
trailer or food crate, or you’ll have me to deal with!” 

In the evening, after all
were again asleep, Joshua, Enoch, and Joel quietly left the sleeping quarters
and, brushing away their footprints in the fresh snow, entered the hangar to
begin their over-night’s work.  Joshua carefully examined the crates of food
and then the similar crates of oil.  He noted that the bills of lading were
standard-sized sheets of paper slipped into clear plastic sleeves on each
crate.  The sleeves were stapled to the wooden crates in such a manner that by
removing the single staple at the bottom, the sleeve could be lifted upward,
allowing for the marking of a 616 underneath with a black marker pen.  This
prophetic symbol would remain hidden until someone, much later, alarmed by what
he found in the food crates, removed the paper bill of lading from the sleeve
for closer examination.

As the three were carrying
out this first step in their mission, Joel asked, “What is the meaning of this
six-sixteen?”

“The number and its color are
both prophetic symbols of the famine of Yahweh’s judgment,” answered Joshua.

“Why are we marking crates of
oil and hydraulic fluid?”

“We will exchange the bills
of lading of these crates with those of the food crates now stacked there at
the front of the hangar.  Then we will have to move each crate so that tomorrow
these non-food crates will be loaded on the Sno-Cat trailers for the trip to
the Pole.

One by one the bills of
lading for the crates of oil and hydraulic fluid were exchanged with those for
the crates of food so that each false food crate was marked with a 616 in black
ink.  When that task had been completed, interrupted periodically by the drone
of the approaching night-time guard snug in his heated Sno-Cat, the three
prepared to move the false food crates into position for the morning loading.

Joshua operated the forklift,
while Joel and Enoch stood by the now mislabeled food crates to make sure each
crate of oil was set into position correctly.  In the morning all the crates in
the hangar would appear exactly as they had the afternoon before.  This process
required numerous passes with the forklift for each exchange and was
interrupted periodically by the passing of the guard, and by the need to
recharge the batteries of the forklift.  The three had become so accustomed to
the drone of the passing guard, that when the Sno-Cat suddenly stopped at the
door on the near side of the hangar, they were perplexed.  For a moment each
froze, looking at each other.

Enoch whispered, “Why did he
stop?”

“Shhh,” said Joshua, as he
listened for any sound from outside the hangar.  “I think I hear footsteps
approaching this side of the hangar.  Hide!”  Joshua dove off the forklift and
rolled behind the crates of machine parts as he heard a key being hastily inserted
into the nearby lock.

Joel and Enoch were just able
to crouch behind the set of food crates when the door was thrown open and the
guard rushed into the hangar.  He ran toward Joshua’s position where the
forklift sat, obviously out of position, with a mislabeled food crate in its
grip.  Joel and Enoch watched in horror as the determined guard ran closer and
closer to their commander’s position.  He vaulted past the back end of the fork
lift, pushing with his right hand, in order to rush around it.  Just when Joel
and Enoch were certain that he would pounce on their commander, the guard
continued on, running to the opposite end of the hangar to a door.  He yanked
open the door and entered.  The three then heard the zipping and ripping sound
of his removal of his cold weather gear, followed by the familiar sounds of him
relieving himself in the hangar bathroom.

At Joshua’s signals, Joel and
Enoch joined him and moved to a secure hiding place behind the crates of
mechanical parts.  There they waited breathlessly as the now relieved guard
made his way, less hurriedly, back across the hangar to his warm vehicle.  On
both passes he had failed to notice the forklift; or if he did, he was unaware
of it’s being out of position.

After he had re-locked the
door and started his Sno-Cat, Joshua exhaled and whispered, “That was close!”

To which Joel replied, “I
almost had a heart attack thinking we had been caught!”

“We should now be safe to
continue the exchange.  We will probably have no other interruptions.”

After four hours of working
and hiding in the hangar, the exchange of crates was finally accomplished and
Joshua said, “This part of our mission has been completed successfully; it’s
time we got some rest for tomorrow’s loading of the trailers.”

The three quietly returned to
their quarters and settled into their bunks for a few hours of needed sleep. The
false food crates would be loaded onto trailers during the morning twilight,
and by noon the caravan would start its run to the Amundsen – Scott South Pole
Station. After finishing this phase of the mission, Joshua planned to return to
Christchurch on the next flight north, and then continue on to Beirut where he
would pick up the last piece of equipment needed for the Reverend’s cleansing
of the temple in Jerusalem. 

Joel and Enoch would remain
at McMurdo for the next few months to continue working on the transfer of
supplies to and from this storage hangar.  Joshua had instructed them to make
sure none of the food crates, now labeled as oil and hydraulic fluid, would be
shipped out to some garage here in McMurdo where they would be discovered. 

They would eventually return
to Christchurch where they would remain until their final mission was
accomplished.  There they could continue monitoring the communication in and
out of the supply depot until it was clear that the McMurdo LC-130 had been disabled. 
The two would then carry out their attack on the last remaining LC-130 in Christchurch,
and then make their escape back to Jerusalem.  Neither Joel nor Enoch had any
idea how their commander planned to cleanse the temple, but they wished to be
present for the prophetic event.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger
and thirst?

-
Khalil Gibran

Before Oliver left his
Chicago apartment for his drive to O’Hare, he again called Maxine on a secure
line, knowing she had now been briefed on Peter’s death at Fermilab.

She picked up and immediately
said, “Dr. Saxon, I’m sorry for your loss.  I know what it’s like to have
someone close to you suddenly die.  Director Clark has filled me in on your
continuing responsibilities there.  He’s staffed me into your Texas project.  I
didn’t let on that I had already been looking into the Father Abraham conspiracy,
but I had an uncomfortable feeling he knew I’d been snooping around.” 

“Thanks for your care, Maxine,
I’ll have to keep some contact with my friends here during the next two weeks,
but for now I’ll concentrate on playing tourist in Waxahachie.  By the way,
please call me Oliver.  I left Dr. Saxon behind when I left the college campus
for the summer.  Incidentally, have you learned anything in your not-so-secret
snooping?” 

Maxine sighed and answered, “OK,
I’ll call you Oliver if you call me Max….  I’ve had no luck in connecting
anything between these three religious groups.  If Abraham was the father of them,
he did very little to keep his family together.  The director did pass on some
information, just in from our agents in Israel that makes the connection even
less likely.  The highly encrypted and therefore technologically sophisticated
messages came from a Haredi neighborhood.  As you know this sect is the Jewish
equivalent to the Religious Society of Friends.  Both shun anything modern,
keeping to the strict law of the Bible or Torah.” 

“Yes, Max, I know. Haredi
means ‘those who tremble at the word of God.’  They’re the last group to resort
to violence, and certainly not one to join a conspiracy linked by high
technology.  It’s likely Central Intelligence is right; some ISIS cell is
hiding its true location by linking its communication through this most
unlikely location.” 

“You may be right, Oliver;
however I must tell you that my own family are Quakers who trace our history
all the way back to the Valiant Sixty of seventeenth century England.  My
father was the first Phillips to break away from the Society of Friends.  So
you see, although I was not raised in the faith, I’m a Quaker soldier of
sorts.  I’ll look into the Israeli military to see if I have a Haredi
equivalent.  Meanwhile, you have to see what you can find in Waxahachie.  If
this is an ISIS plot, it may be possible that this transmission was also a
linked communication by some non-Christian terrorist cell in the States”

Oliver was surprised by
Maxine’s revelation of her family history and eager to find out more at some
later time.  For now, he was pleased that she was willing to open up to him,
but decided not to comment.  She had not mentioned the attack at his apartment. 
Oliver did not want to tell her about it unless she had been briefed by Clark. 
“Well, I’m on my way to Texas to see what I can find out, but you might begin
looking for some publicized event that occurred a few days before this set of
communications that may have triggered some jihadist action.  After all, we’ve
seen this pattern in previous ISIS attacks.” 

“I’ll do that, and you keep
in touch and stay out of trouble.  Remember, I’m the field agent!”

“I’m sorry, Max.  You’re the
one who should be out in the field.”

“No, Oliver, you’re the best
for this mission.  It’s fact-finding only, and should not involve bullets or
IEDs.”

“Good grief, I hope not!”
exclaimed Oliver, relieved that Maxine was good humored about being left out of
the Waxahachie trip.

It was difficult for Oliver
to again approach a flight to Dallas/Fort Worth, knowing what had transpired
before his last attempt.  However, this time the trip to O’Hare and the flight
to Texas was not interrupted with bad news, or for that matter, news of any
kind, as he again found himself deep in thought, distracted by events at
Fermilab and at his apartment.  He began to feel a dark fear growing within him,
stemming from his suspicion Peter was murdered.  He realized he feared for
Alice Newbury’s safety as well as that of Elizabeth, David, and Khalil.  For
now the threat, if it existed at all, was unseen and unknown and lurked in the
shadows of his mind.  He wished that he could somehow remain in Chicago to
watch over all four members of this “family” of Peter’s.  Oliver also realized
the federal agents now in place there would be just as concerned for the safety
of these four people as he was, especially if foul play had already been
suspected.

Walking from the arrival gate
in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to the car rental agency, Oliver was
immediately aware of the people around him.  They were obviously different from
those he had recently encountered in Chicago and Washington, D. C.  Here the
people seemed much more relaxed, and frequently greeted one another with
“howdy”, even if the other person was a complete stranger such as Oliver.  The
“howdys” helped him relax somewhat as he waited for his rental car to be
brought up to the check-out location. 

The drive from the DFW
airport in Grapevine, south through the suburban Arlington area and toward
Waxahachie, offered a pleasant view of North Texas suburban ranch-style homes
and eventually North Texas ranches interspersed with stands of scrub trees and
grass-land.

As Oliver began to drive out
into the open country-side, he soon became aware of patches of blue flowers he
recognized as Texas Bluebonnets.  Driving up over a rise he was overwhelmed at
the sight of a sea of Bluebonnets spreading as far as he could see to the
distant tree-line.  What made the field of blue and green so stunning was that
randomly throughout the field were spots of red, where Indian Paintbrush
blossoms randomly burst forth.  Without them, the solid mass of Bluebonnets
would become monotonous; however, these irregular splashes of red broke up the
sameness of the display and made it spectacular. 
Maybe this is another
example of breaking up the symmetry of a pattern, just like the time I took a
red crayon to my grandmother’s flowered wallpaper
, Oliver mused, as he again
thought of Peter and their days together at Princeton.  He continued this drive
into a perfectly normal and beautiful countryside.  As he drove, it was hard
for him to believe somewhere nearby an ISIS cell might be hiding.

The town of Waxahachie
appeared like so many other older towns in the Southwest, with plain but
functional one and two-story buildings spread out along its streets as he drove
toward the central commercial district.  Downtown Waxahachie also displayed the
same western small town ambiance: small family-owned stores huddled around a
town square, un-noteworthy except for one magnificent exception.  The Ellis
County Courthouse, at the center of the square, not only loomed over the
surrounding buildings, but completely overwhelmed them with its grandeur.  A four-story
alien spacecraft in the same location, at the town center, would have been less
conspicuous. 

The courthouse, now mostly a
museum, was constructed of red brick and carved stone in a heavily ornate
Victorian style.  It would have been beautiful placed on main street Disney World,
but here it seemed definitely out of place.  Oliver drove a few blocks further
to the edge of town and found his motel. 

He freshened up, sat down at
the small desk in the corner of his room, and called Maxine to let her know he
had arrived.  “Max, you can’t believe this town.  It’s surrounded by fields of
Texas Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush producing a panorama of red, blue and
green. If that’s not spectacular enough, it has a castle, complete with towers,
smack dab in its middle that looks like something from medieval Europe.” 

“Take pictures, Oliver; after
all, you’re supposed to be a tourist as you snoop around.” 

“I have my cell phone at the
ready.  By the way, can you give me any additional information about my mission
that could help me in my search?” 

“Well, careful analysis of
cell tower links to the suspect transmissions has pinned the location to a
region a few miles south-west of town in an area that appears to be open
farm-land.  So maybe you’ll be taking pictures of Texas cattle as well as Texas
castles.” 

“Very funny, Max,” chuckled
Oliver, “I’ll bring you back souvenirs from each.  Right after lunch I’ll start
at the courthouse and then check out the south-west side of town, cows and
all.”

On his drive back towards the
center of town, Oliver found a Mexican restaurant that looked like it had been
there for at least twenty years.  Its parking spaces were filled with a mix of
cars and pick-up trucks belonging to locals.  Oliver entered the restaurant and
was shown to a table near the back of the dining room.  He picked up the menu,
but rather than study it, he studied the people at the tables around him.  It
soon became apparent that all were familiar with one another and with the wait
staff.  These customers were couples and groups of men and women, enjoying a
lunch break before returning to their offices or homes.  He saw no one who was
out of place in this restaurant, but himself.

“What can I get y’all?” asked
the waitress, approaching his table with a friendly smile.

Oliver had not yet read the
menu.  “What do you recommend?”

“Our favorite is the luncheon
platter.”

“I’ll have that, and a glass
of iced tea.”  As he waited for his order, he again studied the people in the
dining room expecting to see anyone who didn’t fit.  These customers were all
locals, dining at their favorite restaurant.  If he expected to find an ISIS
cell in Waxahachie, Texas, he was going to have to work harder than this.

The waitress returned with
his order.  “Y’all here for the Bluebonnet tours?”  She had pegged him for a
visitor and was obviously offering to assist him by suggesting a particular
tour.

“As a matter of fact, I am. 
On my drive down from Dallas I was greeted by a spectacular sea of blue, green,
and red.”

“Well, the best Bluebonnet
fields are out around Ennis in East County.   You aughta follow the Ennis trails.”

“Thanks, I will.”  Oliver
then began to savor the various items on his luncheon platter.  Each one he
tasted was more delicious than any he had ever been served at other
restaurants.  He thoroughly enjoyed this plate of Texas-style Mexican food, each
item prepared with unusual care.  Oliver realized this friendly atmosphere and
excellent food had eased the anxiety that had continued to bother him since
learning of Peter’s death and yesterday’s attack at his apartment. 

He did not rush through this
lunch, but sat thinking how he might quickly find more information about the
surrounding countryside, besides following the Bluebonnet trails, or sitting in
the local popular business establishments.  When he had finally finished his
lunch, he left cash on the table for the plate and tip and, nodding to the
smiling waitress, walked to his car.  He was still feeling the warmth of this
hospitable restaurant as he drove to the town square and parked near the
courthouse.

Earlier, he had noticed a
small jewelry store on the square.  Thinking of how he had left Max back in the
I&A office while he was snooping around in North Texas, he entered the shop
to the jangle of a spring-suspended bell overhead.  He spent the next half hour
carefully examining the encased merchandise, much of which was hand crafted and
quite unique. 

He was looking for a gift to
give Maxine on his return.  He felt bad for having misled her about this mission
to Texas, which she could have done just as well.  It would have given her a
badly needed break from her frustrating work at I&A.  He examined a number
of pendants prepared to celebrate the surrounding Bluebonnet fields.  Most were
much too busy, composed of clusters of blue stones sprinkled with some green
and red.  He finally spied a gold necklace which he felt would suit Max.  It
consisted of a gold chain, from which hung a gold triangular pendant with
semiprecious stones of red, blue, and green, one at each of its three corners. 
This pendant, with its simple symmetry, reminded Oliver of the colorful fields
surrounding Waxahachie, as well as that mysterious ‘three’, they both now
hunted together.

Oliver left the shop with his
gift, and walked across the street, stopping to gaze at the Victorian style
façade of the courthouse.  Standing before the front entrance was a statue of a
young man holding a rifle: a memorial dedicated by the Daughters of The
Confederacy to those who fought in the Civil War, or as some called it “the
great war of northern aggression.” 

Inside the museum section of
the lobby, Oliver examined the exhibits giving the history of Ellis County. 
This county prided itself as the Bluebonnet capitol of the world.  The many Bluebonnet
trails were shown on a large map of the county and were accompanied by
paintings and photographs of their splendor.  Another exhibit gave the history
of Waxahachie, including some ideas as to the origin of the town’s name.  Most
experts believed it was a Native American name that meant calf’s tail
.  Ha!
Now I’m going to have to find a small cow patty to take back to Max.